To Amy it seemed a ceiling had been lifted, that the sky was higher than before, and sometimes—if no car was passing by—she would raise an arm and move it through the air. A mass of joy was in her from the squinting, humorous eyes of Mr. Robertson, and a jumbled, rushing sense from all the things she had wanted to tell him and had forgotten to. But there were small squares of sadness inside her as well, as though something dark and wobbly sat deep within her chest, and sometimes she would stop as she reached the overpass to gaze down at the cars that rushed by on the highway, puzzled by a sense of losing things, and only vaguely knowing this was connected somehow to the thought of her mother. And then Amy would hurry home, anxious to see in the empty house signs of her mother: the pantyhose hanging over the shower nozzle, the baby powder on her mother’s bureau—these things would reassure her, as would the sound of her mother’s car turning into the gravelly driveway. It was all right. Her mother was home.
And yet the actual presence of her mother provided disappointment—the small, anxious eyes as she came through the door, the pale hand fluttering to tuck up the brown strands of hair that escaped from the tired French twist. It was hard for Amy to match this woman to the mother she had just missed. Guilty, she sometimes ran the risk of being too solicitous. “That blouse looks really nice, Mom,” she might say, and then inwardly flinch at the brief wariness in her mother’s eye, a wariness so fleeting that even Isabelle was not conscious of having felt it; months would go by before Isabelle recalled those drops of warning that glinted for a moment on the outer edges of her mind.
“I really like poetry,” Amy announced to Isabelle a few weeks after the dreadful night Isabelle had come home to find the house empty and had believed for those terrible minutes that her daughter had been taken away like poor Debby Kay Dorne. “I really, really like poetry.”
“Well, I think that’s very nice,” Isabelle said, distracted by the run she had just discovered in her pantyhose.
“I got this book.” Amy stood in the doorway to the living room, holding a book carefully in both hands, her face hidden by her hair as she gazed down at what she held.
Isabelle hung her coat in the front hall closet and turned to examine the back of her leg again. “I have no idea when that happened,” she mused. “For all I know I’ve been running around like this half the day.” She stepped past Amy to go up the stairs. “What book is that, honey?” she said.
Amy held the book out in front of Isabelle, still holding it with both hands, and Isabelle peered at it as she passed by. “Oh, Yeats,” she said, pronouncing it Yeets, “Yes, of course. I’ve heard of him. He wrote some lovely things, I believe.”
She was halfway up the stairs when behind her Amy said quietly, “It’s Yeats, Mom. Not Yeets.”
Isabelle turned. “What’s that?” she asked, embarrassment already spreading throughout her throat, her chest.
“Yeats,” Amy answered. “You probably just got it mixed up with Keats, which is spelled the same way almost.”
If her daughter had spoken this sardonically, with an adolescent disdain, it would have been easier to bear. But the girl had said it gently, with hesitant politeness, and Isabelle was suffering as she stood, half-turned, a run in her pantyhose, awkwardly on the stairs.
“Keats was English,” Amy said, as though trying to be helpful, “and Yeats was Irish. Keats died when he was really young, of TB.”
“Oh yes. Well, I see.” The shame was like a too-tight sweater pressed to her; the moistness of perspiration sprang out on her face, beneath her arms. Here was something new to fear—her daughter’s pity for her ignorance. “That’s very interesting, Amy,” she said, continuing up the stairs. “I want to hear more about it.”
That night Isabelle lay in bed with her eyes open. For years she had pictured this: Amy off at college. Not the community college here in Shirley Falls, but a real college somewhere. She had pictured Amy walking on an autumn day, holding notebooks against a navy-blue sweater, a plaid skirt swinging at her knees. Never mind that nowadays there were such grubby-looking girls running around, their unharnessed breasts flopping beneath some T-shirt above a filthy pair of jeans. There were still lovely girls to be seen on college campuses, Isabelle was sure; serious, intelligent girls who read Plato and Shakespeare and Yeats. Or Keats. She sat up, rearranged her pillow, then lay down again.
In all the times she had imagined Amy on some college campus, she had never imagined what she saw now: her daughter would be ashamed of her. Amy, walking across a leafy lawn, laughing with her new, intelligent friends, was not going to say My mother works in a mill. She was not going to invite these girls home on weekends or holidays, and neither would she share with Isabelle the wonderful things she was learning, because in her eyes Isabelle was a small-town dummy who worked in a mill. A person to be careful with, the way Amy had been careful with her that evening. It was some time before Isabelle was able to fall asleep.
At the mill the next day, as the women moved into the lunchroom, Isabelle murmured to Arlene Tucker that she was off to the bank for an errand, but instead, buttoning her coat quickly against the March wind, she walked across the parking lot and then drove over the bridge to the one bookstore Shirley Falls had for itself. The thought had come to her that morning as she watched Amy gathering her schoolbooks that she could educate herself. After all, she knew how to read. She could read and study just as though she were taking some course. Why not? She remembered a cousin of her father’s, a kindly, pink-faced woman who was a splendid cook. “There’s nothing magical about being a good cook,” the woman had confided to Isabelle one day. “Get a cookbook. If you can read, you can cook.”
And yet stepping into the bookstore, Isabelle glanced around self-consciously, afraid someone from the church might see her—Emma Clark, Barbara Rawley—and say with surprise, “Isabelle Goodrow. What are you doing here?” But the place was empty except for a man with wire-rimmed glasses slipping down his nose and another man holding a briefcase. There were a lot of books. She was struck by this as she walked cautiously over the carpeted floor. It’s not as though she had never been in a bookstore, for heaven’s sake, but it did seem there were a lot of books. She tilted her face sideways to read the titles. She had not realized you could buy Shakespeare in these little paperbacks. Reaching for one, she was pleased with how accessible it seemed, a slim book with a lovely drawing and the elaborately printed lettering: Hamlet.
Hamlet. Isabelle nodded as she walked over the carpet. She had heard of Hamlet, of course; there was a mother, and a girlfriend who went mad. Although she might be thinking of something else. Something Greek. At the cash register she felt anxious with the enormousness of what she was taking on. But the young clerk, whose chin was covered with a sprinkling of blond whiskers, rang up the purchase with indifference, and this pleased Isabelle. There was nothing in her appearance, evidently, that caused him to find it unusual that she was buying Shakespeare’s Hamlet. She must look the part. (She smiled, realizing she had made a small joke.) Slipping the purchase into her pocketbook, she crossed the windy street to her car and drove over the bridge, back to the mill.
All afternoon her spirits were high because she was going to become well-read. Typing a letter to Beltco Suppliers, Incorporated, Isabelle thought how she would be able to say lightly to someone, “That reminds me of the scene in Hamlet when …” Not her fellow workers in the mill, of course (she smiled at Fat Bev, who was just now lumbering back from the water fountain, wiping her hand across her mouth)—no, she wouldn’t mention Shakespeare to them. But her daughter, someday, would appreciate this—the two of them sitting in a coffee shop talking about Shakespeare’s plays. And meanwhile the women at church—those intimidating deacons’ wives who wore their college educations as subtly as they did their expensive perfumes, and with the same confidence—would finally realize that Isabelle was not what they had thought. She was not simply a single mother who worked at the mill but instead a woman of intelligence and stamina who could qu
ote Shakespeare at the drop of a hat.
During the afternoon break, she accepted Arlene’s offer of a piece of chocolate candy bar, and even gave Lenora Snibbens a sympathetic nod when Lenora rolled her eyes at the skinny backside of Rosie Tanguay leaving the room. Rosie and Lenora had a long-standing feud. Isabelle could not recall at this point the extensive compilation of details that had gone into this, but she did remember it had begun when Lenora had a dream in which the teetotaling Rosie was very drunk and doing a striptease in the post office lobby. Lenora had made the unfortunate mistake of reporting this dream in the lunchroom, accompanied by a great deal of hilarity, and Rosie had not spoken to her since.
Isabelle, who in all her years at the mill had been scrupulous about not taking sides in any of the frequent disgruntlements that were apt to arise, now, with Hamlet in her pocketbook, felt transcendent enough to give Lenora Snibbens that sympathetic smile.
Lenora, after all, was a nice girl. She had buckteeth and a bad complexion, which she seemed to endure with cheerful self-deprecation, and while she may have lacked some common sense in repeating the dream of Rosie, it was tiresome of course to have Rosie get so mean. Although, thought Isabelle, thanking Arlene for the chocolate and heading back to her desk while she touched a tissue to her lips, one could feel sorry for Rosie Tanguay as well. (Rosie had just come out of the ladies’ room, her forehead tight with its usual tension.) Isabelle sat at her desk, sharpening her pencil before proofreading the letter to Beltco Suppliers once again. One really should feel sorry for these women in the office room, their tedious days filled with boring work and bathroom jokes and long-simmering feuds. Sad, really. Her tongue moved across the back of her teeth, the final taste of chocolate disappearing now. Gently she blew on her sharpened pencil.
She was different. She was Isabelle Goodrow and she was going to read.
STACY’S EYES WERE red. It was almost April, but the day was cold, and both girls, their coats open, were shivering. Stacy brought the plastic Tampax holder out of her pocket and removed their cigarettes. “I broke up with Paul,” she said.
Amy waited, then said, “You’re kidding,” thinking that Stacy must be kidding—she had delivered the news so flatly.
And Amy’s mind was jumbled. Mr. Robertson had said to her as she left class that morning, “See me after school. I have a book you might like.” It was hard to concentrate on anything after that.
Stacy put two cigarettes between her plump lips and lit them while Amy watched. The match went out. “Fuck,” said Stacy from the side of her mouth, and tucked her hair behind her ear before lighting another one. “I’m not kidding.” The second match was successful. Stacy sucked for a moment while the tips of the cigarettes turned gray. “I told him to get the fuck out of my life.” She handed a cigarette to Amy and inhaled deeply on her own.
Amy had no idea what to say. That Stacy, having been so blessed as to have a boyfriend with the status of Paul Bellows, would then tell him to get the fuck out of her life made her appear in Amy’s eyes to have a splendor and magnificence, a courage and independence, beyond any she could imagine. “How come?” Amy asked.
“His fucking mother accused me of being pregnant.” Stacy’s eyes moistened, reddening around the edges again. “Stupid mother-fucking cow.”
What foreignness to Amy! Boyfriends with their own apartments, and then the mothers of these boyfriends … such words said. “She accused you of being pregnant?” Amy asked. “You mean she said that? To you?” It didn’t seem polite to take a drag of the cigarette in the face of such a thing. She held it by her side, smoke weaving up her arm.
“To Paul—she said it to Paul.” Stacy sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of the hand that held her cigarette. “That I was getting fat.”
“Wow,” Amy offered. “What a bitch.” But she could not stop her eyes from dropping to Stacy’s stomach, and Stacy’s eyes went there too. For a moment they stood in the silent woods gazing at the part of Stacy’s black sweater that could be seen through her open coat.
“You’re not fat,” Amy said, thinking that she was, just a little. But Stacy had never been skinny; it was hard to tell.
“I think I have a tumor,” Stacy said glumly. She looked up through the trees. “One of those stupid fucking tumors women get.”
“Then you ought to see a doctor,” Amy said seriously.
“So Paul came over last night,” Stacy went on, “and I told him that was it. Just get the fuck out.”
“What did he say?” The sound of a car made them both turn and duck down, where they stayed squatted, facing each other until the car had driven by. Amy stood, offering her arm to Stacy, who grinned half-apologetically as she hoisted herself up.
“See what a load I am?” she said, squinting at her cigarette before she took a puff.
“You look great,” Amy told her, because she did, with her leather skirt and black tights and black boots. Amy would have given anything to look like that; to have a short leather skirt. Her own skirt was a green corduroy that her mother had made, and it was much too long, almost to her knees. “So what did Paul say?” she asked again.
Stacy sighed deeply, shaking her head, her eyes practically closed in recalling this. “You want to know what he did?” She shook her head again. “You won’t believe what he did. He cried.” She looked at Amy with discouragement, then rolled her cigarette pensively against the tree trunk until it looked like a sharpened pencil. “Christ, he fucking cried.” She inhaled and tossed her cigarette onto the snow where it lay silently, a thin waft of gray smoke rising from it, barely distinguishable from the color of the snow.
“Boy,” said Amy. “He really likes you.”
Stacy made a noise, a grunting from her throat, and Amy saw that her eyes were filled with tears. “These stupid boots are leaking,” Stacy said, bending over, poking her finger along the toe’s edge.
“I have this dumb hole in the lining of my coat,” Amy said, opening her coat wide and twisting her head around to examine the rip in the lining of the armpit, which was of no interest to her at all except for providing her friend with a moment of privacy. “This coat is so old. I never liked it anyway. The plaid looks like a man. I mean something a man would wear.” She wanted to make noise so Stacy wouldn’t feel watched. “I hate all my stupid clothes.”
Stacy was still bent over her boots, and Amy, glancing briefly, saw that she was wiping at her nose. But in a moment Stacy straightened up and said, “The coat’s okay. The lining doesn’t show.”
“I hate winter coats period,” Amy said. “I especially hate wearing a winter coat this time of year.”
“I know. Me too.” Stacy ran her hand over her nose.
“The crocuses next to our house are up,” Amy said, taking her second cigarette from Stacy.
“Neat,” Stacy answered. She lit her cigarette and held out the match. “Don’t burn your hair,” she cautioned. “Have you ever smelled burned hair? It’s really nasty. And it goes up in a flash.” Stacy blew the match out, dropping it on the snow. She snapped her fingers. “Like that. Your whole head of hair could go up in flames like that.”
“Great,” Amy said. “There’s a thought.” She tugged her coat around her and leaned back against the fallen tree trunk.
“Well, don’t think about it,” Stacy said, settling herself on the log as well, close to Amy, so that their shoulders touched through their coats as they shivered and smoked.
“I didn’t do my Spanish homework,” Stacy mentioned after a while, and from that Amy knew they weren’t going to talk about Paul Bellows anymore.
“You can copy mine.” Amy pointed up at the spruce tree to a cardinal. “In study hall.”
“Yeah, but Miss Lanier will know.” Stacy glanced at the cardinal with little interest. “The answers will be right and she’ll know they’re not mine.”
“Screw up a few,” Amy suggested, and Stacy nodded. “She’s nice, though, she won’t say anything.” And Stacy nodded again.
A
my tried blowing smoke rings, puckering her mouth like a fish and darting her tongue the way Stacy had tried to teach her, but she was not successful. The smoke came out of her mouth in cylinder spurts. She felt vaguely ill with the anxiety of seeing Mr. Robertson after school. (Once, when she was talking with him last week, he had moved past her to close the window and very lightly, very briefly, touched her on the shoulder.) She wanted to ask Stacy more about Paul, but it would be impolite to push. She wanted to take another look at Stacy’s stomach, too, and she was afraid her eyes would go there involuntarily, so she concentrated on her smoke rings. There was a lot she didn’t understand. Did Stacy think she was pregnant, or was it just Paul’s mother being mean? You could tell if you were pregnant though. Even she knew that.
“It just takes practice,” Stacy was saying, having blown a series of perfect smoke rings herself. Both girls watched them float off into the air, getting larger and wobblier and finally losing their shape by the time they reached the spruce tree. The cardinal darted from its branch and flew further into the woods.
“Poor Miss Lanier,” Stacy said.
Amy nodded. They liked their Spanish teacher. She wore her dresses very short and it was sad because her legs weren’t good; they were all right until you got to the knees, but then the knees came together and right above them her thighs rose up like logs. Also, she wore a lot of nylon-type dresses without any slip, and the dresses stuck to her. You could practically see the outline of her underwear and pantyhose. It was Stacy’s theory that Miss Lanier had a crush on the principal, the man they called Puddy, a pasty, homely, middle-aged man.
“He’s so shy, though,” Stacy said. “I bet he’s never even had a date. He still lives with his mother.”
Amy gave up on the smoke rings and dropped her cigarette in the snow. “Their kids would be ugly and nice.” But her stomach was squeezing in on itself. She thought of Mr. Robertson saying, “See me after school. I have a book you might like.” Everything else—Stacy’s red eyes, Miss Lanier’s unfortunate thighs—all the world seemed faded, with this rendezvous to look forward to. She lived in such an odd, anxious, private world these days; such pleasure from the words “See me after school.” But always, now, this tumbling anxiety. She eyed the cigarette she had tossed on the ground.