Cal made arrangements in school, by doing extra and excellent work, to make up for his absences on Monday afternoons. To Aron’s questions he replied that he was working on a surprise and was duty bound to tell no one. Aron was not much interested anyway. In his self-immersion Aron soon forgot the whole thing.
Cal, after he had followed Kate several times, knew her route. She always went to the same places—first to the Monterey County Bank where she was admitted behind the shining bars that defended the safe-deposit vault. She spent fifteen or twenty minutes there. Then she moved slowly along Main Street, looking in the store windows. She stepped into Porter and Irvine’s and looked at dresses and sometimes made a purchase—elastic, safety pins, a veil, a pair of gloves. About two-fifteen she entered Minnie Franken’s beauty parlor, stayed an hour, and came out with her hair pinned up in tight curls and a silk scarf around her head and tied under her chin.
At three-thirty she climbed the stairs to the offices over the Farmers’ Mercantile and went into the consulting room of Dr. Rosen. When she came down from the doctor’s office she stopped for a moment at Bell’s candy store and bought a two-pound box of mixed chocolates. She never varied the route. From Bell’s she went directly back to Castroville Street and thence to her house.
There was nothing strange about her clothing. She dressed exactly like any well-to-do Salinas woman out shopping on a Monday afternoon—except that she always wore gloves, which was unusual for Salinas.
The gloves made her hands seem puffed and pudgy. She moved as though she were surrounded by a glass shell. She spoke to no one and seemed to see no one. Occasionally a man turned and looked after her and then nervously went about his business. But for the most part she slipped past like an invisible woman.
For a number of weeks Cal followed Kate. He tried not to attract her attention. And since Kate walked always looking straight ahead, he was convinced that she did not notice him.
When Kate entered her own yard Cal strolled casually by and went home by another route. He could not have said exactly why he followed her, except that he wanted to know all about her.
The eighth week he took the route she completed her journey and went into her overgrown yard as usual.
Cal waited a moment, then strolled past the rickety gate.
Kate was standing behind a tall ragged privet. She said to him coldly, “What do you want?”
Cal froze in his steps. He was suspended in time, barely breathing. Then he began a practice he had learned when he was very young. He observed and catalogued details outside his main object. He noticed how the wind from the south bent over the new little leaves of the tall privet bush. He saw the muddy path beaten to black mush by many feet, and Kate’s feet standing far to the side out of the mud. He heard a switch engine in the Southern Pacific yards discharging steam in shrill dry spurts. He felt the chill air on the growing fuzz on his cheeks. And all the time he was staring at Kate and she was staring back at him. And he saw in the set and color of her eyes and hair, even in the way she held her shoulders—high in a kind of semi-shrug—that Aron looked very like her. He did not know his own face well enough to recognize her mouth and little teeth and wide cheekbones as his own. They stood thus for the moment, between two gusts of the southern wind.
Kate said, “This isn’t the first time you’ve followed me. What do you want?”
He dipped his head. “Nothing,” he said.
“Who told you to do it?” she demanded.
“Nobody—ma’am.”
“You won’t tell me, will you?”
Cal heard his own next speech with amazement. It was out before he could stop it. “You’re my mother and I wanted to see what you’re like.” It was the exact truth and it had leaped out like the stroke of a snake.
“What? What is this? Who are you?”
“I’m Cal Trask,” he said. He felt the delicate change of balance as when a seesaw moves. His was the upper seat now. Although her expression had not changed Cal knew she was on the defensive.
She looked at him closely, observed every feature. A dim remembered picture of Charles leaped into her mind. Suddenly she said, “Come with me!” She turned and walked up the path, keeping well to the side, out of the mud.
Cal hesitated only for a moment before following her up the steps. He remembered the big dim room, but the rest was strange to him. Kate preceded him down a hall and into her room. As she went past the kitchen entrance she called, “Tea. Two cups!”
In her room she seemed to have forgotten him!. She removed her coat, tugging at the sleeves with reluctant fat gloved fingers. Then she went to a new door cut in the wall in the end of the room where her bed stood. She opened the door and went into a new little lean-to. “Come in here!” she said. “Bring that chair with you.”
He followed her into a box of a room. It had no windows, no decorations of any kind. Its walls were painted a dark gray. A solid gray carpet covered the floor. The only furniture in the room was a huge chair puffed with gray silk cushions, a tilted reading table, and a floor lamp deeply hooded. Kate pulled the light chain with her gloved hand, holding it deep in the crotch between her thumb and forefinger as though her hand were artificial.
“Close the door!” Kate said.
The light threw a circle on the reading table and only diffused dimly through the gray room. Indeed the gray walls seemed to suck up the light and destroy it.
Kate settled herself gingerly among the thick down cushions and slowly removed her gloves. The fingers of both hands were bandaged.
Kate said angrily, “Don’t stare. It’s arthritis. Oh—so you want to see, do you?” She unwrapped the oily-looking bandage from her right forefinger and stuck the crooked finger under the light. “There—look at it,” she said. “It’s arthritis.” She whined in pain as she tenderly wrapped the bandage loosely. “God, those gloves hurt!” she said. “Sit down.”
Cal crouched on the edge of his chair.
“You’ll probably get it,” Kate said. “My great-aunt had it and my mother was just beginning to get it—” She stopped. The room was very silent.
There was a soft knock on the door. Kate called, “Is that you, Joe? Set the tray down out there. Joe, are you there?”
A mutter came through the door.
Kate said tonelessly, “There’s a litter in the parlor. Clean it up. Anne hasn’t cleaned her room. Give her one more warning. Tell her it’s the last. Eva got smart last night. I’ll take care of her. And, Joe, tell the cook if he serves carrots again this week he can pack up. Hear me?”
The mutter came through the door.
“That’s all,” said Kate. “The dirty pigs!” she muttered. “They’d rot if I didn’t watch them. Go out and bring in the tea tray.”
The bedroom was empty when Cal opened the door. He carried the tray into the lean-to and set it gingerly on the tilted reading table. It was a large silver tray, and on it were a pewter teapot, two paper-thin white teacups, sugar, cream, and an open box of chocolates.
“Pour the tea,” said Kate. “It hurts my hands.” She put a chocolate in her mouth. “I saw you looking at this room,” she went on when she had swallowed her candy. “The light hurts my eyes. I come in here to rest.” She saw Cal’s quick glance at her eyes and said with finality, “The light hurts my eyes.” She said harshly, “What’s the matter? Don’t you want tea?”
“No, ma’am,” said Cal, “I don’t like tea.”
She held the thin cup with her bandaged fingers. “All right. What do you want?”
“Nothing, ma’am.”
“Just wanted to look at me?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Are you satisfied?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“How do I look?” She smiled crookedly at him and showed her sharp white little teeth.
“All right.”
“I might have known you’d cover up. Where’s your brother?”
“In school, I guess, or home.”
“What’s he like?”
“He looks more like you.”
“Oh, he does? Well, is he like me ?”
“He wants to be a minister,” said Cal.
“I guess that’s the way it should be—looks like me and wants to go into the church. A man can do a lot of damage in the church. When someone comes here, he’s got his guard up. But in church a man’s wide open.”