My list would go on forever, and still it would be shorter than other people’s, because those tentative friendly fingers make me stiffen, and by the time I realize I’ve done it and try to relax, the hands are gone. People get the idea. The better they know me, the less they touch me.
But Oscar did not know me at all. Did not notice the way I quietly jumped as his hand touched my shoulder blade. Did not take his hand away until he was ready to set Rocket Bride down again.
“I have lots of ideas,” he said. “She’s just the first. There’s Fancy Boy, and the Mighty Midget, and, let’s see, Radio Dog—”
Caroline shook her head. “Oscar dreams big.”
“Why not?” said Oscar. “Doesn’t cost anything. Here’s another idea. Record players for cars. I can’t get anybody to invest, but it’s what the American public wants.”
“It is?” I said.
“Well,” said Caroline, “it’s what Oscar wants.”
I said, “But is this a nation of Oscars?”
He got a happy, planning look in his eyes. “A nation of Oscars,” he said, as if he were wondering how to swing it.
“There’s an idea,” said Caroline.
“A nation of Oscars,” he repeated, smiling fondly.
He would have loved that, I think. Some people like to think they are unique; I saw immediately Oscar did not. What better than walking into a crowd of himself, brillantined, back-slapping men who would congratulate themselves on the good fortune of being who they were. “I commend you on your taste,” Oscar would say to Oscar. “You’re my kind of man.”
When we went back upstairs, Mrs. Sweatt was simultaneously smoking a cigarette and trying to put on a duffel coat. She was apparently unwilling to put down the cigarette and kept switching it from one hand to her mouth to the other hand, trying to avoid the cloth.
“Where you going, Missus?” Caroline asked.
She looked a little panicked, as if she’d been caught doing something she’d been warned against. “Just going for a walk.”
“Missus,” said Oscar. “You think that’s a good idea?”
“Around the block,” she said.
“Why don’t you have dessert with us,” said Caroline.
“A short walk,” said Mrs. Sweatt. She had the cigarette in her mouth now, buttoning her coat, her eyes shut to avoid the smoke. She slipped the last toggle through the loop by her neck.
“Alice,” said Caroline. “He said he’d be home by nine.”
The sleeves of Mrs. Sweatt’s coat covered her hands; the smoke threatened to cover her face. Her skirt was longer than the coat and bunched up in flowered folds around her calves. She stood still for a minute, considering, then silently went to the table and sat down and ground the cigarette out on the edge of a plate.
“Peggy, come to the kitchen with me,” said Caroline. “Help me cut your beautiful cake.”
Caroline turned on the faucet and washed her hands.
“An after-dinner walk doesn’t sound so bad to me,” I said, rubbing my stomach. “Nice to take the air after a meal.”
“Missus doesn’t want to walk,” said Caroline. “She wants to spy.”
In the dining room, Mrs. Sweatt sat rigidly on her chair. “It’s cold outside.”
Oscar looked through the window at a thermometer attached to the outside sill. “Forty-one. Not too bad. Missus, why don’t you take off your coat.”
She undid the toggles slowly, top to bottom, then slipped out of it one arm at a time. It flopped over the back of her chair.
“Here,” said Oscar. “Let me help you.” He stood up and walked behind her.
Mrs. Sweatt took hold of one of the sleeves of the coat as if it were the arm of a favored suitor. “I might go out after.”
“Just stand up a minute.”
She did, and Oscar pulled out the coat and draped it over the back of her chair. “That better?” he asked.
She nodded.
Oscar picked up the plate with the cigarette. “Missus has started smoking again.”
“I picked it up from some friends in the hospital,” she said.
Caroline passed around slices of cake. The white frosting was gritty with sugar.
“Why, it’s chocolate,” said Oscar. “Sort of a surprise. Eat your cake, Missus.”
“I don’t want to get fat,” she said.
“You!” Caroline leaned back to display her tiny gut. “I myself feel like the Titanic.”
“Be careful of icebergs,” said Mrs. Sweatt. “I have it on good authority that it’s a terrible thing to sink.”
Then the front door rattled, and James stepped in, his hair blown back by the wind, his cheeks tweaked pink by the cold. Mrs. Sweatt stood up. Her chair fell back in a dead swoon.
“Jim,” she said. She went to him, tugged on the lapels of his coat as if she were getting him ready to go back out again. She was tiny next to him, tiny and voluptuous.
“How are you feeling, Mom?” He set his hand on her head. Well, maybe he had been avoiding her, but the loving concern on his face was so clear it pained me, and then I was disgusted with myself for envying a boy’s love for his mother.
“I’m okay,” she said. “Here.” She helped him off with his coat. Her hands went all around him, patting his chest, reaching up to touch his shoulder, his cheek. It was as if she wanted to check whether he’d grown while out of her sight, the way some mothers check for cigarette smoke or whiskey breath — though, of course, she was the one likely to smell of either. “Did you have a good time?” she asked. “Did you get supper?”
“Stuart’s dad has a darkroom,” said James.
“I thought so,” she said. “You smell like chemicals. Go wash.” But she wouldn’t let him go. His glasses had fogged up in the sudden heat of the living room, but he didn’t take them off to clear them, just stood still and let his mother straighten his shirt, feel his hands for chill, smooth his cuffs. Finally she took the glasses from his face — he had to bend down to let her reach — and wiped them on the bottom edge of her sweater.
She handed them back. “You go ahead now,” she said as he put them back on. “Wash your hands.”
“First come say hello,” Caroline called to him. She got up to help Mrs. Sweatt’s chair to its feet.
“Hello, James,” I said.
“Hello, Miss Cort.”
“You like photography?” I asked, though I knew he did.
“Yes. I need a new camera, though.”
In the living room, Mrs. Sweatt lay back on the sofa. The little bit of her face I could see past the dining room’s door frame was dreamy, resolved into its former beautiful shape.
I wanted to offer him something. “We have books on pinhole cameras.” That was just the sort of thing that interested him. “You can make one from a box.”
“From a box?” he asked.
From a box, I heard Mrs. Sweatt say from the other room, but I could not tell whether she was echoing my statement or her son’s question.
That night, when I got outside, when Oscar and Caroline and James had seen me to the door, Oscar touching my shoulder again, Caroline my elbow, James not touching any part of me — I remember all the careless fingers of my life, those that settle and those that don’t — when the door was closed behind me and I was alone in the cold, I hugged myself, smiled to myself, whispered assurances in my own ears — those little things you do, alone, when you have just glimpsed part of an agreeable future. No doubts, no apprehension — those are for later, when the future has arrived and you have to deal with the particulars. This moment was the best time. Everything was possible and improbable and meant nothing at all to anyone but me.