Yank.
Carrie seized her throat. Was the little dog choking? Why was its tongue now protruding frog-like from its mouth?
Mrs. Hale proceeded: “Had Gordon remained in Zenith and retained all his wits, he would have been quite proud of Caroline. Singing in Sister Lydia’s choir! Just think of it. Sister Lydia! I understand she searched far and wide for every single member of that chorus of angels. Isn’t that right, Caroline?”
Carrie removed her hand from her throat. “She was somewhat selective.”
Mrs. Littlejohn hum-sighed. Then she rhapsodized, “Who knew that such a beautiful songbird lived right on this very street?”
Yank.
Mrs. Hale seconded Mrs. Littlejohn’s observation with a knowing nod, her eyes closed, her fist gently thumping her equally proud maternal heart. “Well, I can’t say I’d known all along that Caroline was this talented, but it wasn’t as if I never entertained the possibility. My daughter excels at whatever she sets her mind to. Don’t you, darling?”
“I don’t know, Mother. I suppose I—”
Yank. Yelp.
Seizing her throat once more, Carrie said, “Molly and Maggie are late. They’re hardly ever late.”
“Perhaps they swung around to pick up Jane first,” suggested Sylvia with a superfluous swirl of her fork through the air.
“Well, that wouldn’t make any sense. Jane lives two blocks closer to the tabernacle. Coming for me after picking her up would require doubling back.” Carrie succeeded in saying this without the use of any hand movement at all.
“Well, I should be getting back,” said Mrs. Littlejohn with misfired relevance. “Home, that is. I have an early appointment at the salon. Mrs. Tubb is coming to pick me up. Do you know Mrs. Tubb — Hermione Tubb? She lives in that newer section of Floral Heights — she’s taking me to her beauty salon for my very first violet-ray facial treatment, and then if all my pores close up properly we’re having chop suey and seeing that new Betty Compson picture at the Grantham.” Mrs. Littlejohn gave her little dog one great, decisive tug with the leash. “Something has been in this bed, it appears. Perhaps the squirrels have buried nuts here. Goodbye, Sylvia. Goodbye, Carrie, and congratulations. We’re all so proud of you. I’m so fortunate to have the two of you for neighbors.” Mrs. Littlejohn glanced at the house next door and narrowed her eyes into coin slits. “Not at all like some people, who taint this block with absolute cacaphonia and the most appalling African rhythms, and dare to call it music. Whatever happened to Franz Lehár and Victor Herbert?”
“I think they’re still with us,” said Carrie. “I mean, still alive.”
“Well, I hope they’re still writing music. Because what I’m hearing today by the Negroes and the Tin Pan Yids has no business even being called music.” Mrs. Littlejohn waddled off without waiting for a response.
After she was safely out of earshot, Mrs. Hale said to her daughter, “I’m sure she means well.”
“I’m sure she does,” agreed Carrie, nibbling around the burnt part of a piece of toast.
Mrs. Hale looked both ways down the street (as if her daughter’s friends might have taken leave of their attendance to practicality and created a new and even longer route by which to come and pick up Carrie). “Or maybe they have gone to fetch Jane first for some reason. How is Jane, by the way? You haven’t spoken of her lately.”
“She’s fine. All of my sisters are doing well.”
“I really wish you wouldn’t call them your sisters. By proper definition, they really aren’t your sisters, now are they? They are your friends. The only real family you have in the world is sitting right here, still wondering why you’ve hardly touched your waffles. And after I bought a brand new tin of Log Cabin syrup! Pure cane and maple syrup. Not that cheap Temtor Maple Flavor stuff. I don’t know what’s in that rot. It looks like motor oil.”
“The waffles are soggy, Mother, and I haven’t put any syrup on them, real or otherwise. I don’t think you left them in the iron long enough.”
“I wish Vitula weren’t sick so often. I worry she has T.B. — that little cough she always has.”
“I think she coughs because she smokes, Mother. I think she steals a puff or two when you aren’t looking.”
Mrs. Hale harrumphed. “It’s so unbecoming — women who smoke. Like those wanton flappers. Drink your orange juice.”
“There’s a gnat in it.”
“I don’t know why we came out here.” Mrs. Hale blotted the corners of her mouth (which, like her daughter’s mouth, had welcomed very little food inside) and placed her crumpled napkin next to her plate. “Who knew we’d have to contend with Mrs. Littlejohn so early in the morning?”
“I like it out here, Mother. And I’m glad Maggie and Molly are late, because it gives me the chance to discuss something with you that’s been on my mind for a couple of days now.”
“What is it, dear? I so hate it when things trouble you, and you keep it all bottled up inside. It isn’t healthy.”
“It isn’t something that’s necessarily troubling me, Mother. It’s just something that came up, which I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”
Sylvia Hale gave her daughter a look with which Carrie was quite familiar. It involved a rimpling of the lips and a slight bulging of the eyes and it said, “I don’t believe any part of the statement you just made but will pretend otherwise through this fixed expression, certain to indicate full acceptance of whatever banana oil you might wish to peddle me.” At the same time she gurgled, “And of course there should be nothing of any substance bothering you, my dear. For aren’t things, on the whole, going quite well for us? You have that nice new job with Sister Lydia, and I have my charity work, and there is enough rental income from the properties your grandfather left me that we want for very little, so long as we don’t become too extravagant in our tastes.”
A pause. A breath. An opening.
“Well, you know, Mother, it’s very interesting Mrs. Littlejohn should mention the Prowses. Because I just happened to bump into Bella Prowse at Blue Delft on Saturday.”
An arched brow. “Oh, you’re calling her Bella, now, are you?”
“Well, she does live next door to us, Mother. And I do happen to remember her from grammar school. Anyway, I was buying those nut-center chocolates you asked me to get for the piano candy dish, and I was standing in front of the Johnston’s display.”
“Yes, I noticed they were having a sale — the dollar boxes of the mixed chocolates were going for eighty cents to the pound. You are a savvy shopper for that to have caught your eye.”
“I’d like to finish, Mother.”
Receding, chastened, into her chair: “Please.”
“Anyway, I look to my side and there she is—”
“Rolled-down stockings and her skirt up to here, and she was probably wearing a long enough rope of those ridiculous shell beads that you could slice it all up and have enough normal-length necklaces for half the women on this block.”
“Mother, please!”