It was the laugh which decided Mrs. Melville on her future course of action. She looked briefly at the salesgirl, who looked back at her without expression, and then stepped back a few feet. The small woman looked at her nervously. “I didn’t mean to push in here,” the small woman said, smiling shyly at Mrs. Melville. “I was so upset, I mean, and I’m in such a hurry…”
“That’s perfectly all right,” said Mrs. Melville. “Go right ahead.” She had never said this before in her life.
“Well,” said the small woman to the salesgirl, “you can see, it must have been some kind of a mistake. I wanted the pink blouse, size ten, and somehow she picked up the pink blouse, size forty-two, and put it in the bag by mistake. I mean, she must have made a mistake.”
“Size ten?” said the salesgirl. She turned to the stacks of blouses behind her. “The pink, size ten.” Without looking at Mrs. Melville, she said clearly, “I can use the forty-two back. Had a call for a size forty-two blouse this morning.”
“Really?” said the small woman. “You wouldn’t think anyone that large would wear this pink.”
“You’d be surprised what people think they can wear,” said the salesgirl, not looking at Mrs. Melville. “I had a lady in here this morning looking at that pink blouse size forty-two.”
The small woman shuddered. “I didn’t know they made anything that large,” she said. “Not in any colors except maybe black or brown.”
“Oh, yes,” said the salesgirl. She was folding the blouse to put it into the bag. “I don’t think some of these women ever think what they’re going to look like. They figure they’re going to look like anyone else in that blouse.”
The small woman took the bag. “Thanks very much,” she said. “I appreciate all your trouble.”
“No trouble at all,” said the salesgirl.
The small woman smiled again at Mrs. Melville. “I hope I didn’t delay you.”
“Not at all,” said Mrs. Melville.
The small woman moved off quickly and Mrs. Melville, giving the salesgirl one last ominous glance, followed her.
The small woman had several packages, but the bag containing the blouse was the one Mrs. Melville was watching; it was being carried under one of the thin, black-covered arms, and as the woman walked hurriedly toward the down escalator, Mrs. Melville was able to see her dark hat and the package under her arm.
The store was not crowded, so it was not difficult for Mrs. Melville to keep the woman in sight without coming recognizably close, and she let the woman step onto the escalator and go nearly halfway down before stepping on herself. When the woman reached the bottom she turned to the right, heading for one of the big avenue entrances of the store, and then Mrs. Melville realized that she must hurry, because the woman was planning to leave the store and, once out on the street, would be practically uncatchable. Closing in on her quarry, Mrs. Melville debated the possibilities: Could she corner the woman, accuse her, between handkerchiefs and stockings? Bring her to bay in cosmetics? Face her down before the interested shoppers at the glove counter? Force her to give up the blouse under the eyes of the information clerk?
Then, mercifully, the woman ahead hesitated, glanced at the clock, at a counter, at the clock again, and then paused and turned to the counter. Mrs. Melville came up behind her purposefully and saw that she was hastily turning over a pile of sweaters that lay on the counter, with a sign above reading “Reduced—$1.98.” Moving up beside the woman, Mrs. Melville also began turning over sweaters. They were hideous, she thought, brightly colored small things, not fit for any female over the age of ten. The woman next to her pulled one sweater from the pile, shifting all her packages to one arm to use the other hand to spread the sweater out.
“Miss,” she said shyly to the salesgirl, “how much is this?”
Mrs. Melville moved closer.
“All one ninety-eight,” the salesgirl said. “All the same price.”
The woman looked at the sweater. “Is it my size?” the woman asked the salesgirl. “I can’t seem to find a tag.”
The salesgirl regarded the sweater with cynicism. “These people pull the tags off of everything just because it’s on sale,” she said. “About a ten.”
The woman nodded briskly, and set her packages down on the counter next to Mrs. Melville in order to lift the sweater and hold it against her. “It’s a pretty color,” she said to the salesgirl. “Much prettier than a blouse I just bought upstairs, and I paid…”
But Mrs. Melville did not hear what the small woman had paid for the blouse; she already knew, in any case, and she was heading rapidly for the escalator with the package containing the expensive blouse clutched tightly in front of her. She tried to lose herself immediately among the crowds of shoppers, and went onto the escalator with a group of people, pushing herself without apology ahead of them. On the escalator she walked quickly, almost running up the moving steps, and then, on the second floor, walked as rapidly as she had ever walked in her life, toward the blouse department. The same girl, as bored and dreamy as ever, stood at the counter. Mrs. Melville slammed the bag containing the blouse down on the counter and said loudly, “There.”
The salesgirl recognized her; by now Mrs. Melville’s must have been as familiar a face to her as her own mother’s, or the floorwalker’s, because, looking once at Mrs. Melville, she closed her eyes briefly and said, “Yes?”
“Give me back my blouse,” Mrs. Melville said; she was frankly trying too hard to breathe slowly to speak much. “I want you to give my own blouse back to me.”
The salesgirl opened the bag and took out the pink size ten blouse. “You want,” she said deliberately, “to exchange this blouse for another size?”
“I do,” Mrs. Melville said. “You know perfectly well what I want.”
“And what size did you want?”
“Give it to me,” said Mrs. Melville through her teeth. “You know which one it is. Give it to me.”
The salesgirl shrugged, turned, and took down the pink blouse, glanced at the tag, said, “Size forty-two” in a loud voice, and put it in the bag.
“The next time…” Mrs. Melville began, and then for the life of her could not conceive of a next time; there was no statement crushing enough. “The next time…” Mrs. Melville said again futilely. She turned and stamped away.
“Complaint department, ninth floor,” the girl called after her, and giggled.
Mrs. Melville, her blouse tightly held under her arm—although she did not really believe that the small woman was now following her—went on her way deep in thought. She had triumphed, she thought, over this store with its discourtesy and inefficiency, this store where people were allowed to steal from harmless customers. Where would this store be, Mrs. Melville asked herself indignantly, if people like herself did not shop here? It had just been pure chance that she had come into the store at all, and did they think for a minute that the way she had been treated would encourage her to come back? Mrs. Melville remembered clearly her initial irritation, when she had bought the blouse in the first place. The girl, so rude about the shocking pink and the chartreuse…
Mrs. Melville stopped dead in the middle of the shoe department.
She remembered herself buying the blouse, debating over the color, deciding that the chartreuse was more sophisticated, and—she realized it suddenly and irresistibly—buying the chartreuse blouse. She had definitely considered the pink, worried about it, and then decided that the chartreuse blouse was more sophisticated, it was the very thing she had told herself, it was the very word she had used. She had most emphatically bought the chartreuse blouse the first time. And the blouse in the bag now under her arm was shocking pink.
Hesitation was not one of Mrs. Melville’s vices. For a moment, she stood still in the middle of the shoe department and then, shifting the bag to hold it more firmly, she set her shoulders back and with goodwill toward the world, marched heartily down to where the sign for the up escalator showed her the way toward the smal
l suits, the glassware, Ye Olde Taverne, and—Mrs. Melville knew she would make it this time—the complaint department.
JOURNEY WITH A LADY
Harper’s, July 1952
HONEY,” MRS. WILSON SAID uneasily, “are you sure you’ll be all right?” “Sure,” said Joseph. He backed away quickly as she bent to kiss him again. “Listen, Mother” he said. “Everybody’s looking.”
“I’m still not sure but what someone ought to go with him,” said his mother. “Are you sure he’ll be all right?” she said to her husband.
“Who, Joe?” said Mr. Wilson. “He’ll be fine, won’t you, son?”
“Sure,” said Joseph.
“A boy nine years old ought to be able to travel by himself,” said Mr. Wilson in the patient tone of one who has been saying these same words over and over for several days to a nervous mother.
Mrs. Wilson looked up at the train as one who estimates the probable strength of an enemy. “But suppose something should happen?” she asked.
“Look, Helen,” her husband said, “the train’s going to leave in about four minutes. His bag is already on the train, Helen. It’s on the seat where he’s going to be sitting from now until he gets to Merrytown. I have spoken to the porter and I have given the porter a couple of dollars, and the porter has promised to keep an eye on him and see that he gets off the train with his bag when the train stops at Merrytown. He is nine years old, Helen, and he knows his name and where he’s going and where he’s supposed to get off, and Grandpop is going to meet him and will telephone you the minute they get to Grandpop’s house, and the porter—”
“I know,” said Mrs. Wilson, “but are you sure he’ll be all right?”
Mr. Wilson and Joseph looked at one another briefly and then away.
Mrs. Wilson took advantage of Joseph’s momentary lapse of awareness to put her arm around his shoulders and kiss him again, although he managed to move almost in time and her kiss landed somewhere on the top of his head. “Mother” Joseph said ominously.
“Don’t want anything to happen to my little boy,” Mrs. Wilson said with a brave smile.
“Mother, for heaven’s sake” said Joseph. “I better get on the train,” he said to his father. “Good idea,” said his father.
“Bye, Mother,” Joseph said, backing toward the train door; he took a swift look up and down the platform, and then reached up to his mother and gave her a rapid kiss on the cheek. “Take care of yourself,” he said.
“Don’t forget to telephone the minute you get there,” his mother said. “Write me every day, and tell Grandma you’re supposed to brush your teeth every night and if the weather turns cool—”
“Sure,” Joseph said. “Sure, Mother.”
“So long, son,” said his father.
“So long, Dad,” Joseph said; solemnly they shook hands. “Take care of yourself,” Joseph said.
“Have a good time,” his father said.
As Joseph climbed up the steps to the train he could hear his mother saying, “And telephone us when you get there and be careful—”
“Goodbye, goodbye,” he said, and went into the train. He had been located by his father in a double seat at the end of the car and, once settled, he turned as a matter of duty to the window. His father, with an unmanly look of concern, waved to him and nodded violently, as though to indicate that everything was going to be all right, that they had pulled it off beautifully, but his mother, twisting her fingers nervously, came close to the window of the train, and, fortunately unheard by the people within, but probably clearly audible to everyone for miles without, gave him at what appeared to be some length an account of how she had changed her mind and was probably going to come with him after all. Joseph nodded and smiled and waved and shrugged his shoulders to indicate that he could not hear, but his mother went on talking, now and then glancing nervously at the front of the train, as though afraid that the engine might start and take Joseph away before she had made herself absolutely sure that he was going to be all right. Joseph, who felt with some justice that in the past few days his mother had told him every conceivable pertinent fact about his traveling alone to his grandfather’s, and her worries about same, was able to make out such statements as “Be careful,” and “Telephone us the minute you get there,” and “Don’t forget to write.” Then the train stirred, and hesitated, and moved slightly again, and Joseph backed away from the window, still waving and smiling. He was positive that what his mother was saying as the train pulled out was “Are you sure you’ll be all right?” She blew a kiss to him as the train started, and he ducked.
Surveying his prospects as the train took him slowly away from his mother and father, he was pleased. The journey should take only a little over three hours, and he knew the name of the station and had his ticket safely in his jacket pocket; although he had been reluctant to yield in any fashion to his mother’s misgivings, he had checked several times, secretly, to make sure the ticket was safe. He had half a dozen comic books—a luxury he was not ordinarily allowed—and a chocolate bar; he had his suitcase and his cap, and he had seen personally to the packing of his first baseman’s mitt. He had a dollar bill in the pocket of his pants, because his mother thought he should have some money in case—possibilities which had concretely occurred to her—of a train wreck (although his father had pointed out that in the case of a major disaster the victims were not expected to pay their own expenses, at least not before their families had been notified) or perhaps in the case of some vital expense to which his grandfather’s income would not be adequate. His father had thought that Joe ought to have a little money by him in case he wanted to buy anything, and because a man ought not to travel unless he had money in his pocket. “Might pick up a girl on the train and want to buy her lunch,” his father had said jovially and his mother, regarding her husband thoughtfully, had remarked, “Let’s hope Joseph doesn’t do things like that,” and Joe and his father had winked at one another. So, regarding his comic books and his suitcase and his ticket and his chocolate bar, and feeling the imperceptible but emphatic presence of the dollar bill in his pocket, Joe leaned back against the soft seat, looked briefly out the window at the houses now moving steadily past, and said to himself, “This is the life, boy.”
Before indulging in the several glories of comic books and chocolate, he spent a moment or so watching the houses of his hometown disappear beyond the train; ahead of him, at his grandfather’s farm, lay a summer of cows and horses and probable wrestling matches in the grass; behind him lay school and its infinite irritations, and his mother and father. He wondered briefly if his mother was still looking after the train and telling him to write, and then largely he forgot her. With a sigh of pure pleasure he leaned back and selected a comic book, one that dealt with the completely realistic adventures of a powerful magician among hostile African tribes. This is the life, boy, he told himself again, and glanced again out the window to see a boy about his own age sitting on a fence watching the train go by. For a minute Joseph thought of waving down to the boy, but decided that it was beneath his dignity as a traveler; moreover, the boy on the fence was wearing a dirty sweatshirt, which made Joe move uneasily under his stiff collar and suit jacket, and he thought longingly of the comfortable old shirt with the insignia “Brooklyn Dodger,” which was in his suitcase. Then, just as the traitorous idea of changing on the train occurred to him, and of arriving at his grandfather’s not in his good suit became a possibility, all sensible thought was driven from his mind by a cruel and unnecessary blow. Someone sat down next to him, breathing heavily, and from the quick flash of perfume and the movement of cloth that could only be a dress rustling Joe realized with a strong sense of injustice that his paradise had been invaded by some woman.
“Is this seat taken?” she asked.
Joe refused to recognize her existence by turning his head to look at her, but he told her sullenly, “No, it’s not.” Not taken, he was thinking, what did she think I was sitting here for? Aren’t t
here enough old seats in the train she could go and sit in without taking mine?
He seemed to lose himself in contemplation of the scenery beyond the train window, but secretly he was wishing direly that the woman would suddenly discover she had forgotten her suitcase or find out she had no ticket or remember that she had left the bathtub running at home—anything, to get her off the train at the first station, and out of Joe’s way.
“You going far?”
Talking, too, Joe thought, she has to take my seat and then she goes and talks my ear off, darn old pest. “Yeah,” he said. “Merrytown.”
“What’s your name?”
Joe, from long experience, could have answered all her questions in one sentence, he was so familiar with the series—I’m nine years old, he could have told her, and I’m in the fifth grade, and, no, I don’t like school, and if you want to know what I learn in school it’s nothing because I don’t like school and I do like movies, and I’m going to my grandfather’s house, and more than anything else I hate women who come and sit beside me and ask me silly questions and if my mother didn’t keep after me all the time about my manners I would probably gather my things together and move to another seat and if you don’t stop asking me—
“What’s your name, little boy?”
Little boy, Joe told himself bitterly, on top of everything else, little boy.
“Joe,” he said.
“How old are you?”
He lifted his eyes wearily and regarded the conductor entering the car; it was surely too much to hope that this female plague had forgotten her ticket, but could it be remotely possible that she was on the wrong train?
“Got your ticket, Joe?” the woman asked.
“Sure,” said Joe. “Have you?”
She laughed and said—apparently addressing the conductor, since her voice was not at this moment the voice women use in addressing a little boy, but the voice that goes with speaking to conductors and taxi drivers and salesclerks—“I’m afraid I haven’t got a ticket. I had no time to get one.”
Just an Ordinary Day: Stories Page 33