Maggie nodded. She had no idea what the girl meant.
When Helen came in she was wearing the same kind of kimono as the other girl’s, but in a bright salmon color, and her part was lost in the thicket of her unbrushed hair. Maggie thought she looked more beautiful than in the picture, the pale skin of her heart-shaped face pink at the cheeks and chin, her legs jutting out from her robe. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you to call first?” she said.
“You don’t have a phone,” Debbie said, her eyes down, her arms crossed over her chest.
“Sure we do,” said the roommate. “We got it last week.”
“Don’t you tell Mom,” Helen said sharply, looking suddenly like her old self as she swept into the kitchen. “Do you want coffee?” she called over her shoulder, but neither of the girls answered.
When she came back into the room, a cup cradled in her hands, Maggie felt as though Helen had been gone a long time. She realized it was only a month since Helen had moved out, and she thought perhaps the other feeling was only because she had never belonged at home, had always seemed about to leave. She did not look at home in this apartment either, although her roommate did, yawning and stretching like a toddler just up from an afternoon nap.
“Mom won’t let anybody move into your room,” Debbie said, uncrossing her arms. “Aggie begged and begged. She sent in the money to hold your place at Marymount.”
Helen laughed, not sarcastically, but with real happiness, her blue eyes alight. “That’s all right,” she said. “I knew she would. I’ll come some day next week for dinner and talk to her after. How’s Charles?”
“Okay. He sleeps all the time. Not like Jennifer was.”
“Did you tell them about the part?” the roommate said, putting her cigarette out in the milky dregs of her coffee.
Helen smiled.
“Your sister got a part in a revue at a club downtown. It’s called A New World. Sort of a folk-music thing. I swear she’s going to be famous.”
“Really?” Maggie said.
Helen shrugged again. “Don’t tell Mom,” she said.
“You’re going to sing in a show?” Debbie asked.
“Don’t look so shocked,” Helen said. “I have a good voice.”
“The face didn’t hurt, either,” her roommate said.
From the hallway came the explosive sound of someone laboring to clear his throat. Then there was the sound of spitting, and of the toilet flushing. Maggie and Debbie stared, transfixed, as a tall man with awry red hair walked into the living room, his chest and his feet bare, his blue jeans hanging so low on his hips that a small cloud of pubic hair stood out above the waistband. He was scratching his stomach and still clearing his throat. When he saw the girls he looked at them sleepily. “Sorry, wrong number,” he said, and walked back down the hall. They heard a door close.
“Ooops,” the roommate said.
“I’ve got to go to work,” Helen said.
“The play is during the day?” Debbie asked.
“I’m still waiting tables. The play pays three dollars a performance. I can’t buy shampoo with what the play pays.”
Maggie was afraid to use the bathroom, but she had to go so badly she was afraid she wouldn’t make it home if she didn’t do it then. She looked quickly around the corner of the door, but the man with the red hair was not there. The seat on the toilet was up, and the inside of the shower curtain was wet, Maggie wanted to look in the medicine cabinet, but she was afraid someone would see or hear her. She ran the water, and pinched her cheeks to try to make them pink.
“Could you give me a hand with this?” she heard Helen call from a room down the hall, and she waited for a minute to see if the man would respond and then went into the bedroom herself.
It was an odd mixture of things, with Helen’s old powder-blue spread on the bed and a silky New York City souvenir scarf thrown over the bedside lamp. There was a poster on the wall of a painting that looked like a pocket watch melting into the sidewalk, and a photograph of a young man who reminded Maggie a little of Richard. “Dali,” said Helen. “James Dean.” Maggie could think of no possible reply; it was as though everyone in the apartment spoke in code. Helen pointed down her back to a row of little buttons. “I can’t reach the