Come Along with Me by Shirley Jackson Page B

that this was surely not going to be permanent; she could not endure having him gone for so long every day, although she had felt little about parting from John; moreover, if he kept doing John’s things he might grow imperceptibly more like John. We will simply have to go away, she thought. She was pleased, seeing him get into the car; she would gladly share with him—indeed, give him outright—all that had been John’s, so long as he stayed her stranger.
    She laughed while she did her housework and dressed the baby. She took satisfaction in unpacking his suitcase, which he had abandoned and forgotten in a corner of the bedroom, as though prepared to take it up and leave again if she had not been as he thought her, had not wanted him to stay. She put away his clothes, so disarmingly like John’s and wondered for a minute at the closet; would there be a kind of delicacy in him about John’s things? Then she told herself no, not so long as he began with John’s wife, and laughed again.
    The baby was cross all day, but when Smalljohn came home from nursery school his first question was—looking up eagerly—“Where is Daddy?”
    â€œDaddy has gone to the office,” and again she laughed, at the moment’s quick sly picture of the insult to John.
    Â * * * 
    Half a dozen times during the day she went upstairs, to look at his suitcase and touch the leather softly. She glanced constantly as she passed through the dining room into the corner where the small shelves would be someday, and told herself that they would find a tiny little man, all purple and blue and gold, to stand on the shelves and guard them from intrusion.
    When the children awakened from their naps she took them for a walk and then, away from the house and returned violently to her former lonely pattern (walk with the children, talk meaninglessly of Daddy, long for someone to talk to in the evening ahead, restrain herself from hurrying home: he might have telephoned), she began to feel frightened again; suppose she had been wrong? It could not be possible that she was mistaken; it would be unutterably cruel for John to come home tonight.
    Then, she heard the car stop and when she opened the door and looked up she thought, no, it is not my husband, with a return of gladness. She was aware from his smile that he had perceived her doubts, and yet he was so clearly a stranger that, seeing him, she had no need of speaking.
    She asked him, instead, almost meaningless questions during that evening, and his answers were important only because she was storing them away to reassure herself while he was away. She asked him what was the name of their Shakespeare professor in college, and who was that girl he liked so before he met Margaret. When he smiled and said that he had no idea, that he would not recognize the name if she told him, she was in delight. He had not bothered to master all of the past, then; he had learned enough (the names of the children, the location of the house, how she liked her cocktails) to get to her, and after that, it was not important, because either she would want him to stay, or she would, calling upon John, send him away again.
    â€œWhat is your favorite food?” she asked him. “Are you fond of fishing? Did you ever have a dog?”
    â€œSomeone told me today,” he said once, “that he had heard I was back from Boston, and I distinctly thought he said that he heard I was dead in Boston.”
    He was lonely, too, she thought with sadness, and that is why he came, bringing a destiny with him: now I will see him come every evening through the door and think, this is not my husband, and wait for him remembering that I am waiting for a stranger.
    â€œAt any rate,” she said, “
you
were not dead in Boston, and nothing else matters.”
    She saw him leave in the morning with a warm pride, and she did her housework and dressed the baby; when Smalljohn came