When she woke up she felt refreshed and hungry. She dressed and went out into the foggy streets to the Crow’s Nest. She was used to her new clothes now and enjoyed the feel of them; since Saturday she had learned that if anyone looked twice at her it was because she had a sort of distinction. I like the way you walk, Owen’s voice companioned her.
A waitress handed her a menu and began laying her place. “Thank you,” Van said, and looked up at Brenda. Her first thought was that she hadn’t realized how many wrinkles Brenda’s thin skin had, or how sharp and strong her nose was.
“For Gawd’s sake!” Brenda whispered reverently. “If this ain’t some surprise! I thought you’d dropped off the edge of the world. And don’t you look some fancy! No wonder I didn’t know you when you came in.”
“I know I was pretty messy, but I didn’t think I was that bad.”
“You know what I mean. You look like a million dollars! How does anybody get that way out on that hunk of rocks?”
“You’d be surprised at what it’s like, Brenda,” said Van. “Electricity, gas, television. And that’s not all.” She smiled. “Not anywhere near all.”
“Well, there’s money, I can tell by the sight of you. . . . I’ll be back.” She went on to another booth. Her rows of yellow curls looked like the wig on a cheap doll. Van recognized her alien emotion as pity. What was a life with no wildness in it, only the small gnawing resentments against employers, aching feet, the loneliness of rented rooms, the nights washed out with beer and television and movies?
Brenda came back. “How’s Barry ?”
“Walking high, wide, and handsome.”
“I’ll bet.” She smiled reminiscently. “He was always cocky, even without a cent in his pocket. . . . What are you having?”
“The special. I’m starved.” From a weekend of love, Brenda. A man is leaving his wife for me, what do you think of that? And he’s not a bum. If you’d been on duty Saturday afternoon you’d have seen him.
Brenda was back with a tray. “Coffee now or later?”
“Later. Where are you living now?”
“Same place.”
Her heart seemed to twitch. “Didn’t they tear it down?”
“There’s some hitch, I guess. Different parties can’t come to an agreement, so in the meantime the house stands there.”
“But who’s in charge?”
“I am,” said Brenda with a satisfied smile. “I’ve got your place. My Gawd, it feels as big as the Community Building.”
Cheated again, Van thought. She tried to keep the instant antagonism out of her voice. “Mooney?”
“Still in the front parlor. But he’ll be moving out soon. He’s given some girl a diamond.”
“What about Brig?”
“He’s in Bangor. Exposed himself in the bus station one night. Not that he had anything to scare anybody with, but—” She scribbled on her check pad. “Anyway, they decided he needed to be taken care of. I cleaned up his room good with Lysol, and papered it. Let it to a girl who works in here. She’s not on now. . . . You having dessert?”
“No, just coffee. I wish you could have a cup with me.”
“I do too, but that’s life.” She went to relieve the cashier. When Van paid, they had a few minutes more to talk, but there was nothing else to say, at least for Van. “Oh, I cleaned up a couple more rooms and let them,” Brenda said. “The other front room downstairs, and the side room upstairs, the one with the bay window. I got some second-hand furniture and scrubbed the places up, and now I get fifteen dollars a week for them, from respectable people.”
“Good for you,” Van told her, freed at last. It was one word which had done it; respectable. Light and air had been let in, the hours of brooding silence washed away, the caverns of dream destroyed. It was no longer hers.
Three men approached the desk, and Van turned to go. “And I’ve got a couple of boys cleaning up the yard,” Brenda told her hurriedly. “It’ll be real nice this summer, without that jungle.” Even the lilies of the valley must be gone. “Come down and see me, Van,” Brenda called. Van waved and smiled without answering, and left.
The sensation of freedom stayed with her. She walked slowly along Main Street, looking in the windows at flowers, furniture, sporting goods, jewelry, clothing, shoes, finally at books. For Barry to tell her to buy books was one of the greatest gestures he could make. But she had her own ideas of fairness, and since she had spent more on her clothes than she’d intended, she wouldn’t buy books. It was enough of a present to walk into the shop where she had never been before, and say nonchalantly, “I’m just looking around.” No one called her a deceiver or an impostor. She was alone with the books except for an elderly man ruminating happily among the nonfiction. She fingered a few bindings, unable to concentrate at first on anything inside until the fire died down and she was able to read the first page of a novel.
She was drawn into the story; it wasn’t until someone brushed against her and apologized, that she was jolted back. She didn’t like being so close to strangers, but her pride was too strong for her to rush out like an eccentric solitary. Which I no longer am, she told herself with, sarcasm. She moved on to the paperback racks and remembering guiltily the funeral pyre of the old high school volume, picked out an anthology of poems, and a book containing two stories by Joseph Conrad.
There was a men’s shop next door, and she saw a blue sleeveless cablestitch pullover in the window. Philip Bennett had one which Barry admired the way he admired all Bennett possessions. She went in and bought one for him, and a matching shirt in woven plaid cotton.
In the five and ten she bought things for the Campion and Dinsmore children. It was mid-afternoon now. At the corner where she would turn off, she stopped and looked anxiously up and down Main Street, promising herself that if she saw him in the crowd she wouldn’t wait to speak to him. She thought she spotted him standing outside a shop window full of musical instruments, and she remembered his saying that Holly wanted a guitar. She waited for him to turn his head; he had a way of doing it that always roused in her a reaction both tender and sensual. But when he did, it was a stranger with a red weathered face and a huge beak of a nose. She felt the cruel disappointment of a child who has been deceived, and she wondered how she could ever have taken this man, even turned away from her, for Owen. The incident shook her own opinion of herself, as if she’d discovered a flaw in her love. She walked fast up the side street toward her room.
When she was halfway up the stairs, Mrs. Marshall called from below. “Mrs. Barton, somebody called and left a number.”
The number meant nothing to her. She had never known anyone to call in Limerock. She called now because Mrs. Marshall expected her to. Owen answered.
“H-hello,” she stammered, sitting down. In the kitchen Mrs. Marshall and the elderly lady moved leisurely about. She stared at them with fascination, listening to Owen’s voice by telephone for the first time.
“Listen,” he said, “I can’t meet you anywhere today. I planned on it, but I’ve run into somebody I can’t shake.”
She couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Are you all right?” he demanded.
“Yes. But this is a busy place, and I shouldn’t hang onto the phone for too long.”
“I get it. Eva’s close by and God knows who else. But are you all right? I mean, you aren’t too hawsed up because I can’t meet you, are you? Not scared or worried, anything like that?”
His concern melted her. She wanted to say so then and there, to murmur I love you through this magical means of communication and send sentimental and idiotic fancies floating along the wires. “I’m fine,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve got every reason in the world for it.”
“So have I. What are you doing tonight? Going to a movie?”
“I’ve got a good book. I may stay in and read.”
“I’ll be thinking of you. Have breakfast with me tomorrow morning. Be at the Crow’s Nest at six-thirty and I’ll stroll in and be neighborly.”
She laughed at that, wanting eagerly to reassure him. Barry’s tenderness annoyed her, Owen’s turned her weak and desperately yearning. “All right. Thanks for calling. I hope the measles are better in the morning.” Mrs. Marshall was tiptoeing through the hall with an apologetic grimace. “Good-by.”
She hung up and said, “Well, I didn’t really feel like going there for supper tonight anyway.”
“Young ones got measles?”
“Yes, and I’ve never had them.”