Evan Connell - Mrs. Bridge

Eventually she grew accustomed to her situation and it appeared to Mrs. Bridge that the marriage was going to work out all right. Gil and Carolyn were looking for a house in Parallel; their apartment would be too small when the baby came.

“But everything is so high,” said Carolyn. They were in the kitchen. It was Harriet’s day off and Mrs. Bridge was baking some oatmeal cookies to send to Ruth, and Carolyn was helping. “We want something with a decent yard,” she went on, sliding a spatula under a row of hot cookies and transferring them to a towel spread on the drainboard. “And Gil insists on a dry basement. That’s the first place he goes. The real-estate agent no more than has the door open when Gil heads for the basement and I’m left standing there as big as an elephant. He’s gone mad on turning out salad bowls on a lathe. A friend of his has a lathe. He says it calms his nerves, and so that’s why he has to have a dry basement so it won’t rust the goddamned lathe. Really, how berserk can a man go?”

Mrs. Bridge, carefully drawing a second tray of cookies from the oven, observed that there should be lots of pleasant homes in Parallel.

“Oh, there are, there are,” Carolyn mumbled, “but you’ve got to check the neighbors.”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“The niggers are moving in.”

Mrs, Bridge slowly put down the tray of cookies. She did not know just what to say. Such situations were awkward. On the one hand, she herself would not care to live next door to a houseful of Negroes; on the other hand, there was no reason not to. She had always liked the colored people she had known.

She still thought affectionately o Beulah Mae and worried about her, wondering if she was still alive. She had never known any Negroes socially; not that she avoided it, just that there weren’t any in the neighborhood, or at the country club, or in the Auxiliary. There just weren’t any for her to meet, that was all.

“That reminds me, Carolyn. You’ll never guess who I bumped into the other day. Alice Jones! We got on an elevator together/’

“My God! I’d absolutely forgotten that girl.”

“Don’t you remember how you two used to play together? You were practically inseparable. I almost had to pry you apart at lunch time/’

“Did she recognize you?”

“Oh, right away.”

“What’s she doing?”

“She’s married now and she’s working as a maid in one of the downtown hotels.”

“How many children does she have?”

“She didn’t say.”

“Does she look the same?”

“Heavens, no! She’s almost as tall as Douglas and she looked so black. It’s such a shame.”

Carolyn became thoughtful, and finally said, “I think I’d like to see her. Which hotel is she working at?”

“I’ve been trying to think. I knew you’d want to see her. And she told me which one it was.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter, I guess. I don’t know what we could say to each other, it’s been so long.”

“How many years has it been?”

“Quite a few,” Carolyn answered, biting her lip. “It’s been quite a few years, Mother.”

Mrs. Bridge turned off the gas in the oven and shut the doors.

The snow fell all night. It fell without a sound and covered the frozen ground, and the dead leaves beneath the maple tree, and bowed the limbs of the evergreens, and sifted out of the high, pearl-blue clouds hour after hour. Mrs. Bridge was awakened by the immense silence and she lay in her bed listening. She heard the velvet chimes of the clock in the hall, and presently the barking of a dog. She had a feeling that all was not well and she waited in deep expectancy for some further intimation, listening intently, but all she heard before falling asleep was the familiar chiming of the clock.

The next morning Lois Montgomery telephoned to say that Grace Barron had committed suicide.

In the days that followed Mrs. Bridge attempted to suppress this fact. Her reasoning was that nothing could be gained by discussing it; consequently she wrote to Ruth that there was some doubt as to what had been the cause of Mrs. Barron’s death but it was presumed she had accidentally eaten some tuna-fish salad which had been left out of the refrigerator overnight and had become contaminated, and this was what she told Douglas and Carolyn.

To intimate friends, to those who knew the truth, which was that Grace Barron had swallowed over fifty sleeping tablets, Mrs. Bridge talked more openly. They asked one another familiar and similar questions because, in many ways, Grace Barron was indistinguishable from anyone among them. Their problems had been hers, their position, their wealth, and the love they knew, these also had belonged to her.

“It came as such a shock,” Mrs. Bridge heard herself say again and again. “It’s awfully hard to believe/*

She often wondered if anyone other than herself had been able to divine the motive; if so, it went unmentioned. But she herself had found it instinctively less than an instant after hearing the news: her first thought had been of an afternoon on the Plaza when she and Grace Barron had been looking for some way to occupy themselves, and Grace had said, a little sadly, “Have you ever felt like those people in the Grimm fairy-tale the ones who were all hollowed out in the back?”

The country was now at war. Douglas had graduated from high school and wanted to join the Army. Ruth was gone; she seldom wrote. Carolyn, unable to get along with her husband, was coming home more frequently. And Mrs. Bridge, lost in confusion, often lay down to rest awhile, and thought back to happier times. She saw that it was inevitable these things had come to pass, and she could not escape a feeling of unreality. One day, while shopping on the Plaza, she had recognized someone who used to live next door to her when she was a child. The woman was now evidently verging on old age, and Mrs. Bridge, counting down the years as she observed, from a distance, the conclusion of the youth which was her own, felt a growing sense of despair and futility, and ever after that day she herself moved a little more slowly.

Sometime in the middle of the night Mrs, Bridge awoke and knew Carolyn had come home. The house was absolutely still and yet she had no doubt; rising quietly so as not to disturb her husband she pulled on her quilted satin robe, found her slippers, and went along the hall to the room where the girls had lived. Sure enough the door was closed; ordinarily it was open. Mrs. Bridge hesitated outside, listening, but heard nothing; she had expected to hear Carolyn sobbing.

“Dear, may I come in?*’ she asked. There was no answer, but she pushed open the door and saw Carolyn lying on the bed fully dressed with her hands clasped beneath her head. She was staring at the ceiling.

“Did you and Gil have another argument?” she asked, seating herself on the edge of the bed.

“I can’t stand him/’ she answered after a while.

“What was it this time?”

“He hit me.”

Mrs. Bridge caught her breath.

“He did,” she repeated, with no apparent anger. “He slapped me so hard I lost my balance and fell down.”

“You must have done something to provoke him. Didn’t you?” she asked.

“Are you on his side?”

“I’m trying not be on anyone’s side, dear/’ she said, and reached out to stroke Carolyn’s head. “It’s just that I don’t think Gil is that sort.”

“Oh, no? If you lived with him you’d find out different/’ Tears had sprung into her eyes, and seeing them Mrs. Bridge felt herself ready to weep.