IT WAS THE LAST period and she had the quick-exit seat. When the warning bell jangled she almost made it out the door.
‘Alison. Come here a moment, please. I’d like to talk to you.’
She turned and walked sluggishly to the teacher’s desk. Miss French was one of the better ones: she spoke like a human being, not a robot, and let her light-brown hair fall in a careless fluff on her shoulders. She was not quite over the hill yet, maybe around thirty-one.
‘About this composition you handed in...I asked you to choose three kinds of work people do and discuss the nature of their social contributions.’
‘I remember.’ Alison had a ready stare of passive resistance.
‘But you didn’t.’ Miss French removed her blue-tinted glasses. Her eyes were perturbed. Today she had on black tights with a wraparound denim skirt and a work shirt without a bra. Why couldn’t she act her age? She was always talking about social responsibility, wasn’t she? ‘You wrote about race horses, oxen, and Indian elephants,’ Miss French said.
‘Yes, well, they work, too.’
‘They’re not people, Alison. There’s a difference.’
‘That’s my whole point. That’s why they don’t get any respect.’
‘But the assignment was...Okay, after you describe their work you say it’s unfair for animals to be put to work for people. But how do you think farmers in other ages would have managed without oxen and mules and horses?’
‘Do you think we need horse racing? Do you think the horses enjoy it?’
‘Come on now,’ said Miss French. ‘Of course we don’t need it. But it doesn’t harm the horses. Those horses happen to be very well cared for. But that’s not the point. Look, throughout history people have learned to master what’s available in nature, for their basic needs. We could never have progressed to the point we are now without the use of animals.’
‘And hunting dogs,’ said Alison. ‘They’re trained to prey on their fellow animals. It’s gross.’
‘I’m aware that you’re clever.’ Miss French put her blue glasses back on and smiled with a kind of melancholy. ‘But you’ll never learn anything until you start listening to what’s being said to you. I don’t think you’ve really heard a word I said.’
Alison gave the impassive stare again.
‘And besides, if you’re so interested in animals and fairness, haven’t you grasped that different species prey on each other? Not with any evil intent—it’s the way the cycle of nature is set up. Take a look around. It’s not one big happy family.’ Miss French held out the assignment.
‘Do I have to do it over?’
‘Yes. People, this time. How about scientists, newspaper reporters, bricklayers? Really work up an essay.’
‘That doesn’t grab me, but okay.’
She walked home past the shopping center. Groups of kids clustered around the pizzeria and the movie theatre. Traffic thinned as she turned down a side street; the neighborhood became residential, with low, broad houses set far apart on sloping, mostly vacant lawns bearing the October remains or flower beds. There were no sidewalks. In fifteen minutes she reached her own lawn, where Josh’s flower bed was overgrown, faded and waiting for spring. Also waiting for him to come back and do some weeding: he was away in Arizona for two weeks, visiting and checking up on his company’s trailers like an itinerant country doctor. Arizona was trailer heaven, Josh said. He had been there many times.
She shut the door of her room tightly behind her, opened the window over her bed, and reached to touch the leaves of the maple just outside, before taking the notebook out from under the mattress. The heroine of her newest story was called Alice. Alice was going on fourteen, just a year older than she was. Fed up with ordinary life and in quest of adventure, Alice runs away to lead a life of crime in New York City.
She soon gets hooked on drugs and mugs people in the subways with an innocent-looking tennis racket, to support her habit. After a painful withdrawal period, a stunning test of will, she triumphs, but goes on to become a teen-aged alcoholic. A member of Alcoholics Anonymous stationed outside a bar tries to save her, but she will have none of their corny, God-fearing methods. Once again she saves herself, emerging from a sodden stupor with renewed will. She moves into an abandoned building (till then she has slept in doorways and on park benches) and assembles a gang of younger runaways, whom she directs in a series of robberies. The young policeman who finally traces her falls in love with her. ‘You are the rarest creature I have ever encountered,’ he tells her one night in the police car. Unable to bring himself to turn her in, he wants to reform her and keep her for himself, but since he symbolizes law and convention, Alice laughs in his face. When he tries to kiss her she spits in his eye. ‘You little tiger,’ he whispers, undaunted. His hanging around becomes a drag, so Alice pushes on, hitchhiking to Ohio in a truck whose driver lost both hands in the Vietnam war and had them replaced by hooks. The truckdriver, named Hal, is drawn to her too, and for the first time in her life Alice has some feeling for a man. Even though Hal’s vocabulary is very limited compared to hers, she can see beyond the surface to the spirit within.
Today Alison needed to find a way out of Alice’s dilemma: part of her wants to accept the mutilated truckdriver’s love, but another part of her is repelled at the idea of those cold hooks caressing her naked body. She stood up to take a break first, and pulled her blue T-shirt over her head. It was by now unmistakable—she had breasts. Some of the other girls had had them for more than a year, but she was skinny—maybe that slowed things up. The nipples protruded as if puffed with air, and they were surrounded by a soft fleshiness. She touched one breast with a forefinger. It felt tender. Looking in the mirror, she twitched one eyelid and her upper lip very slightly, a faint expression of disdain that had taken weeks to perfect. Soon they might begin growing at a shocking speed. She had seen it happen to Franny Grant, her ex-best friend, and to Hilary and Karen. When they jumped for the ball on the volleyball court, the breasts bounced. It must feel strange, soft bumps on your body, flopping uncontrollably. The cycle of nature, as Miss French said. A portent of things to come. Pimples next, on her high forehead. But pimples could be covered up, and eventually they pass away. Breasts are forever.
Unless you got cancer and had to have one taken off. Like Lou, her mother’s best friend, a few months ago. Wanda went to visit her in Parkvale Hospital and came home murmuring, ‘Poor Lou, poor Lou,’ as she drifted around the kitchen fixing herself coffee. While the water heated Wanda put her head down on the kitchen table and cried. ‘A young woman like that.’
‘Lou’s not so young. She must be thirty-five at least.’
‘That’s young, Allie, that’s very young. Listen, sweetie, make yourself a hamburger or something. I’m not hungry. I’m going to lie down.’
It was odd to see Wanda cry, because most of the time, when she wasn’t being moody and silent, she was silly, like people on TV acting slightly drunk. And yet Wanda hardly ever drank—it made her too dizzy, she said.
When Lou came over she looked the same as before, on both sides. Alison could hear the two of them in the living room, talking softly against the sound of coffee cups clinking on saucers.
‘But what does it look like?’ Wanda sounded eager as a child.
‘Ah, well, Wanda,’ drawled Lou, who came from South Carolina. ‘What’s the point? Better not to know. I don’t look at it myself.’
‘Listen, Lou, it’s like an epidemic—you’re lucky they caught it so soon. Think of it that way.’ ‘Sure, hon. Easy to say.’ She couldn’t imagine anything that would make her mother weep and moan, ‘Poor Alison, poor Alison.’ Oh, no. Wanda stared at her sometimes with those daffy green eyes as if she were a creature from another planet. An alien. It was true, she certainly didn’t look like any child born of Wanda, who was blond and pink. She had her father’s coloring. ‘Olive, sweetie,’ Wanda said when she was in a good mood. ‘Olive is nice.’ And at other times she said, ‘Why do you stay cooped up in your room all the time! For God’s sake, you’re positively green.’ Her eyes were good, though—tiger eyes that gave a clue to the real person inside. Staring at the mirror, she raised her head and straightened her shoulders. Miss Hanes, the gym teacher, was always telling them to straighten up and let the world see who they were. The world would not see any better who she was this way, though. Who people were was the greatest secret on earth; they guarded it with their lives.
She put her shirt back on and returned to the bed and to Alice’s dilemma. Alice feels sorry for Hal and is grateful for the long ride through the Midwest. Also, she wants to see what it’s like—everyone talked and wrote so much about it. But still, those cold hooks...She postponed the decision by making the truck fall in a ditch. In the complicated rescue operation the hooks come in very handy. But she would have to look up the names of the parts of the truck and fill them in later. She was too tired and hungry now.
As she knocked on Wanda’s door a low, steady murmur came from inside—Wanda on her Princess phone.
‘Alison? You can come in.’
Her sneakers sank into the lavender carpet. The master bedroom, it was called, because the master and the mistress slept there. It was spacious, hung with purple and green velvet curtains and full-length mirrors; in the center reclined Wanda, rolled in a pink satin quilt on the king-sized bed, the telephone cord around her wrist like a bracelet. Her face was flushed from sleep and her short yellow curls were mussed. Magazines lay open around her.’ A cigarette butt smoldered in the ashtray and the odor of the burning filter spread through the room.
‘What is it, Alison? I’m talking to Lou.’
‘Is there anything to eat? It’s almost six.’
‘Oh, Christ. Already? I never got to go shopping. Look, honey, take ten dollars from my bag over there on the dresser and run over to the A & P and get a couple of steaks. Okay? Be a good girl. Honestly, I haven’t felt like myself for days.’ She made a pleading face.
‘Can’t we just have spaghetti or vegetables or something? I’ll make it.’
‘Just go, all right? I’m talking on the phone. Get some ice cream too, any flavor you like.’
She took the money from Wanda’s purse and walked to the door.
‘Wait. Wait a second, Allie.’ Wanda took her hand from the mouthpiece of the phone. ‘Lou? Let me call you back in five minutes, all right?’ She hung up. ‘Come here, sweetie. Sit down by me, that’s right.’ She put her hand over Alison’s. ‘I really am sorry about dinner. I feel extremely lousy. Try to understand.’
‘If you’d tell me in advance I’d plan it myself. Last week you sent me out once for pizza and once for barbecued chicken.’
‘Did I really?’ Wanda raised her eyebrows and smiled. ‘That’s shocking! I guess I’m not the most efficient person in the world. Let me look at you. It seems like I haven’t seen you for days. How’s school? Do you know, you’re finally getting something up on top? How do you like that! Let Mamma see.’ Wanda made a grab at her shirt.
She leaped away and crossed her arms over her chest. ‘Cut that out! For Chrissake!’
‘Oh, you’re sensitive about it.’ She laughed, reached for a cigarette, and fit it into a plastic holder. ‘Well, all right. I must say it’s about time.’
‘I think I’ll go for the steaks now, if you don’t mind.’
‘Alison, before you go, would you bring me up a glass of ginger ale, please? Lots of ice. Five ice cubes! Maybe it’ll help my stomach.’
‘Yes, Miz Markman. Right away, ma’am.’
‘Oh, go on. Don’t be such a tough customer.’
When she returned with the soda, Wanda was on the phone again, giggling with Lou. She sounded as bad as Franny and Hilary and Karen giggling in front of the pizzeria, waiting for the boys to notice them. They weren’t speaking to her now because she had told them how stupid they looked chasing Bobby and Elliot around the parking lot to get their books back. Well, tough shit. She got her bike out of the garage and coasted down the driveway.
Steak. Slabs from a cow, soft and porous, sliced off its body. Meat. There was the same kind of meat in her. Squeezing her thigh, she could feel the muscles move as she pedaled, and she shuddered. In less than an hour she would be holding the slabs of cow in her hands, with the red blood dripping into the sink and making pale pink stains. She would pat them dry with a paper towel, like drying a baby after its bath. Lay them out on the broiler and salt them, like powdering the baby with talcum. And then eat one—she was so hungry she would love it. She was an animal that preyed on her fellow creatures. Part of the cycle of nature.
She slid her bike into the rack outside the market and tested the automatic In door to see exactly which point on the rubber mat made it open. Inside, she took a Hershey bar with almonds from a front rack and tore off the wrapper—if anyone asked, she would promise to pay on her way out—and at the encyclopedia display, looked up Vegetarianism. Many eminent and talented people, it said, such as George Bernard Shaw, a playwright, and Mohandas Gandhi, an Indian leader, had been vegetarians. It wasn’t so weird after all. She had heard of that George Bernard Shaw recently. Yes, Miss Patten had read them something two weeks ago from a play he wrote about Joan of Arc. Next week she would look up Puberty, and the week after, Breasts.
The meat bin was stacked with dead flesh and bone wrapped in plastic. Once they had all walked around on four legs, peacefully eating grass. A few packages were labeled ‘Hearts.’ So they took the very heart out! ‘He’s eating my heart out,’ their next-door neighbor sometimes said to Wanda, about her husband. Right in front of the sirloins, blocking her path, an old man was bent over with his eyes closed. He was lean and muscular, and his large hands gripped the edge of the counter. From under a dark beret white hair showed straight and thin. He had a large bumpy nose and a cleft chin, and his face was crinkled with tiny lines. It was a sharp, almost harsh face, with the full lips pressed firmly together, but the expression was remote, as though all his concentration had been withdrawn from the world to some tremendous sensation within. She hesitated. ‘Excuse me.’
He opened his eyes, black and glittery, but didn’t move.
‘Pardon me, I need to reach the steaks.’
He shook his head, a minuscule arc.
‘Are you all right?’
‘No.’
‘Here, sit down.’ She dragged over a huge carton of paper towels and he slumped on to it, leaning an elbow on the meat bin and supporting his head on a veined hand with very long fingers. Miss Belling, the art teacher, once showed them photos of artists’ hands; they had become tools, she said, the fingers stretched and articulated from work. His hand was like those artists’.
‘Should I call a doctor or something? Are you very sick?’
He shook his head again.
‘Well...when are you going to feel better?’
‘Why, is there any hurry?’
His voice was low, with a slight rasp to it. She edged off and chose two steaks, the least bloody-looking she could find, then returned. ‘I don’t think I should just leave you like this. I’ll get the manager.’
He lifted up a hand weakly. ‘No managers. It’s going away. It’s nothing.’
‘Are you—you’re not going to...pass out here or anything?’
‘Not at the moment. But the prognosis is grim.’
‘Do you have any pills? I could get you a glass of water.’
‘The pills are in a suitcase.’
‘Oh, I have an idea. Have one of these cans of orange juice. There are little openers on top. See? Here, drink it.’
He drank. ‘A resourceful girl. Thank you. That’s better. How old are you, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘I’m almost thirteen. How old are you?’
‘Seventy-four.’
‘You don’t look that old. That’s quite an advanced age.’
‘I think so too. Sometimes I even think, enough is enough.’ He took a red bandanna from his jacket pocket and wiped his face.
‘Would you like me to walk you home?’
‘Thank you, no. I’ll be fine. I’ll have them deliver it. Go ahead with your shopping. Your mother will worry about you. Doesn’t she warn you not to talk to strangers?’
‘I don’t think she cares who I talk to.’
He shrugged. ‘Well, that can have its advantages.’
‘I don’t know. Lately she just stays in bed and talks on the phone all the time.’
‘Perhaps she’s not feeling well.’
‘She looks okay to me.’
He spread out his palms and tilted his head. ‘An enigma, then.’
He couldn’t be from around here. He spoke differently and he thought differently. Possibly from very far away, somewhere exotic.
‘When I was younger I used to think I was adopted,’ she said. ‘In fact, I once wrote a story about it, a few years ago. There was this changeling. Her mother was a gypsy princess and her father was a Turkish lion-tamer. But it turned out to be not true.’
‘You asked?’
‘Well, not exactly. But whenever I got mad I would tell them that when I grew up I was going to search the entire globe till I found my real parents. My father got disgusted and dug my birth certificate out of an old carton. And then my mother found these ancient pictures of herself pregnant. So that was that. I was very disillusioned.’
‘Yes, I can imagine. May I ask...’ He closed his eyes for a moment and ran his hand slowly over his face. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’
‘Because...I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t usually tell people things. Am I bothering you?’
‘No, that’s quite all right. I’m indebted to you for the juice and the carton.’
‘Really? Do you think I saved your life?’
He smiled. ‘I suppose it’s a possibility. But you shouldn’t go about telling your private fantasies to strangers, you know.’
‘Did you ever think you were adopted? It’s a common fantasy, I’ve read.’
‘Oh, no,’ he replied. ‘No, that would have been a great luxury. Look here, I’m really not up to a serious discussion. And I’m sure your mother’s waiting for you.’
‘You’re sure you’ll be okay?’
‘Yes, yes. Go on about your shopping now.’
She paid for the steaks and dashed outside to her bike. At last, someone! He was like a messenger in a play who bursts in with news of the outside world. So there really were people like that out there. He had traveled and seen life, as Alice was going to do. And she herself had saved a life. She longed to tell someone, but the only one who could possibly understand was Alice. She raced towards home, the sentences spinning out to the rhythm of the wheels. She had the dilemma all worked out now. Alice could save Hal’s life when the truck falls in the ditch, and he would be so grateful that he would look upon her with awe and reverence. He wouldn’t need to run those chilly hooks all over her. ‘His hungry eyes took on a look of trance as he gazed down at her slender, lissome body. Instead of brute craving, his face portrayed infinite gratitude. He reached out to touch her, but quickly drew back his hook. “No,” whispered Hal. “I have gone beyond that. You must remain untouched by crude passion.” ’ She pedaled up the driveway and took the package of dripping steaks out of the basket. Lissome, or lissom?
A week later it happened again, like an omen. Late as usual, she pushed open the gym door, to be assaulted by a clamor of voices and bouncing balls. Four volleyball games at once. Four gray balls smudged with years of finger marks flew over the four droopy nets while dozens of arms flailed in disorder. Shouts rang through the air, which was already damp with sweat. Over in the left-hand corner, away from the games, Fats Fox, one of the gym teachers, stood high up on a ladder, threading a length of thick rope through big hooks in the ceiling. And there below him, on a wooden stool, sorting lengths of aluminum tubing and calling out instructions—she could see his full, old lips moving but couldn’t make out any words in the din—was that man, the one whose life she had saved! From the grim reaper. The icy grip of death. Cold fingers clutched at his throat but were thwarted just in time by a youthful...Okay, enough! she whispered fiercely, and in her head a black curtain dropped on the parade of phrases. Skirting the games, she strolled over. The navy-blue beret lay on a black attaché case near his feet. He looked like the photo of Picasso that Miss Bejling had hung in the art room—head thrust forward like a large cat about to spring, hard dark eyes glinting rays into the camera. This man might be a foreign painter too. From Paris, maybe. She could see him seated in front of an easel, on a bridge over that famous river, what was it again? Except he had had no accent.
‘Hi,’ she said.
He swung around on the stool to face her. His eyes were dark and glinting also, and seemed to penetrate behind her face.
‘Don’t you remember me? We met at the meat counter.’
His brows contracted and the eyes narrowed, as if searching in a cluttered place for the memory. ‘Ah, of course! The young lady who gave me the orange juice. The nonadoptee. Allow me to thank you once again. Pardon me for not getting up, but if I move I lose the exact measurements.’ He was marking off spaces with a pencil on a length of tube.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m helping Mr Fox set up some equipment. Obviously. And you, I take it, are a student?’ He looked briefly toward the volleyball games; there appeared to be a touch of scorn in his face.
‘Yes, but I find volleyball barbaric. It comes at you so suddenly. I’d much rather play basketball—at least it’s not so disorganized.’
‘It’s true,’ he said, glancing again at the nets. ‘Volleyball is a particularly chaotic game.’
‘I can get it in the basket every time. It’s my one skill in life. I really like that curve the ball makes, you know, when it goes over the hoop and slips in? I can feel that curve in my hand while I’m still holding the ball. It’s like magic. It’s all controlled and beautiful.’
He had stopped penciling the tubes and was looking at her curiously. ‘You have the curve in your hand? Yes, I know what you mean. Fox!’ he called out all of a sudden. ‘Hold it right there! That ought to be firm enough. Try sliding down. Your weight will test it.’
Fox, red-headed, wide-shouldered, and pudgy, pulled his gray polo shirt over the strip of pinkish belly above his sweat pants and stared down. ‘You mean slide down the rope?’
‘Sure. You don’t propose using the kids to test it, do you?’
Slowly Fats transferred his body from the ladder to the rope.
‘Put your feet on the knots. Attaboy. Swing a little, be a monkey. There you go.’
The rope swung tentatively in a small circle. Fats curled his body around it, his shoulders and arms tense.
‘Oh, if I had an old friend of mine here now,’ the man whispered to her, ‘you’d see a real monkey. This fellow looks like an ape but hasn’t got the bounce.’
She grinned back at him as Fats, rather pale, reached the floor. ‘Do you think that’s all right now?’ he asked, rubbing his palms together.
‘Fine, Fox. We’ll put sturdy mats underneath. No need to fear.’
‘What kind of new torture is this?’ she asked Fats.
‘Mr Fried is going to teach rope climbing and trapeze skills. Why is your attitude so negative? And aren’t you supposed to be in a game anyhow?’
‘Oh, all right. See you around.’
The old man nodded his head in farewell. ‘A pleasure running into you again. Hasta luego.’
The river was the Seine, but she doubted now that he was a painter.
At three o’clock she saw Hilary and Karen headed for the pizzeria. They waved and beckoned—so they weren’t mad any more—but she only waved back and continued on her way. Hilary shrugged as she walked off, fluffing out her long loose hair with one hand. On the left back pocket of her jeans was sewn a broken red heart with an arrow going through it. The heart was for Bobby Cavale, on the swimming team. Karen, plump and a head shorter, chattered and walked fast to keep up with her. They would find the boys there and most likely chase them around the parking lot again. The few times she had gone along she had felt completely hollow inside. Even her voice sounded phony, and tier mind stood somewhere apart, watching, judging every word she spoke. Wanda had warned her. ‘Do you think they’ll keep asking you forever? Do you want to be alone all the time? You’ll be sorry, believe me.’ But she wasn’t sorry yet.
On the way to the library she stopped off in Bamberger’s to go up the down and down the up escalators, and so it was near dark when she finally got home, her knapsack bulging with books. Wanda was busy at the stove, stirring something in a big pot. She wore a long flowered robe in a silky fabric, and her lipstick was a frosty pink.
‘Set the table in the dining room, would you, Allie? And take out the salad. He ought to be here any minute.’
‘Yes’m. Right away, ma’am.’ She opened the refrigerator. There was a bottle of champagne next to the salad bowl. ‘What are you two celebrating?’
Wanda squeezed her frosted lips shut, as if something might slip past them. She bent to open the oven. ‘Just his return, I guess. Use the good silver.’
She couldn’t get a clear picture of Josh’s face. It happened every time he stayed away more than a week: she kept only a blurred outline with dark curly hair and a square jaw. Days went by when she hardly thought of him, except now and then some image would flash through her head like a lingering bit of dream: in his white tennis shorts, going to work out at the gym-tanned and muscled like the tennis pros he watched on TV. Going over the bills at the dining room table, so concentrated, with his shirt sleeves rolled up, a sharpened pencil in his hand and a cigarette between his teeth. She wished he wouldn’t smoke, yet that cigarette in his teeth gave him an air of...she couldn’t think of the word. Or the way he used to hold her on his lap, with that funny lopsided smile, and she would put her arms around his neck and feel...But that had not been for a very long time. You couldn’t force people to keep loving you in the same way, and anyhow, she was much too big. Only babies got petted like that.
As she finished setting out the plates she heard the car. In a moment he was opening the front door, suntanned, his dark hair rumpled, his jacket and tie slung over his shoulder, a suitcase in his hand. When he saw her he gave that same lopsided smile, one corner of his mouth crooked as though something were secretly funny, and he dropped everything to reach out his arms. He was firm and warm, and for a moment she let herself relax against him, wrapped up snug like an infant. Almost too cozy. She drew back before the hug seemed really over.
After he hugged Wanda, Josh picked up his jacket and took a tiny white box from the pocket. ‘I didn’t forget to bring you something this time, Allie.’
It was a silver ring with a narrow double band and a blue stone in the center, a rare blue, bluer than any skies or flowers. She put it on her middle finger. ‘Nice,’ she said, not looking at him.
‘It’s Navajo. Silver and turquoise, and made by a real Indian. I got it at a trading post.’
She held her hand out and gazed doubtfully. Too brilliant on her hand, or she was too pale. A person should be beautiful and glittery, to wear that ring.
While she ate she twisted it and moved it up and down over her knuckle, watching the stone catch the light of the globe above the table. Wanda poured tomato juice. ‘Aren’t you two going to have your champagne?’
‘Oh, that’s for later.’ Lowering her eyes, Wanda began to eat quickly.
‘Don’t let me stand in your way.’
‘Oh, don’t be so silly, Alison,’ said Josh. ‘Now tell me what you’ve been doing these past three weeks. Read any good books?’ He gave her the broad empty smile, the smile that looked ready to become a laugh whatever she might say.
She hesitated. ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘Oh, this girl. She gets into a lot of trouble. Her illegitimate baby dies.’
‘I don’t know where she finds these books,’ Wanda groaned. ‘But you can count on her. They’re either pregnant or alcoholic or both.’
‘It’s a famous book! I found it right in the school library. Oh, and by the way, I saved a man’s life last week.’
‘You never told me that.’ Wanda stopped chewing and stared across the table, her green eyes wide. ‘How?’
‘I was in the A & P—that night you forgot to cook dinner, remember?—and he was sort of stretched out over the meat counter. I got him a box to sit on and I gave him a can of orange juice. I guess he was having heart failure or something, but after a while he seemed to get a little better. He was really old, seventy-four. I offered to walk him home but he said no.’
‘Well, I’m glad of that.’ Wanda went back to her rice. ‘You never know, with strangers. Better to call the manager.’
‘He didn’t want the manager. Anyhow, he must be all right now. I saw him at school today.’
‘At school?’ Josh shifted in his chair. ‘Was he hanging around outside?’
‘Oh, no. He wasn’t that type. Putting up some equipment with the gym teacher. He seemed rather interesting. Well, anyway, how was business?’
‘Business?’ He smiled over at her. ‘Business is not bad. Everyone’s interested in mobile homes these days—with the market so high they can’t afford houses any more.’
‘Did you see anything exciting this time?’
Josh cocked his head and slid two fingers up and back along his jaw. ‘Same old thing—desert, cactus, canyons. Grumpy Indians. They certainly seem to have it for white people. Oh, I did finally stop in to have a look at the Grand Canyon. It was grand, just like they say. I got some postcards I’ll show you after dinner. It’s amazing,’ he said, turning to Wanda. ‘They’ve got motels, buses, even supermarkets. You can practically live there.’
‘But how did you feel on the edge of that huge thing?’ Alison cried. ‘I mean, it must be...I don’t know...overwhelming.’
‘I felt mighty small, baby. Wouldn’t want to get lost down there, I’ll tell you.’
She pushed the slice of roast beef around on her plate. It lay in its puddle of lukewarm gravy like something dead. The first moment he returned was always exciting, but after that everything remained exactly the same. She would try to get behind that lopsided smile to its source, while he, like a dumb camera, would produce whatever had passed before him: deserts, cactus, canyons. Never what any of it meant to him, what he really thought about it. Maybe it meant nothing and he had no thoughts. The hollow space opened inside her again, floating up through her like a bubble.
‘I’ll clear,’ she said. As she circled the table gathering plates she studied them, pretending she didn’t know them: a nice-looking couple from a TV commercial for dishwasher soap, maybe. But those people on TV were not real; they were actors. Everyone knew they didn’t behave that way in real life.
‘I’ll look at the postcards tomorrow,’ she told Josh. ‘I have a lot of homework.’
Curled in a corner of her bed, she wrote quickly on a fresh sheet: ‘Social Contributions of Three Professions. Scientists do experiments in laboratories to find cures for the dread diseases that plague humanity. On the other hand they also invent nuclear weapons and napalm that destroy humanity. Therefore they sometimes strike an objective observer as seeming to defeat their own basic purpose.’ That was logical so far, only it seemed to be a dead end. Move the main idea along, Miss French always said. And it was supposed to be objective, which meant no private opinions. All she could do was another half page of specific examples—on the one hand and on the other hand—to get it up to a decent length. But specific examples were so boring, and the main idea had been stated quite clearly. It did lack an introduction, development, and concluding paragraph, yet it had a certain neatness. Definitely not wordy. The bricklayer and reporter were simple; she could do them during lunch tomorrow. She dropped the school notebook to the floor and got out the other from under the mattress.
Alice decides to leave the truckdriver, Hal, after four days. Being idolized is too much of a strain, and besides, she feels unworthy, remembering the crimes she has left behind her in the city. As a matter of fact, Alice seemed to be undergoing some peculiar change. Between the lines, almost, she was getting closer to the kind of person she was destined to be, a person neither she nor Alison knew yet. The words came out as if dictated by a creature partly herself and partly Alice, a creature just beyond her control. With an eerie curiosity, she watched what appeared on the page. ‘And so an instinct told Alice the time had come to move on. The unknown stretched before her and the call of adventure sounded in her ears. As she left the kindly truckdriver sleeping peacefully in the back of his truck, his wallet lay exposed before her, bulging with bills. She touched it, but no. Although it would certainly be helpful in her future life, whatever that might be, she could not do that to Hal. It would weigh too heavily on her conscience.’ She read the paragraph over and crossed out the last sentence.
Alice resolves right then to give up the life of crime. For a moment she even thinks of turning herself in, but no, again: her spirit would be broken in prison. Alice feels exactly the same as Joan of Arc, in that scene Miss Patten read aloud at the beginning of the term. It is not bread and water I fear, but to be shut away from the light of the sky. Do you think living is nothing but not being stone dead?
She hitches a ride with an older girl with long straw-colored braids who offers her a joint, but recalling her past addictions, Alice turns it down. The girl tells about the vegetarian commune in Nebraska where she is headed, and Alice agrees to go along and do her fair share of the domestic work. In Nebraska the bearded boys and the girls in long peasant skirts are friendly, but since they smoke a lot of dope and are very involved in their non-exploitive relationships, Alice pushes on after a week. The next driver who picks her up, an elderly white-haired lady in pink-rimmed harlequin glasses, catches on immediately that Alice is a runaway; meaning well, she plans to turn her in at police headquarters in Laramie, Wyoming.
Her hand was aching; she stopped. She could hear them downstairs, still murmuring and laughing. She pictured them sitting together on the coffee-colored sofa: Wanda, her furry slippers off and her feet tucked under her, sat sideways leaning towards Josh, one arm resting across the back of the sofa. Her long flowered robe swirled around her in folds. She was smoking. They were both smoking, and their words and laughter drifted up in mists of smoke. Josh had his shoes off too, and his long legs were stretched out to the oval coffee table. He leaned his head back against Wanda’s arm and blew smoke rings up at the ceiling. They were drinking their champagne and talking of...what? It was not possible to imagine now they spoke when she was not there, the real selves underneath the faces, as impossible as it was to picture the other things they did together, when they were upstairs, under the quilt of the huge bed. Unthinkable but true that they touched each other everywhere. That was normal; she had read about it in books. Wanda and Josh were normal.
She lay in bed reading A Member of the Wedding till midnight, then turned out the light. Like a cat, she ran her tongue over the silver ring Josh had brought her from Arizona. It tasted like metal, bitter and sharp. Feeling her way in the dark, she put it back in its box.