The Necktie

JOHN E. O'CONNOR

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For her trip down to the railroad station Mrs. Hartley had put on her lightest summer dress, a white skimmer silhouette with open collar and brass buttons. She had better dresses, but none more cool. Though on a day like this, Mrs. Hartley decided, coolness was simply impossible. Nothing less than air conditioning could have saved her from the murderous Tidewater heat, and by the time the taxi had reached the station she was perspiring freely. It wasn't much better inside the station house, despite the noisy working of a fan perched upon the cigarette machine. The clerk on duty informed her that the train from New York would be fifteen minutes late, so Mrs. Hartley went outside to the station platform, and there she waited.

There was a meager breeze on the platform, and the air was heavy with the smell of salt and loud with the shouting of three negro children playing tag on the vacant lots between the railroad and the warehouse district. With a handkerchief Mrs. Hartley patted away the little slivers of perspiration from her upper lip. She didn't mind her discomfort. What worried her was the possibility of her looking a fright by the time the train

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mattachine REVIEW

arrived, bringing home her son Glenn, whom she hadn't seen for years. open, Mrs. Hartley wanted to look good for Glenn. She had the sort of large-featured face that never loses its beauty, and a figure that was extraordinary for a woman of fifty years, Mrs. Hartley felt a sudden surge of pleasure, brought on by the familiarity of the station house and the vacant lots and the warehouses. They took her back to the early years of her marriage, when she and Mr. Hartley and Glenn had lived in a duplex just four blocks from the station and right across the street from the Lev eridges. The Leveridges were good neighbors who soon became their best friends. They had two children: a daughter, Louise, whom Mrs. Hartley did not see much of, since she played with the girls from a different block; and a son, Rick, whom Mrs. Hartley saw almost as frequently as Glenn, for the two boys were constant companions. Mrs., Hartley and her husband had always approved of Rick as a playmate for Glenn: they seemed pretty evenly matched in strength, in intelligence, and in disposition, without either tending to overwhelm the other. After school and during their vacations, the boys would go off together, usually to the lots by the railroad, which had been unofficially designated as the neighbor-

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