Brad Watson - Miss Jane

“Don’t forget the practically-working-for-free part,” Jane said.

The evening went that way. Jane had little or no appetite but managed to eat a few bites from her plate. The whole situation was making her feel increasingly uncomfortable, though, as it couldn’t be anything other than what it seemed to be, a baffling bit of matchmaking on Grace’s part. Her discomfort was slowly turning into anger that Grace would put her in such a spot, and she grew silent. Mr. Satchel asked if she was all right. “I’m fine,” she said. Then she felt an accident coming on and started to get up and hurry upstairs but stopped, thought, Just let it happen. See what the matchmakers think of that . And after a minute, during which the unmistakable odor of bodily waste began to rise into the air around the table, she could sense the discomfort, see the awkward feeling creep into them, note their averted eyes. All but Grace’s, that is. Hers bored into Jane’s with unmistakable fury and disbelief.

The men stood to leave, thanking Grace, and Satchel thanking her, shaking her hand, making a valiant effort at normalcy. They’d skipped dessert and coffee. And as soon as she shut the door on their departure Grace spun around and came up to her, face distorted in disgust and anger.

“What the hell, sister?” she said. “What the hell was that all about?”

“Indeed,” Jane said right back. “What was it about?”

“I don’t doubt even Louis won’t come back here, after that little incident.”

“Too bad. Such a catch.” She thought Grace might slap her, but instead she banged into the kitchen through the swinging door. Jane followed, banging through herself.

“Seriously, you tell me, sister ,” she said. “Were you really trying to set me up with a man? Never mind how humiliating to me — what about him? He’s a nice man, and a kind man, I can tell. What was he supposed to think when I just outright rejected him and couldn’t even tell him why?”

Grace started to speak, stopped herself, then kind of slumped in on herself, crossing her arms.

“Don’t get so damn mad,” she said. “Louis insisted that this man wanted to meet you.”

Jane stared at her for a minute.

“And why is that?”

“Says he’s lonely and hasn’t had a girl since the war, that he was wounded pretty bad. I get the idea, you know, it was something awful.”

“He doesn’t look wounded. I mean, he’s got two arms and two legs, his face is a little cattywampus but it isn’t scarred.”

Grace just looked at her.

“Maybe it left him like you, in a way. Unable to be intimate with somebody. I’m just guessing.”

To Jane it felt as if she could feel the color leave her complexion. If you could feel an almost mortal paling.

“Guessing,” she said. “You’d already told this Mr. Fontleroy about me? And I suppose he told Mr. Satchel?”

Grace worked her mouth, twisting a dishrag in her hands. Then she cut her eyes away. “Not everything,” she said. “You certainly surprised him on that front.”

Jane said, “How could you do that? Grace.”

“Well, goddamn!” Grace said, throwing the dishrag onto the counter. “Damn me if I bother to do anything to help you, sister. Maybe that man would be a good companion to you, what you think about that? Or is it that you just want to be an old maid your whole life?”

“Well, it’s what I already am, ‘old’ or not, isn’t it?” Jane said.

“Yes,” Grace said, settling just a bit, ears going from pink back to fleshy translucence in the kitchen light.

“So you think because this man cannot have normal relations with a woman he would want to be with me. You tell him I’m ‘deformed’ or something but I suppose you leave off the part about inability to control my bodily functions. That he would be the companion of a woman around whom he would so often enjoy the stink of the privy. That it would be like living with a grown infant always needing her ‘goddamn’ diaper changed. I don’t suppose you told him that, judging by his reaction at the table, poor man.”

“Poor man! Why did you let it happen that way? Why didn’t you excuse yourself and go upstairs, the way you’ve always done?”

After a long moment so quiet the air began to hiss like a tiny steam valve in another room, Jane said, “To make a point, I suppose. To not take part in a lie.” Grace said nothing. “I am twenty-two years old, Grace. That was old maid age, in the old days. And pretty much is for me now. If I have to accept it, you might as well, too. I imagine I am boring you to death, after all this time living here like that, like an old maid. So if you want me to leave, find my own place, you just say so.”

“I didn’t say that and I don’t mean that. You’re my little sister. I’ve tried to take care of you.”

“And I appreciate that, Grace. But if you want me to leave, want your privacy back, you say so. All right?”

Grace nodded.

“You’re not getting any younger, either, Grace,” she said, in a softer voice, not unkind. “I don’t want to be in your way.”

Grace seemed then on the verge of tears.

Jane left the kitchen and went straight up to her room, sat on her bed looking out the window at downtown, not hearing the sounds of it or smelling the smells of it nor even herself. Only seeing the city’s nightscape, and some part of her seeming to float out into it, undetectable by others, no more than a little pocket of warm breeze in the shade of a tree during summer, so subtle as to make one wonder at whether it was really there, passed, or was just a moment of one’s own disembodied dreaming. That ghost self that now so often seemed to be with her when she was alone.

Every now and then Dr. Thompson came by to get her on Sunday and took her for a drive in his car. They drove out to the airfield and watched the occasional airplane take off or land. He bought them a box lunch and they would have a picnic at Highland Park and stroll around and toss the ducks pieces of stale bread Jane would bring from Grace’s house.

Once, he convinced her to take a ride on the park’s carousel. It was a rather tame experience, as he was getting on in years and she did not want to straddle a wooden horse or lion or some other odd animal, so they rode in the sleigh seats. Even so, the whirling of the carousel as it gained speed was a thrill, with the world of the carousel house and the world outside its paned windows in slanting light becoming streaked as if in some kind of drugged dream. And when it slowed and came to a stop she had to clasp his forearm and beg a moment to regain her equilibrium, and then of course hurry to the public pool’s bathhouse with her bag in order to change herself, as the ride had made her forget herself entirely for those long moments and when she came out of it she realized that she had that business to take care of before they moved along.

After they had made their way back to his car and got in, he sat for a moment behind the wheel without speaking.

“What are you thinking about?” she said.

“Oh. Just my mind wandering. Got all whirled up on that carousel.”

They sat a moment.

“I want to ask you a question,” she said.

“Go ahead.”

“How come you never got married again?”

He frowned in thought. Then said, “I didn’t feel the need. Some people feel like they just have to be married, have a companion. I figured out, after Lett died, that I wasn’t one of them. I guess being married to her had helped me see that.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean to pry where I shouldn’t.”

“It’s all right. I don’t mind. Sometimes people get married because it just seems like a good idea at the time. That such-and-such a person would be a good mate, a good person to share a life with. Have children with. People will get married simply because they judge themselves to be compatible. Just because they figure they will get along.”