Free Concrete Angel by Patricia Abbott

else had plenty, when the other girls had a new dress for the dance, money to go into Boston to see a play, money for a dinner in town.
    She hadn’t expected to need much cash today, had no expectations for the day at all. She’d come here in a fog. In fact, she seldom set out to do what she’d done. Some part of her brain must make the plan, lay out the geography of it, and only let her in on it incrementally.
    Could she tell this to whoever came into this room? Say she hadn’t known any of this would happen—that she didn’t mean to take those things, hadn’t exactly considered her heart’s desire till it was tucked inside her purse. Would they care she’d set out from Doylestown this morning in her pretty pink suit with nothing but a jaunt into the city in mind. Then suddenly—and it always came over her like this—she had to have one or two of the beautiful things she saw, things she’d always wanted—for practically her whole life. It was as if she was in a dream—maybe she was. She did these things like she was sleepwalking. There must be a name for it.
    It would be a long time before she heard it though.
    She rose, stretched, and glanced out the tiny window, down at the people on the street floors below, people free to walk around, to have lunch, to make a purchase. Only an hour ago, it’d been she who was free and walking these streets without a care. She paced the cell-like room, thinking about the injustice of it. Occasionally a secretary or a uniformed guard opened the door, never saying a word, probably checking on whether she’d disappeared. Making sure she hadn’t magically stuffed herself in some bag or box or drawer and found her way out of the office, out of the store, much like the stuff she’d tried to take. But there was no escape, only long, sinewy hallways lined with the offices of people who’d spot her should she try to run: her captors.
    She couldn’t make herself disappear or she’d have done it long ago. Certainly done it back at Woolworth’s. Or on that bus ride home with her father. The Hobart family always used public transportation for travel to work and school, and her theft was not deemed reason enough to change this. Cars were for church and shopping trips, where carrying so many packages was out of the question, where the trip was too long. Not for prosaic destinations like the dime store. She still remembered the tired faces of the people getting on and off the bus as her father’s nose pressed hard against the window, his breath fogging it up, his faint reflection in the dirty glass a rebuke.
    She’d waited years for him to bring the day up, to ask why she took those ridiculous things, to slap her, punish her, or banish her. Instead the incident festered between them, one more thing to hold against her.
     
    H ank suddenly stood in the doorway on Wanamaker’s top floor, looking more tired than angry. His face was ashen.
    “Come on,” he said, offering his hand. “Let’s get it over with.”
    Although the gesture implied some feeling for her— some pity—his voice was cold. Holding her hand firmly, he led her out of the room. No one stood in their way in the hallway; no one peeked from drawn blinds or through open doors. Mother was in a fog still, absolutely terrified at ending her days at Eastern State Penitentiary. Horrified at the thought of being in a room the size of the one she’d left, or a smaller one, for years perhaps. Would this be her fate? Get what over with? What had Hank meant by that phrase?
    Her husband led her to a larger, brighter office in the famous Wanamaker’s Department Store, the mother ship of emporiums in Philadelphia. It was too bad she hadn’t been caught at Lit’s, she thought, as she followed him. Lit Brothers, or even Strawbridges, or Gimbels didn’t have such an exalted notion of itself. She’d have been able to bluff her way out—their security wouldn’t have made so much of it.
    The room Hank led her to was carpeted