Go Set a Watchman (To Kill a Mockingbird #2)(14)

Although Maycomb’s appearance had changed, the same hearts beat in new houses, over Mixmasters, in front of television sets. One could whitewash all he pleased, and put up comic neon signs, but the aged timbers stood strong under their additional burden.

“You don’t like it, do you?” asked Henry. “I saw your face when you walked in the door.”

“Conservative resistance to change, that’s all,” said Jean Louise behind a mouthful of fried shrimp. They were in the Maycomb Hotel diningroom sitting on chromium chairs at a table for two. The air-conditioning unit made its will known by a constant low rumble. “The only thing I like about it is the smell’s gone.”

A long table laden with many dishes, the smell of musty old room and hot grease in the kitchen. “Hank, what’s Hot-Grease-in-the-Kitchen?”

“Mm?”

“It was a game or something.”

“You mean Hot Peas, honey. That’s jumping rope, when they turn the rope fast and try to trip you.”

“No, it had something to do with Tag.”

She could not remember. When she was dying, she probably would remember, but now only the faint flash of a denim sleeve caught in her mind, a quick cry, “Hotgreaseinthekit-chen!” She wondered who owned the sleeve, what had become of him. He might be raising a family out in one of those new little houses. She had an odd feeling that time had passed her by.

“Hank, let’s go to the river,” she said.

“Didn’t think we weren’t, did you?” Henry was smiling at her. He never knew why, but Jean Louise was most like her old self when she went to Finch’s Landing: she seemed to breathe something out of the air—“You’re a Jekyll-and-Hyde character,” he said.

“You’ve been watching too much television.”

“Sometimes I think I’ve got you like this”—Henry made a fist—“and just when I think I’ve got you, holding you tight, you go away from me.”

Jean Louise raised her eyebrows. “Mr. Clinton, if you’ll permit an observation from a woman of the world, your hand is showing.”

“How?”

She grinned. “Don’t you know how to catch a woman, honey?” She rubbed an imaginary crew cut, frowned, and said, “Women like for their men to be masterful and at the same time remote, if you can pull that trick. Make them feel helpless, especially when you know they can pick up a load of light’ud knots with no trouble. Never doubt yourself in front of them, and by no means tell them you don’t understand them.”

“Touché, baby,” said Henry. “But I’d quibble with your last suggestion. I thought women liked to be thought strange and mysterious.”

“No, they just like to look strange and mysterious. When you get past all the boa feathers, every woman born in this world wants a strong man who knows her like a book, who’s not only her lover but he who keepeth Israel. Stupid, isn’t it?”

“She wants a father instead of a husband, then.”

“That’s what it amounts to,” she said. “The books are right on that score.”

Henry said, “You’re being very wise this evening. Where’d you pick up all this?”

“Living in sin in New York,” she said. She lighted a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “I learned it from watching sleek, Madison Avenuey young marrieds—you know that language, baby? It’s lots of fun, but you need an ear for it—they go through a kind of tribal fandango, but the application’s universal. It begins by the wives being bored to death because their men are so tired from making money they don’t pay any attention to ’em. But when their wives start hollering, instead of trying to understand why, the men just go find a sympathetic shoulder to cry on. Then when they get tired of talking about themselves they go back to their wives. Everything’s rosy for a while, but the men get tired and their wives start yellin’ again and around it goes. Men in this age have turned the Other Woman into a psychiatrist’s couch, and at far less expense, too.”

Henry stared at her. “I’ve never heard you so cynical,” he said. “What’s the matter with you?”

Jean Louise blinked. “I’m sorry, honey.” She crushed out her cigarette. “It’s just that I’m so afraid of making a mess of being married to the wrong man—the wrong kind for me, I mean. I’m no different from any other woman, and the wrong man would turn me into a screamin’ shrew in record time.”