Her mother, a gentle little schoolteacher, had died last winter. Catherine had gone to live with an uncle in New York. Keating had answered some of her letters immediately, others–months later. She had always replied at once, and never written during his long silences, waiting patiently. He had felt, when he thought of her, that nothing would ever replace her. Then, in New York, within reach of a bus or a telephone, he had forgotten her again for a month.
He never thought, as he hurried to her now, that he should have announced his visit. He never wondered whether he would find her at home. He had always come back like this and she had always been there. She was there again tonight.
She opened the door for him, on the top floor of a shabby, pretentious brownstone house. “Hello, Peter,” she said, as if she had seen him yesterday.
She stood before him, too small, too thin for her clothes. The short black skirt flared out from the slim band of her waist; the boyish shirt collar hung loosely, pulled to one side, revealing the knob of a thin collarbone; the sleeves were too long over the fragile hands. She looked at him, her head bent to one side; her chestnut hair was gathered carelessly at the back of her neck, but it looked as though it were bobbed, standing, light and fuzzy, as a shapeless halo about her face. Her eyes were gray, wide and nearsighted; her mouth smiled slowly, delicately, enchantingly, her lips glistening. “Hello, Katie,” he said.
He felt at peace. He felt he had nothing to fear, in this house or anywhere outside. He had prepared himself to explain how busy he’d been in New York; but explanations seemed irrelevant now.
“Give me your hat,” she said, “be careful of that chair, it’s not very steady, we have better ones in the living room, come in.” The living room, he noticed, was modest but somehow distinguished, and in surprisingly good taste. He noticed the books; cheap shelves rising to the ceiling, loaded with precious volumes; the volumes stacked carelessly, actually being used. He noticed, over a neat, shabby desk, a Rembrandt etching, stained and yellow, found, perhaps, in some junk shop by the eyes of a connoisseur who had never parted with it, though its price would have obviously been of help to him. He wondered what business her uncle could be in; he had never asked.
He stood looking vaguely at the room, feeling her presence behind him, enjoying that sense of certainty which he found so rarely. Then he turned and took her in his arms and kissed her; her lips met his softly, eagerly; but she was neither frightened nor excited, too happy to accept this in any way save by taking it for granted.
“God, I’ve missed you!” he said, and knew that he had, every day since he’d seen her last and most of all, perhaps, on the days when he had not thought of her.
“You haven’t changed much,” she said. “You look a little thinner. It’s becoming. You’ll be very attractive when you’re fifty, Peter.”
“That’s not very complimentary–by implication.”
“Why? Oh, you mean I think you’re not attractive now? Oh, but you are.”
“You shouldn’t say that right out to me like that.”
“Why not? You know you are. But I’ve been thinking of what you’ll look like at fifty. You’ll have gray temples and you’ll wear a gray suit–I saw one in a window last week and I thought that would be the one–and you’ll be a very great architect.”
“You really think so?”
“Why, yes.” She was not flattering him. She did not seem to realize that it could be flattery. She was merely stating a fact, too certain to need emphasis.
He waited for the inevitable questions. But instead, they were talking suddenly of their old Stanton days together, and he was laughing, holding her across his knees, her thin shoulders leaning against the circle of his arm, her eyes soft, contented. He was speaking of their old bathing suits, of the runs in her stockings, of their favorite ice-cream parlor in Stanton, where they had spent so many summer evenings together–and he was thinking dimly that it made no sense at all; he had more pertinent things to tell and to ask her; people did not talk like that when they hadn’t seen each other for months. But it seemed quite normal to her; she did not appear to know that they had been parted.
He was first to ask finally:
“Did you get my wire?”
“Oh, yes. Thanks.”
“Don’t you want to know how I’m getting along in the city?”
“Sure. How are you getting along in the city?”
“Look here, you’re not terribly interested.”
“Oh, but I am! I want to know everything about you.”
“Why don’t you ask?”
“You’ll tell me when you want to.”
“It doesn’t matter much to you, does it?”
“What?”
“What I’ve been doing.”
“Oh…Yes, it does, Peter. No, not too much.”
“That’s sweet of you!”
“But, you see, it’s not what you do that matters really. It’s only you.”
“Me what?”
“Just you here. Or you in the city. Or you somewhere in the world. I don’t know. Just that.”
“You know, you’re a fool, Katie. Your technique is something awful.”
“My what?”
“Your technique. You can’t tell a man so shamelessly, like that, that you’re practically crazy about him.”
“But I am.”
“But you can’t say so. Men won’t care for you.”
“But I don’t want men to care for me.”
“You want me to, don’t you?”
“But you do, don’t you?”
“I do,” he said, his arms tightening about her. “Damnably. I’m a bigger fool than you are.”
“Well, then it’s perfectly all right,” she said, her fingers in his hair, “isn’t it?”
“It’s always been perfectly all right, that’s the strangest part about it….But look, I want to tell you about what’s happened to me, because it’s important.”
“I’m really very interested, Peter.”
“Well, you know I’m working for Francon & Heyer and…Oh, hell, you don’t even know what that means!”
“Yes, I do. I’ve looked them up in Who’s Who in Architecture. It said some very nice things about them. And I asked Uncle. He said they were tops in the business.”
“You bet they are. Francon–he’s the greatest designer in New York, in the whole country, in the world maybe. He’s put up seventeen skyscrapers, eight cathedrals, six railroad terminals and God knows what else….Of course, you know, he’s an old fool and a pompous fraud who oils his way into everything and…” He stopped, his mouth open, staring at her. He had not intended to say that. He had never allowed himself to think that before.
She was looking at him serenely. “Yes?” she asked. “And…?”
“Well…and…” he stammered, and he knew that he could not speak differently, not to her, “and that’s what I really think of him. And I have no respect for him at all. And I’m delighted to be working for him. See?”
“Sure,” she said quietly. “You’re ambitious, Peter.”
“Don’t you despise me for it?”
“No. That’s what you wanted.”
“Sure, that’s what I wanted. Well, actually, it’s not as bad as that. It’s a tremendous firm, the best in the city. I’m really doing good work, and Francon is very pleased with me. I’m getting ahead. I think I can have any job I want in the place eventually….Why, only tonight I took over a man’s work and he doesn’t know that he’ll be useless soon, because…Katie! What am I saying?”
“It’s all right, dear. I understand.”
“If you did, you’d call me the names I deserve and make me stop it.”
“No, Peter. I don’t want to change you. I love you, Peter.”
“God help you!”
“I know that.”
“You know that? And you say it like this? Like you’d say, ‘Hello, it’s a beautiful evening’?”
“Well, why not? Why worry about it? I love you.”
“No, don’t worry about it! Don’t ever worry about it!…Katie….I’ll never love anyone else….”
“I know that too.”
He held her close, anxiously, afraid that her weightless little body would vanish. He did not know why her presence made him confess things unconfessed in his own mind. He did not know why the victory he came here to share had faded. But it did not matter. He had a peculiar sense of freedom–her presence always lifted from him a pressure he could not define–he was alone–he was himself. All that mattered to him now was the feeling of her coarse cotton blouse against his wrist.
Then he was asking her about her own life in New York and she was speaking happily about her uncle.
“He’s wonderful, Peter. He’s really wonderful. He’s quite poor, but he took me in and he was so gracious about it he gave up his study to make a room for me and now he has to work here, in the living room. You must meet him, Peter. He’s away now, on a lecture tour, but you must meet him when he comes back.”