Therese was upstairs, changing her clothes, when she heard
the telephone ring. She heard Florence say, “Oh, good morning,
Mr. Aird. Yes, I’ll call her right now,” and Therese crossed the
room and closed the door.
Restlessly, she began to put the room in order, hung her
clothes in the closet, and smoothed the bed she had already made.
Then Carol knocked on the door and put her head in. “Harge is
coming by in a few minutes. I don’t think he’ll be long.”
Therese did not want to see him. “Would you like for me to
take a walk?”
Carol smiled. “No. Stay up here and read a book, if you want
to.”
Therese got the book she had bought yesterday, the Oxford
Book of English Verse, and tried to read it, but thewords stayed
separate and meaningless. She had a disquieting sense of hiding,
so she went to the door and opened it.
Carol was just coming from her room, and for an instant,
Therese saw the same look of indecision cross her face that
Therese remembered from the first moment she had entered the
house. Then she said, “Come down.”
Harge’s car drove up as they walked into the living room.
Carol went to the door, and Therese heard their greeting, Carol’s
only cordial, but Harge’s very cheerful, and Carol came in with a
long flower box in her arms.
“Harge, this is Miss Belivet. I think you met her once,” Carol
said.
Harge’s eyes narrowed a little, then opened. “Oh, yes. How do
you do?”
“How do you do?”
Florence came in, and Carol handed the flower box to her.
“Would you put these in something?” Carol said.
“Ah, here’s that pipe. I thought so.” Harge reached behind the
ivy on the mantel, and brought forth a pipe.
“Everything is fine at home?” Carol asked as she sat down at
the end of the sofa.
“Yes. Very.” Harge’s tense smile did not show his teeth, but
his face and the quick turns of his head radiated geniality andselfsatisfaction.
He watched with proprietary pleasure as Florence
brought in the flowers, red roses, in a vase, and set them on the
coffee table in front of the sofa.
Therese wished suddenly that she had brought Carol flowers,
brought them on any of a half a dozen occasions past, and she
remembered the flowers Dannie had brought to her one day
when he simply dropped in at the theater. She looked at Harge,
and his eyes glanced away from her, the peaked brow lifting still
higher, the eyes darting everywhere, as if he looked for little
changes in the room. But it might all be pretense, Therese
thought, his air of good cheer. And if he cared enough to pretend
he must also care in some way for Carol.
“May I take one for Rindy?” Harge asked.
“Of course.” Carol got up, and she would have broken a
flower, but Harge stepped forward and put a little knife blade
against the stem and the flower came off. “They’re very beautiful.
Thank you, Harge.”
Harge lifted the flower to his nose. Half to Carol, half to
Therese, he said, “It’s a beautiful day. Are you going to take a
drive?”
“Yes, we are,” Carol said. “By the way, I’d like to drive over
one afternoon next week. Perhaps Tuesday.”
Harge thought a moment. “All right. I’ll tell her.”
“I’ll speak to her on the phone. I meant tell your family.”
Harge nodded once, in acquiescence, then looked at Therese.
“Yes, I remember you. Of course. You were here about three
weeks ago. Before Christmas.”
“Yes. One Sunday.” Therese stood up. She wanted to leave
them alone. “I’ll go upstairs,” she said to Carol. “Good-by, Mr.
Aird.”
Harge made a little bow. “Good-by.”
As she went up the stairs, she heard Harge say, “Well, many
happy returns, Carol. I’d like to say it. Do you mind?”
Carol’s birthday, Therese thought. Of course, Carol wouldn’t
have told her.
She closed the door and looked around the room, realized she
was looking for any sign that she had spent the night. There was
none. She stopped at the mirror and looked at herself for a
moment, frowningly. She was not so pale as she had been three
weeks ago when Harge saw her, she did not feel like the
drooping, frightened thing Harge had met then. From the top
drawer, she got her handbag and took her lipstick out of it. Then
she heard Harge knock on the door, and she closed the drawer.
“Come in.”
“Excuse me. I must get something.” He crossed the room
quickly, went into the bathroom, and he was smiling as he came
back with the razor in his hand. “You were in the restaurant with
Carol last Sunday, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” Therese said.
“Carol said you do stage designing.”
“Yes.”
He glanced from her face to her hands, to the floor, and up
again. “I hope you see that Carol gets out enough,” he said. “You
look young and spry. Make her take some walks.”
Then he went briskly out the door, leaving behind him a faint
shaving-soap scent. Therese tossed her lipstick onto the bed, and
wiped her palms down the side of her skirt. She wondered why
Harge troubled to let her know he took it for granted she spent a
great deal of time with Carol.

“Therese!” Carol called suddenly. “Come down!”
Carol was sitting on the sofa, smoking a cigarette. Harge had
gone. She looked at Therese with a little smile. Then Florence
came in and Carol said, “Florence, you can take these somewhere
else. Put them in the dining room.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Carol winked at Therese. Nobody used the dining room,
Therese knew. Carol preferred to eat anywhere else. “Why didn’t
you tell me it was your birthday?” Therese asked her.
“Oh!” Carol laughed. “It’s not. It’s my wedding anniversary.
Get your coat and let’s go.”
As they backed out of the driveway, Carol said, “If there’s
anything I can’t stand, it’s a hypocrite.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing of any importance.” Carol was still smiling.
“But you said he was a hypocrite.”
“Par excellence.”
“Pretending all this good humor?”
“Oh—just partially that.”
“Did he say anything about me?”
“He said you looked like a nice girl. Is that news?” Carol shot
the car down the narrow road to the village. “He said the divorce
will take about six weeks longer than we’d thought, due to some
more red tape. That’s news. He has an idea I still might change
my mind in the meantime. That’s hypocrisy. I think he likes to
fool himself.”
Was life, were human relations like this always, Therese
wondered. Never solid ground underfoot. Always like gravel, a
little yielding, noisy so the whole world could hear, so one always
listened, too, for the loud, harsh step of the intruder’s foot.
“Carol, I never took that check, you know,” Therese remarked
suddenly. “I stuck it under the cloth on the table by the bed.”
“What made you think of that?”
“I don’t know. Do you want me to tear it up? I started to that
night.”
“If you insist,” Carol said.

“Was that Richard?” Carol asked when she came back.
“No. Phil McElroy.”
“So you haven’t heard from Richard?”
“I haven’t for the last few days. He sent me a telegram this
morning.” Therese hesitated, then took it from her pocket and
read it. “I HAVE NOT CHANGED, NEITHER HAVE YOU. WRITE
TO ME. I LOVE YOU. RICHARD.”
“I think you should call him,” Carol said. “Call him from my
house.” They were going to spend the night at Carol’s house and
leave early in the morning. “Will you put on that dress tonight?”
Carol asked.
“I’ll try it on. It looks like a wedding dress.”
Therese put on the dress just before dinner. It hung below her
calf, and the waist tied back with long white bands that in front
were stitched down and embroidered. She went to show it to
Carol. Carol was in the living room writing a letter.
“Look,” Therese said, smiling.
Carol looked at her for a long moment, then came over and
examined the embroidery at the waist. “That’s a museum piece.
You look adorable. Wear it this evening, will you?”
“It’s so elaborate.” She didn’t want to wear it, because it made
her think of Richard.
“What the hell kind of style is it, Russian?”
Therese gave a laugh. She liked the way Carol cursed, always
casually, and when no one else could hear.
“Is it?” Carol repeated.
Therese was going upstairs. “Is it what?”
“Where did you get this habit of not answering people?”
Carol demanded, her voice suddenly harsh with anger. Carol’s
eyes had the angry white light she had seen in them the time she
refused to play the piano. And what angered her now was just as
trifling.
“I’m sorry, Carol. I guess I didn’t hear you.”
“Go ahead,” Carol said, turning away. “Go on up and take it
off.”
It was Harge still, Therese thought. Therese hesitated a
minute, then went upstairs. She untied the waist and sleeves,
glanced at herself in the mirror, then tied them all back again. If
Carol wanted her to keep it on, she would.
They fixed dinner themselves, because Florence had already
started her three weeks’ leave. They opened some special jars of
things that Carol said she had been saving, and they made stingers
in the cocktail shaker just before dinner. Therese thought Carol’s
mood had passed, but when she started to pour a second stinger
for herself, Carol said shortly, “I don’t think you should have any
more of that.”
And Therese deferred, with a smile. And the mood went on.
Nothing Therese said or did could change it, and Therese blamed
the inhibiting dress for not being able to think of the right things
to say. They took brandied chestnuts and coffee up to the porch
after dinner, but they said even less to each other in the
semidarkness, and Therese only felt sleepy and rather depressed.

The next morning, Therese found a paper bag on the back
doorstep. Inside it was a toy monkey with gray and white fur.
Therese showed it to Carol.
“My God,” Carol said softly, and smiled. “Jacopo.” She took
the monkey and rubbed her forefinger against its slightly dirty
white cheek. “Abby and I used to have him hanging in the back of
the car,” Carol said.
“Abby brought it? Last night?”
“I suppose.” Carol went on to the car with the monkey and a
suitcase.
Therese remembered wakening from a doze on the glider last
night, awakening to an absolute silence, and Carol sitting there in
the dark, looking straight before her. Carol must have heard
Abby’s car last night.
Therese helped Carol arrange the suitcases and the lap rug in
the back of the car.
“Why didn’t she come in?” Therese asked.
“Oh, that’s Abby,” Carol said with a smile, with the fleeting
shyness that always surprised Therese. “Why don’t you go call
Richard?”
Therese sighed. “I can’t now, anyway. He’s left the house by
this time.”
It was eight-forty, and his school began at nine.
“Call his family, then. Aren’t you going to thank them for the
box they sent you?”
“I was going to write them a letter.”
“Call them now, and you won’t have to write them a letter.
It’s much nicer to call anyway.”
Mrs. Semco answered the telephone. Therese praised the
dress and Mrs. Semco’s needlework, and thanked her for all the
food and the wine.
“Richard just left the house,” Mrs. Semco said. “He’s going to
be awfully lonely. He mopes around already.” But she laughed,
her vigorous, high-pitched laugh that filled the kitchen where
Therese knew she stood, a laugh that would ring through the
house, even to Richard’s empty room upstairs. “Is everything all
right with you and Richard?” Mrs. Semco asked with the faintest
suspicion, though Therese could tell she still smiled.
Therese said yes. And she promised she would write.
Afterward, she felt better because she had called.
Carol asked her if she had closed her window upstairs, and
Therese went up again, because she couldn’t remember. She
hadn’t closed the window, and she hadn’t made her bed either, but
there wasn’t time now. Florence would take care of the bed when
she came in on Monday to lock the house up.
Carol was on the telephone when Therese came downstairs.
She looked up at Therese with a smile and held the telephone
toward her. Therese knew from the first tone that it was Rindy.
“… at—uh—Mr. Byron’s. It’s a farm. Have you ever been
there, Mother?”
“Where is it, sweetheart?” Carol said.
“At Mr. Byron’s. He has horses. But not the kind you would
like.”
“Oh. Why not?”
“Well, these are heavy.”
Therese tried to hear anything in the shrill, rather matter-offact
voice that resembled Carol’s voice, but she couldn’t.
“Hello,” Rindy said. “Mother?”
“I’m still here.”
“I’ve got to say good-by now. Daddy’s ready to leave.” And
she coughed.
“Have you got a cough?” Carol asked.
“No.”
“Then don’t cough into the phone.”
“I wish you would take me on the trip.”
“Well, I can’t because you’re in school. But we’ll have trips
this summer.”
“Can you still call me?”
“On the trip? Of course I will. Every day.” Carol took the
telephone and sat back with it, but she still watched Therese the
minute or so more that she talked.
“She sounds so serious,” Therese said.
“She was telling me all about the big day yesterday. Harge let
her play hooky.”
Carol had seen Rindy day before yesterday, Therese
remembered. It had evidently been a pleasant visit, from what
Carol had told Therese over the telephone, but she hadn’t
mentioned any details about it, and Therese had not asked her
anything.
Just as they were about to leave, Carol decided to make a last
call to Abby. Therese wandered back into the kitchen, because
the car was too cold to sit in.
“I don’t know any small towns in Illinois,” Carol was saying.
“Why Illinois? … All right, Rockford … I’ll remember, I’ll think
of roquefort … Of course I’ll take good care of him. I wish you’d
come in, nitwit … Well, you’re mistaken, very mistaken.”
Therese took a sip from Carol’s half-finished coffee on the
kitchen table, drank from the place where the lipstick was.
“Not a word,” Carol said, drawling the phrase. “No one, so far
as I know, not even Florence … Well, you do that, darling.
Cheerio now.”

Five minutes later, they were leaving Carol’s town on the
highway marked on the strip map in red, the highway they would
use until Chicago. The sky was overcast. Therese looked around
her at the country that had grown familiar now, the clump of
woods off to the left that the road to New York passed, the tall
flagstaff in the distance that marked the club Carol belonged to.
Therese let a crack of air in at her window. It was quite cold
and the heater felt good on her ankles. The clock on the
dashboard said quarter to ten, and she thought suddenly of the
people working in Frankenberg’s, penned in there at a quarter of
ten in the morning, this morning and tomorrow morning and the
next, the hands of clocks controlling every move they made. But
the hands of the clock on the dashboard meant nothing now to
her and Carol. They would sleep or not sleep, drive or not drive,
whenever it pleased them. She thought of Mrs. Robichek, selling
sweaters this minute on the third floor, commencing another year
there, her fifth year.
“Why so silent?” Carol asked. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” She did not want to talk. Yet she felt there were
thousands of words choking her throat, and perhaps only distance,
thousands of miles, could straighten them out. Perhaps it was
freedom itself that choked her.
Somewhere in Pennsylvania they went through a section of
pale sunshine, like a leak in the sky, but around noon, it began to
rain. Carol cursed, but the sound of the rain was pleasant,
drumming irregularly on the windshield and the roof.
“You know what I forgot?” Carol said. “A raincoat. I’ll have to
pick one up somewhere.”
And suddenly, Therese remembered she had forgotten the
book she was reading. And there was a letter to Carol in it, one
sheet that stuck out both ends of the book. Damn. It had been
separate from her other books, and that was why she had left it
behind, on the table by the bed. She hoped Florence wouldn’t
decide to look at it. She tried to remember if she had written
Carol’s name in the letter, and she couldn’t. And the check. She
had forgotten to tear that up, too.
“Carol, did you get that check?”
“That check I gave you?—You said you were going to tear it
up.”
“I didn’t. It’s still under the cloth.”
“Well, it’s not important,” Carol said.
When they stopped for gas, Therese tried to buy some stout,
which Carol liked sometimes, at a grocery store next to the gas
station, but they had only beer. She bought one can, because
Carol didn’t care for beer. Then they drove into a little road off
the highway and stopped, and opened the box of sandwiches
Richard’s mother had put up. There was also a dill pickle, a
mozzarella cheese, and a couple of hard-boiled eggs. Therese had
forgotten to ask for an opener, so she couldn’t open the beer, but
there was coffee in the thermos. She put the beer can on the floor
in the back of the car.
“Caviar. How very, very nice of them,” Carol said, looking
inside a sandwich. “Do you like caviar?”
“No. I wish I did.”
“Why?”
Therese watched Carol take a small bite of the sandwich from
which she had removed the top slice of bread, a bite where the
most caviar was.
“Because people always like caviar so much when they do like
it,” Therese said.
Carol smiled, and went on nibbling, slowly. “It’s an acquired
taste. Acquired tastes are always more pleasant—and hard to get
rid of.”
Therese poured more coffee into the cup they were sharing.
She was acquiring a taste for black coffee. “How nervous I was
the first time I held this cup. You brought me coffee that day.
Remember?”
“I remember.”
“How’d you happen to put cream in it that day?”
“I thought you’d like it. Why were you so nervous?”
Therese glanced at her. “I was so excited about you,” she said,
lifting the cup. Then she looked at Carol again and saw a sudden
stillness, like a shock, in Carol’s face. Therese had seen it two or
three times before when she had said something like that to Carol
about the way she felt, or paid Carol an extravagant compliment.
Therese could not tell if she were pleased or displeased. She
watched Carol fold the wax paper around the other half of her
sandwich.
There was cake, but Carol didn’t want any. It was the browncolored
spice cake that Therese had often had at Richard’s house.
They put everything back into the valise that held the cartons of
cigarettes and the bottle of whisky with a painstaking neatness
that would have annoyed Therese in anyone but Carol.
“Did you say Washington was your home state?” Therese
asked her.
“I was born there, and my father’s there now. I wrote him I
might visit him, if we get out that far.”
“Does he look like you?”
“Do I look like him, yes—more than like my mother.”
“It’s strange to think of you with a family,” Therese said.
“Why?”
“Because I just think of you as you. Sui generis.”
Carol smiled, her head lifted as she drove. “All right, go
ahead.”
“Brothers and sisters?” Therese asked.
“One sister. I suppose you want to know all about her, too?
Her name is Elaine, she has three children and she lives in
Virginia. She’s older than I am, and I don’t know if you’d like her.
You’d think she was dull.”
Yes. Therese could imagine her, like a shadow of Carol, with
all Carol’s features weakened and diluted.

Late in the afternoon, they stopped at a roadside restaurant
that had a miniature Dutch village in the front window. Therese
leaned on the rail beside it and looked at it. There was a little river
that came out of a faucet at one end, that flowed in an oval
stream and turned a windmill.
Little figures in Dutch costume stood about the village, stood
on patches of live grass. She thought of the electric train in
Frankenberg’s toy department, and the fury that drove it on the
oval course that was about the same size as the stream.
“I never told you about the train in Frankenberg’s,” Therese
remarked to Carol. “Did you notice it when you—”
“An electric train?” Carol interrupted her.
Therese had been smiling, but something constricted her
heart suddenly. It was too complicated to go into, and the
conversation stopped there.
Carol ordered some soup for both of them. They were stiff
and cold from the car.
“I wonder if you’ll really enjoy this trip,” Carol said. “You so
prefer things reflected in a glass, don’t you? You have your private
conception of everything. Like that windmill. It’s practically as
good as being in Holland to you. I wonder if you’ll even like
seeing real mountains and real people.”
Therese felt as crushed as if Carol had accused her of lying.
She felt Carol meant, too, that she had a private conception of
her, and that Carol resented it. Real people? She thought
suddenly of Mrs. Robichek. And she had fled her because she was
hideous.
“How do you ever expect to create anything if you get all your
experiences second-hand?” Carol asked, her voice soft and even,
and yet merciless.
Carol made her feel she had done nothing, was nothing at all,
like a wisp of smoke. Carol had lived like a human being, had
married, and had a child.
The old man from behind the counter was coming toward
them. He had a limp. He stood by the table next to them and
folded his arms. “Ever been to Holland?” he asked pleasantly.
Carol answered. “No, I haven’t. I suppose you’ve been. Did
you make the village in the window?”
He nodded. “Took me five years to make.”
Therese looked at the man’s bony fingers, the lean arms with
the purple veins twisting just under the thin skin. She knew better
than Carol the work that had gone into the little village, but she
could not get a word out.
The man said to Carol, “Got some fine sausages and hams
next door, if you like real Pennsylvania made. We raise our own
hogs and they’re killed and cured right here.”
They went into the whitewashed box of a store beside the
restaurant. There was a delicious smell of smoked ham inside it,
mingled with the smell of wood smoke and spice.
“Let’s pick something we don’t have to cook,” Carol said,
looking into the refrigerated counter. “Let’s have some of this,”
she said to the young man in the earlapped cap.
Therese remembered standing in the delicatessen with Mrs.
Robichek, her buying the thin slices of salami and liverwurst. A
sign on the wall said they shipped anywhere, and she thought of
sending Mrs. Robichek one of the big cloth-wrapped sausages,
imagined the delight on Mrs. Robichek’s face when she opened
the package with her trembling hands and found a sausage. But
should she after all, Therese wondered, make a gesture that was
probably motivated by pity, or by guilt, or by some perversity in
her? Therese frowned, floundering in a sea without direction or
gravity, in which she knew only that she could mistrust her own
impulses.
“Therese—”
Therese turned around, and Carol’s beauty struck her like a
glimpse of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Carol asked her if
she thought they should buy a whole ham.
The young man slid all the bundles across the counter, and
took Carol’s twenty-dollar bill. And Therese thought of Mrs.
Robichek tremulously pushing her single dollar bill and a quarter
across the counter that evening.
“See anything else?” Carol asked.
“I thought I might send something to somebody. A woman
who works in the store. She’s poor and she once asked me to
dinner.”
Carol picked up her change. “What woman?”
“I don’t really want to send her anything.” Therese wanted
suddenly to leave.
Carol frowned at her through her cigarette smoke. “Do it.”
“I don’t want to. Let’s go, Carol.” It was like the nightmare
again, when she couldn’t get away from her.
“Send it,” Carol said. “Close the door and send her
something.”
Therese closed the door and chose one of the six-dollar
sausages, and wrote on a gift card: “This comes from
Pennsylvania. I hope it’ll last a few Sunday mornings. With love
from Therese Belivet.”
Later, in the car, Carol asked her about Mrs. Robichek, and
Therese answered as she always did, succinctly, and with the
involuntary and absolute honesty that always depressed her
afterward. Mrs. Robichek and the world she lived in was so
different from that of Carol, she might have been describing
another species of animal life some ugly beast that lived on
another planet. Carol made no comment on the story, only
questioned and questioned her as she drove. She made no
comment when there was nothing more to ask, but the taut,
thoughtful expression with which she had listened stayed on her
face even when they began to talk of other things. Therese
gripped her thumbs inside her hands. Why did she let Mrs.
Robichek haunt her? And now she had spread it into Carol and
could never take it back.
“Please don’t mention her again, will you, Carol? Promise
me.”

Chapter Fifteen
Carol walked barefoot with little short steps to the shower room
in the corner, groaning at the cold. She had red polish on her
toenails, and her blue pajamas were too big for her.
“It’s your fault for opening the window so high,” Therese said.
Carol pulled the curtain across, and Therese heard the shower
come on with a rush. “Ah, divinely hot!” Carol said. “Better than
last night.”
It was a luxurious tourist cabin, with a thick carpet and woodpaneled
walls and everything from cellophane-sealed shoe rags to
television.
Therese sat on her bed in her robe, looking at a road map,
spanning it with her hand. A span and a half was a day’s driving,
theoretically, though they probably would not do it. “We might
get all the way across Ohio today,” Therese said.
“Ohio. Noted for rivers, rubber, and certain railroads. On our
left the famous Chillicothe drawbridge, where twenty-eight
Hurons once massacred a hundred—morons.”
Therese laughed.
“And where Lewis and Clark once camped,” Carol added. “I
think I’ll wear my slacks today. Want to see if they’re in that
suitcase? If not, I’ll have to get into the car. Not the light ones,
the navy-blue gabardines.”
Therese went to Carol’s big suitcase at the foot of the bed. It
was full of sweaters and underwear and shoes, but no slacks. She
saw a nickel-plated tube sticking out of a folded sweater. She
lifted the sweater out.
It was heavy. She unwrapped it, and started so she almost
dropped it. It was a gun with a white handle.
“No?” Carol asked.
“No.” Therese wrapped the gun up again and put it back as
she had found it.
“Darling, I forgot my towel. I—think it’s on a chair.”
Therese got it and took it to her, and in her nervousness as she
put the towel into Carol’s outstretched hand her eyes dropped
from Carol’s face to her bare breasts and down, and she saw the
quick surprise in Carol’s glance as she turned around. Therese
closed her eyes tight and walked slowly toward the bed, seeing
before her closed lids the image of Carol’s naked body

Therese took a shower, and when she came out, Carol was
standing at the mirror, almost dressed.
“What’s the matter?” Carol asked.
“Nothing.”
Carol turned to her, combing her hair that was darkened a
little by the wet of the shower. Her lips were bright with fresh
lipstick, a cigarette between them. “Do you realize how many
times a day you make me ask you that?” she said. “Don’t you
think it’s a little inconsiderate?”
During breakfast, Therese said, “Why did you bring that gun
along, Carol?”
“Oh. So that’s what’s bothering you. It’s Harge’s gun,
something else he forgot.” Carol’s voice was casual. “I thought it’d
be better to take it than to leave it.”
“Is it loaded?”
“Yes, it’s loaded. Harge got a permit, because we had a
burglar at the house once.”
“Can you use it?”
Carol smiled at her. “I’m no Annie Oakley. I can use it. I
think it worries you, doesn’t it? I don’t expect to use it.”
Therese said nothing more about it. But it disturbed her
whenever she thought of it. She thought of it the next night,
when a bellhop set the suitcase down heavily on the sidewalk. She
wondered if a gun could ever go off from a jolt like that.

They had taken some snapshots in Ohio, and because they
could get them developed early the next morning, they spent a
long evening and the night in a town called Defiance. All evening
they walked around the streets, looking in store windows, walking
through silent residential streets where lights showed in front
parlors, and homes looked as comfortable and safe as birds’ nests.
Therese had been afraid Carol would be bored by aimless walks,
but Carol was the one who suggested going one block farther,
walking all the way up the hill to see what was on the other side.
Carol talked about herself and Harge. Therese tried to sum up in
one word what had separated Carol and Harge, but she rejected
the words almost at once—boredom, resentment, indifference.
Carol told her of one time that Harge had taken Rindy away on a
fishing trip and not communicated for days. That was a
retaliation for Carol’s refusing to spend Harge’s vacation with
him at his family’s summer house in Massachusetts. It was a
mutual thing. And the incidents were not the start.
Carol put two of the snapshots in her billfold, one of Rindy in
jodhpurs and a derby that had been on the first part of the roll,
and one of Therese, with a cigarette in her mouth and her hair
blowing back in the wind. There was one unflattering picture of
Carol standing huddled in her coat that Carol said she was going
to send to Abby because it was so bad.

They got to Chicago late one afternoon, crept into its gray,
sprawling disorder behind a great truck of a meat-distributing
company. Therese sat up close to the windshield. She couldn’t
remember anything about the city from the trip with her father;
Carol seemed to know Chicago as well as she knew Manhattan.
Carol showed her the famous Loop, and they stopped for a while
to watch the trains and the homeward rush of five-thirty in the
afternoon. It couldn’t compare to the madhouse of New York at
five-thirty.
At the main post office, Therese found a postcard from
Dannie, nothing from Phil, and a letter from Richard. Therese
glanced at the letter and saw it began and ended affectionately.
She had expected just that, Richard’s getting the general delivery
address from Phil and writing her an affectionate letter. She put
the letter in her pocket before she went back to Carol.
“Anything?” Carol said.
“Just a postcard. From Dannie. He’s finished his exams.”

Carol drove to the Drake Hotel. It had a black and white
checked floor, a fountain in the lobby, and Therese thought it
magnificent. In their room, Carol took off her coat and flung
herself down on one of the twin beds.
“I know a few people here,” she said sleepily. “Shall we look
somebody up?”
But Carol fell asleep before they quite decided.
Therese looked out the window at the light-bordered lake and
at the irregular, unfamiliar line of tall buildings against thestillgrayish
sky. It looked fuzzy and monotonous, like a Pissarro
painting. A comparison Carol wouldn’t appreciate, she thought.
She leaned on the sill, staring at the city, watching a distant car’s
lights chopped into dots and dashes as it passed behind trees. She
was happy.

Her impression of Lake Shore Drive was always to be of a broad
avenue studded with mansions all resembling the White House in
Washington. In the memory there would be Carol’s voice, telling
her about a house here and there where she had been before, and
the disquieting awareness that for a while this had been Carol’s
world, as Rapallo, Paris, and other places Therese did not know
had for a while been the frame of everything Carol did.
That night, Carol sat on the edge of her bed, smoking a
cigarette before they turned the light out. Therese lay in her own
bed, sleepily watching her, trying to read the meaning of the
restless, puzzled look in Carol’s eyes that would stare at
something in the room for a moment and then move on. Was it
of her she thought, or of Harge, or of Rindy? Carol had asked to
be called at seven tomorrow, in order to telephone Rindy before
she went to school. Therese remembered their telephone
conversation in Defiance. Rindy had had a fight with some other
little girl, and Carol had spent fifteen minutes going over it, and
trying to persuade Rindy she should take the first step and
apologize.
Therese still felt the effects of what she had drunk, the
tingling of the Champagne that drew her painfully close to Carol.
If she simply asked, she thought, Carol would let her sleep
tonight in the same bed with her. She wanted more than that, to
kiss her, to feel their bodies next to each other’s. Therese thought
of the two girls she had seen in the Palermo bar. They did that,
she knew, and more. And would Carol suddenly thrust her away
in disgust, if she merely wanted to hold her in her arms? And
would whatever affection Carol now had for her vanish in that
instant? A vision of Carol’s cold rebuff swept her courage clean
away. It crept back humbly in the question, couldn’t she ask
simply to sleep in the same bed with her?
“Carol, would you mind—”
“Tomorrow we’ll go to the stockyards,” Carol said at the same
time, and Therese burst out laughing. “What’s so damned funny
about that?” Carol asked, putting out her cigarette, but she was
smiling, too.
“It just is. It’s terribly funny,” Therese said, still laughing,
laughing away all the longing and the intention of the night.
“You’re giggly on Champagne,” Carol said as she put the light
out.

Late the next afternoon they left Chicago and drove in the
direction of Rockford. Carol said she might have a letter from
Abby there, but probably not, because Abby was a bad
correspondent. Therese went to a shoe repair shop to get a
moccasin stitched, and when she came back, Carol was reading
the letter in the car.
“What road do we take out?” Carol’s face looked happier.
“Twenty, going west.”
Carol turned on the radio and worked the dial until she found
some music.
“What’s a good town for tonight on the way to Minneapolis?”
“Dubuque,” Therese said, looking at the map. “Or Waterloo
looks fairly big, but it’s about two hundred miles away.”
“We might take it.”
They took Highway 20 toward Freeport and Galena, which
was starred on the map as the home of Ulysses S. Grant.
“What did Abby say?”
“Nothing much. Just a very nice letter.”
Carol said little to her in the car, or even in the café where
they stopped later for coffee. Carol went over and stood in front
of a jukebox, dropping nickels slowly.
“You wish Abby’d come along, don’t you?” Therese said.
“No,” Carol said.
“You’re so different since you got the letter from her.”
Carol looked at her across the table. “Darling, it’s just a silly
letter. You can even read it if you want to.” Carol reached for her
handbag, but she did not get the letter out.
Sometime that evening, Therese fell asleep in the car and
woke up with the lights of a city on her face. Carol was resting
both arms tiredly on the top of the wheel. They had stopped for a
red light.
“Here’s where we stay tonight,” Carol said.

Therese’s sleep still clung to her as she walked across the hotel
lobby. She rode up in an elevator and she was acutely conscious of
Carol beside her, as if she dreamed a dream in which Carol was
the subject and the only figure. In the room, she lifted her
suitcase from the floor to a chair, unlatched it and left it, and
stood by the writing table, watching Carol. As if her emotions
had been in abeyance all the past hours, or days, they flooded her
now as she watched Carol opening her suitcase, taking out, as she
always did first, the leather kit that contained her toilet articles,
dropping it onto the bed. She looked at Carol’s hands, at the lock
of hair that fell over the scarf tied around her head, at the scratch
she had gotten days ago across the toe of her moccasin.
“What’re you standing there for?” Carol asked. “Get to bed,
sleepyhead.”
“Carol, I love you.”
Carol straightened up. Therese stared at her with intense,
sleepy eyes.
Then Carol finished taking her pajamas from the suitcase and
pulled the lid down. She came to Therese and put her hands on
her shoulders. She squeezed her shoulders hard, as if she were
exacting a promise from her, or perhaps searching her to see if
what she had said were real. Then she kissed Therese on the lips,
as if they had kissed a thousand times before.
“Don’t you know I love you?” Carol said.
Carol took her pajamas into the bedroom, and stood for a
moment, looking down at the basin.
“I’m going out,” Carol said. “But I’ll be back right away.”
Therese waited by the table while Carol was gone, while time
passed indefinitely or maybe not at all, until the door opened and
Carol came in again. She set a paper bag on the table, and
Therese knew she had only gone to get a container of milk, as
Carol or she herself did very often at night.
“Can I sleep with you?” Therese asked.
“Did you see the bed?”
It was a double bed. They sat up in their pajamas, drinking
milk and sharing an orange that Carol was too sleepy to finish.
Then Therese set the container of milk on the floor and looked at
Carol who was sleeping already, on her stomach, with one arm
flung up as she always went to sleep. Therese pulled out the light.
Then Carol slipped her arm under her neck, and all the length of
their bodies touched, fitting as if something had prearranged it.
Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching
fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh. She had a vision
of a pale-white flower, shimmering as if seen in darkness, or
through water. Why did people talk of heaven, she wondered.
“Go to sleep,” Carol said.

Therese hoped she would not. But when she felt Carol’s hand
move on her shoulder, she knew she had been asleep. It was dawn
now. Carol’s fingers tightened in her hair, Carol kissed her on the
lips, and pleasure leaped in Therese again as if it were only a
continuation of the moment when Carol had slipped her arm
under her neck last night. I love you, Therese wanted to say again,
and then the words were erased by the tingling and terrifying
pleasure that spread in waves from Carol’s lips over her neck, her
shoulders, that rushed suddenly the length of her body. Her arms
were tight around Carol, and she was conscious of Carol and
nothing else, of Carol’s hand that slid along her ribs, Carol’s hair
that brushed her bare breasts, and then her body too seemed to
vanish in widening circles that leaped further and further, beyond
where thought could follow. While a thousand memories and
moments, words, the first darling, the second time Carol had met
her at the store, a thousand memories of Carol’s face, her voice,
moments of anger and laughter flashed like the tail of a comet
across her brain. And now it was pale-blue distance and space, an
expanding space in which she took flight suddenly like a long
arrow. The arrow seemed to cross an impossibly wide abyss with
ease, seemed to arc on and on in space, and not quite to stop.
Then she realized that she still clung to Carol, that she trembled
violently, and the arrow was herself. She saw Carol’s pale hair
across her eyes, and now Carol’s head was close against hers. And
she did not have to ask if this were right, no one had to tell her,
because this could not have been more right or perfect. She held
Carol tighter against her, and felt Carol’s mouth on her own
smiling mouth. Therese lay still, looking at her—at Carol’s face
only inches away from her, the gray eyes calm as she had never
seen them, as if they retained some of the space she had just
emerged from. And it seemed strange that it was still Carol’s
face, with the freckles, the bending blonde eyebrow that she
knew, the mouth now as calm as her eyes, as Therese had seen it
many times before.
“My angel,” Carol said. “Flung out of space.”