'You know you do it to children. Go on. Look at a poor old lady You can't hurt her anymore with that thing of yours. Go on!'
Bill had to walk away. He knew his face was white and he could feel his hands trembling. He had been shaken in the depths of his purity. She had been made so bitter! Bill could not imagine what could make anyone as full of bile as that. Except that it seemed to him that it must have come from something terrible that was done to her.
The next day he saw her, and she laughed when she saw him and clapped her hands, like a child again.
'I baked you a cake,' she would say. 'A nice plum cake.' And she would move the invisible cake onto her tray and pretend to cut it.
'How big a slice you want?'
'As big as you can cut it.'
'Oh!' she said. 'I know you! You'd have me cut just a teeny piece for myself and give you the rest. I don't know. Here you go.'
And she passed him the cake on an invisible plate, and he would pretend to eat it.
Tom Heritage passed by the bed. 'Watch it, Billy,' said Heritage. 'That's the first sign.' He turned to Dotty. 'How often does he eat cake that isn't there?' he asked Dotty.
'Only,' she insisted, 'since he's met me and I showed him how. Now he doesn't ever have to go hungry. Would you like a slice?'
'Uh. No thanks. Just had my invisible lunch,' said Tom.
After Heritage had gone, Dotty said, with a sigh, 'He'll never leave Kansas.'
Christmas bore down on them like an express train, jamming all the days together. Billy put up lights on his mother's house for the last time. He and Carol were at a party every night, with relatives or friends. Their high- school class had a Christmas reunion party. Six months after graduation, everybody was pretty much the same, except for a couple of the brainy kids who went away to college. Muffy Havis was there.
Billy wanted to talk to her because she was studying psychology. He tried to talk to her about Dotty.
He loomed toward her. He and Muffy Havis had never spoken much. Muffy had grouped him together with the rest of the huge and popular athletes of the school. She called them the Dumb Oxen.
His hands did most of the talking, as if trying to pull words out of the air. He talked about some patient in the Home, a few scraps of her conversation; some problem she had with the television.
'What's the diagnosis been?' Muffy asked him. 'Schizophrenic?'
'I don't know,' he said, and smiled his big, dumb, sweet smile.
'It's a bit early in the course for me to give a diagnosis,' she said wryly. She was amazed Bill Davison was interested. It made her feel on edge.
'What… what kind of things do you study?' Bill Davison asked her. 'Do they help you understand people better?'
'No,' admitted Muffy quite cheerfully.
Muffy Havis liked classical music and read all kinds of things and had not been terribly popular. She was hefty and pale and had her hair pulled back into a plain ponytail. Being asked unanswerable questions by one of the Dumb Oxen was not something she enjoyed.
'I sure wish I could understand Dotty better.'
Really? Muffy thought. Or did you think everything would be as open and straightforward as playing football and getting drunk with your cronies? Muffy wished she had not come. She was tired of realizing that there was not a single person in her high-school class that she could call a friend.
And here came Carol Gilbert, blond hair, curls, bright smile; she's going to be oh so gracious and get him away from me. Oh, come on, Carol, this is Muffy, remember? You don't have to be jealous of me. Plain old Muffy. Aren't you going to pretend to be nice to me?
'What are you two finding to talk about?' Carol asked.
'Psychology,' said Muffy.
'That's all he talks about these days since that job of his.' Carol was smiling and dancing in place to get away.
'Maybe he should go into insurance,' said Muffy, coolly.
'Something sensible like that,' agreed Carol.
There are two kinds of stupid people, thought Muffy. The nice ones and the shrewd nasty ones. And both kinds come out on top.
Bill Davison murmured something. Muffy wasn't sure, but she thought it was 'All-fired rush to be sensible.'
'What was that, honey?' asked Carol, leaning forward. Oooh thought Muffy. Trouble in the ranks.
Bill didn't answer. Instead he looked up straight into Muffy's eyes big, dumb and not so sensible after all. 'I'd really like to talk some more about this,' he said. 'Now's not really the time. Can I drop by while you're still in town?'
'Uh. Sure,' said Muffy. What the hell, she thought, is happening?
'Maybe you could come out and see her.'
