A Stranger in This World Read Free Page B

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PRETTY JUDY
    JUDY ’ S WINDOW WAS NEAR THE TOP OF THE HOUSE , NEXT TO THE supple tip of a tall, straight juniper tree, she’d lean out and call to the schoolchildren as they passed by, in the morning and again in the afternoon, especially the boys. A white house withgreen shutters in a lake of brilliant lawn, a tulip tree spreading over the grass and flowers and hedges, the pair of candle-shaped junipers guarding the chimney all the way up to the third story, all rambling, graceful, not too perfect. Her mother, Mrs. MacGregor, coached her at the beginning of every school year, so that by October Judy knew nearly everyone’s name. October mornings, the rain splattering out of the leaves of the trees that lined the streets, their limbs meeting overhead, a tunnel of green turning gold, and Judy’s high clear voice drifting down: Hi Jerry! Hi Mary! Hi Paul!
    But school was out, this was June, another rainy month, but more optimistic. Paul was coming back alone from the high school courts, where he’d hit a yellow tennis ball against the backstop for forty-five minutes. He said to himself, I am solitary, I am not lonely. My mother is a pediatrician, my father is an architect, I am going to college. Still, it was sweet to hear the high, piping voice float down from her window: Hi Paul! Hi Paul!
    Hi Judy!
    Come say hi to me!
    OK! he said, and walked up onto the lawn. Hi Judy!
    You couldn’t tell what was wrong with Judy by looking at her face, except that she would forget sometimes to close her mouth, and easy questions would worry her. Everything she felt was on her face, now round as a cartoon sun, pleased, elbows on the sill, staring down at him. The neighborhood said she was nineteen, or even twenty-one, but really she was a kid, kid T-shirts, lollipop colors, big and pink, glossy blond hair cropped blunt at her neck. All day, in the summer emptiness, the familiar streets and sidewalks had felt strange to Paul; hewas fifteen, growing out of his boy’s body into something else; he had passed her house a thousand times and still knew nothing about her. What was it like in Judy’s room?
    In the driveway was a greasy spot where Judy’s mother’s station wagon was not.
    Can I come in?
    Come in, yes! Come say hi to me!
    Curiosity wasn’t all of it. He crept around to the kitchen door like a thief, though this was the proper door—in this neighborhood the front door was for company, the side or back for familiars. He prayed this was not the day for the cleaning woman. The neighborhood boys told rumors about Judy, and Paul did not want to be misunderstood, or understood at all; he wanted to be alone, weightless, he wanted this to be happening in his imagination. The halls of the MacGregors’ house were mournful, serious, other people’s dead peering down at him from smoky paintings. The stairs were light maple, like a bowling alley, but the banister was some dark wood, deep red, like dried, polished blood. He was still holding his tennis racket, a ticket of membership. Red carpets with dark patterns, baskets of dried grasses and leaves, neat and tidy, scented with wax and lemons. Their other children were away at college. Paul guessed wrong on the third floor, opened the wrong door—to the attic, bare wood and piles of old
New Yorker
s and clothes—and again he felt that his life and everything in it was just a sham, something put up quickly for the sake of a picture, the thickness of a photograph.
    ——
    Paul, she said, Pauletta Paulotta Paulola Pauleeleelu.
    Standing plainly in the middle of the carpet, as if she wasn’t sure what to do with her body, too big to hide.
    How are you, Judy?
    I was watching, she said. I always am.
    Mournful deep green plaids on the cushions in the window seat, the rocking chair, the flounced bed; Paul had been expecting dolls, primary yellows. And she was big. She always surprised everyone at picnics or at the annual yard sale, Paul’s height at least, and imposing. Not fat but