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

“Still, you can’t tell,” said Miss Goering rather weakly backing up a bit, and trying to lean in an easy manner against the bureau. Unfortunately, in calling Miss Goering a harlot Arnold’s mother had suggested to her husband the stand that he would take to defend himself.

“How dare you!” he said. “How dare you call anyone that is staying in our house a harlot! You are violating the laws of hospitality to the hundredth degree and I am not going to stand for it.”

“Don’t bully me,” said Arnold’s mother. “She’s got to go right away this minute or I will make a scandal and you’ll be sorry.”

“Look, my dear,” said Arnold’s father to Miss Goering. “Perhaps it would be better if you did go, for your own sake. It is beginning to grow light, so that you needn’t be at all frightened.”

Arnold’s father looked around nervously and then hurried out of the room and down the hall, followed by his wife. Miss Goering heard a door slam and she imagined that they would continue their argument in private.

She herself ran headlong down the hall and out of the house. She found a taxicab after walking a little while and she hadn’t been riding more than a few minutes before she fell asleep.

* * *

On the following day the sun was shining and both Miss Gamelon and Miss Goering were sitting on the lawn arguing. Miss Goering was stretched out on the grass. Miss Gamelon seemed the more discontented of the two. She was frowning and looking over her shoulder at the house, which was behind them. Miss Goering had her eyes shut and there was a faint smile on her face.

“Well,” said Miss Gamelon turning around, “you know so little about what you’re doing that it’s a real crime against society that you have property in your hands. Property should be in the hands of people who like it.”

“I think,” said Miss Goering, “that I like it more than most people. It gives me a comfortable feeling of safety, as I have explained to you at least a dozen times. However, in order to work out my own little idea of salvation I really believe that it is necessary for me to live in some more tawdry place and particularly in some place where I was not born.”

“In my opinion,” said Miss Gamelon, “you could perfectly well work out your salvation during certain hours of the day without having to move everything.”

“No,” said Miss Goering, “that would not be in accordance with the spirit of the age.”

Miss Gamelon shifted in her chair.

“The spirit of the age, whatever that is,” she said, “I’m sure it can get along beautifully without you — probably would prefer it.”

Miss Goering smiled and shook her head.

“The idea,” said Miss Goering, “is to change first of our own volition and according to our own inner promptings before they impose completely arbitrary changes on us.”

“I have no such promptings,” said Miss Gamelon, “and I think you have a colossal nerve to identify yourself with anybody else at all. As a matter of fact, I think that if you leave this house, I shall give you up as a hopeless lunatic. After all, I am not the sort of person that is interested in living with a lunatic, nor is anyone else.”

“When I have given you up,” said Miss Goering, sitting up and throwing her head back in an exalted manner, “when I have given you up, I shall have given up more than my house, Lucy.”

“That’s one of your nastinesses,” said Miss Gamelon. “It goes in one of my ears and then out the other.”

Miss Goering shrugged her shoulders and went inside the house.

She stood for a while in the parlor rearranging some flowers in a bowl and she was just about to go to her room and sleep when Arnold appeared.

“Hello,” said Arnold, “I meant to come and see you earlier, but I couldn’t quite make it. We had one of those long family lunches. I think flowers look beautiful in this room.”

“How is your father?” Miss Goering asked him.

“Oh,” said Arnold, “he’s all right, I guess. We have very little to do with each other.” Miss Goering noticed that he was sweating again. He had evidently been terribly excited about arriving at her house, because he had forgotten to remove his straw hat.

“This is a really beautiful house,” he told her. “It has a quality of past splendor about it that thrills me. You must hate to leave it ever. Well, Father seemed to be quite taken with you. Don’t let him get too cocky. He thinks the girls are crazy about him.”

“I’m devoted to him,” said Miss Goering.

“Well, I hope that the fact that you’re devoted to him,” said Arnold, “won’t interfere with our friendship, because I have decided to see quite a bit of you, providing of course that it is agreeable to you that I do.”

“Of course,” said Miss Goering, “whenever you like.”

“I think that I shall like being here in your home, and you needn’t feel that it’s a strain. I’m quite happy to sit alone and think, because as you know I’m very anxious to establish myself in some other way than I am now established, which is not satisfactory to me. As you can well imagine, it is even impossible for me to give a dinner party for a few friends because neither Father nor Mother ever stirs from the house unless I do.”

Arnold seated himself in a chair by a big bay window and stretched his legs out.

“Come here!” he said to Miss Goering, “and watch the wind rippling through the tops of the trees. There is nothing more lovely in the world.” He looked up at her very seriously for a little while.

“Do you have some milk and some bread and marmalade?” he asked her. “I hope there is to be no ceremony between us.”

Miss Goering was surprised that Arnold should ask for something to eat so shortly after his luncheon, and she decided that this was undoubtedly the reason why he was so fat.

“Certainly we have,” she said sweetly, and she went away to give the servant the order.

Meanwhile Miss Gamelon had decided to come inside and if possible pursue Miss Goering with her argument. When Arnold saw her he realized that she was the companion about whom Miss Goering had spoken the night before.

He rose to his feet immediately, having decided that it was very important for him to make friends with Miss Gamelon.

Miss Gamelon herself was very pleased to see him, as they seldom had company and she enjoyed talking to almost anyone better than to Miss Goering.

They introduced themselves and Arnold pulled up a chair for Miss Gamelon near his own.

“You are Miss Goering’s companion,” he said to Miss Gamelon. “I think that’s lovely.”

“Do you think it’s lovely?” asked Miss Gamelon. “That’s very interesting indeed.”

Arnold smiled happily at this remark of Miss Gamelon’s and sat on without saying anything for a little while.

“This house is done in exquisite taste,” he said finally, “and it is filled with rest and peace.”

“It all depends on how you look at it,” said Miss Gamelon quickly, jerking her head around and looking out of the window.

“There are certain people,” she said, “who turn peace from the door as though it were a red dragon breathing fire out of its nostrils and there are certain people who won’t leave God alone either.”

Arnold leaned forward trying to appear deferential and interested at the same time.

“I think,” he said gravely, “I think I understand what you mean to say.”

Then they both looked out of the window at the same time and they saw Miss Goering in the distance wearing a cape over her shoulders and talking to a young man whom they were scarcely able to distinguish because he was directly against the sun.

“That’s the agent,” said Miss Gamelon. “I suppose there is nothing to look forward to from now on.”