“I’m hot.”
“It’s freezing in here.”
His eyes were caught in a stare. Lugurtha’s working of the biscuit dough, the quick kneading gathering movement of her hands against the sifted marble, put him in mind of something She sang:
Up in an airplane
Smoking her sweet cigarette
Keeping his hand clasped in hers, Kitty led him to the sun parlor and showed, not him to them but them to him, as if they were trophies, the articles of her proof: Jamie stretched on the sofa with a wet handkerchief across his eyes; Mrs. Vaught waiting, hands outstretched to them: a new Mrs. Vaught, too, a genial little pony of a lady, head to one side, pince-nez flashing quick family love-flashes, Rita in a wide stance, back to the coal fire. Mrs. Vaught gave him a quick press of her hand and a kiss, a dismaying thing in itself. She said nothing, but there was an easement in the air, the tender settled sense of larger occasions. The sun parlor itself was an unused ceremonial sort of place. He had only been inside it once before, when Mr. Vaught showed him his old Philco, a tall console glistening with O-Cedar. It had a tilted sounding board and it still worked. Mr. Vaught turned it on and presently the tubes heated up and put out regular 1932 static and the smell of hot speaker-silk such as used to attend the broadcasts of Ben Bernie and Ruth Etting and the Chase & Sanborn hour.
The cold wind pressed against the old-style double-hung windows, leaked through and set dust devils whirling along the tile under the wicker. There were lacquered Chinese boxes and miniature chests of drawers, a mahjong set, and a large gonglike table; the brass coalbox was stamped with a scene of jolly Dutch burghers. The coal grate, which had not been used, gave off a smell of burnt varnish. In one corner stood a stork five feet tall with a hollow eye and a beak which cut off the ends of cigars.
Mrs. Vaught twined her arm in his and, rocking slightly, held the two of them by the fire. “Did I tell you that I knew your mother very well one summer?”
“No’m.”
“It was at the old Tate Springs Hotel. Lucy Hunicutt was the prettiest little thing I have ever seen — all dark hair and big violet eyes. And beaus! They swarmed around her like flies. She was a demon tennis player and wore a little cap like Helen Wills. In fact, everyone called her ‘Little Miss Poker Face.’ But there was one boy who was hopelessly in love with her — Boylston Fisk from Chattanooga (Boylston is now chairman of the board of Youngstown and Reading) — and he was the handsomest man I ever saw. But he could never dance more than three steps with her before somebody would break. So she told him if he could ever find out the name of her favorite piece she would dance it with him. Well, somehow he did. It was ‘Violets.’ And don’t you know, he asked the orchestra to play it, not during the dance but while everyone was still at dinner. And he came across the room to her table with every eye on him and bowed and said: Miss Hunicutt, I believe this is our dance. It was like a dare, don’t you see, but she got up! And they danced the whole piece out on the floor by themselves. I swear it was the most romantic thing I ever saw in my life!”
It was as if the memory of this gentler age had dispensed Mrs. Vaught from the terrible quarrels of the present. She softened. His radar sensed it without quite defining it: the connection between the past time and the present insane quarrel over fluoridation. For him it was the other way around! It was the olden time with its sweetness and its great occasions which struck a dread to his heart! It was past fathoming.
Jamie lay with the handkerchief across his eyes and said nothing. When Mrs. Vaught let him go, the engineer went over and sat on the sofa beside him.
“What happened?”
“What do you mean what happened?” said Jamie irritably.
“I thought we were leaving.”
“I don’t mind waiting a while. After all, what’s the big hurry?”
“But it was not your idea, the postponement.”
“Sure it was!”
“I’m packed and ready to go.”
“I know you are.”
“If you want to go, all you have to do is to get up and we’ll leave. And I think Kitty will go with us. But even if she doesn’t, I’m ready.”
“I know you are.” Jamie looked at him curiously. The engineer blushed.
“If you are staying on my account, then I don’t want it. I’d truly rather leave. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“So I am putting you on your honor to say whether it is on my account or anyone’s account that you are staying. If it is, then let’s go.”
Jamie took away the wet handkerchief and wiped his mouth but did not reply. As the engineer waited, the cold air seeped into his shoes. The jaybirds called in the ragged garden outside. Above the Philco hung a great gloomy etching of Rheims cathedral depicting 1901 tourists with parasols and wide hats and bustles strolling about its portal. The three women in the parlor, he suddenly became aware, had fallen silent. Turning his head a degree, he saw that they were watching the two of them. But when he arose, Kitty and her mother had put their heads together and were talking in the most animated way, Mrs. Vaught counting off items on her fingers as if she were compiling a list of some sort. Jamie put the handkerchief across his eyes.
Rita still stood in front of the fire, feet wide apart, hands locked behind her. She watched ironically as the shivering engineer came up to get warm.
“What’s the problem?”
“Ma’am?”
“You and Jamie don’t seem to be very happy about things.”
“Jamie told me this morning he wanted to take a trip out west — and leave immediately. I told him I would. Now I’m afraid he’s delaying the trip on my account. Don’t you think the trip would be a good idea?” He watched her closely.
She shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. How could a delay of a few weeks matter one way or another? Perhaps it would be better to wait at least until everyone knows what he and she really wants to do. Right now I can’t help but detect a certain precipitousness in the air. I don’t think it’s a bad idea, once decisions are made, to live with them for a while, to see if perhaps they can be lived with.”
As he watched, she set her jaw askew, made her eyes fine, and moved her chin to and fro in the web of her thumb. It was a gesture that reminded him strangely of his own father. Suddenly a thrill of recognition and of a nameless sweet horribleness ran like electricity down his spine and out along the nerves between his ribs. She was daring him. Very well, said the fine-eyed expression and the quirky (yes, legal) eyebrow. Let us see what we shall see. Perhaps I know something about you, you don’t know. Let us see if you can do what you say you want to do, stay here and get married in the regular woman’s way of getting married, marry a wife and live a life. Let us see. I dare you.
But was he being flattered or condemned? Was she saying you know better than to stay here or you don’t have what it takes to stay? He cocked an eye at her and opened his mouth to say something, but at that moment Kitty plucked at his sleeve. “Let’s go, Tiger.”
“What?”
“I have a couple of calls to make. You want to come along?”
“Sure.”
There had occurred between the people in the room, in the very air itself, a falling upward of things and into queer new place, like the patterns of a kaleidoscope. But it was his own Kitty who had been most mysteriously transformed. Her cheek was flushed and she swung her shoulders in her school blouse like a secretary sitting between three desks. She bustled. No longer was she the solitary girl on the park bench, as inward and watchful as he, who might wander with him through old green Louisiana, perch on the back step of the camper of an evening with the same shared sense of singularity of time and the excellence of place. No, she was Miss Katherine Gibbs Vaught and the next thing he knew she’d have her picture in the Commercial Appeal.