O Clouds Roll Back

The Campus Grill was right in front of me. I saw Irma waiting at a
little table near the window. She was conspicuous and her cheek was on her
palm, the other arm laid out on the table. Beside her sat Spencer Goff, the
only boy on the staff that I liked. He was all bones and he gleamed with an
odd boyish smile if one looked at him. It delighted me so deeply to see
the smile that I went off into a delicious memory of a farm house and
lambs and boughs and a little boy chewing a straw. Spencer sat at the
table looking uncomfortable. He was naturally the kind of fellow who
slouches and always looks informal and at ease. But now the very air seemed
to be hurting his face and he kept whipping his nose with his forefinger
and making a mess on the table with his ashes.

"Well, well!" cried Irma. "We're waiting. Oh, don't stop to look at the card. We're famished. I guess Helen isn't coming."

Spencer smiled at me, backing off from the table in his chair, and almost
upsetting it as he rose. He cleared his throat, looked at me again, and then
flung himself down. "Well," he said softly and scowled, grinding his front
teeth.

"Order tea," said Irma. "We won't wait for Helen."

"I saw her across the street, "I said, as if having seen her I was bound
to tell and dared not fail.

"She promised to come," said Irma. "Well," she said acridly, looking up

at the student waiter, "you can bring me some tea. Be sure it's good and hot.
Lemon. Cinnamon toast and hot water." She pressed her lips together
and stared at me, anticipating that I wouldn't know what I wanted. I didn't.

"Please bring me a large orange," I said. Then I blushed. "No, I'll
take some tea," I said recklessly. I had been brought up rigidly on milk. I
always went to bed at half past ten regularly. I looked into cups to see
if they were clean and wiped the silver in all student cafes on my stiff
napkin. I didn't want the tea. I was wretched to be ordering what I didn't
want and to be sitting there, not liking any of it, not having wanted to come.

The boy looked at Spencer. "What'll you have?"

I shall never forget the combination of bravado and fright on Spencer's
face. He slapped the menu card together and said sharply, his eyes lowered
in delight and embarrassment. "You can bring me an oyster cocktail." He
folded his arms on the table and leaned toward the snowy window as if he always
ordered oyster cocktails at half past four in the middle west. I held my
breath, knowing that Irma would do something sharp, but she said nothing and
when I looked at her she was biting her lip to keep from laughing, as if she
had found herself in strange company indeed.

We sat in silence. Finally the tea came, the thick pieces of toast, the cups with big pieces out of them. At last the waiter set down in front of Spencer a jolly water tumbler half filled with tomato catsup and one mammoth dismal looking oyster flopped there in greyness and slimed over with glaucous fluids. He gyed it while Irma poured her tea in a definite businesslike fashion, throwing in the sugar and expertly dropping the lemon. She glanced at Spencer from time to time as she pushed great ends of toast into her mouth. I couldn't bear to look. He tried first the dinner fork, then a spoon. Each time the oyster slipped, slipped off and flopped back into the red sauce.

"Well, what are we going to do about Bruce?" asked Irma. She began to
smile with that acrid biting expression, as if she already knew what she had

to deal with and would dispatch herself accordingly.

Spencer watched his oyster, leaning over to look at it, and then jabbing with his spoon. He seemed very proud and yet he was generous and open as if he didn't really mind our seeing his plight. Finally he smiled broadly and said, "This town is so damned dull I wanted to add a touch of something - something - well, sharp to it, but I can't seem -" Then he opened his lips again and got it in. He chewed with his napkin over his mouth.

"We've got to do something about Bruce."

"What for?" I asked.

"You haven't noticed anything?"

"No," I said. "He just like he was when he was elected editor of the magazine."

"Unfortunately he is," said Irma. "What do you think about it, Spencer?"

He moved uneasily. He scowled and thought for a moment. "Well, I guess he's like any other editor," he said.

"It's gone too far, that's all," said Irma. She seemed to be waiting and yet it was as though everything had already happened the way she had planned it. "He balks at everything we want to do. The magazine is simply infested with all that farm stuff realism and mature odors. You know he's incompetent too. He works and works over that make-up. What are we going to do about it?"

We said nothing.

"Have you any suggestions?"

We had none.

"Do you want a change, Spencer?"

"Well - sure -" he said awkwardly as if Bruce were sitting at the table with us. "Sure - but -"

"Do you want a change, Lucia?" she asked me.

"But could we change?" I asked. "How?"

I had the queer feeling that I had begged her to let me do it and she had unselfishly granted my request. Spencer was silent. He was outside, unwilling to join us, and put his own seal on the great work we should do together. I felt irritation at him fairly stream out my pores and yet I could say nothing, he looked so sensitive and positive and certain of his position, in spite of his awkwardness about the oysters. He had still the look on his face of having dared to do a jaunty and unheard of thing.

"Spencer, aren't you going to join us?" I asked.

"No, you'll have to count me out. I'm for the new magazine all right but I don't want to hurt Bruce. He's an odd fellow. He'll be -- well, I don't want to hurt him and I'm not going to."

"Oh, I see," said Irma with a long leer from the side of her mouth.

"But you're really with us," I said. "You really believe in the possibilities of a new magazine that is worth reading and keeping always."

"Sure," he said and rubbed his hair as if every separate strand hurt him. "Sure I believe in that boloney all right. The magazine's dead. Bruce is about dead too but I'm not going to hurt him."

"Yes, you said that before," said Irma.

"Well, then you understand."

"Lucia," said Irma. "You'll find Bruce at his fraternity house probably at five this afternoon."

I looked at the clock. It was just five minutes of five. I held myself firm, my head a positive lake of Miss imaging myself selling those glorified magazines, having a part in something that built instead of kept things bubbling along in the same undiminished inactivity. I was frightened too because I had never had much conversation with Bruce. I had just watched him during our dull sodden staff meetings and the look of pain that was always on his face came before me. It was a dumb humble look, as if defeat had passed into his bones and itched sometimes unbearably. I jerked up and opened my lips. Irma was smiling at me. I saw her impudent satanic face

with that certain knowledge of me shining forth as if my limitations were so
real to her she could touch them as one would touch iron, as if she saw them
simple and absolute, the cross I would die on without knowing what had brought
me my death.

"Do you know his number?" I mumbled.

"No," she said, as if this had been a most idiotic question. "Bruce and I aren't on the best of terms."

"Well, hey, wait a minute!" cried Spencer as I rose, gripping my hands together, my face simply agonised with determination, aching around the lips and the nose. "Are we sure we want to do this?"

Irma shrugged and that strange look came over her face, as if she was
tired of the world and its weak wavering people. She sighed, striking a match
on the bottom of the table, and lighted her cigarette. She leaned back,
throwing the match aside, and pressed her hand over her forehead.

"Let's be practical about it," said Spencer. "Who's going to be editor if we ask Bruce to resign? It's a hell of an irritating job. Who's going to be editor?"

I sank down in my chair, a strange relief blowing over me. "Yes, who would be editor?" I said, gazing out at the soft wet snow. "Spencer's right. It's a lot of work." Then my vision came back to me. I straightened. "Of course it's work," I said suddenly in a different voice, "but we would be working for something real instead of something futile."

"Right?" said Irma with a leer. I felt a rush of warmth toward her, as if at last I could merge my purposes with those of another and build with a group instead of flopping about alone. But I wanted to ask her if she always had that murky expression about her mouth, a look of dull hatred and loathing. The warmth was only in her voice. Her definite knowledge of me was still on her face, that mysterious estimate of my worth, my very being, as if without effort to her I lay spread out before her - O and there I was, unknown to myself, unrealized, innocent of my good and evil.

a glimpse of how I appeared to her in my shyness, my weakness, my lack of understanding. "Suppose we elect you editor, Lucia," she said. "There seems to be no one else."

I just stared. I supposed what she said was an insult but the meaning of it would reach me toward evening when I sat alone in my room waiting to inform Bruce of his discharge. Then I would talk in my mind to Irma. I would make her understand then that I was a person who didn't permit others to treat her with disrespect. Now my head was empty, perfectly empty, and my mouth felt foolish. I had a memory in the back of my head of sunfilled clouds over the sea and my mother bending down to kiss me goodbye the first time I went away from home to spend the night. I stood up. "I'll go home and telephone Bruce now."

"What for?" said Irma.

"Why it's all decided isn't it?" I said.

"What decided?" she asked, as if she expected me to answer the way one answered in school.

"I am going to make an appointment with Bruce to see me tonight so that he can understand about this."

"Understand?" she said bitingly. "Understand what?"

"Say, for God's sake," cried Spencer, "do you two think that a magazine means anything? Nobody reads and what they do read doesn't change them."

"But are we tied hand and foot?" I cried. "Is it possible that even when we're young we can't go on and express something greater than has ever been expressed before?"

He shrugged. Irma had that long dark leer from one end of her lips. She was looking now straight into my face, her eyes narrowed with dislike. I swear that woman had charted a knowledge of my weaknesses, as certain as if she had sailed through my unknown seas. I felt vaguely her hatred of all that I represented but the difference between us was not clear. "Goodbye," I said, "I'll have to rush."

"What's the matter with telephoning him from here?" she threw at me.

Then I saw that she knew that I was mortally afraid of telephoning any fraternity house. I saw that I could no longer conceal my childish certainty that I would be visible over the telephone not only to the speaker but to the entire housefull of boys. Even then I was bucking myself up to call the number.

"I want to telephone from my house," I said with dignity, gazing out over her head.

"I see." She regarded me as a teacher regards a child. "I do recall that number now. It's Fairchild 4328."

I wrote it down gravely on the back of an envelope.

"And you'll have to put the screws on him I suppose."

My mouth fell open. I took hold of a chair and gulped. "What do you mean by that?"

She shrugged.

"I'm going to explain to him that it's for the good of the magazine and the students. I want him to know that it's not personal. It's for the good of the students." I started to add - "and the world" but I simply couldn't. I shot toward the door. A boy flopped against me and I had to fall back and let him pass. Just as I got a new grip on the latch I heard Irma say distinctly, "Well, do you think she's hypocrite enough to go through with it?"

2.

Bruce was difficult. He came very late, two hours later than he had promised, and it seemed to me that he knew what I was trying to tell him. He was even larger than formerly and harder to speak with because he would not look into my face. He mumbled something about having to buck for an exam and not being able to spend much time with me, much as he would enjoy it. I offered him a chair in the landlady's parlor and I sank down on the green velvet sofa with the henna coloured cushions piled behind me and the dahlia

lamp on a hideous gold inlaid table just behind my arm.

"Things are going badly with the magazine, aren't they, Bruce?" I said.

He stuck his great hands into his pockets and stared at the toe of his
shoe. "Yes," he said. "I need the cooperation of the staff. No editor
can get by unless he has that. You have to have cooperation or else do it
all alone."

He would not look at me. His body was like hardened cement. He kept
staring at the rayon curtains and then he gave me his rigid profile with the
dog-like sullen chin and the parted nostrils.

"We must have more life in the magazine," I brought out savagely. "It's
dead." I felt that I must not be friendly with him or natural and pleasant
because that would be too deceitful. In a sense I was his enemy because I
didn't believe in him as an editor or a critic. I didn't want him running
the magazine. Looked at coldly I was denying him life and pride in himself
and his work. I felt that I must not smile. I must not be sympathetic or
hide my real intention and feeling. "The magazine is dead," I repeated.

Now he bit his lips and bent his chin to his chest. He dug with his hands
deeper into his pockets and then all was still. Suddenly he faced me. I
saw that his eyes were red at the rims and little speckles of red were
coming in clots around his mouth. "Say, Lucia, if you're dissatisfied with
the magazine then why not help me more and give me your entire cooperation?
I need you. I have felt your sympathy and I sure do need you." He looked
down at his foot again, jolting his leg up and down, watching the light dance
over the polished toe.

I opened my lips but it was impossible to answer him. I got up and
walked over to the piano and stood with those trembling photographs behind me,
the tatting piano cover almost scraping the back of my neck. I too gazed at
my toe, my ankle. Finally I went forward ominously. "Bruce...." I began.

"I appreciate your cooperation," he interrupted, jumping up. "I want to
thank you for it." Now he dared not meet my gaze. He huddled over himself,

his huge shoulders giving and sagging under his coat. "I know you are one
I can count on at this time and thank you. It's very fine." He put out his
hand, the sweat standing on his forehead, and moved toward the door.

"Oh, Bruce!" I cried. I ran after him. "Bruce!"

"I'm having a special meeting to-morrow," he said. "I want to get you all
together and talk this thing out. It won't profit us anything to discuss it
now. To-morrow perhaps you'll get up and say something in my behalf."
He shut his mouth doggedly and dropped his head.

"Oh, I would like to help you!" I cried suddenly.

"I appreciate any cooperation you can give me at this time. I am grateful."

shadows Our shadows spread out on the carpet, moving largely with each tremor,
ominously facing, meeting, but remaining intact, unconscious of one another.
It seemed to me that we were like shadow boxers, moving and springing
around one another, raising a fist but never sinking it, dexterously
manipulating our feet so that no contact was possible, no acknowledgment of the
situation and our real thoughts and desires. I drew a long breath.

"We'll win through, Lucia," he said doggedly, looking up at me from the
side slyly.

I tried to rescue my vision of the new magazine. But it was gone. My
thoughts and desires were unimportant, lost in a vague meaningless flux.
I took hold of the stair railing. Then I opened my eyes to his, my face
back, my body rigid. I tried to speak so that he wouldn't know the
emptiness in me, the chaos and almost primordial stupor that had come over me.

"Bruce," I said, "I am asking you to resign."

Tears came slowly into his eyes. He put his tongue under his upper lip
and held it with his mouth closed. Then he sneered and reached into his back
pocket for his handkerchief. He wiped his hands, the soft white stuff
falling loosely as he rubbed. "Is this the feeling of the whole staff?"

"Yes. We think the magazine is pretty rotten and you're pretty bad."

He shoved out his hand to me. "Goodnight," he said in a high pitched

voice. "I'll see you at the meeting to-morrow. I'm running along now."
He drew his brows together, not looking at me. "Well, goodnight," he
said after a gulp and disappeared.

3.

The next morning I met Bruce in the hall of the main building. He looked at me. Not a muscle in his face changed. He kept looking at me until I felt small and hideous. I opened my lips to speak and he turned his face away, solid, bronzed, definite. For the first time in my life I knew I had an enemy. All the others, all the undefined ill natured looks came, I almost knew, from my own chaos and indecisions. I felt nothing definite or immortal about these people as enemies. I felt that soon I would rise to myself and know how to embrace them. I felt positive that all my unresolved elements would merge, soar from the drowse of my being and take eternal form as soon as I discovered how one ought to act in life and what God's plan was. But already I knew I had no right to speak to Bruce.

Bruce kept beyond me, walking straight through the groups of students,
letting them separate and fall back as he strode on. Yes, the girl was Irma.
She shot out of a dark corner at the end of the hall and greeted Bruce in
a familiar way, one hand on her hip, one thin leg forward, the shoe pressed
out elegantly on the floor. He was stiff in the shadows, unbending, formal.
But she slipped her arm through his and while a flash of surprise and rage
cracked loose in me like lightning, I saw her accomodate her step to his and
dissappear.

I met no one else from the staff that morning or afternoon. I didn't even
see Spenceer Goff in the class we attended together. I wanted to see him. I
wanted to get him off under a large bare tree near the lake and tell him
what I had said to Bruce and make him tell me whether it was a horrible thing
to have done. I wanted to see his head pucker and his hand go up to his
hair and then hear those words come out, as if he had hold of some secrets
of life and could make them fall plain and definite for me. I wanted for

the first time in my existence to touch a man's hand and then without knowing
why or what for, to bend my face to it and kiss it. I wanted to do that to
Spencer Goff's hand and then stand with him, looking off, far off to those
white steeples and spires across the smooth green water.

I left the main hall and went down to the lake, staring at the pebbles
that lay along the shore, spotted and marked like small fish. I stood near a
tree trunk and looked off across the water, the way I had imagined doing,
but I felt flat and forlorn and blind, like an animal that noses about for
warmth and shelter in the cold.

The rest of the day passed and at four o'clock on my way to the meeting
I realized that I was almost ready to cry. The first thing I wanted was to
ask Bruce if I might speak to him even though we were enemies because his
silent look of immortal hate had done something horrible inside me. Then I
imagined Spencer, Irma, and myself each rising and speaking for the new
magazine and the new world it was to bring and I decided I would rather
have that than the calm feeling again and Bruce speaking to me. But as I
thought of it I realized that Irma's face was printed somewhere on my
insides, the leer that stretched down the cords of her neck, the safe sure
movements of her hands and body. I decided to limit my optimism in my speech
before them to only the university world but I believed with my whole heart
that the new magazine would send out waves of life into the great world,
the universe.

I slushed through the muddy melting snow and I didn't know how vague I
looked or how frightened, as if I could never feel accustomed to the crowds
of casual, aggressive students who bumped one from both front and back and
continued their conversations. I even prayed, "O Christ, make your
purposes for us plain...." Then I put up my hand and let some soft snow
half melt in my palm. It was as if a bird had flown against it, the wet
snowy wings closing for a second to warm the chilled breast. Then I

realized that I wanted a present from a boy. I wanted a box of candy with red
ribbons and glazed paper over it. I wanted a box of spring violets to pin on
me and smell. I wanted the gift then because I had hurt Bruce and made him
an enemy. That seemed so much worse for me than for him. I think, too,
that I was in love with Spencer Goff. But I know that above all I wanted to
be told that I had done a noble act in asking Bruce to resign.

I saw Helen Ogden across the street looking at some shoes in a window.
Then she wandered along the street with her smart languor, making walking alone
a mysterious and alluring occupation. Suddenly I knew that I walked alone
because no one wanted to walk with me. I remembered with humiliation
the night I said to Helen, "Hamlet really did love Ophelia," as if now I had
had merely done
cleared the world of its mystery. Helen said something strange with her nose
and then she pointed to a tiny chocolate man holding a green mint football
and said, "Don't you love it?" But like Irma and the others she would
be polite, not liking me, casual when she resented me, and we would do
nothing but waste time, marking off space in our lives with no reward of
understanding or contact.

Now Helen was rushing up the steps of the Union building and this time
she avoided me. For a second I thought of walking away, going to the
Chocolate Shop and ordering a large pecan sundae. I thought of taking a
walk by the lake. I thought, suddenly, of leaving college, not trying to
be a student, leaving and going into the great world. But none of those
possibilities seemed within reach. I walked slowly up the steps. I began
to feel horribly ill in my stomach.

Bruce sat at the table. He did not look up when I came in. Helen had
already flopped down in a chair near the door. There was no place for me.
Every one was there, every one was seated. No one spoke to me. It was silent,
like church, and no one looked up. While I closed the door behind me I felt
a lightning wrench and shock of surprise and grief break over me. It seemed
as if my mouth had gone deathly white. Then I went to the window sill and

Irma sat down. Irma had her legs crossed, her face smiling and bitter. Helen kept her head turned stiffly, avoiding any one's eyes. Bruce was dogged. Spencer Goff was sitting on the floor on his overcoat, his white hands on his raised knees, his face tormented and still. Marshall Stiles was there. It was the first meeting he had attended in months. He was even yellower and I remembered the day he had snatched a purple georgette scarf and let it fall over his head like a bee veil. He had sat through the whole meeting like that, his arms crossed on his chest, his glasses shining through his purple shroud.

Bruce stood up. "I understand there is a great deal of discontent about me. I had no idea I was such a bad editor until last night when I was so informed. I have worked hard for this magazine and done everything in my power to make it a good one but of course if you don't want my services I shall let some one else undertake them and leave this magazine entirely alone. I am offering my resignation." He sat down, fitting his tongue under his upper lip, and folded his arms on the table. "Are there any suggestions or nominations for the new editor?"

"Well, goodnight," said Helen, "it's the first I knew we weren't satisfied with you, Bruce. I know that I have always been satisfied."

Every one was silent. Marshall began breathing through his mouth, his long yellow fingers hanging over his chair. His eyes glazed over, the lids dropped. Spencer did not move. Irma was smiling, her face set with that knowledge she seemed to possess of people and situations. She was slunk down so that she looked breastless, her stomach hollowed, her knees like two sticks jutting the material of her skirt.

"What made you think we wanted you to resign, Bruce?" she asked.

He did not speak for a second. Then he said without looking at her. "I was informed that my services were no longer wanted." He gave a short laugh. "I was also told that the magazine was dead and that I was pretty rotten as an editor."

Every face was turned toward Bruce in deep sympathy and understanding and loyalty. I wondered if I could rise now and tell our plan for the new magazine. I looked at Irma. She was smiling in her insulting way and striking a match with a long firm stroke.

"Well," said Irma, "did you think best to proceed on hearsay instead of running down the truth of rumors?"

"I understood that it was the wish of the entire staff."

I drew up my breath. Then something held it solid, like a grey rock in my throat. I could not swallow or lower my chest. Irina, smiling, said distinctly, "I think it's too bad you got that wrong impression, Bruce. We are quite satisfied with your work. In fact, no one could expect any more from you. We are satisfied. Isn't that the feeling of every one here?"

"Yes, indeed," said Marshall. He looked about him, his lower teeth gleaming with saliva. "I haven't been able to solicit the advertising and Bruce has done it for me."

"Well, I call that service," said Helen indignantly. "Bruce, you've been too good to us. We don't appreciate it. We haven't realized. You've been too unselfish."

"I'm resigning," he said doggedly. "Who wants the pleasure of taking my place?"

"No one does," said Spencer.

Irma flushed. I saw her roll her eyes down to her ambitious fingers and then moisten her lips. It had never occurred to me that Irma wanted to be the editor. Now I saw that she loathed every one of us for allowing her to stagnate in an inferior position when she should have been running things and getting famous. I could feel her bitter suffering. I felt it come from her thin arms, her lowered head and leering mouth. "You know you can handle it better than any of us, Bruce," she finally said. Then she bent her head further with a sneer. "You're just the person. You're always on the job."

"Well I'm not going to continue always being on the job," he snapped.
"Let somebody else step forward and take the insults for a change."

"I nominate Irma Sprecher," I said, rising.

The blood rushed violently into Bruce's cheeks. He paused. Then he said angrily, "I think the first nomination had better be for some one to take charge of this meeting. And kindly remember to first address the chair."
He closed his book and started away from the table. Helen sprang from her chair, snatching him by the arms, her scarf falling under her feet. "Bruce,"
she cried, "we don't want you to go - you can't!"

He pushed her aside, wild with anger, and every one but me rose and surrounded him. Even Spencer stood there, his hands in his pockets, his face nervous and strained. But he did not speak to Bruce. He merely stood as if he were waiting for something. Finally Irma cried, "But Bruce, we won't permit it. We won't accept your resignation. Don't be silly about it. We won't let you abandon us."

"Let somebody else take the insults," he muttered again and tried to make his way to the door.

"Just one moment every one!" cried Irma looking around the room. "Let's assure Bruce that whatever he has heard came without our sanction and let's pledge our support. Shall we?"

"Right?" said Helen.

Irma's mouth was stretched big with her talk. She kept swinging her head about like a college yell leader. "Everybody with us?" she fairly shouted. "Everybody strong for us? Everybody strong for Bruce?" In her frenzy she noticed me. "How about you, Lucia, are you ready to support Bruce with all your might?" She swept her eyes over me as if I were non-existent. "Bruce, old man...."

"Aw," he muttered, "let me out of it. This is nauseating. Let me go."

"Who wants Bruce?" she cried, throwing up one thin arm. Then she went on, in her shrill voice, her body moving with it, "We all want Bruce!" Marshall joined her. So did Helen. Spencer did not open his lips. Irma's eyes