Outside, she began to cry. “I could have asked Cyril to go, but I didn’t,” she said.
He put his arm around her. “You’re bats,” he said.
He tried to get her to walk faster. By the time they got back to his apartment, she was smiling again, and talking about going skiing in the Rockies. He opened the door and saw a note lying on the floor, written by Dan. It was Penelope’s name, written over and over, and a lot of profanity. He showed it to her. Neither of them said anything. He put it back on the table, next to an old letter from his mother that begged him to go back to graduate school.
“I want to stop smoking,” she said, handing him her cigarette pack. She said it as if it were a revelation, as if everything, all day, had been carefully leading up to it.
It is a late afternoon in February, and Penelope is painting her toenails. She had meant what she said about moving in with him. She didn’t even go back to Dan’s apartment for her clothes. She has been borrowing Robert’s shirts and sweaters, and wears his pajama bottoms under his long winter coat when she goes to the laundromat so she can wash her one pair of jeans. She has quit her job. She wants to give a farewell party before they go to Colorado.
She is sitting on the floor, and there are little balls of cotton stuck between her toes. The second toe on each foot is crooked. She wore the wrong shoes as a child. One night she turned the light on to show Robert her feet, and said that they embarrassed her. Why, then, is she painting her toenails?
“Penelope,” he says, “I have no interest in any damn party. I have very little interest in going to Colorado.”
Today he told his boss that he would be leaving next week. His boss laughed and said that he would send his brother around to beat him up. As usual, he could not really tell whether his boss was kidding. Before he goes to bed, he intends to stand a Coke bottle behind the front door.
“You said you wanted to see the mountains,” Penelope says.
“I know we’re going to Colorado,” he says. “I don’t want to get into another thing about that.”
He sits next to her and holds her hand. Her hands are thin. They feel about an eighth of an inch thick to him. He changes his grip and gets his fingers down toward the knuckles, where her hand feels more substantial.
“I know it’s going to be great in Colorado,” Penelope says. “This is the first time in years I’ve been sure something is going to work out. It’s the first time I’ve been sure that doing something was worth it.”
“But why Colorado?” he says.
“We can go skiing. Or we could just ride the lift all day, look down on all that beautiful snow.”
He does not want to pin her down or diminish her enthusiasm. What he wants to talk about is the two of them. When he asked if she was sure she loved him she said yes, but she never wants to talk about them. It’s very hard to talk to her at all. The night before, he asked some questions about her childhood. She told him that her father died when she was nine, and her mother married an Italian who beat her with the lawnmower cord. Then she was angry at him for making her remember that, and he was sorry he had asked. He is still surprised that she has moved in with him, surprised that he has agreed to leave New Haven and move to Colorado with her, into the house of a couple he vaguely remembers — nice guy, strung-out wife.
“Did you get a letter from Matthew and Bea yet?” he says.
“Oh, yes, Bea called this morning when you were at work. She said she had to call right away to say yes, she was so excited.”
He remembers how excited Bea was the time she stayed with them in the country house. It seemed more like nervousness, really, not excitement. Bea said she had been studying ballet, and when Matthew told her to show them what she had learned, she danced through the house, smiling at first, then panting. She complained that she had no grace — that she was too old. Matthew tried to make her feel better by saying that she had only started to study ballet late, and she would have to build up energy. Bea became more frantic, saying that she had no energy, no poise, no future as a ballerina.
“But there’s something I ought to tell you,” Penelope says. “Bea and Matthew are breaking up.”
“What?” he says.
“What does it matter? It’s a huge state. We can find a place to stay. We’ve got enough money. Don’t always be worried about money.”
He was just about to say that they hardly had enough money to pay for motels on the way to Colorado.
“And when you start painting again—”
“Penelope, get serious,” he says. “Do you think that all you have to do is produce some paintings and you’ll get money for them?”
“You don’t have any faith in yourself,” she says.
It is the same line she gave him when he dropped out of graduate school, after she had dropped out herself. Somehow she was always the one who sounded reasonable.
“Why don’t we forget Colorado for a while?” he says.
“Okay,” she says. “We’ll just forget it.”
“Oh, we can go if you’re set on it,” he says quickly.
“Not if you’re only doing it to placate me.”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to stick around New Haven.”
“Then what are you complaining about?” she says.
“I wasn’t complaining. I was just disappointed.”
“Don’t be disappointed,” she says, smiling at him.
He puts his forehead against hers and closes his eyes. Sometimes it is very nice to be with her. Outside he can hear the traffic, the horns blowing. He does not look forward to the long drive West.
In Nebraska they get sidetracked and drive a long way on a narrow road, with holes so big that Robert has to swerve the car to avoid them. The heater is not working well, and the defroster is not working at all. He rubs the front window clear with the side of his arm. By early evening he is exhausted from driving. They stop for dinner at Gus and Andy’s Restaurant, and are served their fried-egg sandwiches by Andy, whose name is written in sequins above his shirt pocket. That night, in the motel, he feels too tired to go to sleep. The cat is scratching around in the bathroom. Penelope complains about the electricity in her hair, which she has just washed and is drying. He cannot watch television because her hair dryer makes the picture roll.
“I sort of wish we had stopped in Iowa to see Elaine,” she says. Elaine is her married sister.
She drags on a joint, passes it to him.
“You were the one who didn’t want to stop,” he says. She can’t hear him because of the hair dryer.
“We used to pretend that we were pregnant when we were little,” she says. “We pulled the pillows off and stuck them under our clothes. My mother was always yelling at us not to mess up the beds.”
She turns off the hair dryer. The picture comes back on. It is the news; the sportscaster is in the middle of a basketball report. On a large screen behind him, a basketball player is shown putting a basketball into a basket.
Before they left, Robert had gone over to Cyril’s apartment. Cyril seemed to know already that Penelope was living with him. He was very nice, but Robert had a hard time talking to him. Cyril said that a girl he knew was coming over to make dinner, and he asked him to stay. Robert said he had to get going.
“What are you going to do in Colorado?” Cyril asked.
“Get some kind of job, I guess,” he said.
Cyril nodded about ten times, the nods growing smaller.
“I don’t know,” he said to Cyril.
“Yeah,” Cyril said.
They sat. Finally Robert made himself go by telling himself that he didn’t want to see Cyril’s girl.
“Well,” Cyril said. “Take care.”
“What about you?” he asked Cyril. “What are you going to be up to?”