Highsmith, Patricia by The Price of Salt Page B

tired. Come on to bed.”
    Carol took her to the room that Harge had gone into Sunday, and turned down the covers of one of the twin beds. It might have been Harge’s room, Therese thought. There was certainly nothing about it that suggested a child’s room. She thought of Rindy’s possessions that Harge had taken from this room, and imagined Harge moving first from the bedroom he shared with Carol, then letting Rindy bring her things into this room, keeping them here, closing himself and Rindy away from Carol.
    Carol laid some pajamas on the foot of the bed. “Good night, then,” she said at the door. “Merry Christmas. What do you want for Christmas?”
    Therese smiled suddenly. “Nothing.”
    That night she dreamed of birds, long, bright red birds like flamingos, zipping through a black forest and making scallopy patterns, arcs of red that curved like their cries. Then her eyes opened and she heard it really, a soft whistle curving, rising and coming down again with an extra note at the end, and behind it the real, feebler twitter of birds.
    The window was a bright gray. The whistling began again, just below the window, and Therese got out of bed. There was a long open-topped car, in the driveway, and a woman standing in it, whistling. It was like a dream she looked out on, a scene without color, misty at the edges.
    Then she heard Carol’s whisper, as clearly as if all three of them were in the same room together, “Are you going to bed or getting up?”
    The woman in the car with her foot on the seat said just as softly, “Both,” and Therese heard the tremor of repressed laughter in the word and liked her instantly. “Go for a ride?” the woman asked. She was looking up at Carol’s window with a big smile that Therese had just begun to see.
    “You nitwit,” Carol whispered.
    “You alone?”
    “No.”
    “Oh-oh.”
    “It’s all right. Do you want to come in?”
    The woman got out of the car.
    Therese went to the door of her room and opened it. Carol was just coming into the hall, tying the belt of her robe.
    “Sorry I wakened you,” Carol said. “Go back to bed.”
    “I don’t mind. Can I come down?”
    “Well, of course!” Carol smiled suddenly. “Get a robe out of the closet.”
    Therese got a robe, probably a robe of Harge’s, she thought, and went downstairs.
    “Who made the Christmas tree?” the woman was asking.
    They were in the living room.
    “She did.” Carol turned to Therese. “This is Abby. Abby Gerhard, Therese Belivet.”
    “Hello,” Abby said.
    “How do you do.” Therese had hoped it was Abby. Abby looked at her now with the same bright, rather popeyed expression of amusement that Therese had seen when she stood in the car.
    “You make a fine tree,” Abby told her.
    “Will everybody stop whispering?” Carol asked.
    Abby chafed her hands together and followed Carol into the kitchen. “Got any coffee, Carol?”
    Therese stood by the kitchen table, watching them, feeling at ease because Abby paid no further attention to her, only took off her coat and started helping Carol with the coffee. Her waist and hips looked perfectly cylindrical, without any front or back, under her purple knitted suit. Her hands were a little clumsy, Therese noticed, and her feet had none of the grace of Carol’s. She looked older than Carol, and there were two wrinkles across her forehead that cut deep when she laughed and her strong arched eyebrows rose higher. And she and Carol kept laughing now, while they fixed coffee and squeezed orange juice, talking in short phrases about nothing, or nothing that was important enough to be followed.
    Except Abby’s sudden, “Well”—fishing a seed out of the last glass of orange juice and wiping her finger carelessly on her own dress—“how’s old Harge?”
    “The same,” Carol said. Carol was looking for something in the refrigerator, and watching her, Therese failed to hear all of what Abby said next, or maybe it was another of the