Walker Percy - The Moviegoer

She refers to a phenomenon of moviegoing which I have called certification. Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere.

She sounds better but she is not. She is trapping herself, this time by being my buddy, best of all buddies and most privy to my little researches. In spite of everything she finds herself, even now, playing out the role. In her long nightmare, this our old friendship now itself falls victim to the grisly transmogrification by which she unfailingly turns everything she touches to horror.

THE LAST WEEK-END of Carnival before Mardi Gras; business is very slow. But this morning I awoke with a strong feeling about American Motors. I sell my Ford common and buy American Motors at 26 1/ 2.

Again this morning the dream of war, not quite a dream but the simulacrum of a dream, and again there visits the office the queasy-quince smell of 1951 and the Orient. It is not fear but the smell of fear and so it is peevish-pleasant, like a sore tooth which offers itself to the tongue. It attaches itself to everything in the office. An earnings analysis reminds me of it; a lady came in to pick up her A.T.&T. debentures and she smelled of it.

Only my secretary does not smell of it. Her name is Sharon Kincaid and she comes from Eufala, Alabama. Although she has been working for me two weeks, I have not asked her for a date nor spoken of anything other than business. Yet the fact is that for two weeks I have thought of little else. She seems quite indifferent so far; and she is not really beautiful. She is a good-sized girl, at least five feet six and a hundred and thirty-five pounds — as big as a majorette — and her face is a little too short and pert, like one of those Renoir girls, and her eyes a little too yellow. Yet she has the most fearful soap-clean good looks. Her bottom is so beautiful that once as she crossed the room to the cooler I felt my eyes smart with tears of gratitude. She is one of those village beauties of which the South is so prodigal. From the sleaziest house in the sleaziest town, from the loins of redneck pa and rockface ma spring these lovelies, these rosy-cheeked Anglo-Saxon lovelies, by the million. They are commoner than sparrows, and like sparrows they are at home in the streets, in the parks, on doorsteps. No one marvels at them; no one holds them dear. They flush out of their nests first thing and alight in the cities to stay, and no one misses them. Even their men pay no attention to them, anyhow far less attention than they pay to money. But I marvel at them; I miss them; I hold them dear.

I speak several times by telephone with my aunt and with Kate. Kate seems better and my aunt is pleased and gives me the credit. She has made an appointment for Kate with Dr Mink and Kate has consented to go. When Kate calls me, she takes her analytic tone. It is something of a strain for both of us. For some reason or other she feels obliged to keep one jump ahead of the conventional. When I answer the phone, instead of hearing “Hello, this is Kate,” there comes into my ear a low-pitched voice saying something like: “Well, the knives have started flying,” which means that she and her mother have been aggressive toward each other; or: “What do you know? I’m celebrating the rites of spring after all,” which turns out to mean that she has decided, in her ironic and reflected way, to attend the annual supper given for former queens of the Neptune ball. This is something of a strain for both of us, as I say, but I am glad to hear from her. To tell the truth, I am somewhat worried about her, more so than her stepmother is. Kate is trapping herself too often: hitting upon a way out, then slamming the door upon herself. She has broken her engagement with Walter. But her stepmother understands, and Walter too, it seems. He stands by loyally to do what he can — it is none other than Walter, in fact, who will drive her to the hotel for the queens’ supper. All seems well, but Kate is uneasy. “They think they’re helping me, but they aren’t,” comes the low voice in my ear. “How much better it would be if they weren’t so damn understanding — if they kicked me out of the house. To find yourself out in the street with two dollars to your name, to catch the streetcar downtown and get a job, perhaps as an airline stewardess. Think how wonderful it would be to fly to Houston and back three times a week for the next twenty years. You think I’m kidding? I’m not. It would be wonderful.” “Then why don’t you walk out of the house and get yourself a job?” I ask her. There comes a silence, then a click. But this doesn’t mean anything. Abrupt hang-ups are a part of our analytic way of talking.

Sharon seems to pay no attention to these alexandrine conversations, even though we occupy the same small office and she is close enough to touch. Today she wears a sleeveless dress of yellow cotton; her arms come out of the armholes as tenderly as a little girl’s. But when she puts her hand to her hair, you see that it is quite an arm. The soft round muscle goes slack of its own weight. Once she slapped a fly with her bare hand and set my Artmetal desk ringing like a gong. Her back is turned to me, but obliquely, so that I can see the line of her cheek with its whorl of down and the Slavic prominence under the notch of her eye and the quick tender incurve, shortening her face like a little mignon. There is on her desk a snapshot of her father and it is this very crowding of the cheekbone into the eye socket, narrowing the eye into a squint-eyed almost Chinese treacherousness, which is so ugly in him and so beautiful in her. As she types, the little kidney-shaped cushion presses against the small of her back in a nice balance of thrusts.

I am in love with Sharon Kincaid. She knows nothing of this, I think. I have not asked her for a date nor even been specially friendly. On the contrary: I have been aloof and correct as a Nazi officer in occupied Paris. Yet when she came in this morning unshouldering her Guatemalan bag and clearing her hair from her short collar, I heard a soughing sound in my ears like a desert wind. The Guatemalan bag contains Peyton Place, I happen to know. She had it when she applied for the job, a drugstore-library copy which she held under her purse. Ever since, the bag has been heavy with it — I can tell by the swing of it. She reads it at her lunch in the A & G cafeteria. Her choice in literature I took to be a good omen at the time, but I have changed my mind. My Sharon should not read this kind of stuff.

Her person has acquired a priceless value to me. For the first time I understand the conceits of the old poets: how I envy thee, little kidney-shaped cushion! Oh, to take thy place and press in thy stead against the sweet hollow of her back, etc. The other day Frank Hebert from Savings & Loan next door was complaining about his overhead: his rent was so much, his office girl such and such. To think of it: Sharon Kincaid as an item on a list, higher than the janitor, lower than the rent. Yet I dare not raise her salary, though before long I shall and with reason. She is a first-class secretary, quicker to learn than either Marcia or Linda. Only this much do I know from the interview: she comes from Barbour County, Alabama; she attended Birmingham Southern for two years; her mother and father left the farm and are divorced; her mother sells Real Silk hosiery and often visits Sharon but does not live with her. Sharon lives in a rooming house on Esplanade. Her roommate works for Alcoa. One night I drove by the house, a tall narrow pile with blue windows and a display of plumbing fixtures on the ground floor.