“What’s the matter?”
“Ooooh,” Kate groans, Kate herself now. “I’m so afraid.”
“I know.”
“What am I going to do?”
“You mean right now?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll go to my car. Then well drive down to the French Market and get some coffee. Then well go home.”
“Is everything going to be all right?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me. Say it.”
“Everything is going to be all right.”
Three
SATURDAY MORNING AT the office is dreary. The market is closed and there is nothing to do but get on with the letter writing. But this is no more than I expected. It is a fine day outside, freakishly warm. Tropical air has seeped into the earth and the little squares of St Augustine grass are springy and turgid. Camphor berries pop underfoot; azaleas and Judas trees are blooming on Elysian Fields. There is a sketch of cloud in the mild blue sky and the high thin piping of waxwings comes from everywhere.
As Sharon types the letters, I stand hands in pockets looking through the gold lettering of our window. I think of Sharon and American Motors. It closed yesterday at 301/4.
At eleven o’clock it is time to speak.
“I’m quitting now. I’ve got sixty miles to go before lunch.”
“Wherebouts you going?”
“To the Gulf Coast.”
The clatter of the typewriter does not slacken.
“Would you like to go?”
“M-hm”—absently. She is not surprised. “It just so happens I got work to do.”
“No, you haven’t. I’m closing the office.”
“Well I be dog.” There is still no surprise. What I’ve been waiting to see is how she will go about shedding her secretary manner. She doesn’t. The clatter goes on.
“I’m leaving now.”
“You gon let me finish this or not!” she cries in a scolding voice. So this is how she does it. She feels her way into familiarity by way of vexations. “You go head.”
“Go?”
“I’ll be right out. I got to call somebody.”
“So do I.” I call Kate. Mercer answers the phone. Kate has gone to the airport with Aunt Emily. He believes she is well.
Sharon looks at me with a yellow eye. “Is Miss Cutrer any kin to you?” she cries in her new scolding voice.
“She is my cousin.”
“Some old girl told me you were married to her. I said nayo indeed.”
“I’m not married to anyone.”
“I said you weren’t!” She tilts her head forward and goes off into a fit of absent-mindedness.
“Why did you want to know if I was married?”
“I’ll tell you one thing, son. I’m not going out with any married man.”
But still she has not come to the point of waiting upon my ministrations — like a date. Still very much her own mistress, she sets about tidying up her desk. When she shoulders her Guatemalan bag and walks briskly to the door, it is for me to tag along behind her. Now I see how she will have it: don’t think I’m standing around waiting for you to state your business — you said you were closing the office — very well, I am leaving.
I jump ahead of her to open the door.
“Do you want to go home and let me pick you up in half an hour? Put your suit on under your clothes.”
“All right!” But it isn’t all right. Her voice is a little too bright.
“Meanwhile I’ll go get my car and my suit.”
“All right.” She is openly grudging. It is not right at all! She is just like Linda.
“I have a better idea. Come on and walk home with me to get my car and then I’ll take you to your house.”
“All right.” A much better all right. “Now you wait right here. This won’t take me long.”
When she comes out, her eyes are snapping.
“Is everything all right?”
“You mighty right it is”—eyes flashing, Uh oh. The boy friend has torn it.
“I hope you brought your suit down from Eufala.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Why no.”
“It’s some suit. Just an old piece of a suit. I was going to get me one at Maison Blanche but I didn’t think I’d be going swimming in March.”
“Do you like to swim?”
“Are you kidding?”
“No.”
“I’d rather swim than eat. I really would. Where’re we going?”
“To the ocean.”
“The ocean! I never knew there was an ocean anywhere around here.”
“It’s the open Gulf. The same thing.”
When I put her in the car, she addresses an imaginary third person. “Now this is what I call real service. Your boss not only lets you off to go swimming — he takes you to the beach.”
On these terms we set forth: she the girl whose heart’s desire is to swim; I, her generous employer, who is nice enough to provide transportation.
Early afternoon finds us spinning along the Gulf Coast. Things have not gone too badly. As luck would have it, no sooner do we cross Bay St Louis and reach the beach drive than we are involved in an accident. Fortunately it is not serious. When I say as luck would have it, I mean good luck. Yet how, you might wonder, can even a minor accident be considered good luck?
Because it provides a means of winning out over the malaise, if one has the sense to take advantage of it.
What is the malaise? you ask. The malaise is the pain of loss. The world is lost to you, the world and the people in it, and there remains only you and the world and you no more able to be in the world than Banquo’s ghost.
You say it is a simple thing surely, all gain and no loss, to pick up a good-looking woman and head for the beach on the first fine day of the year. So say the newspaper poets. Well it is not such a simple thing and if you have ever done it, you know it isn’t — unless, of course, the woman happens to be your wife or some other everyday creature so familiar to you that she is as invisible as you yourself. Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise.
The car itself is all-important, I have discovered. When I first moved to Gentilly, I bought a new Dodge sedan, a Red Ram Six. It was a comfortable, conservative and economical two-door sedan, just the thing, it seemed to me, for a young Gentilly businessman. When I first slid under the wheel to drive it, it seemed that everything was in order — here was I, a healthy young man, a veteran with all his papers in order, a U.S. citizen driving a very good car. All these things were true enough, yet on my first trip to the Gulf Coast with Marcia, I discovered to my dismay that my fine new Dodge was a regular incubator of malaise. Though it was comfortable enough, though it ran like a clock, though we went spinning along in perfect comfort and with a perfect view of the scenery like the American couple in the Dodge ad, the malaise quickly became suffocating. We sat frozen in a gelid amiability. Our cheeks ached from smiling. Either would have died for the other. In despair I put my hand under her dress, but even such a homely little gesture as that was received with the same fearful politeness. I longed to stop the car and bang my head against the curb. We were free, moreover, to do that or anything else, but instead on we rushed, a little vortex of despair moving through the world like the still eye of a hurricane. As it turned out, I should have stopped and banged my head, for Marcia and I returned to New Orleans defeated by the malaise. It was weeks before we ventured out again.
This is the reason I have no use for cars and prefer buses and streetcars. If I were a Christian I would make a pilgrimage by foot, for this is the best way to travel. But girls do not like it. My little red MG, however, is an exception to the rule. It is a miserable vehicle actually, with not a single virtue save one: it is immune to the malaise. You have no idea what happiness Marcia and I experienced as soon as we found ourselves spinning along the highway in this bright little beetle. We looked at each other in astonishment: the malaise was gone! We sat out in the world, out in the thick summer air between sky and earth. The noise was deafening, the wind was like a hurricane; straight ahead the grains of the concrete rushed at us like mountains.