The View from Castle Rock

invitation in a different light. The burden of Frances would be lifted, no further obligation would be involved and no intimacy enforced. Mrs. Wainwright said that she had written a little note to my mother, since they didn’t have a phone.
    My mother would have liked it better if I had been asked to some town girl’s house, but she said yes. She took it into account, too, that the Wainwrights were moving away.
    “I don’t know what they were thinking of, coming here,” she said. “Anybody who can afford to wallpaper is going to do it themselves.”
    “Where are you going?” I asked Frances.
    “Burlington.”
    “Where’s that?”
    “It’s in Canada too. We’re going to stay with my aunt and uncle but we’ll have our own toilet upstairs and our sink and a hotplate. My dad’s going to get a better job.”
    “What doing?”
    “I don’t know.”

    Their Christmas tree was in a corner. The front room had only one window and if they had put the tree there it would have blocked off all the light. It was not a big or well-shaped tree, but it was smothered in tinsel and gold and silver beads and beautiful intricate ornaments. In another corner of the room was a parlor stove, a woodstove, in which the fire seemed just recently to have been lighted. The air was still cold and heavy, with the forest smell of the tree.
    Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Wainwright was very confident about the fire. First one and then the other kept fiddling with the damper and daringly reaching in with the poker and patting the pipe to see if it was getting hot, or by any chance too hot. The wind was fierce that day-sometimes it blew the smoke down the chimney.
    That was no matter to Frances and me. On a card table set up in the middle of the room there was a Chinese checkers board ready for two people to play, and a stack of movie magazines. I fell upon them at once. I had never imagined such a feast. It made no difference that they were not new and that some had been looked through so often they were almost falling apart. Frances stood beside my chair, interfering with my pleasure a little by telling me what was just ahead and what was in another magazine I hadn’t opened yet. The magazines were obviously her idea and I had to be patient with her-they were her property and if she had taken it into her head to remove them I would have been more grief-stricken even than I had been when my father drowned our kittens.
    She was wearing an outfit that could have come out of one of those magazines-a child star’s party dress of deep red velvet with a white lace collar and a black ribbon threaded through the lace. Her mother’s dress was exactly the same, and they both had their hair done the same way-a roll in front and long in the back. Frances’s hair was thin and fine and what with her excitement and her jumping around to show me things, the roll was already coming undone.
    It was getting dark in the room. There were wires sticking out of the ceiling but no bulbs. Mrs. Wainwright brought in a lamp with a long cord that plugged into the wall. The bulb shone through the pale-green glass of a lady’s skirt.
    “That’s Scarlett O’Hara,” Frances said. “Daddy and I gave it to Mother for her birthday.”
    We never got around to the Chinese checkers and in time the board was removed. We shifted the magazines to the floor. A piece of lace-not a real tablecloth-was laid across the table. Dishes followed. Evidently Frances and I were to eat in here, by ourselves. Both parents were involved in laying the table-Mrs. Wainwright wearing a fancy apron over her red velvet and Mr. Wainwright in shirtsleeves and silk-backed vest.
    When everything was set up we were called to the table. I had expected Mr. Wainwright to leave the serving of the food to his wife-in fact I had been very surprised to see him hovering with knives and forks-but now he pulled out our chairs and announced that he was our waiter. When he was that close I could smell him, and hear his breathing. His breathing sounded eager, like a dog’s, and his smell was of talcum and lotion, something that reminded me of fresh diapers and suggested a repulsive intimacy.
    “Now my lovely young ladies,” he said. “1 am going to bring you some champagne.”
    He brought a pitcher of lemonade, and filled our glasses. I was alarmed, until I tasted it-I knew that champagne was an alcoholic drink. We never had such drinks in our house and neither did anybody I knew. Mr. Wainwright watched me