was, because the thirties were all jumbled in her memory and she could not tell the beginning of the decade from its end. She dialed the number. It was a hotel on the West Side. Mrs. Walton’s voice, when she answered, was the small, cracked voice of an old woman. “Billy’s dead, Renee,” she said. She began to sob. “I’m so glad you called. He’s going to be buried tomorrow. I wish you’d come to the funeral. I feel so alone.”
Renee put on a black dress the next day and took a cab to the funeral parlor. As soon as she opened the door, she was in the hands of a gloved and obsequious usher, ready to sympathize with a grief more profound and sedate than any grief of hers would ever be. An elevator took her up to the chapel. When she heard the electric organ playing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!” she thought she would have to sit down before she had the strength to see Mrs. Walton, and then she saw Mrs. Walton standing by the open door of the chapel. The two women embraced, and Renee was introduced to Mrs. Walton’s sister, a Mrs. Henlein. They were the only people there. At the far end of the room, under a meager show of gladioli, lay her dead lover. “He was so alone, Renee dear,” Mrs. Walton said. “He was so terribly alone. He died alone, you know, in that furnished room.” Mrs. Walton began to cry. Mrs. Henlein cried. A minister came in and the service began. Renee knelt and tried to remember the Lord’s Prayer, but she got no further than “… on earth as it is in Heaven.” She began to cry, but not because she remembered the man tenderly; she had not remembered him for years and it was only by forcing her memory that she could recall that he sometimes brought her breakfast in bed, and that he sewed the buttons on his own shirts. She cried for herself, she cried because she was afraid that she herself might die in the night, because she was alone in the world, because her desperate and empty life was not an overture but an ending, and through it all she could see the rough, brutal shape of a coffin.
The three women left the chapel, helped by the obsequious usher, and rode down in the elevator. Renee said she couldn’t go to the cemetery, that she had an appointment. Her hands were shaking with fright. She kissed Mrs. Walton goodbye and took a taxi to Sutton Place. She walked down to the little park where Deborah and Mrs. Harley would be.
Deborah saw Renee first. She called Renee’s name and ran toward her, struggling up the steps one at a time. Renee picked her up. “Pretty Renee,” the little girl said. “Pretty, pretty Renee.” Renee and the child sat down beside Mrs. Harley. “If you want to go shopping,” she said, “I’ll take Deborah for a few hours.”
“Now, I don’t know whether I ought to or not,” Mrs. Harley said.
“She’ll be perfectly safe with me,” Renee said. “I’ll take her up to my apartment and you can call for her there at five. Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson needn’t know.”
“Well, maybe I’ll do that, now,” Mrs. Harley said. In this way, Mrs. Harley had begun an arrangement that gave her a few free hours each week.
When Renee hadn’t come by half past ten that Sunday, Mrs. Harley knew that she wasn’t coming, and she was disappointed because she had counted on going to church that morning. She thought of the Latin and the bells, and the exhilarating sense of having been sanctified and cleansed that she always felt when she got up from her knees. It angered her to think that Renee was lying in bed and that only Renee’s laziness was keeping her from prayer. As the morning passed, a lot of children had come to the park, and now she looked for Deborah’s yellow coat in the crowd.
The warm sun excited the little girl. She was running with a few children of her age. They were skipping and singing and circling the sand pile with no more purpose than swallows. Deborah tagged a little behind the others, because her coordination was still impulsive and she sometimes threw herself to the ground with her own exertions. Mrs. Harley called to her, and she ran obediently to the old woman and leaned on her knees and began to talk about some lions and little boys. Mrs. Harley asked if she would like to go and see Renee. “I want to go and stay with Renee,” the little girl said. Mrs. Harley took her hand and they climbed the steps out of the playground and walked to the apartment house where Renee lived. Mrs. Harley called upstairs on the house phone, and Renee answered after a little delay. She sounded sleepy. She said she would be glad to watch the child for an hour if Mrs. Harley would bring her upstairs. Mrs. Harley took Deborah up to the fifteenth floor and said goodbye to her there. Renee was wearing a negligee trimmed with feathers, and her apartment was dark.
Renee closed the door and picked the little girl up in her arms. Deborah’s skin and hair were soft and fragrant, and Renee kissed her, tickled her, and blew down her neck until the child nearly suffocated with laughter. Then Renee pulled up the blinds and let some light into the room. The place was dirty and the air was sour. There were whiskey glasses and spilled ashtrays, and some dead roses in a tarnished silver bowl.
Renee had a lunch date, and she explained this to Deborah. “I’m going to the Plaza for lunch,” she said. “I’m going to take a bath and dress, and you’ll have to be a good girl.” She gave Deborah her jewel box and turned on the water in the bathtub. Deborah sat quietly at the dressing table and loaded herself with necklaces and clips. While Renee was drying herself, the doorbell rang, and she put on a wrapper and went out to the living room. Deborah followed her. A man was there.
“I’m driving up to Albany,” he told Renee. “Why don’t you put some things in a bag and come on up with me? I’ll drive you back on Wednesday.”
“I’d love to, darling,” Renee said, “but I can’t. I’m having lunch with Helen Foss. She thinks she might be able to get me some work.”
“Call off the lunch,” the man said. “Come on.”
“I can’t, darling,” Renee said. “I’ll see you on Wednesday.”
“Who’s the kid?” the man asked.
“It’s the Tennysons’ little girl. I take care of her while the nurse goes to church.” The man
