OCR Text |
Show Woodworth/105 The bus is filled with dingy people, soft inside, who swing with the movement of the bus as if they have no will of their own. She braces herself against the window, watches the world pass outside. Parked cars: red, gray, green, women in cloth coats holding shopping bags, weighted, anchored with shopping bags. Clutching children. It really is spring. It seems like the first time she's noticed. The first time the leaves seem fully out. The elation of summer vacation swarms over her, and this time she cultivates it. The things they can do with summer. Trips to the Cape. Picnics at night, up on her roof, or with Rachael, on her back porch, looking down into the yards with their quiet vegetable patches, the still, dingy laundry drying in soot. Maybey even find out about sailing on the Charles. And the air. Her lungs cwelJ-to tho challenge of it> Opening the window, wanting even to push her head through the crack and get drunk on tho plontitudo JO& it. Like the first day, the first day of summer vacations that are always long gone. The bus leaves her in the middle of Westfield, in front of Peter's drugstore. She waves to him, still half-hidden behind his stack of vitamins, toothbrushes, tampax. He smiles and nods, hands busy somewhere out of sight. A stranger, waiting to cross the street with her, smiles too. "She's beautiful, she's in love," Marty thinks to herself. As the light changes to red and yellow, she decides to go into the drug store. Find something in there. Something to make her look the way she feels. "Hi, Pete," she calls. "Hi, Marty. How's it going?" "Oh, fine. I guess." She wanders the rows of baby oil, Pampers, razors, shampoo, conditioners, tints and bleaches. * *" Peter asks, hands still busy out of |