'They look pretty heavy for you.'
'I can take them.'
He climbed out his side of the taxi to drag the bags from the back seat. Somehow the bag that had been her father's had had a strap broken; the strap dangled, looking ridiculous and defeated. When Mr Carleton handed the bag to her she swayed for a minute, surprised by the weight of it, and then she said, 'Okay. I've got it.'
'You sure now.'
'Sure. Thank you, Mr Carleton.'
'Oh, it's nothing,' he said. 'Good night.' He climbed back into the taxi, slamming the door behind him, and backed out into the road. Joan started for the porch.
The suitcases were hard to get up the steps. She swung them onto the porch one at a time, and then she climbed the steps herself and picked them up again. This all felt so familiar; how many times had she lugged these suitcases into this house? She thought of the first time, coming here in a dust storm, met on the steps by Janie Rose who wore nothing but her underpants and carried one half a brown rubber sheet that they hadn't been able to get away from her in those days. Now there was no one at all to meet her. When she opened the front door the house was so empty it seemed to echo. She turned on a lamp, and it threw long, lonely shadows across the parlour walls.
The first thing she did was put her suitcases back in her bedroom. Whether they had noticed she was gone or not, she didn't want them to come back and find those suitcases. Then she closed her bedroom door and went directly to Simon's room. He wasn't there. The room was black and the door was open, and everything had a strange blank look.
Downstairs, she poured herself a glass of milk from the refrigerator and then wandered through the rooms drinking the milk and switching on every light she came across. Soon all in the house were on, but it didn't seem to change things. When the motor in the refrigerator started up she jumped a little, half frightened for a second. Then she set down the glass of milk and walked very slowly and deliberately out of the house, with that feeling of loneliness prickling the back of her neck as she walked.
The way the music was pouring out, she couldn't identify the voices from Ansel's window. All she heard was words and phrases, and occasional laughter. She stopped at the Potters' window and peered in, but not a single light glimmered there, not even from the very back of the house. They couldn't be far, then. If they planned to be gone for any length of time they turned all the lamps on and sat up a cardboard silhouette of a man reading that was guaranteed to fool burglars. And they couldn't be in bed; it was no later than ten o'clock. She turned away from the window and looked out at the yard, hoping they might come walking up, but they didn't. The only thing left to do was to go on to Ansel's.
No one answered when she knocked. It was too noisy for them to hear her. She opened the screen and knocked once more on the inner door, hard, and then she heard Ansel say, 'Wait! Did someone knock?'
'I didn't hear anyone,' said Miss Lucy.
Joan knocked again, and Ansel said, 'See!' She felt the doorknob twist beneath her hands; then Ansel was standing there, swaying slightly and smiling at her, leaning his cheek against the edge of the door. 'Came back, did you,' he said.
'What?'
‘I saw you go.'
'I don't-'
'But I didn't tell,' he said, and then swung the door all the way open and threw back one arm to welcome her. 'Look what we got!' he called to the others. 'Who we got. See?'
Joan stepped inside and looked around her. The room was full; it looked as if someone had tipped the house endwise so that everyone had slid down to James's parlour. Now they sat in one smiling, rumpled cluster – the Potter sisters, the Pikes, Ansel, and James. When Ansel shouted at them they all turned toward Joan and waved, with their faces calm and friendly. The only one who seemed surprised was Simon. He stood up, and said, 'Joan!' but she frowned at him. 'Hush,' she said. The voices rose again, returning to whatever they'd been talking about before. Simon shouted, 'What?'
'I said, "Hush"!' called Joan.
'Oh, I didn't tell. It was like I promised you, I didn't-'
The rest of his words were drowned out, but Joan understood his meaning. Nobody had told. Maybe they thought she'd just been to a movie, or off visiting. Maybe they knew that wherever she'd gone, she'd be back. And now they sat here, cheerful and in a party mood -but what was the party about? Just by looking, she couldn't tell. Miss Lucy and Miss Faye were making a silhouette of James – Miss Lucy holding a lamp up so that James winced in the light of it, and Miss Faye tracing the shadow of his wincing profile on a sheet of paper held against the wall. But that was something they always did; some instinct seemed to push them into making silhouettes at parties, and now everyone in the house had at least one silhouette of everyone else. Nor could she tell anything from Mr Pike, who seemed to be a little tiddly from some wine he was drinking out of a measuring cup. He sat smiling placidly at something beyond Joan's range of vision, tapping one finger against the cup in time to a jazz version of 'Stardust' that the radio was sawing out. And the person who confused her most was Mrs Pike, sitting in a chair in the corner with her hands folded but her eyes alert to everything that was going on. 'Fourteen!' she called out; she seemed to be counting the swallows Simon took from his own glass of wine. But her voice was lost among all the other voices, and Joan had to read her lips. She turned to Ansel, to see if he could explain all this. He had lain back on his couch now, like an emperor at a Roman festival, and when he saw her look his way he smiled and waved.
'Have a seat!' he shouted. He pointed vaguely to several chairs that were already occupied. 'We're celebrating.'
'Oh,' Joan said. 'Celebrating.'
'Simon ran away.'
'What?'
Simon smiled at her and nodded. 'I went to Caraway on a bus,' he said.
'Oh, Simon.'
'I saw those gold earrings.'
'But how did-'
'James and Mama came and got me. They made a special trip,' he said. 'We're drinking Miss Faye's cooking wine.'
Joan felt behind her for a footstool and sat down on it. 'Are you all right?' she asked.
'Sure I am.'
'Oh, I wish I hadn't gone off and -'
'No, really, I'm all right,' said Simon. 'Look, they're letting me have wine. They put ice cubes in it to make it watery but I drink it fast before the ice can melt.'
'That's nice,' Joan said vaguely. She kept looking around at the others. Ansel leaned toward Joan with his own jelly glass of wine and said, 'Drink up,' and thrust it at her, and then lay down again. 'Ansel had to find his own supper tonight,' Simon told her. 'He had one slice of garlic bologna, all dried out. James is going to cook him a steak tomorrow to make up for it.'
Joan took a long swallow of cooking wine and looked over at James. He was swivelling his eyes toward the silhouette while he kept his profile straight ahead, so that he seemed cross-eyed. When he felt Joan looking at him he smiled and called something to her that she couldn't hear, and then Miss Faye said, 'When you talk your nose moves up and down,' and erased the line she had drawn for his nose and left a smudge there. Mr Pike laughed. He clanged when he laughed; it puzzled Joan for a minute, and then she examined him more closely and found in his lap the elephant bell from Mrs Pike's mantlepiece. 'Why has he got that bell?' she asked Simon.
Simon shrugged, and Ansel answered for him. 'He used it while hunting for Simon,' he called. 'Weird thing, ain't it? Such a funny shape it has. Everything Indians do is backwards, seems to me -'