But Mama didn’t stay in bed. Instead she put on her kimono and went out on the front porch where Mrs. Friend was sitting rocking in the dark.

“I kinda miss the merry-go-round music,” she said to Mrs. Friend. “It makes everything more lonesome now, doesn’t it?”

Papa came home three days later in a new blue suit with a checkered tie and a cane and his moustache shaved off so that Florrie didn’t know him and wouldn’t go to him. This time he had brought a necklace of shells from Atlantic City for Mama and saltwater taffy and a little box with two white mice in it and a big bath towel named Gilsey. The children played with the mice while Mama sat on his lap in the big chair. They forgot about their secret until suddenly Papa said, “A funny thing happened to me in Mansfield. An old trollop from some street show there came up to me in the Parker House and claimed she knew me. Said she was a friend of my wife’s. I knew it was some kinda funny business so I walked off and next thing I see her working the same thing on Hartwell of the Eugenia Candy Company. You meet a lot of queer ones, travelling around.”

“Oh, Harry!” Mama said in a low voice. Then she said, “There’s something I want to tell you. You children had better go to bed now.”

Marcia and Lena hung around, wanting to hear and help tell all about Rosetta’s visit, but their father hoisted one of them to each shoulder and marched upstairs, whistling “Marching Through Georgia,” leaving Florrie in the crib downstairs as usual.

“But we wanted to tell the secret!” Lena protested as he tumbled them on their bed.

“I can spell shampoo,” Marcia said. “I can read it, too.”

“You help your mother, that’s all I ask,” said Papa.

Later they heard their father’s voice getting louder and louder downstairs, their mother’s more pleading.

“But I had to get the money, somewhere, Harry,” their mother was saying. “That’s all I took her in for.”

“So you don’t trust me!” their father shouted. “If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a dozen times that I’m going to send you some money, but oh, no, you believe your mother and Lois and neighbors, take their word against mine every time! Take in a carnival trollop in my home to make some cash as if your own husband didn’t look after you! Daisy, I don’t understand you! Don’t you love me any more, Daisy; is that it?”

“Oh, Harry, you know—” their mother’s voice was muffled now, very likely on Papa’s forgiving shoulder. “I wouldn’t hurt you for anything in the world. It’s all my fault, darling. But look—here’s the three dollars!”

“Keep it,” Papa said gruffly. “Buy yourself a porterhouse steak with it tomorrow.”

7

ONE OF THE CURIOUS things about everybody else, to Marcia, was their need for a Friend. Lena had to have a Friend, Mary Evelyn; Grandma had to have a Friend, Mrs. Carmel; and even Papa had a Friend. A friend was someone who did everything differently from you and was a source of unending fascination. It was an honor to have a Friend call on you, or praise you, and you talked about your Friend proudly because a Friend was always richer, handsomer, and wiser than you—at least at first. A Friend gave you advice, sometimes presents, and his lack in any respect was well-advised, in fact a virtue.