“You must have a hundred of them now,” Sport said as they went down the steps.
“No, I have fourteen. This is number fifteen. How could I have a hundred? I’ve only been working since I was eight, and I’m only eleven now. I wouldn’t even have this many except at first I wrote so big my regular route took almost the whole book.”
“You see the same people every day?”
“Yes. This year I have the Dei Santi family, Little Joe Curry, the Robinsons, Harrison Withers and a new one, Mrs Plumber. Mrs Plumber is the hardest because I have to get in the dumbwaiter.”
“Can I go with you sometime?”
“No, silly. Spies don’t go with friends. Anyway, we’d get caught if there were two of us. Why don’t you get your own route?”
“Sometimes I watch out my window a window across the way.”
“What happens there?”
“Nothing. A man comes home and pulls the shade down.”
“That’s not very exciting.”
“It sure isn’t.”
They met Ole Golly waiting for them, tapping her foot, outside the front door. They walked to Eighty-sixth Street, took the cross-town bus, and soon were whizzing along in the subway, sitting in a line – Ole Golly, then Harriet, then Sport. Ole Golly stared straight ahead. Harriet was scribbling furiously in her notebook.
“What are you writing?” Sport asked.
“I’m taking notes on all those people who are sitting over there.”
“Why?”
“Aw, Sport” – Harriet was exasperated – “because I’ve seen them and I want to remember them.” She turned back to her book and continued her notes:
MAN WITH ROLLED WHITE SOCKS, FAT LEGS. WOMAN WITH ONE CROSS-EYE AND A LONG NOSE. HORRIBLE LOOKING LITTLE BOY AND A FAT BLONDE MOTHER WHO KEEPS WIPING HIS NOSE OFF. FUNNY LADY LOOKS LIKE A TEACHER AND IS READING. I DON’T THINK I’D LIKE TO LIVE WHERE ANY OF THESE PEOPLE LIVE OR DO THE THINGS THEY DO. I BET THAT LITTLE BOY IS SAD AND CRIES A LOT. I BET THAT LADY WITH THE CROSS-EYE LOOKS IN THE MIRROR AND JUST FEELS TERRIBLE.
Ole Golly leaned over and spoke to them. “We’re going to Far Rockaway. It’s about three stops from here. I want you to see how this person lives, Harriet. This is my family.”
Harriet almost gasped. She looked up at Ole Golly in astonishment, but Ole Golly just stared out the window again. Harriet continued to write:
THIS IS INCREDIBLE. COULD OLE GOLLY HAVE A FAMILY? I NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT IT. HOW COULD OLE GOLLY HAVE A MOTHER AND FATHER? SHE’S TOO OLD FOR ONE THING AND SHE’S NEVER SAID ONE WORD ABOUT THEM AND I’VE KNOWN HER SINCE I WAS BORN. ALSO SHE DOESN’T GET ANY LETTERS. THINK ABOUT THIS. THIS MIGHT BE IMPORTANT.
They came to their stop and Ole Golly led them off the subway.
“Gee,” said Sport as they came up on to the sidewalk, “we’re near the ocean.” And they could smell it, the salt, and even a wild soft spray which blew gently across their faces, then was gone.
“Yes,” said Ole Golly briskly. Harriet could see a change in her. She walked faster and held her head higher.
They were walking down a street that led to the water. The houses, set back from the sidewalk with a patch of green in front, were built of yellow brick interspersed with red. It wasn’t very pretty, Harriet thought, but maybe they liked their houses this way, better than those plain red brick ones in New York.
Ole Golly was walking faster and looking sterner. She looked as though she wished she hadn’t come. Abruptly she turned in at a sidewalk leading to a house. She strode relentlessly up the steps, never looking back, never saying a word. Sport and Harriet followed, wide-eyed, up the steps to the front door, through the front hall, and out the back door.
She’s lost her mind, Harriet thought. She and Sport looked at each other with raised eyebrows. Then they saw that Ole Golly was heading for a small private house which sat in its own garden behind the apartment house. Harriet and Sport stood still, not knowing what to do. This little house was like a house in the country, the kind Harriet saw when she went to Water Mill in the summer. The unpainted front had the same soft grey of driftwood, the roof a darker grey.
“Come on, chickens, let’s get us a hot cup of tea.” Ole Golly, suddenly gay, waved from the funny little rotting porch.
Harriet and Sport ran towards the house, but stopped cold when the front door opened with a loud swish. There, suddenly, was the largest woman Harriet had ever seen.
“Why, lookahere what’s coming,” she bellowed, “looka them lil rascals,” and her great fat face crinkled into large cheerful lumps as her mouth split to show a toothless grin. She let forth a high burbling laugh.
Sport and Harriet stood staring, their mouths open. The fat lady stood like a mountain, her hands on her hips, in a flowered cotton print dress and enormous hanging coat sweater. Probably the biggest sweater in the world, thought Harriet; probably the biggest pair of shoes too. And her shoes were a wonder. Long, long, black, bumpy things with high, laced sides up to the middle of the shin, bulging with the effort of holding in those ankles, their laces splitting them into grins against the white of the socks below. Harriet fairly itched to take notes on her.
“Wherecha get these lil things?” Her cheer rang out all over the neighbourhood. “This the lil Welsch baby? That her brother?”
Sport giggled.
“No, it’s my husband,” Harriet shouted.
Ole Golly turned a grim face. “Don’t be snarky, Harriet, and don’t think you’re such a wit either.”
The fat lady laughed, making her face fall in lumps again. She looks like dough, Harriet thought, about to be made into a big round Italian loaf. She wanted to tell Sport this, but Ole Golly was leading them in, all of them squeezing past that mountain of a stomach because the fat lady stood, rather stupidly, in the doorway.
Ole Golly marched to the teakettle and put a fire under it. Then she turned in a businesslike way and introduced them. “Children, this is my mother, Mrs Golly. Mother – you can close the door now, Mother. This is Harriet Welsch.”
“Harriet M. Welsch,” Harriet corrected.
“You know perfectly well you have no middle name, but if you insist, Harriet M. Welsch. And this is Sport. What’s your last name, Sport?”
“Rocque. Simon Rocque.” He pronounced it Rock.
“Simon, Simon, hee, hee, hee.” Harriet felt very ugly all of a sudden.
“You are not to make fun of anyone’s name.” Ole Golly loomed over Harriet and it was one of those times when Harriet knew she meant it.
“I take it back,” Harriet said quickly.
“That’s better.” Ole Golly turned away cheerfully. “Now let’s all sit down and have some tea.”
“Waal, ain’t she a cute lil thing.” Harriet could see that Mrs Golly was still hung up on the introductions. She stood like a mountain, her big ham hands dangling helplessly at her sides.
“Sit down, Mother,” Ole Golly said gently, and Mrs Golly sat.
Harriet and Sport looked at each other. The same thought was occurring to both of them. This fat lady wasn’t very bright.
Mrs Golly sat to the left of Harriet. She leaned over Harriet, in fact, and looked directly into her eyes. Harriet felt like something in a zoo.
“Now, Harriet, look around you,” Ole Golly said sternly as she poured the tea. “I brought you here because you’ve never seen the inside of a house like this. Have you ever