The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [30]
Around the small front yard there was a picket fence. Portia said goodbye to her husband and brother at the gate and knocked on the screen door.
‘How come you sit here in the dark like this?’
They went together through the dark hall back to the kitchen.
‘You haves grand electric lights. It don’t seem natural why you all the time sitting in the dark like this.’
Doctor Copeland twisted the bulb suspended over the table and the room was suddenly very bright. ‘The dark suits me,’ he said.
The room was clean and bare. On one side of the kitchen table there were books and an inkstand--on the other side a fork, spoon, and plate. Doctor Copeland held himself bolt upright with his long legs crossed and at first Portia sat stiffly, too.
The father and daughter had a strong resemblance to each other--both of them had the same broad, flat noses, the same mouths and foreheads. But Portia’s skin was very light when compared to her Father’s.
‘It sure is roasting in here,’ she said. ‘Seems to me you would let this here fire die down except when you cooking.’
‘If you prefer we can go up to my office,’ Doctor Copeland said.
‘I be all right, I guess. I don’t prefer.’
Doctor Copeland adjusted his silver-rimmed glasses and then folded his hands in his lap. ‘How have you been since we were last together? You and your husband--and your brother?’
Portia relaxed and slipped her feet out of her pumps. ‘Highboy and Willie and me gets along just fine.’
‘William still boards with you?’
‘Sure he do,’ Portia said. ‘You see--us haves our own way of living and our own plan. Highboy--he pay the rent. I buys all the food out of my money. And Willie--he tends to all of our church dues, insurance, lodge dues, and Saturday Night. Us three haves our own plan and each one of us does our parts.’ Doctor Copeland sat with his head bowed, pulling at his long fingers until he had cracked all of his joints. The clean cuffs of his sleeves hung down past his wrists--below them his thin hands seemed lighter in color than the rest of his body and the palms were soft yellow. His hands had always an immaculate, shrunken look, as though they had been scrubbed with a brush and soaked for a long time in a pan of water.
‘Here, I almost forgot what I brought,’ Portia said. ‘Haves you had your supper yet?’
Doctor Copeland always spoke so carefully that each syllable seemed to be filtered through his sullen, heavy lips. ‘No, I have not eaten.’
Portia opened a paper sack she had placed on the kitchen table. ‘I done brought a nice mess of collard greens and I thought maybe we have supper together. I done brought a piece of side meat, too. These here greens need to be seasoned with that. You don’t care if the collards is just cooked in meat, do you?’
‘It does not matter.’
‘You still don’t eat nair meat?’
‘No. For purely private reasons I am a vegetarian, but it does not matter if you wish to cook the collards with a piece of meat’ Without putting on her shoes Portia stood at the table and carefully began to pick over the greens. This here floor sure do feel good to my feets. You mind if I just walk around like this without putting back on them tight, hurting pumps?’
‘No,’ said Doctor Copeland. ‘That will be all right’
‘Then--us’ll have these nice collards and some hoecake and coffee. And I, going to cut me off a few slices of this here white meat and fry it for myself.’
Doctor Copeland followed Portia with his eyes. She moved slowly around the room in her stockinged feet, taking down the scrubbed pans from the wall, building up the fire, washing the grit from the collards. He opened his mouth to speak once and then composed his lips again.
‘So you and your husband and your brother have your own cooperative plan,’ he said finally.
‘That’s right.’
Doctor Copeland jerked at his fingers and tried to pop the joints again. ‘Do you intend to plan for children?’
Portia did not look at her father. Angrily she sloshed the water from the pan of collards. ‘There be some things,