Just an Ordinary Day: Stories

  “He probably had to work a long time for that money he tried to give me,” Artie said. “A guy like that couldn’t earn much, could he?”

  “Hard to tell,” Steve said. “Might be one of these precision workers who doesn’t need to see what he’s doing.”

  “Wonder how come a woman would marry a blind man? I’d hate to be…” Artie’s voice trailed off as he saw the door open and the blind man come slowly in, followed, after a minute, by the woman.

  “Hello again,” Artie said. “You back for more brandy?”

  The Wind man walked up to the counter without assistance, felt for the surface with his free hand, and then put the bottle of brandy, still wrapped, down in front of Artie. “I came for my money,” he said.

  Artie stared. “Something wrong?” he asked finally. Steve came over and stood next to him.

  “Yeah,” Steve said, “something wrong?”

  “There’s plenty wrong,” the blind man said. “When people steal from a guy that doesn’t know what’s going on, there’s plenty wrong.”

  Artie looked at the woman, who was standing in the doorway. “What’s the matter with him?”

  “Look,” the blind man said, “you took plenty advantage because I didn’t know, that’s all. I thought I was giving you four ones, and you wouldn’t say a word, just stood there and took advantage.”

  “You think you’re so smart,” the woman said. “A blind man.”

  “I can get along without your help,” the blind man said, turning in the woman’s direction. “This guy steals my money, I can take care of him.” He turned back to Artie. “You better give me back that money,” he said, “or I’ll really make you some trouble.”

  “I gave it to your wife,” Artie said, knowing already it was no use.

  The woman laughed. “Now he’s taking advantage of me,” she said.

  Artie looked at Steve. He knew Steve was thinking the same thing: a blind man telling the cops he had been robbed. Steve shrugged.

  Artie went to the cash register and opened it. “O.K.,” he said, “so I robbed you. You gave me three ones and a five and I thought it was four ones.”

  “That’s a little better,” the woman said.

  Artie took four one-dollar bills out of the cash register and walked over and put them in the blind man’s hand. “These four ones?” the blind man asked.

  “Four ones,” Artie said.

  “These four ones?” the blind man asked, turning to the woman. She came forward, peering.

  “Yes, they are,” she said.

  “See,” the blind man said, “I got down to the corner and I remembered I had a five and three ones instead of four ones. I guess next time you won’t try anything with a guy like me.”

  “That’s right,” Artie said, watching the woman come forward and take the blind man’s arm. The blind man felt around on the counter for the bottle of brandy and put it under his other arm.

  Artie and Steve stood watching them go out, and when the door had closed behind them Artie went over and closed the drawer of the cash register.

  LITTLE OLD LADY IN GREAT NEED

  Mademoiselle, September 1944

  IT WAS LATE IN the afternoon, but even though she was tired from shopping all day, Kitty forced herself to alternate a grave skip with her hurried walk after Great-Grandmother. Great-Grandmother liked to see little girls active, and she herself was as spry now as she had been in the morning when they started out to buy Kitty a new coat. If Kitty lagged behind, Great-Grandmother was apt to stop and, tapping severely with her cane, say to Kitty: “A laggard step, a faltering mind.” With so many people on the street, someone was sure to turn and smile when Great-Grandmother said something like that, so Kitty rushed her steps along, sometimes clinging to Great-Grandmother’s arm and sometimes getting a little ahead, so that she could slow down a minute until Great-Grandmother caught up.

  “I think the plaid coat was very nice on you, Katharine,” Great-Grandmother was saying for the thousandth time. “I think you were wise to choose that one instead of the brown.”

  “Everyone else has a brown coat, though,” Kitty said.

  “Never try to look like everyone else, my dear,” Great-Grandmother said placidly. “It doesn’t pay to be like everyone else. Did I ever tell you that I was the first woman—lady, that is—to smoke a cigarette in San Francisco?”

  “Grandma! What a cute little dog!” Kitty ran ahead, and stopped to pet the dog while the lady who held it on a leash stood patiently, smiling as Great-Grandmother came slowly toward them. “Grandma,” Kitty said. “I wish I had a dog like this, Grandma.”

  “Never intrude yourself upon a stranger,” Great-Grandmother said, bowing slightly to the lady with the dog. “Never intrude yourself on any pretext whatever, Katharine.”

  Kitty blew a kiss to the dog behind Great-Grandmother’s back, and ran to catch up. Great-Grandmother was saying: “A very fine animal, my dear, pedigreed, no doubt. Perhaps we should have a dog, Katharine.”

  “I would like a white one, like that one,” Kitty said. “Did you ever have a dog?”

  “We used to have a mastiff when I was a girl in England,” Great-Grandmother said. She laughed. “Your great-grandfather bought me a lap dog when we married.”

  “What happened to those dogs?”

  Great-Grandmother laughed again. “I believe the lapdog was given away,” she said. “Perhaps the mastiff died. It was long before we came to the United States. Then we were in San Francisco, and I was the first real lady to smoke a cigarette there in public.”

  “Can I wear my plaid coat to school next week, Grandma?”

  “If the weather accommodates, my dear.”

  “I think it will be cold. If I had a dog like that one I would make him a little red coat and he could wear it when he came to school with me. Can we have dinner in a restaurant tonight, Grandma?”

  Great-Grandmother looked at Kitty and hesitated. Then she turned aside and into a doorway, gesturing for Kitty to follow. She handed her packages to Kitty and took out her pocketbook, saying: “A lady never examines her pocketbook nor inquires into the state of her finances in public, Katharine.” Great-Grandmother counted the change in her hand, her weak old eyes squinting. “One dollar and thirty-one cents, Katharine. When is our pension check due?”

  “It comes on Saturday, Grandma.”

  “I was afraid so.” Great-Grandmother sighed. “We had better plan to stay at home until then, my dear. We will stop and buy something for dinner on our way home, Katharine. What would you like?”

  “If I had that dog I would have to get him a bone,” Kitty said. “I would like to have a great big roast turkey for dinner.”

  “We will stop at the butcher’s,” Great-Grandmother said. “I hope he has something tender. Young meat for old teeth.”

  The butcher had turkeys and chickens in his window, and ham and frankfurters. Kitty pressed her nose against the glass, saying: “Grandma, he has more things in his window than any other butcher had today.”

  “Come inside, my dear,” Great-Grandmother said. “A lady makes no display of herself on the street.”

  Inside, the butcher’s counter was empty. The butcher, a thin, red-faced man in a bloodied white apron, stood watching Kitty and Great-Grandmother as they entered.

  “Not much to offer today, ladies,” he said.

  “Turkeys?” Kitty said eagerly.

  “Well, I got one or two turkeys, fine ones,” the butcher said.

  “Let me see.” Great-Grandmother stood, her fingers at her lips, regarding the empty counter. “How about a steak?”

  “No steak,” the butcher said.

  “Sirloin?” Great-Grandmother asked amiably.

  “No steak, lady.”

  Great-Grandmother looked at him. “Something tender,” she said.

  “I have some nice franks,” the butcher said. “Nice little frying chickens. A few hams.”

  “Let me see,” Great-Grandmother said. “I think I prefe
r steak.”

  “No, lady,” the butcher said desperately.

  Great-Grandmother smiled. “Why do you refuse to sell me meat?” she asked. “Must I take my patronage elsewhere?”

  “Lady,” the butcher said, “we got shortages. We don’t get no meat, we can’t sell any. Earlier, you came in, I coulda sold you a fine sirloin. Now—I got nothing left.”

  “Sir.” Great-Grandmother stepped up closer to the counter and gestured the butcher to her. “I am an old lady. My great-granddaughter here could, I have no doubt, tell you exactly how old. I was not bred, sir, for dealing with tradespeople. Until my great-granddaughter and I were left alone in the world, there were always others to take care of business dealings for us. I am not able, therefore, to discuss your business with you, and, equally, I am unable to go from store to store to make purchases.”

  “Lady,” the butcher said unhappily, “would you take one and a half pounds of sirloin?”

  Great-Grandmother considered. “I would,” she said gravely.

  The butcher held up his finger, and turned to go into the ice room. “Wait,” he said. He returned after a minute or two with a piece of sirloin steak, which he put on the counter in front of Great-Grandmother. “It’s my own piece of meat, and you couldn’t ask for a better. My wife told me I should bring home a little meat, and I saved this.”

  Great-Grandmother drew herself up. “I would not take your food, young man.”

  “Take it,” the butcher said. “I don’t want to see you and the kid here without anything for your supper tonight. My wife—she can fix something outta nothing.”

  “I cannot accept this as a gift, you understand,” Great-Grandmother said. “You must let me give you something, at any rate, in exchange for this kindness.”

  The butcher looked surprised. “But I’ll sell—” he began.

  “No,” Great-Grandmother said. “I cannot permit it. I was brought up a lady, sir, and a lady does not permit herself to accept favors from tradesmen. You must let me give you something, in addition to my ration stamps, even if it is only a few pennies.” She took out her pocketbook and searched in it. “Fifty cents,” she said, putting the coin with the stamp book on the counter. “You must accept it. It is what I intended to pay for our dinner tonight.”

  The butcher counted and tore off the stamps, slid the steak into a brown paper bag and handed it silently to Great-Grandmother. “Thank you,” she said. “You are a fine man, sir. A gentleman.” She moved to the doorway. “Come, Katharine,” she said.

  “I love steak,” Kitty said excitedly.

  “One and a half pounds is hardly enough for two,” Great-Grandmother said. “Still, he did the best he could.”

  “He was a nice man,” Kitty said.

  Great-Grandmother smiled. “It was in the Mark Hopkins Hotel, Katharine, I believe. Did I ever tell you? Perhaps it was another hotel. Perhaps it was a restaurant. At any rate, I had become accustomed to smoking in England, where all ladies had taken it up. And the manager, such a polite man, and so elegant, came to me and said: ‘Madam, I must request that you retire to the smoking room if you intend to indulge.’ Of course your great-grandfather would never permit that; it was a men’s smoking room. Then, of course, American ladies took up smoking. But I was the first in San Francisco.”

  “I bet that man’s wife’s going to be mad,” Kitty said, “not bringing home any meat.”

  “Nonsense,” Great-Grandmother said. “He’ll tell her, that’s all. He’ll say that a child and a little old lady with a cane came in and he’ll tell her he had to give it to us.”

  “I bet his wife’ll be mad anyway.”

  “A lady does not permit herself to show anger in public,” Great-Grandmother said.

  WHEN THINGS GET DARK

  The New Yorker, December 30, 1944

  MRS. GARDEN WAS SITTING in the overstuffed chair in her furnished room, smoking. She was a young woman, not more than twenty-three or four. She was small and thin and she was wearing a light blue corduroy housecoat and had her hair in curlers. It was eleven in the morning. She was finishing her third cup of coffee from the pot on the electric plate. Beside her on the small table was a letter. When she put her cup down, she took up the single sheet of ruled letter paper and read it again. “Dear Mrs. Garden,” it said, “I can’t help feeling that right now you are in need of a friend. You seemed to be so strong and courageous when I met you, in spite of your great trouble, that I am sure your young heart will be equal to any burden. When things get dark, remember there are always friends thinking of you and wishing you well.” The letter was signed “A.H.” After a minute Mrs. Garden put it down on the table and went over to the dresser. She took her pocketbook out of it and, rummaging through it, found a match folder. On the inside of the folder was written “Mrs. Amelia Hope, 111 Mortimer Street, Brooklyn Hgts.”

  Mrs. Garden stood in front of the dresser for a minute, looking at herself in the glass. I won’t show at all for a while, she thought. No one would know unless I told them. She turned, holding her arms high, to look at herself in profile. After a minute she walked across the room and got the letter and put it and the match folder in her pocketbook. She went to the closet and took down a dark blue suit and a white blouse, thinking, My clothes still fit me—all the nice things I bought and won’t be able to wear. She dressed carefully, pinning the tiny infantry insignia to her lapel, and took a dark blue hat out of the closet. When she was dressed she glanced around the room before she locked the door. She looked quiet and decent and worried. Out in the hall, she put the key in her pocketbook and went down the stairs.

  All the way in the subway, Mrs. Garden held the pocketbook quietly in her lap, looking out the windows into the darkness. When she reached the station where the subway guard had told her to get off, she got up and went out into the street, where she went to a newsstand and asked the way to the address. Then, still holding her pocketbook close to her, she walked to 111 Mortimer Street. It was an old house, clearly a rooming house, and it looked ugly and decayed. Mrs. Garden went up the steps and rang the bell. When the landlady opened the door, Mrs. Garden said, “I want to see Mrs. Amelia Hope, please.”

  The landlady stood back and said, “Second floor, in the back.”

  Mrs. Garden went up the wide staircase, the sort of staircase you would find in an old, beautiful house, to a second floor with a high-ceilinged hall and white plaster ornamental molding. There was one door toward the back, at the end of the long hall, and Mrs. Garden knocked on it.

  “Come in, please,” an old lady’s voice said. Mrs. Garden opened the door and stood just inside. For a minute it was hard for her to see, because she was facing a high, narrow window with long brown drapes down each side of it. Then she saw a small, old-fashioned desk with carved spindle legs in front of the window, and Mrs. Hope sitting at it.

  “I’m Mrs. Garden. Do you remember me?”

  Mrs. Hope rose and came a step or two forward. “Mrs. Garden?” she said.

  Mrs. Garden opened her pocketbook and took out the letter. She held it out to Mrs. Hope and said, “I wanted to ask you about this.”

  Mrs. Hope looked at the letter and then at Mrs. Garden. “Won’t you sit down?” she said. She gestured at a little gilt chair near the desk. “You find me in a good deal of confusion,” she said. “It seems that they clean my room later each day. You know,” she said, leaning forward to touch Mrs. Garden on the knee, “I pay a small sum extra each week to have my room cleaned well—really well, you know—and I think I’m going to have to speak to them about it. They don’t do it at all as they should.”

  Mrs. Garden looked around. The narrow bed in one corner looked, at first, hardly disturbed, and then she saw that it had not been made up yet that morning. A cup with a tea bag in the saucer sat on the desk, and beside it a pad of ruled writing paper, like the paper Mrs. Garden’s letter was written on.

  “I hope I didn’t interrupt you at anything,” Mrs. Garden said.

  “Indeed
not,” Mrs. Hope said. She stood up and Mrs. Garden realized that she was incredibly small. She was wearing a plain black dress with a red belt, and around her neck was a long rope of aromatic cedar beads. “Will you have some candy?” she asked. She went over to the table by her bed and brought back a small glass dish of candy corn, which she set on the desk where Mrs. Garden could reach it. “I was just writing my letters,” she said.

  “It’s funny,” Mrs. Garden said. “I never expected to meet you again.”

  “I’m sure I know you,” Mrs. Hope said, “but I can’t quite remember where we met.” She was leaning forward, pleased and attentive.

  Mrs. Garden looked up, surprised. “Why, on the bus. You were so nice to me.”

  Mrs. Hope glanced down at the letter on the desk. “Certainly I remember now,” she said. “You’re the young lady with the child.”

  “No,” Mrs. Garden said. “My husband had just left to be sent overseas. Mrs. Hope, I need advice very badly.”

  “It wasn’t a child, come to think of it,” Mrs. Hope said. “It was a sick mother. We women are terrible when we’re sick.”

  “I thought maybe when I got your letter,” Mrs. Garden said awkwardly, “I thought I might come in and talk to you. We haven’t been married very long, Jim and I, and now when he comes back we’re going to be saddled with a baby, and instead of starting out again together and going dancing and having a good time together, we’re going to have responsibilities and everything. And I thought maybe you could tell me something to do.”

  “Of course you did,” Mrs. Hope said. “I meet so many people,” she added, looking down at the desk. “I don’t think anyone has ever come to see me before, though.”

  “They say, ‘Gain one, lose one,’” Mrs. Garden said. “I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to Jim.”

  “Love is a very important thing,” Mrs. Hope said.

  “I haven’t even told him yet,” Mrs. Garden went on. “Every time I write him I mean to put it in, about the baby, and then I think how awful he’ll feel.”