Dance of the Happy Shades

boy. These real estate operators are smart boys.”
    “Does she get anything?” said Mary Lou. “I’m sick of looking at it and all but I don’t want to see anybody in the poorhouse.”
    “Oh, she’ll get paid. More than it’s worth. Look, it’s to her advantage. She’ll get paid for it, and she couldn’t sell it, she couldn’t give it away.”
    Mary set her coffee cup down before she spoke and hoped her voice would sound all right, not emotional or scared. “But remember she’s been here a long time,” she said. “She was here before most of us were born,” She was trying desperately to think of other words, words more sound and reasonable than these; she could not expose to this positive tide any notion that they might think flimsy and romantic, or she would destroy her argument. But she had no argument. She could try all night and never find any words to stand up to their words, which came at her now invincibly from all sides:
shack, eyesore, filthy, property, value
.
    “Do you honestly think that people who let their property get so rundown have that much claim to our consideration?” Janie said, feeling her husband’s plan was being attacked.
    “She’s been here forty years, now we’re here,” Carl said. “So it goes. And whether you realize it or not, just standing there that house is bringing down the resale value of every house on this street. I’m in the business, I know.”
    And these were joined by other voices; it did not matter much what they said as long as they were full of self-assertion and anger. That was their strength, proof of their adulthood, of themselves and their seriousness. The spirit of anger rose among them, bearing up their young voices, sweeping them together as on a flood of intoxication, and they admired eachother in this new behaviour as property-owners as people admire each other for being drunk.
    “We might as well get everybody now,” Steve said. “Save going around to so many places.”
    It was supper time, getting dark out. Everybody was preparing to go home, mothers buttoning their children’s coats, children clutching, without much delight, their balloons and whistles and paper baskets full of jelly beans. They had stopped fighting, almost stopped noticing each other; the party had disintegrated. The adults too had grown calmer and felt tired.
    “Edith! Edith, have you got a pen?”
    Edith brought a pen and they spread the petition for the lane, which Carl had drawn up, on the dining-room table, clearing away the paper plates with smears of dried ice cream. People began to sign mechanically as they said goodbye. Steve was still scowling slightly; Carl stood with one hand on the paper, businesslike, but proud. Mary knelt on the floor and struggled with Danny’s zipper. She got up and put on her own coat, smoothed her hair, put on her gloves and took them off again. When she could not think of anything else to do she walked past the dining-room table on her way to the door. Carl held out the pen.
    “I can’t sign that,” she said. Her face flushed up, at once, her voice was trembling. Steve touched her shoulder.
    “What’s the matter, honey?”
    “I don’t think we have the right. We haven’t the right.”
    “Mary, don’t you care how things look? You live here too.”
    “No, I—I don’t care.” Oh, wasn’t it strange, how in your imagination, when you stood up for something, your voice rang, people started, abashed; but in real life they all smiled in rather a special way and you saw that what you had really done was serve yourself up as a conversational delight for the next coffee party.
    “Don’t worry, Mary, she’s got money in the bank,” Janie said, “She must have. I asked her to baby-sit for me once and she practically spit in my face. She isn’t exactly a charming old lady, you know.”
    “I know she isn’t a charming old lady,” Mary said.
    Steve’s hand still rested on her shoulder. “Hey what do you think we are, a bunch of ogres?”
    “Nobody wants to turn her out just for the fun of it,” Carl said. “Its unfortunate. We all know that. But we have to think of the community.”
    “Yes,” said Mary. But she put her hands in the pockets of her coat and turned to say thank you to Edith, thank you for the birthday party. It occurred to her that they were right, for themselves, for whatever it was they had to be. And Mrs. Fullerton was old, she had dead eyes, nothing could touch her. Mary went out and walked