by Unknown
Karen’s control and gentle good manners, perhaps enhanced by her nurse’s training, had been a saving and a soothing influence, all around. She was the one person, Mrs. Brady reflected, who had always given poor Alice her needed dollop of sympathy, who had never, so far as Mrs. Brady knew, been driven to protest, to say, in one way or another, Oh, for pity’s sake, cheer up!
When the young people left, Mrs. Brady took another cup of coffee which she didn’t want and wasn’t supposed to have. She said to Karen, “You know, I’ve been feeling something—I don’t know exactly what. But I hate to go away tomorrow without getting at whatever it is. Why do I feel as if I were getting special treatment—the kind that Alice always got?”
“Why, Aunt Sarah,” said Karen, smiling, “Of course, you are getting special treatment. We are all so fond of you. Don’t you think we realize you have lost your only sister? Oh, it is too bad that this had to happen during your visit. Poor Alice always so looked forward to seeing you.”
She did? thought Mrs. Brady. She found that her feet were shuffling, her toes curling. Normally, she appreciated Karen’s soothing ways, but not today, somehow.
“I hope you aren’t feeling unhappy because you and I went off on a lark on Monday,” said Karen gently. “Don’t feel that way. Please? There was just no reason to think we shouldn’t have gone. There were people in the house. We mustn’t be tempted to feel guilty, must we?”
Mrs. Brady examined this. No, she thought, but then, to my best knowledge, I have not been tempted to feel guilty.
“You’ll be home, back in your own place,” Karen was saying, “with all the things you find to do and I know you’ll just go on, because you always have.” Karen had butter in her mouth. “Now, tell me, is there something Del likes to eat, especially, that I could order for dinner?”
“Nothing special,” said Mrs. Brady, rather shortly. “She eats what she’s given.” She felt, suddenly, that she would be very glad to see her own child. “So do I,” she added, “usually.”
“Dear Aunt Sarah,” said Karen fondly, “as if you’ve ever been a bit of trouble. But you know, Jeffrey is the one who has been hit the hardest. Don’t you think we must try—just to go on? And let time heal? He’s going to accept that European assignment. I encouraged him to. Don’t you think that’s wise? To get away from this house will be so good for him—new scenes and new experiences to help him forget.”
“Oh, yes. I think it’s wise for him to accept that offer,” said Sarah Brady. “I thought so before, and told him so, as you know.”
“He thinks so much of your judgment,” said Karen, “and so do I. It is only the shock—I think we must just plunge into our plans. Let’s see. You’ll be busy packing today, I suppose?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Brady thought to herself, and that will take all of twenty minutes. She couldn’t figure out why she felt so cross.
Karen excused herself, to make her marketing lists, and Mrs. Brady went upstairs, moving through the big pleasantly furnished house with a strong sense of its eclipse. This house was going to be closed. Jeffrey and Karen would be off, abroad, the children away at schools. What will Henny do? she wondered. But Henny was a household jewel who could write her own ticket, having become as valuable as a rare antique.
Mrs. Brady went back to thinking of Monday. She couldn’t help it.
Just after lunch, on Monday, Karen had invited her to ride along downtown, while Alice rested. Mrs. Brady, who loved to prowl the streets when she was feeling spry enough, had accepted gladly.
She had gone to get her things, discovered with pleasure a legitimate errand of her own, and then had passed her sister’s bedroom door. Karen, in the doorway with a tray in her hands, had made a “shushing” mouth. Alice was not to be told that they were going out. Mrs. Brady had supposed at the time—and still supposed—that to tell Alice would have meant at least five minutes of listening to Alice bemoan the fact that she couldn’t go too, or the fact that she was being abandoned.
So Sarah had merely glanced in, seen her sister’s head—still golden, courtesy of dye—and the prow of her sister’s nice straight nose (which had always made her own nose seem even more knobby than it needed to seem), taken the sense of her sister’s lair, perfumed, and cluttered with the thousand things that Alice had for her bodily comfort, and heard her sister say, “I wish to rest now,” in her piteous, imperious manner. I must be allowed to do exactly as I wish at all times, said Alice’s manner, because I am so ill.
Mrs. Brady remembered Karen’s saying that Henny needn’t bother, Karen would take the tray down; remembered Henny’s dive for the stairs-going-up; remembered seeing Bobby, flat on his stomach on the bed, a book on the floor, and his head hanging over it; remembered how the car had pussyfooted out of the driveway, and Karen’s sad mischievous smile, when they were finally running free, on their way through the small city to its center.
Mrs. Brady had happily considered what she could, in all conscience, shop for. (She lived very frugally in a tiny apartment, not far from her daughter Del’s house.) Karen had discussed a new bedspread for Suzanne and socks for Bobby, and her dentist appointment.
“You won’t mind waiting for me, Aunt Sarah?”
“I think I’d rather poke around by myself and take the bus back,” Mrs. Brady had said.
“But it’s three blocks to walk, from the bus to the house.”
“I don’t mind. Besides, I have a little errand to do.”
“Can’t I do it for you?”
“No. No. It’s all right, you see, when the three blocks end in a soft chair.”
“Well . . . if you insist.”
So Mrs. Brady had enjoyed herself in the department store, inspecting bedspreads, and had advised about socks, and then, deposited on the sidewalk near Karen’s dentist’s building, she had gone her own way. Not far. Not for long. She had that little errand, which gave her a bit of a purpose, and she had accomplished it, and then window-shopped her way to the bus stop, and a bus had come before she was too tired . . .
When she had come back into this house, Dr. Clarke was already there, and Henny was weeping. Bobby was in the living room, numb and dumb and dry-eyed. Jeffrey had been notified. And Alice was dead.
Almost as soon as Mrs. Brady had reached her own bathroom, and taken one of her pills against the shock and strain, she’d heard Karen running up the stairs. But Karen did not need her, and then she had heard Jeffrey’s voice below. So she had hurried down to stand by, been delegated to watch for Suzanne and break the news gently—as Monday had splintered out of the shape of an ordinary Monday.
Remembering, Mrs. Brady shook her head. But there was no shaking the nagging notion out of it. She couldn’t help imagining that there was something she hadn’t been told.
So she marched into her bathroom and took a pill to fortify herself. She intended to fare forth. She intended to see her nephew alone. She really had not—not since, not yet.
It was almost eleven when Mrs. Brady finally made it, by bus, to Jeffrey’s office, identified herself to his receptionist, and could not help but feel gratified when Jeffrey came blasting out of his inner recess.
“Aunt Sarah, what the dickens are you doing here?” He was a tall man, a bit thick in the middle these days; his hair was graying; his long face had acquired a permanent look of slight anxiety. He was a quiet man, who ran well in light harness, grateful for peace whenever he got it.
“I won’t have another chance to see you alone, Jeff.”
“Will you come in?” The anxiety on his face deepened. “Or better still, let’s go down to the drug store and have a coffee break.”
“All right.” She wouldn’t risk another coffee. No matter. So he took her down in the elevator and they sat in a leatherette booth. The place was familiar. Mrs. Brady had lived in this town, herself, ten years ago. The druggist knew her. The young girl who tended the snack counter wa
s friendly. Mrs. Brady felt personally comfortable. She ordered a piece of Danish pastry.
But now to business. Studying her nephew’s face, she said, “Jeff, it’s true. Poor Alice didn’t like it. We both knew that she wouldn’t. I’m sorry that your last talk with her, on Monday morning, had to be even as unpleasant as it was. But I can only say to you that I still think you were right to decide to go to Europe, and right to tell her that you had decided to go.”
“Why, sure, Aunt Sarah,” he said, not looking up. “I know that. And don’t you worry about it for a minute.”
“Alice would have been perfectly safe, with all the arrangements you made, and no more miserable than usual. As far as we could know.”
“I agree. Please, Aunt Sarah, don’t think for a moment that anyone is blaming you—for your advice or for anything else in the world.”
“Oh, Jeff.” His Aunt felt impatient with him. “Of course, you’re not blaming me. I don’t understand why there has to be any thought of blame. I happen to know that the Lord is running this world and hasn’t yet appointed me to do it. Or you, either.” She was sputtering, as of old.
He was smiling at her. “I’m all right, Aunt Sarah,” he said affectionately. “It takes a little time, that’s all.”
“I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“I’m glad—” he began, and quickly stopped.
Oh, yes, he was glad she was going. It only confirmed what Mrs. Brady had been feeling. Well? Perhaps, she must concede that she could be a bit of a nuisance, too. After all, Jeff was a grown man. He didn’t need his Auntie to stiffen him. Or shouldn’t. Time would pass, time would heal. Heal what? The truth was, a burden had been lifted from Jeff and his household. All that eternal pussyfooting would be over. Fresh winds would blow.
But they were not blowing—not yet. Was the household guilty of being just a little too glad? And too soon?
No. She still sensed that she, Sarah Brady, was being treated too gently, in some way. She couldn’t pinpoint one single piece of clear evidence—but she knew in her bones that she was being “handled.”
So? Had Sarah Brady come to such a pass? She didn’t relish it. Why, Alice was the one who always had to be handled. All her life. In fact, that was how Alice managed the rest of the world. If it did not behave just as she wished, she simply insisted that it seem to—at least within her range. And had always won, because it was easier to do it that way—Alice having such a very small and narrow range.
But not I, thought Sarah. No, not I!
“I thought you were glad I was leaving,” she said flatly.
“Not for my sake,” said Jeff, too quickly. “But I want you to be busy and forget. Live your own life, Aunt Sarah.” He was smiling, but she didn’t like either the look or the sound of him. “You have always told me that I ought to live mine.”
Forget? thought Sarah, bristling within. Even poor Alice deserved better than to be forgotten as fast as possible. Furthermore, it isn’t possible. Alice was what she was, and she will remain a part of our lives as long as we live.
“Oh, I say a good many things,” she admitted. “For better or for worse, I have always been one to trot out what’s on my mind. Well, then, right now, I keep having this nagging feeling that there is something that I ought to say. Or do. Or know.”
“All you have to do is be yourself,” said Jeff, somewhat fatuously. He patted her hand. “It’ll be nice to see Del. She doesn’t mind three hundred miles in one day, and the same again tomorrow.”
“That sort of thing doesn’t bother Del,” said Mrs. Brady lightly, seeing clearly that her nephew was getting rid of her.
• • •
She refused Jeff’s offer to send her home in a cab, insisting that she enjoyed the bus ride. On one of her good days, the truth was, she certainly did. But she wasn’t feeling as well now as she might.
When Jeff kissed her brow goodbye and said, pseudo-gaily, “Don’t you worry about a thing,” Mrs. Brady was contrarily convinced that there was something she ought to worry about.
She stood on the sidewalk and listened to one word turn into another in her mind. “Handled”? No, she was being “spared.” Well! She, Sarah Brady, was not going to stand for being “spared”! Not yet and not ever—not if she could help it.
Mrs. Brady walked back into the drug store to look in the phone book, but there were several Dr. Clarkes. She had no clue. Then the druggist hailed her. “Anything else I can do for you, today, Mrs. Brady?”
“Please, Mr. Fredericks, do you happen to know which Dr. Clarke took care of my sister?”
“Surely. Dr. Josephus Clarke. You want his phone number?”
“I want his address,” she said thoughtfully.
“He’s in the same building where your Dr. Crane used to be.”
“Oh, is he? Thank you.” Now Mrs. Brady had her bearings.
Then the druggist said, “I was sure sorry to hear about your sister. A long illness, I guess.” Was he, too, delicately implying cause for rejoicing?
Mrs. Brady came into the doctor’s waiting room, feeling like a dirty spy. The girl who took her name seemed totally confused to hear that she wasn’t a patient. Mrs. Brady had to wait out the doctor’s appointments for almost two hours.
So she sat and turned the leaves of old magazines, and watched the people come and go, and pondered how to ask a question, when it was the question that she wanted to find out. Or whether there was one.
At last she was given her five minutes. “I am Mrs. Conley’s sister, Sarah Brady.”
“We met,” the doctor said, “in sad and unfortunate circumstances. What can I do for you. Mrs. Brady?” He was benign.
“I don’t know. You could tell me, please, why my sister died on Monday.”
“Why? I . . . don’t quite understand.”
“I mean, should we have suspected?”
“Oh, no. Certainly not,” said the doctor. “I see. I see. You have been feeling that you should have been at her side? That’s a very common feeling, Mrs. Brady, but it really isn’t rational. I’m sure you know what I mean.” He was tolerant, gentle.
“You took care of her, as they say, for a long time?” She was groping.
The doctor said, with a sad smile, “I did all I could, Mrs. Brady.”
“Of course you did,” she burst out. “I’m not here to hint that you didn’t. But what did my sister die of? Maybe that’s how I should have put it.”
“How shall I tell you?” He seemed to be countering. He was watching her, quite warily. “In a lay term? Heart failure? . . . I don’t quite understand what troubles you, Mrs. Brady. But if you like, I can assure you that there is no need for you to be troubled—no need at all. We must accept these things.”
“Dr. Clarke, I am not like my sister.”
He made no direct response to this. “It is very easy to imagine things, in grief,” he went on. “But when you have a bit of a heart problem, as you do, it is wise to learn serenity.”
“I have a very good doctor,” she snapped, “who has taught me to deal with my heart.”
“I’m sure you have.”
“Perhaps you know him? Dr. Crane?”
“By reputation. A very good man,” he purred. “You are looking well.”
Mrs. Brady shook her feathers. She was making a fine mess out of this interview. But the doctor was not. He was “handling” her expertly. In fact, he was getting rid of her. Expertly. Like Jeff.
Mrs. Brady found the old familiar bus stop. She supposed she must have put his back up, as the expression goes. I, said Sarah Brady to herself, am a terrible detective.
Well, it wasn’t her way, to go snooping around corners and behind people’s backs. It just never had been her way and she didn’t really know how to do it. She, too, was what she was—a vinegary old soul—and her whole past wasn’t going to let her be anything else.
In the meantime, she hadn’t found out a single blessed thing.
Wait. She had. Dr. Clarke had been told that she, Sarah, had a heart problem. Now, why was he told that?
Ah, now she was sure that she was being “spared” and “handled” and it was beginning to make her good and mad.
• • •
She almost trotted the three blocks to the house, brisk with anger, and had steam left over to pack her things with great dispatch. Then Del roared into the driveway. And when Del came, in her long-legged still puppylike way, there was a lift in the atmosphere. Something about Del. She was a young mother now, with a house of her own to run. But Del refused to be anything but cheerful. She didn’t have to be tactful. It was impossible to be offended by her—Del was as open as the day.
“Sorry I couldn’t make it to Aunt Alice’s funeral,” she said, “but Georgie was down with chicken pox. Sally isn’t due to get them till Tuesday. So here I am. Hi, kids!”
Bobby and Suzanne regarded Del with a kind of suspicious delight. Dinner was almost easy.
Afterward, Del began to yawn. She said she went to bed with the sun these days. Why fight it? Her kids were up and roistering every dawn.
But Mrs. Brady didn’t want Del to leave her side until she had said what she was going to say. She would still tear some veils. There was that anger still in her, still energizing her.
She said, rather abruptly, to the assembly in the living room, “I won’t have another chance. So I want to ask you, right here and now, what’s going on in this house? I’ve been poking around all day, trying to find out what’s been hanging over my head. But I’m no detective. So now I am asking. Why are you keeping secrets from me? What have I ever done to make you insult me by keeping the truth away from me?”
“Why, Mama!” said Del, with nothing but surprise.
Jeff looked at Mrs. Brady with a reddening face. The others seemed to hold their breath. “I am sorry,” Jeff said stiffly, “if you feel we’ve been insulting you, Aunt Sarah. That’s the last thing any of us would want to do.”