Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

He went over to her and touched his lips to the piled hair on the top of her head. She acknowledged the caress by placing her hand atop his, where it rested lightly on her shoulder.

“Are you tired?” he murmured close to her ear.

“Yes. Not — too much, though. Just from all the excitement.”

“Should we unpack our things?”

She welcomed the offered distraction. “All right, let’s. Because tomorrow we’ll be doing so much.”

“Want me to help you?”

“No, I can manage. I know which key belongs to which.”

He opened a door in the wall. “Look at the size of this closet.”

She came over beside him to look. “I want a closet that big when we have our own place. I love the way they smell when they’re new, don’t you? All clean wood-shavings and cedar. Just think, our things will be the first that were ever hung up in it. We sort of christen it.”

They smiled at each other. For a moment they were more like children playing house than two slightly bewildered, slightly frightened people about to enter on the most momentous stage of their personal lives.

“How’ll we do it?” he asked. “Should I take half, and you half?”

“I guess that’s what they — do,” she concurred vaguely.

“Which side do you want?” he invited.

“It doesn’t make any difference. I’ll take from here over, and you take from there over.”

He was already over at one of the valises, squatted down on his heels before it, applying himself perseveringly first to one lock, then the other. “My brother gave me this one,” he said, in apology for its recalcitrance. “I never can quite get it the first time, as long as I’ve been using it. There it is.” The lid went back and over.

She darted a quick glance of curiosity at the contents. “Oh, how many neckties! Does everybody have that many?”

“I’ve kept every one I ever owned, I guess,” he admitted. “I’ve never thrown one away, from the very first one I wore when I first put on long pants.”

“That’s a pretty one there, on top. The one with the blue. Wear that one tomorrow. I’d like it on you.”

“Ma gave me that on my birthday, when I was twenty-one. The last birthday — she was with us.”

“Oh, well, then maybe—” she said with quick compunction.

“No, I like to wear it. I’ve worn it lots of times, since. That’s what she wanted me to do. She bought it for me to wear.” He extricated it from under the straps with a zigzag sawing motion. “I’ll take it out now, and leave it on top here. So I’ll remember in the morning.”

He spread it flat along the top of the dresser. She stepped over after him and evened out, with her finger tips, a slight ripple that had remained in the topmost fold, as though the tie now belonged to the two of them alike, and must be cherished equally by both. “The bees are raised in it,” she said with proprietary approval. “I like that.”

They went back to their unpacking. They were not exactly with their backs to one another, but each with one shoulder given to the other, due to the position of the two pieces of luggage.

He glanced around after a moment. “It smells nice in there,” he complimented her.

“Mamma put in two little bags of sachet, one in each corner, before I left.”

Again they both returned to their unpacking.

With a double armful of fuming cambric layers, like someone holding newly trapped snow in her arms, she crossed to the dresser, opened the drawer, carefully put them in. She carried the fleecy articles turned toward the side, away from him, so that he wouldn’t get too close a look at them. Within a day or two it wouldn’t matter, they would be as one about such things, but at the moment modesty still claimed her, for these were articles of under-apparel.

When he in turn made a trip to the bureau with a double armful from his own receptacle, he likewise held it turned away from her to conceal it from view as much as possible.

Self-consciousness, which had more or less glazed the two of them during those few moments, thawed away again now that that was done. Smiling across-shoulder at one another, he closed down his suitcase, she closed down hers. She brushed off her finger tips against their opposites, but to indicate completion rather than that the task had been dusty. “Well, that much is finished,” she said with satisfaction.

“Yes,” he agreed. “We won’t have to do that now.” Then he suggested, “Why don’t you sit down? No sense standing.”

She selected an armchair, deposited herself into it with a little bounce of possessiveness, due in part no doubt to the newness of the springs. She said again, as she had about the closet, “Oh, I’d love to have a chair like this when we have our own home.”

He slung himself down beside her on one arm of the chair, and tucked his arm around her to her further shoulder, and feeling it there, she allowed her head to pillow back against it.

They were quiet for some moments, utterly, blissfully content. No need to talk, nor even to caress. Their being together like this, close like this, was in itself one big caress. He allowed his head to incline toward hers at last, that was the only thing, and remain there, check pressed to the top of her head.

Their eyes looked out straight ahead, into the distance, into the future, into a from-now-on, that was in the same place for the two of them. Golden future, peach-bloom future, impossible to capture, and even had it been possible to capture, impossible to hold. And even had it been possible to hold, impossible to bear, to endure. Not of this world at all, a future without a cloud, without a pain, without a spiteful word; without a wrinkle, without a gray hair, without a stiffening bone. A dream within a dream within a dream. The Great Shortchange practiced on youth since time immemorial. The boy, the girl, and the Great Untruth, blinding them all alike, two by two, down the countless generations. The bait that traps them together. A Christmas-tree bauble that, when they try to touch it, let alone hold onto it, crumples into a thousand tinseled fragments. And when they look, they hold nothing in their hands, only silvery dust. Like when you pinch a moth by the wings. But even the moth at least is there, for the moment you pinch it. This other thing isn’t.

Once during his double revery she said softly, “I can’t believe it even yet, can you?”

He understood the unexpressed thought. “No,” he said. “Me either.”

“That there was a time, only a little while ago, when there wasn’t any you yet, just me. By myself, alone.”

“And now there’s you and me, both.”

“It must be terrible to be alone.”

“Like we were a couple months ago.”

“I can’t remember it any more, can you? But it must be terrible. To go through each day without any — you.”

“But now we don’t have to any more,” he said. “From now on, each day has you in it.”

He took out a watch. She’d seen it before. It had been given to him on his graduation from high school. He’d told her so. It was gold-plated. He’d told her so. It had a fob of two little pennants of black moiré ribbon. They hung from an inch-wide bar. That was gold-plated too. It was the only watch they had with them, but one was enough. They had no separate needs of time; there was no time apart from one another. There was only time together.

He opened the lid with a spunky little click. She loved to look at the lid. It was bright as a mirror. It had on it: “To John, from Mother and Dad.”

He said, “I guess we better think about—” And then he stopped, because he hadn’t been ready in time with the right last word. The sentence really called for the terminal phrase “—going to bed,” but he didn’t want to use that. She didn’t want him to either.