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

When she realized, however, after a short conversation with Sadie, that she was speaking to Harriet’s sister, a malevolent scowl darkened her countenance, and she spooned her beans more slowly.

“Harriet didn’t tell me you were coming,” she said at length; her tone was unmistakably disagreeable.

Sadie’s heart commenced to beat very fast as she in turn realized that this woman in plus-fours was the waitress, Beryl, of whom Harriet had often spoken in her letters and at home.

“It’s a surprise,” Sadie told her. “I meant to come here before. I’ve been promising Harriet I’d visit her in camp for a long time now, but I couldn’t come until I got a neighbor in to cook for Evy and Bert. They’re a husband and wife … my sister Evy and her husband Bert.”

“I know about those two,” Beryl remarked sullenly. “Harriet’s told me all about them.”

“Will you please take me to my sister’s cabin?” Sadie asked, picking up her valise and stepping forward.

Beryl continued to stir her beans around without moving.

“I thought you folks had some kind of arrangement,” she said. She had recorded in her mind entire passages of Harriet’s monologues out of love for her friend, although she felt no curiosity concerning the material she had gathered. “I thought you folks were supposed to stay in the apartment while she was away at camp.”

“Bert Hoffer and Evy have never visited Camp Cataract,” Sadie answered in a tone that was innocent of any subterfuge.

“You bet they haven’t,” Beryl pronounced triumphantly. “That’s part of the arrangement. They’re supposed to stay in the apartment while she’s here at camp; the doctor said so.”

“They’re not coming up,” Sadie repeated, and she still wore, not the foxy look that Beryl expected would betray itself at any moment, but the look of a person who is attentive though being addressed in a foreign language. The waitress sensed that all her attempts at starting a scrap had been successfully blocked for the present and she whistled carefully, dragging some chairs into line with a rough hand. “I’ll tell you what,” she said, ceasing her activities as suddenly as she had begun them. “Instead of taking you down there to the Pine Cones — that’s the name of the grove where her cabin is — I’ll go myself and tell her to come up here to the lodge. She’s got some nifty rain equipment so she won’t get wet coming through the groves like you would … lots of pine trees out there.”

Sadie nodded in silence and walked over to a fantasy chair, where she sat down.

“They get a lot of fun out of that chair. When they’re drunk,” said Beryl pointing to its back, made of a giant straw disc. “Well … so long.…” She strode away. “Dear Valley…” Sadie heard her sing as she went out the door.

Sadie lifted the top off the chair’s left arm and pulled two books out of its woven hamper. The larger volume was entitled The Growth and Development of the Texas Oil Companies, and the smaller, Stories from Other Climes. Hastily she replaced them and closed the lid.

* * *

Harriet opened the door for Beryl and quickly shut it again, but even in that instant the wooden flooring of the threshold was thoroughly soaked with rain. She was wearing a lavender kimono with a deep ruffle at the neckline; above it her face shone pale with dismay at Beryl’s late and unexpected visit. She feared that perhaps the waitress was drunk. “I’m certainly not hacking out a free place for myself in this world just in order to cope with drunks,” she said to herself with bitter verve. Her loose hair was hanging to her shoulders and Beryl looked at it for a moment in mute admiration before making her announcement.

“Your sister Sadie’s up at the lodge,” she said, recovering herself; then, feeling embarrassed, she shuffled over to her usual seat in the darkest corner of the room.

“What are you saying?” Harriet questioned her sharply.

“Your sister Sadie’s up at the lodge,” she repeated, not daring to look at her. “Your sister Sadie who wrote you the letter about the apartment.”

“But she can’t be!” Harriet screeched. “She can’t be! It was all arranged that no one was to visit me here.”

“That’s what I told her,” Beryl put in.

Harriet began pacing up and down the floor. Her pupils were dilated and she looked as if she were about to lose all control of herself. Abruptly she flopped down on the edge of the bed and began gulping in great draughts of air. She was actually practicing a system which she believed had often saved her from complete hysteria, but Beryl, who knew nothing about her method, was horrified and utterly bewildered. “Take it easy,” she implored Harriet. “Take it easy!”

“Dash some water in my face,” said Harriet in a strange voice, but horror and astonishment anchored Beryl securely to her chair, so that Harriet was forced to stagger over to the basin and manage by herself. After five minutes of steady dousing she wiped her face and chest with a towel and resumed her pacing. At each instant the expression on her face was more indignant and a trifle less distraught. “It’s the boorishness of it that I find so appalling,” she complained, a suggestion of theatricality in her tone which a moment before had not been present. “If she’s determined to wreck my schemes, why doesn’t she do it with some style, a little slight bit of cunning? I can’t picture anything more boorish than hauling oneself onto a train and simply chugging straight up here. She has no sense of scheming, of intrigue in the grand manner … none whatever. Anyone meeting only Sadie would think the family raised potatoes for a living. Evy doesn’t make a much better impression, I must say. If they met her they’d decide we were all clerks! But at least she goes to business.… She doesn’t sit around thinking about how to mess my life up all day. She thinks about Bert Hoffer. Ugh!” She made a wry face.

“When did you and Sadie start fighting?” Beryl asked her.

“I don’t fight with Sadie,” Harriet answered, lifting her head proudly. “I wouldn’t dream of fighting like a common fishwife. Everything that goes on between us goes on undercover. It’s always been that way. I’ve always hidden everything from her ever since I was a little girl. She’s perfectly aware that I know she’s trying to hold me a prisoner in the apartment out of plain jealousy and she knows too that I’m afraid of being considered a bum, and that makes matters simpler for her. She pretends to be worried that I might forget myself if I left the apartment and commit a folly with some man I wasn’t married to, but actually she knows perfectly well that I’m as cold as ice. I haven’t the slightest interest in men … nor in women either for that matter; still if I stormed out of the apartment dramatically the way some do, they might think I was a bum on my way to a man … and I won’t give Sadie that satisfaction, ever. As for marriage, of course I admit I’m peculiar and there’s a bit wrong with me, but even so I shouldn’t want to marry: I think the whole system of going through life with a partner is repulsive in every way.” She paused, but only for a second. “Don’t you imagine, however,” she added severely, looking directly at Beryl, “don’t you imagine that just because I’m a bit peculiar and different from the others, that I’m not fussy about my life. I am fussy about it, and I hate a scandal.”

“To hell with sisters!” Beryl exclaimed happily. “Give ’em all a good swift kick in the pants.” She had regained her own composure watching the color return to Harriet’s cheeks and she was just beginning to think with pleasure that perhaps Sadie’s arrival would serve to strengthen the bond of intimacy between herself and Harriet, when this latter buried her head in her lap and burst into tears. Beryl’s face fell and she blushed at her own frivolousness.