A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories

“Right!” he said. “I’m easygoing, I tell you—”

But Miss Fremwell’s eyes were lidded now and her mouth was strange. He sensed this and tapered off.

A night wind blew fluttering her light summer dress and the sleeves of his shirt.

“It’s late,” said Miss Fremwell.

“Only nine o’clock!”

“I have to get up early tomorrow.”

“But you haven’t answered my question yet, Miss Fremwell.”

“Question?” She blinked. “Oh, the question. Yes.” She rose from the wicker seat. She hunted around in the dark for the screen-door knob. “Oh now, Mr. Lemon, let me think it over.”

“That’s fair enough,” he said. “No use arguing, is there?”

The screen door closed. He heard her find her way down the dark warm hall. He breathed shallowly, feeling of the third eye in his head, the eye that saw nothing.

He felt a vague unhappiness shift around inside his chest like an illness brought on by too much talking. And then he thought of the fresh white gift box waiting with its lid on in his room. He quickened. Opening the screen door, he walked down the silent hall and went into his room. Inside he slipped and almost fell on a slick copy of True Romance Tales. He switched on the light excitedly, smiling, fumbled the box open, and lifted the toupee from

the tissues. He stood before the bright mirror and followed directions with the spirit gum and tapes and tucked it here and stuck it there and shifted it again and combed it neat. Then he opened the door and walked along the hall to knock for Miss Fremwell.

“Miss Naomi?” he called, smiling.

The light under her door clicked out at the sound of his voice.

He stared at the dark keyhole with disbelief.

“Oh, Miss Naomi?” he said again, quickly.

Nothing happened in the room. It was dark. After a moment he tried the knob experimentally. The knob rattled. He heard Miss Fremwell sigh. He heard her say something.

Again the words were lost. Her small feet tapped to the door. The light came on.

“Yes?” she said, behind the panel.

“Look, Miss Naomi,” he entreated. “Open the door. Look.”

The bolt of the door snapped back. She jerked the door open about an inch. One of her eyes looked at him sharply.

“Look,” he announced proudly, adjusting the toupee so it very definitely covered the sunken crater. He imagined he saw himself in her bureau mirror and was pleased. “Look here, Miss Fremwell!”

She opened the door a bit wider and looked. Then she slammed the door and locked it. From behind the thin paneling her voice was toneless.

“I can still see the hole, Mr. Lemon,” she said.

The First Night of Lent

So you want to know all the whys and wherefores of the Irish? What shapes them to their Dooms and runs them on their way? you ask. Well, listen, then. For though I’ve known but a single Irishman in all my life, I knew him, without pause, for one hundred and forty-four consecutive nights. Stand close; perhaps in him you’ll see that entire race which marches out of the rains but to vanish through the mists; hold on, here they come! Look out, there they go!

This Irishman, his name was Nick.

During the autumn of 1953, I began a screenplay in Dublin, and each afternoon a hired cab drove me thirty miles out from the River Liffey to the huge grey Georgian country house where my producer-director rode to hounds. There, we discussed my eight pages of daily script through the long fall, winter, and early spring evenings. Then, each midnight, ready to turn back to the Irish Sea and the Royal Hibernian Hotel, I’d wake the operator in the Kilcock village exchange and have her put me through to the warmest, if totally unheated, spot in town.

“Heber Finn’s pub?” I’d shout, once connected. “Is Nick there? Could you send him along here, please?”

My mind’s eye saw them, the local boys, lined up, peering over the barricade at that freckled mirror so like a frozen winter pond and themselves discovered all drowned and deep under that lovely ice. Amid all their jostlings and their now-here’s-a-secret-in-a-stage-whisper-commotion stood Nick, my village driver, his quietness abounding. I heard Heber Finn sing out from the phone. I heard Nick start up and reply: