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“What was that like?”
“Oh, it was like any other school. You had to learn things, take tests. There was nothing special about it just because we all had a calling, supposedly. But what was wonderful was that it was in Chicago. I couldn’t believe Chicago.” His face lit up. He had white, perfect teeth. “Do you ever go there?”
“Sometimes. Not often. Last year, Bunny took me down to the Museum of Science and Industry. They’ve got a display set up so you can see yourself on television.”
“That wasn’t far from where I went to school.” He sounded pleased. “I’d never been to Chicago before. I’d hardly been out of Iowa, and here were these beautiful, giant buildings, these streets crammed with people and cars. I got there and it was like that scene in The Wizard of Oz, when the picture suddenly goes from black-and-white to color. A whole world opened up. Everything had seemed so obvious and certain in Iowa, and suddenly, in Chicago, there were possibilities.”
“And then you had to end up in Katydid,” I said.
He smiled. “Katydid’s not so bad. It’s pretty, it’s got the square. I like the people here.”
“But it sure isn’t Chicago.”
“One thing Chicago taught me, and that’s that you make of a place what you want,” he said. “The possibilities are always there. It’s just a question of recognizing them.” He placed his hands on the table in front of him, folded, one across the other, as if in the small space beneath them he was hiding something. His fingers were long and slender, like tapered candles. Little tufts of blondish hair saved them from being too delicate. I thought they were the most beautiful hands I’d ever seen.
By now, I’d forgotten all about my list and about my worries of not having something to say. We kept talking, and I started telling him about life with Bunny. Perhaps I was too talkative; thinking back later, I worried that I’d said too much. I wasn’t careful, as I’d tried to be with Mrs. O’Brien. Bunny would have been furious. I even told him about the night Bunny burned her dress, though I’d never talked to anyone except Tom about it. He a
nd I were very young at the time. It was very late, and we were both in bed when Tom smelled something funny and came to my room to wake me. Together we padded down to the kitchen. Bunny was in her bathrobe, kneeling on the floor. In front of her in a messy pile was a dress—a strapless gown with a yellow organdy skirt. It was an old dress that she never wore, but to me, it was the most beautiful piece of clothing she owned. She had put it on once just to show me. Her bare shoulders were white and with all that organdy spreading out around her legs, I thought she looked like a princess. When Tom and I found her, though, she was trying to set fire to the dress, using a lighter somebody had left at the house. The fabric smoldered and smoked but wouldn’t catch. The organdy just turned into black spider webs and dissolved. Bunny didn’t know we were watching. She was sobbing, and she kept flicking the lighter and holding it under the material until the lighter got too hot to hold. Then she’d drop it and suck on her fingers and pick it up again. Meanwhile, the kitchen was filling with gray smoke. Of course, when Bunny saw Tom and me, she stood right up and pretended that nothing had happened. She said something about there being a spot on the dress that she couldn’t get out. She bundled the material up and stuffed it in the trash can. Tom and I just stood there watching.
“What was going on?” asked Reverend Vaughn.
“Well, it happened not long after Bunny had broken up with Wayne Wadlinger. She never said anything, but I knew there was some connection.”
“How did it make you feel?”
I had to think for a moment. “It made me feel that I wished I could bring Bunny back down to Tom’s and my level, so she would only feel the things we felt. This was so different. Most of the time, she seemed like us—that was why she was so much fun. But every now and then, something would happen, and I’d realize how different we were. Like the burning dress. Why would anybody burn a dress? It worried me. It still does, I suppose.”
“But don’t you think a mother is supposed to be different?” he asked. “She’s older than you. She raised you. The generations are always different.”
“Yes, but Bunny never hid things from us—or at least she never seemed to. It was as if we were all kids together. And that’s what made her so unusual. I knew that all along. I mean, even before I went to school and saw what other mothers were like, I knew Bunny was special. It was wonderful, having a mother like that, but I always knew I had to be careful. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could go around talking about.”
Reverend Vaughn nodded and stood up. It was time to head back to the Vernons’. “You were right to be careful,” he said, cracking a thin smile, so faint it hardly seemed meant to be noticed.
TWELVE
After Reverend Vaughn left, I mooned around the Vernons’ house. I couldn’t get him out of my mind. I knew it was silly to get carried away like that, but I decided it was good for me—thinking about him relaxed me for the first time in days. I reviewed our conversation. Trading confidences, we’d almost made a pact, I thought. Maybe I had gone too far, but he’d gone far too; at least, it seemed so. He was so open about examining himself. There was no boasting, no anger, no point to prove. He was so … honest. And those hands. I couldn’t stop thinking about his hands.
That evening after dinner, Mrs. Vernon went off to a church meeting, and Mr. Vernon went out bowling. I thought I’d try to read, so I browsed through Sissy’s bookshelf. It held a strange collection that included mostly children’s books—Bible stories, picture books about talking animals, that kind of thing, as if Sissy had stopped reading long before she died. There were a couple of volumes of Reader’s Digest condensed books and, by itself at the end, a lone copy of Hard Times, by Charles Dickens. I’d liked Great Expectations, so I pulled out Hard Times and started to read. I saw right away why Sissy had collected the book: The main character was named Sissy. Still, Hard Times at first looked promising, perhaps even useful. “In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts,” said one man early on. But the tone overall was so blustery and overblown that I couldn’t quite tell if Dickens was being humorous or realistic. Plus the adult characters all had funny names. Thomas Gradgrind. Mr. M’Choakumchild. My thoughts soon drifted.
I put Hard Times down and wandered into the bathroom next door. Sissy had used this one; her parents had another at the far end of the hall. Two bathrooms in one house—three if you counted the half bathroom off the kitchen. Bunny and Tom and I had made do with one all those years. I wondered how much money Mr. Vernon made. A lot more than a waitress at the country club. Leaning over the bathroom sink, I stared at myself in the mirror. I felt kind of free, knowing I was alone in the house. I even felt a little wild. I made faces at myself, trying to find expressions that helped pull my features together. I tested my profile, straining to look out the corners of my eyes. With my chin held up, there was something almost dignified about my silhouette, something angular and flat, like modern art. Maybe Reverend Vaughn had noticed that. I wished I had some of my makeup—a bit of rouge to highlight my cheekbones, some lipstick to improve my mouth. Unadorned, my lips seemed so weak, so trembly. But makeup had been the farthest thing from my mind when I’d packed. I’d never thought to bring some. Now, everything was in the bathroom cabinet at home—that is, if Bunny hadn’t thrown it all away.
I opened Sissy’s cabinet, behind the mirror. Empty. Just a flimsy, metal container of throat lozenges, rusted at the hinge. The narrow glass cabinet shelves glinted under the bright overhead light. How could anyone have an empty bathroom cabinet? It was depressing. The thought of Sissy irritated me, and I slammed the cabinet shut.
Maybe Mrs. Vernon had some makeup. Every now and then I’d noticed a slight reddening on her cheeks and lips. I’d never use her lipstick, of course, but I might just investigate to see if she really had any. The door to the other bathroom was ajar. I pushed it open and turned on the light. The room sparkled with whiteness and tile. A can of Ajax sat on the back of the toilet. The shelf behind the sink was empty, except for a wrinkled tube of Colgate and a bouquet of old toothbrushes sitting in a cup. I looked in the cabinet: Band-Aids, Bayer aspirin, emery boards, Q-tips, Bactine, Noxema shaving creme, a razor, blades, Jergen’s hand lotion. And one small, green plastic bottle of pills from Conrad’s Drug Store. The prescription was from Dr. Baker for Mrs. Vernon: Take two daily, one in the morning, one at night. I picked up the bottle to study the contents: big, dangerous-looking orange capsules. I tipped the bottle and nothing moved. They’d fused together, obviously untouched for years. I put the medicine back and closed the cabinet. Even in their private places, these people were uninteresting.
Leaving the bathroom, I paused in front of the door to the Vernons’ bedroom. I’d never been in there; in fact, I’d never even looked inside. Mrs. Vernon had a way of sliding in and out, ghostlike, with the door three-quarters closed. I got the impression she thought that a bedroom was somehow too personal to open up. I pushed the door open.
The fading light of the sunset passed through the flimsy drawn curtains and gave the room a yellowy, historic aura, as if, once, something terribly important and tragic had happened there. A double bed jutted into the center of the room. Beside it, a small night table held a Bible and an empty glass. Two tall bureaus stood side by side. On one was a pincushion, a Chinese box, and a nativity statue; the other was topped by a school picture of Sissy and nothing else. A couple of mournful paintings of Jesus hung on the wall. The windows were closed, and a faint, syrupy smell, too sweet for perfume, clung to the air.
I stood in the center of the room. Going through the bureau drawers looking for makeup was out of the question, but I felt a small excitement at being there—the kind of thrill I used to get from seeing how long I could hold my breath, testing how well my nerve stood up against my better judgment.
Suddenly something banged downstairs. Someone was at the door. I felt awful, even before being caught. More noise downstairs, a thumping. I ran to the bedroom door and grabbed the knob. Hurrying out, I pulled too hard, and the door slammed. A crash echoed after me. I ran down the hall to Sissy’s room and closed the door. It had to be Mr. Vernon, home early. I lay on the bed, trying to imagine what had crashed in the bedroom. In the hall, below me, footsteps creaked. That didn’t sound like Mr. Vernon, or like Mrs. Vernon either. I went to the door and opened it a crack. Silence. I tiptoed down the hall to the top of the stairs. Someone was down there. My heart was pounding so fiercely that it was hard to listen, but I was sure someone was there. I came two steps down the stairs and tried to look along the front hall. Light from the parlor window cut across the darkness, but the far end of the hall disappeared in shadow.
“Hello?” I said softly.
“Whoosh!” Someone made a noise, like a cushion letting out air. Footsteps pounded down the hall, and the front door flew open. The screen door slammed. I ran downstairs and saw a thin, flailing figure dash across the lawn.
Outside, I stood on the front step. Nothing moved on Oak Street. The houses were all lit from within. Someone was playing a phonograph: The wavery voice of a male singer drifted through the air. Dwayne’s bicycle was sprawled in the grass beside the sidewalk, and up the street Dwayne was peeking out from behind a tree.
