She was fussing over a minor drapery detail when the doorbell rang.
"I ought to disconnect that damned thing," she muttered as she reluctantly left the Lucy. The bell clamored a fourth time. "Just a living minute!" She wiped her sticky hands on her smock front. "Never have callers when I'm clean, do I?" She threw open the door.
"Mrs. Martin?" asked the woman standing there. She was clutching the strap of a shoulderbag, balancing a thick notebook, a packet of forms, and trying to talk intelligibly around the ball-point pen between her teeth.
She wasn't even vaguely familiar to Mirelle: not a face seen at church or the Food Fair or school and community meetings. In a stylish grey jersey dress with matching coat, her dark brown hair smartly coiffed, she was an attractive woman. Her even features were carefully made-up, lightly but expertly so that with animation the lines of age and dissipation were not immediately apparent. The mouth was wide and thin-lipped: the smile which the pen bisected was winningly apologetic, Only the expression of the large, slightly protuberant grey eyes belied the total impression of the suburban type. The eyes, quick, darting, shrewd, were mocking and critical.
"I'm Sylvia Esterhazy, your ward-heeler."
"My what?" Mirelle laughed aloud.
Sylvia Esterhazy repeated herself good-naturedly, her husky voice playing with the laugh inside her. "Your county committee woman."
The notebook was slipping from her grasp and so was the strap of her shoulderbag. Before Mirelle was aware of her intention, she had taken the notebook from Sylvia's hand and was shepherding her into the living room.
"Ward-heeler is what I am though, despite the politer title on the election ballot. We're having a registration unit at the elementary school on Saturday and I'm trying to get all those eligible down there to register. That includes dispensing Girl Scouts as baby-sitters if necessary. You and your husband have been here over the statutory year, haven't you? Good, we want your votes… either way… because the next election is going to be a bitch."
"I'm afraid I'm an Independent."
Sylvia's carefully delineated eyebrows rose mockingly.
"Don't be afraid of independence, dearie. It's better than being a Republican," and her eyes glinted with repressed malice.
Mirelle laughed. "You mean, there actually are Democrats willing to come out in the open in this state?"
"That's part of the fun of being a Democrat in Delaware," Sylvia replied with a triumphantly wicked laugh.
Mirelle grinned back.
"By any remote chance, is your husband also an Independent?"
"As much as anything." His parents had been Republicans but they hadn't often discussed politics.
"Now, may I count on both of you to come and register on Saturday?"
The thought of going anywhere with Steve on Saturday was not comforting to Mirelle. Sylvia was watching her face and abruptly altered her expression.
"He's out of town right now," Mirelle explained as smoothly as she could. "I expect him home on Friday but… " She shrugged.
"Company man, huh?" Sylvia asked, making a notation. "Your occupation is…?"
"I'm a sculptor," Mirelle said swiftly, to forestall the onerous housewife. Then she realized that Sylvia's pen had been poised: the woman was asking, not assuming.
Sylvia rolled her eyes now, at the defiance in Mirelle's voice.
"I like decisiveness," she said with a chuckle as she wrote. "I put 'politician' down for myself," she added, looking up as she finished writing. It was then that she saw the Running Child.
"You did it," she said with agreeable surprise and absently disengaged herself from her impedimenta, walking over to examine the figure closely. "Your daughter, too," she stated.
"Yes, Tonia was three when I did it. She's seven now and grown so unlike this that I'll have to do another of her. Whining!"
Sylvia chuckled, turning the statue carefully on its base to get the full effect. "You sculpt with a great deal of love, don't you?"
The phone's summons saved Mirelle from having to answer. She excused herself quickly. The call was from a telephone solicitation for magazines so she hung up more rudely than was her custom and returned to find the living room empty.
A sound told her that Sylvia had found the studio, and when Mirelle joined her, Sylvia turned from the Lucy, her face white with shock.
"You knew Lucy Laben… Lucy Laben Farnoll?" she whispered hoarsely. "Where? When? She's been dead for years!"
The two women stared at each other until Sylvia laughed unsteadily.
"I didn't mean to be nosey. No, I tell a lie. I did. Then I saw the statue and…" Sylvia shrugged, swallowing hard. "Curiosity is the bane of my existence. But you can't imagine what a turn it gave me to see Laben to the life. Why, that's just the way she'd stand… we were classmates at Duke… when she couldn't make up her mind to shower or play bridge. We used to call her PM… perpetual motion… the way you have her feet, almost not touching. It's uncanny, that's what!" Sylvia gave an embarrassed bark of laughter, shaking her head over her reaction and shock. "Life's little surprises! You know, when I said you sculpt with a great deal of love a moment ago, I didn't realize how accurate I was. Martin. Martin." She ran the name through her mind. "Mirelle Martin!" Her eyes widened with astonishment and something else. "But, on the list you're Mary Ellen…"
"My baptismal name…"
"Mirelle. Mirelle Martin. Of course." Sylvia clapped a dramatic hand to her forehead. "In one of those Christmas letters Lucy would deign to write, she mentioned meeting ayoung woman who…" Sylvia paused, obviously hesitant with the truth.
"… Was a very mixed up little fool," Mirelle supplied with a self-deprecating laugh to put Sylvia at her ease.
"No, that wasn't what Lucy said," and Sylvia shot Mirelle an appraising look. "But she did mention your… and the adjective she used was 'lovable'…" Sylvia waggled a finger at Mirelle, "pieces that she bludgeoned you into doing for a church bazaar she'd got herself involved in."
Mirelle laughed as a series of happy memories from that year crowded into her mind.
"Come. Come have coffee with me," she urged Sylvia.
"Oh, Lord, girl," and Sylvia rolled her eyes heavenwards beseechingly, "I've got the whole damned street to canvass. But I'd much rather have coffee with you. You're the brightest spot in a weary dreary day. Okay! The Democratic Party owes me a coffee break at the very least."
It was two hours later that Sylvia, explosively resisting her own inclination, gathered up her paraphernalia and whipped from the house, promising in no uncertain terms to return very soon.
She was like a private hurricane, Mirelle thought, leaning weakly against the door when Sylvia had left. The vitality of the woman, different from Lucy's, had a contagious strength about it. For the first time in ages, Mirelle felt disappointment in a guest's departure. They could have talked for hours more without scratching the surface of a hundred points of common interest and disagreement. What was even more flattering was Sylvia's obvious reluctance to leave.
Mirelle caught herself up sharply. What was the use? As soon as she had got half-way friendly with Sylvia, Steve would undoubtedly be transferred. They'd been in Wilmington for over two years already, a record stay in one place. What was the sense of involving herself with all the contingent sense of loss when they moved away? A little piece of herself bestowed and unreclaimable.
That afternoon she received a phone call, from June Treadway, the chairperson of their church's women's associ ation. Mirelle was not of an organization temperament: she joined neither bowling leagues, bridge clubs nor women's associations, resisting with inverse ratio to the amount of pressure put on her to join. Early in life, Mirelle had learned never to be dependent on the social support of other women.