ALL EVENING AS STELLA ANSWERED THE DEPARTMENT store telephone, she thought of Darl, how when she came out the back door of the department store (“Good evening, Fielding’s”), he would be there, straddling the seat of the Vespa, one foot out on the pavement for balance.
Between telephone ringings (“Good evening, Fielding’s”), she tried to read The Divine Comedy. It was not assigned in any of her classes, but she had heard of it and wanted to know why it was supposed to be great. T. S. Eliot had referred to Dante in The Waste Land. When Stella tried to imagine the levels of hell spiraling down, all she could think of was Darl, the thrill of riding behind him on the motor scooter as he took the best curves down Red Mountain. Then she envisioned the brown freckles thrown like a net over all his classic handsome face.
From her perch on the mezzanine, she saw a boy she had known in high school. He had had a tiny hand, a birth defect. She had been a senior and Blake a freshman at Phillips High School, but they took drama and speech together. (“Good evening, Fielding’s.”) One day, their speech teacher, Miss White, from the North, had jabbed her own skin with her index finger and said, “Some people are so ignorant that they think the pigmentation of their skin means who’s smart and who’s dumb, who’s superior and who’s inferior.” While others looked down at their desks in embarrassment, she and the freshman boy had exchanged an electric glance across the room, made a connection, she had thought.
(“Fielding’s Department Store. May I help you?”) The school had buzzed about Blake, his weird hand, of course but also because he was a math whiz and had whole symphonies in his head. He was different. When Blake looked at other students, it was with contempt for their inadequacies.
High school hadn’t been that way with Stella’s friend Cat, who was in a wheelchair. (“Good evening, Fielding’s.”) Cat was as smart as Blake, but she was friendly. From the balcony, Stella watched Blake walk into the shoe department and throw himself down into a chair. He looked like a spoiled prince, his head topped by curls, his defective hand held up like a scepter. Maybe Stella would telephone Cat and gossip a bit. No, this was a night when Cat’s brother was escorting her to a party given by one of her handicapped friends.
Nancy was doubtlessly on a date. Ellie would be at a rehearsal for The Fantasticks.
During her break from the switchboard, Stella wandered toward the dress department. The store was quiet, almost empty of customers. With the trouble going on, people didn’t want to be out at night. She nodded to Sadie, the store maid, already running the vacuum in her neat gray and white uniform, and at two clerks chatting at a cash register. The store felt lonely.
Stella went to the dress rack and closed her eyes. She liked to feel the textures of the dresses first, before she looked at them. She always made sure no one was watching her. Touching the sleeve of a denim jacket made Stella feel young and tender about herself. She loved to touch corduroy, grooved like a plowed field. Some fabrics had a bright, glazed finish, and then there was the new no-iron shagbark fabric. She had bought a no-iron dress, its fabric covered with tiny knots. Aunt Krit had said she preferred a plain cloth. “I always tried the latest fashions,” Aunt Pratt had called from her bed, “when I was young.”
While she touched the fabrics of the dresses, Stella’s hand remembered the reassuring twill of Darl’s trousers, the curve of his buttock, and at their feet, the city down in the valley.
Stella wandered to the three-sided mirror and admired her dress, a smooth cotton broadcloth composed of tiny brown and black checks, edged with black rickrack at the collarless throat and short sleeves. When she had felt the dress on its hanger, the rickrack had pleased her fingertips. Small, bright black buttons ran down the front from the neck to the hem. That long line of little buttons somehow seemed brave.
With a part down the middle of her head, Stella thought she looked like the brave poet Emily Dickinson. Emily had not always worn white; she had not always been reclusive, but had become so, over time. Maybe Stella would be the reverse of Emily; maybe she was coming through the looking glass the other way. Coming out into the world, no longer in hiding.
Something in the air, or was it in the light reflected from the mirror, reminded her of her mother’s voice. “You look nice, Stella.” Emily Dickinson’s hair had been dark and pulled smoothly back. Stella’s blond hair ended in a flip just above her shoulders.
Both Emily’s religious skepticism and her courage amazed Stella. Though the other girls in Emily’s boarding school professed their faith in the divinity of Jesus, Emily had refused. From what starting point in yourself could you doubt what everyone you knew told you about Christ? Emily had believed in God, if not Jesus. Of course, if she wore a black-and-brown-checked dress such as Stella’s, it would have come to the floor. Had a hoop under it and been the prettier for it.
What did Darl see in her? He seemed to know she was quiet, and he didn’t care. What did she see in herself? Somebody who wanted to change. Somebody who wanted to live more fully. Someone whose scope was larger than the campus, broader than boring, part-time work, wider than a cloistered, borrowed home with two aunts, one a maiden teacher, the other an invalid (though she loved them and was grateful to them). Stella stepped out of the three-way mirror and returned to her station at the switchboard.
Though she opened The Divine Comedy again, she mostly daydreamed and gazed over the balcony at the business of the store, at the shoe department, men’s clothing, jewelry and accessories, at hats left over from Easter. Sometimes she peered down into the glass cases of gloves and lipstick tubes, the minutiae of fashion. (“Good evening, Fielding’s.”) She sized up the customers passing in the aisles—who was attractive and who was not. A department store was like a city. She had loved looking out over Birmingham from Vulcan. Like looking from a castle wall, his arm around her, her fingers knowing the twill of his trousers. And where would they go tonight?
Someplace to hug and kiss. Some fine and private place. Since Darl had gotten the Vespa, they could explore the city. How important were congruent values to a happy relationship? Suppose he kept his religion (she hoped he did), but she lost hers?