Читать книгу Mrs. Bridge - Evan S. Connell - Страница 17

11 • ALICE JONES AGAIN

It seemed to Mrs. Bridge that Saturday came around quite often. She was selecting some sugar buns from the bakery man when Alice dashed up the driveway with a long piece of clothesline in her hand, and the first thing that came to Mrs. Bridge’s mind was that the girl had stolen it.

“Good morning, Alice,” she said. Alice dropped the clothesline on the back steps and ran directly into the house to find Carolyn. A few minutes later the gardener appeared and asked, as he always did, whether she was being a nuisance. Mrs. Bridge smiled briefly and shook her head, not knowing how to be truthful without hurting his feelings.

The children were in Carolyn’s room playing jacks. Mrs. Bridge looked in on them after a while and asked why they didn’t play out of doors, the day being so nice, and she thought—but could not be sure—that as she suggested this the little Negro girl gave her a rather strange look. In any event the suggestion appeared to take hold, because a few minutes later she heard them outside shouting with laughter about something.

Shortly before noon, while rearranging the handkerchiefs in her husband’s bureau, Mrs. Bridge heard Carolyn singing at the top of her voice: “My mother, your mother, live across the way, eighteen-sixteen East Broadway! Every night they have a fight, and this is what they say—” Here Alice Jones took over the song: “Goddamn you, goddamn you, goddamn you, goddamn you—”

Mrs. Bridge rushed to the nearest window and looked down. One end of the clothesline was tied to the rose trellis. At the other end was Carolyn, churning the rope with both arms, and in the center was Alice leaping up and down.

Next week, when Alice came racing up the driveway and tried to open the screen door to the kitchen, she found it locked. Mrs. Bridge was in the kitchen and said, “Who is it, please?”

“It’s me,” replied Alice, rattling the door.

“Just a minute, Alice. I’ll see if Carolyn is at home.” She went into the living room and found her daughter looking at one of the movie magazines that Ruth had begun buying.

“Alice is here again. I’ll tell her you’re busy.”

But at the first word Carolyn had jumped up and started for the back door.

About ten o’clock both of them came into the kitchen for a bottle of soda pop and wanted to know what there would be for lunch.

“Corky is having creamed tuna on toast and spinach,” said Mrs. Bridge pleasantly.

Alice observed that she herself didn’t care for spinach because it was made of old tea bags.

“I believe you’re supposed to have lunch with your Daddy, aren’t you?”

Alice heard a note in her voice which Carolyn did not; she glanced up at Mrs. Bridge with another of those queer, bright looks and after a moment of thought she said, “Yes’m.”