"All right, quiet down, I can hear."
Bobbie took a large-mouthed bite of her cheeseburger. Joanna sipped her coffee and frowned.
"Even if I'm wrong," Bobbie said with her mouth full, "even if there's no chemical doing anything"-she swallowed-"is this where you really want to live? We've each got one friend now, you after two months, me after three.
Is that your idea of the ideal community? I went into Norwood to get my hair done for your party; I saw a dozen women who were rushed and sloppy and irritated and alive; I wanted to hug every one of them!"
"Find friends in Norwood," Joanna said, smiling. "You've got the car."
"You're so damn independent!" Bobbie took her coffee from the dashboard.
"I'm asking Dave to move," she said. "We'll sell here and buy in Norwood or Eastbridge; all it'll mean is some headaches and bother and the moving costs -for which, if he insists, I'll hock the rock."
"Do you think he'll agree?"
"He damn well better had, or his life is going to get mighty miserable.
I wanted to buy in Norwood all along; too many WASPs, he said. Well I'd rather get stung by WASPs than poisoned by whatever's working around here. So you're going to be down to no friends at all in a little while-unless you speak to Walter."
"About moving?"
Bobbie nodded. Looking at Joanna, she sipped her coffee.
Joanna shook her head. "I couldn't ask him to move again," she said.
"Why not? He wants you to be happy, doesn't he?"
"I'm not sure that I'm not. And I just finished the darkroom."
"Okay," Bobbie said, "stick around. Turn into your nextdoor neighbor."
"Bobbie, it can't be a chemical. I mean it could, but I honestly don't believe it. Honestly."
They talked about it while they finished eating, and then they drove up Eastbridge Road and turned onto Route Nine. They passed the shopping mall and the antique stores, and came to the industrial plants.
"Poisoner's Row," Bobbie said.
Joanna looked at the neat low modern buildings, set back from the road and separated each from the next by wide spans of green lawn: Ulitz Optics (where Herb Sundersen worked), and CompuTech (Vic Stavros, or was he with Instatron?), and Stevenson Biochemical, and HaigDarling Computers, and Burnham-Massey-Microtech (Dale Coba-hiss!-and Claude Axhelm), and Instatron, and Reed amp; Saunders (Bill McCormick-how was Marge?), and Vesey Electronics, and AmeriChem Willis.
"Nerve-gas research, I'll bet you five bucks."
"In a populated area?"
"Why not? With that gang in Washington?"
"Oh come on, Bobbie!"
WALTER SAW SOMETHING WAS bothering her and asked her about it. She said, "You've got the Koblenz agreement to do," but he said, "I've got all weekend. Come on, what is it?"
So while she scraped the dishes and put them in the washer, she told him about Bobbie's wanting to move, and her " El Paso " theory.
"That sounds pretty far-fetched to me," he said.
"To me too," she said. "But women do seem to change around here, and what they change into is pretty damn dull. If Bobbie moves, and if Charmaine doesn't come back to her old self, which at least was-"
"Do you want to move?" he asked.
She looked uncertainly at him. His blue eyes, waiting for her answer, gave no clue to his feelings. "No," she said, "not when we're all settled irL It's a good house… And yes, I'm sure I'd be happier in Eastbridge or Norwood. I wish we'd looked in either one of them."
"There's an unequivocal answer," he said, smiling. "'No and yes."'
"About sixty-forty," she said.
He straightened from the counter he had been leaning against. "All right," he said, "if it gets to be zero-a hundred, we'll do it."
"You would?" she said.
"Sure," he said, "if you were really unhappy. I wouldn't want to do it during the school year-"
"No, no, of course not."
"But we could do it next summer. I don't think we'd lose anything, except the time and the moving and closing costs."
"That's what Bobbie said."
"So it's just a matter of making up your mind." He looked at his watch and went out of the kitchen.
"Walter?" she called, touching her hands to a towel.
"Yes?"
She went to where she could see him, standing in the hallway. "Thanks," she said, smiling. "I feel better."
"You're the one who has to be here all day, not me," he said, and smiled at her and went into the den.
She watched him go, then turned and glanced through the port to the family room. Pete and Kim sat on the floor watching TV-President Kennedy and President Johnson, surprisingly; no, figures of them. She watched for a moment, and went back to the sink and scraped the last few dishes.
DAVE, TOO, WAS WILLING TO move at the end of the school year. "He gave in so easily I thought I'd keel over," Bobbie said on the phone the next morning. "I just hope we make it till June."
"Drink bottled water," Joanna said.
"You think I'm not going to? I just sent Dave to get some."
Joanna laughed.
"Go ahead, laugh," Bobbie said. "For a few cents a day I'd rather be safe than sorry. And I'm writing to the Department of Health. The problem is, how do I do it without coming across like a little old lady without all her marbles? You want to help, and co-sign?"
"Sure," Joanna said. "Come on over later. Walter is drafting a trust agreement; maybe he'll lend us a few whereases."
SHE MADE AUTUMN-LEAF collages with Pete and Kim, and helped Walter put up the storm windows, and met him in the city for a partners-andwives dinner-the usual falsely-friendly clothes-appraising bore. A check came from the agency: two hundred dollars for four uses of her best picture.
She met Marge McCormick in the market-yes, she'd had a bug but now she was fine, thanks-and Frank Roddenberry in the hardware store-"Hello, Joanna, how've you b-been?"-and the Welcome Wagon lady right outside. "A black family is moving in on Gwendolyn Lane. But I think it's good, don't you?"
"Yes, I do."
"All ready for winter?"
"I am now." Smiling, she showed the sack of birdseed she'd just bought.
"It's beautiful here!" the Welcome Wagon lady said. "You're the shutterbug, aren't you? You should have a field day!"
She called Charmaine and invited her for lunch. "I can't, Joanna, I'm sorry," Charmaine said. "I've got so much to do around the house here. You know how it is."
CLAUDE AXHELM CAME OVER one Saturday afternoon-to see her, not Walter. He had a briefcase with him.
"I've got this project I've been working on in my spare time," he said, walking around the kitchen while she fixed him a cup of tea. "Maybe you've heard about it. I've been getting people to tape-record lists of words and syllables for me. The men do it up at the house, and the women do it in their homes."
"Oh yes," she said.
"They tell me where they were born," he said, "and every place they've lived and for how long." He walked around, touching cabinet knobs. "I'm going to feed everything into a computer eventually, each tape with its geographical data. With enough samples I'll be able to feed in a tape without data"-he ran a fingertip along a counter edge, looking at her with his bright eyes-"maybe even a very short tape, a few words or a sentence-and the computer'll be able to give a geographical rundown on the person, where he was born and where he's lived. Sort of an electronic Henry Higgins. Not just a stunt though; I see it as being useful in police work."