THE coat was advertised in Sunday’s paper. There was a picture of it which showed a lovely squirrel collar and a belt that tied in a soft bow. Mrs. Graves saw it and called to Judy, who was reading the funny paper. “Isn’t this nice-looking?” she asked.
Judy couldn’t believe her eyes. At first she thought that her mother must be thinking of getting the coat for Lois, but reason told her that Lois had a winter coat, new last year, and that her own coat was too tight across the shoulders and too short in the sleeves. She drew in her breath so sharply and with such rapture that she hiccoughed. Mrs. Graves frowned. “Judy!” she said, mechanically.
“Fur!” Judy gasped. “Oh boy!” She leaned over her mother’s shoulder to read the advertisement. “Coat of feathery wool tweed, gossamer soft, with lamb’s-wool interlining, dashing squirrel collar which buttons snugly under the chin, and fitted waist to give you the new Continental look. Comes in colors as gay as the autumn woods. Brown, grape, leaf red, and henna. Sizes 7 to 14. Price—$29.50.”
“Well, do you like it?” Mrs. Graves asked.
“Like it!” Judy repeated. “It’s perfect. Oh, Mother!”
“Let’s see it,” Lois said. She folded her part of the funny paper and laid it neatly on the table. When she walked, she took short, prim steps and her skirt swung from side to side from her slender, childish hips. She looked at the coat critically.
“It’s awfully nice,” she agreed, “except that the belt is going to look peculiar, to say the least.”
Her eyes travelled coldly to Judy’s middle. “Judy shouldn’t wear a belt, especially a belt with a bow. She’ll be excruciating in it. It will make her look like a sack of meal.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Mrs. Graves said.
“She’s not!” Judy cried. “She’s jealous, that’s all. She doesn’t want me to have a coat with a fur collar because she has a coat with a fur collar, and she wants to be the only one.”
Lois laughed tolerantly. “Don’t be absurd,” she said. “Get the coat, by all means, if you don’t mind looking like a sack of meal. Or worse.”
“What do you mean worse?” Judy asked grimly.
“You know,” Lois said meaningly. “What I told you.”
Judy’s face was white and her lips trembled. “I won’t.”
“Oh, yes you will. With that big bow.”
“Will what?” Mrs. Graves asked.
“What are you two talking about?”
“She’s mean,” Judy said. “She wants to spoil everything, and I won’t let her.”
“Will what?” Mrs. Graves repeated.
“Look pregnant.” Judy blurted it out.
Mrs. Graves put the paper down in her lap. “I have never,” she told them sternly, “heard such dreadful talk. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
“Lois was the one. She’s always saying it.”
“Go to your room, Lois, and stay there until I say you may come out,” Mrs. Graves said. Her eyes followed Lois’s slim figure as she left, and she sighed. “Well, we’ll see.”
“Please,” Judy begged. She stood in front of her mother, her dark-brown eyebrows meeting in a line as she frowned anxiously.
Mrs. Graves leaned forward and pulled at her daughter’s skirt. “I don’t know why your skirts always hike up that way. It must be the way you sit on them.”
Judy smoothed her dress over her round, firm little stomach. “Please,” she said.
“I’ll see.”
“Can we go tomorrow ? “ she asked.
“If we go at all, we’ll go next Saturday morning,” Mrs. Graves answered. “And I don’t want to hear another word about it.”
“But it might be gone by next Saturday.” Judy had a sharp vision of dozens of little girls snatching at the coats and wearing them out of the store, looking triumphantly Continental.
“Don’t be silly,” Mrs. Graves said.
“They have hundreds of them.”
Judy walked slowly back to her chair and picked up the funny paper, but it had lost its flavor. She went quietly to her mother’s room and stood in front of the long mirror that was set in the door of the closet. She was tall for her twelve years and heavily built. From her shoulders to her knees she was entirely shapeless, which gave her a square, broad look in spite of her height. Her summer tan had faded and her face had a rather ghastly yellow tinge. Below her skirt, which was too short for her, her legs were hard, muscular, and covered with scratches. Her dress, a soft-blue one, smocked at the sleeves, was supposed to hang gracefully from the shoulders in straight folds, but instead it pulled as though she had been stuffed into it. She wore two rings on her fingers—an aquamarine and a turquoise in gold settings. She had outgrown them and they drew her fingers in at their bases and made them look like sausages. She wore two charm bracelets of a brassy color and a locket and chain that fastened so tightly around her neck it seemed it might throttle her. In the locket was a rather dim snapshot of a kitten and a clear picture of Tyrone Power, clipped from a movie magazine. Her darkbrown hair hung straight below her ears and was held in place by numerous bobbie pins and two ready-made bows. Her toenails, under her wool socks and scuffed brown oxfords, were painted with a decadent pink mother-of-pearl polish.
She sucked in her stomach, held her breath, and pulled her dress in at the waist. And, while the change in her silhouette reflected in the mirror was almost imperceptible, her eyes shone with a terrible optimism.
SHE lived through the week that followed slightly breathless from holding her stomach in and quite faint from going without her lunch. She wore her old coat tolerantly to school each day and treated it with disrespect, throwing it on the floor of the coatroom and kicking it into the closet of her room at night. And at recess, in the warm security of friendship, she boasted a little. “Oh, bilge!” she exclaimed. “I just now remembered that I’ve got to go shopping Saturday. Have to get a new coat and stuff.”
Her best friend murmured, “How too filthy,” with understanding.
“Oh, foul,” Judy said complacently. “Of course, this poor old thing’s a wreck. I always loathed it, anyway. I wouldn’t have picked it out in the first place if it hadn’t been for snotty old Lois. She’s always right, of course.”
• •
“Oh, needless to say.”
“But,” Judy went on, “as long as what will be will be, I might as well get something stunning while I’m about it. Something with a fur collar and fitted.”
“If charming Lois doesn’t butt in.”
“Oh, I guess charming Lois won’t butt in this time. I think fur softens the face, don’t you?”
“Definitely.”
WHEN she awoke Saturday morning, she had the half-sick feeling of anticipation of Christmas Eve. She bathed and dressed carefully, rubbing a little talcum powder on her nose and looking at her face closely to make sure it didn’t show. She was on time for breakfast.
“Good morning, Judy,” her mother said. “You have a little talcum powder on your nose, dear. Rub it off.”
Across the table, Lois smiled and her eyes closed like a cat’s.
“Well, Judy,” her father said, “I hear you’re going shopping today.” She sighed. “I suppose so.”
“You suppose so,” Lois jeered. “She hasn’t been able to eat for a week.”
“Mother,” Judy pleaded, “does she have to come with us?”
“She does,” Mrs. Graves answered. “Now, not so early in the morning, girls, please!”
As Judy helped herself to two tablespoons of sugar, Lois shook her head meaningly. “Better watch yourself,” she said. “Not that it isn’t too late, P. K.” P. K. meant Powerful Katinka.
“You’re getting too old to tease your sister every minute, Lois,” Mrs. Graves said.
“Fifteen isn’t so old,” Judy scoffed. “She tells everyone she’s sixteen. Fifteen is just a baby age, really.”
“If I’m a baby, what does that make you?” Lois asked.
“Quiet! Or you both stay home,” Mrs. Graves said.
It was after ten when they left the house. The day was sharp and bright, and the wind blew the dried brown leaves along the brick sidewalk next to the Park. Judy noticed that Lois and her mother had that expression on their faces. It was a look they put on every time they went out. An aloof, indifferent look. When they wore it, they never glanced directly at anyone or anything, as though there was something indecent about a direct gaze. Lois wore her coat with the beaver collar and a tiny hat tilted forward on her head. Her kid gloves were immaculate, and she seemed like a delicate miniature of her mother. As they waited for a bus she stood quietly, and when the bus came she helped her mother on. “As though she were a lousy cripple,” Judy thought. She resentfully pinched Lois.
“Would you like to sit next to the window, Judy?” Mrs. Graves asked.
“Heavens, no!” Judy exclaimed, her voice polite and amused.
“I’d feel better if you did.” Her mother stood holding on to the back of the seat until Judy slid past her. “If you begin to feel funny, let me know and I’ll open the window wider.”
Mrs. Graves took three dimes from her bag and handed them to Judy.
“Here,” she said. “You may put them in.”
Judy took the money in her slippery fabric glove and one dime dropped to the floor. “How can you be so clumsy?” Mrs. Graves said. She moved her feet to one side. “Do you see it?”
Judy leaned over and her coat pulled at the seams.
The conductor passed down the aisle, clicking his machine and calling, “Fares, please!”
Lois turned around in her seat. “Never a dull moment,” she said.
It was some time before Judy found the dime, and her gloves were dusty from the floor. She paid the fares and sat back in her seat, looking out the window, her cheeks crimson.
THEY got off the bus at Thirty-eighth Street. As they entered the store, Judy took off her coat and carried it. It would not do, she thought, for the saleswoman to see her wearing anything so decidedly un-Continental.
The carpets were soft in the coat department and the place looked sleekly elegant. The girl who came to wait on them was slim and smart in a black silk dress with a lace jabot. Her face lit up when she saw Lois. “Something for this young lady?” she asked.
“Not today,” Mrs. Graves answered. “I would like to see the coat you advertised in last Sunday’s Tribune for this little girl.” She rested her hand on Judy’s shoulder.
“Oh, yes,” the salesgirl said vaguely. She looked at Judy speculatively. “Well, we’ll see. Were you interested in any particular color?”
“Leaf red,” Judy said.
The girl went away, and after a time reappeared with a coat hanging over her arm. As she approached, Judy could see the soft gray of a squirrel collar. The girl held up the coat before Judy’s dazzled eyes. “This is the one that was advertised, size fourteen.”
It was a soft, bright red and the fur collar was even bigger than it had looked in the picture. The back was fitted and the belt that tied in a bow hung below the hem.
“That’s it!” Judy cried. “That’s the one!”
“Goodness! Not so loud,” Mrs. Graves reproved her.
Judy took off her gloves and laid them on the chair. She turned her back to the salesgirl and held her arms stiffly and slipped them into the sleeves. They went in easily at first, but the coat caught above the elbows.
“I was afraid of that,” the salesgirl said. “I’m afraid she’s a little large for a fourteen.”
“Oh,” Mrs. Graves said. “Does it come any larger?”
“No,” the girl answered. “Size fourteen is the largest we carry on this floor. You’d better try the Junior Misses.”
Judy stood with her arms in the coat. She pulled it up and could feel the fur collar around her neck. “Have they one exactly like this?” she asked.
• •
“I really couldn’t say,” the girl answered.
“Come, Judy,” her mother said briskly. “Take it off and we’ll look someplace else.”
Judy pulled at the sleeves and the coat slipped to the floor. The sight of it lying there was more than she could bear, and she stooped quickly and caught it in her arms. “I don’t want another coat,” she said. “If I can’t have this one, I’d rather wear my old coat forever.”
She held it close and buried her chin in the fur. Her hard, plump little body was tense.
The salesgirl smiled tolerantly. “It’s too bad,” she said. “Now, if it were for this young lady . . .” She nodded at Lois.
Lois drew herself up and looked at the girl coldly. “Really, it’s not my coat at all. I should think anyone could see that.”
She stepped forward and pulled the coat from Judy’s arms. “For heaven’s sake, turn around and get into this,” she said.
Something in her voice lifted the bleakness from Judy’s heart. She put her arms back in the sleeves and Lois tugged. The coat went on. It was too tight across the shoulders and it didn’t meet by two inches in the front, but it went on.
• •
“Lois,” Mrs. Graves said. “It won’t do. Have you lost your mind?”
“Anybody would think,” Lois told her, pulling the coat into place and tying the belt in a big bow, “that nobody had ever heard of alterations in this family. Besides, it’s perfectly silly to think that Judy could wear a junior-miss coat. It would be too old for her.
You don’t want her to look like her own grandmother, do you?”
“But—” the salesgirl said.
“It would be too old,” Lois repeated firmly.
“Well,” Mrs. Graves said doubtfully.
Lois walked backward and looked at Judy. Her wrists hung awkwardly from the sleeves, the bow caught her in the pit of the stomach, but the fur collar buttoned snugly about her chin and her eyes were shining.
“I think it’s perfectly charming,” Lois said. “Of course, no matter what you put on Judy, she looks as though she were going to you know what.” ♦