course and left all three of us to find out just where we were going. There is one way of looking at things which I don’t seem to have mentioned, and that is simply this: When our orientation was planted firmly in present time, everything was great. As long as we lived as much as possible in the Now, there were no worries, no cares, no paranoia, no anxiety. It was only when we turned from Where are we now? to Where the hell are we going? that things became less than idyllic.
PRISS
We all found ways, didn’t we, to run away from us?
You in the woods, Rhoda, and you to New York, Harry. But more than that we ran off to our secret selves and shut the rest of the world out.
As well as we have come to know each other, I keep finding out things about both of you that I did not know until I read what you have written. And I’m sure the reverse is equally true, because I find myself revealing things here that I kept to myself until now. This typewriter is like an analyst’s couch, it really is.
I don’t know if I should tell you this.
Probably not.
But I guess I will, anyway. I suppose I could always tear up what I’ve written if I decide that it is something I would rather hold within myself a little longer.
I could do that.
And write some other chapter in this one’s place.
If things had gone together in any other way, if any of I don’t know how many variables had not been just so, then it never would have happened. But that’s always the way, isn’t it? Everything that occurs in life is an extraordinary coincidence, and life itself is such a flaunting of the odds that it’s a miracle any of us exist at all.
This one afternoon, you see, I was in the grip of my Priscilla’s-Just-In-The-Way delusion.
Well, see, it’s a particularly natural delusion. Almost inescapable when one sees how well Rhoda and Harry get along together, and how much more they seem to have in common than either one has with me. When I look at the subject sanely, however, I realize that one of the things they have in common is that they’re both in love with me, and I realize further that in a very special way we exist as a trio and would not exist ever so well any other way.
I honestly believe God meant for people to sleep in threes. If He didn’t, it’s just because He didn’t think things through logically. It wouldn’t absolutely have to be our sort of trio. It could be the other sort, two men and a girl, and that would be nice, although not as nice for me, I don’t think, as this. But nicer than sleeping with just one person. Definitely nicer than that.
More than three would not be good.
More than three…
There were other things wrong with that afternoon. It was the end of June, when our weather is usually particularly good, but for the past week we had been having chilly air and more rain than we had any use for, and at the moment we were having both. I might have just tried walking around in the garden to shake my mood but the garden was only fit for walking if you had webbed feet, and I didn’t. (It’s just my two heads that made me odd.) So I said something about going shopping, dashed for the car, navigated the length of the driveway, and then drove aimlessly along.
I didn’t plan on going to any particular supermarket, but that’s one of the comforting things about life in America. If you drive in any distance for a little while you will come to a supermarket, indistinguishable to all intents and purposes from any other supermarket, and then you can buy something and take it home with you, whether you need it or not. So I didn’t have to drive toward a supermarket, or rather there was no way I could drive that wasn’t toward at least one of them, so all I had to do was sit back and enjoy the ride. It would have been more enjoyable if the windshield wipers had worked better, or if I hadn’t kept crying like an idiot for no good reason at all.
I never pick up hitchhikers.
Never in my life. Not because I’ve been afraid-most of the time around here the kids who try to hitch rides are around twelve years old, and don’t particularly scare me. But because it just never occurred to me, it never seemed to me to be the sort of thing I would be inclined to do.
Then why did I stop for these kids?
God alone knows. I certainly don’t. There’s a certain temptation that makes me want to say that I had the final outcome in mind, somewhere in mind, when I first took my foot off the gas pedal and eased it onto the brake. But I’ve been over it in my mind a thousand times since then and I just can’t believe it was the case. I saw them out there at the roadside getting wet, and there was something youthful and appealing about them as a group, the way they stood, their casual attitudes.
Let’s make a scene out of it. I want to get my own mind out of the way and put it down the way it happened. That should be easier.
Anything should be easier.
I saw them, five boys at the roadside, two of them thumbing valiantly at passing traffic, another bending over cupped hands to light a cigarette, two others reeling back playfully as if sideswiped by a passing car. I took my foot at once from the accelerator and applied the brake, thinking as I did so that the pavement was slippery, that today of all days was a bad time to risk stopping. But the car braked smoothly to a stop and the five of them ran up and pulled open the doors on the passenger side.
“How far are you going, ma’am?”
“Up the road a few miles. I don’t know exactly.”
An inane response, but it didn’t seem to bother them.
“Anything’s drier than out there,” one said, and they began to pile into the car. I watched them and was surprised to discover that one of them was a girl. They were all dressed alike in jeans and sweatshirts, and at a distance she had just looked like one of the boys. Now, with her long silky hair (soaked by the rain) and her pretty face, there was no mistaking her sex.
The girl and two of the boys got into the back seat. The other two boys sat in front.
“Certainly appreciate this, ma’am.”
“Nice car.”
“A lot drier in here than it is out there.”
“Hey, close the door, Mike.”
And off we went. How far were they going? As far as I was, they assured me. They went to college in New Hampshire and were on their way back to homes in Connecticut and Westchester County. They waited for me to pursue this conversationally, and I didn’t, not being overwhelmingly interested, and then their conversation started up again on its own, between them and excluding me, and I preferred it that way. I could listen to them talk about people and incidents that meant nothing to me, could let my ears take a bath in their conversation, absorbing the feel and texture of it as if it were being conducted in a foreign language, its meaning of no interest to me at all.
I found myself watching them.
In the rear-view mirror, first of all. The girl sat between the two boys, and seemed to be close to the one on her left; he had an arm around her, and periodically drew her over for a kiss. She kissed him in front of the others with no apparent embarrassment, which I thought was nice, and rather sweet and open.
Then the boy on her right said, “My turn, now, Glory,” and she giggled and leaned over and kissed him. It was not a little puppy kiss, either; I could see them in the mirror, and their mouths were open and it looked as though he had his hands on her breasts. They held the kiss for a few moments and then she relaxed again in the first boy’s embrace.
I looked at the two boys on the seat beside me. The one sitting next to the door had a long dark face with sharp features. His hair was dark and moderately shaggy, and he had a beard about two inches wide that swept down from his sideburns to his chin. His neck, cheekbones, and moustache were clean-shaven. The boy next to me had straight blonde hair halfway to his shoulders and no beard. His face was very open and he was cute rather than handsome; he looked like a hip version of David Eisenhower.
