The Road Through the Wall (14 page)

•   •   •

Harriet stopped in the living-room doorway, dumfounded, her mouth open and her great feet stilled. “What are you doing, Daddy?” she asked. “What are you doing here?”

Mr. Merriam looked up at her from his armchair and smiled. “Can't I come home early for a change?” he asked.

“But it's
so
early,” Harriet said. “Not anywhere near dinner-time.”

“Thought I'd like to see my family for a change,” Mr. Merriam said. “Spend a little time at home.”

“Mother's not here,” Harriet said. She moved back against the doorway and said, “She went out quite a while ago. You should have told her or something.”

Mr. Merriam moved his newspaper against the arm of the chair. “Suppose you come sit down and talk to Daddy, Harriet. Been a long time since you and I spent a day together.”

Harriet looked helplessly over her shoulder. “I was going out,” she said. “I just came back for my paper dolls.” She looked over her shoulder again at the front door and said, again, “I thought I'd go out.”

Mr. Merriam's smile faded, and he took up his newspaper. “You run along if you want to,” he said.

Harriet was embarrassed, and she said hastily, “I don't
have
to go. I can stay here for a while.”

“That's all right, you go ahead and play,” her father said.

“I'll stay here for a while,” Harriet said. She moved her feet uneasily and said solicitously, “Can I get you a cup of tea, Daddy?”

“No, thank you,” Mr. Merriam said. “You go ahead and play,” he said insistently.

“I don't want to now.” Harriet came over cautiously and sat down on a stool near her father's chair. She was still embarrassed and uncertain what to say, but finally she remarked brightly, “Have a hard day at the office today?”

“No,” Mr. Merriam said solemnly, “as a matter of fact, I thought it was such a nice day I wouldn't work at all, so I came on home.”

“You're not sick, are you?” Harriet said suddenly, struck with suspicion.

“No,” Mr. Merriam said. He shook his head. “I'm not even sick,” he said.

“Mother should be back very soon,” Harriet said. “She went to sew at Mrs. Donald's house. They sew every week at someone's house and this week it was Mrs. Donald's turn.”

“What do they sew?” Mr. Merriam asked.

“They take their own sewing,” Harriet explained. “They all sew. Next week they go to Mrs. Ransom-Jones's, I think.”

“They do that
every
week?” Mr. Merriam said.

“Unless they're sick or busy or something,” Harriet said. “They always go to a different house each week. They come here, even.”

“Can you sew?” Mr. Merriam asked with interest.

“Not very well,” Harriet said. “Mostly I'm a writer.”

“I see,” Mr. Merriam said. “What do you do with yourself all the time, Harriet?”

“I write,” Harriet said, “and I play with the kids, and Mother is teaching me to cook.”

“When are you going to make me a cake?” Mr. Merriam asked cheerfully.

“I can't make
cakes
yet,” Harriet said. “Mostly Mother lets me help her with things like the sandwiches for tea, when the sewing ladies come here, you know, and I make the salad every day for lunch.”

“I have a salad for lunch sometimes in town,” Mr. Merriam said. “Isn't it a lot of bother to make?”

“We're on a diet,” Harriet said, her face red. “I lost two pounds.”

“Yes,” Mr. Merriam said. He waited a minute and then said, “Be glad when school starts again?”

“No,” Harriet said. She listened intently and then stood up. “Here's Mother coming,” she said. “I guess I can go along now.”

•   •   •

After the morning he had come peacefully across the street and found Hester Lucas sitting on the Roberts's front porch, Tod Donald began hanging around the Roberts house more and more; when Art was away, or busy, Tod cultivated Jamie. His most earnest desire was to be in the same house as Hester, to be where he might hear her voice, or find her suddenly, or talk about her to people who saw her constantly. Both the Roberts boys loathed her, and before long the neighborhood knew that she was leaving their house—after a bare two weeks, not quite so long as Mrs. Roberts's maids usually stayed—so that Tod was forced to do his investigating quickly. He had no idea what he was looking for, or why it seemed that he might find it through Hester, but she had come with a good omen, Mrs. Roberts's arm around him, and her larger-than-life eyes and mouth brought Tod back to her again and again with the conviction that here, somehow, he might gain back what he had lost by being born at all.

One evening, coming across the lawn to the Roberts's—he meant to borrow a book from Art, or ask if Jamie was home, or any idiot purpose that might bring him around Hester—he saw Hester sitting on the porch steps, almost the way he had found her first, and in the darkness he was able to distinguish only vaguely that it was his brother who sat with her. Sudden suspicion silenced his steps, and he went roundabout past the Byrne house and into the bushes by the porch, where they sat without ever having noticed him. From the bushes he could watch and hear everything, and see, most particularly, Hester's big head against the faint light from the doorway.

Hester was saying, “And so she tells me I have to go, as though I ever wanted to stay. That old goat.”

Tod pressed closer behind the bushes, felt the cold rough stone of the porch against his shoulder. “
And
I didn't say a word,” Hester went on. “The things I could of told her.”

“No sense making trouble,” James said. His voice sounded disturbed, reluctant. The night air, and the cold stone, and his brother's voice, made Tod shiver.

“I wouldn't make any trouble,” Hester said. “I've had enough trouble, thanks.” She snorted. “I know enough so's I can handle some old guy in the kitchen, thanks.”

“Are you going to get back into high school?” James asked. Then, as though to cover up what must have been a private train of thought, he added quickly, “I mean, if you lost this job—”

“
I
don't care.”

“I figure you must of gotten a bad deal,” James said. “You didn't do anything.”

Hester laughed. “I did so do something,” she said. “I did plenty.
They
don't know what it's all about.”

“I mean—” James seemed to be speaking very carefully; he sounded as though he were avid for detail and yet not anxious to ask directly, “I mean, they said they brought you right back and all.”

“My father said he'd fix me if I didn't get an annulment,” Hester said. “You see, an annulment, that means you didn't do anything, but a divorce—well.” She laughed again. “If I got an annulment that meant I didn't do anything,” she explained, and then added, significantly, “but we'd been
married
two
weeks
before my father even caught us.”

James laughed too, falsely. “That must have been something,” he said.

“I can get back in high school if I want to,” Hester said. “They can't keep me out of high school if my father says I can go.”

There was a long silence; Tod, craning his neck until the bushes rattled suspiciously, could only see Hester and his brother sitting far apart on the steps. Finally Hester said, softly, “I bet
you
wouldn't mind it either.”

“What?” James said, startled.

“Being married to me for maybe two weeks,” Hester said insinuatingly. “It was fun.”

“I don't know,” James said deprecatingly. “I mean, I never thought much about it.”

“I
bet
you didn't,” Hester said. She leaned toward James; Tod could see her. “It's
fun
,” she repeated.

“I'm not ever going to get married,” James said. “Not till I'm thirty-five, at least, and earning a lot of money; a wife wants a man who can take care of her.” He moved uneasily, and then stood up. “Ought to be in bed,” he said. “Training.”

“Training?” Hester said.

“Football,” James said, surprised. “Good night, Hester.” He started across the street, and Hester watched him go from the steps and Tod watched him go from the bushes. Tod had no idea what his brother should have done, but he knew it was wrong for Hester to be sitting there alone right now. Forgetting that he revealed his eavesdropping, Tod pushed out of the bushes and came up onto the steps.

Hester watched him without curiosity. “What are
you
doing?” she asked.

Tod walked manfully up the steps and sat down next to her, where his brother had been sitting, and she looked at him tolerantly.

“I was listening to what you said,” he told her.

“I saw you come out of the bushes,” Hester said. “Your brother and his football.”

“He really does play football,” Tod said earnestly. “I'm going to play football too when I'm in high school.”

Hester was quiet, looking at the Donald house across the street. “That his room?” she asked, gesturing at the upstairs window where a light had been turned on.

“His and mine,” Tod said. “It's funny, he goes to bed earlier than I do sometimes and he's older.”

“That's because of the football,” Hester said.

Tod waited for a minute and then said, “Was that really true about you? About being married?”

“Sure,” Hester said. She touched her dyed hair lightly with one hand. “I ran away from school and got married.
Everyone
knew about it.”

“What did you do?” Tod asked, and knew suddenly that the question was a mistake; Hester was looking at him oddly, he had been too blunt, had pushed his need for information too far.

“You run along,” Hester said. “You go on home to bed.”

Desperately, trying to make it up, Tod said, “
I'd
like to be married to you.”

“For God's sakes,” Hester said. “The very idea.” She stood up and went to the door of the Roberts house and said over her shoulder, “What do you think I am, anyway?”

•   •   •

Harriet Merriam sat by herself on the curb in front of the house-for-rent. All day the painters had been there, and apparently plumbers, and strange heavy men in dark business suits, and the children had pressed around them, saying, “Is someone going to move in here?” and, “Mister, are you fixing it up for someone to live in?” One of the painters said genially to Virginia Donald that he thought “there wouldn't be all this work going on if they was going to tear it down,” and so, finally, it was confirmed: there were to be new people on Pepper Street, perhaps new children.

Everyone else was down at the vacant lot playing baseball, but Harriet seldom joined in, at baseball or tag or hide-and-seek, actually because she was fat and the other children made fun of her, ostensibly because her mother had forbidden her to play. “I have a sort of weak heart,” Harriet confided once to Virginia and Virginia told everyone else, “my mother thinks and the doctor thinks I shouldn't do much running around like the other kids.”

Harriet was wondering if there would be any girls moving into the house-for-rent, and if so, if one of them might not be a good kind of friend for her; since the affair at the apartment house she had been suspicious of Virginia, afraid that some silly word from Virginia might lead Mrs. Merriam to the traces which would bring her inevitably, and inexorably, to Harriet's part in the affair. Perhaps one of the new girls who would live in the house—they would be like in
Little Women
, and Harriet's friend would be Jo (or just possibly Beth, and they could die together, patiently)—would love and esteem Harriet, and some day their friendship would be a literary legend, and their letters—

Marilyn Perlman walked past, slowly, and then stopped and turned back. “Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” Harriet said. Marilyn came over and stood beside Harriet, looking back at the house-for-rent.

“I guess someone's going to move in,” she said.

“Sure,” Harriet said. She was bewildered; she had never spoken particularly to Marilyn; why should Marilyn stop and speak to her? She had no idea what to say or where to look; whenever she saw Marilyn she was embarrassed about remembering the ugly look on Marilyn's face that day in school when Helen Williams had made some sort of a meaningless fuss about Christmas. Marilyn sat down, suddenly, next to Harriet on the curb. “Listen,” she said in an honest voice, “I wanted to talk to you for a long time.”

“What about?” Harriet said.

Marilyn put her chin on her hands and stared straight ahead. “Just about everything,” she said. “You like to read, don't you?” When Harriet moved her head solemnly Marilyn said, “So do I,” and then stopped to think. “Do you get library books?” she asked.

“No,” Harriet said. “I've never been to the library yet.”

“Me neither,” Marilyn said. “We could get library cards, you know.”

“Have you read
Little Women
?” Harriet asked.

Marilyn shook her head and asked, “Have you read
Vanity Fair
?”

“I haven't read that yet,” Harriet said. “I liked
Little Women
, though.”

“Is it at the library?” Marilyn asked. “I want to get books at the library. They give you a card and you go in and take any books you want and then you bring them back when you've read them. Of course you've got to take very good care of them.”

“I liked
Jo's Boys
too,” Harriet said.

“You want to go down to the library sometime?” Marilyn asked.

“I could probably go some day,” Harriet said.

“Tomorrow,” Marilyn said. “It opens at two in the afternoon, I'm pretty sure. And I know where it is.”