Things Invisible to See by Nancy Willard

Author:Nancy Willard [Willard, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-4804-8150-3
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-03-21T15:24:00+00:00

19

A Greedy Eye

AFTER BEN LEFT, WILLIE and his mother began every morning with a discussion of Marsha.

“It’s just as well he’s rid of her,” said Willie.

“Just as well,” agreed Wanda. “Such a terrible girl.”

Willie said, “Terrible,” and thought of Marsha’s tearstricken face and her white rabbit coat and her money and remembered how her head felt against his shoulder and the sly look she gave him, as if she were reading the future in his face.

One morning Willie observed that his mother was growing tired of this subject, and he feared that unless he mentioned Marsha first, they might not discuss her at all, and he would lose the pleasure of parading Marsha’s faults, a pleasure oddly akin to prayer, for it seemed to bring him into the very presence of her to whom all this talk and energy were directed. A new morsel of information would sustain his appetite for weeks.

“Her stepfather is Dr. Deller,” said Wanda. “Did you know that? Don’t forget to drink your orange juice.”

Willie drank it very fast.

“His specialty is eyes. He has a big wooden eye in his examining room with Arabic writing on it.”

“Who told you that?”

“Mr. Nesbitt. Dr. Deller operated on him for cataracts.”

“What does the writing mean?”

“I don’t know,” answered Wanda.

“Maybe Mr. Nesbitt could find out.”

“What do you want to know for?”

“It’s nice to know things like that,” Willie answered.

A week later she told him what it meant: Don’t have a greedy eye.

“He overcharges,” she added.

In his mind Willie kept a compartment marked “Marsha, Priority,” in which he filed the most casual remarks and tried to assemble them into a larger picture of their subject, while he listened for new tidbits of information floating in the stream of his mother’s talk. One evening over supper his mother said, “Dr. Deller came in today.”

“What for?” asked Willie.

“He brought a bunch of Marsha’s dresses to be cleaned.” Willie felt himself go weak. Wanda went on relentlessly. “He used to go down the street to Spotless and Cheap, but they lost a pair of his trousers, so he’s switching to us. I never saw a girl with so many clothes. He told me she never gets rid of a single outfit.”

When Willie stopped by Goldberg’s Cleaners & Tailors at noon and offered to take her to lunch, his mother was surprised and pleased. “But I can’t leave the counter till Joe comes back from his lunch break. We’re awfully busy at noon.”

“Is there anything I can do to make myself useful?” asked Willie.

“You can keep out of the way,” she said. “I have more work than I can handle.”

She brushed him aside and took an armload of shirts from a man who was drumming his fingers on the counter.

“No starch, Mr. Siegl, right? And you want ’em on hangers.”

Mr. Siegl nodded. “My wife’s pink dress is in that pile,” he warned her. “She wants you should get the sweat out of the armpits.”

Wanda filled out another slip. At the bottom she scrawled, “Sweat Under Pits.

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