Nothing remains but desire, and desire comes howling down Elysian Fields like a mistral. My search has been abandoned; it is no match for my aunt, her rightness and her despair, her despairing of me and her despairing of herself. Whenever I take leave of my aunt after one of her serious talks, I have to find a girl.
Fifty minutes of waiting for Kate on the ocean wave and I am beside myself. What has happened to her? She has spoken to my aunt and kicked me out. There is nothing to do but call Sharon at the office. The little pagoda of aluminum and glass, standing in the neutral ground of Elysian Fields at the very heart of the uproar of a public zone, is trim and pretty on the outside but evil-smelling within. Turning slowly around, I take note of the rhymes in pencil and the sad cartoons of solitary lovers; the wire thrills and stops and thrills and in the interval there comes into my ear my own breath as if my very self stood beside me and would not speak. The phone does not answer. Has she quit?
Some children have come into the playground across the street; two big boys give them a ride on the ocean wave. Ordinarily the little children ride only the merry-go-round which is set close to the ground and revolves in a fixed orbit.
I’ve got to find her, Rory. It is certain now that my aunt is right and that Kate knows it and that nothing is left but Sharon. The east wind whistles through the eaves of my pagoda and presses the glass against its fittings. I try the apartment. She is out. But Joyce is there, Joyce-in-the-window, Joyce of the naughty-you mouth and the buckskin jacket.
“This is Jack Bolling, Joyce,” says a voice from old Virginia.
“Well well.”
“Is Sharon there?”
“She is out with her mother and Stan.” Joyce’s voice has a Middle West snap. Moth-errr, she says and: we-ull we-ull. “I don’t know when shill be back.” She sounds like Pepper Young’s sister.
“Who is Stan?”
“Stan Shamoun, her fiancé.”
“Oh yes, that’s right.” What’s right? She’s not only quit. She’s marrying the macaroni. “What about you? Are you getting married?”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve been wanting to meet you for some time.”
“I just thot of something.”
“What?”
“The Lord of Misrule reigned yesterday—”
“Who?” Is she starting out on some sort of complicated Midwestern joke? Grinning like a lunatic, I hold on for dear life.
Joyce goes on talking in a roguish voice about the Lord of Misrule and a fellow down from Purdue, a dickens if she ever saw one.
The two big boys on the playground have got the ocean wave going fast enough so they can jump on and keep up speed by kicking the ground away on the low passes. Iii-oorrr iii-oorrr goes the dry socket on its pole in a faraway childish music and the children embrace the iron struts and lay back their heads to watch the whirling world.
“Joyce, I wonder if I may be frank with you”—the voice comes into my ear and I myself am silent.
“Please do. I like frank people.”
“I thought you were that kind of person—” Old confederate Marlon Brando — a reedy insinuating voice, full of winks and leers and above all pleased with itself. What a shock. On and on it goes. “—I know some folks might think it was a little unconventional but I’m gon tell you anyway. I know you don’t remember it but I saw you last Saturday—” It is too much trouble to listen.
“I remember!”
Round and round goes the ocean wave screeching out its Petrouchka music iii-oorrr iii-oorrr and now belling out so far that the inner bumper catches the pole and slings around in a spurt so outrageously past all outrage that the children embrace the iron struts for dear life.
“I’m only home for lunch,” says Joyce. “But why don’t you come over Saturday night. Some of the kids will be there. Praps we could all go to Pat O’Brien’s.” Joyce makes herself out to be a big girl child, one of the kids, and all set for high jinks.
“No praps about it.”
A watery sunlight breaks through the smoke of the Chef and turns the sky yellow. Elysian Fields glistens like a vat of sulfur; the playground looks as if it alone had survived the end of the world. At last I spy Kate; her stiff little Plymouth comes nosing into my bus stop. There she sits like a bomber pilot, resting on her wheel and looking sideways at the children and not seeing, and she could be I myself, sooty eyed and nowhere.
Is it possible that — For a long time I have secretly hoped for the end of the world and believed with Kate and my aunt and Sam Yerger and many other people that only after the end could the few who survive creep out of their holes and discover themselves to be themselves and live as merrily as children among the viny ruins. Is it possible that — it is not too late?
Iii-oorrr goes the ocean wave, its struts twinkling in the golden light, its skirt swaying to and fro like a young dancing girl.
“I’d like to very much, Joyce. May I bring along my own fiancée, Kate Cutrer? I want you and Sharon to meet her.”
“Why shore, why shore,” says Joyce in a peculiar Midwest take-off of her roommate Sharon and sounding somewhat relieved, to tell the truth.
The playground is deserted. I notice that the school itself is locked and empty. Traffic goes hissing along Elysian Fields and the jaybirds jeer in the camphor trees. People turn in now and then at the school gate but they make for the church next door. At first I suppose it is a wedding or a funeral, but they leave by twos and threes and more arrive. Then, as a pair of youths come ambling along the sidewalk, I catch sight of the smudge at the hair roots. Of course. It is Ash Wednesday. Sharon has not quit me. All Cutrer branch offices close on Ash Wednesday.
We sit in Kate’s car, a 1951 Plymouth which, with all her ups and downs, Kate has ever cared for faithfully. It is a tall gray coupe and it runs with a light gaseous sound. When she drives, head ducked down, hands placed symmetrically on the wheel, the pale underflesh of her arms trembling slightly, her paraphernalia — straw seat, Kleenex dispenser, magnetic tray for cigarettes — all set in order about her, it is easy to believe that the light stiff little car has become gradually transformed by its owner until it is hers herself in its every nut and bolt. When it comes fresh from the service station, its narrow tires still black and wet, the very grease itself seems not the usual muck but the thrifty amber sap of the slender axle tree.
“Why didn’t you tell her about our plans?” Kate still holds the steering wheel and surveys the street. “I was in the library and heard every word. You idiot.”
Kate is pleased. She is certain that I have carried off a grand stoic gesture, like a magazine hero.
“Did you tell her?” I ask.
“I told her we are to be married.”
“Are we?”
“Yes.”
“What did she say to that?”
“She didn’t. She only hoped that you might come to see her this afternoon.”
“I have to anyway.”
“Why?”
“I promised her one week ago I would tell her what I planned to do.”
“What do you plan to do?”
I shrug. There is only one thing I can do: listen to people, see how they stick themselves into the world, hand them along a ways in their dark journey and be handed along, and for good and selfish reasons. It only remains to decide whether this vocation is best pursued in a service station or—
“Are you going to medical school?”
“If she wants me to.”