Hilda and Pearl by Alice Mattison Read Free Book Online Page B

right if Frances put her father’s shoes back on the shoe trees. She liked the shoe trees, which had heavy, solid wooden feet—half feet. Once they were inside the shoes, a shiny steel bar slid satisfyingly into place. After she’d put the shoes away, she thought her mother might mind her being in the bedroom, so she took them out again and put them back where they had been.
    She opened the top drawer of her mother’s dresser. The drawer was heavy but moved more easily than her own drawers, which stuck. She felt the pile of underwear in the drawer, as if the book might be under it. Then she closed this drawer and opened the bottom one, which was filled with old things, old sweaters and blouses. The drawer might contain some clue her mother had forgotten. She would take the clue out and show it to her mother, and her mother would suddenly understand where Simon would go when he was upset.
    Under the sweaters, in the back, was an old white paper bag that was too big for what was inside it and was rolled around it. Frances thought she had better take it to her own room. Her mother was coming out of the bathroom when Frances passed with the bag in her hand, and she held it close to her body, on the side away from her mother, as they passed in the hall. They looked at each other but didn’t speak. Frances almost said hello.
    She went into her room and sat down on the bed. She heard her mother go into her own bedroom. Someone had written on the white bag in pencil—it was her mother’s writing. It was hard to read. “Racket.” It looked like the word racket . Inside was a pair of baby’s shoes.
    The shoes were white. They must have been her own. They would have come up on her ankles. They had white shoelaces. Frances turned the shoes over and over again. She didn’t see how the shoes could help find Simon, and she didn’t think she ought to ask her mother about them. She put the shoes back into the bag. They would be one of Frances’s treasures. She didn’t have other treasures that she could recall, but there were probably some things. She put the bag under her pillow. She felt as if a great deal of time had passed, but when she went back to the living room, it was only twenty to eleven. She saw her library book on the sofa along with her mother’s coat. Of course that was where her mother would leave it. She could take the book and read. Maybe she should offer to go to the store for her mother. Her mother hardly ever sent her to the store. It seemed like something someone in a book might do, someone who had had a tragedy.
    She sat down and began to read. When her mother came out of the bedroom, she did offer to go to the store and her mother accepted. “I don’t want to go out in case of the phone,” her mother said.
    She asked Frances to get a few things—bread and canned soup—and gave her the money. Frances took her coat and went down to the street. It was drizzling. She had a kerchief in her pocket and she tied it over her head. On the way to the store, she looked at everyone she passed, looking for Simon or for her father coming home with news. She wondered whether people passing knew about Simon. Maybe this was important news that had been on the radio or in the newspaper.
    She didn’t know why Simon had run away, if that was what had happened—if he had not been murdered in the men’s room, for example. She didn’t know exactly why, that is, but she thought running away would be cool and fresh and delicious, and as she walked, she raised both arms, her hand closed around the money, as if a breeze might lift her up. It would be a relief to run away. That was why Simon had done it. If a reporter asked, that was what she’d say. When she reached the candy store at the corner she looked at the papers, but of course none of the headlines was about Simon.
    At home her mother had washed the breakfast dishes. There seemed to be