The next afternoon they came upon a block they couldn't get around. A trailer truck had overturned and half a dozen cars had crashed behind it. Luckily, they were only two miles beyond the Enfield exit. They went back, took the exit ramp, and then, feeling tired and discouraged, stopped in the Enfield town park for a twenty-minute rest.
"What did you do before, Nadine?" Larry asked. He had been thinking about the expression in her eyes when Joe had finally spoken (the boy had added "Larry, Nadine, fanks," and "Go baffroom" to his working vocabulary), and now he made a guess based on that. "Were you a teacher?"
She looked at him with surprise. "Yes. That's a good guess."
"Little kids?"
"That's right. First and second graders."
That explained something about her complete unwillingness to leave Joe behind. In mind at least, the boy had regressed to a seven-year-old age level.
"How did you guess?"
"A long time ago I used to date a speech therapist from Long Island," Larry said. "I know that sounds like the start of one of those involved New York jokes, but it's the truth. She worked for the Ocean View school system. Younger grades. Kids with speech impediments, cleft palates, harelips, deaf kids. She used to say that correcting speech defects in children was just showing them an alternative way of getting the right sounds. Show them, say the word. Show them, say the word. Over and over until something in the kid's head clicked. And when she talked about that click happening, she looked the way you did when Joe said 'You're welcome.'"
"Did I?" She smiled a little wistfully. "I loved the little ones. Some of them were bruised, but none of them at that age are irrevocably spoiled. The little ones are the only good human beings."
"Kind of a romantic idea, isn't it?"
She shrugged. "Children are good. And if you work with them, you get to be a romantic. That's not so bad. Wasn't your speech therapist friend happy in her work?"
"Yeah, she liked it," Larry agreed. "Were you married? Before?" There it was again - that simple, ubiquitous word. Before. It was only two syllables, but it had become all-encompassing.
"Married? No. Never married." She began to look nervous again. "I'm the original old maid schoolteacher, younger than I look but older than I feel. Thirty-seven." His eyes had moved to her hair before he could stop them and she nodded as if he had spoken out loud. "It's premature," she said matter-of-factly. "My grandmother's hair was totally white by the time she was forty. I think I'm going to last at least five years longer."
"Where did you teach?"
"A small private school in Pittsfield. Very exclusive. Ivy-covered walls, all the newest playground equipment. Damn the recession, full speed ahead. The car pool consisted of two Thunderbirds, three Mercedes-Benzes, a couple of Lincolns, and a Chrysler Imperial."
"You must have been very good."
"Yes, I think I was," she said artlessly, then smiled. "Doesn't matter much now."
He put an arm around her. She started a little and he felt her stiffen. Her hand and shoulder were warm.
"I wish you wouldn't," she said uncomfortably.
"You don't want me to?"
"No. I don't."
He drew his arm back, baffled. She did want him to that was the thing; he could feel her wanting coming off her in mild but clearly receivable waves. Her color was very high now, and she was looking desperately down at her hands, which were fiddling together in her lap like a couple of hurt spiders. Her eyes were shiny, as if she might be on the verge of tears.
"Nadine - "
(honey, is that you?)
She looked up at him and he saw she was past the verge of tears. She was about to speak when Joe strolled up, carrying his guitar case in one hand. They looked at him guiltily, as if he had found them doing something rather more personal than talking.
"Lady," Joe said conversationally.
"What?" Larry asked, startled and not tracking very well.
"Lady!" Joe said again, and jerked his thumb back over his shoulder.
Larry and Nadine looked at each other.
Suddenly there was a fourth voice, highpitched and choking with emotion, as startling as the voice of God.
"Thank heaven!" it cried. "Oh thank heaven!"
They stood up and looked at the woman who was now half running up the street toward them. She was smiling and crying at the same time.
"Glad to see you," she said. "I'm so glad to see you, thank heaven - "
She swayed and might have fainted if Larry hadn't been there to steady her until her dizziness passed. He guessed her age at about twenty-five. She was dressed in bluejeans and a plain white cotton blouse. Her face was pale, her blue eyes unnaturally fixed. Those eyes stared at Larry as if trying to convince the brain behind them that this was not a hallucination, that the three people she saw were really here.
"I'm Larry Underwood," he said. "The lady is Nadine Cross. The boy is Joe. We're very happy to meet you."
The woman continued to stare at him wordlessly for a moment, and then walked slowly away from him and toward Nadine.
"I'm so pleased..." she began, "... so pleased to meet you." She stumbled a little. "Oh my God, are you really people?"