Mending. Sallie Bingham
mother had drawn the line at that. How grateful she’d been, after catching a glimpse of the file of beds in the dormitory, the freezing bathrooms with their battery of sinks, and tubs in closets.
But she did eat lunch there during the week, or at least she tried to, at a long table in the refectory while a nun read aloud to the clink of spoons. Lunch was usually soup with things floating in it. Baskets of torn bread were passed savagely up and down; at four o’clock, more bread appeared, layered with slabs of bitter chocolate. While eating, they were not allowed to talk, a great relief.
She saw the pond through a break in the trees. After one look, she turned back. Without the children, she realized, the pond held no attraction. Now she began to skate faster; the light was going down, and she remembered that she was expected to go to the dentist that afternoon. She didn’t remember what time.
Skating back, faster and smoother now, the vibrations from the wheels on the rough sidewalk ran from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head. She was flying, faster than she had ever imagined going.
In front of the iron gate, Jean stood waiting, his hands on the top of the big black American car that had come across on a freighter. (French gas was too weak to power it up hills, and when it quaked and wavered, her father cursed under his breath.) She wanted to apologize to Jean for keeping him waiting but had no words. She clattered into the back seat—he’d opened the door without looking at her—then bent down to unfasten the skates with the key she wore on a string around her neck.
The car moved forward.
She liked looking at the streets through the thick glass windows that seemed to strain out detail. Hardly anyone was walking under the empty trees. Buses rolled by lighted up like aquariums, faces floating in the cool, inside glow. And the strange little cars were scurrying along like beetles; she rode high above them.
She heard Jean’s deep sigh as he mashed the brakes at an intersection; then he said something under his breath, probably a curse. She knew what was wrong: the chauffeur, Phillippe, had been given the day off in order to get married. That seemed reasonable; he would be back on duty early the next morning. But Jean was not pleased. He wore Phillippe’s black visored cap at a strange angle, pushed back on his head.
On the big avenue that led to the arch with the flame, they stopped at a red light. A few walkers crossed in front of them. One turned back. A face was pressed to Jean’s window, a thin face, very white. Fingers flailed against the glass and the mouth was shaping words.
Jean snapped his head around, frowning at the face. The light changed and they started forward. The woman dropped away like a rag.
She wanted to ask what the woman had said. This was not the first time a stranger had approached the car, and she knew it had something to do with the license plate and the small, bright American flag planted above it.
She’d overheard her mother complaining, “We saved their necks during the war, but now. . . .”
“It comes at a price,” her father had said. “In the end nobody really wants to be saved.”
Not sure of the link but sensing its relevance, she remembered the conversation at lunch about the American ambassador in Rome, and wondered if she looked as dark and solid as her father’s colleagues, standing shoulder to shoulder, drinks in hand, under the living room chandelier. But that look depended on their suits, the shoulders stiff and long with padding—women didn’t wear such clothes—and on their barking laughter that penetrated to her blue octagonal room on the second floor.
Because it had been a dressing room, the blue room was meant to share her parents’ bathroom, but that would never do. Instead, she hurried across the marble hall, morning and evening, to the loungers’ disorderly bathroom, rushing in and locking the door. Often one of them began to pound before she was finished, and they claimed she left unmentionable things on the floor.
A darker quarter of the city closed around the car after it passed across a bridge guarded by marble horses. Jean stopped before a narrow house in a narrow street. Elaborately, he climbed out and opened her door. She was grateful not to look at him, not to have to see his displeasure.
Her mother always told Jean when he should come back after her fittings. Her French was equal to that. But the girl didn’t know how to say anything. She made a face at Jean, imploringly, hoping he would wait, but he had already turned away and was looking over the top of the car. Then he closed her door with a smart snap, climbed in and sped off.
She searched her pocket for the scrap of paper with the dentist’s name. When she took the scrap out, she felt her five coins, cool and reassuring.
His office was on the second floor of the silent little house. She rode up in an elevator like a cigarette box. It stopped on the second floor, and she waited for the gilt gate to open, finally realizing it was waiting for her to open it herself. It had a powerful spring that pressed against her as she passed. She kneed it aside as she would have kneed an unruly dog.
She rang, and a young woman in a black dress swiftly opened the door. She took the girl’s coat, and then led her into a room with a window and a dentist’s chair.
She sat down and began to wait for the dentist to appear. He came in the door without speaking. She watched his white cuffs as he arranged his instruments on a small tray. Finally she looked at his face. He did not look back. She understood that her mother must have told him she spoke no French. His face was as closed as though she was dumb, rather than wordless.
He was supposed to see how her teeth were doing now that her braces were gone. The orthodontist at home had snatched them off because, he said, there was no one in France who would know how to attend to them. (Attending to them meant having them tightened, excruciatingly, every other Friday.) He said the French were very backward about correcting teeth, as the girl had observed every time one of them opened his mouth. Their teeth hardly looked like teeth, yellow and crooked as kernels of corn—something to do with their wartime diet, her mother had said. The orthodontist had insisted that all his work would be undone if the girl went to France, but her mother had refused to be swayed by that. “After all, teeth are not the only consideration,” she had said, leading the girl to speculate about the others.
Now the French dentist was examining her teeth with his little metal probe. Her head was comfortably fitted into the padded brace, and the big chair enclosed her like a shell. She closed her eyes, contented. He didn’t hurt her.
As he scraped her teeth, only her tongue was uncooperative, blocking his tool now and then.
After she spat and rinsed her mouth, he motioned her up out of the chair. The woman appeared, handed her her coat, and escorted her to the front door. Behind, the dentist was smiling; she felt it, even though her coat. Somehow, even without words, she had pleased him.
The little elevator was waiting for her.
Downstairs, she pushed open the door and went out into the fading afternoon. She had no idea how long she’d sat in the chair.
Standing on the sidewalk, she looked around. The narrow street was walled with small buildings, two or three stories high. She couldn’t tell for sure, but they seemed to be houses. However, no one came, or went, through the front doors and there were no lights in the windows. She began to wonder if the houses were deserted.
The air smelled grainy with coal soot.
Half a block away, on the corner, a green awning stretched part way across the sidewalk. There was writing on the awing, and she realized that it must be some kind of shop.
As she waited, the streetlamps came on with a flash that settled into a dim glow. The ornamented tops of the buildings melted into the darkening sky. The streetlight above her head was humming to itself in a rising and falling tone, almost like a song.
A light came on in a window across the street. She imagined a woman inside, beginning to cook dinner. She would lay out carrots, turnips, and onions and begin chopping. The carrots would still have their earthy beards. Water would begin to boil on the stove. She remembered a visit they had paid to a French family; those children had had plain