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

Mr. Oliver said that he was certainly glad to meet them. The Timminses were wonderful friends, but sometimes, traveling like this, he felt like the extra wheel. Did Mrs. Ellenger know what he meant to say?

They were all talking: Mr. Oliver, Eddy, Emma’s mother, Mr. and Mrs. Timmins, the rest of the people who had drifted in. The mood, collectively, was a good one. It had been a wonderful day. They all agreed to that, even Mrs. Ellenger. The carols had started again, the same record. Someone sang with the music: “Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light…”

“I’d take you more for sisters ,” Mr. Oliver said.

“Really?” Mrs. Ellenger said. “Do you really think so? Well, I suppose we are, in a way. I was practically a child myself when she came into the world. But I wouldn’t try to pass Emma off as my sister. I’m proud to say she’s my daughter. She was born during the war. We only have each other.”

“Well,” Mr. Oliver said, after thinking this declaration over for a moment or so, “that’s the way it should be. You’re a brave little person.”

Mrs. Ellenger accepted this. He signaled for Eddy, and she turned to Emma. “I think you could go to bed now. It’s been a big day for you.”

The noise and laughter stopped as Emma said her good nights. She remembered all the names. “Good night, Eddy,” she said, at the end, but he was rinsing glasses and seemed not to hear.

Emma could still hear the carols faintly as she undressed. She knelt on her bed for a last look at Tangier; it seemed different again, exotic and remote, with the ring of lights around the shore, the city night sounds drifting over the harbor. She thought, Today I was in Africa…But Africa had become unreal. The café, the clock in the square, the shop where they had bought the bracelet, had nothing to do with the Tangier she had imagined or this present view from the ship. Still, the tiger was real: it was under her pillow, proof that she had been to Africa, that she had touched shore. She dropped the curtain, put out the light. To the sound of Christmas music, she went to sleep.

It was late when Mrs. Ellenger came into the cabin. Emma had been asleep for hours, her doll beside her, the tiger under her head. She came out of a confused and troubled dream about a house she had once lived in, somewhere. There were new tenants in the house; when she tried to get in, they sent her away. She smelled her mother’s perfume and heard her mother’s voice before opening her eyes. Mrs. Ellenger had turned on the light at the dressing table and dropped into the chair before it. She was talking to herself, and sounded fretful. “Where’s my cold cream?” she said. “Where’d I put it? Who took it?” She put her hand on the service bell and Emma prayed: It’s late. Don’t let her ring…The entreaty was instantly answered, for Mrs. Ellenger changed her mind and pulled off her earrings. Her hair was all over the place, Emma noticed. She looked all askew, oddly put together. Emma closed her eyes. She could identify, without seeing them, by the sounds, the eau de cologne, the make-up remover, and the lemon cream her mother used at night. Mrs. Ellenger undressed and pulled on the nightgown that had been laid out for her. She went into the bathroom, put on the light, and cleaned her teeth. Then she came back into the cabin and got into bed with Emma. She was crying. She lay so close that Emma’s face was wet with her mother’s tears and sticky with lemon cream.

“Are you awake?” her mother whispered. “I’m sorry, Emma. I’m so sorry.”

“What for?”

“Nothing,” Mrs. Ellenger said. “Do you love your mother?”

“Yes.” Emma stirred, turning her face away. She slipped a hand up and under the pillow. The tiger was still there.

“I can’t help it, Emma,” her mother whispered. “I can’t live like we’ve been living on this cruise. I’m not made for it. I don’t like being alone. I need friends.” Emma said nothing. Her mother waited, then said, “He’ll go ashore with us tomorrow. It’ll be someone to take us around. Wouldn’t you like that?”

“Who’s going with us?” Emma said. “The fat old man?”

Her mother had stopped crying. Her voice changed. She said, loud and matter-of-fact, “He’s got a wife someplace. He only told me now, a minute ago. Why? Why not right at the beginning, in the bar? I’m not like that. I want something different, a friend .” The pillow between their faces was wet. Mrs. Ellenger rubbed her cheek on the cold damp patch. “Don’t ever get married, Emma,” she said. “Don’t have anything to do with men. Your father was no good. Jimmy Salter was no good. This one’s no better. He’s got a wife and look at how — Promise me you’ll never get married. We should always stick together, you and I. Promise me we’ll always stay together.”

“All right,” Emma said.

“We’ll have fun,” Mrs. Ellenger said, pleading. “Didn’t we have fun today, when we were ashore, when I got you the nice bracelet? Next year, we’ll go someplace else. We’ll go anywhere you want.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” Emma said.

But her mother wasn’t listening. Sobbing quietly, she went to sleep. Her arm across Emma grew heavy and slack. Emma lay still; then she saw that the bathroom light had been left on. Carefully, carrying the tiger, she crawled out over the foot of the bed. Before turning out the light, she looked at the tiger. Already, his coat had begun to flake away. The ears were chipped. Turning it over, inspecting the damage, she saw, stamped in blue: “Made in Japan.” The man in the shop had been mistaken, then. It was not an African tiger, good for ten wishes, but something quite ordinary.

She put the light out and, in the dim stateroom turning gray with dawn, she got into her mother’s empty bed. Still holding the tiger, she lay, hearing her mother’s low breathing and the unhappy words she muttered out of her sleep.

Mr. Oliver, Emma thought, trying to sort things over, one at a time. Mr. Oliver would be with them for the rest of the cruise. Tomorrow, they would go ashore together. “I think you might call Mr. Oliver Uncle Boyd,” her mother might say.

Emma’s grasp on the tiger relaxed. There was no magic about it; it did not matter, really, where it had come from. There was nothing to be gained by keeping it hidden under a pillow. Still, she had loved it for an afternoon, she would not throw it away or inter it, like the bracelet, in a suitcase. She put it on the table by the bed and said softly, trying out the sound, “I’m too old to call you Uncle Boyd. I’m thirteen next year. I’ll call you Boyd or Mr. Oliver, whatever you choose. I’d rather choose Mr. Oliver.” What her mother might say then Emma could not imagine. At the moment, she seemed very helpless, very sad, and Emma turned over with her face to the wall. Imagining probable behavior was a terrible strain; this was as far as she could go.

Tomorrow, she thought, Europe began. When she got up, they would be docked in a new harbor, facing the outline of a new, mysterious place. “Gibraltar,” she said aloud. Africa was over, this was something else. The cabin grew steadily lighter. Across the cabin, the hinge of the porthole creaked, the curtain blew in. Lying still, she heard another sound, the rusty cri-cri-cri of sea gulls. That meant they were getting close. She got up, crossed the cabin, and, carefully avoiding the hump of her mother’s feet under the blanket, knelt on the end of her bed. She pushed the curtain away. Yes, they were nearly there. She could see the gulls swooping and soaring, and something on the horizon — a shape, a rock, a whole continent untouched and unexplored. A tide of newness came in with the salty air: she thought of new land, new dresses, clean, untouched, unworn. A new life. She knelt, patient, holding the curtain, waiting to see the approach to shore.