People Who Knock on the Door (32 page)

31

D
isplay was Arthur’s first assignment Monday, which meant the longer front window and to some extent the interior, though Tom still wanted his bargain counters. A couple of extra stepladders kept getting in Arthur’s way, as the workmen were not quite finished with the ceiling lights, and these gave Arthur an idea for the front windows: stepladders with a shoe and the price on each step.

Betty Brewster asked Lois and Joan for tea at her house, and Arthur was invited too, but couldn’t go because of his job. Gus and Veronica came for dinner one evening, and Gus said casually to Arthur afterwards in the living room:

“I noticed—what’s-her-name wasn’t at the Silver Arrow the other night. Veronica and I were there and I asked about her. Baby’s due in August, one of the waitresses said.”

“August,” Arthur repeated, surprised.

His mother, grandmother and Veronica were then in the kitchen. Later that evening, when Arthur and his mother were alone, Arthur told his mother this.

“Yes, I heard too. From Bob Cole,” his mother replied, and at once showed the nervousness that the subject of Irene always brought. “Bob Cole says she comes to church almost every day. There’s someone there to unlock the doors for her. And she’s got someone to drive her, a neighbor, I suppose.—Bob went to see Robbie last Tuesday. Did I tell you that?”

“No.” And Arthur wasn’t interested.

“I had a nice note from the man called Jeff,” his mother went on. “One of Robbie’s Delmar Lake friends. Belated note, I must say, but still nice of him. They’re going to visit Robbie, they said. That’ll pick Robbie up, I know.”

Amazing they hadn’t visited Robbie before. Would Foster House let them in? Those fellows were the type the guards would frisk first. Arthur had been in a sour mood ever since his mother and grandmother had come home from the tea at Betty’s. He had asked them if Betty had had any news about Maggie, and his mother had reported that Maggie was spending the summer on the East Coast and would come home for a week or so in early September before she went back to Radcliffe. So Arthur supposed all was going blissfully well with Larry Hargiss and family. How tall was Mr. Hargiss? That didn’t matter. Arthur imagined walking up to him one day, maybe when Hargiss was with Maggie, socking him in the jaw with a hard right, and Hargiss would fall to the ground somewhere, unconscious. Another tea invitation Arthur more regretted missing was that from Professor Jurgens, whose wife telephoned one evening. The date fell on a working day, and Mrs. Jurgens hadn’t proposed any other date.

Arthur still went often to the public library, and he was able to tell Miss Becker that he was going to Columbia in September. A letter had come from Columbia, saying he had been accepted as a dorm student, and as an added bonus or compliment, or so Arthur felt, Columbia had enclosed an application form for a $1,500 grant, “which may be possible for this academic year but perhaps not for the next.” Arthur knew the Reagan administration was economizing. But Columbia wouldn’t have sent the grant application form unless they thought it likely he would get a grant for this year.

His grandmother had been gone for ten days and had left the house transformed: His mother’s bedroom had a new double bed with a blue and gray counterpane; Robbie’s room was rearranged, his old scratched table replaced by a handsome one that his mother and grandmother had found at a secondhand place. His mother talked of taking a full-time job as a secretary in September. Her typing was excellent, and she had bought a book on shorthand. His grandmother had offered to pay fifty percent of his Columbia bills, Arthur had learned, and if she said that, she would do it and a bit more. When he graduated and started earning, Arthur thought, he would repay his grandmother, so what she would give him he liked to consider a loan. He would have to continue his schooling somewhere, maybe Columbia, for two more years after the usual four. The future spiraled in Arthur’s mind into a nebulous and distant point, like one of the third-dimensional diagrams in physics. How high would tuition fees be in
five
years?

Would his mother ever remarry? She was only about forty-three, not exactly old. But there were no prospects around that Arthur could see or imagine. He wished his grandmother could come and live with them, but her life and her dance school in Kansas City was bound to be more interesting than Chalmerston. Arthur tried to take cheer from the fact that he was free of his father’s harangues and disapproval, that September meant the East and New York. But he still missed Maggie and it hurt, like a disease that he could not get rid of. Francey had not cured him. He wondered, in fact, if Francey had had any effect at all in regard to Maggie? Gus had introduced him to a blond girl called Leonora, half-Polish and half-French, who was visiting relatives of Gus’s family in town. She had been interesting and attractive, but she hadn’t struck a spark; it had simply been a pleasant evening.

His mother drove to Foster House every four or five days to visit Robbie, and Arthur still declined to go. Arthur gathered that Robbie never asked about him or expressed any wish to see him. His mother returned from his visits with an air of optimism: Robbie was obeying all the rules and didn’t seem to mind them. Robbie said the food was good. He had a different roommate now, because Robbie had made some remarks that the Puerto Rican boy had complained about. Racial remarks, Arthur gathered.

“So he’s going to get out when the six months are up?—He’ll start back in school here?”

“It depends on his behavior, they said. So far, it’s considered quite good. I talk with Mr. Dillard every time I go, you know.”

Mr. Dillard was one of the superintendents, Arthur knew. Robbie was presumably coming home in December, on probation.

When his mother returned from her next visit, the news was not so good: Robbie had got into a fistfight with his new roommate, who had accused Robbie of breaking a toolbox, while Robbie had said that someone else had come into the room and done it. “Each boy is making a toolbox, I mean,” his mother explained, “and they take the boxes to their rooms in the evening till the next carpentry lesson.” Robbie had broken the boy’s nose, and Robbie was walking around stiffly with his ribs strapped in adhesive tape. The other boy was bigger and had retaliated.

Arthur made hardly a comment.

He was doing an errand for his mother in J. C. Penney’s on a Saturday morning in early August when he saw Maggie. Arthur was at the “novelties” counter with his mother’s list in hand, waiting for a salesgirl, when he happened to look to his left. At first, he didn’t believe it was Maggie, but someone rather like her, because this girl’s hair was longer, quite to her shoulders and brushed back and held by a clip or a ribbon. His heart seemed to stop. The girl
was
Maggie. Now she leaned forward, talking to a salesgirl across the counter. She appeared to be by herself. There were lots of people between them, coming and going.

“Help you, sir?”

“Th-this,” Arthur said, handing the piece of paper to the salesgirl, as if abandoning the idea of reading it to her, and in fact he didn’t understand the numbers on the list which had to do with thread weights. He looked again at Maggie, who stood with her left foot extended and resting on the heel. That was just like Maggie!

“Yes, here you are. This the color you mean for the yellow?” The girl had three spools on her palm already, two white, one yellow.

“I’m sure that’s okay,” Arthur said, fishing money out.

There was time. Maggie hadn’t finished at the counter.

Arthur got his little white bag from the salesgirl and walked toward Maggie, hesitated, then went on.

Maggie lifted her eyes from the counter and looked at him, and smiled uncertainly or shyly. “Oh—Arthur!”

“’S really you! I couldn’t believe it.” He crushed the top of the paper bag, which was weightless, in his fingers. “Thought you weren’t coming back till September.”

“I changed my mind.—Mom—”

Someone bumped into Arthur and passed him. “What?”

“Mom says you’re going to Columbia in September.”

“Right. Yes.”

Now Maggie had to give her attention to the salesgirl, and took her purchase, in a larger bag.

They started to walk slowly toward an exit.

“You’re staying the rest of the summer?” he asked.

“Till the seventeenth of September.”

Arthur nodded and took a breath. “Walk you to your car?” He wondered if Larry Hargiss was with her, maybe holding the car somewhere.

“I have to buy one more thing. Somewhere else.”

They were out on the sidewalk. She was walking in another direction from Shoe Repair, where he was due back now, because he had asked Tom’s permission to run out on a quick errand for his mother. What a lucky little errand it had been! Arthur felt stunned, hypnotized even, by the fact that Maggie was beside him, so close their arms almost touched, Maggie whom he could seize now like a madman, if he chose, and whose body would be firm and real. If he didn’t ask now, he thought, he was gutless. Or a fool.

“Can I call you sometime, Maggie?” he asked in a firm voice.

She smiled again, more at ease than a minute ago. “Sure, Arthur. Why not?”

“Okay.” He stopped. “I have to go the other way. Now. I’ll call you, Maggie.” He turned and walked away, trotted, looking at the pavement. It was like a dream! Yet her voice was still in his ear:
Sure, Arthur. Why not?
How long had she been in town? Five days? Longer? Had Mr. Hargiss just departed from the Brewster house? Why would she say
why not
like that unless she still liked him?

Arthur felt elated, though puzzled, all the rest of the day. He was selling now, as well as being manager in name. His elation, he told himself, must be based solely on the fact that Maggie was in town, geographically near. But if she was still tied up with Mr. Hargiss, she might also have said
why not
in the same manner, Arthur was thinking by 5 p.m. It would be stupid to build himself up for a letdown.

Nevertheless he was inspired to ask his mother out to dinner that evening at the Chowder House, a place that served excellent seafood.

“What puts you in such a good mood?” she asked. “Don’t tell me Tom’s given you a raise already?”

“Not quite yet. I just thought it’d be nice to go out for a change.” He intended to mention Maggie during dinner. Or he might decide not to mention her at all.

Arthur was midway through delicious fried scallops and was about to begin, “By the way,” when his mother said:

“I saw Jane Griffin at the Home today. She’d heard also that the church was going to pay Irene’s hospital bills—when that child arrives.”

Dismal subject. Ruining the evening, Arthur thought. But since it was on his mother’s mind, he knew he had to share it with her. “Well, well. Did the minister announce it from the pulpit?”

“No-o, silly! Bob mentioned it to Jane, because Jane’s a full-time employee now at the Home. Where that child might go, you know, finally.”

Arthur was not enjoying his food so much now. “Did she say anything about who the father might be?”

“Well—she said she’d heard the rumor. Because Richard often visited her, but Jane made light of it and said they—meaning people—might as well be talking about Eddie Howell or Bob Cole who also visit her.”

Arthur was laughing. “Eddie Howell! That stallion!—I suppose Jane was fishing—for you to say yes or no about Dad?”

His mother shrugged. “Maybe.—But I didn’t rise to the bait. Everyone knows the rough company Irene meets where she works.”

Arthur wanted to change the subject, and couldn’t. “Did Jane connect any of this with what Robbie did?”

“Didn’t seem to. No hint of that.—Robbie still doesn’t want any of his father’s clothes.”

Arthur could have told his mother that the day he had sorted out the sweaters. His mother had been sad the day she got back from Foster House and Robbie had rejected the clothes, but his mother had left the sweaters and scarves at Foster House to be given to the other boys. Since then his mother had tried again with some more items that had belonged to Richard.

Now to make the atmosphere a little more cheerful, if he could, Arthur said, “I saw Maggie today.”

“Maggie? She’s in town?”

“Yes. She was shopping and I ran into her.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before? So that’s why you’re in a good mood.—Are you going to see her again?”

“I said I might call her, yes.—What would you like for dessert, Mom?”

That night, Arthur had a vivid dream about Maggie taking a boat somewhere, and he was seeing her off. She had a stateroom to herself, and there were lots of people around, all strangers. Maggie said she was going to the Arctic, and Arthur could not find out why. She was going to be gone a long while, she said, and he was miserable at the prospect. Her hair was much longer, down to her waist, and then as he was waving good-bye to her—from some place remote from the ship but not the dock—her hair became shorter and shorter until it was as it used to be, and Maggie flitted into her stateroom and closed the door. Arthur awoke with damp eyes and a forehead wet with sweat.

He rubbed his chin with a clenched fist. My God, just a
dream
, he thought. Maggie was here in town! And she wasn’t going to the Arctic!

That day, Arthur telephoned the Brewster house during his lunch hour.

Betty answered in a cheerful tone and passed him to Maggie.

“Art,” he said, though Maggie never called him that. “You said I could call you up, so I am. Any chance of seeing you?”

A few seconds later, he had a date to come to Maggie’s house around 6:30 “for a Coke or something.”

Arthur fully expected to run into Larry Hargiss, so he paid attention to what he wore. After a shower at home, he put on clean blue jeans and shirt, and a summer jacket not absolutely clean but not dirty either. A particularly pretty peachy rose was in full bloom in the garden, but he decided against bringing this in hand, in case Mr. Hargiss was present.

Mr. Hargiss was at least not in the living room when Arthur arrived. Betty greeted him warmly and remarked that she hadn’t seen him in more than a month.