Would you think me forward if I—?
Perry’s? Why, Perry’s was two blocks away; it was where his mother used to go for soupbones. And no sooner had it hit him than sure enough, they came to Dowd’s grocery and passed it by, with neither Mary nor Darcy giving it a glance. Jeremy did. He gazed longingly at the crates of oranges and peaches and pears slanted toward him behind the fly-specked plate glass window. The tissue paper they nestled in seemed a particularly beautiful shade of green. He thought with love of Mrs. Dowd’s gnarled old hands spreading the tissue just enough, rescuing a runaway peach and setting it back in place with a little grandmotherly pat. Mary and Darcy walked on. “Wait!” he said. “I mean — have you ever tried Dowd’s?”
“They’re more expensive,” Mary said. She went on studying her list. Darcy took Jeremy’s hand in both of hers and swung on it — a clamp on his index finger, another on his little finger. What could he do? He set one foot in front of the other, doggedly, barely managing each step. For Mary Tell’s sake he was slaying dragons, and yet to keep her respect it was necessary that she never even guess it. He wiped his face on his sleeve. They came to the end of the block, where a red light stopped them. Cars whizzed back and forth, but what he was most afraid of was the street itself. Then the light turned green. “Wait!” he said again. Mary looked up, in the act of putting her grocery list in her purse.
“Could we — I mean I don’t believe I—”
“Hurry,” Darcy said, “we’ll miss the light.”
He stepped off the curb. All the comfort he had was Darcy’s grip on his hand, but now Mary said, “Darcy, don’t swing on people. How often have I told you that?” One of Darcy’s hands fell away; only his index finger was secure. He reached out blindly and found Mary’s arm, the crook of her elbow, which he hung onto as he had seen men do on the late show. Did she notice that it was she supporting him and not the other way around? “I certainly wish the price of tomatoes would go down,” Mary said.
Then they had reached the other sidewalk. The air on this block was different. He could have told it with his eyes shut. It was hotter, more exposed, and old Mrs. Carraway’s wind chimes were not tinkling. What was that flat-faced cement building? He didn’t like the look of it. He noticed that the rowhouses ran only in twos and threes, which gave the block a broken-up look. A mean-eyed woman watched him from her front stoop. He saw a commercial printer’s whose black and gold sign must have been here years ago, when he was a boy walking to school. Its sudden emergence in his memory made him feel strange. He lowered his eyes again. Pretend this is only a corridor leading off from the vestibule. Pretend it is just an unusually long room. It will all be over in a while.
Then they reached Perry’s. “Here we are,” said Mary. He looked up to find a window full of dead things stacked in pyramids — tinned vegetables, Nabisco boxes, paper towels. No fruit. “I’ll wait outside,” he said.
“Outside?”
“I’ll just — I do my shopping at Dowd’s.”
Mary seemed about to ask him a question, but then Darcy said, “Can I have my penny now?”
“What penny?” Mary said.
“You said you would give me a penny for the gumball machine. You said you would. You said—”
“Oh, for mercy’s sake,” said Mary, opening her pocketbook. “Here.” Then she went in, and Jeremy chose a place outside the door. First he watched the street, but the unfamiliar buildings opposite made him feel worse. He looked behind him, toward the glass door, and saw Darcy just coming out with a gumball. “Look. Pink,” she said. “My favorite color.”
“Is that right?” said Jeremy. He was glad to see her. He turned outward again, so that he was facing the street. Darcy stood beside him. “They have charms and things too,” she said. “You can see them in the machine but they never come out. Do you think I might get one someday?”
“Perhaps so,” Jeremy said.
“Or are they just to fool people. You think that’s what it is? You think they’re just trying to get your pennies from you?
Jeremy had a terrible thought. He felt that he might become marooned beside Perry’s Grocery. How would he ever get home again? He imagined himself dipping the toe of one shoe into the street, then drawing it out and turning away, unable to cross. “I’m sorry, I just can’t,” he would have to say. He thought of the time he had climbed the crape myrtle tree in his back yard when he was three. He had climbed only to the first fork but then had found it impossible to get back down. Every time he tried, his hair stood on end and the soles of his feet started tingling. “Let him stay,” his father said. “He’ll come down.” Then at night, when he still hadn’t managed it, his father took three long strides to the tree and lifted him off roughly, one arm around his waist, causing Jeremy to scream in that single dizzying moment before his feet touched solid ground again. Now Mary would take him in hand, nudge him out, coax him into one step after another. “Come on, you can do it, you’ll see, when you get to the other side you’ll look back and laugh at how easy it was.” Only he wouldn’t. He would have to back away, and now he was too big to be carried bodily. He imagined spending the rest of his life on this new island, exposed for all the world to see, propped against the wall like a target. “Would you like half of my gumball, Jeremy?” Darcy asked him.
“No, thank you, Darcy,” he said.
“I don’t have a knife, but I could bite it in half.”
Dread rose in him like a flood in a basement, starting in his feet and rapidly filling his legs, his stomach, his chest, seeping out to his fingertips. Its cold flat surface lay level across the top of his throat. He swallowed and felt it tip and right itself. Nausea came swooping over him, and he buckled at the knees and slid downward until he was seated flat on the sidewalk with his feet sticking out in front of him. “Jeremy, you silly,” Darcy said, but when he couldn’t smile at her or even raise his eyes she said, “Jeremy? Jeremy?” She went screaming into the grocery store; her voice pierced all the cotton that seemed to be wrapped around his head. “Mom, come quick, Jeremy’s all squashed down on the sidewalk!” Then he was surrounded by anxious feet nosing in upon him — Darcy’s sneakers, Mary’s sandals, and a pair of stubby loafers almost covered by a long bloody apron. “It’s the heat,” the apron said. Mary said, “Jeremy? Are you ill?”
“Sick,” he whispered.
She set a rustling paper bag beside him, bent to lay a hand on his forehead and then straightened up. Her sandals were the largest thing about her. The hem of her skirt was so close he could see the stitches, he saw the underside of her bosom and the triangle below her jaw. “Will you marry me?” he asked her.
She laughed. “No, but I’ll see you home and into bed,” she said. “Can you stand? You need some air.” And she raised his head herself, and then propped him while he got to his feet. She said, “Walk a ways, now. It’ll clear your head. Here, take this.” From her grocery bag she brought out a navy blue box, and while he swayed against her she tore the wrapper off and handed him a cinnamon graham cracker. “Sometimes it helps to eat a little something,” she said.
“No, no.”
“Try it, Jeremy.”
He only clutched it in his hand. He felt that opening his mouth would cause his last remaining strength to pour out of him. Inch by inch he headed homeward, shaky but upright, leaning on Mary’s arm. The bloody apron receded behind them. Darcy danced ahead. They came closer to the street while Jeremy prayed continuously to the traffic light: oh, please turn red, turn red, let me at least have time to get my bearings. But it stayed an evil green, and Mary led him without a pause off the curb, across a desert of cement, up the other side. They were home. They were on his own block. He straightened and let out a long slow breath. Mary said, “You’re just like Darcy, whenever you don’t eat breakfast you get sick to your stomach. Isn’t that what happened?”