“Shall I go in and see him?”

“You know, Abra, I’ve got a feeling that he doesn’t want to see anybody. Judge Knudsen phoned and your father said to tell him he was asleep.”

“Can I help you?”

“Go change your dress, dear. You don’t want to get your pretty dress soiled.

Abra tiptoed past her father’s door and went to her own room. It was harsh bright with varnish, papered brightly. Framed photographs of her parents on the bureau, poems framed on the walls, and her closet—everything in its place, the floor varnished, and her shoes standing diligently side by side. Her mother did everything for her, insisted on it—planned for her, dressed her.

Abra had long ago given up having any private things in her room, even any personal thing. This was of such long standing that Abra did not think of her room as a private place. Her privacies were of the mind. The few letters she kept were in the sitting room itself, filed among the pages of the two-volume Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, which to the best of her knowledge had never been opened by anyone but herself since it came off the press.

Abra felt pleased, and she did not inspect the reason. She knew certain things without question, and such things she did not speak about. For example, she knew that her father was not ill. He was hiding from something. Just as surely she knew that Adam Trask was ill, for she had seen him walking along the street. She wondered whether her mother knew her father was not ill.

Abra slipped off her dress and put on a cotton pinafore, which was understood to be for working around the house. She brushed her hair, tiptoed past her father’s room, and went downstairs. At the foot of the stairs she opened her binder and took out Aron’s postcard. In the sitting room she shook Aron’s letters out of Volume II of the Memoirs, folded them tightly, and, raising her skirt, tucked them under the elastic which held up her panties. The package made her a little lumpy. In the kitchen she put on a full apron to conceal the bulge.

“You can scrape the carrots,” her mother said. “Is that water hot?”

“Just coming to a boil.”

“Drop a bouillon cube in that cup, will you, dear? The doctor says it’ll build your father up.”

When her mother carried the steaming cup upstairs, Abra opened the incinerator end of the gas stove, put in the letters, and lighted them.

Her mother came back, saying, “I smell fire.”

“I lit the trash. It was full.”

“I wish you’d ask me when you want to do a thing like that,” her mother said. “I was saving the trash to warm the kitchen in the morning.”

“I’m sorry, Mother,” Abra said. “I didn’t think.”

“You should try to think of these things. It seems to me you’re getting very thoughtless lately.”

“I’m sorry, Mother.”

“Saved is earned,” said her mother.

The telephone rang in the dining room. Her mother went to answer it. Abra heard her mother say, “No, you can’t see him. It’s doctor’s orders. He can’t see anyone—no, not anyone.”

She came back to the kitchen. “Judge Knudsen again,” she said.

Chapter 53

1

All during school next day Abra felt good about going to see Lee. She met Cal in the hall between classes. “Did you tell him I was coming?”

“He’s started some kind of tarts,” said Cal. He was dressed in his uniform—choking high collar, ill-fitting tunic, and wrapped leggings.

“You’ve got drill,” Abra said. “I’ll get there first. What kind of tarts?”

“I don’t know. But leave me a couple, will you? Smelled like strawberry. Just leave me two.”

“Want to see a present I got for Lee? Look!” She opened a little cardboard box. “It’s a new kind of potato peeler. Takes off just the skin. It’s easy. I got it for Lee.”

“There go my tarts,” said Cal, and then, “If I’m a little late, don’t go before I get there, will you?”

“Would you like to carry my books home?”

“Yes,” said Cal.

She looked at him long, full in the eyes, until he wanted to drop his gaze, and then she walked away toward her class.

2

Adam had taken to sleeping late, or, rather, he had taken to sleeping very often—short sleeps during the night and during the day. Lee looked in on him several times before he found him awake.

“I feel fine this morning,” Adam said.

“If you can call it morning. It’s nearly eleven o’clock.”

“Good Lord! I have to get up.”

“What for?” Lee asked.

“What for? Yes, what for! But I feel good, Lee. I might walk down to the draft board. How is it outside?”

“Raw,” said Lee.

He helped Adam get up. Buttons and shoelaces and getting things on frontways gave Adam trouble.

While Lee helped him Adam said, “I had a dream—very real. I dreamed about my father.”

“A great old gentleman from all I hear,” said Lee. “I read that portfolio of clippings your brother’s lawyer sent. Must have been a great old gentleman.”

Adam looked calmly at Lee. “Did you know he was a thief?”

“You must have had a dream,” said Lee. “He’s buried at Arlington. One clipping said the Vice President was at his funeral, and the Secretary of War. You know the Salinas Index might like to do a piece about him—in wartime, you know. How would you like to go over the material?”