The Wintering Read Free Page A

could not escape. She had stood even outside the bathroom door crying, “Everything’s falling apart, the yard’s a mess. If you’re not going to fix it up, you got to at least get some Negro to.” Flushing had barely drowned her out. He had been angered into action when the toilet would not flush immediately a second time, as she droned on. Going for his tools, he had fixed the toilet to flush when needed, and she had watched disbelievingly. In the dining room now, the sideboard’s door clicked shut. He made it almost from the kitchen before Inga came in, wearing a soft fawn-colored robe, the softness, the fawn, like her eyes, he thought. Sniffing for sherry, he smelled, so far, only the sweet scents of her bath. Her hair was damp at the base of her neck and pulled up onto the top of her head, then stuck with heavy gold pins. Artificially colored now, he supposed. But her hair had the naturally progressed look from virgin gold to her present age, and he anguished over what age could do.
    â€œI have a headache,” Inga said. “What should I take for it?”
    â€œAspirin, fresh air, try those,” he said. Jessie, having gone to the back door to spit, had come back. “What us going to have for supper?” she said.
    â€œAsk the mistress of the house,” he said. Going by Inga, and wondering why she had on silver dancing shoes, he then smelled menthol from her medicated eye pads and the bittersweet smell of her cough syrup, which was heavy with codeine. A moment, that smell seemed to take him back into his own drugged sleep, and he struggled to keep his eyes open. Inga’s voice was thick, her eyes were heavy, and the medicine was a whiff on the hand she raised in a gesture not hopeful of detaining him. In the hall, the telephone rang as he passed it. He answered only to sever himself from his previous conversation. Inga’s hand had continued upward to her forehead, and she had said, “Oh, Jessie. Is the pain never to end?”
    â€œHello,” he said.
    A male voice young enough to quiver and quivering on a rising note rushed at him, without pause. “Mr. Almoner, sir, this is Borden Lake Decker, you went to school with my mother, Winifred Lake, Winnie they called her (Would the boy never breathe? he was wondering, smiling), and I go to Princeton (here he did breathe, waiting hopefully, Almoner thought, for at least a fraternal grunt, but he was silent), and my roommate is here, Quill Jordan, Quill Jordan, from Delton, you know (but he was not to be impressed, either), and we’re both English majors at Princeton (yes, I got that), and we admire your work so much (whispering in the background), and, oh yes, Quill’s writing a senior thesis on your work, and could we possibly come over and just meet you a moment? And, oh (more whispering), there’s a girl here who wants to be a writer, too.”
    Whew, Almoner thought, though the young voice seemed not at all breathless. He said gravely that he was sorry, but he was leaving that moment on a fishing trip, not to return for several days.
    â€œOh,” the boy said. His voice sank deep enough to hold a more masculine hint, as if he had touched the bottom of disappointment. Still, Almoner thought, he was not going to relent. The boy said, “Thank you for this much time, I know how you guard it.”
    Then why had he called? Almoner wanted to ask.
    The boy cried as if he were within hailing distance. “But I want to tell you, Mr. Almoner. You’re not forgotten at Princeton!” Then the phone was clamped down, abruptly, on his own confusion.
    Almoner was chuckling and almost laughing continuing down the hall, but he was touched by the sincerity. And, I’m not forgotten at Princeton, he reminded himself, thinking of the vast gap between them that the boy would think that would matter. Yet it meant something to be told he was not forgotten. He had attended the university only a year.