Searching for Caleb

But Justine loved her mother's soft skin and her puffy bosom and the dimples on the backs of her hands. She like to huddle beneath the drooping velvet canopy of the bed, which was her mother's real home, surrounded by a circle of chocolate boxes, empty teacups, ladies' magazines, and cream-colored letters from Baltimore. Of course there were days when her mother was up and about, but Justine pictured her only in the dim rosy glow of the bedside lamp. She dwelt on the suspense of entering that room: was she welcome this time, or wasn't she? Some days her mother said, "Oh Justine, can't you let me be?" or wept into her pillow and wouldn't speak at all; but other days she called, "Is that my Justine? Is that my fairy angel? Don't you have one tiny kiss for your poor mama?" And she would sit up and scoop Justine into a spongy, perfumed embrace, depriving her of breathing room for a moment, not that it mattered. Then she flung back the ruffled pink sleeves of her bedjacket and taught Justine the games she had played when she was a child-cat's cradle and Miss Fancy's Come to Town and the doodle story, where you drew a map that turned out to be a goose. Or she would have Justine fetch scissors and she would cut, from the Baltimore newspapers, folded stars and paper dolls with pigtails and standing angels made from a circle cleverly slashed here and there as only she knew how. She would tell true stories, better than anything in books: How Uncle Two Scared the Hobo Away, How Grandfather Peck Fooled the Burglar, How the Mayhews' Ugly Dog Buttons Ate My Wedding Dress. She told how Justine was born in Baltimore thanks to split-second timing and not in Philadelphia as everyone had feared. "Well, luckily I had my way," she said. "You know how your daddy is. He didn't understand at all. When you started coming two months early I said, 'Sam, put me on that train,' but he wouldn't do it. I said, 'Sam, what will Father say, he's made all the arrangements at Johns Hopkins!' 'I just hope he didn't lay down a deposit/ your daddy said. So I picked up my suitcase that I had all ready and waiting and I said, 'Listen here, Sam Mayhew . . .' "

At six in the evening Claudia would leave, slamming the door behind her, and Justine's mother would look at the clock and her fingers would fly to her mouth. "How in the world did the time pass?" she would ask, and she would slide to the edge of the bed and feel for her pink satin slippers.

"We can't let your daddy catch us lazing about like this." She would put on a navy blue dress with shoulder pads, and cover her rosebud mouth with dark lipstick, turning instantly from pink-and-gold to a heavy, crisply defined stranger like the ones hurrying down the sidewalk five stories below. "Of course my headache hasn't improved one bit," she would say.

"I'd go back to bed but your daddy would never understand. He doesn't believe in headaches. He certainly doesn't believe in going to bed for them. It just is not his custom, I suppose."

To hear her talk, you would think Sam Mayhew was as different and exotic as an Asian prince, but he was only a small pudgy man with a Baltimore accent.

Then there were days in a row when Justine was not allowed in her mother's room at all, when she would puzzle and puzzle over what magic password had given her entry before. No one could go in but Claudia, carrying the latest string-tied box from the Parisian Pastry Co. Justine was marooned on a scratchy brocade chair in the living room and the bearded men beneath it were only waiting for her to lower one foot so that they could snatch her by the ankle and drag her down. Even Sam Mayhew's homecoming could not rouse his wife from bed. "Oh, go away, Sam, let me be, can't you see a crack is running down in front of my ears?"

Sam and Justine ate supper alone, on the gold-rimmed plates that Claudia had laid out in the dining room. "Well, now, Justine, what have you been doing with yourself?" Sam would ask.

"Did Claudia take you to the playground? Did you have a nice time on the swings?"

But he would quickly flounder and drown in her blank, astonished stare.

Day after day Justine on her brocade island looked at her mother's old Books of Knowledge-tattered maroon volumes with brittle pages, the only things she could reach without setting a foot to the floor. She lost herself in a picture of a train heading through outer space. It had been explained to her that this picture demonstrated the impossibility of man's ever reaching the moon. See how long it would take to cover the distance, even by rail? But to Justine it appeared all too easy, and she felt herself lightening and dwindling and growing dizzy whenever she saw that tiny lone train curving through the endless blackness.