East of Eden

“Me and her get along just fine,” said Joe. “I got to meet a guy.”

Joe went to his room to think. He was uneasy. He jumped up and looked in his suitcase and opened all the bureau drawers. He thought somebody had been going through his things. Just came to him. There was nothing to find. It made him nervous. He tried to arrange the things he had heard.

There was a tap on the door and Thelma came in, her eyes swollen and her nose red. “What’s got into Kate?”

“She’s been sick.”

“I don’t mean that. I was in the kitchen shaking up a milkshake in a fruit jar and she came in and worked me over.”

“Was you maybe shaking up a little bourbon in it?”

“Hell, no. Just vanilla extract. She can’t talk like that to me.”

“She did, didn’t she?”

“Well, I won’t take it.”

“Oh, yes, you will,” said Joe. “Get out, Thelma!”

Thelma looked at him out of her dark, handsome, brooding eyes, and she regained the island of safety a woman depends on. “Joe,” she asked, “are you really just pure son of a bitch or do you just pretend to be?”

“What do you care?” Joe asked.

“I don’t,” said Thelma. “You son of a bitch.”

2

Joe planned to move slowly, cautiously, and only after long consideration. “I got the breaks, I got to use ’em right,” he told himself.

He went in to get his evening orders and took them from the back of Kate’s head. She was at her desk, green eyeshade low, and she did not look around at him. She finished her terse orders and then went on, “Joe, I wonder if you’ve been attending to business. I’ve been sick. But I’m well again or very nearly well.”

“Something wrong?”

“Just a symptom. I’d rather Thelma drank whisky than vanilla extract, and I don’t want her to drink whisky. I think you’ve been slipping.”

His mind scurried for a hiding place. “Well, I been busy,” he said.

“Busy?”

“Sure. Doing that stuff for you.”

“What stuff?”

“You know—about Ethel.”

“Forget Ethel!”

“Okay,” said Joe. And then it came without his expecting it. “I met a fella yesterday said he seen her.”

If Joe had not known her he would not have given the little pause, the rigid ten seconds of silence, its due.

At the end of it Kate asked softly, “Where?”

“Here.”

She turned her swivel chair slowly around to face him. “I shouldn’t have let you work in the dark, Joe. It’s hard to confess a fault but I owe it to you. I don’t have to remind you I got Ethel floated out of the county. I thought she’d done something to me.” A melancholy came into her voice. “I was wrong. I found out later. It’s been working on me ever since. She didn’t do anything to me. I want to find her and make it up to her. I guess you think it’s strange for me to feel that way.”

“No, ma’am.”

“Find her for me, Joe. I’ll feel better when I’ve made it up to her—the poor old girl.”

“I’ll try, ma’am.”

“And, Joe—if you need any money, let me know. And if you find her, just tell her what I said. If she doesn’t want to come here, find out where I can telephone her. Need any money?”

“Not right now, ma’am. But I’ll have to go out of the house more than I ought.”

“You go ahead. That’s all, Joe.”

He wanted to hug himself. In the hall he gripped his elbows and let his joy run through him. And he began to believe he had planned the whole thing. He went through the darkened parlor with its low early evening spatter of conversation. He stepped outside and looked up at the stars swimming in schools through the wind-driven clouds.

Joe thought of his bumbling father—because he remembered something the old man had told him. “Look out for a soup carrier,” Joe’s father had said. “Take one of them dames that’s always carrying soup to somebody—she wants something, and don’t you forget it.”

Joe said under his breath, “A soup carrier. I thought she was smarter than that.” He went over her tone and words to make sure he hadn’t missed something. No—a soup carrier. And he thought of Alf saying, “If she was to offer a drink or even a cupcake—”

3

Kate sat at her desk. She could hear the wind in the tall privet in the yard, and the wind and the darkness were full of Ethel—fat, sloppy Ethel oozing near like a jellyfish. A dull weariness came over her.

She went into the lean-to, the gray room, and closed the door and sat in the darkness, listening to the pain creep back into her fingers. Her temples beat with pounding blood. She felt for the capsule hanging in its tube on the chain around her neck, she rubbed the metal tube, warm from her breast, against her cheek, and her courage came back. She washed her face and put on make-up, combed and puffed her hair in a loose pompadour. She moved into the hall and at the door of the parlor she paused, as always, listening.

To the right of the door two girls and a man were talking. As soon as Kate stepped inside the talk stopped instantly. Kate said, “Helen, I want to see you if you aren’t busy right now.”

The girl followed her down the hall and into her room. She was a pale blond with a skin like clean and polished bone. “Is something the matter, Miss Kate?” she asked fearfully.

“Sit down. No. Nothing’s the matter. You went to the Nigger’s funeral.”

“Didn’t you want me to?”

“I don’t care about that. You went.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Tell me about it.”

“What about it?”

“Tell me what you remember—how it was.”

Helen said nervously, “Well, it was kind of awful and—kind of beautiful.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know. No flowers, no nothing, but there was—there was a—well, a kind of—dignity. The Nigger was just laying there in a black wood coffin with the biggest goddam silver handles. Made you feel—I can’t say it. I don’t know how to say it.”

“Maybe you said it. What did she wear?”

“Wear, ma’am?”

“Yes—wear. They didn’t bury her naked, did they?”

A struggle of effort crossed Helen’s face. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I don’t remember.”