Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories of Shirley Jackson (37 page)

The waitress indicated the Ry-Krisp. “That’s all we got,” she said shortly.

“That woman over there has muffins,” Mrs. Melville pointed out.

“She was here before you.”

“This is disgraceful,” said Mrs. Melville. “I certainly would
not
have ordered the salad if I had known there were no more muffins. Don’t you
tell
customers these things?”

Without answering, the waitress began to move slowly away toward another table. “Miss!” Mrs. Melville said sharply. The waitress turned. “Bring me more mayonnaise,” Mrs. Melville directed, “another pat of butter, and coffee without cream or sugar at once.”

The waitress glanced at Mrs. Melville and moved away again. Mrs. Melville began her salad. She would report the girl in the blouse department and stand there until she was assured the girl was fired. She would report the waitress and insist upon a formal apology.

Someone sat down in the chair across the table from her.

Now, Mrs. Melville at all times hated to have anyone watch her eat, and she detested having to ask for more butter under the eye of an unknown person, particularly if, as it seemed in this case, the unknown person was small and quick-moving and a woman. To indicate her extreme disapproval, Mrs. Melville did not once glance up at the woman, but she could see from under her lashes that this was a woman in a dark suit or coat, and certainly someone very small, since she had gone into the narrow seat between the table and the wall without squeezing and without stirring the table or asking Mrs. Melville to move. When the waitress came, the other woman said, briefly, “Tea with lemon,” and further infuriated Mrs. Melville. Anyone who came into a restaurant, where the serving and eating of food was an obligation, and ordered only a cup of tea with lemon, was automatically in Mrs. Melville’s bad graces. More annoyed than she had been all day, Mrs. Melville abandoned the vestiges of her salad and said, “Check, please,” to the waitress.

Without comment, the waitress wrote on the check and handed it to Mrs. Melville. Mrs. Melville, with an effort, began to edge into her coat, carefully avoiding looking at the woman across the table; Mrs. Melville did not like being watched while getting into her coat. Ye Olde Taverne was beginning to fill up with shoppers taking Shopper’s Tea, and the passage of people back and forth behind Mrs. Melville’s chair made her effort to don her coat more violent; as she gave the lapels a last pull together across the front, the waitress returned, set down a cup of tea in front of the woman across the table, and a tiny paper cup in front of Mrs. Melville. “Your mayonnaise,” said the waitress, and grinned.

Mrs. Melville indignantly forbore leaving any tip, but got up with vast dignity and made her way to the cashier.

“I wish to report this waitress for impertinence,” she said. “The one over there in the yellow skirt.”

“What’d she do?” asked the cashier without interest.

“She refused to give me what I had ordered,” Mrs. Melville said. “She spoke rudely, and when I asked for more—”

“Complaint department,” said the cashier unenthusiastically. “I can’t do nothing about that here, miss.”

She looked up at Mrs. Melville without interest and said, “Complaint department” again wearily as she took Mrs. Melville’s money. “Ninth floor,” she said.
“I think.”

With one final furious glance at the waitress, Mrs. Melville snatched up her change and made purposefully for the escalator. The salesgirl, the waitress, the cashier—what sort of a store could this be? Mrs. Melville, setting her shoulders firmly as she stood on the escalator, thought with satisfaction that she was certainly glad no one she knew ever came here to shop; how could anything be purchased in a store where the salesgirls criticized one’s figure, the waitress kidnapped one’s muffins, the cashiers had no sympathy for one’s feelings?

She stepped off the escalator at the eighth floor, started for her final escalator, and stopped dead. Her package. Her package, her bag with her precious blouse in it, was down in the restaurant.

“Now, why do you think no one
reminded
me?” Mrs. Melville said aloud, so that a woman passing her on the way to the next escalator looked at her disagreeably. Irritated beyond further words, Mrs. Melville turned silently and made her way across the store to the down escalator. Back she went, the way she had come, and back through the wooden portals of Ye Olde Taverne. There were people at the table she had used—indeed, almost all the tables were filled now—two young women, obviously suburban matrons, in neat pretty hats and neat pretty coats, sitting where Mrs. Melville and the unknown woman had sat so shortly before. Although one of the two young suburban matrons wore a dark green coat with a mink collar and a green straw hat and the other one wore a brown wool suit with a fur scarf and a tan straw hat, they looked somehow subtly, unbelievably alike, and both raised calm, assured eyes to Mrs. Melville as she came up to the table and said, restraining her voice:

“I beg your pardon, but I left a package here on the chair.” She indicated the chair in which the young woman in dark green was sitting. “Have you seen it?”

The two young women glanced at one another. “A bag, was it?” said the one in brown; she was, Mrs. Melville noticed, having tea with cinnamon toast. “A bag from this store?”

“Yes, certainly,” said Mrs. Melville, growing impatient again. “Where is it?”

“Good heavens,” the one in green said to the one in brown. She was having a ham and cheese sandwich on whole wheat; a good choice, Mrs. Melville thought.

“I
know”
said the one in brown, nodding. She turned to Mrs. Melville. “I think we did a
terrible
thing,” she said. “There was a woman here drinking tea when we came and she left just as we came and we found the package on the chair and I called her back and gave it to her.”

“Gave her
my
package?” said Mrs. Melville, mystified.

“We thought it was hers,” the one in green explained. “It was here on the chair, you see. Now that I think of it,” she said to the one in brown, “she
did
act sort of funny.”

“Sort of funny,” the one in brown agreed.
“Very
funny. When I gave her the package she sort of
looked
at me.”

“Yes,” the one in green agreed. “Why don’t you ask at the Lost and Found?” she inquired brightly of Mrs. Melville.

“What did she look like, this woman?” said Mrs. Melville.

“Well,” said the one in green, “she was small and dark. And sort of funny.”

“I thought she was definitely funny,” said the one in brown decisively. “Sort of dark, and small, she was.”

Mrs. Melville turned abruptly, without thanking them, and found the waitress who had been so rude to her. Marching up to the girl, Mrs. Melville said, “Did you see the other woman who sat at my table?”

The girl stared. “No,” she said. Mrs. Melville remembered that she had left no tip. When the girl continued to stare at her blankly, Mrs. Melville said persuasively, “She stole a package that belonged to me. I want to get my package back.”

“What was in the package?” said the waitress.

“A blouse,” said Mrs. Melville tensely. “Did you see her?”

The waitress looked sweetly at Mrs. Melville. “Try the complaint department,” she said. “It’s up on the ninth floor.”

Mrs. Melville tightened her lips, and then decided not to bandy words with this impolite girl; she hurried over to the cashier, who turned her blond head tiredly. “Did you see a small, dark woman come out of here with a package?”

“I seen a million,” said the cashier.

“This one had a cup of tea, that’s all she had,” Mrs. Melville said.

“A thousand of them had a cup of tea,” the cashier said. “You was here before.”

“I lost a package,” Mrs. Melville said. “She stole it.”

The cashier shook her head. “Never seen it,” she said.

Irritably, Mrs. Melville stamped out of Ye Olde Taverne. Near the escalator to the seventh floor, and beyond it, on the way to the ninth floor, she stopped again. Her blouse had been stolen, certainly, but by a very small woman. Now, Mrs. Melville was very well aware that her blouse was a size forty-two, and, whatever else she knew about the small woman who had stolen it, she knew perfectly well that the small woman would not wear a blouse size forty-two; she had, after all, squeezed without complaint into the narrow space between the table and the wall; she had ordered only a spartan cup of tea. Furthermore, anyone who had taken illegally a blouse bought in the store would be in immediate terror of being found out. Now, Mrs. Melville reasoned, if
she
(perish the thought!) had stolen a package and, taking it to the nearest ladies’ room, had found that it contained a blouse several sizes too large,
and
the sales slip for the blouse, what would she do? Why, Mrs. Melville told herself triumphantly, she would hurry with the blouse to the department where it had been purchased, and, with some credible story, return it for a smaller size before any fuss could be raised about its loss. Obviously, Mrs. Melville deduced, the woman with the blouse was perhaps even now exchanging it.

Mrs. Melville doggedly got back onto the escalator again, this time going down. She went as quickly as possible back to the blouse department, looking as she went for a small, dark, suspicious size ten.

The blouse department was deserted. The salesgirl whom Mrs. Melville was still on her way to report lounged on the counter. Mrs. Melville headed for her.

“Miss,” she said loudly, even before she had reached the counter. “Do you remember me buying a blouse here?”

The girl nodded. She remembered.

Mrs. Melville said emphatically, “Someone
stole
that blouse.”

The salesgirl took a deep breath. “What am I supposed to do about it?” she said. “Give you another?”

“Now, listen here,” Mrs. Melville began, and then stopped herself, and said instead, “What I want to know is this: has anyone come here to return that blouse for another size?”

“Let me see,” said the girl. “It was a size forty-two, wasn’t it? Or a forty-four?”

“A forty-two,” said Mrs. Melville.

“Well,” said the girl, “not very many people wear blouses that
large
. So if anyone came to return a blouse of that
size
, I’d surely notice it.”

Mrs. Melville clenched her hands around her pocketbook. “Someone in this store stole that blouse,” she said.

“You might try the complaint department,” the girl said innocently.

As Mrs. Melville was opening her mouth to answer, a woman came up beside her at the counter. “Miss?” she said softly.

Mrs. Melville turned slowly. The woman was small, and wearing a dark coat and hat. Moreover, she was carrying a package that looked suspiciously like Mrs. Melville’s package, and she was saying to the salesgirl:

“Earlier today I bought a blouse here. I think I bought it from the other girl, because I’m pretty sure
you
didn’t sell it to me.” She laughed embarrassedly. “Anyway,” she said, “when I bought it I told her I wanted to take it upstairs and try it on with a suit and perhaps exchange it for another color if it didn’t match the suit….” Her voice trailed off as she saw the salesgirl nod politely.

“Wrong color?” said the salesgirl professionally, beginning to open the bag.

“Oh,
no
,” said the woman. “I mean, the color is
perfect
. I
love
it. No, it’s the size. She must have got it mixed up, somehow.”

The salesgirl took the blouse out of the bag and spread it on the counter. Mrs. Melville looked at it and began to breathe more quickly; a deep happiness filled her.

“It’s just the right shade of pink,” the small woman said timidly. “But I mean, it’s a size forty-two. She must have given it to me by mistake.” The small woman laughed. “You can
see
I don’t wear a forty-two,” she said.

It was the laugh which decided Mrs. Melville on her future course of action. She looked briefly at the salesgirl, who looked back at her without expression, and then stepped back a few feet. The small woman looked at her nervously. “I didn’t mean to push in here,” the small woman said, smiling shyly at Mrs. Melville. “I was so upset, I mean, and I’m in such a hurry…”

“That’s perfectly all right,” said Mrs. Melville. “Go right ahead.” She had never said this before in her life.

“Well,” said the small woman to the salesgirl, “you can see, it must have been some kind of a mistake. I wanted the pink blouse, size ten, and somehow she picked up the pink blouse, size forty-two, and put it in the bag by mistake. I mean, she must have made a mistake.”

“Size ten?” said the salesgirl. She turned to the stacks of blouses behind her. “The pink, size ten.” Without looking at Mrs. Melville, she said clearly, “I can use the forty-two back. Had a call for a size forty-two blouse this morning.”

“Really?” said the small woman. “You wouldn’t think anyone that large would wear this pink.”

“You’d be surprised what people think they can wear,” said the salesgirl, not looking at Mrs. Melville. “I had a lady in here this morning looking at that pink blouse size forty-two.”