PARTISAN REVIEW
75
coat that, with the heat, stuck crudely to her. Her handkerchief and
glass were always about her. I would empty it, whenever I could,
but it didn't seem to do much good. More and more often, I would
come home and find her asleep in the chair I had left her in, with–
out so much as the station of her radio changed. Then I would be
sent with notes to the shop. The last of these was not even read.
There was nothing for her, I was to say. But I couldn't. I didn't
know how. I thought about it all the way home and then turned
around and went back. And there I stood, just stood, until I was
asked what it was I wanted. For a minute then, I didn't know my–
self. "A job," it came to me finally and in a voice, I recall, all but
drowned out by the machines.
With the first of my pay I brought two of their dresses and
took them home for her to work on. Those dresses, the same two,
my mother was to do over and over again. And what she did, I
would have Sophie, one of the girls at the shop, undo for me. "Im–
possible," was Sophie's word for it.
It
made no sense to her. But she
never questioned me, or would she take anything I offered her for it.
If
I wanted to do something, she did say once, I could take her out
somewhere.
"Where?"
"Anywhere." Sophie made great use of her hands when she
spoke. And I followed their every move in the hope of some further
meaning to what was going on. She suggested a picnic. "We can rent
one of those boats they have. You know. And I'll bring the radio and
sandwiches. What do you like?"
"Anything," I said, "but chicken salad."
As it turned out though, it was no day for a picnic.
It
was
Sophie's idea that we go to a J11ovie. I didn't care one way or the
other, but said that I had seen the one at Loew's. She wore heels and
had done something about the little holes that picked at her face.
But her smell, I noticed right away, was what it always was. It was
not just a smell. Sophie's was more a combination than anyone
smell.
It
was ripe tomatoes, gum, and damp upholstery, cigarettes,
age, and toilet water. In the theater it was worse. Her odor seemed
to blossom there and thicken so with each breath that, after a time,
it was as if I had never known anything else. That's when I kept
getting up and going out to the lounge. "You don't know what you're
