Five houses facing one another: white, white, white, light blue, and white, all split-levels, all with black shutters. Rochelle’s house had a miniscule front porch and, though it was too early for flowers, tidy beds where flowers had once, obviously, grown. No one seemed to be home anywhere, but inside one of the other houses a dog was yapping. Sally looked around, then back, and in that single, small moment of distraction she understood what was different. In the other houses, windows showed glimpses of rooms: a living room, an entryway, a lit kitchen. At Rochelle’s house, every curtain was drawn.
She knocked gently, and after a very long while heard sounds from inside.
“Yes?” Rochelle’s mother’s upper half emerged from the crack of the open front door. “What is it?”
“Mrs. Steiner?”
Sally saw relief on the woman’s face. Though it didn’t last.
“Mrs. Steiner? I’m Sally. Rochelle’s roommate.”
“Sally!” She stepped out all the way, onto the doorstep: a slender woman in khaki pants and a Fair Isle sweater. And slippers. “Of course! Sally! But Rochelle didn’t tell me.”
She took Sally in her open arms and squeezed, and there was the briefest emanation of something sour and sharp. “I thought of surprising her,” Sally said.
Rochelle’s mother stiffened. “Then she doesn’t know you’re here?”
“I … well, no. Surprise! I mean, I thought, I’d love to see my roommate’s hometown…”
And I knew she’d say no if I suggested it, Sally thought, or rather, she admitted to herself for the first time. Because this had been a mistake, she already understood. A bad one. Rochelle would not be happily surprised to have her turn up unannounced this way, with a bag on wheels and a full ten days of uncommitted time until they both had to be back in Ithaca. All at once, she wanted to get away from this oddly different house before Rochelle emerged.
“She’s gone into town,” Rochelle’s mother said. “But she won’t be long. Would you like to wait for her on the porch?”
Sally frowned. It wasn’t precisely cold outside, but it wasn’t porch weather, either. And it was now undeniably getting on toward evening. “Uh … okay,” she managed. She took the handle of her bag and walked behind Mrs. Steiner to the little porch. There were two plastic chairs there, behind the railing, with a small wooden table between them.
“I’ll bring you out some tea!” said Mrs. Steiner, as if this hospitable gesture offset the strangeness of not being invited … actually … inside.
Sally sat, the old plastic giving, slightly, beneath her. She drew her wool cardigan around her shoulders, pretending she was comfortable—which, as the sun’s warmth continued to drain, became increasingly challenging. After a few moments, Mrs. Steiner emerged with a green ceramic mug full of tea, or more accurately, water with a tea bag trailing from it. The water was barely hot.
“Now, you come from the city, I remember.”
“Oh. Yes,” Sally said. She wondered if she should take a sip to be polite.
“I met you, the day you girls moved in?”
She seemed to be reminding Sally, or herself. “Yes.”
Mrs. Steiner nodded. Sally wasn’t sure what she was agreeing with, exactly.
“It makes a difference, seeing the sort of person your child will be living with. You’ll see one day, when you take your daughter to college.”
Sally made herself nod. In the dark obscurity of her own future, this was one scenario she felt certain would never occur.
“I’m sure that’s true,” she said instead. “You know, Mrs. Steiner, this was kind of a last-minute idea, this visit, and I’m thinking I’d better be getting on home. I didn’t have a very good grasp of how far out of the city Ellesmere was, so I miscalculated how long it would take to get back. If you could tell Rochelle I just stopped to say hi, that would be great…”