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By Root 5028 0

peanut-butter sandwich and a wedge of pecan pie. She missed New York and thought again that Remsen Park was an unfriendly place. Late in the day the doorbell rang and a vacuum-cleaner salesman stood in the door. “Well now, come right in,” Betsey said cheerfully. “You come right in. I don’t have a vacuum cleaner now and I don’t have the money to buy one at the moment. We only just moved from New York but I’m going to buy one as soon as I have the money and perhaps if you’ve got some new attachments I might buy one of those because I’m determined to buy a new vacuum cleaner sooner or later and I’ll need the attachments anyhow. I’m pregnant now and a young mother can’t do all that housework without the proper equipment; all that stooping and bending. Would you like a cup of coffee? I imagine you must get tired and footsore going around with that heavy bag all day long. My husband’s in the Taping Department and they work him hard but it’s a different kind of tiredness, it’s just in the brain, but I know what it is to have tired feet.”

The salesman opened his sample case in the kitchen before he drank his coffee and sold Betsey two attachments and a gallon of floor wax. Then, because he was tired, and this was his last call, he sat down. “I was living alone in New York all the time my husband was in the Pacific,” Betsey said, “and we just moved out here and of course I was happy to make the move but I don’t find it a very friendly place. I mean I don’t think it’s friendly like New York. In New York I had lots of friends. Of course I was mistaken, once. I was mistaken in my friends. You know what I mean? There were these people named Hansen who lived right down the hall from me. I thought they were my real friends. I thought at last I’d found some lifelong friends. I used to see them every day and every night and she wouldn’t buy a dress without asking me about it and I loaned them money and they were always telling me how much they loved me, but I was deceived. Sad was the day of reckoning!” The light in the kitchen was dim and Betsey’s face was drawn with feeling. “They were hypocrites,” she said. “They were liars and hypocrites.”

The salesman packed his things and went away. Coverly came home at six. “Hello, sugar,” he said. “Why sit in the dark?”

“Well, I think I’m pregnant,” Betsey said. “I guess I’m pregnant. I’m seven days late and this morning I felt sort of funny, dizzy and sick.” She sat on Coverly’s lap and put her head against his. “I think it’s going to be a boy. That’s what it feels like to me. Of course there’s no point in counting your chickens before your eggs are hatched but if we do have a baby one of the things I want to buy is a nice chair because I’m going to breast feed this baby and I’d like to have a nice chair to sit in when I nurse him.”

“You can buy a chair,” Coverly said.

“Well, I saw a nice chair in the furniture center a couple of days ago,” Betsey said, “and after supper why don’t we walk around the corner and look at it? I haven’t been out of the house all day and a little walk would be good for you, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it be good for you to stretch your legs?”

After supper they took their walk. A fresh wind was blowing out of the north—straight from St. Botolphs—and it made Betsey feel vigorous and gay. She took Coverly’s arm and at the corner, under the fluorescent street lamp, he bent down and gave her a French kiss. Once they got to the shopping center Betsey wasn’t able to concentrate on her chair. Every suit, dress, fur coat and piece of furniture in the store windows had to be judged, its price and way of life guessed at and some judgment passed as to whether or not it should enter Betsey’s vision of happiness. Yes, she said to a plant stand, yes, yes to a grand piano, no to a breakfront, yes to a dining-room table and six chairs, as thoughtfully as St. Peter sifting out the hearts of men. At ten o’clock they walked home. Coverly undressed her tenderly and they took a bath together and went to bed for she was his potchke, his fleutchke, his notchke, his motchke, his everything that