Mavis Gallant - Home Truths

“To the airport, if you feel like taking me. Otherwise I’ll hitch.”

“Oh, please don’t do that!” He seemed afraid of another outburst from her — something low-pitched and insulting this time.

“Come in this minute,” said Meg. “I don’t know what you are up to, but we do have neighbors, you know.”

“Why should I care?” said Sarah. “They aren’t my neighbors.”

“You are a little coward,” said Meg. “Running away only because …” There were so many reasons that of course she hesitated.

Without unkind intention Sarah said the worst thing: “It’s just that I’m too young for all of you.”

Meg’s hand crept between the bars and around her wrist. “Somebody had to be born before you, Sarah,” she said, and unlocked her hand and turned back to the house. “Yes, boys, dear boys, here I am,” she called.

Tim said, “Would you like — let me see — would you like something to eat or drink?” It seemed natural for him to talk through bars.

“I can’t stay in the same bed with someone who doesn’t care,” said Sarah, beginning to cry. “It isn’t right.”

“It is what most people do,” said Tim. “Meg has the dogs, and her television. She has everything. We haven’t often lived together. We gradually stopped. When did we last live together? When we went home once for the motor show.” She finally grasped what he meant by “live together.” Tim said kindly, “Look, I don’t mean to pry, but you didn’t take old Roy too much to heart, did you? He wasn’t what you might call the love of your life?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Dear, dear,” said Tim, as if someone had been spreading bad news. He seemed so much more feminine than his wife; his hands were powdery — they seemed dipped in talcum. His eyes were embedded in a little volcano of wrinkles that gave him in full sunlight the look of a lizard. A white lizard, Sarah decided. “This has affected Meg,” he said. “The violence of it. We shall talk it over for a long time. Well. You have so much more time. You will bury all of us.” His last words were loud and sudden, almost a squawk, because Meg, light of tread and silent on her feet, had come up behind him. She wore her straw hat and carried her morning glass of gin and orange juice.

“Sarah? She’ll bury you,” said Meg. “Fetch the car, Tim, and take Sarah somewhere. Come along. Get to Friday. Tim.” He turned. “Dress first,” she said.

The sun which had turned Tim into a white lizard now revealed a glassy stain on Meg’s cheek, half under her hair. Sarah’s attention jumped like a child’s. She said, “Something’s bitten you. Look. Something poisonous.”

Meg moved her head and the poisoned bite vanished under the shade of her hat. “Observant. Tim has never noticed. Neither has Roy. It is only a small malignant thing,” she said indifferently. “I’ve been going to the hospital in Nice twice a week for treatment. They burned it — that’s the reason for the scar.”

“Oh, Meg,” said Sarah, drawn round the gate. “Nobody knew. That was why you went to Nice. I saw you on the bus.”

“I saw you,” said Meg, “but why talk when you needn’t? I get plenty of talk at home. May I ask where you are going?”

“I’m going to the airport, and I’ll sit there till they get me on a plane.”

“Well, Sarah, you may be sitting for some time, but I know you know what you are doing,” said Meg. “I am minding the summer heat this year. I feel that soon I won’t be able to stand it anymore. When Tim’s gone I won’t ever marry again. I’ll look for some woman to share expenses. If you ever want to come back for a holiday, Sarah, you have only to let me know.”

And so Tim, the battery of his car leaking its lifeblood all over French roads, drove Sarah down to Nice and along to the airport. Loyal to the Reeve standards, he did not once glance at the sea. As for Sarah, she sat beside him crying quietly, first over Meg, then over herself, because she thought she had spent all her capital on Roy and would never love anyone again. She looked for the restaurant with the blue tablecloths, and for the beach where they had sat talking for a night, but she could not find them; there were dozens of tables and awnings and beaches, all more or less alike.

“You’ll be all right?” said Tim. He wanted her to say yes, of course.

She said, “Tim, Roy needs help.”

He did not know her euphemisms any more than she understood his. He said, “Help to do what?”

“Roy is unhappy and he doesn’t know what he wants. If you’re over forty and you don’t know what you want, well, I guess someone should tell you.”

“My dear Sarah,” said the old man, “that is an unkind thing to say about a friend we have confidence in.”

She said quickly, “Don’t you see, before he had a life that suited him, inspecting people in jails. They didn’t seem like people or jails. It kept him happy, it balanced …” Suddenly she gave a great shiver in the heat of the morning and heard Lisbet laugh and say, “Someone’s walking on your grave.” She went on, “For example, he won’t eat.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” cried Tim, understanding something at last. “Meg will see that he eats.” Right to the end, everyone was at cross-purposes. “Think of it this way,” said Tim. “You had to go home sometime.”

“Not till September.”

“Well, look on the happy side. Old Roy … matrimony. You might not enjoy it, you know, unless you met someone like Meg.” He obviously had no idea what he was saying anymore, and so she gave up talking until he set her down at the departures gate. Then he said, “Good luck to you, child,” and drove away looking indescribably happy.

Sarah kept for a long time the picture of Judas with his guts spilling and with his soul (a shrimp of a man, a lesser Judas) reaching out for the Devil. It should have signified Roy, or even Lisbet, but oddly enough it was she, the victim, who felt guilty and maimed. Still, she was out of the tunnel. Unlike Judas she was alive, and that was something. She was so much younger than all those other people: as Tim had said, she would bury them all. She tacked the Judas card over a map of the world on a wall of her room. Plucked from its origins it began to flower from Sarah’s; here was an image that might have followed her from the nursery. It was someone’s photo, a family likeness, that could bear no taint of pain or disaster. One day she took the card down, turned it over, and addressed it to a man she was after. He was too poor to invite her anywhere and seemed too shy to make a move. He was also in terrible trouble — back taxes, ex-wife seizing his salary. He had been hounded from California to Canada for his political beliefs. She was in love with his mystery, his hardships, and the death of Trotsky. She wrote, “This person must have eaten my cooking. Others have risked it so please come to dinner on Friday, Sarah.” She looked at the words for seconds before hearing another voice. Then she remembered where the card was from, and she understood what the entire message was about. She could have changed it, but it was too late to change anything much. She was more of an amoureuse than a psycho-anything, she would never use up her capital, and some summer or other would always be walking on her grave.

Now that they are out of world affairs and back where they started, Peter Frazier’s wife says, “Everybody else did well in the international thing except us.”