The Gardens of Kyoto by Kate Walbert

Author:Kate Walbert [Walbert, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

9

That night I invited your father upstairs to my tiny apartment above the Woolworth’s. I should say that Mother and Daddy thought this somehow low-class, to live above the Woolworth’s, but I found it oddly liberating, bohemian. You’ll laugh, but in those days there were so few ways for a good girl to stretch her wings, and to be able to slip downstairs on a Saturday morning and have a coffee and a cigarette at the Woolworth counter, my hair still unbrushed, my shoes halfway on my bare feet. I felt the closest I would come to leading a different life, one where I would be strong enough to go farther from home. It was not in my character to truly break away, as Betty had, but those Saturday mornings were glorious. I knew a few of the regulars and they knew me. We’d share the newspaper and they’d ask about my students. I liked to talk those mornings. I felt happy. My cigarette would burn down in one of the green-glass ashtrays set in the cluster of salt and pepper shakers, napkin dispensers, ketchup bottles, and I would often let my fried eggs get cold.

The waitress I knew from the time I was a little girl, when certain special weekend mornings Daddy would escort his three brides, he called us, to this same Woolworth’s for pancakes. She remembered Rita best from that time. Shirley Temple, she called her, and pulled at the curls Rita had spent hours perfecting in front of the mirror. Rita humored her, said she felt sorry. Anyone who ends up behind the Woolworth’s counter ought to be pitied, she announced one day, somewhat out of the blue. From time to time, when the regulars had left and I had no one but that old waitress to talk to, I’d wonder whether Rita would have said the same about someone ending up on the other side of the counter. But in those days, at least, I tried my best not to think of Rita.

Anyway, your father had suggested he pick me up after school. I had some meetings to attend directly after classes, so it was already almost dark, the playing fields abandoned, when he pulled into the circular drive and parked at the front entryway. I had been waiting just behind the big glass doors, hoping he would arrive before all the other faculty had gone home. They knew the story of Rita, of course; these were small towns. And they most likely understood that I sent some portion of my paycheck to Mother and Daddy each month. I wanted to surprise them, to let them in on my secret life, and so when your father drove up in his wide convertible, the top down, his arm casually draped across the back of the white leather front seat, I bounded out the door far more cheerfully than what is generally in my nature, laughing as if someone had just told me something I still found

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