That was when she said aloud, “I won’t cry any more. He isn’t worth crying over.”
She took a turn about the apartment. It pressed on her with sights hard to endurethe heaped-
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up books she and Roy had read and talked about; a picture he had taken one day when they went sailing and later enlarged and framed; a dust-free spot by the south window, where the drop-cloth used to lie beneath his easel; her guitar, which she would play for him while she sang, giving him music to accompany his work; the bed they’d bought at the Goodwill
“Th-th-the trouble is,” Vanny admitted, “he is worth it. Damn him.”
She wanted wildly to get out. Only where? What for? Not to some easily found party among his friends (who had never quite become hers). They had too little idea of privacy, even the privacy of the heart. Nor, on some excuse, to the home of one of her friends (who had never quite become his). They were too reserved, too shyly intent on minding their own business. So? Out at random, through banging city streets, to end with a movie or, worse, smoke and boom-boom and wheedling strangers in a bar?
Stay put, girl, she told herself. Use the weekend to get rested. Make a cheerful, impenetrable face ready for Monday.
She’d announced her engagement to Roy Elkins, promising young landscape and portrait painter, at the office last month. The congratulations had doubled her pleasure. They were nice people at the computer center. It would be hard to tell them that the wedding was off. Thank God, she’d never said she and Roy were already living together! That had been mainly to avoid her parents getting word in Iowa. They were dears, but they wouldn’t have understood. I’m
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not sure I do either. Roy was the first, the first. He was going to be the last. NowYeah, I’m lucky. It’d have hurt too much to let them know how much I hurt.
The place was hot and stuffy. She pushed a window open. Westering sunlight fell pale on brick walls opposite. Traffic was light in this area at this hour, but the city grumbled everywhere around. She leaned out and inhaled a few breaths. They were chill, moist, and smog-acrid. Soon’s we’d saved enough money, I’d quit my job and we’d buy an old Connecticut farmhouse and fix it ourselves “Oh, hell damn everything, anyway.”
How about a drink? Ought to be some bourbon left.
Vanny grimaced. Her father’s cautions against drinking alone, or ever drinking much, had stayed with her more firmly than his Lutheran faith and Republican politics. The fact that Roy seldom touched hard liquor had reinforced them.
Of course, our stash… . She hesitated, then shrugged. Her father had never warned her about solitary turning on.
The smoke soothed. She wasn’t a head. Nor was Roy. They’d share a stick maybe once or twice a week, after he convinced her that the prohibition was silly and she learned she could hold her reaction down to the mild glow which was the most she wanted. This time she went a little further, got a little high, all by herself in an old armchair.
Her glance wandered. Among objects which cluttered the mantel was a miniature Aphrodite
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of Milos. She and Roy had both fallen in love with the original before they met each other. He said that was the softest back in the world; she spoke of the peace in that face, a happiness too deep for laughter.
Dizziness passed through her. She lifted her hands. “Aphrodite,” she begged, “help. Bring him home to me.”
Afterward she realized that her appeal had been completely sincere. Won’t do, girl, she decided. Next would come the nice men in white coats. She extinguished and stored the joint, sought the kitchen, scrambled a dish of eggs chopping a scallion and measuring out turmeric for them was helpful to herand brewed a pot of tea: Lapsang Soochong, that is, hot, red, and tarry-tasting. Meanwhile an early fall dusk blew in from the sea.
Sobered, she noticed how cold the place had gotten. She took her cup and saucer and went to close the living room window she had left open. The only light streamed out of the kitchen behind her.