They Call Me Patrice

He stepped down from the back porch and the moonlight silted over his head and shoulders like talcum as he came toward her. She turned In company with him, and they walked slowly on together side by side.

Bill didn’t say anything. Just walked beside her with one hand slung in his pocket. He kept looking down, as though the sight of the path fascinated him. He stopped once briefly to light a cigarette.

“I hate to tear myself away, it’s so lovely down here,” she said at last.

“I don’t give a hang about gardens,” he answered almost gruffly. “Nor walking in them. Nor the flowers in them. You know why I came down here. Do I have to tell you?”

He flung his cigarette down violently, backhand, with the same gesture he’d use if something angered him.

Suddenly she was acutely frightened. She’d stopped short.

“No, wait, Bill. Bill, wait— Don’t.”

“Don’t what? I haven’t said anything yet. But you know already, don’t you? I’m sorry, Patrice. I have to tell you. You have to listen.”

She was holding out her hand protestingly toward him, as if trying to ward off something. She took a backward step away, broke their proximity.

“I don’t like it,” he said rebelliously. “I was never bothered by girls before. I never even had the childish crushes all boys do. I guess that was just my way to be. But this is it, Patrice. This is it now, all right.”

“No, wait— Not now. Not yet. This isn’t the time—”

“This is the time, and this is the night, and this is the place. There’ll never be another night like this, not if we both live to be a hundred. Patrice, I love you, and I want you to marry me.”

“Bill!” she pleaded, terrified.

“Patrice,” he asked forlornly, “what’s so terrible about my loving you? I’m no lover. I can’t say it right, but—”

“Bill, please.”

“Patrice, I see you every day and—” He flung his arms apart helplessly. “I didn’t ask to fall in love. But I think it’s something good. I think it’s something that should be.”

She bowed her head for a moment as if in distress. “Why did you have to tell me? Why couldn’t you have given me more time? Please, give me more time. Just a few months—”

“I can’t take back what I’ve already said, Patrice,” he answered ruefully. “How can I now? How could I, even if I hadn’t spoken? Is it Hugh, is it still Hugh?”

“I’ve never been in love bef—” she started to say, penitently.

He looked at her strangely.

I’ve said too much, flashed through her mind. Too much, or not enough.

“I’m going in now.” The shadow of the porch dropped between them like an indigo curtain.

He didn’t try to follow. He stood there where she’d left him.

“You’re afraid I’ll kiss you.”

“No, I’m afraid I’ll want you to.”

In the mornings the world was sweet just to look at from her window. To wake up in her own room, to find her little son awake before her, and giving her that special smile of delight. To carry him over to the window and hold the curtain back, and look out at the world. Show him the world she’d found for him.

Then to dress herself and the baby and to go downstairs to the pleasant breakfast room, Mother Hazzard always there. The mirror-like reflections in the coffee-percolator showing squat, pudgy images sealed around the table. The baby loved that. He was the center of attraction in his high chair.

Even mail, a letter of her own, waiting for her at her place. She felt a pleased little sense of completion at sight of it.

“Mrs. Patrice Hazzard,” and the address. Once that name had frightened her. It didn’t now. In a little while she would no longer even remember that there had been another name, once, long ago.

“Now Hugh, not so fast, finish what you have first.”

She opened the envelope and for a moment she thought there must have been a mistake. Just blank paper. Then she saw three small words, almost buried in the fold of the papers.

“Who are you?”

In the mornings now the world was bitter-sweet to look upon from the window. To wake up in a room that wasn’t rightfully hers. That she knew — and she knew somebody else knew — she had no right to be in. The early sunlight was pale and bleak upon the ground. A man sprinkling the lawn a few doors down was a stranger: a stranger who might be an enemy. He looked up, and she hurriedly shrank back from the window lest he see her.

Was he the one? Was he?

The strain was beginning to tell on her. Her resistance was wearing thin. She was nearing a danger-point of some sort, she knew. She couldn’t stand much more of it. “Don’t let there be another letter. Don’t.”

Downstairs, Mother Hazzard eyed her solicitously. “Didn’t you have a good night’ dear? You look a little peaked.”

But she only had eyes for one thing.

She’d already seen them, waiting for her. Two white oblongs. The one on top was a department-store brochure, sealed in an envelope. The letterhead identified it, made it harmless. But there was something else under it.