The Velvet Room (2 page)

“I wonder how much a wheel costs?” she asked Theda. “Dad doesn’t have much money left. I heard him say so.”

“Who cares!” You could tell that Theda’s sophisticated shrug was copied from someone in the movies, but Robin couldn’t think just who. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll get there somehow. We always do. There’s always the police, you know. They’ll probably see that we get as far as the next county, anyway. Remember how helpful they were that time we broke down right in the middle of Pasadena?”

Robin clenched her teeth. How could Theda joke about that time in Pasadena! It made a pain in Robin’s stomach just to think about it. Everyone staring, and those awful policemen laughing about all the stuff tied on top of the car and making jokes about “Okies.” Robin had tried to tell one of them how the Williamses weren’t “Okies” or “Arkies” either, but the policeman had just grinned and said, “Well, you couldn’t tell by looking, kid.”

Robin broke into a run and scrambled over the stone wall, leaving Theda to get over as best she could in her silly high heels. Mama and Shirley were sitting in the front seat, and Mama was reading the funny paper to Shirley. Robin knew for a fact that it was at least the tenth time that someone had read that same ragged funny paper to her. Cary was up on top of the load on the roof of the Model T. He was sitting astraddle the rolled-up mattress, pretending to be riding a horse. There was no sign of Dad or Rudy.

J
UST AS ROBIN WAS CLIMBING
into the back seat over the roll of bedding on the running board, a big new truck slowed up and made a U turn in the highway right in front of them. To everyone’s surprise, there in the back of the truck were Dad and Rudy. The truck stopped, they jumped down, and two strange men got out of the cab. Or rather one strange man and a boy — a thick, awkward-looking boy, as big as a man, but with a not-quite-finished look about him.

Theda had just made it over the wall and was teetering toward the car, smoothing her hair and tucking in her blouse, and trying to pretend she hadn’t noticed the strange boy. Mama, followed by Shirley, got out of the car, and pretty soon everyone was standing around in front of the car again. That is, everyone except Cary, who stayed on the roof, and Robin, who just sat in the corner of the back seat.

“Helen,” Dad said, “this is Mr. Criley and his boy, Fred. Mr. Criley, this is my wife, Mrs. Williams, and my family. You met my eldest, Rudy here, and then there’s Theda, and Robin — where is Robin?” Mama nodded toward the car. “Oh, there she is over in the car. Robin’s twelve now. And Cary — up there on the load. He’s eight, and the baby here is four.” Dad patted Shirley on the head; she promptly stuck her thumb in her mouth and ducked behind Mama.

Robin watched Mr. Criley’s eyes move slowly and coolly over each of them. His head nodded briefly in acknowledgment of the introductions. For a long minute he looked at the ancient Model T with its top-heavy load of household possessions. As Robin looked at Mr. Criley, in a funny sort of way she also saw exactly what he was seeing. She could see every detail: every dent and paintless patch of rusted metal, every cracked or broken window. She could see exactly how the boxes and bags and rolls looked that were piled and tied on every inch of the roof, and even on the running boards. For three years the Model T had been the only unchanging part of her life; and though she realized how important the car was to them, it seemed as if every one of those more-than-a-thousand days had made her hate the old car a little more.

Mr. Criley’s inspection finally appeared to be over, because he turned to Dad abruptly and said, “The car will have to stay here for now. Too late to fool with it today. But you’d better bring everything else along if you don’t want it to get stolen.” His lips curved upward in what was supposed to be a smile, but seemed like something very different. “Don’t think you need to worry about anybody stealing that car.” He turned back to the truck. As he climbed into the cab, he shouted, “Better put all them younguns to work on that load. I got to get back to the ranch.”

Dad didn’t even give Theda and Mama a chance to ask any questions. His voice had a new sound, firmer and more lively, as he said, “O.K. everybody. Let’s see how fast we can get all our stuff into the back of the truck. Step lively now. Theda, vou take the bedding. Rudy, you get those boxes of kitchen things. Robin! Get out of that car and lend a hand here. Mama, I’ll boost you and Shirley up, and you can push the things back in the truck bed as we hand them up.

In a minute there were Williamses running in every direction. The boy named Fred had not gotten back into the truck with his father. At first Robin wondered if he was thinking of helping them. But he only stood there, leaning against the side of the truck and watching, as he tossed a coin up and down with one hand. He was big and strong-looking, and maybe as old as eighteen even; but his face was pink and lumpy, like a big homely baby. Something about the expression on his face made Robin’s eyes fill with angry tears. When the car was almost empty, he slowly and deliberately stood himself up straight and strolled over to it. Robin was inside collecting the last few things, Cary’s sweater and Shirley’s old rag doll. The boy named Fred leaned on his hands on the window sill and with lifted eyebrows carefully surveyed the interior of the Model T. Kneeling on the back seat, Robin stared back at him angrily, but he didn’t even seem to see her.

He was allowing his lips to curve into a slow, scornful smile when suddenly there was a loud whack! The scornful expression dissolved instantly into one of pained surprise. There was nothing slow or deliberate about the way he pulled his head out of the car and stood up. Robin scrambled over to the window in time to see him glaring down at Cary and rubbing the seat of his trousers.

Cary had Dad’s shovel over his shoulder. The expression on his round, freckled face was a caricature of shocked innocence, but Robin was only too familiar with the wicked twinkle in his blue eyes.

“Gee!” Cary said, “I’m sorry. I just had this old shovel, and when I turned around I didn’t see where the end of it was going. See, I just turned around quick like this and…” Cary demonstrated, whirling around quickly, so that this time the shovel whistled by the bigger boy’s stomach.

“Hey! Watch it!” the boy yelled, jumping backward so quickly that he almost lost his balance and fell. He regained his balance but not his dignity and, still holding the injured area, retreated to the truck.

Robin and Cary looked at each other. That gleam in Cary’s eye usually made Robin want to wring his neck. She regarded him soberly for a long thoughtful moment. Then very slowly they smiled at each other.

When at last all of the Williamses and their worldly possessions were piled into the truck, Mr. Criley started off down the highway with a screech of gears that scared Shirley into another crying spell. Over Shirley’s yelling and the roar of the truck’s motor, Dad explained what had happened and why they were all bouncing around in the back of the truck.

“I have a job!” he said, and Robin noticed again the difference in his voice. It was as if for the first time in months he liked the sound of what he was saying. “At least till the end of apricot season and maybe even afterwards. Strangest thing. Rudy and I stopped in at a big ranch just a half mile or so up the road to ask where we could find a service station. There was a sign out front that said ‘Las Palmeras,’ same as back there on the gatepost we ran into. We just got inside the gate when a man on a horse rode over and asked us what we wanted. I told him about the fix we were in, and he started asking a lot of questions about my experience with mules and citrus and if the family was all healthy…”

“Was it that Mr. Criley, on the horse?” Mama interrupted.

“Oh no,” Dad said. “Mr. Criley’s just a foreman. The fellow on the horse was Mr. McCurdy himself. Owns I don’t know how many hundred acres around here. Seems to be a real nice fellow, too. So anyway, he said that one of his permanent hands quit on him just this morning. He said I can work until the end of apricot season at least, and maybe longer if I fill the bill.”

As Dad was talking, a question trembled on Robin’s tongue until she felt she would strangle if she didn’t ask it. “Dad!” she nearly shouted, but when Dad turned to her in surprise she could hardly ask for fear the answer would be the wrong one. “Dad, does a house come with the job? I mean, if it’s a permanent job, maybe a real house of our own comes with it.”

Dad smiled and put his arm across her shoulders. “Mr. McCurdy said he provides houses for all his permanent hands. Of course I haven’t seen it yet, but there
is
a house, Big Enough, and we’ll be seeing it in just a few minutes.”

Robin looked up quickly at Dad’s smiling face. He used to call her Big Enough a lot, but that had been a long time ago; it seemed like years and years — so long ago that all she had had to worry about was being too small.

T
HE NEXT MORNING ROBIN
sat on the front steps of her new home with her chin in her hands. The very thing that they had all been praying for had happened: Dad had found a permanent job. But at that moment, there on the stairs, on that June morning in 1937, she was thinking that the word for how she was feeling was “despair.”

Despair was like climbing up a mountain, trying to escape from a terrible desert. You struggle on for ages and ages because you keep thinking that someday you’ll have to reach the top. And then at last you come to the summit and you look over, and before you is another thousand miles of desert. And this time it is worse, so much worse, because now you know there’s no way to escape.

She realized that she had been foolish. She had hoped for so long that Dad would get a steady job that she had gotten into the habit of thinking that when he did, everything would be perfect. It was three years since the depression, and the mortgages had made Dad lose his place in Fresno. They had been three years of living in tents and shacks, and even in the old Model T; so a steady job for Dad had started to mean, more than anything else, a house to live in — a real house with a front porch, shiny floors, and things around that were there just to be beautiful, like pictures and curtains.

Robin leaned forward and hid her face on her knees. Her eyes felt hot, but she was not going to cry. “What’s the matter with you, anyway,” she told herself. “You should have known better.”

But she hadn’t known better. At least she hadn’t last night when Dad had said that a house came with the job on Mr. McCurdy’s ranch. How happy she’d been for a few minutes.

Then the truck had turned off the highway and crunched along a graveled road beside a hedge. Over the hedge Robin had caught sight of a very large house. Trees and shrubs had partly blocked the view, but Robin had gotten an impression of huge gleaming white surfaces, rounded corners, and large expanses of sparkling glass.

Behind the big modern house there was another broad expanse of tree-studded lawn, and beyond that, a long low wooden building that gleamed immaculately white, even in the twilight. From a double door in the building a horse’s sleek black head had emerged; he was still chewing a mouthful of hay. Beyond the stables the truck had passed through a large dust-whitened yard, surrounded by a confusion of buildings — barnlike structures of various sizes and open sheds full of farm machinery.

Just beyond the barns Robin had seen something that had made her heart stumble for a moment. Set apart by a white picket fence, a neat little house sat securely on a patch of green lawn. But the truck hadn’t stopped, and as they passed she had noticed that clothes were blowing on a line behind the house. She had known then that it wasn’t the one; but perhaps, she had thought, theirs would be like it. She knew now that the white house was where the Crileys lived, and they lived there because Mr. Criley was a foreman. But she hadn’t known that last night.

Just beyond the Criley’s house the road changed from gravel to badly rutted dirt, and Robin had been forced to hang on tightly to the slats of the truck bed. Ahead she had seen a windbreak — a thickly planted row of towering eucalyptus trees. The rutted road passed through a narrow opening in the row of trees and came to a sudden stop. And there in the narrow alley between the eucalyptus windbreak and the first row of the orange orchard was Las Palmeras Village, the Williamses’ new home. It had been right then that Robin had found out about despair.

She was still pressing her forehead hard against her knees and squeezing her eyes shut when the noise of an approaching car brought a welcome interruption. She lifted her head to see a Packard coupé shudder over the deep ruts of the road and come to a stop a few feet from the steps on which she was sitting. A small man bustled out of the car carrying a leather bag.

“You one of the Williamses?” he asked.

Robin frowned. “I’m Robin,” she said. She thought of saying, “I’m not one of anything,” but she didn’t.

But the little man didn’t wait for an answer anyway. He trotted on up the stairs to where Mama opened the door just as he was about to knock on it. Mama looked startled.

“Mrs. Williams?” he said. “I’m Doctor Woods. Mr. McCurdy sent me around to see you folks.”

Theda stopped brushing her hair, and Rudy got up off the floor where he had been trying to plug up a hole in the bottom of the wood stove. His face and hands were smeared with soot. Cary was under the table. Mama tried to make room for the doctor’s bag, and some tin plates got shoved off the table onto the floor. Mama and the doctor both reached for them and almost bumped heads.

“Excuse me,” Mama said, “excuse me. I’m sorry to have you see us in such a mess, Doctor.” Her voice sounded too high, the way it did when she was embarrassed, and she kept trying to smooth down Shirley’s wispy, uncombed hair with her hands. “We just got in last night and…”

“Of course, of course,” the doctor boomed. “Now if you children will just line up here…”

“I don’t understand why Mr. McCurdy sent…” Mama interrupted herself, “that is, I mean nobody’s been sick, except of course Shirley here had just a touch of asthma last night, but…”