Part 26 (2/2)

I thought of the times when we would be playing Scrabble in the kitchen and Mr. Vorguilla after drinking his gla.s.s of water would put a hand on Mrs. Vorguilla's shoulder and sigh, as if he had come back from a long, wearying journey.

”h.e.l.lo, pet,” he would say.

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Mrs. Vorguilla would duck her head to give his hand a dry kiss.

”h.e.l.lo, pet,” she would say.

Then he would look at us, at Queenie and me, as if our presence did not absolutely offend him. ”h.e.l.lo, you two.”

Later on Queenie and I would giggle in our beds in the dark.

”Goodnight, pet.” ”Goodnight, pet.” How much I wished that we could go back to that time.

Except for going to the bathroom in the morning and sneaking out to put my pad in the garbage pail, I sat on my made-up cot in the sunporch until Mr. Vorguilla was out of the house. I was afraid he might not have any place to go, but apparently he did.

As soon as he was gone Queenie called to me. She had set out a peeled orange and cornflakes and coffee.

”And here 's the paper,” she said. ”I was looking at the Help Wanteds. First, though, I want to do something with your hair. I want to cut some off the back and I want to do it up in rollers.

Okay with you?”

I said okay. Even while I was eating, Queenie kept circling me and looking at me, trying to work out her idea. Then she got me up on a stool-I was still drinking my coffee-and she began to comb and snip.

”What kind of a job are we looking for, now?” she asked. ”I saw one at a dry cleaner's. At the counter. How would that be?”

I said, ”That'd be fine.”

”Are you still planning on being a schoolteacher?”

I said I didn't know. I had an idea that she might think that a drab sort of occupation.

”I think you should be. You're smart enough. Teachers get paid more. They get paid more than people like me. You've got more independence.”

But it was all right, she said, working at the movie theater. She had got the job a month or so before last Christmas, and she was - 256*

really happy then because she had her own money at last and could buy the ingredients for a Christmas cake. And she became friends with a man who was selling Christmas trees off the back of a truck. He let her have one for fifty cents, and she hauled it up the hill herself. She hung streamers of red and green crepe paper, which was cheap. She made some ornaments out of silver foil on cardboard and bought others on the day before Christmas when they went on sale in the drugstore. She made cookies and hung them on the tree as she had seen in a magazine. It was a European custom.

She wanted to have a party, but she didn't know who to ask.

There were the Greek people, and Stan had a couple of friends.

Then she got the idea of asking his students.

I still couldn't get used to her saying ”Stan.” It wasn't just the reminder of her intimacy with Mr. Vorguilla. It was that, of course. But it was also the feeling it gave, that she had made him up from scratch. A new person. Stan. As if there had never been a Mr. Vorguilla that we had known together-let alone a Mrs.

Vorguilla-in the first place.

Stan's students were all adults now-he really preferred adults to schoolchildren-so they didn't have to worry about the sort of games and entertainment you plan for children. They held the party on a Sunday evening, because all the other evenings were taken up with Stan's work at the restaurant and Queenie 's at the theater.

The Greeks brought wine they had made and some of the students brought eggnog mix and rum and sherry. And some brought records you could dance to. They had thought that Stan wouldn't have any records of that kind of music, and they were right.

Queenie made sausage rolls and gingerbread and the Greek woman brought her own kind of cookies. Everything was good.

The party was a success. Queenie danced with a Chinese boy named Andrew, who had brought a record she loved.

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”Turn, turn, turn,” she said, and I moved my head as directed. She laughed and said, ”No, no, I didn't mean you.

That's the record. That's the song. It's by the Byrds.”

”Turn, turn, turn,” she sang. ”To everything, there is a season-”

Andrew was a dentistry student. But he wanted to learn to play the Moonlight Sonata. Stan said that was going to take him a long time. Andrew was patient. He told Queenie that he could not afford to go home to Northern Ontario for Christmas.

”I thought he was from China,” I said.

”No, not Chinese Chinese. From here.”

They did play one children's game. They played musical chairs. Everybody was boisterous by that time. Even Stan. He pulled Queenie down into his lap when she was running past, and he wouldn't let her go. And then when everybody had gone he wouldn't let her clean up. He just wanted her to come to bed.

”You know the way men are,” Queenie said. ”Do you have a boyfriend yet, or anything?”

I said no. The last man my father had hired as a driver was always coming to the house to deliver some unimportant message, and my father said, ”He just wants a chance to talk to Chrissy.” I was cool to him, however, and so far he hadn't got up the nerve to ask me out.

”So you don't really know about that stuff yet?” said Queenie.

I said, ”Sure I do.”

”Hmm hmm,” she said.

The guests at the party had eaten up nearly everything but the cake. They did not eat much of that, but Queenie wasn't offended. It was very rich, and by the time they got to it they were filled up with sausage rolls and other things. Also, it had not had time to ripen the way the book said it should, so she was just as glad to have some left over. She was thinking, before Stan pulled her away, that she should get the cake wrapped up in a wine-soaked cloth and put it in a cool place. She was either - 258*

thinking of doing that or she was actually doing it, and in the morning she saw that the cake was not on the table, so she thought she had done it. She thought, Good, the cake was put away.

A day or so later Stan said, ”Let's have a piece of that cake.”

She said, Oh, let it ripen a bit more, but he insisted. She went to the cupboard and then to the refrigerator, but it was not there.

She looked high and low and she could not find it. She thought back to seeing it on the table. And a memory came to her, of getting a clean cloth and soaking it in wine and wrapping it carefully around the leftover cake. And then of wrapping waxed paper around the outside of the cloth. But when had she done that? Had she done it at all or only dreamed about it? Where had she put the cake when she finished wrapping it? She tried to see herself putting it away, but her mind went blank.

She looked all through the cupboard, but she knew the cake was too big to be hidden there. Then she looked in the oven and even in insane places like her dresser drawers and under the bed and on the closet shelf. It was nowhere.

”If you put it somewhere, then it must be somewhere,” Stan said.

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