Mrs. Bridge. Evan S. Connell

do the cooking and cleaning.

      One morning at the breakfast table Carolyn said petulantly, “I’m sick and tired of orange marmalade!”

      Mrs. Bridge, who was mashing an egg for her, replied patiently, “Now, Corky, just remember there are lots and lots of little girls in the world who don’t have any marmalade at all.”

      5 • CHRISTMAS BASKET

      That there should be those who had marmalade, and those who did not, was a condition that appealed to Carolyn. She looked forward to Christmas, at which time the newspaper printed a list of the one hundred neediest families in Kansas City. Every year Mrs. Bridge adopted one of these families, seeing to it that they had a nice holiday, and Carolyn now took a definite interest in this annual project. Each needy family was described in the paper—how many children, how old, what they needed particularly, and so forth—and Carolyn helped her mother decide which family they should adopt. Ruth and Douglas did not seem to care very much.

      A bushel basket, or perhaps two, would be filled with canned goods, possibly some clothing, and whatever else the poor family could obviously use—a smoked ham, a bag of flour, a bag of salt—and the basket would then be topped with candy canes and a paper angel or a Santa Claus, and the edges trimmed with scallops of red and green crepe. Then on the day before Christmas Mrs. Bridge and the children would deliver the basket to the address furnished by the newspaper.

      During the preparations Mrs. Bridge would sometimes ask the children if they could remember the family they had adopted last year. Ruth, being the oldest, usually could, but it was always Carolyn who could describe most sharply the details of poverty.

      Douglas, possibly because he was so young—or so Mrs. Bridge reasoned—did not enjoy these trips. Each Christmas when he saw the basket being filled and trimmed he grew restless and obstinate; she did not know why, nor could she get him to explain. He did not want to go, that was clear, but she wanted him to appreciate his own good fortune, and not to grow up thinking he was better than someone else, so she insisted he go along to visit the poor family; he would ride in the back seat of the Reo with one arm resting on top of the Christmas basket, and he never said a word from the moment the trip started until they were home again. But he, like Ruth, remembered. This was why he hated to go. He could remember the very first visit. He had been just three years old when he first joined his sisters on the annual expedition to the north end of the city—had it been to Strawberry Hill, where he had expected to see a bowl of strawberries on top of the hill?—no matter, he remembered how he had been sitting in the back of the Reo when the door was opened and a man leaned in and took the basket away. Then, while the door was still open and snowflakes were falling on his knees, someone else leaned in—he could not remember whether it was a man or a woman—and quickly, neatly touched the cushion of the Reo.

      Although many years were to pass before Douglas could understand why someone had wanted to touch the cushion, or why the memory of that gesture should persist, each Christmas thereafter when he saw the basket being filled and trimmed he grew restless and obstinate.

      6 • DISPLACED DUMMY

      On a winter morning not long after one of these excursions Mrs. Bridge happened to come upon Douglas in the sewing room; he was standing quietly with his hands clasped behind his back and his head bent slightly to one side. So adult did he look in the depth of his meditation that she could not resist smiling. Then she saw that he was staring at the dummy of her figure. She had kept the dummy there near the sewing machine for a long time and had supposed that no one in the family paid any attention to it, but after this particular day—unless she was using it to make herself a dress—the dummy stood behind an upended trunk in the attic.

      7 • ALICE JONES

      That summer Carolyn began playing with Alice Jones, the daughter of the colored gardener who worked next door. Every Saturday morning he would appear from the direction of the streetcar line, his daughter Alice capering wildly around him. As soon as they came in sight of the Bridges’ house she would rush ahead, pigtails flying. In a minute she would be at the back door, pressing the bell with both hands. Often Mrs. Bridge would be in the kitchen polishing silver or planning the week-end menu while Harriet did the heavy cleaning somewhere else in the house, so Mrs. Bridge would answer the door.

      Alice Jones was always out of breath from the run and her eyes were shining with expectation as she inquired if Corky could come out and play.

      “Why, I think she can,” Mrs. Bridge would say, and smile. “Providing you two behave yourselves.” About this time the gardener would come walking up the neighbor’s driveway and she would say through the screen door, “Good morning, Jones.”

      “Mornin’, Mrs. Bridge,” he always answered. “That child bothering you all?”

      “Not a bit! We love having her.”

      By this time Carolyn would appear and the two children would begin their day. In spite of Carolyn’s excellence at school she was not very imaginative, and no matter what she suggested they do that day Alice Jones had a better idea. Carolyn was a little stunned by some of the suggestions, and for a few minutes would grow petulant and arrogant, but when she found that Alice could not be intimidated she gave way and enjoyed herself.

      One morning they decided to take apart the radio-phonograph and talk to the little people inside the cabinet; another morning they made sandwiches and filled a Thermos jug with milk because they planned to leave on a trip to Cedar Rabbits, Iowa. Again, they composed a long cheerful letter to Sears, Roebuck & Co. in which Alice told how she murdered people. Some Saturdays they would stage extremely dramatic plays which went on for hours—with time out for other games—the leading part always being taken by Alice Jones because, at her grade school in the north end of the city, she was invariably the Snow Queen or the Good Fairy or some other personage of equal distinction. Carolyn, whose stage experience had been limited to a Thanksgiving skit in which she had been an onion, seldom objected and in fact had some difficulty keeping up with the plot.

      Long before noon they were at the back door, wanting to know if it was not yet lunchtime, and when at last Harriet, or perhaps Mrs. Bridge, set up the breakfast-room table for them they would turn on the radio so that during lunch they might listen to the livestock reports, which Alice Jones found hilarious.

      One day a fire truck went by the house and Alice, wagging her head in amazement, exclaimed, “There they go again! Who they going to burn down this time?” Dismayed by the wickedness of the firemen, she rolled her eyes and sighed and helped herself to more caramel pudding.

      Mrs. Bridge, who was making up a grocery list, paused and smiled affectionately at both children, pleased that Carolyn was not conscious of the difference between them.

      Alice and her father appeared every Saturday, and the two children, occasionally joined by Ruth—who more often spent the day lying on the porch swing—would play together as comfortably as on the first Saturday they met. The gardener never failed to ask Mrs. Bridge if Alice was a nuisance; Mrs. Bridge always smiled and assured him she was not.

      For a month each summer the Bridges went to Colorado; they hired Jones for this month to water the grass after he had finished working for the neighbors, and so Alice amused herself on the familiar grounds and frequently asked her father how soon Corky would be back.

      “Soon enough,” was his usual reply, but one day he paused, and as if considering the future, he told her, cryptically and a little sadly, “She liable to not come back, child.”

      But at last the vacation ended and Carolyn returned, full of sunshine and sophistication.

      “The mountains are awfully big,” she said primly, and, echoing her mother, “It was just grand.”

      Then Alice Jones said, “You know what I got in this here pocket?”

      Carolyn, reluctant to become once more the planet instead of the star, affected disdain.

      “Who