After a moment she went in and asked one of the clerks about it.
“Yes, it’s quite unusual, isn’t it?” he beamed. “We can’t keep them in stock. The kids adore them. Just like those hoops a couple of years ago. I’d be willing to bet the Scootch will outsell them.”
“Who makes it?” she asked faintly.
“Who? Uh—let’s see.” He up-ended a carton behind the counter. “California firm,” he said. “Ayers-Purvis Toys.” He read the name slowly. “That must be a new one, I don’t recall it,” he said. “All the new ideas come from California,” he explained, smiling. “Don’t know why. They breed out there like cats.”
“Thank you,” she said, turning to leave.
He called after her, “Excuse me, wouldn’t you like to buy one? I mean—you’ll have to get one sooner or later for your own kids.”
“My own kids probably have twenty of them,” she said, and left, knowing he would go to the back of the store and tell the others about the wacky customer he had.
She felt a tormented tenderness for Charlie, standing there gazing at his supreme achievement in the window. It was so silly. It was so ingenious. It would make him and Cleve a fortune. She wished him well; she wished for the first time in along time that she had been able to adapt to him better than she had. She wished fervently that they might have made each other happy, that the children could have brought a sense of fulfillment to her life. She wished that she had been there when he came home with his face lighted up and that happy, abstract look in his eyes to tell her about his wonderful new idea, wished she could have seen Polly and Skipper with their daddy’s great invention.
She leaned momentarily against the wall of the toy shop and a woman stopped to inquire if she needed help.
“No,” she said, and straightened up and walked into the crowd. She finally bought a pair of crystal candlestick holders at Black, Starr, and Gorham’s. While they were being gift-wrapped her spirits revived a little. She thought of Laura, thought of her very hard. Tried to picture the man she married. Was he good to her, was he rich, was he intelligent? He was gay—did that make him swishy, too? A nancy? Or could a man be gay and reasonably masculine at the same time? She burned to meet him. She was prepared to hate him.
At the hotel she collapsed on her bed and slept the rest of the day. When she awoke, late in the afternoon, she wrote Merrill Landon a note to say that Laura, his lost Laura was found. She gave him Laura’s address and told him she was married. “And you have a granddaughter,” she added. “Betsy.” She asked him to forward a note she enclosed to Charlie, so it would have a Chicago postmark on it.
To Charlie she wrote: “I saw the Scootch in the shop windows today. For what it’s worth, I’m proud of you. I hope you make a million dollars. The kids must love it I’m fine, don’t worry about me. I haven’t made my mind up yet on anything. Take care of yourself and give the children my fondest love. Beth.”
She cried while she wrote it, knowing she had no right to the tears. They were tears of self-pity more than anything else. She had given up a lot when she gave up her children, her home, her conjugal rights. She had given them up on a gamble, in the hope that she might someday find something else, something that would mean more to her. But she hadn’t found that something yet and it scared her to feel herself suspended between two worlds, belonging to neither. And she had done it all, deliberately, to herself.
Beth took a taxi to Laura’s apartment building. It was a short ride in the pleasant twilight, with the sun almost down and the air cooling.
She asked at the desk for Mr. and Mrs. Mann.
The clerk telephoned up and then asked Beth who was calling, one hand judiciously placed over the receiver.
“Mrs. Ayers,” Beth said doubtfully.
“Mrs. Ayers,” the clerk repeated, gazing down at the floor and speaking into the receiver. He glanced up again at Beth and then handed the phone to her.
“Hello?” she said, her heart pounding, rising in her throat, her ears geared for Laura’s light voice.
“Mrs. Ayers?” It was Jack. He sounded rather growly, but pleasant.
“Yes.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know you.”
“I—I’m an old school friend of Laura’s,” she said, wishing the trembling in her would go away just long enough for her to make a serene first impression on him.
“Oh,” he said. And then, with just a hint of enlightenment, “Oh. Well, then, won’t you come up?”
“Thanks, I’d love to.”
She got into the elevator, feeling the light nervous sweat break out all over her body, trying not to clutch her present too tightly in her clammy hands and ruin the wrappings. She watched the numbers of the floors flash above her until they got to four. It seemed an eternity.
She found the door promptly, but it was another matter to ring the bell. She felt suddenly faint and hated herself, trying to take up her courage and smooth her dress and compose her face with a multitude of ineffectual fluttering gestures. At last she stopped and stood rigidly still for as long as she could bear it, her eyes tight shut and the sweat loosed uncontrollably all over her. And then she reached for the bell.
Before she could push it the door opened and she gave a small but audible gasp. A short dark man, crew-cut and horn-rimmed, smiled at her.
“Took so long I thought you must have gotten lost,” he grinned. “Mrs. Ayers? Come on in. I’m Jack
