“Yes ma’am?”
“I have a hunch she’ll wander out your way. If she does, will you drive her home?”
“Yes.”
“It isn’t as if Kate were another Otey Ann,” says my aunt after a moment.
“No, it isn’t.” She is thinking of two things: one, an acquaintance from Feliciana named Otey Ann Aldridge who went crazy and used to break out of the state hospital in Jackson and come to New Orleans and solicit strangers on Bourbon Street; two, she is thinking of the look in Nell Lovell’s eye, the little risible gleam, even as she reassured my aunt.
I awake with a start at three o’clock, put on a raincoat and go outside for a breath of air.
The squall line has passed over. Elysian Fields is dripping and still, but there is a commotion of winds high in the air where the cool heavy front has shouldered up the last of the fretful ocean air. The wind veers around to the north and blows away the storm until the moon swims high, moored like a kite and darting against the fleeing shreds and ragtags of cloud.
I sit in the shelter outside Mrs Schexnaydre’s chain link fence. Opposite the school, it is used by those children who catch buses toward the lake. The streetlight casts a blueblack shadow. Across the boulevard, at the catercorner of Elysian Fields and Bons Enfants, is a vacant lot chest high in last summer’s weeds. Some weeks ago the idea came to me of buying the lot and building a service station. It is for sale, I learned, for twenty thousand dollars. What with the windfall from Mr Sartalamaccia, it becomes possible to think seriously of the notion. It is easy to visualize the little tile cube of a building with its far flung porches, its apron of silky concrete and, revolving on high, the immaculate bivalve glowing in every inch of its pretty styrene (I have already approached the Shell distributor).
A taxi pulls up under the streetlight. Kate gets out and strides past the shelter, hands thrust deep in her pockets. Her eyes are pools of darkness. There is about her face the rapt almost ugly look of solitary people. When I call out to her, she comes directly over with a lack of surprise, with a dizzy dutiful obedience, which is disquieting. Then I see that she is full of it, one of her great ideas, the sort that occur to people on long walks.
“What a fool I’ve been!” She lays both hands on my arm and takes no notice of the smell of the hour. She is nowhere; she is in the realm of her idea. “Do you think it is possible for a person to make a single mistake — not do something wrong, you understand, but make a miscalculation — and ruin his life?”
“Why not?”
“I mean after all. Couldn’t a person be miserable because he got one thing wrong and never learned otherwise — because the thing he got wrong was of such a nature that he could not be told because the telling itself got it wrong — just as if you had landed on Mars and therefore had no way of knowing that a Martian is mortally offended by a question and so every time you asked what was wrong, it only grew worse for you?” Catching sight of my sleeve, she seizes it with a curious rough gesture, like a housewife fingering goods. “My stars, pajamas,” she says offhandedly. “Well?” She searches my face in the violet shadow.
“I don’t know.”
“But I do know! I found out, Binx. None of you could have told me even if you wanted to. I don’t even know if you know.”
I wait gloomily. Long ago I learned to be wary of Kate’s revelations. These exalted moments, when she is absolutely certain what course to take for the rest of her life, are often followed by spells of the blackest depression. “No, I swear I don’t believe you do,” says Kate, peering into my face, into one eye and then the other, like a lover. “And my telling you would do no good.”
“Tell me anyhow.”
“I am free. After twenty-five years I am free.”
“How do you know?”
“You’re not surprised?”
“When did you find out?”
“At four thirty this afternoon, yesterday afternoon.”
“At Merle’s?”
“Yes. I was looking up at his bookshelf and I hadn’t said anything for a long time. I saw his book, a book with a sort of burlap cover that always struck me unpleasantly. Yet how hard I had tried to live up to him and his book, live joyfully and as oneself etcetera. There were days when I would come in as nervous as an actress and there were moments When I succeeded — in being myself and brilliantly (look at me, Merle, I’m doing it!), so brilliantly that I think he loved me. Poor Merle. You see, there is nothing he can say. He can’t tell me the secret even if he knew it. Do you know what I did? After a minute or so he asked me: what comes to mind? I sat up and rubbed my eyes and then it dawned on me. But I couldn’t believe it. It was too simple. My God, can a person live twenty-five years, a life of crucifixion, through a misunderstanding? Yes! I stood up. I had discovered that a person does not have to be this or be that or be anything, not even oneself. One is free. But even if Merle knew this and told me, there is no way in the world I could have taken his advice. How strange to think that you cannot pass along the discovery. So again Merle said: what comes to mind? I got up and told him good-by. He said, it’s only four thirty; the hour is not yet over. Then he understood I was leaving. He got interested and suggested we look into the reasons. I said, Merle, how I wish you were right. How good to think that there are reasons and that if I am silent, it means I am hiding something. How happy I would be to be hiding something. And how proud I am when I do find secret reasons for you, your own favorite reasons. But what if there is nothing? That is what I’ve been afraid of until now — being found out to be concealing nothing at all. But now I know why I was afraid and why I needn’t be. I was afraid because I felt that I must be such and such a person, even as good a person as your joyous and creative person (I read your articles, Merle). What a discovery! One minute I am straining every nerve to be the sort of person I was expected to be and shaking in my boots for fear I would fail — and the next minute to know with the calmest certitude that even if I could succeed and become your joyous and creative person, that it was not good enough for me and that I had something better. I was free. Now I am saying good-by, Merle. And I walked out, as free as a bird for the first time in my life, twenty-five years old, healthy as a horse, rich as cream, and with the world before me. Ah, don’t disapprove, Binx. Binx, Binx. You think I should go back! Oh I will, no doubt. But I know I am right or I would not feel so wonderful.”
She will not feel wonderful long. Already the sky over the Chef is fading and soon the dawn will glimmer about us like the bottom of the sea. I know very well that when the night falls away into gray distances, she will sink into herself. Even now she is overtaking herself: already she is laboring ever so slightly at her exaltation.
I take her cold hands. “What do you think of this for an idea?” I tell her about the service station and Mr Sartalamaccia. “We could stay on here at Mrs Schexnaydre’s. It is very comfortable. I may even run the station myself. You could come sit with me at night, if you liked. Did you know you can net over fifteen thousand a year on a good station?”
“You sweet old Binx! Are you asking me to marry you?”
“Sure.” I watch her uneasily.
“Not a bad life, you say. It would be the best of all possible lives.” She speaks in a rapture — something like my aunt. My heart sinks. It is too late. She has already overtaken herself.
“Don’t — worry about it.”
“I won’t! I won’t!”—as enraptured and extinguished in her soul, gone, as a character played by Eva Marie Saint. Leaning over, she hugs herself.