“Things change whether we let them or not. And that’s good — it keeps us from getting bored with life and with each other.”
“But I’m not bored.”
“Listen to me, Charlie. I won’t be living with you and Louise, first because I don’t want to, and second, because Louise wouldn’t want me to, and third be—”
“Louise wouldn’t mind. She’s crazy about you, Ben. Why, I bet when you come right down to it, she’d just as soon marry you as marry me.”
Ben reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder. “Goddam it, don’t you talk like that. It’s not fair to Louise. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” Charlie said in a whisper. “But I was only—”
“Sure, you were only. You’re always only. You know what happens when you’re only? Things get so fouled up—”
“I’m sorry, Ben.”
“Yeah. Sure. Well.”
“I only meant it as a compliment, to show you how much Louise likes you and that she wouldn’t mind at all if you lived with us.”
Ben took a deep drag on his cigarette. “I have to go back inside.”
“You’re not really mad at me?”
“No.”
“And it’s O.K. if I buy another car, say right after work?”
“It’s your money.”
“Wouldn’t you like to come along and give me advice on what make and model to get and things like that?”
“Not this time.”
Charlie heard the finality in his voice and he knew Ben meant not this time and not any time ever again.
He watched Ben go back into the cafeteria kitchen and he felt like a child abandoned in the middle of a city, in a strange noisy alley filled with the clatter of dishes and the clanking of pots and pans, and voices shouting, in Spanish, words he couldn’t understand.
I’m frightened. Help me, Ben!
Not this time. Not any time ever again.
The two Charlies walked, together but not quite in step, down the alley and into the street, the engaged man about to buy a new car, and the little boy looking for a little girl to play with.
(10)
Miss Albert first noticed the child because she was so neat and quiet. Most of the children who came to the library during summer vacation wore jeans or shorts with cotton T-shirts, as if they were using the place as a rest stop between beach and ball game, movie and music lesson. In groups or alone, they were always noisy and always chewing something — chocolate bars, bubble gum, peanut brittle, apples, ice cream cones, bananas, occasionally even cotton candy. Miss Albert had a recurrent nightmare in which she opened up one of the valuable art books and found all the pages glued together with cotton candy.
The little girl with the blond ponytail was not chewing anything. She wore a pink dress with large blue daisies embroidered on the patch pockets. Her shoes had the sick-white color that indicated too many applications of polish to cover too many cracks in the leather. The child’s expression was blank, as if her hair was drawn back and fastened so tightly that her facial muscles couldn’t function. It must be just like having your hair pulled all the time, Miss Albert thought. I wouldn’t like it one bit. She probably doesn’t either, poor child.
The girl picked a magazine from the rack and sat down. She opened it, turned a few pages, then closed it again and sat with it on her lap, her eyes moving from the main door to the clock on the mezzanine and back again. The obvious conclusion was that the girl was waiting for someone. But Miss Albert didn’t care for the obvious; she preferred the elaborate, even the bizarre. The child’s family had just arrived in town, possibly to get away from a scandal of some kind — what kind Miss Albert would decide on her lunch hour — and the girl, alone and friendless, had come to the library for the children’s story hour at half past one. But Miss Albert was not satisfied with this explanation. The girl had no look of anticipation on her face, no look of anything, thanks to that silly hair-do. She’d be cute as a bug with her hair cut just below her ears and a fluffy bang. Or maybe with an Alice-in-Wonderland style like Louise, except on Louise it looks ridiculous at her age. Imagine Louise getting married, I think it’s just wonderful. It shows practically anything can happen if you wait long enough.
Half an hour passed. Miss Albert’s stomach was rumbling and her arms were tired from taking books from her metal cart and putting them back on their proper shelves. From the children’s section adjoining the main reading room, she could hear a rising babble of voices and the scrape of chairs being rearranged. In ten minutes the story hour would begin and Mrs. Gambetti, with nothing to do at children’s checkout, would come and relieve Miss Albert for lunch. And Miss Albert would take her sandwich and thermos of coffee over to Encinas Park to watch the people with their sandwiches and their Thermoses of coffee.
But I really can’t leave the child just sitting there, she thought. Very likely she doesn’t know where to go and she’s probably too timid to ask, having been through all that scandal whatever it was but I’m sure it was quite nasty.
Miss Albert pushed her empty cart vigorously down the aisle like a determined week-end shopper. At the sound of its squeaking wheels, Mary Martha turned her head and met Miss Albert’s kindly and curious gaze.
Miss Albert said, “Hello.”
Mary Martha had been instructed not to speak to strangers but she didn’t think this would apply to strangers in a library, so she said, “Hello,” back.
“What’s your name?”
“Mary Martha Oakley.”
“That’s very pretty. You’re new around here, aren’t you, Mary?”
The child didn’t answer, she just looked down at her shoes. Her toes had begun to wiggle nervously like captive fish. She didn’t want the lady to notice so she attempted to hide her feet under the chair. During the maneuver, the magazine slid off her lap onto the floor.
Miss Albert picked it up, trying not to look surprised that a child so young would choose Fortune as reading material. “Did you move to town recently, Mary?”
“I’m not supposed to answer when people call me Mary because my name is Mary Martha. But I guess it’s all right in a library. We didn’t move to town, we’ve always lived here.”
“Oh. I thought — well, it doesn’t matter. The story hour is beginning in a minute or two. You just go through that door over there” — Miss Albert pointed — “and turn to the right and take a seat. Any seat you like.”
“I already have a seat.”
“But you can’t hear the story from this distance.”
“No, ma’am.”
“You don’t want to hear the story?”
“No, ma’am, I’m waiting for my mother.”
Miss Albert concealed her disappointment behind a smile. “Well, perhaps you’d like something to read that would be a little more suitable for your age bracket.”
Mary Martha hesitated, frowning. “Do you have books about everything?”
“Pretty nearly everything, from aardvarks to Zulus. What kind of book are you interested in?”
“One about divorce.”
“Divorce?” Miss Albert said with a nervous little laugh. “Goodness, I’m not sure I— Wouldn’t you like a nice picture book to look at instead?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well, I’m afraid I don’t — that is, perhaps we’d better ask Miss Lang in the reference department. She knows more about such situations than I do. Come on, I’ll take you over and introduce you.”