“Hello, Judith,” Ruth said in a falsely bright manner.

Elaine turned abruptly. The girl was standing pressed against the door frame with a slice of bread in one hand and a piece of clay in the other.

She looked gravely at Ruth. “I made something. Do you want to see it?”

“I’d love to,” Ruth said. “It looks very interesting.”

“It isn’t interesting, it’s just a worm. But it’s a good worm. Paul screamed at it blue murder.”

“I don’t blame him. It’s such an excellent worm I feel like screaming myself.”

“Why don’t you?”

“Perhaps I will, later on when your mother leaves.”

“It doesn’t count if you don’t do it right away like Paul did.” For the first time since she entered the room she turned her eyes on her mother. “Who is Ruby?”

“She’s just a girl, a woman,” Elaine said. “And how many times have I told you not to go around in your bare feet like that prying into grown-ups’ conversations? It’s cheating.”

“Linda’s mother has ruby earrings.”

“Well, that’s nice.”

“They cost a million or two dollars.”

“Now, Judith, you know perfectly well that a pair of earrings doesn’t cost a million dollars.”

“Linda’s mother’s did.”

“All right, all right.”

“She got them from her boyfriend.”

“Really now, Judith, you mustn’t—” Elaine turned, sighing, to Ruth. “She makes up the weirdest things, honestly.”

Ruth smiled at the girl. “I brought Wendy along.”

“I know.”

“Don’t you want to pet her?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll pet her later on when my mother leaves.”

She put the clay worm on the table beside Ruth and walked silently out of the room.

“It’s always like that,” Elaine said. “Always. The least little thing and she turns against me. You’d think I was an ogre or something. Why does she do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, it’s no time to be worrying about it. I ordered the cab for eleven-thirty.”

“It’s almost that now.”

“I — it’s hard to believe I’m really leaving. I haven’t been anywhere for so long.” She hesitated. “Do I look all right? — I mean, not like a country bumpkin?”

“You look very citified.”

“Do I, really? People dress in Chicago, you know. Not like out here.”

When the cab came, Ruth gathered the children on the front porch to say goodbye to their mother. Since Elaine never went as far as the corner grocery store without last-minute admonitions, a trip to Chicago was worth a record number: promise not to eat too many sweets, to say your prayers, brush your teeth, stay out of the loquat tree, watch for cars, don’t spill anything on the new rug, keep out of the gopher poison in the garage, drink your orange juice, don’t catch poison oak; be good, obedient, neat, careful, wise, polite, clean and healthy.

The air was thick as jelly with promises. The baby went to sleep in Ruth’s arms, Paul played with the dog, Judith ate three bananas.

Elaine departed in the cab, laughing a little because she had wanted this trip for a long time, and crying a little too, because this wasn’t how she had planned it. She had meant to go with Gordon and the children, a happy little family off on a visit to Grandma. “What a beautiful family you have,” people would say. Or, “Such lovely, well-mannered children. It isn’t often in this day and age—”

No, it wasn’t often.

She leaned out of the back window of the cab and waved her lace handkerchief in farewell. But there was no one left on the porch except the little white mongrel scratching its ear.

Elaine put the lace handkerchief back in her pocketbook and dabbed at her eyes with a piece of Kleenex. She must keep the handkerchief clean for the plane trip. Kleenex looked common.

15

On Monday night the wind stopped and fog began to move in from the sea across the city like a giant cataract across an eye.

Mrs. Freeman watched it from her dining-room window. It settled down into the trees and between the houses and crept under the cracks of doors; lights grew hazy, people vanished; the foghorn began to bray from the lighthouse on the Mesa.

Mrs. Freeman closed all the windows and pulled down the blinds and went back to the letter she had received in the morning mail. It was written on cheap hotel stationery and the handwriting was like a child’s, hesitant and uneven, and punctuated with blobs of ink.

Dear Carrie, I bet you’re sore at me not writing before this but you know me “old girl,” I’m no good writing letters and stuff. Anyway here goes.

I am in Vegas where all the “big shots” come here to gamble. Every day you see somebody famous like movie stars and gangsters. I’ve been working steady for a week now a swell job with tips. I “turn on the charm” for them and the tips really roll in. You have to smile a lot that’s the secret, the others haven’t got wise to it yet.

It’s pretty hot here now in the day but the nights are just right. People come here with azsma and go away cured, also T.B. Well that’s about all Carrie. Just wait I’ll hit the jackpot yet and then I’ll be home and we’ll live in “the lap of the gods,” you can buy a whole new outfit. I miss you a lot and would sure love a home cooked meal for a change. I miss the ocean too, they can have the desert, give me a view of the sea any time. Well I guess that’s it.

Love,

Robert.

P.S. Happy birthday on the 3rd of Sept. Ha, ha, I bet you thought I forgot!

Her birthday was on the fifth, but it was the nicest letter she had ever received from him. When the doorbell rang her heart quickened for an instant in the hope that it might be Robert, that the act of writing to her had made him homesick and he had decided to come back right away for a home-cooked meal and a view of the sea.

She opened the door and saw George, his outlines blurred by fog, his voice muffled.

“Is Ruby here?”

She looked at him dully, as if he had spoken a name she’d never heard before.

He coughed and said, “May I come in?”

“Yes. Yes, come in.” She closed the door behind him, trembling a little. “It’s cold, a cold night. I can smell winter in the air and here it isn’t even fall yet. But that’s Channel City for you, we get some of our best weather in December or January.”

“I suppose so, but—”

“We can talk in the dining room. I have the heater going.”

They sat down at the round oak table under the beaded chandelier. In spite of the gas heater hissing in the corner, the room was chilly, as if the old walls had absorbed one too many fogs.

“Ruby,” Mrs. Freeman said. “She didn’t call you?”

“No.”

“I asked her to. I said you must be sure and tell Mr. Anderson before you leave. He’ll want to know, I said, he’ll be around asking for you.”

“She’s gone, then?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Yesterday morning. It was very sudden.”

“It must have been.”

“Even so she ought to have told you. It’s not fair leaving it to me. She could have called you.”

“Maybe she tried. Maybe the line was busy.”

“I’ll bet you that’s what happened.”

He leaned across the table. “But you wouldn’t bet much, would you?”

“No,” she said, turning away. “Not much. She was — I tried to talk to her. She was a headstrong girl. Nothing mattered to her except what she wanted at the moment.”

“And what did she want?”

“Him,” Mrs. Freeman said quietly. “Just him. Nobody else counted. Some women are like that.”

Not many, she thought. But some. The unlucky ones. And the men they love are unlucky too. Like Robert.

She looked at the bowl of wax fruit in the center of the table. The fruit came from the dime store but Robert had made the bowl himself out of a cracked phonograph record according to directions he’d found in an old magazine, steaming the record over the teakettle and when it was soft shaping it into a scalloped bowl. “Why, Robert, it’s beautiful!” “It’s not bad, is it?” “It’s just beautiful.” “Maybe I can get hold of a bunch of old records and start a whole new business.” “That’s a wonderful idea.” “Honest to God, I think we got something here. I think we’re going to hit the jackpot, Carrie, old girl.” “Of course, of course we are, dear.”

Of course. Because she couldn’t bear to hurt him, she had encouraged him beyond all reason and reality. The hurt came anyway, and it was shattering and final. He tried to sell one of the bowls to Mrs. Haggerty next door and Mrs. Haggerty said her kids had been making bowls like that for years at the Y.M.C.A. crafts club.

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Freeman said, but it wasn’t clear from her tone whom she was sorry for, George or Robert or Ruby or herself.

George lit a cigarette and the smoke curled up into the beaded chandelier and softened its glare.

“Where did she go?”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t be any use anyway, trying to find her.”

“But you know she went with him — with the man?”

“I saw them leave in his car. A nice-looking car. Green. When she said goodbye to me she put her arms around me, can you beat it?” Mrs. Freeman’s mouth tightened. “You’d think we’d been friends or something, the way she said goodbye to me like that, as if she was kind of sorry she had to leave. Well, I can’t be responsible for all the girls that cross my path. It’s just — I took kind of a personal interest in Ruby. She reminds me of someone I knew years ago. Ruby’s a little harder than this other girl I knew. Maybe she’ll have better luck. She’s not a bad girl.”