“No.”
“How did you find me, Louise? Of all the places in the city, what made you go there?”
“A lucky guess based on a lucky coincidence,” she said, smiling. “The little Oakley girl was in the library this afternoon. She wanted a special book and Miss Albert brought her to my department and introduced her to me. Since I’d just looked up who lived at 319 Jacaranda Road for you, I asked her if that was her address and she said yes. It was that simple.”
“No, it couldn’t have been. You couldn’t have even guessed anything from just that much.”
“Well, we talked a little.”
“Not about me. She’s never even seen me.”
“We talked,” Louise said, “about her cat. She doesn’t own a dog.”
He turned away from her and looked out the window though there was nothing to see but different shades of grayness. “That wasn’t a very good lie about the little dog that chased cars, I guess.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“It’s a funny thing, her coming to the library like that. It’s as if someone planned it, God or Ben or—”
“Nobody planned it. Kids go to libraries and I work in one, that’s all... You see lots of little girls, Charlie. What made you... well, take a fancy to that particular one?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it because she reminded you of me, Charlie? She reminded me of me right away, with those solemn eyes and that long fine blond hair.”
“Blond?”
“Don’t sound so incredulous. I used to be a regular towhead when I was a kid.”
He put his hands on the steering wheel and held on tight like a racing driver about to reach a dangerous curve. Blond, he thought. That crazy mother has dyed Jessie’s hair blond. No, it’s impossible. Jessie’s hair is short, it couldn’t have grown long in a day. A wig, then. One of those new wigs the young girls are wearing now—
“There must be trouble in the family,” Louise said. “Mary Martha wanted a book on divorce.”
“Who?”
“The Oakley girl, Mary Martha... You look upset, Charlie. I shouldn’t go on talking about her like this, and I won’t. I promise not to say another word.” She pressed her cheek against his shoulder. “I love you so much, Charlie. Do you love me, too?”
“Yes.”
“You’re tired, though, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to go home?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. I — it’s late, it’s cold.”
“I know. You go home and get a good night’s sleep and you’ll feel much better in the morning.”
“Will I?” He looked straight ahead of him, his eyes strained, as if he was trying to make out the outlines of the morning through the fog. But all he could see was Jessie coming out of the playground with Mary Martha. Their heads were together and they were whispering, they were planning to trick him. All the time he thought they hadn’t noticed him and they’d been on to him right from the start. They’d looked at him and seen even through the dirty windows of the old green car, something different about him, something wrong. And Jessie — it must have been Jessie, she was always the leader — had said, “Let’s fool him. Let’s pretend I live in your house.”
Children were subtle, they could see things grownups couldn’t. Their attention wasn’t divided between past and present, it was focused on the present. But what was there about him that had made Jessie notice him? How had she found out he was different?”
Louise said, “Good night, Charlie.”
Although he said, “Good night,” in return, he was no longer even aware of Louise except as a person who’d come to bring him bad news and was now leaving. Good riddance, stranger.
The car door opened and closed again. He turned on the ignition and pulled out into the street. Somewhere in the city, in some house hidden now by night and fog, a little girl knew he was different — no, she was not a little girl, she was already a woman, devious, scheming, provocative. She was probably laughing about it right at this minute, remembering how she’d tricked him. He had to find her.
Reasons why he had to find her began to multiply in his mind like germs. I’ll reprimand her, without scaring her, of course, because I’d never scare a child no matter how bad. I’ll ask her what there was about me she noticed, why I looked different to her. I’ll tell her it’s not nice, thinking such terrible thoughts...
(13)
Jessie called out from her bedroom, “I got up for a glass of water and now I’m ready to be tucked in again, somebody!”
She didn’t especially need tucking in for the third time but she could hear her parents arguing and she wanted to stop the sound which was keeping her awake. She thought the argument was probably about money, but she couldn’t distinguish any particular words. The sound was just a fretful murmur that crept in through the cracks of her bedroom door and made her ears itch. It wasn’t a pleasant tickle like the kind she got when she hugged the Arlingtons’ dog, Chap; it was like the itch of a flea bite, painful, demanding to be scratched but not alleviated by scratching.
She called again and a minute later her father appeared in the doorway. He had on his bathrobe and he looked sleepy and cross. “You’re getting away with murder, young one. Do you realize it’s after ten?”
“I can’t help it if time passes. I couldn’t stop it if I wanted to.”
“No, but you might make its passing a little more peaceful for the rest of us. Mike’s asleep, and I hope to be soon.”
She knew from his tone that he wasn’t really angry with her. He even sounded a little relieved that his conversation with Ellen had been interrupted.
“You could sit on the side of my bed for a minute.”
“I think I will,” he said, smiling slightly. ““It’s the best offer I’ve had today.”
“Now we can talk.”
“What about?”
“Oh, everything. People can always find something to talk about.”
“They can if one of the people happens to be you. What’s on your mind, Jess?”
She leaned against the headboard and gazed up at the ceiling. “Are Ellen and Virginia best friends?”
“If you’re referring to your mother and your Aunt Virginia, yes, I suppose you’d call them best friends.”
“Do they tell each other everything?”
“I don’t know. I hope not.”
“I mean, like Mary Martha and me, we exchange our most innermost secrets. Did you ever have a friend like that?”
“Not since I was old enough to have any secrets worth mentioning,” he said dryly. “Is something worrying you, Jessie?”
She said, “No,” but she couldn’t prevent her eyes from wandering to the closed door of her closet. A whole night and day had passed since she’d taken back the book Virginia had given her and Howard had pressed the twenty dollars into her hand. The money was out of sight now, hidden in the toe of a shoe, but she might as well have been still carrying it around in her hand. She thought about it a good deal, and always with the same mixture of power and guilt; she had money, she could buy things now, but she had also been bought. She wondered what grownups did with children they bought. Did they keep them? Or did they sell them again, and to whom? Perhaps if she returned the twenty dollars to Howard and Virginia, they would give her back to her father and everything would be normal again. She hadn’t wanted the money in the first place, Howard had forced it on her; and she had a strong feeling that he would refuse to take it back.