Searching for Caleb

Nor did Laura, who continued as spry and capable as ever. Nor Daniel, of course-a man of even temper. Although sometimes, late at night, he would take the Ford and drive aimlessly over the moonlit roads, often ending up in the old section of the city where he had no business any more, and knew no one, and heard nothing but the faint, musical whistling of the streetcar wires in the dark sky overhead.

Justine's childhood was dark and velvety and it smelled of dust. There were bearded men under all the furniture, particularly her bed. When her door was shut at night blue worms squiggled through the blackness, but when it was open the knob stuck out exactly like a shotgun barrel sidling through to aim at her head, and she would have to lie motionless for hours pretending to be a wrinkle in the blankets.

In the mornings her father was away, either at the office or out of town, and her mother was in bed with a sick headache, and Justine sat in the living room with the curtains shut so that even to herself she was only a pale glimmer. She was waiting for the maid. First there was the scrabbling of the key in the apartment door and then light, air, motion, the rustle of Claudia's shopping bag and her thin cross mosquito voice.

"Now what you doing sitting there? What you up to? What you doing sitting in that chair?" She would yank the curtains open and there was the city of Philadelphia, a wide expanse of blackened brick apartment houses and dying trees in cages and distant factory smokestacks. Then she would dress Justine in a little smocked dress and braid the two skinny braids that she called plaits. "Don't you go getting that dress dirty. Don't you go messing yourself up, I'll tell Miss Caroline on you." By that time maybe her mother's headache would be lifting, at least enough so that her parched voice could trail out from the bedroom. "Justine? Aren't you even going to say good morning?" Although not an hour ago she had buried her face in the pillow and waved Justine away with one shaky, pearl-studded hand.

Justine's mother wore fluffy nightgowns with eyelet ruffles at the neck.

Her hair was the color of Justine's but tightly curled. She was the youngest of Daniel Peck's six children, the baby. Even total strangers could guess that, somehow, from her small, pursed mouth and her habit of ducking her chin when talking to people. Unfortunately she tended to put on weight when unhappy, and she had become a plump, powdery, pouchy woman with her rings permanently embedded in her ringers. Her unhappiness was due to being exiled in Philadelphia. She had never guessed, when agreeing to marry Sam Mayhew, that the Depression would close down the Baltimore branch of his company just six months after the wedding. If she had had any inkling, she said-but she didn't finish the sentence. She just reached for another chocolate, or a petit-four, or one of the pink-frosted cupcakes she grew more and more to resemble.