disinterest of one to whom other women are only relatives or neighbors.
I give up, Frances thought. But she was unable to give up. A need she didn’t want to admit sent her through the aisles of the store, looking at the counter displays, buying a box of stationery here and three pairs of sheer nylons there, sizing up the clerks and the women who were desultorily shopping. She knew she was being silly. She and Bake and the others had talked about the wacky idea people have that “you can always tell.” The men in the insurance office had bragged about “knowing one every time,” looking past her as she sat filling out forms. Every woman in the room could be available and it wouldn’t show. “Still,” Kay had insisted, “sometimes you sort of know. It’s not the clothes or the hairdo. I don’t know what it is.” And Bake, flicking out her cigarette, “Pure wishful thinking.”
Frances kept on looking.
It was a hot day. Her back ached from shoving furniture around and her scalp itched from the wave lotion. Her toes pinched. She went out into the torrid street carrying her packages, remembering too late that she had meant to look at dresses.
There were other stores, none so large or up-to-date as Shapiro’s but all carrying familiar brand names. A Sears Roebuck on one corner faced a Steinway on the other corner. Kresge, Woolworth, and Ben Franklin were lined up on the same block. There were jewelry stores with engagement rings in little slotted boxes. She passed a tavern that looked cool and dark, thought about going in for a pre-luncheon martini and realized that she didn’t know the customs in Waubonsie. Maybe nice women didn’t go into bars unescorted. She walked along.
What was she looking for, she wondered, an oriental bazaar with teak and spices and carved ivory?
A sign with Chinese characters, red on gold, caught her eye. She moved toward it. And there was her bazaar.
The window was narrow, with a dozen books lying at careless angles. A complete edition of Shakespeare in half calf, open at the Balcony Scene—nice clear print with curly serifs and elegant capitals. Half a dozen remaindered novels. A thin volume that could only be hand-set poetry, jacketed in burlap. Katherine Mansfield’s Journals, both volumes, faded purple. And in the front of the window, flanked by a chunk of uncut rose crystal and a small, flowered bowl, lay a wood carving of a cat done with love and skill, the essence of catness. I’ve got to have that, she decided, entering to a thin tinkle of chimes.
A young man floated forward to meet her. If she had felt baffled about the women in the store, unable to tell which were her own kind, there was no doubt about this boy. The insurance salesmen would have placed him without a second look. His face was pretty rather than handsome, his hair a little too long and too carefully disposed; he came to an elegant stop leaning on the counter. It was shirtsleeve weather, but his narrow striped collar was held by a little gold pin. A little fine-drawn, a little precious; and in this alien land her heart warmed to him. She could have hugged him.
A little nellie, she thought in automatic criticism. And realized, reddening, that he was sizing her up too and what he was seeing was Mrs. William Ollenfield. She was a little angry that he should judge by appearances. The boys are all artistic and the girls are all athletic. Kay, for instance—Kay wouldn’t walk across the street if she had cab fare. She said coldly, “The cat in the window—it’s for sale?”
“It’s nice, isn’t it? I have a friend who carves them. All different and individual—you’ll never see it duplicated.”
She was reluctant to ask what it cost, as though originality could be paid for in money. It didn’t matter anyway. Mrs. William Ollenfield had plenty for little impulsive purchases. Looking around, delaying her commitment to the cat, she saw that the place was really a secondhand store, a little dusty and shabby. But a length of Persian silk in dull reds and blues lay across a small table, there were three or four small water colors on one wall, and a shelf held several pieces of handmade pottery. “The pictures?”
He made a small modest gesture. “Mine. I have fun doing them, and every once in a while somebody buys one.” He smiled. “Why don’t you look around, if you’re not in any hurry? I mean, if you’re interested in books. You don’t have to buy anything.”
It was true, the place was empty except for the two of them. She knew the story: the boy sensitive, working in a store or an office at a job perhaps made for him by an uncle or friend of the family, always out of things, always nervous about his hidden personal life. Dismissals, the staff being cut, the company reorganized, never the real reason, always an embarrassed excuse.
He was looking at her. She said, “Thanks, maybe I will. I just moved here from Chicago, and I haven’t met anybody yet.” And remembered the freshly curled hair and the printed silk, the idiotic ruffle. Take off your mask, but how? He said politely, “It’s not a very interesting town,” and turned away. She had no answer. If she said, “Yes, but I have to go where my husband goes,” it would only bear out the lying testimony of the ruffled dress.
It seemed odd, now, that she had never had a close male friend. Bake had half a dozen, two nice boys who shared an apartment on the floor above her, a gray-haired man with an invalid wife who took her to concerts—you saw him in Karla’s now and then, having a drink with one girl or another before going back to his furnished room. But she had never known any man well enough to count him as a friend. She thought she might like to know this boy better.
The doorbell jingled again. Sunshine poured in, outlining the figure of a girl on the threshold. She came in slowly, pulling the door shut behind her. In outline, against the harsh outdoor light, she seemed like a slender boy of fifteen or sixteen, his angles not yet blunted into manhood. Once in the room she was neither fifteen nor a boy. There were fine creases at the corners of her eyes and around her thin neck, and the line of her shoulders was purely feminine. She had high cheekbones and ash-blonde hair cut short; where it curled around her forehead it was dark with perspiration. She wore blue slacks and a striped cotton shirt, with sneakers; her bare ankles were fine-boned.
She said, ignoring Frances, “I just wanted to tell you the committee meets tonight at Joe’s. The books they ordered have come.”
“All right.”
I ought to leave, Frances thought. They know each other and I’m an outsider. But she was unable to go. Embarrassed and a little frightened, but compelled, she said, “You look like someone I know.”
“Are you a parent? I’m a teacher, so naturally I meet a lot of parents.”
“No. I only meant—”
She was floundering. The boy came to her rescue. He said, “She’s new in town and she likes John’s cats. If she has any sense at all,” he said, lifting his narrow shoulders, “she’ll go right back where she came from. No matter where it is, it can’t be as bad as here.”
The girl was sizing her up. Frances gave back the look. She looked like Kay. There was no real physical resemblance; Kay was taller and more filled out, and her hair was reddish-brown. It was the boylike air. Put this one in tights and tunic and she could play Rosalind, half boy and half woman, a face crossed by fleeting part-expressions. Looks or no looks, in some way that really mattered, she was like Kay.
She said, “No, you look like a girl I know. Used to know. Would you both like to go somewhere and have a drink?”
The appraising silence was like Kay’s, too. Then the fair girl gave her a polite smile with no depth to it. “Thanks, but I have an engagement. Maybe another time.”
Frances was helpless. She wanted to grab this stranger by the sleeve and beg her not
