They are people, goddam it, not pneumatic, hydraulic, terrace toys. Not necessarily Heloise and Abelard, Romeo and Miss Capulet, or even Nappi and Joe. But just a crumb of some kind of love there, lad. Love that makes her sweet to hold, warm to murmur to, after there’s no more fireworks left in the park. And you can’t do that with a terrace toy.
Dana rolled her head toward me and smiled and said, “I was almost asleep.” She put a fist against her yawn. “You know, when you are thinking of something and then it all turns crazy and then it turns real again, and you know a dream got mixed into it.”
“Tell me the crazy part.”
“It’s just plain dull, Trav, really. I was wondering if the car would be there as I ordered, and then suddenly I was remembering the last time you and I wanted a car-we didn’t ever, of course-and we walked out and got into it and it didn’t have any wheels. You were furious and you kept saying they always did that to us. And I was thinking that this time I would look for the wheels before signing the slip, and suddenly I realized how nutty that was. I suppose some psychiatrist would have a ball with that.”
“I suppose he’d say you were realizing I can’t get anyplace with you.”
I said it off the top of my mind. She looked at me for another moment and then said, too casually, “I guess you could make it mean almost anything.” She turned her face away again, and I saw the redness climb her throat and up her cheek, suffuse her forehead and slowly die away.
It had been too logical a guess, and she had for a moment accepted it, and then taken the next step of translating what it meant to dream that this time she’d look for the wheels before signing the slip. I realized I had innocently created the sort of awareness which would keep her doubly on guard against any kind of emotional involvement with me, no matter how minor.
She arranged the car while I claimed the luggage. When she got in beside me, she had a marked map in her hand. She showed it to me and said, “Just the general idea. I’ll call the turns.” A most valuable gal.
“Food?” I asked.
“Woops,” she said, and scrambled out and hustled back into the terminal. She came out with new marks on the map, and we went a few blocks out of our way into North Utica into one of those Italian-Tourist-Close-to-Motels enterprises called the Diplomat. It wasn’t going to excite any farflung gourmet exclamations, but the shots of anti-freeze were excellent protection against the 35-degree afternoon, the lowering sky, the chill moistness of the air. Hot Italian sausage with spaghetti al dente was a similar precaution.
You know how it is. You wonder. We had drifted into a silence not entirely comfortable. I hadn’t seen much lift or life in her. If we were going to spend a lot of time together, it could become a drag. So you wonder, and you think something up. When you say it, you more than half expect a totally blank look and some kind of query like, for example, “Hah! What’s that?”
So when she just started to wind a fork of spaghetti, I said to her, “By God, Myra, I bet you forgot to turn the thermostat down.”
Her fork clattered on the plate and she said instantly, “I forget to turn it down? Frank, dear, it was on your list. Remember?”
“Of course it was on my list. I reminded you and crossed it off.”
“I’d think that once, just once, you could… What was it set for?”
“Seventy-five. What else? Sixty-eight is enough for normal people. You have to have seventy-five.”
“Oh God, all that lovely oil. Darling, maybe we could phone the Hollisbankers.”
“So how do they get in?”
She hesitated a moment. “I have it! With Helen’s figure, Fred could slip her under the door.”
I broke up. A clear victory for her side. You never know until you try. We laughed like a pair of idiots, and then her very next chuckle turned into a strangled howling sob and she jumped up and fled for the ladies’ room, nearby lunch customers staring at her and me. She had finished most of her lunch. I finished mine. I would say she was gone a good ten minutes.
When she came out her color was not good. Her fine eyes were red-rimmed. She slipped meekly into her chair. She told the waitress she was finished. Just coffee, please. “I’m sorry” she said to me. “I didn’t expect that. It got a little too close. All of a sudden. I’m sorry, it was just a little too much like… another game I used to play. Don’t look so concerned. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I won’t try it again.”
“That’s probably better.”
The coffee came. The silence was laborious. As we were getting ready to leave, she suddenly gave me a strained and vivid smile and reached a trembling hand across to touch my wrist and said, “Darling, did you remember to mail the cards to Mom and Sis?”
“I mailed them. Your mother got the one of the bucks with their horns locked.”
She pursed her lips for a moment, and I knew she was thinking how to cue me so I could win. “I wonder if Mom will think there’s some kind of symbolism there, dear, and get upset or anything.”
“Baby, fighting over dough is the thing she does best.”
She laughed. Acknowledgment of defeat. Bad jokes win. Her eyes glistened, but she laughed. I was proud of her for coming through, but I could not help feeling guilty too. She had her adjustment, her acceptance. It wasn’t fair to stir her up. It wasn’t fair to her for me to want to see her lift a bit, to see what she looked like behind the iron control. Two games had set a pattern. We were Myra and Frank. If I tried another round, she would feel obligated. So I would leave it up to her to start the next one. And she would know I was leaving it up to her and why. That was the funny thing about us, back in the beginning. I had the absolute confidence in her knowing what I was thinking.
We went north up Route 8 into the hills. We went through a village named Poland. It looked like a Christmas card. The roads were dry, the snow banked high. It was the sort of town that you do not particularly want to live in, but wish you had come from. It looked like a very good place to be from.
Further up into the Adirondack Forest Preserve, the air was clearer and colder. The heater in the little sedan was comforting. Winding road, winter lakes, blackness of the evergreens against snow, tree-stubbled hills like the hump backs of old browsing beasts, eating away at eternity. At least we had changed the quality of our silences. Or that lovely land had changed it.
Speculator, at almost four in the afternoon, was about the size of Poland, but with about one-fifth the charm. Progress had begun to clomp down its main drag, whanging at a tin drum, sending off little clusters of neon.
The ski kids were roaming the area, hooting their rut cries at each other, speckling the snow banks with their bright empty beer cans. I parked in front of a big supermarket-type general store called Chas Johns, where all the fluorescence was on in the gray dullness of the overcast afternoon, and Dana called from an outdoor phone booth. She was back in a few moments and said, “They say he went down to Gloversville to pick up a railway express shipment of skis or something, and they expect him back at six.”
“So, accommodations I guess. I want a chance to measure him a little, get the right time and place to break him open.”
“Remember, he’ll recognize me.”
“I know. And I may need you for the finale, after he’s gone soft. We’ll see.”
“It’s strange. You make him sound like a locked box.”
“That’s what they are, Dana. And usually somebody skimped on the design. Bad welds and a dime-store lock.”
There was a small and relatively new motel jammed into almost the center of town at a strange angle. I made a try. The gentleman in command said he had one twin-bed room only because he had a cancellation, and he could let it go for one night only, because he was reserved from Thursday right through the week end, and so was everybody else. It was good snow and a good forecast, and it looked like one of the big weeks of the season.