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

“Did you have to stop combing your hair just because he left?” I heard Sylvie say. “You’re untidy as Puss.”

If you listen at doors, you hear what you deserve. She must have seemed thunderstruck, because Sylvie said, “Oh my God, don’t look so helpless.”

“I’m not helpless,” said Louise.

“Why didn’t you leave us alone?” Sylvie said. “Why didn’t you just leave us with our weakness and our mistakes? You do so much, and you’re so kind and good, and you get in the way, and no one dares hurt you.”

That might have been the end of them, but the same afternoon Louise gave Sylvie a bottle of Miss Dior and the lace petticoat and a piece of real amber, and they went on being friends.

Soon after that scene, however, in March, Louise discovered two things. One was that Sylvie had an aunt and uncle living in Paris, so she was not as forsaken as she appeared to be. Sylvie told her this. The other had to do with Sylvie’s social life, métier, and means. Monsieur Rablis made one of his periodic announcements to the effect that Sylvie would have to leave the hotel — clothes, mirror, horoscopes, money box, and all. Monsieur Rablis was, and is, a small truculent person. He keeps an underexercised dog chained to his desk. While the dog snarled and cringed, Louise said that she knew Sylvie had an aunt and uncle, and that she would make Sylvie go to them and ask them to pay their niece’s back rent. Louise had an unshakable belief in the closeness of French families, having read about the welding influence of patriotism, the Church, and inherited property. She said that Sylvie would find some sort of employment. It was time to bring order into Sylvie’s affairs, my sister said.

She was a type of client the hotel-keeper had often seen: the foreign, interfering, middle-aged female. He understood half she said, but was daunted by the voice, and the frozen eye, and the bird’s-nest hair. The truth was that for long periods he forgot to claim Sylvie’s rent. But he was not obsessed with her, and, in the long run, not French for nothing; he would as soon have had the money she owed. “She can stay,” he said, perhaps afraid Louise might mention that he had been Sylvie’s lover (although I doubt if she knew). “But I don’t want her bringing her friends in at night. She never registers them, and whenever the police come around at night and find someone with Sylvie I have to pay a fine.”

“Do you mean men?” said my wretched sister. “Do you mean the police come about men?”

Some of my sister’s hardheaded common sense returned. She talked of making Sylvie a small regular allowance, which Sylvie was to supplement by finding a job. “Look at Puss,” Louise said to her. “Look at how Puss works and supports herself.” But Sylvie had already looked at me. Louise’s last recorded present to Sylvie was a camera. Sylvie had told her some cocksure story about an advertising firm on the rue Balzac, where someone had said she had gifts as a photographer. Later she changed her mind and said she was gifted as a model, but by that time Louise had bought the camera. She moved the listing in her books from “Necessary” to “Unnecessary.” Mice, insects, and some birds have secret lives. She harped on the aunt and uncle, until one day I thought, She will drive Sylvie insane.

“Couldn’t you ask them to make you a proper allowance?” Louise asked her.

“Not unless I worked for them, either cleaning for my aunt or in my uncle’s shop. Needles and thread and mending wool. Just the thought of touching those old maid’s things — no, I couldn’t. And then, what about my lessons?”

“You used to sew for me,” said Louise. “You darned beautifully. I can understand their point of view. You could make some arrangement to work half days. Then you would still have time for your lessons. You can’t expect charity.”

“I don’t mind charity,” said Sylvie. “You should know.”

I remember that we were in the central market, in Les Halles, dodging among the barrows, pulling each other by the sleeve whenever a cart laden with vegetables came trundling toward us. This outing was a waste of time where I was concerned; but Sylvie hated being alone with Louise now. Louise had become so nagging, so dull. Louise took pictures of Sylvie with the new camera. Sylvie wanted a portfolio; she would take the photographs to the agency on the rue Balzac, and then they would see how pretty she was and would give her a job. Louise had agreed, but she must have known it was foolish. Sylvie’s bloom, divorced from her voice and her liveliness, simply disappeared. In any photograph I had ever seen of her she appeared unkempt and coarse and rather fat.

Her last words had been so bitter that I put my hand on the girl’s shoulder, and at that her tension broke and she clutched Louise and cried, “I should be helped. Why shouldn’t I be helped? I should be!”

When she saw how shocked Louise was, and how she looked to see if anyone had heard, Sylvie immediately laughed. “What will all those workmen say?” she said. It struck me how poor an actress she was; for the cry of “I should be helped” had been real, but nothing else had. All at once I had a strong instinct of revulsion. I felt that the new expenses in Louise’s life were waste and pollution, and what had been set in motion by her giving was not goodness, innocence, courage, or generosity but something dark. I would have run away then, literally fled, but Sylvie had taken my sleeve and she began dragging me toward a fruit stall. “What if Louise took my picture here?” she said. “I saw something like that once. I make up my eyes in a new way, have you noticed? It draws attention away from my mouth. If I want to get on as a model, I ought to have my teeth capped.”

I remember thinking, as Louise adjusted the camera, Teeth capped. I wonder if Louise will pay for that.

I think it was that night I dreamed about them. I had been dream-haunted for days. I watched Louise searching for Patrick in railway stations and I saw him departing on ships while she ran along the edge of the shore. I heard his voice. He said, “Haven’t you seen her wings? She never uses them now.” Then I saw wings, small, neatly folded back. That scene faded, and the dream continued, a dream of labyrinths, of search, of missed chances, of people standing on opposite shores. Awaking, I remembered a verse from a folkloric poem I had tried, when I was Patrick’s age, to set to music:

Es waren zwei Königskinder

Die hatten einander so lief

Sie konnten zusammen nicht kommen

Das Wasser, es war zu tief.

I had not thought of this for years. I would rather not think about all the verses and all the songs. Who was the poem about? There were two royal children, standing on opposite shores. I was no royal child, and neither was Louise. We were too old and blunt and plain. We had no public and private manners; we were all one. We had secrets — nothing but that. Patrick was one child. Sylvie must be the other. I was still not quite awake, and the power of the dream was so strong that I said to myself, “Sylvie has wings. She could fly.”

Sylvie . When she had anything particularly foolish to say, she put her head on one side. She sucked her fingers and grinned and narrowed her eyes. The grime behind her ears faded to gray on her neck and vanished inside her collar, the rim of which was black. She said, “I wonder if it’s true, you know, the thing I’m not to mention. Do you think he loved her? What do you think? It’s like some beautiful story, isn’t it?…[hand on cheek, treacle voice]. It’s pure Claudel. Broken lives. I think .”

Cold and dry, I said, “Don’t be stupid, Sylvie, and don’t play detective.” Louise and Collie, Patrick and Louise: I was as bad as Sylvie. My imagination crawled, rampant, unguided, flowering between stones. Supposing Louise had never loved Collie at all? Supposing Patrick had felt nothing but concern and some pity? Sylvie knew. She knew everything by instinct. She munched sweets, listened to records, grimaced in her mirror, and knew everything about us all.