'What I actually told him,' he said, 'was that you asked for it. Asked me to take it for you.'
She lowered the dress to her lap again and looked over at him, and James thought that surely she would say something now. But when she did speak, all she said was, 'It must be right hard, taking pictures of children'- politely, as if he were a stranger she was trying to make conversation with.
James waited a minute, but she didn't say more. She had lowered her head to her sewing again, fumbling at it with quick, blunt fingers and absentmindedly working the pins from one side of her mouth to the other. So he said, 'Well, ma'am, not really,' and then turned and quietly let himself out the door again. All the way down to his end of the porch he kept thinking of going back and trying once more, but he knew already it wasn't any use. So he entered his own part of the house and then just stood there a minute, thinking it over, watching Ansel as he slept.
12
The things Joan Pike owned in this world could be packed in two suitcases, with room to spare. She was putting them there now, one by one, folding the skirts in two and laying them gently on the bottom of the big leather suitcase her father's parents had given him to take to a debating contest fifty years ago. Her own suitcase, newer and shinier, stood waiting on the floor already filled and locked. She had saved out her big straw pocketbook, which was hard to pack and could hold all the things she might need on the bus. It stood on the floor, with one corner of a Greyhound ticket envelope sticking out of it. The ticket she had bought this morning, after spending all Wednesday night lying in bed rolling up the hem of her top sheet while she thought what to do. She had ridden into town for it on Simon's bicycle, and come back with it hidden inside her white shirt. Nobody knew she was going.
When her closet was empty she cleaned it out carefully, picking up every stray bobby pin and button from the floor and bunching the hangers neatly at one end of the rod with the hooks all pointing the same way. Mainly she wanted to save her aunt the trouble, but also she wanted to go away feeling that she had left a clean sweep behind her – not a thread, not a scrap of hers remaining that she could want to return for. She would like to have it seem as if she had never been here, if that was possible. So she closed the closet door firmly and turned the key in its lock. Then she began on the rest of the room.
She rolled her silver-backed dresser set in sweaters, so that none of the pieces would get scratched. Seeing the set, which her parents had given her on her eighteenth birthday, made her remember that she should be bringing back presents for them, and she frowned into the mirror when she thought about it. Always before, after two weeks at Scout camp even, she had brought back gifts for each of them and formally presented them, and her parents had done the same. But this time she hadn't thought far enough in advance; she would have to come home empty-handed. The idea bothered her, as if this were some basic point of guest etiquette that she, always a guest, had somehow forgotten. She shook her head, and laid the wrapped silver pieces carefully on top of her skirts.
Out in the back yard Simon was running an imaginary machine gun, shouting 'ta-ta-ta-ta-tat' in a high voice that cracked and aiming at unknowing wrens who sat in the bushes behind the house. She could see him from her window – his foreshortened, blue denim body, the swirl of hair radiating out from a tiny white point on the back of his head. With luck, he wouldn't see her go. He would stay there in the back yard, and his mother would stay in bed for her afternoon nap, and she could sneak out of the house and across the fields without anyone's seeing her. It might even be supper before they noticed. Mr Pike would fuss a little, feeling responsible for his brother's child. Mrs Pike was still too sad to care, but Simon would care. He would ask why she had left without telling them, and how would they answer him? How would she even answer him? 'Because I don't want to think I'm really going,' she would say. It was the first time she had thought that out, in words. She stopped folding a slip and looked down at where Simon sat, with his legs bent under him and the toes of his boots pointing out, sighting along a long straight stick and pulling the trigger. As soon as she got home, she decided, she would telephone to make it all right with him.
Then after supper James would come. 'Joan ready?' he'd say. 'She's gone,' They'd tell him. Then what would he do? She couldn't imagine that, no matter how hard she tried. Maybe he would say, 'Well, I'm sorry to hear that,' and remain where he was, his face dark and stubborn. Or maybe he would say, 'I'll go bring her back.' But that was something she didn't expect would ever happen now. A week ago, she might have expected it. She'd thought anything could happen, anyone would change. But now all she felt sure of was that ten years from now, and twenty, James would still be enduring, on and on, in that stuffy little parlour with Ansel in it; and she couldn't endure a minute longer.
She turned away from the window and went back to her suitcase. Everything was in it now. The bureau was left as blank as the bureau in a hotel room; its drawers were empty and smelled of wood again. On the back of the door hung her towel and washcloth, the only things left of her. She plucked them off the rack and carried them out to the laundry hamper in the hall, and then she was finished. No one would ever know she had lived here. When she had locked the second suitcase, and stepped into the high heels that she had taken off so as not to make a noise, she stood in the doorway a minute making sure of the blankness in the room. Then she picked up the two suitcases and the pocket book and went downstairs.
Carrying it all was harder than she remembered. She kept having to switch the pocket book strap from one arm to the other, and although the suitcases weren't heavy they were big and bulky and banged against her legs when she walked. Before she was even off the front porch she was breathing hard. Then in the yard, the spikes of her high heels kept sinking into the earth and making things more difficult. If she'd had any sense, she thought, she would have called Mr Carleton and his taxi service. Except then everybody and his brother would have known she was leaving. She waited until she had crossed the road and was into the field and then she took her first breather, chafing the red palms of her hands and looking anxiously back at the house. No one had seen her yet.
All the evening walks through this field with James or the children had taught her the shortest way to town – the straight line through burrs and bushes, leading apparently to nowhere but more field, emerging suddenly upon Emmett Smith's backyard and from there to Main Street. She walked carefully, to avoid getting runs in her stockings, and kept her eyes strained ahead for the first sight of the Smith house. Around her ears the breeze made a hot, lulling sound, drying the dampness on her forehead to a cold thin sheet. Then another sound rose, like wailing, and she turned and saw Simon running to catch up, his brown hands fluttering to part the weeds in front of his chest and his face desperate. 'Jo-oan!' he was calling. He made two syllables out of it. Joan set down the suitcases and waited, with her hands crossed over her pocketbook. 'Joan, wait' he said, and floundered on. 'Oh, Simon,' she said, but she kept waiting.
When he came up even with her he was out of breath, and covered with burrs. For a while he just stood there panting, but then his breath came more slowly and he straightened up. 'Can I come?' he asked.
'Oh, Simon-' '
'I came in to see what you was doing. I couldn't find you; I thought -' He stopped, and switched his eyes from her face to the field behind her. 'I wouldn't be a bit of trouble,' he said softly. She leaned forward, trying to catch his words and he said it louder: 'I wouldn't be a bit of-'