Thirteen dollars and fifty cents for a doll only ten inches high.
“Take it,” Therese wanted to say to them. “It really is too expensive, but I’ll give it to you. Frankenberg’s won’t miss it.”
But the women in the cheap cloth coats, the timid men huddled inside shabby mufflers would be gone, wistfully glancing at other counters as they made their way back to the elevators. If people came for a doll, they didn’t want anything else. A doll was a special kind of Christmas gift, practically alive, the next thing to a baby.
There were almost never any children, but now and again one would come up, generally a little girl, very rarely a little boy, her hand held firmly by a parent. Therese would show her the dolls she thought the child might like. She would be patient, and finally a certain doll would bring that metamorphosis in the child’s face, that response to make-believe that was the purpose of all of it, and usually that was the doll the child went away with.
Then one evening after work, Therese saw Mrs. Robichek in the coffee and doughnut shop across the street. Therese often stopped in the doughnut shop to get a cup of coffee before going home. Mrs. Robichek was at the back of the shop, at the end of the long curving counter, dabbling a doughnut into her mug of coffee.
Therese pushed and thrust herself toward her, through the press of girls and coffee mugs and doughnuts. Arriving at Mrs. Robichek’s elbow, she gasped, “Hello,” and turned to the counter, as if a cup of coffee had been her only objective.
“Hello,” said Mrs. Robichek, so indifferently that Therese was crushed.
Therese did not dare look at Mrs. Robichek again. And yet their shoulders were actually pressed together! Therese was half finished with her coffee, when Mrs. Robichek said dully, “I’m going to take the Independent subway. I wonder if we’ll ever get out of here.” Her voice was dreary, not as it had been the day in the cafeteria. Now she was like the hunched old woman Therese had seen creeping down the stairs.
“We’ll get out,” Therese said reassuringly.