Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

wake her,” I said. “Bet.”
    I looked at the rusty-bottomed bread tin swiped too often by the dishcloth, and the pots sitting on the stove, washed but not put away, and the motto supplied by Fairholme Dairy: The Lord Is the Heart of Our House . All these things stupidly waiting for the day to begin and not knowing that it had been hollowed out by catastrophe.
    The door to the side porch had been unlocked.
    “Somebody came in,” I said. “Somebody came in and took Queenie.”
    My father came out with his trousers on over his long underwear. Bet was slapping downstairs in her slippers and her chenille robe, flicking on lights as she came.
    “Queenie not in with you?” my father said. To me he said, “The door had to’ve been unlocked from the inside.”
    Bet said, “What’s this about Queenie?”
    “She might just have felt like a walk,” my father said.
    Bet ignored this. She had a mask of some pink stuff dried on her face. She was a Sales Representative for beauty products, and she never sold any cosmetic she had not tried on herself.
    “You get over to Vorguillas’,” she said to me. “She might’ve thought of something she was supposed to do over there.”
    This was a week or so after Mrs. Vorguilla’s funeral, but Queenie had kept on working there, helping to box up dishes and linens so that Mr. Vorguilla could move into an apartment. He had the Christmas concerts at school to get ready for and could not do all the packing himself. Bet wanted Queenie to just quit, so that she could get taken on for Christmas help at one of the stores.
    I put on my father’s rubber boots that were by the door, instead of going upstairs for my shoes. I stumbled across the yard to the Vorguillas’ porch and rang the bell. It was a chime, which seemed to proclaim the musicality of the household. I hugged Buffalo Bill tight around me and prayed. Oh, Queenie, Queenie, turn the lights on. I forgot that if Queenie was working in there, the lights would be on already.
    No answer. I pounded on the wood. Mr. Vorguilla was going to be in a bad temper when I finally woke him. I pressed my head to the door, listening for stirrings.
    “Mr. Vorguilla. Mr. Vorguilla. I’m sorry to wake you, Mr. Vorguilla. Is anybody home?”
    A window was heaved up in the house on the other side of the Vorguillas’. Mr. Hovey, an old bachelor, lived there with his sister.
    “Use your eyes,” Mr. Hovey called down. “Look in the driveway.”
    Mr. Vorguilla’s car was gone.
    Mr. Hovey slammed down the window.
    When I opened our kitchen door I saw my father and Bet sitting at the table with cups of tea in front of them. For a minute I thought that order had been restored. There had been a phone call, perhaps, with some pacifying news.
    “Mr. Vorguilla isn’t there,” I said. “His car’s gone.”
    “Oh, we know that,” Bet said. “We know all about that.”
    My father said, “Look at here,” and pushed a piece of paper across the table.
    I am going to marry Mr. Vorguilla , it said. Yours truly, Queenie.
    “Underneath the sugar bowl,” said my father.
    Bet dropped her spoon.
    “I want him prosecuted,” she shouted. “I want her in Reform School. I want the police.”
    My father said, “She’s eighteen years old and she can get married if she wants to. The police aren’t going to set up a roadblock.”
    “Who says they’re on the road? They’re shacked up in some motel. That fool of a girl and that bug-eyed pickle-ass Vorguilla.”
    “Talk like that isn’t going to bring her back.”
    “I don’t want her back. Not if she comes crawling. She’s made her bed and she can lie in it with her bug-eyed bugger. He can screw her in the ear for all I care.”
    My father said, “That’s enough.” Queenie brought me a couple of 222’s to take with my Coke.
    “It’s amazing how your cramps clear up, once you get married. So—your dad went and told you about us?”
    When I had let my father know that I wanted to get a summer job before entering Teachers’ College in the fall, he had said that maybe I should go to Toronto and look up Queenie. He said that she had written to him in care of his trucking business, asking if he could let them have some money to tide them over the winter.
    “I would’ve never had to write to him,” Queenie said, “if Stan hadn’t got sick last year with pneumonia.”
    I said, “It was the first I knew where you were.” Tears came into my eyes, I didn’t know why. Because I’d felt so