Jane Bowles - My Sister's Hand in Mine - The Collected Works of Jane Bowles

“You see you can buy many things here,” said Pacifica. “I come here because he knows me and I can get my stockings for very little money.”

While Pacifica was buying her stockings Mrs. Copperfield looked at all the other little articles in the store. Pacifica took such a long time that Mrs. Copperfield grew more and more bored. She stood first on one foot and then on the other. Pacifica argued and argued. There were dark perspiration stains under her arms, and the wings of her nose were streaming.

When it was all over and Mrs. Copperfield saw that the salesman was wrapping the package, she went over and paid the bill. The salesman wished her good luck and they left the store.

There was a letter for her at home. Mrs. Quill gave it to her.

“Mr. Copperfield left this for you,” she said. “I tried to urge him to stay and have a cup of tea or some beer, but he was in a hurry. He’s one handsome fellow.”

Mrs. Copperfield took the letter and started towards the bar.

“Hello, sweet,” said Peggy Gladys softly.

Mrs. Copperfield could see that Peggy was very drunk. Her hair was hanging over her face and her eyes were dead.

“Maybe you’re not ready yet … but I can wait a long time. I love to wait. I don’t mind being by myself.”

“You’ll excuse me a minute if I read a letter which I just received from my husband,” said Mrs. Copperfield.

She sat down and tore open the envelope.

Dear Frieda [she read],

I do not mean to be cruel but I shall write to you exactly what I consider to be your faults and I hope sincerely that what I have written will influence you. Like most people, you are not able to face more than one fear during your lifetime. You also spend your life fleeing from your first fear towards your first hope. Be careful that you do not, through your own wiliness, end up always in the same position in which you began. I do not advise you to spend your life surrounding yourself with those things which you term necessary to your existence, regardless of whether or not they are objectively interesting in themselves or even to your own particular intellect. I believe sincerely that only those men who reach the stage where it is possible for them to combat a second tragedy within themselves, and not the first over again, are worthy of being called mature. When you think someone is going ahead, make sure that he is not really standing still. In order to go ahead, you must leave things behind which most people are unwilling to do. Your first pain, you carry it with you like a lodestone in your breast because all tenderness will come from there. You must carry it with you through your whole life but you must not circle around it. You must give up the search for those symbols which only serve to hide its face from you. You will have the illusion that they are disparate and manifold but they are always the same. If you are only interested in a bearable life, perhaps this letter does not concern you. For God’s sake, a ship leaving port is still a wonderful thing to see.

J.C.

Mrs. Copperfield’s heart was beating very quickly. She crushed the letter in her hand and shook her head two or three times.

“I’ll never bother you unless you ask me to bother you,” Peggy Gladys was saying. She did not seem to be addressing anyone in particular. Her eyes wandered from the ceiling to the walls. She was smiling to herself.

“She is reading a letter from her husband,” she said, letting her arm fall down heavily on the bar. “I myself don’t want a husband — never — never — never.…”

Mrs. Copperfield rose to her feet.

“Pacifica,” she shouted, “Pacifica!”

“Who is Pacifica?” asked Peggy Gladys. “I want to meet her. Is she as beautiful as you are? Tell her to come here.…”

“Beautiful?” the bartender laughed. “Beautiful? Neither of them is beautiful. They’re both old hens. You’re beautiful even if you are blind drunk.”

“Bring her in here, darling,” said Peggy Gladys, letting her head fall down on the bar.

“Listen, your pal’s been out of the room two whole minutes already. She’s gone to look for Pacifica.”

It was several months later, and Miss Goering, Miss Gamelon, and Arnold had been living for nearly four weeks in the house which Miss Goering had chosen.

This was gloomier even than Miss Gamelon had expected it would be, since she hadn’t much imagination, and reality was often more frightening to her than her wildest dreams. She was now more incensed against Miss Goering than she had been before they had changed houses, and her disposition was so bad that scarcely an hour went by that she did not complain bitterly about her life, or threaten to leave altogether. Behind the house was a dirt bank and some bushes, and if one walked over the bank and followed a narrow path through some more bushes, one soon came to the woods. To the right of the house was a field that was filled with daisies in the summertime. This field might have been quite pleasant to look at had there not been lying right in the middle of it the rusted engine of an old car. There was very little place to sit out of doors, since the front porch had rotted away, so they had, all three of them, got into the habit of sitting close by the kitchen door, where the house protected them from the wind. Miss Gamelon had been suffering from the cold ever since she had arrived. In fact, there was no central heating in the house: only a few little oil stoves, and although it was still only early fall, on certain days it was already quite chilly.

Arnold returned to his own home less and less frequently, and more and more often he took the little train and the ferry boat into the city from Miss Goering’s house and then returned again after his work was done to have his dinner and sleep on the island.

Miss Goering never questioned his presence. He became more careless about his clothing, and three times in the last week he had neglected to go in to his office at all. Miss Gamelon had made a terrible fuss over this.

One day Arnold was resting upstairs in one of the little bedrooms directly under the roof and she and Miss Goering were seated in front of the kitchen door warming themselves in the afternoon sun.

“That slob upstairs,” said Miss Gamelon, “is eventually going to give up going to the office at all. He’s going to move in here completely and do nothing but eat and sleep. In another year he’s going to be as big as an elephant and you won’t be able to rid yourself of him. Thank the Lord I don’t expect to be here then.”

“Do you really think that he will be so very, very fat in one year?” said Miss Goering.

“I know it!” said Miss Gamelon. There was a sudden blast of wind which blew the kitchen door open. “Oh, I hate this,” said Miss Gamelon vehemently, getting up from her seat to fix the door.

“Besides,” she continued, “who ever heard of a man living together with two ladies in a house which does not even contain one extra bedroom, so that he is obliged to sleep fully clothed on the couch! It is enough to take one’s appetite away, just to walk through the parlor and see him there at all hours of the day, eyes open or shut, with not a care in the world. Only a man who is a slob could be willing to live in such a way. He is even too lazy to court either of us, which is a most unnatural thing you must admit — if you have any conception at all of the male physical make-up. Of course he is not a man. He is an elephant.”

“I don’t think,” said Miss Goering, “that he is as big as all that.”

“Well, I told him to rest in my room because I couldn’t stand seeing him on the couch any more. And as for you,” she said to Miss Goering, “I think you are the most insensitive person that I have ever met in my life.”