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By Root 8944 0

’ clubs, bridge clubs, milliners and dressmakers. Further afield invitations were received by the Mother Superiors of the Ursuline Order, the Poor Clares and the Sisters of Mercy. They were received by the overseers of Jesuit schools and retreats, Franciscan Fathers, Cowley Fathers, Paulists and Misericordia Sisters. They were delivered to mansions remodeled into country clubs, boarding schools, retreats for the insane, alcohol cures, health farms, wildlife sanctuaries, wallpaper factories, drafting rooms and places where the aged and the infirm waited sniffily for the angel of death in front of their television sets. When the bells of Saint Michael’s rang that afternoon there were no more than twenty-five people in the body of the church and two of these were rooming-house proprietors who had come out of curiosity. When the time came Moses said the words loudly and with a full heart. After the ceremony most of the guests returned to Clear Haven and danced to the music of a phonograph. Sarah and Leander performed a stately waltz and said good-by. The maids filled the old champagne bottles with cheap sauterne and when the summer dusk had fallen and all the chandeliers were lighted the main fuse blew once more. Giacomo repaired it and Moses went upstairs and entered Melissa’s room by the door.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

The rocket-launching sites at Remsen Park were fifteen miles to the south and this presented a morale problem for there were hundreds or thousands of technicians like Coverly who knew nothing about the beginnings or the ends of their works. The administration met this problem by having public rocket launchings on Saturday afternoons. Transportation was furnished so that whole families could pack their sandwiches and beer and sit in bleachers to hear the noise of doom crack and see a fire that seemed to lick at the vitals of the earth. These firings were not so different from any other kind of picnic, although there were no softball games or band concerts; but there was beer to drink and children strayed and were lost and the jokes the crowd made while they waited for an explosion that was calculated to pierce the earth’s atmosphere were very human. Betsey loved all of this, but it hardly modified her feeling that Remsen Park was unfriendly. Friends were important to her and she said so. “I just come from a small town in Georgia,” she said, “and it was a very friendly place and I just believe in stepping up and making friends. After all, we only pass this way once.” As often as she made the remark about passage, it had not lost its strength. She was born; she would die.

Her overtures to Mrs. Frascati continued to be met with sullen smiles and she invited the woman in the next house—Mrs. Galen—in for a cup of coffee, but Mrs. Galen had several college degrees and an air of elegance and privilege that made Betsey uneasy. She felt that she was being scrutinized and scrutinized uncharitably and saw there was no room for friendship here. She was persistent and finally she hit on it. “I met the liveliest, nicest, friendliest woman today, honey,” she told Coverly when she kissed him at the door. “Her name’s Josephine Tellerman and she lives on M Circle. Her husband’s in the drafting room and she says she’s lived on nearly every rocket-launching reservation in the United States and she’s just full of fun and her husband’s nice too and she comes from a nice family and she asked us why didn’t we come over some night and have a drink.”

Betsey loved her neighbor. This simple act of friendship brought her all the delights and hazards of love. Coverly knew how dim and senseless Circle K had seemed to her until the moment when she met Josephine Tellerman. Now he was prepared to hear about Mrs. Tellerman for weeks and months. He was glad. Betsey and Mrs. Tellerman would do their shopping together. Betsey and Mrs. Tellerman would be on the telephone every morning. “My friend Josephine Tellerman tells me that you have some very nice lamb chops,” she would tell them at the butcher. “My friend Josephine Tellerman recommended you to me,