If Morning Ever Comes, Page 2

  He lay quiet for a minute, following the sculptured molding around the ceiling with his eyes.

  “What was I saying?”

  “About toothbrushes.”

  “Oh. Well, that was all.”

  He turned and rose up on one elbow to see what Jeremy was doing. Jeremy was reading all the postcards he had saved.

  “Hey, Ben Joe,” he said.

  “Hmm.”

  “You want to hear something funny?”

  “What.”

  “It’s from this buddy of mine that goes to college out west, with a picture of this gorge, real deep down with a river at the bottom. Says, ‘This gorge is habit-forming. Threw a bowling ball down it to hear how it sounded and it sounded so good I moved on to bigger and better things and last night me and some buddies threw a piano down it.’ A piano. What do you guess it looked like when it hit? Ben Joe?”

  Ben Joe looked up.

  “Ah, you’re not listening,” said Jeremy. He put the postcard back in the drawer and moved on to the next one.

  Ben Joe sat up, running his fingers through his hair. “What time is it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Eleven or so.”

  He reached over and pulled open the top drawer of his own bureau. At the right was a stack of letters; he pulled the top one out, looked at it to make sure it had been signed by his sister Jenny (she was the official family letter writer), and then lay back down, holding the letter over his head, right-side up, to read it:

  Dear Ben Joe:

  We received yours of the 12th. Yes, of course we are well. I don’t know why you keep asking us, since you know as well as we do that the last time any of us was in the hospital was five years ago when Susannah had all four wisdom teeth pulled at once. Mama says to tell you you worry too much. We are getting along beautifully & hope you are too.

  Financially things are going smoothly. Next month both of the twins are getting raises at the bank, but Lisa is getting $6 more a month than Jane, which makes family relationships kind of tense. Tessie is taking drawing lessons after school now for $2 a lesson, which I think we can afford, & the only extra expense this month has been the eaves pipe falling down from the roof outside Tessie’s & my window due to Tessie’s standing on it. Tessie didn’t, tho. Fall, I mean. I’ll never know why.

  I wish you would write a letter to the family suggesting that we go back to a policy of my doing the grocery shopping. Specially since it was me you left in charge of the money. Gram has been doing it lately & the results are disaster. She gets anything she feels like, minced clams & pickled artichoke hearts & pig’s feet & when I ask where are the meat & potatoes she says it’s time we had a little change around here. She’s ruining us.

  Enclosed is next month’s check for your expenses, etc. I hope you will remember to send a receipt this time as it makes my bookkeeping neater.

  Sincerely,

  Jennifer.

  Enc.

  Ben Joe folded the letter and sat up again. “I wish someone besides Jenny would do the letter writing in my family,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” He began walking around the room with his hands in his pockets. “You never know what’s going on, exactly. Just about the dratted eavespipes and stuff.”

  “The what?” Jeremy sat back and stared, and when Ben Joe didn’t answer, he said, “Oh, now, are you getting started on your family again? What are you worried about?”

  Ben Joe stopped in front of the window and looked out. There was a Venetian blind between him and the outdoors; the buildings across from him were divided into dozens of horizontal strips.

  “Someone’s lost a red balloon,” he said. “They must’ve lost it out a window, it’s flying so high.”

  “Maybe it’s a gas balloon.”

  “Maybe. What bothers me is, sometimes I think my family doesn’t know when to get upset—the most amazing things happen and they forget to even tell me. I try to keep quiet, but all the time I’m thinking, ‘I wonder what’s going on back there. I wonder if maybe I shouldn’t just chuck everything and go on back and see for myself, set my mind at rest if nothing … ’ ”

  He was sitting on Jeremy’s bed now, and reaching for the phone.

  “You going to call home?” Jeremy asked.

  “I reckon.”

  “You want me to get out?”

  “Nah, that’s all right—Operator, I want Sandhill, North Carolina, two four oh—”

  “You got a Southern accent,” she said. She was snappy and cross, with a New York twang to her voice. “I can’t tell if you said ‘four’ or ‘five’; you don’t—”

  “I haven’t got one, either. I said ‘two, four, oh—’ ”

  “Yes you do. You said ‘Ah.’ ‘Ah haven’t got—’ ”

  “I did not. My mother’s a Northerner, even.”

  “Number, please.”

  “Two four oh, six seven five four. If I had an accent I’d say ‘foh.’ No ‘r.’ But I said the ‘r.’ ”

  “And your number, please.”

  “Academy four, six five five nine.”

  “Station to station?”

  “Yes’m.”

  The telephone had a familiar plastic smell; the receiver was warm and already a little damp in his hand. He hated using the telephone. The thought of speaking to someone, and listening to him, without seeing him was as panicky as not being able to breathe. How could he tell anything about a person if he couldn’t see him? Sometimes he thought something must be wrong with his ears; what he heard told him almost nothing. And usually he read too much harshness into a voice. He could hang up a telephone receiver and feel hurt and bewildered for days and then find out, weeks later when he asked what he had done to annoy them, that they were just talking above the noise from a TV set. So now, to make it easier for himself, he tried to picture exactly what was going on at the other end. He pictured the house in Sandhill at eleven o’clock on a Thursday morning, with the autumn sun shining palely through the long bay windows in the living room. His sisters would all be at work, he guessed, except for Tessie, who was still in grade school. Or was it her lunch hour? No, too early. That left only his mother, and maybe even she would be gone; she worked part time at a book store. The phone rang twice. He waited, tensed against the pillows.

  “Hello?” his mother said. He could tell her from his sisters, although their voices were almost the same, by that way she had of seeming to expect the worst when she answered the telephone.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It’s me. Ben Joe.”

  “Ben Joe! What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I called to see how you were.”

  “Didn’t you get our last letter?”

  “Well, yes. I guess I did. The one about the eavespipe falling down?”

  “I think that was it. Did you get it?”

  “Yes, I got it.”

  “Oh. I thought maybe you were worried because you hadn’t heard from us.”

  “No, I heard.”

  “Well, that’s nice.”

  Ben Joe waited, frowning into the receiver, twining the coils of the telephone cord around his index finger. He tried desperately to picture what she looked like right now, but all he came up with was her hair, dust-colored with the curls at the side of her face pressed flat by the receiver. That was no help. Give him anything—eyes, mouth, just a stretch of cheek, even—and he could tell something, but not hair, for goodness’ sake. He tried again.

  “Well,” he said, “How is everyone?”

  “Oh, fine.”

  “That’s good. I’m glad to hear it.”

  “It’s too bad you called while the girls were away. Joanne’s the only one here now. They’d have liked to talk to you.”

  “Susannah, you mean.”

  “What?”

&
nbsp; “You mean, Susannah’s the only one here.”

  “No, Susannah’s switched to a full-time job now. I thought Jenny told you. She’s working at the school library. I don’t know why that should be tiring, but apparently it is. She comes home all cross and snappy, and last night she had a date with the Lowry boy and ended up shoving his face into a cone of buttered popcorn at the Royal Crown theater. I forget what movie they were showing.”

  “Never mind,” said Ben Joe. “What I’m asking is, who is it that’s the only one home but you?”

  “Joanne. I told you.”

  “Joanne?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Mom,” Ben Joe said, “Joanne’s been gone for seven years.”

  “Oh. I thought Jenny wrote you about that.”

  “Wrote me about what?” He was up off the bed now; Jeremy looked over at him curiously.

  “I think maybe you didn’t get our last letter,” his mother said. “Come to think of it, it was the next-to-the-last letter about the eaves pipe falling down. The last one should get there today or so. Have you gotten today’s mail yet?”

  “No.”

  “Why, what time is it?”

  “Mom,” Ben Joe said, “is Joanne home or isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she’s home.”

  “Well, then, why? And when did she get there? Why didn’t you—”

  “She left,” his mother said vaguely.

  “Just now? Didn’t she know I was on the phone?”

  “No, I mean she left Kansas.”

  “Obviously she left.”

  “She took the baby and ran away from her husband.”

  “What?”

  Ben Joe sat down again on the edge of Jeremy’s bed. Jeremy took a sidelong glance at him and then got up and left the room.

  “Ben Joe, is there a bad connection on your end? Can’t you hear me?”

  “I can hear you.”

  “Well, don’t be so dramatic, then. What’s done is done, and it’s none of our affair.”

  Ben Joe closed his eyes, briefly; he wondered how many times in his life he had heard his mother say that.

  “Are you there, Ben Joe?”

  “Yes’m. How is she?”

  “Oh, fine. And the baby’s a darling. Very well behaved.”

  “Has she changed much? Joanne, I mean. What’s she like now?”

  “Oh, the same as ever.”

  “Can I talk to her?”

  “She’s asleep. She stayed up last night to watch the late show.”

  Ben Joe took a breath, hesitated, and then said, “I’m coming home, Mom.”

  “Ben Joe—”

  “It won’t hurt to cut a few classes. I want to just see how everything is.”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “I know, but I want to set my mind at rest. I’ve been worrying.”

  “You’re always worrying.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mom.”

  “Ben Joe—”

  Ben Joe hung up, neatly and quietly. There was that giddy feeling in his head that always came from talking for any period of time with his mother, or even sometimes with his sisters; he felt confused and uncertain, as if he and his family were a set of square dancers coming to clap the palms of their hands to each others’, only their hands missed by inches and encountered nothing. It was only after he had gone over the conversation in his mind, arranging it in a logical order and trying to convince himself that everything was really all right, that he felt better. He stepped to the door and said, “Jeremy?”

  “Yeah, Ben Joe.” Jeremy came in, looking quickly at Ben Joe’s face. “Trouble?”

  “I’m going home for a few days. If the university calls, you tell them I’ll be back, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’ll take that night train. Be there by morning.” He pulled his suitcase out from under the bed and then sat down, staring at it blankly.

  “You see what I mean,” he said. He spread his arms helplessly, looking up at Jeremy, who was leaning against the wall with his hands in the pockets of his dungarees and his face worried. “You get these cheerful little financial statements, and meanwhile what’s going on? Joanne’s run away from her husband and come home, after seven years of only phone calls and letters from her—”

  “Joanne,” Jeremy said. “She the one with the red dress and bangles?”

  “Yep. Her. On the way out to get your toothbrush, will you pick up today’s mail? I bet they tell about it in a P.S., that’s what.”

  “You going to try and make her go back to her husband?”

  “No, just going to see her.”

  “Well, I’ll go get the mail,” said Jeremy.

  “Okay.”

  Ben Joe crossed back to his bureau. The drawer was still open; he pulled out a large leather jewelry box and flipped the lid up. Inside were all the odds and ends that he never knew what to do with. He searched through two-cent postage stamps and Canadian nickels and old scraps of addresses and worn-out snapshots and eventually he came across the torn-off flap of an envelope with train times scrawled across it. He picked out the night train to North Carolina. Then, whispering the time to himself as he walked, he went to his closet to choose the clothes he would wear home.

  2

  His car on the train was only half full; rushing through the darkness it made a hollow, rattling sound. It was cramped and peeling inside, with dirty plush seats and a painted tin roof. At the front hung a huge black-and-white photograph of some people on a beach in Florida, to show that this was the southbound train. Maybe once the photograph had been shiny and exciting, so that passengers gazing at it had counted the hours until they could see the real thing. But now the plastic sheet over it had grown scratched and dull, and the people in it—dozens of tiny people in homely old bathing suits, caught forever in the act of skipping hand in hand toward gray waves or sitting close together under gray-and-white umbrellas—seemed as sad and silent as the flat, still palm trees above them. For a while Ben Joe gave himself up to just staring at it, until the strange feeling it gave him was gone and it was only a photograph again. Then he turned away and looked at the people who shared this car with him.

  Mostly they were upright, energetic Negro housewives, sitting like wide shade trees over their clusters of children. Around their feet were diaper bags and paper sacks and picnic baskets; above their heads, in the baggage racks, was an abundance of feathered hats and woolen scarves and sturdy, dark-colored coats. Like Ben Joe, who had a sheepskin-lined jacket folded across his lap, they had come prepared for the time when the hot, stuffy car would suddenly turn too cold for sleeping. They clucked to their children constantly and passed them hot lemonade and pieces of Kleenex, dug up from the bottoms of grocery sacks whenever they heard someone sniff, whether it was their own child or not.

  “Here your pacifier, Bertie.”

  “You let Sadie at the window now; you been at it a sufficient time.”

  A thin blond man in a pea jacket passed through, carrying a box of toys with “80 cts” printed on it in purple nail polish. He came even with the children just across the aisle from Ben Joe and from the box he pulled out a toy—a rubber donkey with a cord and squeeze-bulb attached to it. The children reached for it, their hands like four little black spiders.

  “Want it?” the man asked.

  The children looked at their mother. She was a comfortable, smiling woman sitting in the seat ahead of them with a friend. When she heard the man’s voice she turned and looked at the children and smiled more broadly, and then frowned and gently shook her head.

  “Watch,” the man said.

  He pressed the bulb and the donkey bucked, tossed his head, kicked up his heels. Then the little rubber knees buckled in the wrong places and the donkey was lying down in the man’s hand, limp and ridiculous-looking.

  “Only eighty cents,”
the man said.

  The children watched, round-eyed. With one hand the little girl began stroking the back of her mother’s head, patting the curls of her hair with soft, tiny pats.

  “How much you say?” the mother asked. She turned only halfway, so that she seemed to be asking the woman beside her.

  “Eighty cents, ma’am. Eighty little pieces of copper.”

  “No sir,” the mother said. She turned to the children and said, “No, sir. You wait, chirren, we’ll get us something in Efram. In Efram, we’ll see.”

  “Eighty cents,” the man said.

  “No sir.” She reached out to straighten the collar of the smaller child, the girl, and then gave her a soft pat on the shoulder and smiled at her.

  “How about you?” the man said to Ben Joe.

  “No.”

  “No kiddies at home?”

  “No.”

  “Ah, well.”

  The man moved on. At the back of the car it began to be noisier; that was where the men sat. Some of them were apparently the women’s husbands, and others—the younger, more carelessly dressed ones, slouching in their seats and tipping hip flasks—belonged to no one. They offered swigs to the married men now and their conversation became gayer and louder. Up front, the women clicked their tongues at each other.

  “Lemuel Barnes, I coming back there after you if you don’t hush!” one called.

  “You watch it now, you men, you watch it!”

  That was the woman ahead of Ben Joe, a young, plump woman with a baby whose head rested on its mother’s shoulder like a little brown mushroom button. She was sitting alone, but she had been talking steadily ever since she boarded the train, calling to her husband at the rear and soothing her baby and carrying on conversations with the other women passengers. Now she stood up and faced the rear, with the baby still over her shoulder, and shouted in a piercing voice:

  “You all going to wake the baby, Brandon, you hear? Going to wake up Clara Sue. You want me come back and check on you?”

  She started into the aisle, obviously not meaning to go through with it, and stopped when Brandon shouted back, “Aw, Matilda, this Jackie boy the one. He stirring all the trouble up.”

  The other women chuckled.