3 is not a Crowd

CAROL: We also have been thinking about getting a European girl as a domestic. They have employment agencies in New York that specialize in that, either from Ireland or Scandinavia, mostly. The Scandinavians are supposed to be very liberal on sex and we will probably get around to making inquiries one of these days. Again, you couldn’t expect to hit the jackpot on the first nickel, and we might have some disappointments, but with a Scandinavian girl, a young one, I think it just might work out.

BOB: Of course you’ve got to bear in mind, John, that we think about no end of things and make plans and all, and nothing ever comes of it. We enjoy the planning but we don’t actually do everything we have in mind, not by any means. I think we might up and get started on this, but we’ve been talking about it for a long while and haven’t done a thing about it up to now.

CAROL: I think we will, though.

BOB: Maybe.

CAROL: I think I’ll write a letter tomorrow. I wonder if you get to look at a photograph of the girl or you just take what they send you?

BOB: What I was getting at, about how we like to plan a number of things, some of which we know there’s hardly a chance in the world that we’ll do—

CAROL: You’re not going to tell him?

BOB: Why not?

CAROL: I don’t know.

BOB: We’re telling everything else. And this isn’t even something we’ve done yet, and probably never will, so what’s the point in keeping shut about it?

CAROL: I don’t know.

BOB: Don’t you want me to say anything?

CAROL: Well, you already said enough so that John here will only suspect worse than anything you could possibly say, so why don’t you go ahead? You might as well tell him what it is.

BOB: Well, there is this charity in New York where you can adopt a foster child in another country. You pay them $192 a year and they take care of the child, pay for food and clothing and put a roof on their hut and all the other things that the child needs. And from time to time they send you reports on how the child is doing, and pictures of her, and you can write her a letter once a month and she writes letters to you once a month which they translate and send to you.

CAROL: And we adopted one a year ago. A daughter, obviously.

BOB: We didn’t have anything in mind but to do a good deed for someone. We believe in charity, but just giving money to some big organization, you don’t feel you’re making a real contribution. All you’re doing is throwing one drop into a big bucket, and you keep feeling that if the government really wanted to cure cancer they would do better taking the money out of taxes than having all these charities. But something like this, you participate, and you see the results of what you’re doing. When you send a check to the cancer society you don’t know if it does any good or not, but here we know that one particular child won’t go hungry and will have clothes to wear.

CAROL: She’s eleven years old. She lives in Colombia, in South America—

BOB: Oh, Christ, he knows where Colombia is. He wasn’t going to think you meant Colombia, Missouri.

CAROL: Her name is Estrellita, which means Little Star. She’s part Indian and has the most beautiful face. Black shoe-button eyes and straight hair and the most beautiful innocent face you ever saw.

BOB: And now and then Carol and I will talk about seeing if we can’t bring her up here to live with us. Not right away but when she’s a little older. You know, the advantages of living in America, and of being able to have a decent life—

CAROL: Of course you can imagine what would happen if we had her here.

BOB: Well, when you stop and think, what would be so bad about that?

CAROL: I didn’t say anything would be bad about it.

BOB: The chances are strong that we’ll never go through with it. That we won’t ever take it past the stage of something to talk about. But if we ever did, I think it would be ideal. For her and for us. I think it would work out to be a perfect relationship, if we ever did anything about it.