Everybody Loves Somebody (6 page)

H
ELEN OWEN
had a special talent when it came to charity: where other volunteers were met with brittle smiles and refusals, Helen managed
to turn virtually every solicitation into a profitable transaction. She’d gone door to door to raise money for the town library.
She’d visited her wealthiest friends to raise capital for the expansion of a small local hospital. Helen was known in town
for her magical touch, and during the day her face shone with the kind of contentment that belongs only to women who manage
to combine prosperity with social purpose. Had she been even wealthier, she would have found her niche as a famous philanthropist.
But the Owens were wedged snugly in place just below the pinnacle of the aristocracy. They were what their more desperate
friends referred to as
well off
—not exactly the “economic royalists” maligned by Roosevelt but still miraculously unaffected by the difficult times.

On a typical day, the children would arrive home from school, devour the snack prepared for them by Mrs. Minello, the cook,
and then run out to play until suppertime. Helen would come home at about four thirty or five to find Mrs. Minello up to her
elbows in raw meatloaf. For the next hour, Helen would listen to the radio and attend to correspondence at the rolltop desk
in the den. At six she would call her children in for supper, and they’d come scampering across the yard, grass stains on
their clothes, twigs tangled in their hair. They would wash their hands at the kitchen sink and sit down to eat whether or
not Dexter was expected home that night. During dinner, Helen would drill the children about their successes at school. When
they were through, they’d rush outside to continue work on their fort, or such was Helen’s notion of their project. Eventually
they’d return to the house of their own accord, emerging from the dusk like pieces of pale quartz, though until then Helen
would sit near the single window in the den listening for any sound—a crackle of leaves, a cough, a brittle laugh—that might
belong to some drifter lurking out in the woods. Not that she blamed those men unfortunate enough to have lost their jobs
and homes. But as their ranks increased, so did the violence. While she watched her children playing in the distance, she’d
imagine all the harm that might come to them. Only after she had them safely inside for the night would she admit the burden
of their absence.

Yet she remained determined not to overprotect them, and she kept her worry a secret, privately condemning herself for indulging
the faithless emotion and always greeting the children with remarkable composure, interrogating them about the next day’s
schedule as though they were her adult employees. They in turn were wonderfully respectful of their mother, unlike some other
children she knew, and they’d try their best to impress her. Gregory, she hoped, would grow up to be a doctor. Jacqueline
would carry on her mother’s good work. But there was plenty of time for them to choose their vocations. For now, Helen tried
to allow them ample opportunity to do as they pleased, since she believed that children benefit from privacy—an independent
character grows out of an independent childhood, as Helen herself could testify from her own upbringing.

Memorial Day was not unusual in any way. Rumblings of thunder in the late afternoon were not followed by rain, so the children
returned outside after their snack. At supper, Jackie described in detail an experiment with helium her teacher had performed
for her class the previous week. Gimp announced, for the fifth time in two days, that he’d gotten an A on a spelling quiz.
Helen tested them both for a few minutes with words like
appetite,
conscience,
and
unanimity,
coaching them gently through the more difficult syllables. Then she excused them from the table, and they rushed off for
their final hour of play.

With Dexter away taking care of some sort of business that
could not wait,
Helen spent the rest of the evening in restless solitude. Once the children were in bed, she paged through magazines and
eventually fell asleep in her clothes. She woke with a start shortly after 2:00 a.m. Sleep was a useless effort at that point,
so she went downstairs to read on the sofa. But though her mind was alert, her eyes were too tired to decipher the print.
She tried to doze. She tried rehearsing verb conjugations in French. Finally she decided to go outside for a breath of fresh
night air.

She felt the thumping work of her heart as she closed the door behind her—a common-enough symptom of her rising anxiety. A
dog barked in the distance. Nearby, branches rustled under the paws of some nocturnal animal. Helen set out on a walk through
the neighborhood, and though nothing seemed amiss, she felt the need to stay acutely alert. She imagined she was a guard for
her family and neighbors. As long as she was awake, nothing terrible could happen. The night would pass without disruption.
No child would be stolen, no band of ruffians would come to prey on roaming bums.

By the third turn around the circle, Helen’s anxiety had begun to subside, replaced by a pleasant fatigue. She was already
looking forward to her Scotch and the sleep that would finally release her from her vigilance. She paused in a pocket of air
rich with the scent of honeysuckle and turned her face up to contemplate the strands of clouds that floated across the moon.
She felt as proud of her vigilance as she was sure that the last hours of the night would pass uneventfully. Her neighbors
would never know what she had done for them. The phantom warrior of Wakeman Road. The obvious irony of the street’s name struck
her for the first time, and she slowed her pace to better appreciate her neighborhood. Behind the bayberry hedge was the Raymond
house, number 35, a large brick Tudor with a slate roof. The Raymonds, it was rumored, had suffered dearly from the Crash,
and since then they’d been kept afloat by Willie Raymond’s parents. Mrs. Parsons, who lived in the Cape at number 33, had
been renting out rooms ever since her husband’s death two years ago. The Owens owned the shingled Colonial, number 31. Separating
each house were spacious yards, the grass still fragrant with rotting dogwood blossoms.

How unreal Helen suddenly felt—so strangely voluptuous.
Imagine lying on a sheet of freshly fallen blossoms, your body still slender with youth, a boy leaning over you, your mouths
latched. Imagine a touch made more electrifying by the fact that it is forbidden. Imagine lying naked beneath him, feeling
him inside you.
The night seemed to insist upon romance, and for a moment she found herself remembering something she had never experienced.
She’d known only routine courtship, everything correct, from the rings exchanged to the devotion that bound her to her husband
for life, and her memory sternly reminded her of this: there had been no backyard romance in her life, no secret passion that,
had it been discovered, would have ruined her, no inappropriate desire impossible to contain. Mrs. Helen Weech Owen had lived
a contained life. Of course, all that could change in an instant. She could stand here in the middle of the road and howl
at the moon, rousing the whole neighborhood with the sound, an awful temptation that swept over and past her, leaving her
drenched in sweat but sedate.

She walked on, recovering her dignity with every step, so by the time she was crossing her own yard she could scold herself
for getting so worked up over nothing.

She slept fitfully and at dawn fell into a deeper sleep that lasted until noon. The sound of automobile tires on the brick
drive woke her. Her husband was home from his business trip. She felt an immediate rush of joy, which subsided as she watched
him slip out of the car. He would be disappointed to find her still in her nightgown, and the thought of trying to make up
excuses irritated her. By the time she had arrived downstairs to greet him she felt angry at his intrusion, though he asked
no questions about her apparel, and as soon as she had him settled in with his coffee, she returned to her room, where she
dressed with the slow, self-conscious movements of an invalid who has forced herself to rise from bed after many months.

The children would already be finished with classes for the day, since the school was holding its annual spring fair in the
afternoon. Helen decided to catch up with them there, and since Dexter opted for rest, she walked alone to the school yard,
where the small carnival, complete with booths and hayrides and a hot-air balloon, seemed dwarfed by the expansive playing
fields. She spent most of the day wandering through the crowd in search of her daughter and son, unable to believe that no
one had seen them or knew where they were. By 4:30 p.m., panic made it impossible for Helen to speak coherently, so it was
Dexter who finally called the police.

D
EVIOUS CHILDREN
. Mustering all their guilelessness, they convince the Rialto’s red-coated ticket taker to let them in without paying so they
can search—unsuccessfully—for the lost purse, then they scurry back across Times Square, west on Forty-second, and down to
Pennsylvania Station. Jackie blames the theft on the mad old crow man, but Gimp reminds her that they’d used money from the
purse to buy the malted milk. Which reminds Jackie that she is thirsty, though for now there is nothing they can do about
it, not with two measly cents between them.

In the station they are drawn by the clash of a tambourine to a crowd that has gathered around a performer, a clown of sorts,
only half in costume, with a fool’s cap on his head and a frothy pink collar pinned to his T shirt. He is balancing three
eggs on a spoon while he hits a tambourine against his thigh. Except for a few laughing children tucked against their parents’
legs, the crowd watches silently as an egg drops and explodes on the floor. Jackie and Gimp push to the front, and she clutches
his hand so she won’t lose him like she lost the purse. People press against her on all sides. She becomes aware of something—a
book, perhaps a package—rubbing uncomfortably up and down, up and down against the small of her back. She shifts forward,
but the pressure increases until she begins wondering whether a spiteful stranger is twisting a fist against her back. She
jerks her elbows to gain herself more room. In a moment the pressure ceases, and she turns to catch sight of a short, bloated
man with balloons for cheeks and a blunt goatee slipping backward through the crowd. As their glances meet, his flushed face
and strangely friendly smile give away his intentions, igniting in Jackie a peculiar humiliation she has never felt before.
She pulls her brother forward into the space left open for the clown and then through the sparser crowd behind. They run across
the main hall and out through an end pavilion. Gimp lets his sister tug him across Seventh Avenue. They keep running until
Jackie stops right in front of the side entrance of Macy’s department store to catch her breath.

“Let’s go home,” she says between gasps.

“We don’t have any money.”

No money, no tickets, no passage home. Across the street shirtless workers are edging squares of cement for a new sidewalk.
Gimp watches them for a while then turns to eye the revolving doors of Macy’s. His sister just stands there hugging herself,
panting, looking vacantly ahead, so he gives her a playful push, causing her to stumble a few steps, and he runs into the
store, knowing that Jackie will have to follow.

She loses sight of him almost instantly, for the interior dazzles with its glittering ribbons wrapped around Corinthian columns,
its many mirrors positioned at various angles, its jewels displayed on beds of blue velvet. Even the hundreds of hats propped
on racks pulsate with light. And such heady perfumes, the scents spun into swirls by fans. And the scarves and purses, so
many purses, leather, straw, alligator, cotton, all of them stuffed with paper to look plump. It is a magical place, as remote
as a painting, populated by slender ladies so comfortable in their elegance that Jackie wonders whether they are actresses
hired by the store to complete the displays.

“Oh, sister!” Gimp’s voice rises above the crowd—there he is, halfway up the stairs, taunting his sister with his grin, beckoning
her to follow. He turns, bumps into a woman carrying two large shopping bags. She boxes him on the ear—serves him right—as
he dashes by. Jackie tries to pursue him, bounces like a pinball through the aisles and finally reaches the stairs, only to
see her brother disappear around the corner of the second floor. Women’s wear, perfect for hide-and-seek. Jackie ascends two
stairs at a time, dives through racks of shin-length dresses that smell of moldering hay, pushes through the clothes straight
into her brother, who lunges toward her, tackles her and knocks her down, then scampers off.

Stupid coot!
She’ll show him! Still on her hands and knees, she crawls beneath the dresses into the next aisle, catches Gimp’s ankle as
he runs by, leaves him sprawled on the dusty wooden floor. Ha! Score one!

What a fine adventure this is turning out to be after all. Gimp chases Jackie, Jackie chases Gimp, until a salesgirl catches
them both by an arm and starts to drag them toward the rear stairway. But they yank free and each hurtles off in the opposite
direction, one upstairs to the third floor, one downstairs to the first.

Safely alone, Jackie decides to let Gimp come after her rather than pursuing him. She wanders through lingerie and shoes and
finds another stairway leading to the basement, where she discovers a vast market made to look even more expansive with floor-to-ceiling
mirrors on all sides. There are chocolate bars, pints of fresh raspberries, peaches, cheese, fresh breads and rolls, packets
of cookies and lemon drops. Jackie imagines herself a poor orphan set loose in Paradise. She manages to stuff her pockets
without anyone noticing and even brazenly stops to ask a deli clerk for directions to the water fountain. She is feeling utterly
pleased with herself as she bends over the curling stream of water. But when a pair of arms wraps around her from behind she
shrieks, choking on the last sip of water, causing nearly everyone in the area to stop what they’re doing and stare.