I had some difficulty discarding what was in the studio and so I closed it off. I shut both doors and locked them. Sometimes when I was sitting in the living room I heard people knock on the outside door and call for me. "Lady?
Picture lady? What's the matter, aren't you working no more? I been counting on this!" I listened, with my hands folded in my lap. I was surprised by how many people counted on my pictures. I was surprised by a lot of things. The flurry of my life had died down, the water had cleared so that finally J could see what was there.
But no one else could. My family pestered me, hounded me. They thought I had something left to give them. Well, I tried to tell them. I said, "You'll have to manage on your own from now on." They just looked baffled. Asked me to cut their hair, sew buttons on their shirts. Saul kept trying to start these pointless conversations. Really, he'd only married me because he saw me sticking with my mother. He saw I wouldn't have the gumption to leave a place. Him and his I-know-you-love-me's, I-know-you-won't-leave-me's; I should have realized. "This marriage Isn't going well," I told him.
But he said, "Charlotte, everything has its bad patches."
"I need to take a wilderness course."
"Wilderness?"
"Learn to live on my own with no equipment.
Cover great distances. In the desert and the Alps and such."
"But we don't have any deserts here."
"I know."
"And we don't have any Alps."
"I know."
"We don't even have snow all that often."
"Saul," I said, "don't you understand? I have never, ever been anywhere. I live in the house I was born in. I live in the house my mother was born in. My children go to the same school I did and one even has the same teacher. When I had that teacher she was just starting out and scared to death and pretty as a picture; now she's a dried-up old maid and sends Selinda home for not wearing a bra."
"Certainly," said Saul. "Things keep coming around, didn't I tell you? You and I keep coming around. Charlotte, year by year, changed in little ways; we'll work things through eventually."
"It's not worth it, though," I said.
"Not worth it?"
"It takes too great a toll." He folded both my hands in his, with his face very calm and preacherly. Probably he didn't know how hard he was gripping. "Wait a while," he said. "This will pass. We all have… just wait a while. Wait." I waited. What was I waiting for? It seemed I hadn't yet discarded all I should have. There were still some things remaining.
Jiggs reminded me of the P. T. A. meeting; he saw it on the UNICEF calendar.
He was seven now and industrious, organizational, a natural-born chairman.
"Eight o'clock, and wear your red dress," he told me.
"I don't have that dress any more and I don't want to go to any meetings."
"It's fun, they serve cookies. Our class is making the Kool-Aid."
"I have spent my Me at the Clarion P. T. A. What's the purpose?"
"I don't know, but I'm sure there is one," said Jiggs. He peered at the calendar again. "The thirteenth is Muhammad's birthday. The fifth was World Day of Prayer. Mother, did you enjoy World Day of Prayer?"
"I'm sorry, honey, I didn't know they were having it"
"You should have looked ahead of tune."
"My idea of a perfect day," I told him, "is an empty square on the calendar. That's all I ask."
"Well, then," said Jiggs. He adjusted his glasses and ran his finger across the page. "In the month of March, youll have three perfect days."
"Three? Only three?" I looked down at the back of his neck-concave, satiny. Very slowly, I began to let myself imagine his mother. She would ride into town on a Trailways bus, wearing something glorious and trashy spun of Lurex. I would meet her when she arrived. I would bring Jiggs with me. I would at long last give him up.
That morning Linus and Miss Feather were helping at the church bazaar; I had the place to myself. I sent the children to school and gave the house a final cleaning, dispensing with all the objects that had sprouted in title night-rolled socks, crumpled homework papers, and a doll's toy dollhouse no bigger than a sugar cube, filled with specks of furniture. (I didn't check to see what Mnd of furniture; I feared to find another dollhouse tucked inside that one.) Then I took a bath and dressed in a fresh skirt and blouse. The mirror showed me someone stark and high-cheekboned, familiar in an unexpected way. My eyes had a sooty look and you would think from the spots of color on my cheeks that I was feverish. I wasn't, though. I felt very cold and heavy.
The dog seemed to know that I was going and kept following me too closely, moaning and nudging the backs of my knees with his nose. He got on my nerves. I unlocked my studio door and pushed him inside. "Goodbye, Ernest," I said. Then I straightened and saw the greenish light that filtered through the windows-a kind of light they don't have anyplace else. Oh, I've never had the knack of knowing I was happy right while the happiness was going on. I closed the door and passed back through the house, touching the worn, smudged woodwork, listening to absent voices, inhaling the smell of school paste and hymnals. It didn't look as if I'd be able to go through with this after all.
But once you start an action, it tends to bear you along. All I could hope for was to be snagged somewhere. In the sunporch, maybe, circling the phone, waiting for news that Jiggs had a sniffle and was being sent home early. In the kitchen, taking forever to make a cup of instant coffee. Absently pouring a bowl of cereal. Something besides cereal fell from the box-a white paper packet. I plucked it out and opened it. Inside was a stamped tin badge, on which a cartoon man walked swiftly toward me with his feet the biggest part of him. And along the bottom, my own personal message. Keep on truckin'.
Fifteen
We drove slowly, looking for a bank that stayed open Friday nights. We left Perth behind, entered the next town and then the next. These places were strung together like beads, no empty spots between them but ravelings of Tastee-Freezes, seashell emporiums, and drive-in movies. It was dark enough now so I could see the actors' faces on the screens. But all I saw of Jake and Mindy was the gold line edging each of their profiles, sometimes lit other colors by the neon signs we passed. Mindy was craning forward, searching the buildings', biting her lower lip. Jake was sunk low in his seat like someone sick or beaten, and he hardly bothered to look out the window.
"Maybe in this state, banks don't have Friday hours," Mindy said.
Jake didn't answer.
"Jake?" He stirred. "Sure they do," he said.
"How do you know? What if we end up driving all night, Jake, ride right off the bottom of Florida. Shouldn't we stop and get a store to cash this thing?"
"Well, stores, now, they might tend to make more of a to-do," Jake said. "Be more apt to remember us later."
"But I'm tired! I got a crick in my neck." Jake let his head turn, following a likely-looking office building.
"If I don't eat by six I faint," said Mindy. "And look, it's almost seven."
"Well, there now, Mindy," Jake said absently.
"You know I got low blood sugar."
"Really? You want some sugar?"
"No I don't want sugar."
"No trouble at all, Mindy, I got it right here." He searched his jacket, accidentally poking me with one elbow. "Look at here. Domino sugar." The packets were worn and grimy by now. He held them out, a double handful. "Never say I don't come prepared."