Next morning I got up, made coffee for myself over the flame of a chafing dish, a skill I’d learned ever since the gas had been discontinued, and put on pants and a blouse. Then I sat down at the dressing table and wrote three checks, one to the gas company, one to the electric, and one to the phone. Two of them I put in a drawer, as I wouldn’t have money to cover; but one of them, to the phone company, I put in my bag and I went out. I walked down to the bank, reserved $10, and deposited the rest, more than $50 in all. Then I walked up the hill to the phone company, which had offices near the bank. They sent me up to Mr. Wilson, on the second floor. I handed him my check, tucked into the last bill we’d received, marked “Third Notice,” and asked him: “Mr. Wilson, how soon can the phone be turned on?”
“… Just a second. I’ll see.”
He left the room, but then in a short time was back. He sat down and pushed me his phone. “Will you dial your number?” he asked.
“Mr. Wilson, my phone is cut off. Perhaps I should have mentioned, it happened some time ago, when I didn’t pay my bill, and-”
“Well, try it anyway.”
I dialed my number. “Oh!” I yelped. “It’s ringing.”
“I thought it would.”
He laughed, and I hung up so I could clap my hands, though I loved hearing the ring. He gave me a little pat on the arm, and once more I felt happy and friendly. Then I walked down the hill, crossed the street, and a half block up went into a luncheonette in the middle of a big parking lot, where I ordered breakfast-a big, real breakfast, of orange juice, fried eggs sunny side up with a slice of ham, buttered toast, and coffee. For the figure, it’s not recommended, but for the soul, when you haven’t eaten like that, at least at breakfast time, for so long you can’t remember the last time you did, it’s wonderful. I took my time, and chewed every bite. When she brought me my check, the girl asked me: “Didn’t I see you last night at the Garden? Didn’t you serve us our drinks? Me and my friend?”
“That’s right, I remember. You were in the blue dress.”
“First night out in a while.”
“Did you find the service O.K.?”
“Little too good, I’m sorry to say-especially how well the friend liked it. He’s not my boyfriend, exactly, but since he was taking me out, I could have done with a little less looking. Not that it was your fault.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t notice.”
“Well, he sure did. That boy liked you.”
“They make us wear those things, you know.”
“I imagine it helps with tips, from male customers anyway.”
“It seems to.”
She looked down at her own torso and shook her head. “And I’m working here. If I had what you have …”
I left her a dollar as tip. It wasn’t her fault she couldn’t fill out a blouse the way Liz and I could.
Back in the house I looked up Elizabeth Baumgarten in the phone book and dialed her number. When she answered I said: “Liz, this is Joan. I got my phone turned on, and in celebration thereof, called you first of all.” She took it big and flung off a couple of gags, then said she’d stop by around 3:30 and run me down to work. I told her: “Make it three, so we can visit a little while,” and she said she would. Then I set the alarm and lay down for a little nap, to let the breakfast digest. I got up just after two, put on light tan pantyhose, the trunks, flat-heel comfortable shoes, and a peasant blouse of my own, as the other wasn’t fresh anymore, and needed a dunk in the basin. I was hanging it up on the shower rail when the doorbell clicked, with a knock following, and I skipped down the hall to answer. But instead of Liz it was Ethel. Her eyes opened wide at my costume. “Oh,” I said. “Hello, Ethel.”
“I’m here for Tad’s things,” she told me.
“Well come in, why don’t you? Act sociable.”
“… If he has any things, that is.”
I didn’t appreciate this crack, but I still played it friendly and took no notice. “Of course he has things,” I assured her, motioning her inside.
“I only say so because you seemed to have so little, when I first came here on Sunday. It was truly a shock.”
“So you said at the time.”
She continued to speak, not bothering to face me, as she walked past me to the living room: “I mean, not even electricity, Joan! I don’t see how you could live that way, how you could raise a child that way.”
Before I followed I glanced at her car, which she’d put in the drive, to make sure Tad wasn’t in it, locked up to bake in the sun. He wasn’t, and I went in the living room. By then she’d taken a seat, but resumed her stare at my outfit, especially my trunks. “I see you’ve noticed my uniform,” I said. “I’ve taken a job. I work in a cocktail bar-the Garden of Roses, down the street.”
“… Joan, I’d be ashamed!”
“Of what? Working for a living?”
“There are livings that don’t require you to dress like… a tramp.”
“Find me one that’ll have me and I’ll apply. In the meantime, I’m earning good money and all I’m doing for it is bringing people drinks and a bit of food, and a smile to go with them.”
“Might as well have nothing on but that smile.”
“The more they admire what they see, Ethel, the more they tip- and tips are the object of the game. They have to be, when you have a little boy and have to pay board for him.”
“You don’t have to pay board, I’ve told you.”
“Oh, but Ethel, I do. I can’t be beholden to you.”
She stared some more, then broke out: “Joan, don’t you have any pride? If not for your own sake, Joan, you could think of Tad.”
“You mean, to be a fit mother for him?”
“… Yes! That’s what I mean, exactly!”
“And you’re not the only one, Ethel. Would you believe it, some woman called up the police about it, talked to the officers who handled Ron’s case, trying to get them to move, to have me declared an unfit mother. Can you imagine something like that? This woman even mentioned Joe Pennington-you know, that boy you spread rumors about, as being something more to me than just an acquaintance. Who do you suppose would have done a thing like that?”
She didn’t answer, and I sat there kicking my foot. Then the doorbell spoke again, and when I opened the door Liz was there. She came in and I presented her: “Ethel, Miss Baumgarten, my very good friend. Liz, my sister-in-law, Mrs. Lucas.”
Liz waved her hand, and as Ethel nodded her head, threw off the spring coat she had on, standing forth in her cocktail-bar outfit, which of course was identical with mine, except for the blouse not quite the same. Seeing Ethel’s expression she said: “If the clothes kind of startle a little, Mrs. Lucas, they’re O.K., we work in a ginmill, Joanie and I. We serve drinks in a cocktail bar, and our bunch, they kind of like legs. They shouldn’t but they do. Mine aren’t terrific, like Joanie’s, but for an old lady, they’ll do. At least, so I’ve been told.”
“They’re-quite striking,” said Ethel.
“I’ll get Tad’s things,” I said, “and then we can have some coffee.”
I went back to the kitchen, started water in the chafing dish, then went in the little room that I had used as a nursery and got Tad’s things from the chiffonier drawer. Most of them were clean, but in one corner were the things he’d had on since the day Ron got killed, and those I had in my hand when I took the clean ones, which I put in a grocery bag, back to the living room. I handed the bag to Ethel, waved the others, and told her: “These aren’t clean, I’ll wash them out and bring them Sunday, when I go over to visit my child-if I’m invited, that is.”
“I’ll wash them,” said Ethel, reaching for them.
“No, I’ll do it, of course.”
“I’ll wash them!” she snapped, and took them from me. “And how about his medicine, for the pain …?”
“All gone,” I said. “Used up in the first two weeks.”
“But Ron said the doctor gave you a month’s worth!”
“It might have been a month’s worth,” I said, “if Ron hadn’t continually aggravated things by pulling Tad around by the arm, or slapping him when he got mad.”
“And you didn’t buy more?”
“With what money?”
By that time Liz was camped down by the sofa, having a look at the broken leg. “I don’t get this,” she announced. “It’s not any bust-off, Joan-it’s a pull-off, has to be, as all the pins are here, and nothing’s really been broken. Only time I’ve seen the like was in the bar when a drunk got to rolling around one night and gave a yank to a table leg.”
“Oh, those things happen,” I said.
Ethel said nothing, as of course Liz was so close to the true explanation, involving Ethel’s brother, my husband, that it wasn’t at all funny. I said: “I’ll see if the coffee’s coming on for ready,” and went back to the kitchen. I made the coffee, put it in the pot, put sugar lumps in a bowl, and opened the last tin of condensed milk. But when I got back to the living room with it, Ethel was ready to go, and did, shaking hands with me, and bowing coldly to Liz. Liz was still in front of the sofa, sitting tailor-fashion on the floor, and when Ethel had gone, said: “I’ll bring my do-it-yourself kit over and fix this thing-it’ll be no trouble at all, just a glue job, with twenty-four hours in a clamp-I have the glue, I have the clamp, I have the book of instructions. The kit was a gift from my boyfriend, my regular boyfriend, that is, the one who comes on Sundays and pays my rent, kind of. At least most of the time. And if you think it funny he’d give me such a kit, so do I-but the real funny part is that he’d give me anything, so I’m thankful for small things.” She saw me about to say something and interrupted before I could. “… And if you think it funny that I have a regular boyfriend when I told you I sometimes go with other men, too, picked up in the bar, well-so do I. I don’t pretend to understand it. But I keep doing it, and I won’t tell you it’s just for the extra money.”
“What else is there?”
“Their asking, I guess,” she said. “They’re so eager sometimes. It takes the curse off gray hair. You know what I mean, Joanie? At a certain age, we need assurances.”
I set down the coffee things. “At any age, Liz.”
“I suppose so.”
She poured herself a cup, and I was glad to see her do it, since I hated for the milk to go to waste.
“Joanie, explain something to me, please.”
“If I can. What?”
“It’s about your sister-in-law.”
“She’s not too friendly, Liz. She blames me for what happened to her brother-my husband, Ron. And then there’s my son. She’s taking care of him now, supposedly to help me, but what she really would like is to keep him.”
Joan nodded as though I’d just confirmed something she’d been thinking. “She didn’t think I could see her, but I could, out of one side of my eye. And that bundle of soiled clothes, the ones you were going to wash that she grabbed out of your hand, she was holding them to her face, burying her nose in them, and smelling them, Joan, I’d swear that’s what she was doing-I can’t be mistaken about it. She was smelling your little boy’s clothes, not the clean ones, the dirty ones.”
“It doesn’t surprise me at all.”
“Well, what would make her do that?”
“She’s hipped on him, Liz. She always was, but even more since Ron’s death. I’m telling you, she’s trying to steal him off me.” I explained about Ethel’s surgery, the hysterectomy I suppose it was, and she sat thinking that over. Then: “Are you willing, Joan? You want to give the boy up? Is that how you want it to be?”
“I’m here to tell you it’s not.”
“Then you got a thing on your hands.”
“I know I have, but as of now I’m helpless to move in and block it.”
“Why’d you let her take him in the first place?”
“She forced it,” I said, “made it clear I could go along willingly or she’d call the state and have him taken away from me permanent, by showing them how we were living. Never mind that it was Ron that reduced us to it. She’d just show them we had no gas, no electric, no money in the bank, that I had no income and no prospect of earning any …”
“Well, she’d have been wrong about that.”
“That’s so,” I said, “but now that I’m working, it means I couldn’t take Tad back even if Liz were willing. Not while I’m out eight or nine hours a day, six days out of seven, and Tad still so young. He needs care and attention, and if I’m not around-I have to leave him with her, whether I like it or not.”
“She’s got it bad, Joanie.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Liz had a second cup while I finished my first, and when I’d washed up she said we should be getting started, “so you get there by four o’clock. Jake’s particular about his set-ups.”
“O.K., but there’s something I have to do first.”
What I had to do was look up Earl K. White III in the phone book. I did, and he was listed, at least his residence was, on one of the streets of College Heights Estates, the swank part of University Park, but no phone. I looked in the District book, and sure enough he was there, in boldface type, with “Investment Secs” after his name. What that meant I didn’t quite know, but I looked under that head in the yellow book, and lo and behold there was a big ad that went something like this:
Earl K White III
Investment Securities
Successor to Earl K. White, Jr.,
And Earl K. White-
Three Generations of Financial Stewardship
Since 1913
MEMBER, NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE
That seemed to cover everything. At last, I knew who Earl K. White III was. I rejoined Liz, telling her: “O.K., let’s not keep Jake waiting.”