She saw Richard’s thin soft lips tensed in a straight line as they must
have looked when he wrote the letter, a line that still did not keep the
tiny, taut curl in the upper lip from showing—she saw his face clearly
for a moment, and then it vanished with a little jolt that seemed as
muffled and remote from her as the clamor of Richard’s letter. She stood
up, put the letter back in the envelope, and walked on. She hoped he
succeeded in purging himself of her. But she could only imagine him
telling other people about her with that curious attitude of passionate
participation she had seen in New York before she left. She imagined
Richard telling Phil as they stood some evening at the Palermo bar,
imagined him telling the Kellys. She wouldn’t care at all, whatever he
said.
She wondered what Carol was doing now, at ten o’clock, at eleven in New
Jersey. Listening to some stranger’s accusations? Thinking of her, or
was there time for that?
It was a fine day, cold and almost windless, bright with sun. She could
take the car and drive somewhere. She had not used the car for three
days. Suddenly she realized she did not want to use it. The day she had
taken it out and driven it up to ninety on the straight road to Dell
Rapids, exultant after a letter from Carol, seemed very long ago.
Mr. Bowen, another of the roomers, was on the front porch when she came
back to Mrs. Cooper’s house. He was sitting in the sun with his legs
wrapped in a blanket and his cap pulled down over his eyes as if he were
asleep, but he called out, “Hi, there! How’s my girl?”
She stopped and chatted with him for a while, asked him about his
arthritis, trying to be as courteous as Carol had always been with Mrs.
French. They found something to laugh at, and she was still smiling when
she went to her room. Then the sight of the geranium ended it.
She watered the geranium and set it at the end of the window sill, where
it would get the sun for the longest time. There was even brown at the
tips of the smallest leaves at the top. Carol had bought it for her in
Des Moines just before she took the plane. The pot of ivy had died
already—the man in the shop had warned them it was delicate, but Carol
had wanted it anyway—and Therese doubted that the geranium would live.
But Mrs. Cooper’s motley collection of plants flourished in the bay
window.
“I walk and walk around the town,” she wrote to Carol, “but I wish I
could keep walking in one direction—east—and finally come to you. When
can you come, Carol? Or shall I come to you? I really cannot stand being
away from you so long....”
She had her answer the next morning. A check fluttered out of Carol’s
letter onto Mrs. Cooper’s hall floor. The check was for two hundred and
fifty dollars. Carol’s letter—the long loops looser and lighter, the
t-bars stretching the length of the word—said that it was impossible for
her to come out within the next two weeks, if then. The check was for
her to fly back to New York and have the car driven East.
“I’d feel better if you took the plane. Come now and don’t wait,” was
the last paragraph.
Carol had written the letter in haste, had probably snatched a moment to
write it, but there was a coldness in it, too, that shocked Therese. She
went out and walked dazedly to the corner and dropped the letter she had
written the night before into the mailbox anyway, a heavy letter with
three airmail stamps on it. She might see Carol within twelve hours. The
thought did not bring any reassurance. Should she leave this morning?
This afternoon? What had they done to Carol? She wondered if Carol would
be furious if she telephoned her, if it would precipitate some crisis
into a total defeat if she did?
She was sitting at a table somewhere with coffee and orange juice in
front of her, before she looked at the other letter in her hand. In the
upper left corner she could just make out the scrawly handwriting. It
was from Mrs. R. Robichek.
Dear Therese,
Thank you very much for the delicious sausage that came last
month. You are a nice sweet girl and I am glad to have the
opportunity to thank you many times. It was nice of you to think
of me making such a long trip. I enjoy the pretty post cards,
specially the big one from Sioux Falls. How is in South Dakota?
Are mountains and cowboys? I have never had chance to travel
except Pennsylvania. You are a lucky girl, so young and pretty
and kind. Myself I still work. The store is just the same.
Everything is the same but it is colder. Please visit me when you
come back. I cook a nice dinner for you not from delicatessen.
Thank you for the sausage again. I lived from it for many days,
really something special and nice. With best regards and yours
truly.