Things Invisible to See (7 page)

“God broke the mold when he made you,” said Ben.

Mold!
exclaimed God.
I never repeat myself.

The sidewalks were crowded with shoppers, mostly middle-aged women, pushing into the store or watching the mechanical figures in the windows, swagged and wreathed for Christmas, though Thanksgiving was still a week away. A family of snowmen, nodding like imbeciles. Santa in a golden sleigh, compelled to wave. Half a dozen elves whose hands pounded and stitched and sawed, and from somewhere—a cloud, perhaps—Bing Crosby singing “Silent Night” with the little catch in his voice.

“Let’s share a room in the door,” said Marsha. She pushed Ben ahead of her into the revolving door and squeezed in behind him. The door wedged tight. Panic froze him. A man in the section behind them tapped the glass, and Marsha started to laugh.

“Ben, move your feet!”

He moved them. The door opened. Why did she like to humiliate him? I’ve got to be patient, he told himself. He had made a bargain with God: If I am kind and helpful to everyone I meet from this day forward, God will forgive me for striking down Clare Bishop, even if I don’t tell her I did it. Why should I tell? What good would it do? In his mind rose a jeweler’s balance. The words “Clare Bishop’s concussion” hovered over the right pan, and a throng of faces, known and unknown, floated in the other one, the faces of everyone he would help for the rest of his life.

They passed the perfume counter. Marsha paused at a rack of men’s leather caps.

“Nobody would know if I took one,” she said.

“Marsha, please.”

“The stuff on the main floor is overpriced. Think of all the times I’ve paid too much. I could take that cap and even the score.”

“Don’t,” said Ben. “That man is watching us.”

“Which man?”

“That man next to the bathrobes. If you wore your glasses, you’d see him.”

She shrugged.

“Some day when I’m alone in here, I’ll take it.”

“You don’t need that cap,” said Ben.

“It was for you,” she said. “I was taking it for you.”

Riding the escalator to the ninth floor, she whispered in his ear, “What I really want for Christmas is butterfly-wing eye shadow, but I don’t think it’s been invented yet.”

The dining room was nearly full. All women, he noticed, and a few elderly men. Oriental carpets, white tablecloths, French windows with drapes of rose satin—oh, he didn’t belong here. A matronly hostess showed them to a table for two by a window.

“I want a table in the middle of the room,” said Marsha. “I don’t want to miss anything.”

She hung her purse on the chair and slipped off her jacket and sat down. She had a way of taking off her jacket that made you think she was taking off everything.

“This beats taking an exam in calculus,” she said.

“Why are you taking calculus?” demanded Ben.

“Because I’m good at it,” replied Marsha.

The waiter, in a red dinner jacket and green vest, brought two menus and stood discreetly aside.

“Crab,” said Marsha, glancing at the menu. “Have the stuffed crab. I’m paying.”

Ben knew she wanted him to pay, and he knew she did not like him to contradict her. Was she testing him? Whether he paid or not, he would fail.

The waiter stepped forward, sleek as a muskrat, pencil poised over his pad, and turned to Marsha, who turned to Ben.

“What looks good to you?” she asked him.

“Everything,” said Ben. “Everything looks good.”

“I’ll have plain Jell-O and tea,” said Marsha to the waiter. “I’m on a diet. My friend will have everything.”

“I beg your pardon?” said the waiter.

“I said everything. The crab, the broiled spring chicken, the oyster croquette, the celery soufflé, the black bass baked in cream, the shrimp, the celery and pineapple salad, the raisins molded in wine jelly, the pistachio cake, the chestnut parfait. And coffee and tea.”

“That’s luncheons number one, two, three, four, and five,” said the waiter. “I think I’d better move you to a larger table.”

“I don’t want to move,” said Marsha. “You can bring an extra table over here.”

“Marsha, the crab is fine,” pleaded Ben.

But the awful feast had been set into motion. Two more waiters emerged from the kitchen bearing the extra table and three stands for the trays, which they unfolded to the left and right of Ben. The muskrat waiter brought a large bowl of shrimps on ice and set it before him.

“The shrimp,” he announced. A butler announcing arrivals. “And the sauce for the shrimp.”

“Fast service,” remarked Marsha. “Those women behind you were here before us, and they’re still waiting.”

The whole dining room—right down to the curtains, thought Ben—was watching them.
Everything. Everything looks good.
His words and their consequences were as irreversible as if he’d rubbed a magic lamp—and here they came, bass and oyster and chicken and crab, bowing down to his appetite, under their steaming silver covers.

Ben lifted the first cover. The bass was dressed for the occasion in a pewter coat striped with black. Bread crumbs nestled like sleep around its upturned eyes: a small dead prince on a bed of rice.

“You’re a real glutton,” Marsha observed. Her Jell-O and tea had not arrived.

“A glutton for punishment,” said Ben and started in on the bass.

Suddenly a woman’s voice crackling through a loudspeaker commanded their attention.

“Our model number one is wearing a navy crepe dinner dress, formalized with a lovely net yoke accented with ostrich feathers. Notice the self-buttons at the waist and wrist. The split skirt opens on a knee-length petticoat of white embossed organdy. Number one. Available on the ninth floor.”

The model swept by them. Tall. Dark. Her number flashed on a white oval plaque the size of a dinner plate that dangled from her wrist. She looked straight at Ben, twirled, struck a pose, and passed on.

“Is she for sale?” asked Ben.

“You’d buy her if she were, wouldn’t you?” said Marsha.

“Nope,” answered Ben quickly.

“She’s tall,” said Marsha. “You like tall, dark women.”

“I don’t, Marsha.”

“Like that sultry cheerleader you went out with last fall.”

“She means nothing to me,” said Ben. “There was nothing between us.”

“Our model number two is wearing a lamé peach plaid dinner dress with corseletted bodice and a trailing sash and cap sleeves,” purred the voice.

Another model, tall and red-haired, stepped up to Ben and smiled.

“Go ahead,” said Marsha. “Look if you want to.”

“I don’t want to,” he said.

“Beauty,” she sighed. “I’d kill for it. The girls at Country Day are all so beautiful. I feel like a ferret among doves.”

“You’re beautiful,” said Ben.

“My chin sticks out. My nose is too big.”

“That’s not true. I love you the way you are.”

“‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment,’” said Marsha. “‘Love’s not love which alters when it alteration finds.’”

Love? True minds? Marsha always made Ben feel as if an exquisite wild animal had developed a taste for him; he felt honored, excited, and afraid.

“And our third model is wearing—” here little gasps of delight sprang up from those nearest the door through which she was entering—“a satin and tulle wedding dress with fitted bodice—”

Marsha began to weep. “I’m sorry, Ben. I always cry at weddings.”

Ben did not see the bride, only heard her pass in a rustle of satin as Marsha leaned toward him.

“Ben, let’s get married. They’re not drafting married men. You wouldn’t have to go.”

“I’m not afraid of going,” he said. “In fact, I’m thinking of enlisting.”

“You’re crazy!” said Marsha. “You want to go out and get shot up?”

“If we enter the war, somebody’s got to go,” he said.

“Look here. My stepfather could find you a job in a defense plant. He knows a lot of people. You’re not being unpatriotic if you don’t go.”

Ben put down his knife and fork. With all the interruptions, he had scarcely touched the fish.

“Marsha, I just think we shouldn’t get married till you finish high school. And till we can get through a whole month without fighting.”

“Everybody fights. It’s perfectly normal. You always put the blame on me. You don’t trust me.”

“I do trust you.”

The Jell-O and tea arrived. Marsha shoved it aside.

“If we were married we wouldn’t fight. That’s what we fight about—getting married.”

“Marsha,” Ben said, folding his napkin, “there’s no way I can eat all this.”

“Leave it,” she snapped.

“I’ll ask the waiter for—”

“You don’t ask for a doggy bag at Hudson’s. Leave it. I’m having a chocolate sundae. I’m addicted to chocolate. I have to have it every three hours.”

An elderly woman in a wheelchair caught Ben’s eye. The young boy pushing her toward the door was her grandson, perhaps. Ben saw himself pushing her, forever and ever, chained to her helplessness. Freedom. Oh, God, I’m addicted to freedom.

“What are you thinking?” asked Marsha.

“I’m thinking that I’m addicted to you.”

It wasn’t what he’d meant to say.

“If we were married,” said Marsha, “you could have me every three hours.”

A spasm of terror made him shudder. He would grow old like the ancient woman in the chair, and her grandson would grow old, and Marsha’s body in time would turn on itself, turn bent and shapeless. Panic swept through him.

“I can’t wait three hours,” he said.

Marsha grabbed her purse and her jacket.

“Come on. I know a place we can go.”

The waiter, seeing them rise, hurried over with the check. Though she usually added it and checked it to the penny, now Marsha left a fistful of bills on the table and walked quickly out of the dining room. Once in the corridor they ran for the elevator.

“Basement, please,” said Marsha, to the heavyset girl in the maroon uniform, who shifted on her stool and pushed the lowest button: B.

“Here’s where you find the real bargains,” Marsha said, as they got off. “The same names as upstairs, but without the labels. My mom used to bring me here the week before school opened and buy all my stuff.”

Ben followed her, past counters heaped with blouses, sweaters, brassieres, scarves. Women were reaching for things, pinching them, rubbing them between their fingers. Marsha turned abruptly down a small corridor, passed the door marked
LADIES
, and stopped at the door next to it:
EMPLOYEES ONLY
. She opened it.

“Come
on,
” she urged. “It’s all right.”

He followed her, his mouth dry, into a small room.

Nothing here but a chaise and a low table. For magazines. But there were no magazines. Through the thin walls he heard toilets flushing.

“Nobody ever comes in here,” she said, throwing her purse and her jacket on the floor.

When he unbuttoned her blouse, his hand met something cold and smooth. The leather cap dropped at his feet.

“It’s yours,” she said. “I took it for you.”

“Oh, Marsha.”

“Nobody caught me. Nobody ever catches me.”

E
VERYBODY HAD A CURE
for her.

Nell, who had once dated a Christian Scientist, sent her pamphlets which explained that she was God’s perfect child and therefore the paralysis was an illusion. On one of the pamphlets was scrawled a message: “Sounds crazy—but worth a try!”

Mrs. Lieberman sent her a newspaper clipping about a polio patient who painted “The Last Supper” on velvet, holding the paintbrush between his toes.

Hal ordered her copies of “Nuts May Save the Race” and “What is the Matter with the American Stomach?” from the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where he went once a year on a private vacation to enjoy the company of vegetarians and celebrities in search of their lost youth.

“That’s where I’d like to take you,” he said. “They’ve got heated pools. Just like Warm Springs. Look what Warm Springs did for Roosevelt.”

Helen brought the advertisements that still arrived in the mail for Grandpa, even though he no longer practiced osteopathy. Oh, praise the benefits of Dr. Herrick’s sugar-coated vegetable pills, a blessing to the afflicted, and Dr. Herrick’s Red Pepper Plasters, which restore health and vigor to the weak, and Dr. Herrick’s Pain-Killing Magic Oil, which for forty years has been a merciful friend to the suffering and is not of an oily nature and is very pleasant! There were also pamphlets for people who found themselves cutting teeth in their elbows or who were born with special problems such as four-inch tails.

“A four-inch tail!” exclaimed Helen. “Clare, things could always be worse.”

Mrs. Clackett, the grocer’s wife, sent her half a dozen back issues of
The Herbalist’s Almanac,
which her husband gave to all his customers at Christmas. Clare read the testimonials, keeping a sharp eye out for cases similar to her own. “Dear Doctor Well: I wish to sincerely thank you for your Wahoo Bark of Root. I can hardly believe it was so effective.” But what was Wahoo? “Dear Doctor Well: Since I have been taking Black Haw I feel so much better. I do not have those bearing down pains and I shall continue to praise Black Haw.”

Clare couldn’t be sure if she had met Black Haw before, under a different name. When she found the names of herbs she knew, it was like coming across the name of an old friend in the newspaper. Grandpa had told her about the herbs and about the love affairs between sicknesses and their cures that started when the first Headache met Pennyroyal, and Sprain called for Wormwood, and Loss of Appetite demanded Sarsaparilla, and Cramps took Skullcap to bed, and Cankers rejoiced in Golden Seal, and Fevers cooled toward Slippery Elm. He introduced her to good friends, silent friends, named Boneset and Periwinkle and Life Everlasting, who traveled where she could not go, bustling through the trade centers of the brain and resting in the crepuscular chambers of the heart, rowing through secret canals in the ear, or floating between the islets of Langerhans by the dark continent of the liver. The blessings of Juniper and Ginger were upon her always. Grandpa asked her, “What did God give us for the healing of nations?” and she answered, “The leaves of the tree of life,” and he said, “Correct. Take a penny from the jar. Take two. That was a hard one.”