I left her with the doctor and went upstairs—as I say, I know that house as well as I know my own—and tried to find some things for her to bring over with her; I could come over in the morning and get anything she wanted, of course, so I just took a pair of clean pajamas out of the drawer and one of her good school dresses out of the closet; she was going to have to see a good many people in the next day or so and there was no harm in her looking as neat and clean as I could make her. I got her toothbrush out of the bathroom—and I’m no stickler for housework, but I’d be ashamed to keep a bathroom the way Helen Lanson did—and then I thought that maybe she had some kind of a toy dog or doll or something to comfort her; Dorrie may be fifteen years old, but she still has a little blue lion I gave her when she was small, and you can always tell when Dorrie’s upset about something because she takes her blue lion to bed with her. But in this girl’s room there was nothing. You would have been shocked. Books, of course, and a picture of her mother and father, and a set of paints and a game or so, but nothing . . . well, soft. I finally lifted her pillow and underneath it was a little notebook with a red cover, like a school notebook or something, and since it was under her pillow I thought it must be something she valued—I’ve seen Dorrie’s diary under her pillow, like that, and even though of course I’ve never looked inside it I know how excited she gets if she thinks someone’s gotten to it. I thought maybe Vicky might want to keep this little book safe, so I folded it in with the nightgown and a pair of clean socks, and after thinking for a minute (after all, wouldn’t I want someone to do the same for Dorrie?) I took the picture of her mother and father and put that in, too. When I went downstairs she was still sitting there and the doctor was sitting with her, and when I came in he looked at me and shrugged, so I suppose he hadn’t gotten any more tears from her than I had. I went out into the hall with the doctor and he said he had given her a sedative and I said I was taking her right next door and would put her to sleep in Dorrie’s bed. “She doesn’t seem to care one way or another,” I told him.
“Sometimes it takes a while,” he said. “It’s a terrible thing; too much, probably, for her mind to take in all at once. I expect that by tomorrow she’ll be feeling it more, and I’ll stop in and see her in the morning.”
Well, I saw that all the lights were turned out and the doors locked and then I took Vicky’s things and we went next door and it was a relief to me to be back in my own house, even though I admit I felt a good twinge when I saw our suitcases all packed and standing in the hall. We had planned to get a good early start in the morning, and now here I had to unpack everything again. I asked Vicky if she would like a cup of cocoa and she said yes—I never did see that girl when she wouldn’t eat—so I left her in the kitchen with her cocoa and a piece of my good chocolate cake and I went upstairs and fixed up Dorrie’s room for her. I took out a lot of Dorrie’s things because somehow—and I don’t want to sound nasty, but it’s true—you couldn’t think of that great dull girl sleeping with Dorrie’s pretty little pictures and dolls and necklaces and dance souvenirs all around her; she fit in Dorrie’s room like Dorrie would fit in a dollhouse. I made the bed all neat, and I put on Dorrie’s blue comforter, because it would have to be cleaned anyway before Dorrie came home, and then I brought her upstairs and waited while she got undressed. When I went in to tuck her in I had made up my mind of course that I wasn’t going to be hesitant or anything, and I was going to kiss her good night, because after all the girl was alone in the world now, except for the kindness of neighbors who took her in. When I came in she was in bed and I think the doctor’s sedative—or my hot cocoa—was affecting her, because she looked sleepy and kind of full, like a big cat that’s had a mouse. She looked much too big for Dorrie’s bed, I can tell you that. She was trying to be brave, though; when she turned her head on the pillow and looked at me she gave a little smile, and I thought maybe she was getting ready to cry, but she only said, “I did tell them. I’ve known about it for two months.”
“I’m sure of it,” I said. “Try not to think about it anymore tonight.”
“They wouldn’t believe me.”
“Well, it certainly wasn’t your fault, and it won’t do you any good to keep brooding on it; right now you’ve got to sleep.”
“I knew all about it,” she said.
“Shh,” I said. I turned out the light, and went over to kiss her good night and she looked up at me and said, “Don’t go in any boats.” She had some strange connection in that odd mind between me and boats; she must have mentioned it half a dozen times during those first few days, when her thoughts were so confused and dazed. I suppose she had heard something, or perhaps Helen and Don had said something—maybe one of the last things they said to her; people always remember something like that—and it could have been about me; they talked about us enough, heaven knows. Anyway, I told her not to worry about boats anymore, that everything was going to be all right, and I finally leaned over and gave her a little kiss on that big white forehead and said, “Good night.”
“Good night,” she said. I turned on Dorrie’s night-light in case she should wake up in the night and forget she was in Dorrie’s room and then closed the door and came downstairs to wait for Howard.
When he came in he was feeling pretty awful, so I made him some cocoa and while he had it we sat and talked about our trip to Maine. “There’s certainly no chance of it now,” I told him. “The girl’s right upstairs. We can’t do a thing until the aunt comes.”
“They notified the aunt,” Howard said. “Sent a cable from the police station.”
“What makes me hopping mad is having to unpack the bags. And my nice green sweater I bought just for the trip.”
“Well, it wouldn’t look very good if we just took off and left the girl alone.”
“No,” I said. “It’s a terrible thing,” I told him, “a terrible thing to happen anytime, of course, but wouldn’t you just know they’d go and do it now?”
“No help for it. We’ll have to try and plan something else. Is she asleep?”
“I think she must be. I gave her some cocoa. You know, that’s another thing that bothers me. That girl hasn’t cried a single tear.”
“Kids like that sometimes feel it worse inside.”
“Maybe,” but I didn’t think so. “No early start tomorrow, I guess.”
I really felt like crying, seeing Howard take those suitcases upstairs, but he told me to cheer up. “It’s rotten bad luck,” he said, “but we’ll think of something else.”
There was a lot to do the next day. First, I had to unpack those suitcases and put everything away so it wouldn’t wrinkle. Also, I thought I kind of ought to go over to the Lansons’ and straighten up—Helen Lanson always left things in a mess, and I certainly wouldn’t have been surprised to find her dinner dishes still dirty in her sink; that girl wouldn’t lift a finger to wash them, I know now, after having her in my house. Not one thing did she do. I can’t quite picture Helen Lanson picking up after her, so I guess Vicky kept that room of hers at home looking so swept and bare, but in my house she never made Dorrie’s bed once, never got out of her chair to take a dish to the kitchen, never offered to dust or vacuum even though half the mess was on her account.
I had to forgive her, of course, because of the sad blow she’d had, but I’d just like to see my Dorrie act like that no matter what happened. I mean, even if I was dead it would give me comfort to know that my daughter didn’t forget her training, and the nice manners I taught her.
Half the time Vicky never bothered to answer at all when she was spoken to. That morning I asked her what she wanted me to bring her back from her own house and she just looked at me. Maybe there was nothing there she wanted. I just decided the aunt would have to look over everything. Helen Lanson had some lovely china, and a set of wineglasses I would have given my right arm to own; she’d inherited them from her grandmother, and you’d think even a child l
ike Vicky would have some sense of their value, but when I mentioned them and said how much I coveted them, she only stared at me. I straightened things up around the Lansons’ house and got some clothes for Vicky, and then locked everything up tight and brought the keys home and set them on the mantel, where I could find them right away when the aunt came. If I had been another kind of person, I could have those wineglasses today and no one would ever have known.
I was pretty sure that along during the day people would be coming in; the Lansons being as popular as they were, it seemed a lot of their friends might drop over to see if Vicky was all right and I wasn’t starving her or beating her or something. You’d think with all the friends the Lansons had, someone might have come forward to take the girl so we wouldn’t be tied down with her, but of course we were right on the spot when someone was needed, and as Howard said, it still wouldn’t look right to go off so soon. The doctor said Vicky was fine; she spent most of the morning up in Dorrie’s room reading Dorrie’s books, and after lunch I told her to dress nicely and comb her hair and come downstairs to sit. I just wanted her there looking proper if anyone came; lucky she had a dark dress to wear. Mrs. Wright came by early; she lived down the street and had only just heard. She was kind of sniffling, with a handkerchief over her face most of the time, and she patted Vicky’s hand and said it was heartbreaking, just heartbreaking, and Vicky looked at her. After a minute or so of this she gave up and followed me out to the kitchen to get a cup of tea and said, “Has she been like this ever since it happened?”
“No,” I said. “All night she was asleep.”
“Has she been crying?”
“Not a single tear.”
I got the cups out; one thing about Mrs. Wright, you don’t get off easy. Tea and chocolate cake were the least she expected, and I supposed if the Lansons’ fancy friends dropped around later it would mean cocktails and potato chips and crackers and olives and whatnot. “It’s a heartbreaking thing,” Mrs. Wright kept saying, “simply heartbreaking. Were they killed instantly?”
“I suppose so. I don’t know anything about it.” I knew what she wanted to ask me, but I wasn’t going to help her out. It’s not good for people to think about such things; I never asked Howard a word about it and he never offered to tell me, because I always think that a person has enough everyday troubles without going looking for the horrible details of what happens to other people. “They hit a truck,” I said. “That’s all I know.”
“Anyway, it will be in the paper tonight. That poor little girl. Who told her? You? How did she take it?”
“About as you’d expect,” I said. I didn’t want Mrs. Wright blaming me for the way Vicky acted; she might think I’d broken the news wrong, or something, so I started back into the living room with the tea tray and of course she had to follow me and couldn’t ask any more about it with Vicky sitting right there. She tried to make bright conversation instead, I guess to cheer Vicky a little, although I could have told her to save her breath.
She told about Mrs. Haven at the grocery forgetting her lamb chops and how the grocer had to come down from his dinner and open the store for her and she told about the Actons’ cat getting run over, but she stopped herself in the middle of that and looked at Vicky to see if she had said anything wrong and then she started quickly to tell about her grandson, who just got admitted to medical school.
“He’s going to be a doctor,” she explained.
“He’ll be caught with a girl in his room and expelled pretty soon,” Vicky said suddenly.
“Vicky!” I said. I couldn’t think of anything decent to say; I mean, I couldn’t punish her, her not being my child and all, but I did think I ought to do something, with Mrs. Wright sitting there with her mouth open. “Young ladies should speak politely in company, Vicky,” I said. Dorrie would never have said a thing like that about Mrs. Wright’s grandson.
“I’ll overlook it,” Mrs. Wright said, “considering your present circumstances, Vicky, although you ought not to have that kind of thought with your parents lying there—” She stopped, and took out her handkerchief again, and Vicky stared at the wall, and I thought it would be a pleasure to tan that young lady’s hide.
Later some of the Lansons’ friends did come, as I expected, and it was cocktails and potato chips and crackers and pickles and everything; we could have had a party of our own, and invited our own friends, for what it cost us to entertain the Lansons’ friends, although I must say that one of the men took the Lansons’ keys and went over and got a bottle of gin because, he said, it was the least the Lansons would want us to do, and I thought that was probably true. Everyone tried to say something nice to Vicky, but it was hard. I heard one conversation that shocked me, because if I heard Dorrie talking like that to her elders, I would have washed her mouth out with soap. A Mr. Sherman, whom I hadn’t met before, was telling her what a fine man her father had been—I suppose he thought he ought to, although anyone who knew Don Lanson knew better—and Vicky came right out and said, in that flat voice of hers, “Your wife finally has the evidence to divorce you.” You can imagine how that sounded, right to an old friend of her father’s, and he was surprised to hear it, you could tell; I don’t think my Dorrie even knows the word divorce. Later I heard her telling her father’s lawyer that the papers in his office were going to be burned up in a big fire; he had been talking to her about her father’s will, and I suppose somehow the idea of a will got through to her—a little thing like that will, sometimes, you know—so she reacted like a spiteful baby. I thought it was extremely rude of her, driving her father’s friends out of my house like that, and I was going to tell her so, but there was always someone there talking to her, patting her hand and telling her to be brave. Tell Vicky to be brave—tell the ocean to keep rolling.
Well, it was like that till her aunt came. She was delayed getting here—some trouble with the plane—and so she missed the funeral, but I saw that Vicky was there in a dark-blue dress and black shoes and her hair combed, and all, and never a tear did that child shed. They had a nice attendance, I must say. You would have thought the Lansons were the most popular people in town, but I suppose people thought it was a friendly gesture to Vicky, and of course since Howard and I were kind of in charge, I guess a lot of people came out of courtesy to us. Once during the ceremony Vicky leaned over toward me and whispered, “You see that man over there, the one with the bald head and the gray suit? He stole some money and they’re going to put him in jail,” which I thought a disrespectful and silly remark to make during her parents’ own funeral, particularly since a lot of people thought she was getting overcome and looked to see if I was going to have to take her out.
The day the aunt arrived was the day of the big fire downtown that destroyed almost a whole block of offices, so I didn’t have a chance to introduce her to many of the people who had been dropping in nearly every day. I had Vicky’s clothes all clean and neat—I could hardly send her home dirty, after all—and packed ready to take back. I must say I wasn’t sorry to see that girl turned over to her own relatives; it was hard, having her in Dorrie’s room all the time, and Howard was getting so he could hardly eat, looking at her sitting there at the dinner table every night and stuffing herself. The night before she went to her aunt—they were going to stay next door for a day or so, arranging for things to be sold and to be stored and to be given away, and I must say I had half an idea that the aunt might have thought of me when it came to the wineglasses, Vicky knowing how I wanted them so much, and after all I’d done—the night before she left, when I went in to say good night, she gave me her little red notebook. “This is for you,” she said. “I want you to have it because you’ve been so kind to me.”
Well, it was the only word of thanks I was ever to get. Not one word was ever said about those wineglasses. I knew she prized the little book and thought she was giving me something precious, so I took it. “Stay away from boats,” she said, and I la
ughed at her, I really had to, and then she told me to take good care of the little book and of course I promised her I would.
“I’ll remember you when I’m in London, England,” she said. “Tell Dorrie to write to me sometimes.”
“I surely will,” I said. Dorrie is the sweetest child in the world, and if she thought it would give Vicky any pleasure to get a letter from her, she’d sit right down. “Now, good night,” I said. I had gotten used to kissing her good night, but I never looked forward to it.
“Good night,” she said, and went right off to sleep, as she always did. Well, they left, and I hear the house has been sold and someone new was coming to live there. I took a look at Vicky’s little red notebook, thinking it might be a little book of poems like Dorrie gave me once, or even pictures of something, but I was disappointed; the child had been amusing herself writing gossipy little paragraphs about her neighbors and her parents’ friends—although what else would you expect, considering the way Don and Helen used to talk about people?—and horror tales about atom bombs and the end of the world, not at all the kind of thing you like to think about a child dwelling on; I wouldn’t have Dorrie thinking about things like that, and I threw the little book in the furnace. She must have been a very lonely child, I thought, to spend her time writing sad little stories. I hope she’s as happy in London as she expected to be, and meanwhile we’ve decided what we’re going to do to make up for our lost trip to Maine. We’ll keep Dorrie out of school for a couple of weeks—she’s always at the top; she can miss a little work—and we’re all going to go on a cruise.
What a Thought
Dinner had been good. Margaret sat with her book on her lap and watched her husband digesting, an operation to which he always gave much time and thought. As she watched he put his cigar down without looking and used his free hand to turn the page of his paper. Margaret found herself thinking with some pride that unlike many men she had heard about, her husband did not fall asleep after a particularly good dinner.