Anna smiled. “As a matter of fact, I think it is.”
8
It’s an optimum room, one of the best on our list, and I hope you’ll be as delighted as I am,” Anna said. There was a stack of fliers perched precariously on the comer of her desk, announcing the forthcoming Daughters and Sisters Swing into Summer Picnic and Concert, an event which was part fundraiser, part community relations, and part celebration. Anna took one, turned it over, and sketched quickly. ”Kitchen here, hide-a-bed here, and a little living-room area here. This is the bathroom. It’s hardly big enough to turn around in, and in order to sit on the commode you’ll practically have to put your feet in the shower, but it’s yours.”
“Yes,” Rosie murmured. “Mine.” A feeling that she hadn’t had in weeks—that all this was a wonderful dream and at any moment she would wake up beside Norman again—was creeping over her.
“The view is nice—it’s not Lake Drive, of course, but Bryant Park is very pretty, especially in the summer. Second floor. The neighborhood got a little ragged in the eighties, but it’s pulling itself together again now.”
“It’s as if you’ve stayed there yourself,” Rosie said.
Anna shrugged—a slender, pretty gesture—and drew the hall in front of the room, then a flight of stairs. She sketched with the no-frills economy of a draftsman. She spoke without looking up. “I’ve been there on a good many occasions,” she said, “but of course that’s not what you mean, is it?”
“No.”
“A little of me goes out with every woman when she leaves. I suppose that sounds corny, but I don’t care. It’s true, and that’s all that really matters. So what do you think?”
Rosie hugged her impulsively, and instantly regretted it when she felt Anna stiffen. I shouldn’t have done it, she thought as she let go. I knew better. And she had. Anna Stevenson was kind, there was no doubt about that in Rosie’s mind—maybe even saintly—but there was that strange arrogance, and there was this, too: Anna didn’t like people in her space. Anna especially didn’t like to be touched.
“I’m sorry,” she said, drawing back.
“Don’t be silly,” Anna said brusquely. “What do you think?”
“I love it,” Rosie said.
Anna smiled and the small awkwardness was behind them. She drew an X on the wall of the living-room area, near a tiny rectangle which represented the room’s only window. “Your new picture... I’ll bet you decide it belongs right here.”
“I’ll bet I do, too.”
Anna put the pencil down. “I’m delighted to be able to help you, Rosie, and I’m so glad you came to us. Here, you’re leaking.” It was the Kleenex again, but Rosie doubted it was the same box Anna had offered her during their first interview in this room; she had an idea that a lot of Kleenex got used in here.
She took one and wiped her eyes. “You saved my life, you know,” she said hoarsely. “You saved my life and I’ll never, ever forget it.”
“Flattering but inaccurate,” Anna said in her dry, calm voice. “I saved your life no more than Cynthia flipped Gert downstairs in the rec room. You saved your own life when you took a chance and walked out on the man who was hurting you.”
“Just the same, thank you. Just for being here.”
“You’re very welcome,” Anna said, and for the only time during her stay at D & S, Rosie saw tears standing in Anna Stevenson’s eyes. She handed the box of Kleenex back across the desk with a little smile.
“Here,” she said. “Looks like you’ve sprung a leak yourself.”
Anna laughed, took a Kleenex, used it, and tossed it into the wastebasket. “I hate to cry. It’s my deepest, darkest secret. Every now and then I think I’m done with it, that I must be done with it, and then I do it again. It’s sort of the way I feel about men.”
For another brief moment, Rosie found herself thinking about Bill Steiner and his hazel eyes.
Anna took the pencil again and scratched something below the rough floor-plan she’d drawn. Then she handed the sheet to Rosie. It was an address she’d jotted down: 897 Trenton Street.
“That’s where you live,” Anna said. “It’s most of the way across the city from here, but you can use the buses now, can’t you?”
Smiling—and still crying a little—Rosie nodded.
“You may give that address to some of the friends you’ve made here, and eventually