Twenty-two
“Oh, hello,” the reporter said. “You’re Mrs. Neely, aren’t you? You remember us, I guess. At the trial? We didn’t expect to see you out here, but I’m glad we ran into you.”
Joy smiled at them. “Why, yes,” she said. “I remember you, Mr.—er—”
“Shaw,” the younger man said. “And this is Byron Lambeth.”
“Oh, I know Mr. Lambeth. We’re old friends, aren’t we?”
“Mrs. Neely and I have seen a lot of each other,” Lambeth said gravely.
“Now, what would you like to say, Mrs. Neely?” Shaw asked with professional briskness. “Do you have any idea where your husband was headed when he—uh—”
“Well, I’m not sure,” she said slowly. “I hadn’t heard—”
“Don’t you think he might have been trying to come here?”
“Why, yes. I’ve thought of that. He was coming this way, wasn’t he? I mean, when he— Oh, it’s so awful! You don’t know what it’s been like all day, not knowing.” The idea of Sewell’s coming back to her began to blossom and take shape, and she knew. She just knew. Why hadn’t she realized it before? Why, of course. It really couldn’t have been anything else. He had been headed right this way, hadn’t he?
Forgetting the two men for a moment, she let her mind run unhampered along this delightful and beckoning pathway, seeing herself as the irresistible beauty for whom men would take incalculable risks. It happened all the time in the movies. And then, even as she was beginning to believe in herself as this fatal beauty, all the terrible tragedy of it came rushing in upon her and she fought to hold back the tears as she thought of how near he had been and she had not known. Sewell had been killed while risking everything just to be at her side for one final, beautiful hour, and she hadn’t known it until too late.
“Yes,” she said tragically, her face slightly raised like the pictures of Joan of Arc and a mist of tears in her eyes. “He was coming to see me. I can feel it. It’s something you know deep down inside of you. Oh, poor Sewell! To think how near he was and I didn’t know.”
Shaw broke in eagerly. “That’s it! That’s the way I see it. He must have been coming here. What else would lie have been doing up there on that bridge? We’ll cover it from that angle. And we’ll want some pictures. You won’t mind posing, will you, Mrs. Neely?”
“Mrs. Neely won’t mind posing at all, I’m sure,” Lambeth said with the same deferential and still half-drunken gravity. “Mrs. Neely takes a very good picture.”
“I—I’ll be glad to,” Joy said graciously. She began dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief, and looked down appraisingly at the dowdy old kimono. They would catch me in this crummy old rag, she thought. “Oh, but I’ll have to change and fix up a little. I look such a fright. I haven’t even bothered to— I mean, it’s all been so horrible. It won’t take a minute. You won’t mind, will you?” She gave them a wan little smile, and before either of them could answer she had turned and run back down the hall.
Now, where’s that confounded kid? she thought frantically, rushing into the bedroom and over to the suitcase on the old trunk. What’ll I wear? Any other time she’d be underfoot like some idiotic puppy, mooning at me while I brush my hair, and now when I could use her she’s nowhere around. Not a goddamned thing that’s fit to be seen in, and the picture’ll be in all the papers. Not that cheap, lousy print—it’s wrinkled, anyway. A whore wouldn’t be found dead in it. Just think, he was coming to see me. Wasn’t that sweet? He just had to see me: he couldn’t stay away. She threw the kimono on the bed.
She began to grab dresses up wildly until she had them all in her arms, and then threw them back into the suitcase in jumbled confusion. Oh, where the hell is that kid? I’ve got to have the mirror. And my lipstick. And I’ve got to comb my hair. She ran into the center of the room and stared wildly around in a sort of frenzied and helpless indecision. Where could she start? And what could she wear?
She ran out onto the back porch to get the mirror, in her frantic rush forgetting until after she was already out there, in the open, that she had taken off the kimono and had on nothing except her wisps of underthings. Oh, my God, she thought, I’m losing my mind. Snatching the mirror off its nail, she fled headlong back into the room. Suppose they’d seen me, she thought. Not Lambeth, that stew bum. He’s seen me in less than this. But the other one. Shaw, isn’t it? He’s cute. He’d have thought I was an awful hussy.
I hope that crazy Lambeth doesn’t get the pictures mixed up and turn that other one in to the paper. Wouldn’t that be a mess, when the editor saw it? And I wonder what Harve ever did with the one I gave him. I hope he didn’t have it with him when he was—uh—when Sewell—er— Think of them finding it and a lot of strange people passing it around. Suppose Sewell had found it when he— God, that would have been terrible. But he didn’t even know about it.
“Jessie! Jessie! Where are you, dear?” Oh, where is that lousy kid? If she thinks she’s going to Houston with me, she’ll have to be more help than this. What do I want with her, anyway? She’d just be a nuisance. I won’t take her.
What am I talking about? Of course I’ll take her. I don’t care what she does afterward, but I’m going to take her. Didn’t I see his face there this morning, on the porch? That got him, all right. The lousy bastard. That’ll teach him who he can shove like that.
She propped the mirror up against a pillow and sat down on the bed to comb her hair. The mirror fell over, and she put her head in her arms, wanting to cry. Stop it, she thought. Stop it! Stop it! Stop itl I’ve got to get fixed lip. They’re going to take my picture, and it’ll be in all the papers. I’ve just got to look my best. I’ve just got to. I don’t want to look like some old bag. Please! The story will say how he was coming back to see me, and people will look at the picture and say, “What was he going anywhere to see an old frump like that for?” Well. I’m not an old frump, and he was coming to see me. He was. I just know he was. Wasn’t that sweet? All that worrying and stewing I’ve done about nothing, afraid I was losing my looks and getting old, when there wasn’t anything to it at all.
She looked up then and saw Jessie standing in the door. The girl’s childlike face, framed in the aureole of her tousled and rain-dampened hair, was burdened with an overpowering sadness, and the large blue eyes had no spark of their usual spirit and life.
“Oh, there you are, honey,” Joy said, babbling, paying no attention to the other’s heart-wrenching quiet. “Will you help me for a minute? Hold the mirror lot me, will you? And see if you can find my lipstick.”
Jessie came on into the room and took the mirror, her eyes still sad and now a little self-conscious as well, faintly embarrassed as always by the older woman’s near nakedness. “What is it, Joy?” she asked dully.
“Reporters,” Joy rattled on, full of excitement, pulling the comb through her hair in long sweeps back over her shoulders. “From some paper. They’re going to take my picture, and write about us in the paper. Maybe they’ll take yours too. I don’t know what paper it is; I forgot to ask them. Maybe it’s a Houston one. Say, you know what?” She paused in mid-stroke to look up with bubbling inspiration. “If they’re from Houston, maybe they’ll give us a ride. We can go back with them.”
In spite of herself, Jessie began to feel some of Joy’s excitement. “Do you think they’d let us?” she asked.
“Of course, honey. Certainly they would,” Joy rambled on, by now fully convinced that Shaw and Lambeth were from Houston. The whole thing was an actuality, no longer even faintly conjectural. She possessed a great deal of Cass’s happy facility in the art of making facts agree with her and for making up her own if necessary.
“We’ll get a ride with them, and when we get to Houston we can stay with this friend of mine down there, the one named Dorothy, you remember, the one who’s a model, only maybe she isn’t modeling now, I don’t know. I haven’t heard from her for a long time. Maybe she isn’t working as a model right at the moment, but that part doesn’t matter. Anyway, we’ll stay with her, she’d love to have us—she’d just love it, we’re such great friends. We’ll stay with her until we get jobs, and then we’ll get our own apartment.”
Jessie had caught onto her excitement for a moment and then had slid back, with the misery returning to her eyes. She tried desperately to listen, to follow every word, and to go along with Joy in appreciation of this enchanting vista, but her mind kept turning back to the brooding theme of her own unhappy thoughts.
“Joy,” she asked now, suddenly, with a quiet and still-laced intensity, “do you think he had time to ask forgiveness?”
What on earth is she mumbling about? Joy thought. Christ, here I’ve been rattling on miles an hour and I thought she was listening. “Who had time to ask what?” she asked absently. “Baby, do you know where my lipstick is? I can’t find my purse.”
“It’s in your suitcase somewhere, I think,” Jessie said.
Let’s see, Joy was thinking. I’ll wear my nylons. I’ve only got one pair without runs, but this is important and if I’m careful they’ll be all right. I’ll have to have them on, it seems to me they always want to get your legs in the picture. I’ll wear that dress with the bows, it’s the only one that’s halfway decent. No. No, I can’t do that, damnit. It’s ruined, it’s all full of sand and it’s wrinkled. The last lousy, stinking thing I had that was fit to be found dead in, and now it’s ruined. That’s the one I had on when that stupid, ugly, mean-faced bastard pushed me. Well, he’s going to pay for that, all right. I’ll wear my white slippers with the French heels and the ankle straps; I think they’re clean. They’ll look nice in a picture, really smart.
Springing up, she ran over to the suitcase and began throwing dresses around again in a sort of despairing frenzy. “Jessie, Jessie, what can I put on? Help me, honey.”
Jessie followed her quietly. “Why not that white summer dress you had on this morning, Joy?”
“It’ll have to do, I guess.” She snatched it up frantically. Oh, why aren’t there any hangers around this awful dump? she thought. It’s all wrinkled. Well, it’s the only one. Hurriedly, she slipped into it, rummaged through the rat-nest confusion of the suitcase until she found her purse, and made up her face. Then there was another explosive upheaval among the powder-sifted brassieres, pants, dresses, handkerchiefs, and stockings while she matched the two remaining unsnagged nylons. She slowed down and put them on, very carefully, and slipped into the white shoes.
At last she was ready. She took one last look in the mirror and shook back her hair. Jessie followed her onto the porch, alternately caught up into the excitement of it and then slipping back into her own gray and lonely sadness.
Joy forgot to introduce the two strange men, and she stood quietly back out of the way. The man with the camera was fussing with its knobs and funny dials and taking light bulbs out of a leather bag. She wondered where he was going to plug them in, and thought with embarrassment of his finding out at the last minute that there wasn’t any electricity.
Maybe God would have forgiven him, Jessie thought, if he’d had time to ask. Maybe he did. Maybe the last thing he did on earth was to pray for forgiveness of his sins. It seemed so important, and she couldn’t understand why Joy didn’t wonder about it too. It must be more important than having your picture taken.
She wished she could ask Mitch about it. She had always consulted him about things like that, but now she couldn’t because she didn’t ever want to speak to him again. It was lonely, though, not having Mitch to ask about things.