“I don’t know whether this would interest you or not,” she would say to guests, picking up the album in both hands, and as she deposited it on her visitor’s lap she would say, “Now, just look at them until you get bored, but for heaven’s sake don’t feel obliged to go through them all.” And she would then hover nearby, anxious to know which pictures were being looked at. Often she would be unable to sit still; she had to look over the visitor’s shoulder, reaching down now and then to say, “That’s the famous old cathedral you’re always hearing about,” Or, “That’s the ocean, of course.” Or, “This was taken from the steps of the National Gallery, and right there directly behind the man on the bicycle is where we ate lunch.”
But the pictures to which she returned most often for her own pleasure were those of her family: they evoked what she had known most intimately, and all she had loved most profoundly.
117. Hello?
One December morning near the end of the year when snow was falling moist and heavy for miles all around, so that the earth and the sky were indivisible, Mrs. Bridge emerged from her home and spread her umbrella. With small cautious steps she proceeded to the garage, where she pressed the button and waited impatiently for the door to lift. She was in a hurry to drive downtown to buy some Irish lace anti-macassars that were advertised in the newspaper, and she was planning to spend the remainder of the day browsing through the stores because it was Harriet’s day off and the house was empty so empty.
She had backed just halfway out of the garage when the engine died. She touched the starter and listened without concern because, despite her difficulties with the Lincoln, she had grown to feel secure in it. The Lincoln was a number of years old and occasionally recalcitrant, but she could not bear the thought of parting with it, and in the past had resisted this suggestion of her husband, who, mildly puzzled by her attachment to the car, had allowed her to keep it.
Thinking she might have flooded the engine, which was often true, Mrs. Bridge decided to wait a minute or so.
Presently she tried again, and again, and then again. Deeply disappointed, she opened the door to get out and discovered she had stopped in such a position that the car doors were prevented from opening more than a few inches on one side by the garage partition, and on the other side by the wall. Having tried all four doors she began to understand that until she could attract someone’s attention she was trapped. She pressed the horn, but there was not a sound. Half inside and half outside she remained.
For a long time she sat there with her gloved hands folded in her lap, not knowing what to do. Once she looked at herself in the mirror. Finally she took the keys from the igni-tion and began tapping on the window, and she called to anyone who might be listening, “Hello? Hello out there?”
But no one answered, unless it was the falling snow.