PARTISAN REVIEW
by my various purchases-the Fuller toothbrush, the receipt for the
magazine subscription which will help a girl obtain a nine-week
flying course which she eagerly, eagerly wants, the one dozen white
eggs fresh from the farm and cheaper than you can get at the comer
grocery, the first volume in the indispensable 12-volume Illustrated
Encyclopaedia of Home Medicine, the drug sundries totalling at least
two dollars which will help guarantee a youngish veteran a permanent
job--I could sigh and beam. That would be nice. But I don't have
the money, and this coming of
ill
temper is just ·as much directed at
myself for not having it as it
is
at the man for probably intending to
put me in a position where I shall have to make
him
a failure.
"And just what is it you want?" I ask impatiently.
The man tells me, as man to woman. In the stark phrasing of
his
urgent need, I see that the certain thing alluded to by the warmth
of his voice
is
a secret not of the past, but, with my acquiescence, of
the near future. I let the receiver take a plunge down onto the hook
from approximately a one-foot height. Then, I go outside and pick
some pansies for Margarita, as I had been intending to do just be–
fore the phone rang. Margarita is the seven-year-old girl next door.
She has never known any mother or father, only
tias
and
tios
who
share none of her blood. She has a face that looks .as
if
it had been
chiseled with utter care out of cream and pale pink marble. Her soft
brown hair hangs in plaits as low as her waist. And, these days, be–
cause the Catholic school is full and cannot take her, she wanders
lonesomely about, with plenty of time for such amenities as dropping
in to admire a neighbor's flowers. The pansies I pick for her, lemon
yellow, deep purple, clear violet, mottled brown, were transplanted
here last year by Wakako and Chester, a young couple we know
who have a knack for getting things wholesale, and they are thriving
like crazy this Spring, sprawling untidily over their narrow bed and
giving no end of blooms.
Later, there is a small, timid rat-tat-tat at the door. It's Margari–
ta, bearing two calla lilies, a couple of clove pinks, and one tall ama–
ryllis stalk with three brilliant brick-red flowers and a bud. She dashes
off the porch, down the steps, and around the ivy-sprawled front
fence before I can properly thank her. Oh, well. Taking the gift to the
service porch, I throw out the wilting brown-edged callas she dashed
over with last week, rinse out the blue potato glass, fill it
with
1080
