James got the book for her. But on the way home he stopped off to play baseball and when he finally arrived, she recalled, she hadn't asked him about it.
The next morning she remembered it just as he was leaving for school. "I put it in the parlor, Mom," said James and departed.
But she couldn't find it in the parlor and there were so many things to do, like cleaning up the mess Barbara had left in her room and fixing the rips in James' pants—she wondered if any other eleven-year-old on earth could rip so much so often—that she forgot all about it for a while.
It was as if there had been no postcard, no book. At least that was the way it was for a time.
Two days later, when Bill came home from work, he dumped himself into an easy chair and said, "Saw a funny thing today."
"I had a letter at last from Barbara," said Carrie absently, patting her hair into place and wondering what her husband would think of her if now, at the age of forty, she dyed her hair red.
Bill always told her that as a brunette she was both young-looking and pretty. The question was, would he tell her the same thing if she were a redhead? Probably not. Men were foolishly conservative about such things.
"Barbara said school supplies are very expensive this year," she went on. "She wants more money."
"It was really funny." If she could ignore his conversation he could ignore hers right back. That was one of the unfortunate things, she realized, that marriage taught a man. "You know that vacant lot with the broken fence, where the kids play? Know who I saw playing baseball there today?"
"James, of course. But, Bill, Barbara said—"