Things Invisible to See Read Online Free PDF Page A

seriously.
    “Can you get off work on Wednesday? I could cut class. We could drive into Detroit and knock around Hudson’s. It’s a great place for lunch on Wednesdays. They have fashion shows in the dining room.”
    “I can’t think of anything I need to buy at Hudson’s,” said Ben.
    “Don’t you give your mom a Christmas present?”
    “Yeah, but Christmas is more than a month away.”
    “In a month everything will be picked over,” snapped Marsha. “Besides, we could ride the escalators.” Taking his silence for consent, she added, “You can pick me up around ten in the morning.”
    Click.
    She never said good-bye, and she never gave Ben a chance to say it.
    Clare Bishop. Who was Clare Bishop? He knew the name of everybody in his class. Two hundred names. He didn’t recognize hers. He dragged out his old yearbooks, determined to find her.
    Under the junior class picture for ’41, her name was listed among the missing.
    She was also missing from the sophomore class picture in ’40. But he found Marsha, smiling broadly, three months before her mother remarried and Marsha Kerlikoski transferred to Country Day and became Marsha Deller.
    In the yearbook for ’39, Clare’s name appeared under the freshman class picture, and Ben searched row after row until he found her: a child with long straight hair who had closed her eyes at the wrong moment. What did she look like now, this sleeper in the middle row of two hundred ninth graders?

4
Easy as Walking on Water
    O VER THE URGENT STACCATO of Lowell Thomas spitting out Monday’s six o’clock news, the telephone rang, and Helen Bishop, who was guiding a pillowslip through the mangle, called from the cellar, “Don’t answer it, Hal. It’s bad news.”
    “No news could be worse than what I’m hearing,” said Hal. “We’re practically at war.”
    He picked up the receiver.
    “Hello?”
    “Hal?” crackled a faint voice at the other end. “Hal? I can hardly hear you.”
    Helen’s sisters sounded so exactly alike on the phone that Hal could never be sure whether he was talking to Vicky or Nell. But it sounded like long distance. It would be Vicky, calling from Grosse Pointe.
    “Vicky?” he guessed.
    “I hope I didn’t wake anybody,” said Vicky. The line snapped and roared, as if she were chewing on it.
    “We’re all up,” said Hal.
    “How’s Clare?”
    “Not too good,” he said and felt his voice choking up.
    “Call Helen to the phone. And tell her to turn off the iron. She’s burning the sheets.”
    “What makes you think—?”
    “I can smell it,” said Vicky. Of her acute sense of smell Vicky would only say, “It’s the aftereffects of scarlet fever” and “It runs in the family.”
    Almost immediately there was a distinct smell of scorched linen, and the connection opened up loud and clear, as if they’d both dropped into a lower altitude.
    “Hold on,” said Hal. “I’ll call Helen.”
    He opened the door to the cellar and shouted, “Vicky’s calling you from Grosse Pointe!”
    Then he headed upstairs to listen on the bedroom extension. Helen clumped breathlessly into the hall and collapsed on the love seat and put the receiver to her ear.
    “Here I am.”
    “How’s Clare?” asked Vicky.
    “I was with her again last night. She’s having some trouble moving her legs.”
    “She can’t walk,” said Hal on the extension.
    “You mean she’s paralyzed?” asked Vicky.
    “So far the tests don’t show any nerve or muscle damage,” Helen went on.
    “Isn’t it nice you’ve got Nell to help you,” said Vicky.
    Helen and Vicky both knew their youngest sister had never done a lick of housework all the years they were growing up together. As the oldest, Helen had done it all. The ironing: her father’s shirts with the little tucks in them. The dishes: her mother saved them for her, both lunch and breakfast, to do when she came home from school.
    “Nell never turns her hand,” said Helen. “She teaches till four,