359: May turned . . .
Herb ’n’ Lorna, Chapter 15 continues
May turned to look at her, just for a moment. Lorna put a smile on her face. “It is hopeless,” she said. She laughed. “It’s a hopeless situation, but you don’t have to feel miserable about it. Maybe we should feel miserable about it, but I don’t — not any more.”
“Oh?” said May. “Did you meet a man in Baltimore?”
“No!” said Lorna. She grinned in the dark. “I — found something to — keep me going. It was very difficult there. The work they wanted us to do was impossible. Every day we fell farther behind. We just couldn’t do everything they wanted us to do. It was impossible. It was a hopeless situation. We all knew they were disappointed in us, and we were disappointed, too. But I didn’t feel miserable about it. The others didn’t, either. Somewhere along the line, we all decided — those of us who stuck it out — not everybody did — that we would do everything we could do and that was all we could do.”
“I see those logic puzzles have paid off,” said May. Lorna poked her shoulder.
“I worked as much as I could,” Lorna went on, “and I got as much done as I could. I liked it. I think we all liked it. We had wonderful times at night. We were all thrown together, a hundred of us, with a hundred stories to tell. We were always tired, but we were never too tired to talk. I heard stories about husbands and sisters and uncles and mothers and babies and — everything.”
“But what did you find?”
“Find?”
“What did you find to keep you going?”
“Oh. Work. Work and — I — ” Lorna stopped herself. She had been about to tell May about her soap carvings. Now, she decided, was not the time, but after the liberation of her work with the calculating women, she was determined not to keep her work a secret from May.
“It’s too long a story, May,” she said. “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”
“When do you have to go back?”
“Back?”
“To Baltimore.”
“Oh, there isn’t really any need for me to go back. The project is a failure, really. Oh, not a failure, just not a success. It’s not as if I’d make the difference if I went back. They very nearly told me to stay home. I think they didn’t want to actually tell me that it wouldn’t make any difference whether I came back or not, so they told me again and again how important it would be for me to be at home with my daughter now, that they understood, and they didn’t want me even to think about coming back for several months.”
“Well, they were right. It is important for you to be home with Ella now.”
“Oh, I know,” said Lorna.
They had arrived. May stopped the car and sat with both hands on the wheel, looking straight ahead through the windshield. “Shall I come in with you? No, you wouldn’t want me to come in with you, would you? You’ll want to see them on your own first. I’ll come over tomorrow.”
“Will you help me with my bags?”
“Oh! Of course! Of course I will. I don’t know what I was thinking of.”
Together, they carried Lorna’s bags to the porch. Before she let herself in, Lorna took May by the sleeve and asked her, suddenly, impulsively, “Is Garth home, May?”
“No,” said May. “No. He’s off somewhere. He’s off somewhere quite a lot, lately.” She looked downward.
Lorna put her hand under May’s chin and tilted her head upward. “Why don’t you go out somewhere and have a drink?” she said.
“What?” said May. “By myself? You mean to a bar?”
“Yes,” said Lorna. “Why don’t you go somewhere where someone is laughing and telling loud stories?”
“Where would that be?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lorna. “There must be — ”
“Someplace where I could go by myself? Believe me, Lorna, Garth and I have done time in every bar in this town, and the only women alone in any of them are women I wouldn’t want to know. There is no — Well, actually, I have to take that back. There is one place. Whitey’s. It’s a family kind of place. Kids and everything. There wouldn’t be children this late, I guess, but there are sometimes. We used to have quite a lot of fun there, to tell the truth. Whitey is quite a sketch. He — ”
“Good. Good, May. Go there. Talk with some people. Laugh a little.”
“Oh, but — Come with me, Lorna. Oh, of course — ”
“Go on, May. You go. Go have some fun.”
“But I — ”
“Go to Whitey’s by yourself tonight, and I promise you I’ll go there with you tomorrow night. I have a wonderful secret to tell you. All right?”
“All right,” said May. In the light that came through the diamond-shaped window in the front door, Lorna could see that she was smiling.
Lorna went inside, and she spent the night holding Ella, talking to her, trying to soothe her, and regretting that she had ever told Ella that she ought to choose between Bert and Buster.
May went to Whitey’s. She found that she liked the place from the moment she arrived. She saw many familiar faces there, and she rediscovered a pleasure in light conversation and inconsequential flirtation that, she was surprised to find, was much of what she missed of youth.
[to be continued on Thursday, October 12, 2022]
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