Another group of people, older and better dressed, stood at the window of a real estate office looking at photographs of homes for sale, mountain cabins, expensive condominiums. They talked, took notes, compared prices. Their eyes glistened. In their expressions she could see the pleasure of the prospect of moving, of the exhaustion of the possibilities of an old place and the opening of the possibilities of a new place. Perhaps they lived in places like Richmond or Atlanta or Washington. Undoubtedly they had plans to buy a mountain cabin for vacations or a condominium for retirement. They had plans and the plans took up their time.
It was as if she belonged to both groups. It was not clear which was better off or which she would join if she had the chance. It seemed that she had plans for the immediate future, but she didn’t know what to do with the rest of her life.
The old tightness came back and clenched under her diaphragm. She turned back to the bench. For her, too, it was a question of time. What would she do with time? Was there something she was supposed to do?
Her body was sore. Her arms and legs hurt, one side of her jaw was swollen, her ribs felt as if she had taken a beating. But there was also the feeling that she was over the worst of it. Perhaps, she thought, it was like the pain one feels after being in a fight and winning. It was the kind of soreness the sun cures. The bench and her position on the bench had been arranged so that the morning sunlight hit the sore parts of her body. She felt like a snake stretched out on a rock in the sun, shedding its skin after a long hard winter.
Her hands were open on her knees. She turned them over. There were fingernail marks in both palms, not severe enough to break the skin but deep enough to cause bruising. They were the sort of marks one might make waiting a long time, fists clenched, for something frightening to happen.
At that moment something inside her relaxed. A muscle, which had been clenched so long she had forgotten it, suddenly unclenched. It let go and she closed her eyes and took a breath of air into a new part of her lungs.
It became possible, she noticed, to look at things rather than watch out for things. A line of ants crawled past her foot. She picked out one ant which carried a neatly cutout section of a green leaf, holding it vertically aloft like a sail, and followed it as it made its way over the coarse granules of the sidewalk. As the sun warmed her, she studied the clothes of the passersby. Many people, she noticed, seemed to dress as they pleased. Nobody paid much attention. Had this always been the case? Surely it had been different the last time she was in a street, one, two, three years ago.
What year was it? Nineteen seventy-nine? eighty? eighty what?
The sidewalk was crowded. When she made her forays, she was afraid of running into someone. Then she realized that she was not accustomed to seeing people going somewhere or doing something. It seemed more natural for people to be sitting silently or standing and gazing or being taken somewhere. What if she ran straight into someone? But oncoming people seemed to know without looking at her exactly when to veer slightly and miss her. The veering occurred when the other person was about five feet away, a turn of a degree or so to the right or left. It must be a trick, an exchange of signals which she must learn. Otherwise, she might find herself confronting a person, step to the right with him, to the left, and so on. What then? What she feared was a breakdown in the rules of ordinary living which other people observed automatically. What if the rules broke down? Suddenly she remembered that she had once been an A student. But what if she flunked ordinary living?
Just before she reached home base, the bench, a young woman approached and did not veer. They stopped, facing each other. Oh my, she thought, this is it. But the woman was smiling, for all the world as if she knew her. Oh my, she thought, perhaps she does and I am supposed to know her. Indeed, she seemed to belong to a past almost remembered. She was dressed in the old style, skirt, blouse, cardigan sweater, shoulder bag, penny loafers. Her long black hair was parted in the middle and framed her oval face like a madonna’s. Seen close, she was not so young. Her face was chapped. Evidently the woman had something to say to her or expected her to say something, for she did not step aside. As she watched the woman’s radiant smile and cast about in her mind for where she might have known her, she noticed that the woman held a sheaf of pamphlets in one hand and that her fingers were ink-stained. From the pressure of the strap of the shoulder bag on the wool of the sweater, she judged that the bag was heavy. Perhaps it was filled with more pamphlets. The woman, still smiling, was handing her a pamphlet. Anxious to make up for not being able to recognize the woman, she began to read the pamphlet then and there. The first three sentences were: Are you lonely? Do you want to make a new start? Have you ever had a personal encounter with our Lord and Saviour? While she was reading, the woman was saying something to her. Was she supposed to listen or read?
Later, from the bench, she observed that other people dealt with the woman differently. Some ignored her, veered around her. Others took the pamphlets politely and went their way. Still others stopped for a moment and listened (but did not read), heads down and nodding. But for her, questions asked were to be answered, printed words were to be read.
Facing the woman, she considered the first sentences of the pamphlet. “Yes,” she said, “there is a sense in which I would like to make a new start. However—”
But the woman was saying something.
“What?”
“I said, are you alone? Do you feel lonely?”
She considered the questions. “I am alone but I do not feel lonely.”
“Why don’t you come to a little get-together we’re having tonight? I have a feeling a person like yourself might get a lot out of it.”
She considered that question. “I’m not sure what you mean by the expression ‘a person like yourself.’ Does that mean you know what I am like?”
But the woman’s eyes were no longer looking directly at her, rather were straying just past her. The smile was still radiant but in it she felt a pressure like the slight but firm pressure of a hostess’s hand steering one along a receiving line.
“Won’t you come?” said the woman but steering her along with her eyes. “The address is stamped on the back. I promise you you won’t regret it.” Her voice was still cordial, but the question did not sound like a question and the promise did not sound like a promise.
Sitting down again, knapsack beside her, she reflected that people asked questions and answered them differently from her. She took words seriously to mean more or less what they said, but other people seemed to use words as signals in another code they had agreed upon. For example, the woman’s questions and commands were evidently not to be considered as questions and commands, then answered accordingly with a yes, no, or maybe, but were rather to be considered like the many signboards in the street, such as Try Good Gulf for Better Mileage, then either ignored or acted upon, but even if acted upon, not as an immediate consequence of what the words commanded one to do.
Such a code, she reflected, may not be bad. Indeed, it seemed to cause people less trouble than words. At one time she must have known the code. It should not be hard to catch on to.