The New York Stories of Elizbeth Hardwick by Elizabeth Hardwick Page A

new. A rather unusual seriousness and prudence quickly revealed themselves in her nature.
    “I sure go for that Southern accent,” Russell said. Marianne explained that she was from a coal-mining town in the Kentucky hills.
    Russell observed her closely, taking in her modest, appealing face. He admired her without being in the least afraid of her. His manner immediately became too flashy, too ready. Confidence made him giddy. “What are you doing so far from home?” he demanded.
    Marianne bit her lip, nervously. No, she was not really pretty, Russell decided, because of a look of moral anxiety and struggle. She appeared both more capable and more careworn than the girls he was used to. He felt certain she didn’t know about life, by which he meant that she didn’t know how to have a good time. This did not displease him. He was tired of tough girls. The downward curve of Marianne’s lips, her thoughtful, melancholy eyes gave him the sensation of a new experience, of something plain but engulfing. She was studying fashion designing in Boston, she said.
    “Well, that bit surprises the hell out of me!” Russell said, lifting his eyebrows. He had an image of the kind of girl who went to modeling school or cared about fashions: spoiled, wide-mouthed, greedy girls, too much petted by their parents. They drove cars and wore tight slacks. The very image of such a girl made Russell feel insecure. Marianne, on the other hand, was subdued and reasonable. From the very first she seemed to look at him with approving eyes. Her neat little soul was trusting and serious.
    It turned out that Marianne had a scholarship. Russell was impressed, but refrained from saying so, not wishing to give himself away too quickly. In all his life he had never had a relative or a close friend who did anything with such excellence as to be singled out for society’s special encouragement and aid. His life had been starved in a way, empty as the horizon before a bunch of poor nomads, searching in the hot dust. He had grown up on candy bars, in a noisy, affectionate, overstuffed home. A peculiar, creamy starvation, a noisy, voluble muteness, an indolent restlessness had claimed him, his family, his friends, his neighborhood, in the way a ghastly irony or trick in a folktale will claim a whole village. He had lived in a two-family house, a green-and-tan structure. His father worked on an oil-delivery truck; his older brother, Ed, worked in a Coca-Cola bottling plant; another brother, Dan, worked as a checkout man in a supermarket. When Russell was in high school these older brothers were still living at home and so there had been enough money for the family to live comfortably. They owned the expected articles of domestic life — automobile, television set, matching pieces of furniture, plastic curtains, a large refrigerator, and so on — owned them as naturally as a farmer owns his mongrel dog. And yet a deep poverty was their lot. At home at night the family had the look of puffy lethargy to be seen in prisoners. Their faces showed an odd lack of vivacity, even when they were laughing and talking, as they did a good deal. Indeed, contentment of a kind was well-known to them. The strange, full lethargy gave large stretches of peace. They were all, except Russell, who was still just twenty-three, running to fat, to an accumulation of stored, useless, enervating energy. They were living out their time, blameless, and not unusual.
    Coolly, Russell lit another cigarette. Marianne explained her life to him, in her brisk, whining voice, the earnest singsong of country preachers. “You see it’s not an academic scholarship, this thing that got me all the way up here, this award. I’m here on what you might call a business scholarship.”
    “Hmm...” Russell said, appreciatively.
    There was a nice man at home, a Mr. Miller, the owner of The Fair Store. She had worked there after school and in the summers, taking a real interest in the dress department.