Mavis Gallant - The Cost of Living - Early and Uncollected Stories

“My mother wants you to go ashore with us in Africa,” she had said, already convinced this was so.

“What do you mean, ashore?” Eddy said. “Take you around, meet you for lunch?” There was nothing unusual in the invitation, as such; Eddy was a great favorite with many of his clients. “It’s funny she never mentioned it.”

“She forgot,” Emma said. “We don’t know anyone in Africa, and my mother always likes company.”

“I know that ,” Eddy said softly, smiling to himself. With a little shovel, he scooped almonds into glass dishes. “What I mean is your mother actually said”—and here he imitated Mrs. Ellenger, his voice going plaintive and high—“‘I’d just adore having dear Eddy as our guest for lunch.’ She actually said that?”

“Oh, Eddy!” Emma had to laugh so hard at the very idea that she doubled up over her drink. Eddy could be so witty when he wanted to be, sending clockwork spiders down the bar, serving drinks in trick glasses that unexpectedly dripped on people’s clothes! Sometimes, watching him being funny with favorite customers, she would laugh until her stomach ached.

“I’ll tell you what,” Eddy said, having weighed the invitation. “I’ll meet you in Tangier. I can’t go ashore with you, I mean — not in the same launch; I have to go with the crew. But I’ll meet you there.”

“Where’ll you meet us?” Emma said. “Should we pick a place?”

“Oh, I’ll find you,” Eddy said. He set his plates of almonds at spaced intervals along the bar. “Around the center of town. I know where you’ll go.” He smiled again his secret, superior smile.

They had left it at that. Had Eddy really said the center of town, Emma wondered now, or had she thought that up herself? Had the whole scene, for that matter, taken place, or had she thought that up, too? No, it was real, for, their taxi having deposited them at the Plaza de Francia, Eddy at once detached himself from the crowd on the street and came toward them.

Eddy was dapper. He wore a light suit and a square-shouldered topcoat. He closed their taxi door and smiled at Emma’s mother, who was paying the driver.

“Look,” Emma said. “Look who’s here!”

Emma’s mother moved over to a shop window and became absorbed in a display of nylon stockings; presented with a fait accompli , she withdrew from the scene — turned her back, put on a pair of sunglasses, narrowed her interest to a single stocking draped on a chrome rack. Eddy seemed unaware of tension. He carried several small parcels, his purchases. Jauntily he joined Mrs. Ellenger at the window.

“This is a good place to buy nylons,” he said. “In fact, you should stock up on everything you need, because it’s tax-free. Anything you buy here, you can sell in Spain.”

“My daughter and I have everything we require,” Mrs. Ellenger said. She walked off and then quickened her step, so that he wouldn’t appear to be walking with them.

Emma smiled at Eddy and fell back very slightly, striking a balance between the two. “What did you buy?” she said softly. “Something for Wilma and George?”

“Lots of stuff,” said Eddy. “Now, this café right here,” he called after Mrs. Ellenger, “would be a good place to sit down. Right here, in the Plaza de Francia, you can see everyone important. They all come here, the high society of two continents.”

“Of two continents,” Emma said, wishing her mother would pay more attention. She stared at all the people behind the glass café fronts — the office workers drinking coffee before hurrying back to their desks, the tourists from cruise ships like their own.

Mrs. Ellenger stopped. She extended her hand to Emma and said, “My daughter and I have a lot of sightseeing to do, Eddy. I’m sure there are things you want to do, too.” She was smiling. The surface of her sunglasses, mirrored, gave back a small, distorted public square, a tiny Eddy, and Emma, anguished, in gloves and hat.

“Oh, Eddy!” Emma cried. She wanted to say something else, to explain that her mother didn’t understand, but he vanished, just like that, and moments later she picked out his neat little figure bobbing along in the crowd going downhill, away from the Plaza. “Eddy sort of expected to stay with us,” she said.

“So I noticed,” said Mrs. Ellenger. They sat down in a café—not the one Eddy had suggested, but a similar café nearby. “One Coca-Cola,” she told the waiter, “and one brandy-and-water.” She sighed with relief, as if they had been walking for hours.

Their drinks came. Emma saw, by the clock in the middle of the square, that it was half-past eleven. It was warm in the sun, as warm as May. Perhaps, after all, they had been right about the summer dresses. Forgetting Eddy, she looked around. This was Tangier, and she, Emma Ellenger, was sitting with the high society of two continents. Outside was a public square, with low buildings, a café across the street, a clock, and, walking past in striped woollen cloaks, Arabs. The Arabs were real; if the glass of the window had not been there, she could have touched them.

“There’s sawdust or something in my drink,” Mrs. Ellenger said. “It must have come off the ice.” Nevertheless, she drank it to the end and ordered another.

“We’ll go out soon, won’t we?” Emma said, faintly alarmed.

“In a minute.”

The waiter brought them a pile of magazines, including a six-month-old Vogue . Mrs. Ellenger removed her glasses, looking pleased.

“We’ll go soon?” Emma repeated.

There was no reply.

The square swelled with a midday crowd. Sun covered their table until Mrs. Ellenger’s glasses became warm to the touch.

“Aren’t we going out?” Emma said. “Aren’t we going to have anything for lunch?” Her legs ached from sitting still.

“You could have something here,” Mrs. Ellenger said, vague.

The waiter brought Emma a sandwich and a glass of milk. Mrs. Ellenger continued to look at Vogue . Sometimes passengers from their ship went by. They waved gaily, as if Tangier were the last place they had ever expected to see a familiar face. The Munns passed, walking in step. Emma thumped on the window, but neither of the ladies turned. Something about their solidarity, their sureness of purpose, made her feel lonely and left behind. Soon they would have seen Tangier, while she and her mother might very well sit here until it was time to go back to the ship. She remembered Eddy and wondered what he was doing.

Mrs. Ellenger had come to the end of her reading material. She seemed suddenly to find her drink distasteful. She leaned on her hand, fretful and depressed, as she often was at that hour of the day. She was sorry she had come on the cruise and said so again. The warm ports were cold. She wasn’t getting the right things to eat. She was getting so old and ugly that the bartender, having nothing better in view, and thinking she would be glad of anything, had tried to pick her up. What was she doing here, anyway? Her life…

“I wish we could have gone with Eddy,” Emma said, with a sigh.

“Why, Emma,” Mrs. Ellenger said. Her emotions jolted from a familiar track, it took her a moment or so to decide how she felt about this interruption. She thought it over, and became annoyed. “You mean you’d have more fun with that Chink than with me? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“It isn’t that exactly. I only meant, we could have gone with him. He’s been here before. Or the Munns, or this other friend of mine, Mr. Cowan. Only, he didn’t come ashore today, Mr. Cowan. You shouldn’t say ‘Chink.’ You should say ‘Chinese person,’ Mr. Cowan told me. Otherwise it offends. You should never offend. You should never say ‘Irishman.’ You should say ‘Irish person.’ You should never say ‘Jew.’ You should say—”