Sophie's Choice - William Styron [307]
“You know, Stingo, I just thought of something,” Sophie said, breaking in at some point on my soliloquy. “It’s something very important.”
“What’s that?” I said.
“I don’t know how to drive. I don’t know how to drive a car.”
“So?”
“But we’ll be living on this farm. From what you say, so far away from things. I’ll have to be able to drive a car, won’t I? I never learned in Poland—so few people had cars. At least, you never learned to drive until you were so much older. And here—Nathan said he was going to teach me but he never did. Surely I’ll have to learn how to drive.”
“Easy,” I replied. “I’ll teach you. There’s a pickup truck already there. Anyway, in Virginia they’re very lax about driver’s licenses. Jesus”—I had a sudden fit of recollection—“I remember I got my license on my fourteenth birthday. I mean, it was legal!”
“Fourteen?” said Sophie.
“Christ, I weighed about ninety pounds and could barely see over the steering wheel. I remember the state trooper who was giving the test looked at my father and said, ‘Is he your son or a midget?’ But I got the license. That’s the South... There’s something that’s so different about the South even in trivial ways. Take the matter of youth, for instance. In the North you’d never be allowed to get a driver’s license so young. It’s as if you got older much younger in the South. Something about the lushness, the ripeness maybe. Like that joke about what’s the Mississippi definition of a virgin. The answer is: a twelve-year-old girl who can run faster than her daddy.” I heard myself giggle self-indulgently, in the first spell of what could even remotely be called good humor I had experienced in hours. And suddenly the hunger in me to get down to Southampton County, to start planting roots, was nearly as intense as the real need I had by this time to consume some of Herzog’s celebrated crab cakes. I began jabbering at Sophie with brainless unrestraint, not so much actually forgetful of what she had just finished telling me as, I think, thoughtlessly oblivious of the fragile mood her confessional had created within herself.
“Now then,” I said in my best pastor’s counseling voice, “I have a feeling from some of the things you mentioned that you think you’re going to be out of place down there. But listen, nothing’s further from the truth. They might be a little stand-offish at first—and you’ll worry about your accent and your foreignness, and so on—but let me tell you something, Sophie darling, Southerners are the warmest and most accepting people in America, once they get to know you. They’re not like big-city hooligans and shysters. So don’t worry. Of course, we’ll have to do a little adjusting. As I said before, I think the wedding ceremony will have to come pretty soon—you know, to avoid ugly gossip if nothing else. So after we get the feel of the place and introduce ourselves around—this’ll take several days, that’s all—we’ll make out a big shopping list and take the truck and drive up to Richmond. There’ll be thousands of things we’ll need. The place is filled with all the basics, but we’ll need so many other things. Like I told you, a phonograph and a bunch of records. Then there’s the little matter of your wedding clothes. You’ll naturally want to be dressed nice for the ceremony, and so we’ll shop around in Richmond. You won’t find Paris couture there but there are some excellent stores—”
“Stingo!” she cut in sharply. “Please! Please! Don’t run on like that, about wedding clothes and such as that. What do you think I have in my suitcase right now? Just what!” Her voice had risen, cross and quavering, touched with an anger she had rarely ever aimed at me.
We stopped walking, and I turned to look at her face in the shadows of the cool evening. Her eyes were clouded with murky unhappiness and I knew then, with a painful catch in my chest, that I had said the wrong thing, or things.