Joy Williams - The Visiting Privilege - New and Collected Stories

“I’m all right,” I said.

“You’re an American girl,” the Marksman said, watching me.

“What are you doing?” my mother said.

“I’m all right,” I said. “Nothing.”

I took the pitcher of water off the dining table and busied myself by pouring some into the saucer of the Christmas tree stand. The tree wasn’t taking water anymore. The room was sucking up the water, not the tree. But it looked all right. It was still green.

“Do you want to learn to shoot,” the Marksman asked me.

“Goodness no,” my mother said. “Isn’t there a law against that or something? She’s just a child.”

“No law,” the Marksman said. “The law allows you certain rights — you, me, her, everybody.”

I wondered if he was going to say I could be a natural, but he didn’t.

“No,” my mother said. “Absolutely not.”

I didn’t say anything. I knew I would not always be with my mother.

I went to the psychiatrist longer than my mother and I went to the institute. We stopped going and the Marksman stopped coming over for dinner. The last time I went to the psychiatrist there was a new girl in the waiting room. There had always been a little girl about my age and now there was this new one, an older one. We were all girls there. It was a coincidence, is my understanding, that there were no boys. The littlest one was cute. She had a pretty heart-shaped mouth and she carried a toy, a pink and purple dinosaur that she was always trying to give away. You could tell she liked it, that she’d had it probably since she was born, it was all worn smooth and gnawed in spots. Once I got there and she had another toy, a rabbit wearing an apron, and I thought that someone had actually been awful enough to take the dinosaur when she offered it. But it showed up with her again and she was back to trying to give it not just to me but to anyone who came into the waiting room. That seemed to be the little girl’s problem, or at least one of them.

The new girl told us that she was there because her hair was thinning and making her ugly. It looked all right to me, but she said it was thinning and that she had to spend an hour each day lying upside down with her head on the floor to stimulate its growth. She said she had to keep the hairs in the sink after she washed it and the hairs in the brush and the hairs on her pillows. She said she’d left some uncollected hairs on a blouse that her mother had put in the laundry, and when she found out about it she’d become so upset that she did something she couldn’t even talk about. The other girl, the one my age, said that our aim should be to get psychopharmacological treatment instead of psychotherapy, because otherwise it was a waste of time, but that’s what she always said.

I was the last of us to see the psychiatrist that afternoon. When my time was almost up he said, “You’re a smart girl, so tell me, what’s your preference, the manifest world or the unmanifest one?”

It was like he was asking me which flavor of ice cream I liked. I thought for a moment, then went to the dictionary he kept on a stand and looked the word up.

“The manifest one,” I said, and there was not much he could do about that.

We were visiting friends of mine on Nantucket. Over the years they’ve become more solitary. They’re quite a bit older than we are, lean, intelligent and carelessly stylish. They drink too much. And I drink too much when I visit them. Sometimes we’d just eat cereal for supper; other times we’d be subjected to an entire stuffed fish and afterward a tray of Grape-Nuts pudding. Their house is old and uncomfortable, with a small yard that’s dark with hydrangeas in August. This was August. I told my wife not to expect dinner from my erratic friends, Betty and Bruce. We would have a few drinks, then return to the inn where we were staying and have a late supper. Only one other guest was expected this evening, a local woman who had ten daughters.

“What an awful lot,” my wife said.

“I’m sure we’ll hear about them,” I said.

“I suppose so,” Bruce said, struggling to open an institutional-size jar of mayonnaise that had been set on a weathered picnic table in the yard.

“She’s unlikely to talk about much else with that many,” my wife said. “Are any of them strange?”

“One’s dead, I believe,” our host said, still struggling with the jar. “ ‘Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might…’ ” he said, addressing his own exertions.

“Let me give that a try,” I said, but Bruce had finally broken the plastic seal.

“I meant strange as in intellectually or emotionally or physically challenged,” my wife said. She had already decided to dislike this poor mother.

Bruce dipped a slice of wilted carrot into the jar. “I really like mayonnaise. Do you, Paula? I can’t remember.”

“Bruce, you know very well it’s Pauline,” Betty said.

“I’m addicted to mayonnaise, practically,” Bruce said.

My wife smiled and shook her head. If she had resolved to become relaxed in that moment it would be a great relief, for Bruce had been kind to me and there was no need for tension between them. Pauline prefers to be in control of our life and our friendships. She’s a handsome woman, canny and direct, never unreasonable. I suppose some might find her cold but I am in thrall to her because I had almost been crushed by life. I had some rough years before Pauline, years I only just managed to live through. I might as well have been stumbling around in one of those great whiteouts that occur in the far north where it is impossible to distinguish between a small object nearby and a large object a long way off. In whiteouts there is no certainty and every instinct is betrayed — even the birds fly into the ground, believing it to be air, and perish. I strained to see and could not, and torn by strange sorrows and shames I twice attempted suicide. But then a calm overtook me, as though my mind had taken pity on me and called off the hopeless search I had undertaken. I was thirty-two then. I met Pauline the following year and she accepted me, broken and wearied as I was, with an assurance that further strengthened me. We have a lovely home outside Washington. She wants a child, which I am resisting.

We were all smiling at the mayonnaise jar as though it were one of the sweet night’s treasures when a bell jangled on a rusted chain wrapped around the garden gate. We had engaged the same bell an hour before. A woman appeared, thinner than I expected, almost gaunt, and shabbily dressed. She seemed a typical wellborn island eccentric, and looked at us boldly and disinterestedly…It was difficult to determine her age and thus impossible to guess at the ages of her many daughters. My first impression was that none of them had accompanied her.

“Starky! Have a drink, my girl!” Bruce said in greeting.

She embraced him, resting her cheek for a moment in his hair, which was long and reached the collar of his checkered shirt. She breathed in the smell of his hair much as I had and found it, I could imagine, sour but strangely satisfying. She then turned to Betty and kissed, as I had, her soft warm cheek.

She had brought a gift of candles, which Betty found holders for. The candles were lit and Pauline admired the pleasant effect, for with nightfall the hydrangeas had cast an almost debilitating gloom over the little garden. It did not trouble me that we had brought nothing. We had considered a pie but the prices had offended us. It was foolish to spend so much money on a pie.

“Guinivere,” Bruce called. “We’re so glad you came!”

A figure moved awkwardly toward us and sat down heavily. It was a young woman with a flat round face. Everything about her seemed round. Her mouth at rest was small and round.