"Then we'll consider the car pool settled?" Mrs. Baden asked, coming in tactfully. "Naturally," I said, mentally shredding my previous sentence. "We would feel so honored to have Hi-nin—"
"Do not think of putting yourself out. We do not have a helicopter, of course, but Hi-nin and I can so easily walk."
I was rapidly becoming unable to think of anything at all because Gail was trying to use me for a merry-go-round and I kept switching her from hand to hand and I could hear her beginning to build up the ba-bas.
"My car pool," I said, "would be terribly sad to think of Hi-nin walking."
"You would?"
"Terribly."
"In such a case—if it will give you pleasure for me to accept?"
"It would," I said fervently, holding Gail under one arm as she was beginning to kick.
And on the way home all the second thoughts began.
I would be glad to have Hi-nin in the car pool. Four of the other mamas were like me, amazed that anyone was willing to put up with her child all the way to and from Playplace. I could count on them to cooperate. But Gail's mama.... I'd gone to Western State Preparation for Living with Regina Raymond Crowley.
I landed on the Crowley home and tooted for five minutes before I remembered that Regina was at work.
"Ma-ma!" Gail began.
"Wouldn't you like to come to Verne's house," I asked, "and we can call up your mama?"
"No." Well, I asked, didn't I?
I was carrying Gail down the steps from my roof when I bumped unexpectedly into Clay.
"What is that!" he exclaimed, and Gail became again flying blonde hair and kicking feet.
"Regina's child," I said. "What are you doing home?"
"Accountant sent me back. Twenty-five and a half hours is the maximum this week. Good thing, too. I've got a headache." He eyed Gail meaningfully. She was obviously not the sort of thing the doctor orders for a headache.
"I can't help it, honey," I said, sitting down on a step to tear another handkerchief square from my skirt. "I'm going to call Regina at work now."
"Don't you have a chairman to take care of things like that?"
"I am the chairman," I said proudly.
"Why in heaven's name did you let yourself get roped into something like that?"
"I was selected by Mrs. Baden!"
"Obscenity," said Clay. It is his privilege, of course, to use this word.
The arty little store where Regina works has a telephane as well as a telephone, and in color, at that. So I could see Regina in full color, taking her own good time about switching on the sound. She switched on as a sort of afterthought and tilted her nose at me. I don't suppose she can really tilt her nose up and down, but she always gives that impression.
"Gail has an incipient streptococcus infection," I said. "They sent her home."
"Ma-ma!" Gail cried.
"Why didn't they give her a shot there? That's what they did with my niece last year."
I explained why not.
Regina sighed resignedly. "Verne, people can talk you into anything. There are times when you have to be firm. I work, girl. That's why I put Gail in Playplace. I can't leave here until twelve o'clock."
"But what'll I do with Gail?"
"Take her back. Or you keep her until I get home. Sorry, Verne, but you got yourself into this."
I switched off, furious.
Then I remembered Hi-nin. I couldn't be furious. I was going to have to get Regina's cooperation.
I picked up Gail and went into the bedroom. "I do not dislike Regina Crowley," I wrote with black crayola on a piece of note paper. I stuck it into a crevice of my mirror and gave Gail my bare-shoulder decorations to play with while I concentrated on thinking up reasons why I should not dislike Regina Crowley.
"I do," Clay said, sneaking up so quietly I jumped two feet.
"So do I," I said, gazing wearily at my note. "But I have to have her in a good mood. You see, there's this Hiserean child and since I'm chairman of the car pool, I have to—"
"Don't tell me about it," Clay said. "My advice to you is get elephantiasis of your steering foot and give the whole thing up now." He glanced meaningfully at Gail, who couldn't possibly be bothering him. She was playing quietly on the floor, pulling the suction disks off my jewelry and sticking them on her legs.
When I finally got Gail home, she sped into her mother's arms and I couldn't help being a little irritated because I had been practically swinging from the ceiling dust controls to ingratiate myself, and her mama just said, "Oh, hi," and Gail was satisfied.
"By the way," I said, watching Regina hang up her dark blue hand-woven jacket, "you wouldn't mind picking up an extra child tomorrow, would you?"
"Mind! Certainly I mind. I've got as much as I can do with my job and Gail and eight children in the heli already."
"It's a Hiserean child," I said. "The mother is so lovely, Regina. She didn't want us to go to any trouble."
"That's fine. Because I'm not going to go to any trouble."
I put my fists behind my back. "Of course I understand, Regina. I think it's remarkable that you manage to do so much. And keep up with your art things as you do. But don't you think it would be an interesting experience to have a Hiserean child in the pool?"
Regina pulled off her hand-woven wrap-skirt and I was shocked to see she wore a real boudoir slip to work.
"Everybody to their own interesting experiences," she said, laughing at me. This was obviously one of her triple-level remarks.
"De gustibus," I said, to show I know a few arty things myself, "non disputandum est."
"You have such moments, Verne! Have you ever seen a Hiserean child?"
"I saw one today."
"Well."
"Well?"
"De gustibus, as you said. You know the other children will eat it alive, don't you? Your child will. Now Gail...."
It's true that Gail never kicks anyone small enough to kick back. It's also true that Billy bites.
I unclenched my fists and stretched up with a deep breath so as to relax my stomach and improve my posture.
"Hiserean children," I pointed out, "are going to have to be adjusted to our society. As I understand it, they're here to stay. Their sun blew up behind them and personally I think we're lucky they happened to drift here."
"I don't see why it's so lucky. I wish we'd gotten one of the ships full of scientific information. Or their top scientists. Or artists, for that matter. All we got were plain people. If you like to call them people."
"They're at least educated people with good sense. And we've got their ship to take apart and learn things from. And their books and, after all, some music and their gestural art. I should think you artists would find that real avant garde."
"Just hearing you say it like that is enough to kill Hiserean art."
"Regina, I know you think I'm a prig, but that isn't the point. And if it matters to you, I'm not a prig."
"Do you wear boudoir slips?" Regina was biting a real smile.
"No, I don't. But I'd like to."
"Then why don't you?"
"Because I put one on once and I thought I looked absolutely devastating and you know what my husband said?"
"I won't try to guess Clay's bon mot."
"He said, 'What did you put that on for?'"
Regina laughed until she popped a snap on her paper house dress. "But seriously," she said finally, "if he didn't know, why didn't you tell him?"
"That's not the point. The point is I am not the boudoir-slip type. My unmentionables are unmentionable for esthetic reasons only."
Regina laughed again. "Really, Verne, you're not half bad when you try."
"If you honestly think I'm not half bad, could you do it just as a favor to me? Pick up Hi-nin when you have the car pool?"
"The Hiserean child? No."
"Please, Regina. I'd do it for you except that the children would notice and it would get back to Mrs. His-tara. If there's anything I could do for you in return—"
"What could you possibly do?"
"I don't know. But I can't go back and tell that dear creature our car pool doesn't want her."
"Stop looking so intense. That's what keeps you from being the boudoir-slip type. You always look as though you're going out to break up a saloon or campaign for better Public Child Protection. The boudoir slip requires a languorous expression."
"Phooey to looking languorous. And phooey to boudoir slips. I'd wear diapers to nursery school if you'd change your mind about taking along Hi-nin."
"Would you wear a boudoir slip?"
"I—hell, yes."
"And nothing else?"
"Only my various means of support. And my respectability."
Regina laughed her tiger-on-the-third-Christian laugh. "What I want to find out," she said, "is how you manage the respectability bit."
It dawned on me while I was grinding the pepper for Clay's salad that Regina had explained herself. All of a sudden I saw straight through her and I wondered why I hadn't seen it before. Regina envied me.
Now on the face of it, that seemed unlikely. But it occurred to me that Regina's parents had been the poor but honest and uneducated sort that simply are never asked to chaperone school parties. And the fact is that they were not what Regina thought of as respectable, thou............