The Road Through the Wall (16 page)

When Harriet saw that Marilyn was tearful she was embarrassed. “Where
is
all this?” she said harshly. “It doesn't make any sense to
me
.”

“No place,” Marilyn said. “Forget it.” She sat up, her ugly face angry. “It's silly,” she said. “I'll tell you all about it sometime.”

“I think,” Harriet said, trying to look inspired, “that I was one of those people who had to take care of an idol or something. In a long white dress with jewels in my hair. And chanting.”

“I know what let's put in the box,” Marilyn said suddenly.

“What we remember?”

“That's all over with,” Marilyn said. “Let's put down what we think we'll be this time. I mean, like in this reincarnation. See, in maybe ten years we'll be grown-up and then we'll know. What we're going to be this time, I mean.”

“No,” said Harriet, meaning she could not understand.

“What I mean is,” Marilyn said carefully, “let's both write down what we're going to be like in maybe ten years from now.”

“What we'll be in ten years,” Harriet said reflectively. “I'll be twenty-four.”

“We'll write it down, and we won't look at each other's,” Marilyn said, “and then in ten years when we meet here again we can look at it.”

“We have to promise, though,” Harriet said; they were building it together now. “We have to promise never to look at them until ten years.”

“Let's write it now,” Marilyn said.

A mystic raptness seized them. Solemnly they tore identical pages out of their notebooks, and, taking their pencils, sat down to write. Harriet wrote half a page, Marilyn only a few lines, but it took them both a long time. Then, as solemnly, each folded her own, and they opened the secret hiding place and put the papers in.

“Rest here, all my hopes and dreams,” Marilyn said, and Harriet, a little embarrassed, said, “A curse be on whoever touches these papers.”

Then the hiding place was covered and all traces of it effaced. Marilyn held her hand out over the hiding place and Harriet took it, and Marilyn said, “Now you're my closest and dearest friend, Harriet.”

“We'll always be true friends,” Harriet said. “We'll never separate. We will always be able to communicate in our thoughts.”

“I'll always know where you are and what you're doing,” Marilyn said.

“And each other's most secret thoughts,” Harriet said.

There seemed to be no way to end it. Finally Marilyn drew her hand back and Harriet dropped her hand to pick up her book. They were quiet for a while, and then Marilyn said in her normal voice,

“Golly, if Virginia Donald ever finds this place.”

“She wouldn't know it was us,” Harriet said.
“Probably.”

•   •   •

Frederica Terrel's family came so quietly that no one knew they were there; perhaps they stole in through a back door, or walked quickly up the street unobserved; at any rate, they came softly and invisibly, and the first anyone knew they were there was when Frederica came hesitantly down the front steps, looked up and down the street and, after standing on the sidewalk for a minute, noticed Miss Fielding sitting on her front porch and came to the foot of Miss Fielding's walk.

“Excuse me,” Frederica said. She blinked nervously through her glasses. “Where would I find a grocery store near here? I want to get some food and things.”

Miss Fielding leaned forward to look over the stone railing of her porch. “A grocery store?” she asked. She went to the nearby grocery almost daily, had done so ever since moving to Pepper Street, but the fact of someone's asking her a direct question frightened her. She thought deeply, and Frederica fidgeted nervously, blinking through her glasses. “I guess,” Miss Fielding said, “at least—do you want just plain things? Like potatoes, for instance, and bread?”

“And canned goods,” Frederica said. “And my sister has to have milk.”

“Well,” Miss Fielding said. She thought again. Perhaps Frederica would not be favorably impressed with Miss Fielding's regular grocery, and then Miss Fielding would be blamed; worse still, the man in the grocery (Mr. Jowett, that would be) might find Frederica, coming with Miss Fielding's recommendation, insolent, or demanding, or extravagant, or even, just possibly, someone who wanted to open a charge account—to buy, in other words, without paying—and the thought, in Miss Fielding's mind, of herself facing Mr. Jowett tomorrow after having sent him such an unreliable customer. . . . “Well,” Miss Fielding said. Her face brightened and she looked beyond Frederica. “There comes Mrs. Ransom-Jones,” she said with relief. “I'm very sure she knows the
best
place to go.”

Frederica turned around slowly, planting her feet one beside the other in little steps so as to pivot without losing her balance. She regarded Mrs. Ransom-Jones heavily as Mrs. Ransom-Jones came down the street, and Miss Fielding, leaning even farther forward, called out delicately, in her shrill old woman's voice, “Mrs. Ransom-Jones?
Will
you come here for a moment, please?”

Mrs. Ransom-Jones, just passing the house-for-rent, brought her eyes back guiltily from the frank stare with which she was watching the lower windows; she had, most patently, been trying to see inside, and her tone was sharp as she said, “Miss Fielding! Good afternoon.” Miss Fielding waved her hand to bring Mrs. Ransom-Jones closer and said, “This is our new neighbor, I believe. She is in trouble, and I think you can help her better than I.”

“I want a store,” Frederica said abruptly. “I want to buy some groceries.”

Mrs. Ransom-Jones considered prettily, trying with over-courtesy and every conceivable air of good breeding to persuade Miss Fielding and this lumpy girl that the Ransom-Joneses did not peer in windows. “There's Delamar's, of course,” she said. “But of
course
.” She laughed lightly, good breeding and all. “It's a little
expensive
,” she went on. “He has things like
paté de fois gras
and all sorts of elaborate things like that. I really only shop there when I want something special. For dinner parties or something.”

“I want to get some baloney,” Frederica said. “And some milk and some bread and a can of peas and a dozen eggs and probably a bag of potato chips.”

“There's Mr. Jowett,” Miss Fielding said. Mrs. Ransom-Jones's recommendation would be above reproach.

“Mr. Jowett,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. “Yes, Mr. Jowett would do.”

“And I ought to get light bulbs,” Frederica said. She turned around again to Miss Fielding, quickly, with the first emotion she had shown; it seemed to be anger. “You know those damn people they took away every single light bulb?” she demanded.

“Isn't that nice,” Miss Fielding said, flustered, and Frederica turned back to Mrs. Ransom-Jones. “
That's
cheap, isn't it?” she said. “We'll be in the dark.”

Mrs. Ransom-Jones, whose good face depended on a complete lack of interest in Frederica's family, said, “If you turn right at this corner and then left at the highway and go straight down for about three blocks you'll find Mr. Jowett's. In a little block of stores.”

Frederica opened her mouth slightly to listen better, and when Mrs. Ransom-Jones had finished Frederica repeated the directions in her usual dull voice, and turned in response to Mrs. Ransom-Jones's daintily pointing finger and trudged off down the street.

“Not even ‘Thank you,'” Miss Fielding said in the tone of one who was not at all surprised.

“Well. . . .” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said, in the tone of one who was used to it. She and Miss Fielding smiled at each other, and then Miss Fielding said, “You've got a nice day for your walk, Mrs. Ransom-Jones.”

“I thought I'd get some air,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. “Lillian was asleep, so I thought I'd run out for a few minutes.”

“How
is
your sister?” Miss Fielding asked immediately.

Mrs. Ransom-Jones smiled sadly, and waved one hand. “Not very much better,” she said.

“I
am
sorry,” Miss Fielding said.

“But of course. . . .” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said.

“You never can tell,” Miss Fielding said. “I've known people, people who were just like that. . . .”

“Nothing seems to help much, one way or the other,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. She put one foot forward, and nodded brightly. “Such an
odd
girl,” she said.

Miss Fielding stayed leaning forward for a minute and then sat back, resigned. “I imagine the whole family must be odd,” she said.

“Indeed, yes.” Mrs. Ransom-Jones, her walk apparently over, turned to go back up the street. She waved good-bye to Miss Fielding, and, keeping her face carefully averted, started past the house-for-rent. Because Mrs. Ransom-Jones was looking steadfastly across the street at the Byrne house, and because the girl, apparently Frederica's sister, was tiptoeing down the walk looking backward at her own house, they collided square in front of the house-for-rent, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones said, “Good heavens!” and tried to recover her balance, while the girl, with a solidness and lumpy stolidity reminiscent of Frederica, stood gaping.

“Don't you know how to apologize?” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said with annoyance. “Do you just stand there like an ape?”

The girl grinned; unlike Frederica, she had strong white teeth and a great heavy unthinking face; when she grinned at Mrs. Ransom-Jones it seemed to be partly apologetic, partly complete uncomprehending bewilderment; perhaps she was dazzled by Mrs. Ransom-Jones's smooth hair, her smartly planned linen dress, the clean white shoes. Mrs. Ransom-Jones, thinking of this in order to recover her poise, noticed that the girl was barefoot. She was a tall stout girl, taller perhaps than Frederica, and certainly barefoot. Mrs. Ransom-Jones said, “Barefoot? A girl your age?”

The girl grinned again, but Mrs. Ransom-Jones seemed to have communicated with her, because she looked down at her feet and then back at Mrs. Ransom-Jones. It seemed to be an effort of mental enthusiasm for her to move; in order for her to hold out her hand to Mrs. Ransom-Jones she first had to think of it, then think of the hand, then send some kind of slow deliberate message down the arm to the hand, all the time regarding her hand with rapt concentration. When the hand moved and went out to Mrs. Ransom-Jones the girl was pleased; she smiled again, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones, moving back a step, said, “What—?”

“Money,” the girl said slowly. Her voice was thick and again reminiscent of Frederica's dull tones. “I've money.” Speaking seemed to be less of an effort than anything else except smiling; perhaps the girl was accustomed to sitting quietly while people took care of her when she voiced her wants. “Plenty of money.”

“Really,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said helplessly. She was acutely conscious that Miss Fielding, somewhere behind her, was leaning forward again—leaning forward and perhaps even standing up—and that what Miss Fielding was seeing did not lend any appreciable dignity to Mrs. Ransom-Jones's poise and graciousness. For Miss Fielding's benefit Mrs. Ransom-Jones straightened her back, put her shoulders steady, and said carefully and emphatically, “I don't think you ought to be out with all that money, my dear. Your mother should be with you. Now you turn right around and go back inside your house and tell your mother I—” Mrs. Ransom-Jones emphasized the “I” slightly—“said that you should not be out alone. Do you understand me?” Mrs. Ransom-Jones rested and then added, for Miss Fielding, “My dear.”

The girl stared blankly, looking from Mrs. Ransom-Jones to the money in her hand, and, once, down at her feet again. Mrs. Ransom-Jones took a breath and said, sharpening her voice a little, “You
must
turn right around and go back into the house. I'm
sure
your mother doesn't know you're out here.” Finally Mrs. Ransom-Jones said, “How
old
are you?”

The girl smiled again. “Twelve-and-a-half,” she said.

Mrs. Ransom-Jones gasped. Certainly the girl was
big
enough. . . . “Twelve-and-a-half,” she said, without any change in her voice, which she imagined was soothing and yet forceful. “Now you turn right around and go back in—”

“How old are you?” the girl said. “I'm twelve-and-a-half.”

Certainly the girl had no trouble talking; Mrs. Ransom-Jones estimated anxiously that the real problem seemed to be elsewhere, perhaps
very
slow reactions, Mrs. Ransom-Jones thought; it was difficult to imagine, on Pepper Street, in broad daylight, that a new tenant, and unfortunate girl, could be—

“Dear,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said, “suppose we go in together and see your nice mother. I'll just go up to the door with you and we can tell your nice mother that you met me outside and I made you come home again. I'm sure she'll be happier to know that you're back in the house, and safe.” For one swift minute Mrs. Ransom-Jones allowed herself to look down at the money again. She retained in her mind, from the first glimpse, a vision of (was it possible?) a twenty-dollar bill, among others. Her second glance confirmed this. A twenty, and several ones. “A girl twelve years old!” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said involuntarily. She took the girl's arm with determination and faced toward the house. For a minute the girl resisted, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones, with a renewal of the feeling of how she must look to Miss Fielding, had the sensation of tugging against a battleship heavily moored, which gives slightly to a tug, but ultimately remains where it is. Then the girl, leaning against Mrs. Ransom-Jones, began to move along beside her, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones guided her up the walk to the front door. She rang the doorbell and the girl chuckled affectionately. After waiting for a few minutes Mrs. Ransom-Jones said excusingly to the girl, “Just so you're safe inside,” and tried the door-handle gently. The door opened, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones put her head inside and said, “Hello?” There was no answer, and Mrs. Ransom-Jones said, her voice a little anxious, “Where
is
your nice mother, dear?”