Dotty’s Suitcase (13 page)

He narrowed his eyes at her. “I'm not good at multiplication tables and you know it. And what's more, I bet you weren't either when you were eight.” He pointed his finger at her, his face expressionless.

He had her there.

Dreamily Olive's fingers played with the crisp new bills. “I like the way they feel,” she said. “And smell. I never smelled new money before. I think I like it better than old.” She rubbed the money against her face.

“Once Mr. Clarke was rich,” Jud said suddenly. “He told us that. Now he's poor and he says he likes it better.” He leaned back in his chair and put his thumb in his mouth and hooked his index finger over his nose.

“Come on, Jud.” Mrs. Doherty took him by the hand and led him, unprotestingly, to the couch. “Poor little tyke,” she murmured, covering him with a blanket.

“Hey, what happened to your davenport?” Dotty asked, noticing for the first time that the silk-covered davenport wasn't there.

“Oh, that old thing.” Olive handed back the money. “Mine's twenty dollars too,” she said.

They tallied up the money. There were ten stacks of twenty dollars each. “Two hundred dollars!” Olive said. “Imagine!”

“I thought it might be a thousand,” Dotty said. “It would've been if it hadn't been all ones.” She felt cheated.

“I'll run out for a little air,” Mrs. Doherty said. She put on a sad-looking overcoat that came almost to her ankles, and tied a scarf over her head. She had no gloves, Dotty noticed, or galoshes. “You girls have a good visit while I'm gone.”

They heard her go down the stairs. After that the only sound was Jud's thumb clicking against the roof of his mouth. Olive and Dotty shuffled the money as if they were getting ready to play cards.

“Let's go into your room,” Dotty suggested. “It'll be like old times.”

“Why don't we stay here? It's more comfortable,” Olive said.

“Oh, please. Let's go to your room. We can pretend we're home, that everything's the same.”

“I'd take the money in a minute,” Olive whispered, although there was no one to overhear. “But not Mama. You know her. She wouldn't take a peanut if it didn't belong to her.” She stared at the wall, her face bleak.

“Come on, Olive,” Dotty said, taking her by the hand. “We'll go to your room and have a good talk.”

Olive gave her a long, strange look. “All right,” she said. “If you want.” She opened the door and led Dotty inside. On the floor were two mattresses covered with blankets. There was also a chest of drawers and a small chair. That was all.

“This is where Mama and I sleep,” Olive said.

Dotty turned around twice. “Where's your bed?” she asked. “I don't see your bed.”

“No,” said Olive. Her eyes were very bright, and her cheeks looked as hard and red as two apples. “We sold it. A lady offered us a lot of money for it and the davenport so we sold them both.”

Dotty didn't speak. She couldn't. She felt as if it were her bed that had been sold. As if a member of the family had been sold. Things would never be the same again.

In a harsh voice that Dotty had never heard her use before, Olive said, “She offered us seventy-five dollars. It was right after my father got sick. After the boys went away. We needed the money.” She shrugged. “It's only a bed,” she said in the same harsh voice. Her voice was tight, but her eyes were dry. She looked almost old.

“Tell me about school,” she said. “What's Janice Bailey up to? And how about Laura and Mary Beth? They found husbands yet?” She laughed.

And as Dotty began to recount the news from home, Olive's grandmother stared stonily down at them from the wall, her close-set eyes full of disapproval, her thin lips set in a grim smile.

CHAPTER 21

Next morning they all got to the bus station with time to spare. Dotty bought two one-way tickets. “That'll be fifty cents,” the man said. She handed him a dollar bill.

“She's running late,” the man said, handing her change. “Expect the snow's to blame. Can't always get through, you know. Just take a seat. She'll be along.”

“Who's she?” Jud said.

The man looked startled. “Why, the bus, sonny,” he said as if Jud were half-witted.

Dotty and Olive sat down on a bench that looked as if it might possibly hold them without collapsing. Most of the others had broken slats and peeling paint. An unpleasant odor pervaded the place.

Olive wrinkled her nose. “It smells here,” she said.

“Smells?” Jud replied. “It stinks.”

There was a door marked “Women” and another marked “Gents.” A chewing-gum machine boasted a slot that directed, “Put Penny Here.” “If I had a penny, I wouldn't give it to you,” Jud muttered, circling the machine, trying to figure out a way to get a piece of gum for nothing.

A shabbily dressed man pushed open the door and shuffled toward the trash basket. He looked over at them, and Dotty was afraid he was going to ask them for money. Apparently, he thought better of it and began to forage through the trash, cursing under his breath.

“You've got to come back,” she said to Olive. “You promised. Aunt Martha will find you a place to live. Please say yes, Mrs. Doherty. Please.”

Last night Olive's mother had yielded to pressure and said she and Olive would come back to live in Earlville. But this morning she'd changed her mind. Now she pursed her lips and looked at the opposite wall at a picture of a smiling family standing on the running board of a new Chevrolet that could be bought for $445, FOB Detroit.

“It costs a lot to move,” she said. “I know Olive's keen on it. And I am too. But they said at the dry goods store they might have a job for me at the end of the month. Their other girl's leaving. It would pay ten dollars a week. I couldn't make that kind of money in Earlville now, could I?”

She knew the answer to that.

I wish she hadn't come with us, Dotty thought. I wish she'd stayed home. She's spoiling our last visit. Why did she say she'd move back to Earlville if she didn't mean it?

“She's coming now!” the man yelled from behind his counter. “I can hear her brakes squealing. She'll be here directly. Better get your bags together. Once she's in, she don't waste time. She likes to get back on the road.”

Jud ran outside to get a look at the female bus. He was disappointed to find it was a bus like any other. Dotty picked up her suitcase and, with her arm around Olive, they walked together as closely bound as if they'd been tied with rope.

Mrs. Doherty embraced Dotty and managed to land a kiss on Jud, although he bobbed and weaved rather skillfully in an attempt to escape her.

“We'll think about it,” she said.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” Dotty said. She looked sideways at Olive because she couldn't bear to meet her look head on. “I'll see you soon,” she said. They touched briefly, and then they were hugging each other, crying and laughing at the same time.

“Come on, girls,” the bus driver said. “I'm behind schedule as it is. Get on board. We got to go.”

Jud climbed the steps of the bus. He stood at the top looking down at them.

“She's running late,” he said in a loud voice. “Better get on or she might leave without you.” He went to the rear of the bus and took a window seat on the side away from them.

The driver gunned the engine in warning.

“I've got to go,” Dotty said and ran up the steps, and the door closed behind her. Leaning over to see out, she waved to Olive and her mother until the bus picked up speed and they disappeared from view.

She walked halfway back to where Jud was sitting. He pressed his face against the murky glass, pretending he didn't know her. They were the only passengers except an old man who was snoring rhythmically and a young woman holding an ugly, fretful baby.

I bet that kid cries the whole way, Dotty thought. I just bet.

She sat down, holding the suitcase on her lap, and put both of her arms around it. The baby started to wail in earnest. But Dotty was tired. She and Olive had shared the same mattress last night, and it had been lumpy and uncomfortable and much too narrow for two people.

She closed her eyes and went to sleep.

CHAPTER 22

Dotty woke as the bus whizzed by Orv Bronk's dairy farm. That meant they were almost there. She sat up, wishing there were some way to get the gritty taste out of her mouth. She scratched her head and pulled her hat back on to hide her hair. She must be a sight.

While she'd slept, Jud had been gaining on her. When she turned, he was in the seat behind her. He scowled and looked out the window, not wanting anyone to know they were together. She knew he wanted to be a big shot, wanted people to think he was traveling on his own.

“Hey, kid,” Dotty said, “you got the time?”

Jud pushed his nose against the glass and didn't answer. She grinned and studied the rest of the passengers. The old man was gone. In his place were two middle-aged men, their large round faces almost identical. They were dressed differently, but they sat the same way, arms folded over their big stomachs, feet planted firmly in front of themselves, as if they were getting ready to run someplace. They didn't exchange any words, just sat there staring ahead. Dotty wondered what they'd do when they got to where they were going. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, like in
Alice in Wonderland
, she thought.

The ugly baby was quiet, its head lolling against its mother's shoulder.

“Next stop Earlville,” the bus driver sang out. Grimly the baby's mother began to fit the child into a sweater that seemed several sizes too small. When she caught Dotty looking at her, a proud look came over her face and she said, “He's going on four months. Big for his age, ain't he?”

Dotty nodded, not having the least idea of how big a baby four months old should be. Thank God it was a boy. With that kisser, it better be.

Her stomach began to churn. They were almost there. She felt strange, as if she had been asleep for twenty years, like Rip Van Winkle, and were coming back to her old home town expecting to find everything and everyone as they had been. Only nothing was the same. Suppose that was the way it was going to turn out? Suppose when the bus pulled into the station and they got off, there was no one there to greet them? Because twenty years had gone by and everyone at home just kept on going. Changing, growing old. Only she and Jud were the same. But they weren't. At least she wasn't.

Lots of folks would've moved away. Or died. Lots of deaths happen over twenty years. She didn't want to think about that. Her father would be old. Really old. Maybe Aunt Martha and Uncle Tom would be gone. The girls would be married. Laura most likely to a farmer, with a passel of kids. Mary Beth might've found a rich husband and was living in the city in an apartment with a maid in a white apron and cap to answer the door. Like in the movies. She'd have a fur coat and jewels and two kids, a boy and a girl. They'd be named Buddy and Cissy. Dotty smiled at the thought.

She peered out the window. Everything looked different. The houses seemed smaller, the snow-packed fields much more vast, with little cut-out cows standing in the distance.

“I want to see the money once more.” Jud sidled into the seat beside her.

“Your face is dirty.” Dotty dove down on him like a seagull after a clam and swabbed his cheek with her grubby handkerchief.

“Owww!” he shrieked.

The bus driver looked at them in his mirror and shouted, “Quiet back there! I don't allow no nonsense on my bus.”

The baby's mother, her face grim in the wintery light, joggled the child on her knee. He'd been quiet but began to fuss.

“See what you did!” the child's mother said angrily. “Got him quieted down and you kids start him going again.”

“Just leave me be,” Jud whistled through his teeth. “You got no right to wash me. You're not my mother.”

“Don't you want to look your best when you see your folks?” To keep herself busy, Dotty breathed on the suitcase and polished it to a fine sheen with her sleeve. It would be the first thing they'd notice. Once they made sure she was in one piece. It was a beauty and no mistake. With a suitcase like that, she could go anywhere. Too bad the initials were R. P. C. instead of D. F. F.

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, said a loud, strong voice in her head.

Jul's feet drummed nervously. “My ma's going to hit the ceiling,” he said.

“Better the ceiling than you.”

Jud made a grab for the suitcase. “Let's have a look.” He snapped it open before she could stop him.

“Somebody's gone and stole the money!” he cried.

“I gave it to them,” said Dotty.

“Who? Who'd you give it to?”

“I left it under Olive's pillow. All except a couple of dollars for us to get home on.”

“You had no business!” he wailed. “It wasn't yours! Half was mine. You had no right!”

“They have nothing. Olive's mother'll probably make her give it back. I don't know,” Dotty said sadly. “It might help them. They don't have any food or warm clothes or anything. Olive's father died because they had no money for a doctor. We think we're bad off. They don't even have a radio, Jud.”

Jud was speechless, overcome.

“We're rich, compared to them.”

“We are?”

“Yup. We have enough to eat. Your father has a job. So does mine. We have a car. And a radio. What more do you want? Here.” She handed him a dollar bill. “That's half of what I got. It's yours. A souvenir.”

He sat staring at the money, turning it over and over in his hand.

“I couldn't have made it without you, Jud.” A wave of unaccustomed tenderness toward him washed over Dotty, and she put out her hand to touch him. He jerked out of her reach.