THEA

The apartment where Ma and I lived was a single room plus bath above the garage of a house in a new neighborhood on the north side of Oklahoma City. Our apartment was only really big enough to accommodate one person, and had never been fully finished, but it was my seventh “home” in four years, and I wanted to keep it. I’d been the one to spot the doctor’s advertisement in the paper and the promise of a separate apartment was the thing that had made me insist Ma apply. I’d watched her lose job after job from being caught drunk and neglecting her duties. She only ever drank at home, so Prohibition notwithstanding, she’d never been arrested, but each job-loss meant starting over, broke, in a new place. I figured a separate apartment to hide her when she was in no condition to be seen greatly increased my chances of finishing a year at the same school I started in.

When I got to the doctor’s kitchen, I brought in the milk from the back porch and lit the burner under the percolator for Ma. Then I cut bread for toast, sliced bacon, and set eggs and butter within easy reach of the frying pan I’d left ready on the stove when I washed the dishes the night before, meanwhile stuffing my face with whatever came to hand. After that, I assembled and filled the coffee-making contraption the doctor referred to as a “cafetière,” because the doctor would not drink percolated coffee. Mother told me this was because he was “Old Money,” an expression I didn’t understand as meaning anything beyond that he was very particular about coffee.

The kitchen clock told me I’d miss the beginning of my first class, but luckily this was only geometry. I ranked a solid second in geometry at Central High School, and my teacher usually pretended not to notice if I was tardy.

The bacon was half-done, and I was about to begin frying eggs when my mother finally made her appearance. I’d really be late for class now. I didn’t complain about this, though, because Ma looked cheerful and was steady on her feet, which she wasn’t always. She felt so good, in fact, that she even offered me her cheek for a kiss.

“Go on,” she said. “I’ll take over.”

I poured her the coffee I’d promised, then ran back up to the apartment both to retrieve my schoolbooks and to ransack it, quickly but thoroughly, for any sign of a bottle or flask. There wasn’t one, and even better, my stash of carfare nickels was untouched. Ten nickels a week for the streetcar was my pocket money, and Ma usually left it alone, but if nickels stood between her and a drink she was determined to have, she’d help herself to anything she could find.

Then, schoolbooks under my arm, I ran for the streetcar stop two blocks away.

I saw Dr. Hallam at the window of the front room as I passed. He saw me, too, which was too bad. The doctor knew I existed, of course, but it was my policy to make myself as inconspicuous as possible to maintain the illusion that my mother was the one—the only one—who got his house clean and his food cooked.

I couldn’t entirely figure out the doctor. He was youngish, nice looking, and mannerly—things everybody wishes they were, but many aren’t. Since he was a doctor, I guessed he must also be very smart and educated. He owned more books than some libraries, and had a car, nice clothes, and a house, so obviously he had plenty of money. He let my mother buy what she needed for housekeeping and paid the bills without even looking at them. Taken altogether, in fact, Dr. Hallam had everything anybody could possibly want in life—and as far as I could see, he didn’t notice he had them or care. He didn’t seem to care about anything, in fact. He seldom talked, and I never saw him smile.

He didn’t have any sweethearts, though if he made half an effort, his looks and money would bring women around in droves, and though he’d lived in Oklahoma City for more than a year, his house was empty beyond a few sticks of dining room furniture, a bed for him to sleep in, and a desk and chair in the library. Aside from a dozen medical books and some stacks of medical magazines, the library’s two walls of shelves were empty. The books that should have been on them were still packed up in crates lining the hallway. Lamps in the doctor’s bedroom and the front room stood on the floor. The house was always going to be too big for him to live in alone. There was no helping that. It had been built for a large family who ended up not wanting it—there was a story there, but I didn’t know it—but I thought if Dr. Hallam brought in at least enough chairs and tables and sofas that he didn’t rattle around the rooms like a bean in a boxcar, he might be more comfortable.

The doctor didn’t try to be comfortable. He didn’t try to be happy. He just—lived. Worked and lived. That was all.

This annoyed me. Personally, I’d have liked to have seen a law passed that said people who had advantages—especially money—and didn’t appreciate them were obliged to share their advantages—especially money—with the rest of us. Ma and I quarreled about a lot of things, but we were always in perfect agreement about wanting more money.

At the Central High stop, I jumped off the streetcar before it stopped rolling and ran for school’s back door.