The House on Coliseum Street Read online

  And there wasn’t a breath of air that day…

  “I feel so tired,” she told her aunt. “I feel so terribly tired.”

  “A rest will be fine for you,” Ethel said. “Good pine air after that awful damp in New Orleans.”

  And she had the sleeping porch made up for Joan. Without asking her. Joan moved out there obediently.

  “This will be wonderful for you,” Ethel said. “In the old days they used to say it was good for consumptives, too.”

  So Joan slept in the porch and heard the soughing of the pines all night, and woke to the sharp stifling smell of their needles when the morning sun grew hot on them.

  “I’m cold out there,” she complained after the first night. And she took two blankets and a quilt out with her the next time. She rolled herself up in them like a sleeping bag for warmth.

  It seemed to her sometimes that the wind blew right through her, echoed right through her. And it was in those long quiet nights, looking up at the stars through the haze of the screen wire, that she became aware of her body’s emptiness. She had always thought of herself as solid. A solid lump. Like a piece of mud or even a roast in the oven. But now she knew she wasn’t. That she was just a tissue of skin stretched around a frame of bone. Like a canoe or a tent. She had seen wind or rocks break them up, and it bothered her to be stretched so fine and delicate.

  She lay at night listening to the echoing emptiness inside her, caverns and echoing passages of bones, empty rooms and cages one after another.

  She did not go out. She turned down each subsequent invitation—tennis, a quick sail, a moonlight swim—with almost the same words: “I’m so tired. I haven’t been feeling well.”

  Her aunt added an explanation for her when it was necessary: “The summer flu—it is so hard to get over, you know.”

  Her face was thinner. Each morning darker circles under her eyes stared at her; and each morning resolutely she covered them with make-up.

  “Dear child,” her aunt said one morning at breakfast, “that particular stuff gives you an absolutely porcelain look. As if you might break.”

  “I might,” she said, “I’m crispy and brittle.”

  “Honestly child, you’ve been ill, but there’s no need to take on.”

  And so (she had a feeling her aunt arranged it, but she had never been able to figure out just how) she began gardening. Or rather she spent hours crouched in the sun, running the soft sandy dirt between her fingers.

  Occasionally too she would take an old slaughter pole that she found stored up on the rafters over the garage and go down to the end of the pier and fish. The Gulf was very shallow and she would watch the big blue crabs scuttle by. She never caught any fish. Once she hooked an eel, but she snipped her line and let him go.

  She didn’t particularly care. It was the heat she wanted. The white sun pouring in through the straw of her hat, the white sun glaring up from the surface of the water beneath her.

  It was only in the full sun that she felt warm and comfortable.

  JOAN STAYED ON THE coast longer than she had intended. The endless, unruffled hot days stretched along. The brilliant white summer color left the sky. The clouds were piled higher and more fiercely than ever and the hurricane season approached. She had no word from the house on Coliseum Street. Sometimes she got a strange feeling that it wasn’t there at all.

  Aurelie called occasionally, she knew. Because Ethel would say casually at dinner, “Your mother sends you her love.” So she had telephoned. But Joan did not ask to speak to her, and Ethel did not suggest it.

  Fred wrote her once or twice, short gossipy letters, that didn’t sound like him at all. Joan wondered what Aurelie had told him.

  She asked Ethel once: “What did Aurelie tell Fred?”

  “Now dear,” Ethel said. “I want to know.”

  The old eyes twinkled with something that was either maliciousness or amusement (Joan couldn’t decide which). “She told him the truth, of course—that you were very tired and nervous and a bit overwrought.”

  “Oh,” Joan said.

  Again the unidentified gleam. “A common complaint of young females.”

  As Joan sat on the end of the pier with her pole a few minutes later she rehearsed her aunt’s words. She knew then what they were planning to do. They were all going to pretend that it hadn’t happened.

  Her heart jumped around her chest crazily, like a bird fluttering. She wondered if she was going to faint.

  They were going to pretend it hadn’t happened, that nothing had happened. But it had. Of course it had.

  They had to pretend. Always.

  She studied the smooth yellow surface of her pole, running her index finger up and down along it. The fluttering stopped, and she felt steadier.

  How strange, she told herself. It must have been the sun.

  She did not realize she had spoken aloud until she saw an old man, who was fishing some dozen yards away, turn and stare at her.

  A few days later, as she came into the house, she found her aunt waiting for her on the front porch.

  Joan was drenched. One of the fierce quick afternoon thunderstorms had caught her. Her blouse was plastered to her, transparent as veiling, so that the outline of her bra showed. Her hair dripped behind her ears.

  “It was a hard rain,” Ethel said. “It seems to get harder each day.”

  “Yes,” Joan said. She climbed the steps, stopping just outside the front door, and waited.

  “You go right in and change.” Ethel was wearing a purple print dress with little white ruching around the neck. An old woman’s dress. “I’ve got a message for you, though.”

  “What?” Joan asked.

  “Aurelie is coming in the morning.”

  “Oh,” Joan said.

  “Fred is driving her over.”

  “Oh,” Joan said.

  “I’ve always wanted to meet that young man,” Ethel said. “After all, I really should meet my nephew-in-law at least once before the wedding.”

  Pretend that nothing has happened… “Okay,” Joan said. “I’ll toss my stuff into the suitcase.” She gave a quick bright smile that missed Ethel somehow and flashed on a window and a bit of shutter as she turned to go inside.

  She had to stop a minute, dazzled as she was from the glare. And as she waited for her eyes to adjust, she shivered in her wet clothes, shivered in the cool dusky hall.

  And that was how she went back to New Orleans, back to the house on Coliseum Street.

  III. THE HOUSE ON COLISEUM STREET

  THEY CAME BACK ON a Saturday. On Sunday morning Doris banged into Joan’s room. Joan had not gotten up; she was lying on her side, studying the shape of her hand against the sheets, studying the nails and the little half-moons at their base.

  “Welcome home, old duck,” Doris said cheerily.

  Joan looked up. As she did, she realized that her eyes ached. Their lids were heavy and swollen. Have I been crying, she thought suddenly. Was I crying in my sleep?

  She scrubbed at her eyes. “God, I sleep hard.”

  Doris dropped down on the foot of the bed. She was wearing a white nylon robe, a birthday present from Aurelie, and her hard tanned body showed clearly through the filmy gauze. Her short blond hair was flattened on one side, where she had slept, and her cheek still had the pink creases of the pillow. She looked rumpled and half awake, and the enormous collar of her robe was bunched up like ruffled feathers. She slapped at it once or twice, irritably.

  “Trust Aurelie to pick something like this,” she said. “This just isn’t my style.”

  “Yes it is,” Joan said. “You should have a bedroom all mirrors and gold sea shells. Venus rising and that sort of thing.”

  “I know,” Doris grinned. “High-class whore house.”

  Joan sat up, feeling the familiar dizziness begin to sing in her ears. Then quite suddenly it stopped; her head was clear and empty.

  Doris bounced on the foot of the bed, the filmy nylon fluttering over h
er body like clouds over rock. “So tell me what went on.”

  Sitting up, Joan did not have to open her eyes so wide; she could forget how puffy they were and how they ached. “You know the coast,” she said carefully. “Nothing very exciting.”

  “What happened?” Doris stretched out across the foot of the bed, arching her back, curling her bare toes in the air. “You do look like the wrath of God.”

  “I can’t help that,” Joan said.

  “Who’s over there?” Doris leered. “You’ve been knocking yourself out with somebody.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Some things Aurelie said.”

  Aurelie, Aurelie, Joan thought, you are so clever. You take such wonderful care of your children. Even Doris won’t know. You did it all so beautifully…

  “You always did like secrets,” Doris was saying. “Pity you won’t tell me. Might even be somebody I know.”

  “Little sister,” Joan said, “there are some people in this world cleverer than you, some people who can run rings around you.”

  Doris got up, the robe falling in tangles around her feet. “Not you, old duck.”

  “No,” Joan said truthfully. “I wasn’t even thinking of me.”

  That afternoon she called Michael.

  “Hello,” she said quietly, casually. “I’m glad I caught you at home.”

  A pause while he identified her voice. Then a quick breath. “For God’s sake,” he said, “what happened to you?”

  “Did you try to call me?”

  “No,” he admitted, “but you said you’d call.”

  “Look,” she said. “It’s all right.”

  “You mean you were wrong?”

  “No,” she said, “but it’s all right now.”

  “For God’s sake.”

  The silence was so long she began to wonder. “You aren’t angry?”

  “Me?” he said, “I think it’s terrific.”

  It seemed to her that she ought to say good bye and hang up. There didn’t seem to be anything more. She felt awkward, as if she’d used the wrong fork.

  “It was the sensible thing to do,” she said finally.

  “You’re damn right it was,” he said. “But I didn’t think gals had that much sense.”

  What he said was true. Most gals would have wanted to get married. Maybe she would have gotten married.

  Then Michael was saying something else. “I didn’t hear you,” she apologized.

  He laughed and she recognized the old sound, crisp and open and jolly. And free.

  She realized suddenly that he had been afraid. He had. And that struck her as funny. “You were afraid.”

  “No,” he said huffily, “I wouldn’t say that. But I wasn’t very happy about things.”

  “Silly,” she giggled, “silly, silly.”

  “Yea,” he said, “I guess so.”

  For the very first time a conversation with him was going right. She felt good about it. She felt she was in control. And she was. All because of a tiny speck of a child.

  “Tell you what,” he said finally, “this deserves some sort of a celebration, don’t you think?”

  A celebration. Or a funeral. “Be fun,” she said aloud.

  “What about tomorrow?”

  “It’s a good day.”

  “We’ll go have dinner at the Blue Room.”

  “Swell,” she said, “a proper celebration.”

  The next day a corsage came for her—white orchids. She was very dressed up: a new dress that she had bought the previous year on vacation in Jamaica—all heavy tropical greens and blues. She felt a little light-headed, a little dizzy. She wondered if she wasn’t catching something; she took her temperature and then swallowed a couple of aspirins for good measure.

  In the club’s dimness, he looked even more handsome than she remembered. Narrow head, thin face. Indian-looking, almost, with high cheekbones and deep shadows under them. She felt lovely; she wondered if she was. He hadn’t said; he never said a word. He had never given her a compliment.

  The tips of the white orchids brushed her cheek—it didn’t matter. This was Now, she thought, and have fun.

  “Thank you for the celebration,” she said.

  He took her hand across the table. “You were great,” he said, “so we ought to have a party.”

  “A birthday party,” she said.

  He looked startled. “Sure if you like.”

  A bottle of sparkling Burgundy came. And quite suddenly she thought of Aurelie’s decision: sparkling Burgundy is vulgar.

  “Poor Aurelie,” she said aloud.

  “I guess she knew all about it.”

  “Oh sure,” Joan said, “she didn’t mind. Not really.”

  “For God’s sake.” He lifted his glass. “Here’s …”

  “Happy times,” Joan said.

  Later still they went down to Pat O’Brien’s, to a gay noisy airless room where two pianists belted out a succession of indistinguishable songs. She ordered a gin and tonic.

  “Hell,” Michael said, “you want a Hurricane.”

  She shrugged. “I’ll get drunk.”

  “So you get drunk. So what?”

  She nodded. Right again. If she got drunk—what could happen? Nothing more can happen. Not to me.

  Joan could feel the man at the next table staring at her, admiringly. The dress was good, the flowers were good, and she had done her hair properly for once… It was very thrilling. That’s what came of not being born pretty, she thought. You worked on it hard, and you were a lot more grateful. A lot more. More than Doris, for one. But Doris wasn’t exactly pretty, either, she had something else. It must be fun. Or something like that. Life, maybe.

  And without wanting to, Joan thought: but I had life too, right in my belly; after a while it would have begun to move and stir; and now I’m empty and quiet…

  Michael was tapping her arm. “Hi, honey bunch.”

  She smiled. “I was a million miles off.”

  “I know.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I hope you’re not going to be one of those sad-type drinkers.”

  “I don’t know.”

  A red-faced drunk staggered by their table, changed his mind and sat down. They both giggled at him. And he began a long rambling account of his oil wells in Texas. Finally, in the middle of a sentence, he lurched away.

  Michael was chuckling, deep in his throat, quietly.

  “Do you suppose he was telling the truth?” Joan asked.

  “God knows.”

  “If this is a party,” Joan said, “I would like another drink.”

  “Anything you would like, honey bunch,” Michael said. “God, you were terrific. If it had come out, I’d be fired so fast I wouldn’t even see the door slamming.”

  “Oh,” she said, “oh.”

  “Well sure… Things like that just don’t happen in the academic world.”

  “Well,” Joan said, “it’s all right.”

  “I’ll drink on that,” Michael said. “I’ll get us a drink.”

  The room got more crowded. There was more noise, but it actually seemed quieter to Joan. The din had all subsided to an even low level roar. Far off and steady like a waterfall. She recognized the signs; she was getting very drunk.

  When, several hours later, they left, she noticed that her heels weren’t too steady on the broken flagstone that formed the sidewalk. She found herself staring down, selecting each stone carefully. Michael did not take her arm. He walked quietly right next to her and a little distance off.

  In the car he said: “Let’s go one more place.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Where?”

  “Fairy joint. Out on the lake.”

  I don’t want to go to the lake, she thought. I’ve been to the lake with you. And it was a terrible time.

  Aloud she said: “Sure, let’s try.”

  It was a long drive to the lake, and the top stayed up. Just as well, she thought, the set would stay in
her hair.

  The other bar was small and dark and not very crowded. They had a couple of beers and watched the show.

  Maybe it was the mixture of drinks, and maybe it was the mixture of sexes, but Joan began to feel very confused. She couldn’t tell men from women any more.

  A short slender dark-haired woman, with beautifully kept hair, and a very revealing beige dress, slipped past them on clopping heels. She touched Joan’s shoulder briefly, softly. Slipped an arm into Michael’s, hugged him. Then slipped away.

  Michael grinned. “Now what was that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Man or woman, guess!”

  “I can’t,” Joan said.

  “No opinion at all?”

  “Do you?”

  “I know.”

  “Tell me?”

  He shook his head.

  “That’s not fair.” The quick alcoholic tears were very near the surface.

  “What was it?”

  It would be silly to cry, she told herself. And she stared determinedly down into the brown bottom of her beer bottle. “I couldn’t care less.” She yawned elaborately. “I’m getting awfully sleepy and tomorrow is awfully close and I can’t sleep all morning.”

  “If it makes you feel better, I’ve got an eight o’clock class scheduled for the coming term.”

  “Eight o’clock,” she said. “God!”

  “Nobody would take it and it got wished on me.”

  “Have fun.”

  The road was very unsteady under her feet. The crunch of gravel seemed fantastically loud, seemed to boom out in the dark. She wondered if Michael could drive, all the stories of drunks at the wheel coming back to her with a rush. She took one quick look—he seemed to be driving with more concentration than usual, but he seemed to be doing all right.

  So she leaned her head back and fell to following her own thoughts around and around. They weren’t making much sense—even she could tell that. But very slowly one fact detached itself and stood out clearly. It was strange, in a way, that it hadn’t appeared earlier. She wanted him. Badly. She could feel her body twisting and lifting to that imaginary shape.

  Damn, she thought, oh God damn.

  Then they were home, and she walked up the front walk with her legs burning and the familiar trembling on the back of her tongue.