At some point an invisible signal passed, because Mary Ellen jumped out of the chair where she had been curled and said gaily, “It’s all settled then. Heavens, what a bad hostess I am. Who’d like coffee, or a drink?”
Intuition told Celia to decline with a smile; Susan Vestry rose too after a glance at her watch. David Macintosh looked at the rainy windows and said that he could be persuaded to have a drink but would go down with them and find a cab first.
“David, I’ve been getting cabs in the rain for years,” said Susan, and after arrangements that Celia would move in within the next day or two the door of 4A closed behind them and they walked down the stairs. In her singleminded confidence, her mingled respect and contempt for someone cosseted and weak, Celia did not care in the least that Mary Ellen now had David to herself.
Stairs were not the best place for conversation, but Susan Vestry managed it. “What kind of job had you thought of, Celia, if you don’t mind my calling you that?”
“I certainly hope you will . . . Someone suggested modeling, although I’m afraid I have no experience with that or anything else, really. What with Mother—”
“Of course,” said Susan Vestry quickly. “Let’s see . . .” They had arrived in the outer vestibule with its banks of mailboxes. “I know a woman on one of the trade papers, and she just might be able to help, or know someone who could.”
“Oh, I don’t want to be a nuisance—”
“No nuisance at all,” said Susan, “so why don’t you let me call around a little before you do anything definite? I think, by the way, that you’re going to be very good for Mary Ellen.” She opened the outer door and they were under the hollowly echoing canopy, with bright little bounces of rain on the wet sidewalk. “There’s usually a cab on University. Can I drop you off?”
“Thank you, but I love to walk,” said Celia, knotting her scarf dexterously at her nape. “Maybe it was being cooped up so much . .
And she did like to walk—in her exhilaration, had to walk. On this particular night, she could have walked through a blizzard.
Tall for her age, Celia had gone out baby-sitting by the time she was eleven. At fourteen she had been an important economic factor in the taken-in washing and ironing; at sixteen she had become a “mother’s helper” in houses which knew the presence of a mother sporadically if at all. Her initial adjustment to the sharing of an apartment was more difficult than any of these undertakings.
She had never lived on equal terms with a contemporary like this one; that was a strain in itself. For all of her adult life her late evenings had been her own after whatever hard day’s work: not even demanding Mrs. Stryker would have dared to summon her after a certain point. Mary Ellen Vestry chattered companionably, and borrowed or offered face cream or nail polish or earrings at any hour. She penetrated Celia’s existence as relentlessly as a child confident that it is liked.
Moreover, she had habits that set Celia’s teeth on edge for the first few days. She was untidy; she had no concept of time; even with her glasses on she had a knack for overturning containers and dropping things. When some thing urgent occurred to her, she thought nothing of issuing out of her shower with a half-draped towel or nothing at all. Celia, untroubled by any vision of straining old fingers at a balcony’s edge, was genuinely scandalized by this.
But on the whole she had a sense of enormous achievement, so much so that she was hardly surprised at the ease with which she was accepted into Mary Ellen’s world. On that first evening she had offered to get some of her own furniture out of storage “although it’s a little heavy for an apartment, I’m afraid”—if it became necessary she would subtract a few items from Stedman Circle—and when this suggestion was turned down, predictably, she said, “Well, then, just a few sentimental things,” and departed to a secondhand store on Third Avenue. Here she bought a faintly spotted old mirror with gilt rosebuds, a small hand-painted china box which looked to her like something an invalid old lady could not have done without, and a fat brown earthenware teapot: with all her Georgian silver, Mrs. Stevenson had treasured one very much like it.
Thus established, Celia settled down to a quiet and thorough appraisal of her new situation. David Macintosh was never far from her thoughts, although he worked in Providence and only appeared at the apartment on weekends, and she speculated a good deal on what had given Mary Ellen her peculiarly vulnerable look. Neither preoccupation showed; if anything, she evinced less than the normal amount of interest in her roommate’s fife and the man with whom the roommate was so clearly in love.
Mrs. Cannon and Mr. Tomlinson could have warned Mary Ellen about this appearance of serene self-containment, but Mrs. Cannon was unaware of Mary Ellen’s existence and the grass had long been green on Mr. Tomlinson’s grave.
Susan Vestry seldom said things she didn’t mean, and on a dark afternoon in late November Celia sat in the small cluttered office of Charlotte Wise, who was presently studying her as inquisitively as a Pekingese.
Mrs. Wise was associate editor of a trade
