The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty - Eudora Welty [57]
You will think, what if nothing ever happens? What if there is no climax, even to this amazing life? Suppose old Mr. Marblehall simply remains alive, getting older by the minute, shuttling, still secretly, back and forth?
Nobody cares. Not an inhabitant of Natchez, Mississippi, cares if he is deceived by old Mr. Marblehall. Neither does anyone care that Mr. Marblehall has finally caught on, he thinks, to what people are supposed to do. This is it: they endure something inwardly—for a time secretly; they establish a past, a memory; thus they store up life. He has done this; most remarkably, he has even multiplied his life by deception; and plunging deeper and deeper he speculates upon some glorious finish, a great explosion of revelations ... the future.
But he still has to kill time, and get through the clocking nights. Otherwise he dreams that he is a great blazing butterfly stitching up a net; which doesn't make sense.
Old Mr. Marblehall! He may have years ahead yet in which to wake up bolt upright in the bed under the naked bulb, his heart thumping, his old eyes watering and wild, imagining that if people knew about his double life, they'd die.
FLOWERS FOR MARJORIE
He was one of the modest, the shy, the sandy haired—one of those who would always have preferred waiting to one side.... A row of feet rested beside his own where he looked down. Beyond was the inscribed base of the drinking fountain which stemmed with a troubled sound up into the glare of the day. The feet were in Vs, all still. Then down at the end of the bench, one softly began to pat. It made an innuendo at a dainty pink chewing-gum wrapper blowing by.
He would not look up. When the chewing-gum wrapper blew over and tilted at his foot, he spat at some sensing of invitation and kicked it away. He held a toothpick in his mouth.
Someone spoke. "You goin' to join the demonstration at two o'clock?"
Howard lifted his gaze no further than the baggy corduroy knees in front of his own.
"Demonstration...?" The tasteless toothpick stuck to his lips; what he said was indistinct.
But he snapped the toothpick finally with his teeth and puffed it out of his mouth. It landed in the grass like a little tent. He was surprised at the sight of it, and at his neatness and proficiency in blowing it out. And that little thing started up all the pigeons. His eyes ached when they whirled all at once, as though a big spoon stirred them in the sunshine. He closed his eyes upon their flying opal-changing wings.
And then, with his eyes shut, he had to think about Marjorie. Always now like something he had put off, the thought of her was like a wave that hit him when he was tired, rising impossibly out of stagnancy and deprecation while he sat in the park, towering over his head, pounding, falling, going back and leaving nothing behind it.
He stood up, looked at the position of the sun, and slowly started back to her.
He was panting from the climb of four flights, and his hand groped for the knob in the hall shadows. As soon as he opened the door he shrugged and threw his hat on the bed, so Marjorie would not ask him how he came out looking about the job at Columbus Circle; for today, he had not gone back to inquire.
Nothing was said, and he sat for a while on the couch, his hands spread on his knees. Then, before he would meet her eye, he looked at the chair in the room, which neither one would use, and there lay Marjorie's coat with a flower stuck in the buttonhole. He gave a silent despairing laugh that turned into a cough.
Marjorie said, "I walked around the block—and look what I found." She too was looking only at the pansy, full of pride.
It was bright yellow. She only found it, Howard thought, but he winced inwardly, as though she had displayed some power of the spirit. He simply had to sit and stare at her, his hands drawn back into his pockets, feeling a match.
Marjorie sat on the little trunk by the window, her round arm on the sill, her soft cut hair now and then blowing and streaming like ribbon-ends over her curling hand where she