Now right there was where I should have said yes, I want the story of your life, it’s most important that I know the story of your life. But at his words something like a knife shot through me. Because if he told the story of his life I might have to tell the story of my life, and I didn’t want to have to say I had been an orphan, that I didn’t know who I was, that I didn’t even know my proper name. Perhaps you think this is far-fetched, but there are many of us in that situation in the world. We form a, little club, and if you ever meet any of them they will tell you the same thing: it is a terrible thing not to know who you are, a secret shame that gnaws at you constantly, and all the more because you are helpless to do anything about it. So I merely said: “Not if you don’t want to.”
“I’m — just no good, that’s all.”
“Some people might not think so.”
“Oh, yes, if they knew it all.”
“Most of the time I think you’re — a lot of good. And fine inside, I mean. But I don’t like it when you talk this way. I don’t mind what you are. I don’t mind if you’re never anything — of what you mean. But I hate it when you stop fighting. That’s the main thing — to do your best.”
“I’m blocked off from my best.”
Again, what was he talking about? I didn’t know, and for my own reasons, I was afraid to ask. So I merely patted his hand and said: “Nobody can be blocked off from their best, if they really try. It’s got to come out.”
He put his head on my shoulder, and we sat a long time without talking, and then he went to the end of the veranda and sat for awhile with his back to me, looking out over the water. Then he came and stood looking down on me. “There’s one way I can get back at them.”
“How?”
“By marrying you.”
It was like a dash of cold water in the face somehow. Up to then, in spite of all the talk he had been indulging in, I had felt very near him, but now I felt very queer, and must have hesitated for a time before I said anything. “Is that the only reason you want to marry me? To get back at them?”
“Well — let’s say to get clear of them.”
“To show your independence?”
“All right, put it that way.”
“It doesn’t interest me to be the Spirit of ’76 to your little revolution — whatever it’s about, as I haven’t found out yet.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“There’s only one reason I’d marry you, or anybody. If you loved me, and I felt I loved you, that would be enough reason. But just to get back at them — well, that may be your idea of a reason, but it’s not mine.”
“There’s plenty I haven’t told you.”
“I doubt if I’d be interested.”
I went in, put my wet bathing things back into the bag, put on my hat and went out. He was sitting on the step. “Where are you going?”
“Well, there seems to be a town or something over there, so I thought I’d take the train back. I was supposed to be brought back long ago, but nothing seems to have been done about it.”
He threw my bag into a corner, took off my hat and sat me down in the canvas porch seat. Then we started arguing again, and were right back where we started.
We argued and argued, and it was dreary and didn’t make any sense, and he said of course he loved me, and I said he didn’t say it the right way. Then he said his vacation started the next day, and we could have a two-weeks’ honeymoon, and I said I didn’t see what that had to do with it. Then the frogs stopped croaking as though somebody had given them a signal, and it was so still you almost held your breath and everything we had been talking about seemed unreal, and all that mattered was that he was there and I was there, and peace came down upon us. And after awhile I said: “How much do you make?”
“...Hundred bucks a week.”
“All right, then, I make eighty-five. That’s enough.”
“Do you mean yes.”
“I might as well. I really want to. Do you?”
“You know I do.”
“Then yes.”
Next thing I knew, the sun was shining and I was lying there under a blanket, and he was shaking me. “Breakfast’s ready.”
I got up and went inside. He was all shaved and fresh-looking, but my sports dress was wrinkled, and my eyes were red and my face shiny, and my hair all rough and ratty. I took a bath, gave the dress a quick press with an electric iron that was there, and made myself look as decent as I could. Then we had the toast and coffee he had made, and when we got in the car the dew was still on the grass. We were before the big Monday rush, and made good time. We parked near Brooklyn Bridge and went over to the City Hall and got married. We were the first couple. We got in the car again and started uptown. I looked at him and realized I had never yet called him Grant, and yet he was my husband.
Part II
Knife Under the Tongue
Chapter Five
We drove up to the Hutton, and I went up and packed and then came down and checked out, and paid with a check. He put my things in the car, and we drove over to his apartment, which was on East 54th Street. It was in a regular apartment building and had a large living room with a view clear over to Queens, and dining room and kitchen, and seemed a great deal more expensive than anybody could afford who made only a hundred dollars a week. But that wasn’t what struck me about it. It was the strangest place I had ever been in, and yet I knew it was interesting and in very fine taste. Except for the furniture itself, which was comfortable and of good quality, everything in it, even the rugs, was Indian. There were Mexican serapes, all very beautiful, hanging on the walls, as well as pictures by Mexican artists, mainly, as I later found out, Rivera and Orozco, all of Indians. There were Navajo rugs scattered around, and Indian silver and gold work, and on the wall a framed collection of arrowheads, ranging in size from tiny little red ones, which had been used to shoot birds with, up to big spear heads, and all arranged beautifully, in order of size, in white cotton batting with a glass frame over them. Then off on a table, under glass, there was a collection of stone instruments, which I later found out were what the Aztec priests had used to hack out the hearts of the sacrificial victims. However, there was something very beautiful about them, made as they were out of a black stone called obsidian, which was capable of being sharpened, as Grant once showed me, merely by holding it in water so that the oxidation or something brought it to a fine edge.
All this, however, I only partly saw, except to realize I was in a most unusual place, and also to realize that there was something back of all this wild talk of Grant’s that I did not in the least understand. He had the boy take my things to the bedroom, and then began walking around much as he had the evening before. Suddenly it was dismal and hot, and sticky, and completely different from what a bride’s first day is supposed to be. However, I merely said: “It must be getting on toward eleven, so I think I had better go to work.”
He hardly seemed to hear me. “Ah — what was that?”
“I say it’s time for me to go to work.”
“Oh. I suppose so.”
“Well — shall I come back here then?”
“Why — yes, of course.”
“May I have a key?”
“Why — certainly. Here, take mine.”
I usually went to work on the subway, but I felt so miserable I took a taxi, first taking care to note the number of the apartment house, which made me feel still worse, as it was really supposed to be my home, and yet I had to remember it as though it was the address of some stranger. I cried in the taxi all right, and I was still crying when we came in sight of the restaurant. Then I saw it was being picketed, with a lot of the girls out there carrying placards, and arguing with people that started to go in. So I knew the strike had come as a result of the big meeting. But I was too sick at heart even to think about the union, or anything, and I told the driver to go on without stopping, and then I told him to turn around and take me back where he had picked me up.