'He'll be out front, Baby,' the usherette said. 'Good movie, wasn't it?'
'Oh yes, it surely was,' said Baby. 'But movies can't sing.' She didn't really like movies. 'Can you buckle my shoe for me?' She stuck out her foot, toes curled down like at ballet class. 'It came unbuckled.'
'That's okay, Harriet, one of us will do it,' said Jinny, echoed by her older, shyer sister. It was her older, shyer sister who crouched down to do up the buckle, quickly, almost furtively.
'You don't have to buckle my shoe now,' Frances reassured Harriet. She didn't want Harriet to feel she had missed out. 'You coming along to the show tonight?'
'Um,' said Harriet.
Jinny laughed. 'She's probably already seen it a hundred times, Baby.' Jinny did not always make Frances look good.
Frances knew how to deal with that. 'That's why we do it different each time. We do different songs, don't we, Harriet?'
To Frances's great pleasure, Harriet agreed. The shoe was buckled. 'Goodbye, Harriet!' called Frances as they were leaving. Then Frances ran up the aisle to find her daddy.
She found him in what her mother and no one else called the foyer. Daddy was there talking to some men, and Frances ran up to him, shouting, 'Daddy, Daddy, it was good!'
Her father laughed and scooped her up and swung her around. 'You bet it was!' he said and gave her a shake. 'I was thinking of you when I booked it!' He turned toward the two men. 'Hey, boys, this is my little girl. This is Frances.'
Frances saw then that the two weren't men at all, but teenagers. Frances didn't like them. They didn't know how to smile. Their smiles were all twisted, and their feet shuffled, and their hands were in their pockets. They looked like they could be rough. 'Hiya, Kid,' one of them managed to say, with a voice with a catch in it, as if a string had been plucked.
'These are my other daughters, Mary Jane and Virginia.' They had just come up. Mary Jane hid slightly behind Jinny, but both of them looked scared, or something like it. Frances was going to say something to make them all happy. She was going to, and then decided not to. There was something nasty about those two men. Why did Daddy know people like them? Frances could see her daddy wanted to get away too. His voice went breathless, and he began to talk too fast and move his head a lot. 'Got to be getting on.'
'Sure,' said one of the boys, his smile even more twisted, and Frances felt something she had no words for. She felt the contempt the boys had for her father. Her father turned and quickly walked away.
'Who wants a swing?' he asked as he turned. Why did he let them talk to him like that? Frances hugged his thick neck that smelled of aftershave and was prickly with stubble.
'Me,' said Frances, coyly, forgetting the boys in her affection for her father.
'Jinny?' her father asked, eyebrow arched.
Jinny said nothing but got into place beside him. Her father lowered Frances, and they each took a hand, and Frances felt a delicious tingle in her stomach.
'One… two… three!' they all said in a chorus and swung her over the movie-house carpet.
'Again,' she said and giggled.
'One… two… threeeee!' Frances was swung up high over their heads, and Mary Jane had run ahead to push open the big glass door, and as if flying, Frances soared up out of shadow, and down into a blanket of hot Lancaster air.
'Now it's Jinny's turn,' Frances said.
'You can't swing me, I'm too big,' said Jinny. 'And besides, it's too hot out here.'
'I can swing you,' said Frances and chuckled at the idea.
'No you can't,' said Jinny, beginning to giggle too.
They all played a game. Daddy and Frances pretended to swing Jinny. One, two, threeeee! and Jinny would whoop. 'Golly, that sure was some good swing,' Jinny said, joking. Mary Jane followed quietly. Frances didn't want Mary Jane to feel left out so she turned and winked at her. Mary Jane smiled back, gently, her arms folded in front of her.
'Who were those boys?' Mary Jane asked quietly. Daddy walked on a couple of steps. 'Those boys in the movie house?'
'Just some kids, honey,' said Daddy, walking on ahead. 'They come in for the show on Saturdays. Nice boys.'
'They didn't look nice,' said Janie.
'No, they did not,' said Frances, holding on to her father's soft, fat finger.
'You don't like anybody, Janie,' said Jinny, and there was enough truth in it for none of them to say anything else.
'Race you to the car,' said Daddy.
Only he and Frances ran.
'It's too hot,' said Jinny, behind them.
The car was a special treat. Mom had driven to and from Los Angeles again, and she had left the car outside the theater, so the girls, particularly the Baby, wouldn't have to walk home in the heat.
It was a Buick. Frances liked the word and said it over to herself. Big, beautiful Buick. Her daddy concentrated on opening the door, and she clambered in, hoisting herself up onto the large front seat. Janie came up, scowling in the sunshine, hand sheltering her eyes. Janie didn't like Lancaster. She was always uncomfortable in it. Frances
