The Reservoir (23 page)

“She’s twenty-one and I’m her nearest of kin,” I said. I almost added that I was a lawyer, but I decided it was best not to press her.

Miss Pilcher studied Lillian’s face but was apparently too polite to say that she looked younger than twenty-one. “Well, that should be all right then,” she said. “If you’ll wait here, I’ll see if Miss Elder can speak with you now.”

She disappeared down the hall, and Lillie said, “I won’t stay where I’m not wanted.”

“But they do want you,” I said, “and this is a nice place.” If only her train had not been late, she’d have a bed and be settling in now.

“It’s for poor people, Tommie. I don’t like it here. It smells funny, and I don’t like the way she looked at me.”

“We are poor,” I said. “And I think it smells good.”

“You’re not the one having a baby.” She pressed her lips together and folded her arms.

I told her there was no other choice and that she was being unreasonable. Then I suggested we could find a boardinghouse somewhere, and when the time came get her a midwife. “Would you like that better?” I asked.

Without another word she turned abruptly and walked from the office and then out onto the street. All I could do was try to keep up.

“I don’t think I can go through with that,” she said, “not knowing what’s on the other side.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I want to get married first, and then it doesn’t matter what you do. The baby will have a father, and then I can decide whether I want to keep her.”

I admit I was irritated with her. “Quit calling it her,” I said, “you don’t know what it is, or if it’ll even be alive.”

“Hush, Tommie, that’s horrible. I know she’s alive. She’s kicking in me right now. Do you want to feel? Here, put your hand—” She took hold of my wrist but I pulled away.

We kept walking to the end of Spring Street, and then down along Hollywood Cemetery toward the river. We crossed the railroad tracks and proceeded to the bridge to Belle Isle, but then Lillian stopped. If I close my eyes I can see the whole thing like it was right in front of me. The day had not warmed up at all—the sun was frozen behind a thin blanket of clouds. But there was a promise of spring in the tight little balls and buds of the bare sycamores and shrubby trees lining the shore. A pair of geese were flying downriver, one scolding the other, and the sound carried over the noise of the falls and the nailworks on the island.

We stood there for a time looking into the river, its jumble of rock slabs like giant stepping-stones you could almost cross.

“Tommie,” she said, “what are you thinking now?”

“I was thinking what it would be like if we were married. Do you think we would be happy?”

“I think we would be happier than we are now.” She pulled her shawl closer around her neck and took my hand. “I’d be a good wife for you. You’d be a good father. I know neither of us wanted this now, but we’ll make do and someday we’ll look back and it won’t seem so bad. You’ll see.”

Something about the way she said, “You’ll see,” the almost arrogant certainty of it, made me pull my hand away.

“I’m tired and hungry,” she said. “I don’t know why we’ve come all the way out here.”

“I was just following you,” I replied, but a distracting idea had come into my mind. It was unformed and didn’t present a picture that made any sense. A hole in a wall. That was the image that kept popping into my mind—a hole in a wall, through which I could crawl to freedom, like being born anew. It didn’t bear dwelling on, because there was nothing before or after it, just an escape to freedom—and yet now the idea had lodged in my brain it wouldn’t go away. I’m ashamed to admit it, but there it was.

I turned and headed back toward the railroad, letting her fall in behind me. “We’ll get some dinner,” I told her, “then you’ll go back to your hotel and rest and I’ll tend to the final arrangements.”

She followed along in silence for a while, but as we started uphill, she said, “What are we going to do then?”

“I haven’t decided,” I said, going on.

“You won’t get away with it.” At that, I stopped and turned. A cold breeze off the river wrapped her dress against her legs. “If you don’t marry me, you’ll be sorry,” she said. “You know God sees everything we do. You know what I think? I think we belong together forever.” Now whispering, “Forever and ever, amen.”

“How do you know it’s my child?” I said.

She stared at me, not moving a muscle. Her rosy cheeks were drained of color. “I told you, Tommie, there’s been no one but you.”

“Hasn’t there?”

“What do you mean?”

I had to tell her, I couldn’t hold it back any longer. I said, “I know everything, Lillie. Everything you’ve been hiding. Your mother wrote my mother. Everybody knows.”

“Everybody?” her voice quavered and she glanced around. She suddenly looked as if she were about to faint. “Tommie, I swear it’s yours. I can tell by the timing of it.”

“I don’t believe you.” I said. “I don’t think you know at all. You lay with your own father, and now you want me to take responsibility. I won’t do it, I tell you.”

She collapsed in a heap, right on the side of the road, one leg sliding out toward the ditch. Just down the road was a gray clapboard workmen’s tavern, and across the way a few flat-roofed wooden shacks, but no one was about. “Go on,” she told me. “Just go on.”

“I’m not going to just leave you here,” I told her. “I thought you were hungry.”

“I don’t need anything,” she said. She was so quiet I had to ask her to repeat herself. “I don’t need anything. I’m an abomination.”

“Lillie, nobody knows but my mother and me, and she would never tell anyone.”

“But no one will ever want me.”

“That’s not true.”

“You don’t want me. It might have a tail and cloven feet. I’m afraid, Tommie, I’m so afraid.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said.

She looked up at me with hurt eyes. “It might be yours, you know, I think it is. She’s yours, Tommie, I know it.” I looked away, trying to figure out the best way to get her up and moving. “You were in love with me in January,” she said, “you can’t deny it.”

I took her hand and she let me pull her to her feet, but when I tried to let go, she flopped down again as if she had no bones. “You have to help me here,” I said. This time I supported her with my arm around her waist and we began slowly walking up the hill again. “I’ve decided I’m going to kill myself, Tommie,” she said.

“No, you’re not.” I had to keep thinking, trying to soothe her, before she turned this into an obscene drama. There were people up on Byrd Street. It would not do to have her in this state.

“My life is ruined,” she said, “why shouldn’t I?”

“Suicide’s a sin.”

“I don’t care about that. I’ve already sinned.”

“God’ll forgive you.”

“But nobody else will.”

“Hush now,” I said. “We should get you something to eat.” She put her head down and walked along beside me up to Main, then down to Delarue’s lunchroom. I asked for a table near the back and ordered. Then I drank a glass of pilsner and smoked while she quietly ate her dinner.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked.

“I think the best thing is to get you into the Magdalen House after supper this evening.”

She nodded. “I don’t mind.”

In my mind’s eye I saw Miss Pilcher’s face in a painting. “The Madonna,” I said.

“What?”

“That’s who Miss Pilcher reminds me of—the Madonna in St. Peter’s. She looks so patient. Have you been there?” She shook her head. “It has a basin for holy water. You can dip your hand in water that’s been blessed by a priest. I think it counts even if you’re not Catholic. You have to cross yourself with it.” I was really saying the first thing I could think of, something to calm us both down, but it didn’t work.

“I don’t think it counts if you’re not Catholic,” she said.

Some tomb from out whose sounding door she ne’er shall force an echo more
. Why those lines from Poe should’ve come to mind like some taunt I couldn’t say, except that I did want to seal her out of my heart forever. When she had finished eating I told her I wouldn’t see her to the hotel door. I reminded her to use the ladies’ entrance and said that I would be back for her that evening as early as I could.

When she had gone I paid the bill and left fifteen cents for the waiter. Then I walked up to Mozart Hall, where the Dime Museum was presenting
The Chimes of Normandy
at two-thirty. I paid my ten cents and entered the hall and took a seat near the back. The story was about Germaine, a beautiful young woman raised by a cruel man claiming to be her uncle. As a little girl, she was rescued from drowning by a mysterious marquis who later returns from exile. At the intermission, I said hello to Bernard Henley, a college friend. In the final act the marquis fell in love with Germaine and claimed his title to the Castle of Corneville, and the story ended in laughter and happiness.

Sitting in a theater with a happy crowd, you see, living for a while in another world, was just the diversion I’d needed. I took a deep breath and headed out. It was now after five o’clock. The sky was gray.

I thought: Soon this’ll all be over.

Leaving the Dime Museum I began walking quickly, yet with no direction. I went down to Canal Street and looked onto the looming smokestacks of the ironworks and beyond to the bridges that crossed the river over the falls. The sky wept tiny crystals of snow. I looked up, and stray pellets stung my face and found a hole in my hat. Where was a sign from God? I had never been more uncertain about anything in my life.

The noise of the river seemed to grow louder, and a strain of happy music from the operetta drifted through my mind. I turned away from the river and began walking back up to Main. I didn’t know why, but I felt as if I were in a current, like when I wanted to go to Lizzie Banks’s. Once I had resolved to go, nothing could deter me.

I walked slowly back into the heart of the city. Random noises came and went from open doors—music, laughter, shouts, clapping. “O dem golden slippers” drifted from a window. A stray thought:
Murderers and whoremongers shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire!
I began whistling, and a tremor went through my body.
He shall come in judgment!

I trudged across Capitol Square, where several men, black and white, were sitting on benches clustered around a gray-haired negro; as I drew near, I recognized the preacher John Jasper, a man who seemed to collect a crowd wherever he went. Jasper said, “The day’s comin’ when the sun will be called from his racetrack, and his light squinked out forever; the moon shall turn to blood and this earth be consumed with fire. Let ’em go. Won’t scare me, nor trouble Gawd’s elected people. For the word of Gawd shall endure forever.”

The old man’s voice was powerful and frightening, and I hurried away. But the voice dogged me. “A city on a hill cannot be hid,” Jasper shouted. “Go on, shout the Lord’s praises as you go! And I shall meet you in the city of the New Jerusalem, where we shan’t need the light of the sun. For the lamb of the Lord is the light of the world.”

The muscles in my arms felt tight with strain and I was out of breath. I looked around and found myself well past my hotel. It was nearly dark now and the lamplighter was making his way up the sidewalk. Grains of snow were falling, dusting the coats of passersby. I sniffed the air, flipped my collar up, and hurried along. Back in my room, I put on my overshoes, then headed to the American Hotel. I decided not to bother with a messenger—someone might remember me. Instead, I stepped swiftly into the lobby, hat tilted over my face, and went straight up to Room 21.

She let me in and held me with a sob. “Thank God you’re here,” she said. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but she was dressed and ready to go, her hair gathered in back with a piece of shoelace. That clothes bag of hers sat on the bed, its green linen embossed with a wheat-sheaf pattern. “I’m ready,” she said. “Are we taking the streetcar?”

“To Belvidere,” I said. “It’s only a few blocks from there.” Even then, I wanted to put my arms around her, to lay her out on the bed and cradle her. I thought of her father. “I’ll be waiting for you over at the
Dispatch
office,” I said.

“I’ve written a note to Aunt Jane,” she told me, looking me full in the face, as though she wanted me to say something. “I’ve told her I had to meet a friend’s aunt in Richmond, and I’m going on with her to Old Point. I dated it the fourteenth, because I may be too busy to write tomorrow and for some time, and I didn’t want her to worry.”

“That’s fine,” I said.

She began reading some aloud, then laughed in an oddly coy way, as though this were all a lark and we were conspiring as we had back in January. “You can read the rest if you want to.”

“No, go ahead and seal it.” She seemed unusually animated and fidgety. It made me nervous while I was trying to think, trying to anticipate what we would do if Magdalen House turned us away.

“Everything will turn out all right,” she said, as though reading my mind. “You’ll see. You’ll be fine, and we’ll both be happy. I just know it.”

I took her letter and left the room, then headed down the corridor. A colored man in uniform doffed his cap and asked if I’d found the lady I was looking for, apparently confusing me with someone else. It caught me by surprise, but, the Violet Bone plot coming to mind, I quickly said, “No, I was looking for a lady who went to school with my sister.” I regretted this immediately. I should’ve told the man to mind his own business. Instead, I found myself being shown to the parlor, where men were supposed to wait for unescorted women. Pretending to be ignorant of the practice, I handed the man a nickel and thanked him for his service.

I took a seat in the parlor and read the newspaper for a minute or two. There was an advertisement for baby carriages, and one for a liniment called Mother’s Friend, “to be used after the first two or three months.” To be used how and for what, after the first two or three months of what, it didn’t say. I turned the page and saw a short notice about men in England who, when they tired of their wives, sold them for sixpence or a quart of beer.