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

She tilted her head back and half-closed her eyes. In the true style of a person given to interminable monologues, she was barely conscious of her audience. “Now,” she said, “we can come to whether I, on the other hand, get a thrill out of Camp Cataract.” She paused for a moment as if to consider this. “Actually, I don’t,” she pronounced sententiously, “but if you like, I will clarify my statement by calling Camp Cataract my tree house. You remember tree houses from your younger days.… You climb into them when you’re a child and plan to run away from home once you are safely hidden among the leaves. They’re popular with children. Suppose I tell you point-blank that I’m an extremely original woman, but also a very shallow one … in a sense, a very shallow one. I am afraid of scandal.” Harriet assumed a more erect position. “I despise anything that smacks of a bohemian dash for freedom; I know that this has nothing to do with the more serious things in life … I’m sure there are hundreds of serious people who kick over their traces and jump into the gutter; but I’m too shallow for anything like that … I know it and I enjoy knowing it. Sadie on the other hand cooks and cleans all day long and yet takes her life as seriously as she would a religion … myself and the apartment and the Hoffers. By the Hoffers, I mean my sister Evy and her big pig of a husband Bert.” She made a wry face. “I’m the only one with taste in the family but I’ve never even suggested a lamp for the apartment. I wouldn’t lower myself by becoming involved. I do however refuse to make an unseemly dash for freedom. I refuse to be known as ‘Sadie’s wild sister Harriet.’ There is something intensively repulsive to me about unmarried women setting out on their own … also a very shallow attitude. You may wonder how a woman can be shallow and know it at the same time, but then, this is precisely the tragedy of any person, if he allows himself to be griped.” She paused for a moment and looked into the darkness with a fierce light in her eyes. “Now let’s get back to Camp Cataract,” she said with renewed vigor. “The pine groves, the canoes, the sparkling purity of the brook water and cascade … the cabins … the marshmallows, the respectable clientele.”

“Did you ever think of working in a garage?” Beryl suddenly blurted out, and then she blushed again at the sound of her own voice.

“No,” Harriet answered sharply. “Why should I?”

Beryl shifted her position in her chair. “Well,” she said, “I think I’d like that kind of work better than waiting on tables. Especially if I could be boss and own my garage. It’s hard, though, for a woman.”

Harriet stared at her in silence. “Do you think Camp Cataract smacks of the gutter?” she asked a minute later.

“No, sir.…” Beryl shook her head with a woeful air.

“Well then, there you have it. It is, of course, the farthest point from the gutter that one could reach. Any blockhead can see that. My plan is extremely complicated and from my point of view rather brilliant. First I will come here for several years … I don’t know yet exactly how many, but long enough to imitate roots … I mean to imitate the natural family roots of childhood … long enough so that I myself will feel: “Camp Cataract is habit, Camp Cataract is life, Camp Cataract is not escape.” Escape is unladylike, habit isn’t. As I remove myself gradually from within my family circle and establish myself more and more solidly into Camp Cataract, then from here at some later date I can start making my sallies into the outside world almost unnoticed. None of it will seem to the onlooker like an ugly impetuous escape. I intend to rent the same cabin every year and to stay a little longer each time. Meanwhile I’m learning a great deal about trees and flowers and bushes … I am interested in nature.” She was quiet for a moment. “It’s rather lucky too,” she added, “that the doctor has approved of my separating from the family for several months out of every year. He’s a blockhead and doesn’t remotely suspect the extent of my scheme nor how perfectly he fits into it … in fact, he has even sanctioned my request that no one visit me here at the camp. I’m afraid if Sadie did, and she’s the only one who would dream of it, I wouldn’t be able to avoid a wrangle and then I might have a fit. The fits are unpleasant; I get much more nervous than I usually am and there’s a blank moment or two.” Harriet glanced sideways at Beryl to see how she was reacting to this last bit of information, but Beryl’s face was impassive.

“So you see my plan,” she went on, in a relaxed, offhand manner, “complicated, a bit dotty and completely original … but then, I am original … not like my sisters … oddly enough I don’t even seem to belong socially to the same class as my sisters do. I am somehow”—she hesitated for a second—“more fashionable.”

Harriet glanced out of the window. Night had fallen during the course of her monologue and she could see a light burning in the next cabin. “Do you think I’m a coward?” she asked Beryl.

The waitress was startled out of her torpor. Fortunately her brain registered Harriet’s question as well. “No, sir,” she answered. “If you were, you wouldn’t go out paddling canoes solo, with all the scary shoots you run into up and down these rivers.…”

Harriet twisted her body impatiently. She had a sudden and uncontrollable desire to be alone. “Good-bye,” she said rudely. “I’m not coming to supper.”

Beryl rose from her chair. “I’ll save something for you in case you get hungry after the dining room’s closed. I’ll be hanging around the lodge like I always am till bedtime.” Harriet nodded and the waitress stepped out of the cabin, shutting the door carefully behind her so that it would not make any noise.

* * *

Harriet’s sister Sadie was a dark woman with loose features and sad eyes. She was turning slightly to fat in her middle years, and did not in any way resemble Harriet, who was only a few years her senior. Ever since she had written her last letter to Harriet about Camp Cataract and the nomads Sadie had suffered from a feeling of steadily mounting suspense — the suspense itself a curious mingling of apprehension and thrilling anticipation. Her appetite grew smaller each day and it was becoming increasingly difficult for her to accomplish her domestic tasks.

She was standing in the parlor gazing with blank eyes at her new furniture set — two enormous easy chairs with bulging arms and a sofa in the same style — when she said aloud: “I can talk to her better than I can put it in a letter.” Her voice had been automatic and when she heard her own words a rush of unbounded joy flooded her heart. Thus she realized that she was going on a little journey to Camp Cataract. She often made important decisions this way, as if some prearranged plot were being suddenly revealed to her, a plot which had immediately to be concealed from the eyes of others, because for Sadie, if there was any problem implicit in making a decision, it lay, not in the difficulty of choosing, but in the concealment of her choice. To her, secrecy was the real absolution from guilt, so automatically she protected all of her deepest feelings and compulsions from the eyes of Evy, Bert Hoffer and the other members of the family, although she had no interest in understanding or examining these herself.

The floor shook; recognizing Bert Hoffer’s footsteps, she made a violent effort to control the flux of her blood so that the power of her emotion would not be reflected in her cheeks. A moment later her brother-in-law walked across the room and settled in one of the easy chairs. He sat frowning at her for quite a little while without uttering a word in greeting, but Sadie had long ago grown accustomed to his unfriendly manner; even in the beginning it had not upset her too much because she was such an obsessive that she was not very concerned with outside details.