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Authors: Patricia Highsmith
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cautious about making friends, especially men friends.
The little boy’s head pressed harder against her thigh, the bus turned, and she saw they were approaching a town. She didn’t know it, she thought excitedly, but she did. It was Dalton.
And if anyone cared to question her as to why she had done what she did, she thought as she made her way down the aisle, taking her suitcase with her, she would tell them the whole story, how Clark had told her he loved her and asked her to marry him and live withhim in his house near Etienne Station, north of New Orleans, and how she had cooked and cleaned and been the best wife she knew, and how as the months went on she saw that Clark really hated her and had only married her to be able to pick on her and—she saw it clearly now—had deiberately chosen a wife from a place like the Star Hotel so he could hold it over her and make himself feel superior. She poked her straws through the hole in the top of the milk container.
“Hey, cain’t you say nothin ,” girl?” It was the young man in the blue overalls grinning down at her, the sudden burr of his voice making her think first of a man who’d bent down to say something to her in a wheatfield once where she’d come with her father to watch the threshing, then of the sailors’ voices in Mobile, and fear dropped like a needle through her before she could even wonder why she’d thought of that wheatfield she hadn’t thought of since, and she turned away, leaving the 15 cents on the counter, not knowing if it was his or hers, replying, strangely breathless:
“I just can’t talk just now!”
She’d been riding several minutes on the bus before she noticed the young man wasn’t aboard. If he got himself a girl in Dalton, she hoped she’d be a nice girl. But maybe he was just going home to his folks, why should she even think he was going to a girl? She’d stop thinking things like that once she got far enough away from Clark. Clark wouldn’t even let her ride to Etienne Station with the Trelawneys any more. She could let them know about the last time she’d gone with the Trelawneys, when Clark had been off somewhere for two days and there’d been no food in the house. He’d knocked the groceries out of her arms and slapped her face, back and forth, not saying a word, until she just collapsed on the groceries, cryingas if her heart would break. And the scar from the belt buckle, she could show them that.
Without looking at it, she massaged the U-shaped scar on the back of her hand. Since she had got on the bus, her hands had never been still, the long backward-bending fingers clamping the soft palms symmetrically against the corners of her handbag, only to fly off to some other perch, as if she kept trying to pose them properly for a photograph. Her lizard pumps stood upright, side by side on the vibrating floor.
Alistaire was the next rest-stop. She didn’t remember too much about the town except the name, or perhaps the town had changed a good deal in ten years, but the name was enough, and the fact she’d spent one of those happy, carefree nights in a tourist home with her family on one of their summer vacations. The sun was already down, so she decided to stay the night and get an early start tomorrow, as her father had used to say on their tours in the car. “Where you reckon we’ll sleep tonight , papa?” she or her sister Gladys would ask him from the back seat, where the khaki blankets and the picnic lunch and probably a watermelon would be tied up and stowed away in such apple-pie order it was a pleasure just to crawl in the little space beside her sister. Her father’d say, “Lord knows, sugar,” or maybe, “Guess we’ll make Aunt Doris’ by tonight, Gerrie. Remember your Aunt Doris?” which was almost as exciting as a new tourist home, because like as not, she’d have forgotten her aunt’s house since the year before. Wouldn’t she like to forget Clark’s house in a year’s time, too,
The little boy’s head pressed harder against her thigh, the bus turned, and she saw they were approaching a town. She didn’t know it, she thought excitedly, but she did. It was Dalton.
And if anyone cared to question her as to why she had done what she did, she thought as she made her way down the aisle, taking her suitcase with her, she would tell them the whole story, how Clark had told her he loved her and asked her to marry him and live withhim in his house near Etienne Station, north of New Orleans, and how she had cooked and cleaned and been the best wife she knew, and how as the months went on she saw that Clark really hated her and had only married her to be able to pick on her and—she saw it clearly now—had deiberately chosen a wife from a place like the Star Hotel so he could hold it over her and make himself feel superior. She poked her straws through the hole in the top of the milk container.
“Hey, cain’t you say nothin ,” girl?” It was the young man in the blue overalls grinning down at her, the sudden burr of his voice making her think first of a man who’d bent down to say something to her in a wheatfield once where she’d come with her father to watch the threshing, then of the sailors’ voices in Mobile, and fear dropped like a needle through her before she could even wonder why she’d thought of that wheatfield she hadn’t thought of since, and she turned away, leaving the 15 cents on the counter, not knowing if it was his or hers, replying, strangely breathless:
“I just can’t talk just now!”
She’d been riding several minutes on the bus before she noticed the young man wasn’t aboard. If he got himself a girl in Dalton, she hoped she’d be a nice girl. But maybe he was just going home to his folks, why should she even think he was going to a girl? She’d stop thinking things like that once she got far enough away from Clark. Clark wouldn’t even let her ride to Etienne Station with the Trelawneys any more. She could let them know about the last time she’d gone with the Trelawneys, when Clark had been off somewhere for two days and there’d been no food in the house. He’d knocked the groceries out of her arms and slapped her face, back and forth, not saying a word, until she just collapsed on the groceries, cryingas if her heart would break. And the scar from the belt buckle, she could show them that.
Without looking at it, she massaged the U-shaped scar on the back of her hand. Since she had got on the bus, her hands had never been still, the long backward-bending fingers clamping the soft palms symmetrically against the corners of her handbag, only to fly off to some other perch, as if she kept trying to pose them properly for a photograph. Her lizard pumps stood upright, side by side on the vibrating floor.
Alistaire was the next rest-stop. She didn’t remember too much about the town except the name, or perhaps the town had changed a good deal in ten years, but the name was enough, and the fact she’d spent one of those happy, carefree nights in a tourist home with her family on one of their summer vacations. The sun was already down, so she decided to stay the night and get an early start tomorrow, as her father had used to say on their tours in the car. “Where you reckon we’ll sleep tonight , papa?” she or her sister Gladys would ask him from the back seat, where the khaki blankets and the picnic lunch and probably a watermelon would be tied up and stowed away in such apple-pie order it was a pleasure just to crawl in the little space beside her sister. Her father’d say, “Lord knows, sugar,” or maybe, “Guess we’ll make Aunt Doris’ by tonight, Gerrie. Remember your Aunt Doris?” which was almost as exciting as a new tourist home, because like as not, she’d have forgotten her aunt’s house since the year before. Wouldn’t she like to forget Clark’s house in a year’s time, too,
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