The Morning and the Evening (11 page)

Her momma had warned her against marrying a Yankee, even though Billy was a child when his poppa, a widower, had moved to Marigold from upper New York State where he had failed at growing apples. Billy had told her what he remembered of the winters there, how the snows had piled on top of one another and stood in dirty heaps, till April sometimes.

April! She had said it in astonishment, thinking what the word meant to her: japonica red as a sunset, fragile dogwood and grass as green and shiny as the shredded kind you put into children's Easter baskets. And the air! as soft as the tread of a kitten's paws, as sweet as their little faces.

Billy said they had trudged to school through tunnels dug in the snow, the snow flung on either side making banks taller than the children's heads.

Why, she had said, didn't they just stay home the way children in Marigold would have done? Shoot, Yankees just liked to make things hard for themselves. Who in Marigold would have dug through all that snow? Nobody she could think of. It would have been a time for sitting before the fire, popping corn and playing Rook.

She thought it was this feeling of basic alienness from Billy that accounted for the intensity with which she had fallen in love with Frank. She felt she had come home again, back to her own people, back to their ways. Sometimes, lying awake at night, she would think, All that snow, all that cold; it was bound to make a person harder, gruffer, different. She would sleep, to dream that the snow lay next to her in a frozen mound, untouchable.

“Bed,” she said to Billy Jr. He put up his little arms, and she carried him into the bathroom and then to bed. He had to be asleep before Frank came. “Hurry now, hurry,” she said anxiously, while he selected from among a jungle of toys something to sleep with. Then he was beside the bed, and she knelt with him while he said, in his baby's voice, “Now I lay me down to sleep.…”

She took him into her arms afterward. He was so slight, so tiny, she thought how easily his little bones could break beneath the pressure of her arms. “Oh, my teeny bones, my little boy,” she said, and was overcome with sorrow at the void in her life. If only the man she loved were the father of her children…

When he was in bed she stood a moment and looked at Judy in her crib, her limbs flung wide in sleep, the bottle she had sucked dry resting on one shoulder. Frances moved it slightly, not far. If Judy woke in the night, she had to find it.

She returned to the living room, forlorn with her own unhappiness, aware more than ever of the dimension Frank added to her life. She stared about the room, depressed by it. Once decorating the house had been a consuming interest, but her interest had diminished at the exact pace of her interest in the marriage. Where she had taken the last brushstroke of a new coat of paint halfway up the molding in the hall was evident. She regarded it now as a sort of measure, the way people kept records of children's heights on the walls. Perhaps the day she left off painting was the day she had decided she was never going to like going to bed with Billy. Perhaps it was the day he had said never again ask him how much money he made or he would never give her any.

At the window, she held aside the lifeless marquisette curtain and, looking out, saw only the empty road. She returned to the center of the room, listening for sounds from the children's room. Only a moment before she had heard great zoomings and
ka-tows
, a great many soldiers were meeting their deaths, but now it was quiet. Her heart beat fearfully. She went about the house turning off lights, except for one in her bedroom. She stood in the darkened hallway, waiting, thinking, Suppose it's tonight we are caught?

Then he opened the door. In two strides, she was down the hall. She threw her arms about him and said, “Honey. Oh, honey.”

They went into the bedroom and sat opposite each other while she told him all she had done during the week. The long week. He told her of the evening, that he had held bad cards and had been glad to leave. Oh, she teased, was that the only reason?

He never mentioned Billy, and she seldom spoke of Eleanora. It was the only area of shyness left between them.

He removed his shirt and his shoes, and she thought how once she had been embarrassed even by that. She had wanted them only in bed and making love, with no preliminaries—nothing to be unbuttoned, unzipped, removed, no words. She had been unrealistic, childish. Now the fact that these ordinary things had to happen between them gave her pleasure. It made their lovemaking even more extraordinary.

When Frank removed his undershirt, she came to him, knelt and put her head against his chest, touched the hair there. He put his hand on the side of her head and held her to him, making her feel quite small. She heard only a sound like that in a sea shell. She considered it her special world; she could smell his soap and his skin, and she thought, I have come home. Thank you, God.

“What?” She sat up and took down his hand.

“I said, ‘I have to go to the bathroom.'” He grinned.

While he was gone, she removed everything but her slip and was in bed when he came back. She did not like to be seen naked until they were actually making love, but she was glad he had no embarrassment. He walked without clothes to the dresser and put down his change and his keys and his wallet. Just as Billy does every night, she thought; how often she had watched him.

Looking at Frank now, she could not help but compare him to Billy. Twelve years' difference in age made a difference. Though Frank was thin, he was slightly flabby, though in good condition. For someone his age, she thought automatically, surprising herself. It was the first time she had felt in the least separate from him, or realized that they did, after all, belong to different generations.

He came to bed with a cigarette and crushed it out in an ashtray on the bedside table. “Remind me to empty that,” she said. “Billy's started in on those filter tips.”

Surely, he made love to her. She responded so passionately she would have been embarrassed had he ever shown the least inclination to be so. But she had promised herself not to hold back here, not the only place in the world she felt she had ever been herself. Only in childbirth had she ever been taken out of herself before. And then, catapulted into pain, she had cried out helplessly, against her will. It had outraged her to submit to pain. But not to love.

“It was wonderful,” she said. “Was it for you?”

“Sure,” he said. “You're sure something.”

“Do you think my fanny's too big? Billy does.”

“I think it's fine.” He patted it.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing, I'm just tired.”

But she thought it was more than that. “Is it about us? Are you worried about us?”

“No,” he said. “Everything's just the same between us.”

“Hopeless?” she said, and was sorry. She had promised not to talk any more for a while about their getting divorces. He had said she could not understand what it was to have been married for twenty years; how much you had tied up in it—there were children and a house and property and a great span of shared experiences.

But she had not wanted to think practically and had been somewhat disappointed that he did. She wanted to run through town and cry, Yes, we're cheating. And I love it!

Didn't he realize how exceptional their love was? She had once read an expression she thought somewhat trite: A happy marriage can never be broken up. Suppose it were true?

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I said I wouldn't talk about us any more for a while.”

He touched her. “I was thinking about chickens.”

“Chickens!” My God, she thought, he had been thinking about chickens while she was trying to solve their whole lives. That was the advantage men had over women—their work. They could always worry about it instead of something they couldn't do anything about.

“I'm going to have to start raising them, now that cotton's limited. Folks seem to be doing right well with them, but I hate the dirty bastards.”

“I too,” she said. “We were thinking of rice. But it seems like so much work.”

“Don't it, though. I wish I could give up farming altogether and raise only cattle. That's all I really ever have cared about, cattle.”

She was sitting up, leaning against her knees. She wondered if he were looking at her, and at that moment he ran his hand the length of her back. “You're nice,” he said.

She wanted desperately to turn to him again, but as always, there was not enough time. “I guess we'd better get up,” she said.

“I reckon so.” He slid from the bed and went again into the hall to the bathroom.

She dressed while he was gone. When he returned, she sat on the bed and watched him. It's so long till next Thursday, she thought, and pressed her hand against her mouth, thinking she was going to cry out. He could not possibly know how much these evenings meant to her. She had discussed with him briefly her problems with Billy but never had told him how unsatisfactory everything really was. If Frank knew how completely she was his, he would begin to lose interest. It was only human nature.

She wondered if he would possibly go home and make love to Eleanora tonight. She wondered how often he did, anyway. She had always wanted to ask him but would not. Several times she had awakened in the night abruptly with a feeling of total loss. Each time she had traced the feeling back to a dream of Frank making love to Eleanora. At those times she had looked at Billy sleeping beside her and been glad that he was there.

Faintly, far off, the church bell began to ring nine o'clock. “We'd better hurry,” she said. “I'll walk a little way with you.”

“Good,” he said.

She stood on tiptoe and kissed him about the mouth and chin as he put on his coat. They went arm in arm out into the night. One cloud covered the moon and shone luminously, blue; the sky looked thick and dark as midnight. Frances wondered if it were going to rain tomorrow. They followed the uneven wooden walk, crossed the road, and gained the walk on the other side. Ahead were two houses dark as shut-up boxes. They passed them and moved freely down the uninhabited road. Only the Mays' was beyond. At a bend they stood to separate. He would cut across a field here that would take him home without having to pass back through town. He put his head down to kiss her and raised it suddenly. “What was that?”

“What was what?”

“Somebody yelling,” he said.

She heard it too. They completed the bend and were facing the Mays'. Against the lighted front windows, they saw a man running across the yard. He cleared the fence as Ruth Edna came onto the porch.

“What——?” Frank said. He started forward.

Frances caught him back. “She's all right,” she said. “She's calling him back. Who is it? Could it be Cotter?”

At that moment the feet came toward them on the gravel quicker than it seemed possible for them to have covered that distance. They drew back from the road instinctively. At the last moment Frank stepped forward, but he glimpsed only something white. Then they were listening again to the sound of feet running on gravel, already some distance away.

“What in God's name? Did you hear it?” Frank said.

“I heard something, but it couldn't have been a man.”

“It must have been. But it sounded like something half crazy looking for water.”

“What are we going to do?”

“It—he headed uptown. We better go see, unless we ought to go see about Miss Ruth Edna.”

“She seems all right. She went back in the house. How could we explain it if we went to ask her?”

“Let's go,” he said. They began to run, sometimes together, sometimes with Frances lagging behind. He reached the corner just before her, and when she came up, they stared uptown as the door of her mother's store opened; the men came tumbling out. All along the way cautious doors were being opened and lights were coming on. Frank said, “You better go home. I'll go see.” Without another word he went off.

She knew as precisely what to do as if someone had handed her instructions. She did not particularly like herself for knowing. Hurrying home, she wondered which person was herself: this one who knew what to do now, who cared about nothing but herself and Frank, or the guiltless half-person she had been before.

Entering the house, she emptied the ash tray Frank had used, straightened the bed and flung an opened magazine on it. She turned on lights in the hall, in the living room, on the front porch, and looked in on the children before she left the house again.

“What is it?” she called, recognizing Ed Veazey ahead of her on the walk.

“Don't know,” he called back, and went on almost faster than he could, his chin drawn in, his chest thrust out, comical as someone in a walking race.

The night was alive now with people. All along the way, doors stood open, porches, living rooms, yards were lighted. Frances had never in her life been afraid of the dark night roads, but she was afraid of them brightly lit. It was as if the world had blown up, and everyone were running to survive. There seemed no time to stop, and as she ran, she was aware of the street lights standing out from everything, spots of white-hot color above the road, naked and alone. A nucleus of people had formed in the road ahead, and she ran toward it as if her safety lay there, though actually that was where the unknown, possibly the danger, lay. Around in her mind went the phrase, crazily, Safety in numbers, safety in numbers.

Oh, God, don't let it be Momma, don't let it be Billy, don't let it have anything to do with me at all, she thought.

Beyond, the countryside lay as it should, dark and serene. She thought of the people sleeping undisturbed. She thought of the grave on the nearby slope, with her father in it unaware, the flowers in the cylindrical cold metal vase sunk into the ground over his chest, making bright spots in the dark. On this strange night, she thought, even stranger things could happen; she stopped running, gazed eons away to the very faintly star-pocked sky, and whispered, “Daddy! Daddy, what is it like?”