A Death In The Family (15 page)

Hannah stopped where she stood, bowed her head, closed her eyes, and made the sign of the Cross.

Mary lifted the receiver from its hook before the second ring, but for a moment she could neither put it to her ear, nor speak. God
help me, help me
, she whispered. “Andrew?”

“Poll?”

“Papa!” Relief and fear were equal in her. “Have you heard anything?”

“You’ve heard?”

“No. I said, ‘
Have you heard from Andrew
?’ ”

“No. Thought you might have by now.”

“No. Not yet. Not yet.”

“I must have frightened you.”

“Never mind, Papa. It’s all right.”

“Sony as hell, Poll, I shouldn’t have phoned.”

“Never mind.”

“Let us know, quick’s you hear anything.”

“Of course I will, Papa. I promise. Of course I will.”

“Shall we come up?”

“No, bless you, Papa, it’s better not, yet. No use getting all worked up till we
know
, is there?”

“That’s my girl!”

“My love to Mama.”

“Hers to you. Mine, too, needless to say. You let us know.”

“Certainly. Good-bye.”

“Poll.”

“Yes?”

“You know how I feel about this.”

“I do, Papa, and thank you. There’s no need to say it.”

“Couldn’t if I tried. Ever. And for Jay as much as you, and your mother too. You understand.”

“I do understand, Papa. Good-bye.”

“It’s only Papa,” she said, and sat down, heavily.

“Thought Andrew had phoned.”

“Yes ...” She drank tea. “He scared me half out of my wits.”

“He had no business phoning. He was a perfect fool to phone.”

“I don’t blame him. I think it’s even worse for them, sitting down there, than for us here.”

“I’ve no doubt it is hard.”

“Papa feels things a lot more than he shows.”

“I know. I’m glad you realize it.”

“I realize how very much he really does think of Jay.”

“Great—heavens, I should hope you do!”

“Well, for a long time there was no reason to be sure,” Mary retorted with spirit. “Or Mama either.” She waited a moment. “You and her, Aunt Hannah,” she said. “You know that. You tried not to show it, but I’ knew and you knew I did. It’s all right, it has been for a long time, but you do know that.”

Hannah continued to meet her eyes. “Yes, it’s true. Mary. There were all kinds of—terrible misgivings; and not without good reason, as you both came to know.”

“Plenty of good reasons,” Mary said. “But that didn’t make it any easier for us.”

“Not for any of us,” Hannah said. “Particularly you and Jay, but your mother and father too, you know. Anyone who loved you.”

“I know. I
do
know, Aunt Hannah. I don’t know how I got onto this tack. There’s nothing there to resent any more, or worry over, or be grieved by, for any of us, and hasn’t been for a long time, thank God. Why on earth did I get
off
on such a tangent! Let’s not say another word about it!”

“Just one word more, because I’m not sure you’ve ever quite known it. Have you ever realized how very highly your father
always
thought of Jay, right from the very beginning?”

Mary looked at her, sensitively and suspiciously. She thought carefully before she spoke. “I know he’s
told
me so. But every time he told me he was warning me, too. I know that, as time passed, he came to think a great deal of Jay.”

“He thinks the world of him,” Hannah rapped out.

“But, no, I never quite believed he really liked him, or respected him from the first and I never will. I think it was just some kind of soft soap.”

“Is Jay a man for soft soap?”

“No,” she smiled a little, “he certainly isn’t, ordinarily. But what
am
I to make of it? Here he was praising Jay to the skies on the one hand and on the other, why practically in the same breath, telling me one reason after another why it would be plain foolhardiness to marry him. What would
you
think!”

“Can’t you see that both things might be so—or that he might very sincerely have felt that both things were so, rather?”

Mary thought a moment. “I don’t know, Aunt Hannah. No, I don’t see quite how.”

“You learned how yourself, Mary.”

“Did I!”

“You learned there was a lot in what your father—in all our misgivings, but learning it never changed your essential opinion of him, did it? You found you could realize both things at once.”

“That’s true. Yes. I did.”

“We had to learn more and more that was good. You had to learn more and more that wasn’t so good.”

Mary looked at her with smiling defiance. “All the same, blind as I began it,” she said, “I was more right than Papa, wasn’t I? It wasn’t a
mistake
. Papa was right there’d be trouble—more than he’ll ever know or any of you—but it
wasn’t
a mistake. Was it?”

Don’t
ask
me, child,
tell
me, Hannah thought. “Obviously not,” she said.

Mary was quiet a few moments. Then she said, shyly and proudly, “In these past few months, Aunt Hannah, we’ve come to a—kind of harmoniousness that—that,” she began to shake her head. “I’ve no business talking about it.” Her voice trembled. “Least of all right now!” She bit her lips together, shook her head again, and swallowed some tea, noisily. “The way we’ve been talking,” she blurted, her voice full of tea, “it’s just like a post-mortem!” She struck her face into her hands and was shaken by tearless sobbing. Hannah subdued an impulse to go to her side. God help her, she whispered. God keep her. After a little while Mary looked up at her; her eyes were quiet and amazed. “If he dies,” she said, “if he’s dead, Aunt Hannah, I don’t know what I’ll do. I just don’t know what I’ll do.”

“God help you,” Hannah said; she reached across and took her hand. “God keep you.” Mary’s face was working. “You’ll do well. Whatever it is, you’ll do well. Don’t you doubt it. Don’t you fear.” Mary subdued her crying. “It’s well to be ready for the worst,” Hannah continued. “But we mustn’t forget, we don’t know yet.”

At the same instant, both looked at the clock.

“Certainly by very soon now, he should phone,” Mary said. “Unless
he’s
had an accident!” she laughed sharply.

“Oh soon, I’m sure,” Hannah said. Long before now, she said to herself, if it were anything but the worst. She squeezed Mary’s clasped hands, patted them, and withdrew her own hand, feeling, there’s so little comfort anyone can give, it’d better be saved for when it’s needed most.

Mary did not speak, and Hannah could not think of a word to say. It was absurd, she realized, but along with everything else, she felt almost a kind of social embarrassment about her speechlessness.

But after all, she thought, what
is
there to say! What earthly help am I, or anyone else?

She felt so heavy, all of a sudden, and so deeply tired, that she wished she might lean her forehead against the edge of the table.

“We’ve simply got to wait,” Mary said.

“Yes,” Hannah sighed.

I’d better drink some tea, she thought, and did so. Lukewarm and rather bitter, somehow it made her feel even more tired.

They sat without speaking for fully two minutes.

“At least we’re given the mercy of a little time,” Mary said slowly, “awful as it is to have to wait. To try to prepare ourselves for whatever it may be.” She was gazing studiously into her empty cup.

Hannah felt unable to say anything.

“Whatever is,” Mary went on, “it’s already over and done with.” She was speaking virtually without emotion; she was absorbed beyond feeling, Hannah became sure, in what she was beginning to find out and to face. Now she looked up at Hannah and they looked steadily into each other’s eyes.

“One of three things,” Mary said slowly. “Either he’s badly hurt but he’ll live, and at best even get thoroughly well, and at worst be a helpless cripple or an invalid or his mind impaired.” Hannah wished that she might look away, but she knew that she must not. “Or he is so terribly hurt that he will die of it, maybe quite soon, maybe after a long, terrible struggle, maybe breathing his last at this very minute and wondering where I am, why I’m not beside him.” She set her teeth for a moment and tightened her lips, and spoke again, evenly: “Or he was gone already when the man called and he couldn’t bear to be the one to tell me, poor thing.

“One, or the other, or the other. And no matter what, there’s not one thing in this world
or
the next that we can do or hope or guess at or wish or pray that can change it or help it one iota. Because whatever is, is. That’s all. And all there is now is to be ready for it, strong enough for it, whatever it may be. That’s all. That’s all that matters. It’s all that matters because it’s all that’s possible. Isn’t that so?”

While she was speaking, she was with her voice, her eyes and with each word opening in Hannah those all but forgotten hours, almost thirty years past, during which the cross of living had first nakedly borne in upon her being, and she had made the first beginnings of learning how to endure and accept it.
Your turn now, poor child
, she thought; she felt as if a prodigious page were being silently turned, and the breath of its turning touched her heart with cold and tender awe. Her soul is beginning to come of age, she thought; and within those moments she herself became much older, much nearer her own death, and was content to be. Her heart lifted up in a kind of pride in Mary, in every sorrow she could remember, her own or that of others (and the remembrances rushed upon her); in all existence and endurance. She wanted to cry out
Yes! Exactly! Yes. Yes. Begin to see. Your turn now
. She wanted to hold her niece at arms’ length and to turn and admire this blossoming. She wanted to take her in her arms and groan unto God for what it meant to be alive. But chiefly she wanted to keep stillness and to hear the young woman’s voice and to watch her eyes and her round forehead while she spoke, and to accept and experience this repetition of her own younger experience, which bore her high and pierced like music.

“Isn’t that so?” Mary repeated.

“That and much more,” she said.

“You mean God’s mercy?” Mary asked softly.

“Nothing of the kind,” Hannah replied sharply. “What I mean, I’d best not try to say.” (I’ve begun, though, she reflected; and I startled her, I hurt her, almost as if I’d spoken against God.) “Only because it’s better if you learn it for yourself.
By
yourself.”

“What do you mean?”

“Whatever we hear, learn, Mary, it’s almost certain to be hard. Tragically hard. You’re beginning to know that and to face it: very bravely. What I mean is that this is only the beginning. You’ll learn much more. Beginning very soon now.”

“Whatever it is, I want so much to be
worthy
of it,” Mary said, her eyes shining.

“Don’t try too hard to be worthy of it, Mary. Don’t think of it that way. Just do your best to endure it and let any question of worthiness take care of itself. That’s more than enough.”

“I feel so utterly unprepared. So little time to prepare in.”

“I don’t think it’s a kind of thing that can be prepared for; it just has to be lived through.”

There was a kind of ambition there, Hannah felt, a kind of pride or poetry, which was very mistaken and very dangerous. But she was not yet quite sure what she meant; and of all the times to become beguiled by such a matter, to try to argue it, or warn about it! She’s so young, she told herself. She’ll learn; poor soul, she’ll learn.

Even while Hannah watched her, Mary’s face became diffuse and humble.
Oh, not yet
, Hannah whispered desperately to herself.
Not yet
. But Mary said, shyly, “Aunt Hannah, can we kneel down for a minute?”

Not yet
, she wanted to say. For the first time in her life she suspected how mistakenly prayer can be used, but she was unsure why.
What can I say
, she thought, almost in panic.
How can I judge
? She was waiting too long; Mary smiled at her, timidly, and in a beginning of bewilderment; and in compassion and self-doubt Hannah came around the table and they knelt side by side. We can be seen, Hannah realized; for the shades were up.
Let us
, she told herself angrily.

“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, Amen,” Mary said in a low voice.

“Amen,” Hannah trailed.

They were silent and they could hear the ticking of the clock, the shuffling of fire, and the yammering of the big kettle.

God is not here, Hannah said to herself; and made a small cross upon her breastbone, against her blasphemy.

“O God,” Mary whispered, “strengthen me to accept Thy will, whatever it may be.” Then she stayed silent.

God hear her, Hannah said to herself. God forgive me. God forgive me.

What can I know of the proper time for her, she said to herself. God forgive me.

Yet she could not rid herself: something mistaken, unbearably piteous, infinitely malign was at large within that faithfulness; she was helpless to forfend it or even to know its nature.

Suddenly there opened within her a chasm of infinite depth and from it flowed the paralyzing breath of eternal darkness.

I believe nothing. Nothing whatever.

“Our Father,” she heard herself say, in a strange voice; and Mary, innocent of her terror, joined in the prayer. And as they continued, and Hannah heard more and more clearly than her own the young, warm, earnest, faithful, heartsick voice, her moment of terrifying unbelief became a remembrance, a temptation successfully resisted through God’s grace.

Deliver us from evil, she repeated silently, several times after their prayer was finished. But the malign was still there, as well as the mercifulness.

They got to their feet.

As it became with every minute and then with every flickering of the clock more and more clear that Andrew had had far more than enough time to get out there, and to telephone, Mary and her aunt talked less and less. For a little while after their prayer, in relief, Mary had talked quite volubly of matters largely irrelevant to the event; she had even made little jokes and had even laughed at them, without more than a small undertone of hysteria; and in all this, Hannah had thought it best (and, for that matter, the only thing possible), to follow suit; but that soon faded away; nor was it to return; now they merely sat in quietness, each on her side of the kitchen table, their eyes cast away from each other, drinking tea for which they had no desire. Mary made a full fresh pot of tea, and they conversed a little about that, and the heated water with which to dilute it, and they discussed that briefly; but such little exchanges wore quickly down into silence. Mary, whispering, “Excuse me,” retired to the bathroom, affronted and humbled that one should have to obey such a call at such a time; she felt for a few moments as stupid and enslaved as a baby on its potty, and far more ungainly and vulgar; then, with her wet hands planted in the basin of cold water she stared incredulously into her numb, reflected face, which seemed hardly real to her, until, with shame, she realized that at this of all moments she was mirror gazing. Hannah, left alone, was grateful that we are animals; it was this silly, strenuous, good, humble cluttering of animal needs which saw us through sane, fully as much as prayer; and towards the end of these moments of solitude, with her mind free from the subtle deceptions of concern, she indulged herself in whispering, aloud, “He’s dead. There’s no longer the slightest doubt of it”; and began to sign herself with the Cross in prayer for the dead, but sharply remembering we do not know, and feeling as if she had been on the verge of exercising malign power against him, deflected the intention of the gesture towards God’s mercy upon him, in whatsoever condition he might now be. When Mary returned, she put more wood on the fire, looked into the big kettle, saw that a third of the water had boiled away, and refilled it. Neither of them said anything about this, but each knew what the other was thinking, and after they had sat again in silence for well over ten minutes, Mary looked at her aunt who, feeling the eyes upon her, looked into them; then Mary said, very quietly, “I only wish we’d hear now, because I am ready.”