A Death in the Family

by James Agee

  "I think you're wise to wait," Hannah said.

  "How's that water?" Mary twisted in her chair to see. "Sakes alive, the watched pot." She got up and stuffed in more kindling, and brought down the box of tea. "I don't knows I really want any tea, anyway, but I think it's a good idea to drink something warm while we're waiting, don't you?"

  "I'd like some," said Hannah, who wanted nothing.

  "Good, then we'll have some. Just as soon as the water's ready." She sat down again. "I thought one light blanket would be enough on a night like this but I've another over the foot of the bed in case it should turn cool."

  "That should be sufficient."

  "Goodness knows," Mary said, vaguely, and became silent. She looked at her hands, which lay loosely clasped on the table. Hannah found that she was watching Mary closely. In shame, she focused her sad eyes a little away from her. She wondered. It was probably better for her not to face it if she could help until it had to be faced. If it had to be. Just quiet, she said to herself. Just be quiet.

  "You know," Mary said slowly, "the queerest thing." She began slowly to turn and rub her clasped fingers among each other. Hannah waited. "When the man phoned," she said, gazing quietly upon her moving fingers, "and said Jay had been in a-serious accident"; and now Hannah realized that Mary was looking at her, and met her brilliant gray eyes; "I felt it just as certainly as I'm sitting here now, 'It's his head.' What do you think of that?" she asked, almost proudly.

  Hannah looked away. What's one to say, she wondered. Yet Mary had spoken with such conviction that she herself was half convinced. She looked into an image of still water, clear and very deep, and even though it was dark, and she had not seen so clearly since her girlhood, she could see sand and twigs and dead leaves at the bottom of the water. She drew a deep breath and let it out in a long slow sigh and clucked her tongue once. "We never know," she murmured.

  "Of course we just have to wait," Mary said, after a long silence.

  "Hyesss," Hannah said softly, sharply inhaling the first of the word, and trailing the sibilant to a hair.

  Through their deep silence, at length, they began to be aware of the stumbling crackle of the water. When Mary got up for it, it had boiled half away.

  "There's still plenty for two cups," she said, and prepared the strainer and poured them, and put on more water. She lifted the lid of the large kettle. Its sides, below the water line, were rich beaded; from the bottom sprang a leisured spiral of bubbles so small they resembled white sand; the surface of the water slowly circled upon itself. She wondered what the water might possibly be good for.

  "Just in case," she murmured.

  Hannah decided not to ask her what she had said.

  "There's ZuZus," Mary said, and got them from the cupboard. "Or would you like bread and butter? Or toast. I could toast some."

  "Just tea, thank you."

  "Help yourself to sugar and milk. Or lemon? Let's see, do I have le…"

  "Milk, thank you."

  "Me too." Mary sat down again. "My, it's frightfully hot in here!" She got up and opened the door to the porch, and sat down again.

  "I wonder what ti…" She glanced over her shoulder at the kitchen clock. "What time did they leave, do you know?"

  "Walter came for us at quarter after ten. About twenty-five after, I should think."

  "Let's see, Walter drives pretty fast, though not so fast as Jay, but he'd be driving faster than usual tonight, and it's just over twelve miles. That would be, supposing he goes thirty miles an hour, that's twelve miles in, let's see, six times four is twenty-four, six times five's thirty, twice twelve is twenty-four, sakes alive, I was always dreadful at arithmetic…"

  "Say about half an hour, allowing for darkness, and Walter isn't familiar with those roads."

  "Then we ought to be hearing pretty soon. Ten minutes. Fifteen at the outside."

  "Yes, I should think."

  "Maybe twenty, allowing for the roads, but that is a good road out that far as roads go."

  "Maybe."

  "Why didn't he tell me!" Mary burst out.

  "What is it?"

  "Why didn't I ask?" She looked at her aunt in furious bewilderment. "I didn't even ask! How serious! Where is he hurt! Is he living or dead."

  There it is, Hannah said to herself. She looked back steadily into Mary's eyes.

  That we simply have to wait to find out," she said.

  "Of course we have," Mary cried angrily. "That's what's so unbearable!" She drank half her tea at a gulp; it burned her painfully but she scarcely noticed. She continued to glare at her aunt.

  Hannah could think of nothing to say.

  "I'm sorry," Mary said. "You're perfectly right. I've just got to hold myself together, that's all."

  "Never mind," Hannah said, and they fell silent.

  Hannah knew that silence must itself be virtually unbearable for Mary, and that it would bring her face to face with likelihoods still harder to endure. But she has to, she told herself; and the sooner the better. But she found that she herself could not bear to be present, and say nothing which might in some degree protect, and postpone. She was about to speak when Mary burst out: "In heaven's name, why didn't I ask him! Why didn't I? Didn't I care?"

  "It was so sudden." Hannah said. "It was such a shock."

  "You would think I'd ask, though! Wouldn't you?"

  "You thought you knew. You told me you were sure it was his-in the head."

  "But how bad? What!"

  We both know, Hannah said to herself. But it's better if you bring yourself to say it. "It certainly wasn't because you didn't care, anyway," she said.

  "No. No it certainly wasn't that, but I think I do know what it was. I think, I think I must have been too afraid of what he would have to say."

  Hannah looked into her eyes. Nod, she told herself. Say yes I imagine so. Just say nothing and it'll be just as terrible for her. She heard herself saying what she had intended to venture a while before, when Mary had interrupted her: "Do you understand why J-your father stayed home, and your mother?"

  "Because I asked them not to come."

  "Why did you?"

  "Because if all of you came up here in a troop like that, it would be like assuming that-like assuming the very worst before we even know."

  "That's why they stayed home. Your father said he knew you'd understand."

  "Of course I do."

  "We just must try to keep from making any assumptions-good or bad."

  "I know. I know we must. It's just, this waiting in the dark like this, it's just more than I can stand."

  "We ought to hear very soon."

  Mary glanced at the clock. "Almost any minute," she said.

  She took a little tea.

  "I just can't help wondering," she said, "why he didn't say more. 'A serious accident,' he said. Not a 'very' serious one. Just 'serious.' Though, goodness knows, that's serious enough. But why couldn't he say?"

  "As your father says, it's ten to one he's just a plain damned fool," Hannah said.

  "But it's such an important thing to say, and so simple to say, at least to give some general idea about. At least whether he could come home, or go to a hospital, or… He didn't say anything about an ambulance. An ambulance would mean hospital, almost for sure. And surely if he meant the-the very worst, he'd have just said so straight out and not leave us all on tenterhooks. I know it's just what we have no earthly business guessing about, good or bad, but really it does seem to me there's every good reason for hope, Aunt Hannah. It seems to me that if…"

  The telephone rang; its sound frightened each of them as deeply as either had experienced in her lifetime. They looked at each other and got up and turned towards the hall. "I…" Mary said, waving her right hand at Hannah as if she would wave her out of existence.

  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.