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

“Don’t start crying about your sister, for God’s sake,” said Charles. “It’s awfully late, and if you have a job in the morning…” Vaguely, he did recall a sister: a scowling female form that had chaperoned his early meetings with Marian and then disappeared.

“She brought me up,” said Marian. “She thought I was so pretty. She used to wake me up in the morning, and say, ‘Little pretty one.’ She said it every day. Mother died…And Father was pretty useless. She went everywhere with me. I was seventeen when I started modeling. Father was dead against it. We lived in New Canaan then.”

“Darling, I know all this,” said Charles. “I just happened to have forgotten about Margaret.”

“No, listen to this,” said Marian. “You can’t imagine what a beautiful kid I was. No, really you can’t. People used to stare at me on the street. I remember the men, mostly. They still look at me like that, like someone rubbing their dirty hands all over you. Only now it doesn’t frighten me. I was so beautiful that people hated me. Men hate beautiful girls, if they can’t have them.”

“I don’t know where you picked up that idea,” said Charles. “Everyone likes you. Everyone.”

“That’s not what I mean,” said Marian. “My sister was with me all the time. She used to sit and read a book all the while I was working. The men were so scared of her that no one looked at me twice. I never minded. They did the best they could, though: a shove here, a little pat there. Then, the same year, when I was seventeen, I fell in love with a photographer. He was a Dane, or rather, his parents were. I don’t know what happened to him. Maybe he was killed in the war.”

She was silent for several minutes, and Charles, reaching overhead, put out his light. Then she began again: “We started passing notes, right under Margaret’s nose, like a couple of school kids. I started coming in town without her, afternoons, saying I was shopping or something. I could only manage it afternoons, of course. So we decided to go away together. Up to then, it had all been pretty innocent. We were going to see if we liked each other — he told me that was how it was done in Europe, though I don’t think he’d ever been there — and then we’d get married. We didn’t run very far. We went to Philadelphia.”

“You’re making this up,” said Charles. “It doesn’t sound like you.”

“Why?” said Marian. “Because now I don’t run off to Philadelphia with photographers? I’m trying to tell you, I was seventeen.”

“Do you think that makes it better, or something?” said Charles. “A girl of seventeen…and I met you a year later.”

“Well, it wasn’t too pleasant, if you’re looking for a moral,” his wife said. “In fact, I was so upset and frightened and unhappy that on the train when we were coming back to New York I said, ‘You needn’t look at me that way. It’s just as sinful for you as it is for me.’ He looked surprised, but he kept looking at me that funny way. Then he told me what they used to call me behind my back: this Lily Girl from New Canaan.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” said Charles.

“Margaret met me at the door, when I got out of the taxi,” said Marian. “My father was upstairs, collapsing, or writing me out of his will. She took me in her arms. She kissed me. She said, ‘Little pretty one.’ She looked around and she said, ‘No, I guess he didn’t come with you.’ She put me to bed. She brought me my dinner, on a tray. She brushed my hair, and she said, once, under her breath, ‘Thieves.’ She never mentioned it again. No, not once. Until I said I was going to marry you. Then she called you a thief and a rascal.”

“She didn’t even know me. Frankly, I think she sounds neurotic.”

“She was wonderful. And I wasn’t even there when she died.”

“I don’t see why you’re crying about it now ,” said Charles. “If she died before Joyce was even born, that’s seventeen years. I wish you hadn’t told me all this. When I think that a while back you were saying men couldn’t be trusted. I’d certainly tell you…I mean, if something had happened nearly twenty years ago, I’d certainly tell you about it. As if we weren’t upset enough about Joyce; or do you think this helps?”

“I’m sorry,” said Marian. “I keep thinking about Margaret, and saying ‘Thieves,’ and bringing my dinner, and dying all by herself. I get it all mixed up with Joyce, being all by herself right now. Joyce sort of looks like her, something about the way she stands, something sturdy. Put on your light, will you? I’ve lost my handkerchief.”

Charles looked at her critically. “You’ll never be able to work tomorrow,” he said. “Your eyelids are a mess.”

“I don’t care,” said Marian. “Only I don’t want to look too funny for Joyce. Oh, I want her hair to grow! Don’t you see her, being alone, and cutting it off? Her femininity, because she’s been made ashamed of it, or afraid?”

“Don’t start on that,” said Charles. “Don’t give her complexes she hasn’t got. It won’t mark her for life. It didn’t mark you. You made a happy marriage. And a career. Everyone respects you.”

“Oh, I’ll tell her about it,” said Marian. “I should have talked to her before, but she seemed such a kid. I’ll talk to her. I’ll tell her how to live in the world with them as decently as one can.”

“With who?” said Charles.

“With all of you,” said his wife.

Charles turned off his light. “I don’t see where I come into this at all,” he said. He turned over to lie on his side, his sense of injury wrapped around him like an eiderdown. “Try to sleep,” he said. “From the sound of your voice, you’ve given yourself a cold.”

His wife did not reply. She was overwrought, Charles decided. As for her story, he scarcely knew whether to believe it or not. It’s so plainly out of character, he thought, recalling their blameless courtship. She was never that interested in men, and she thinks all photographers are morons. But then, he thought, she may have made it all up so that I wouldn’t be too hard on Joyce. He wanted to suggest this to Marian, but he was afraid of provoking another scene. He said, kindly: “Good night,” and his wife whispered something back.

At last he fell asleep, undisturbed, leaving his wife to think and to weep alone in the dark, under her mask of ice cubes.

1956

ON THE HUNDRED and twenty-sixth day, Bernadette could no longer pretend not to be sure. She got the calendar out from her bureau drawer — a kitchen calendar, with the Sundays and saints’ days in fat red figures, under a brilliant view of Alps. Across the Alps was the name of a hardware store and its address on the other side of Montreal. From the beginning of October the calendar was smudged and grubby, so often had Bernadette with moistened forefinger counted off the days: thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six…That had been October, the beginning of fear, with the trees in the garden and on the suburban street a blaze of red and yellow. Bernadette had scrubbed floors and washed walls in a frenzy of bending and stretching that alarmed her employers, the kindly, liberal Knights.

“She’s used to hard work — you can see that, of course,” Robbie Knight had remarked, one Sunday, almost apologizing for the fact that they employed anyone in the house at all. Bernadette had chosen to wash the stairs and woodwork that day, instead of resting. It disturbed the atmosphere of the house, but neither of the Knights knew how to deal with a servant who wanted to work too much. He sat by the window, enjoying the warm October sunlight, trying to get on with the Sunday papers but feeling guilty because his wife was worried about Bernadette.