“Mother!” she cried, moving to the bed.
“Yes,” her mother said. Her voice came up small and tired.
“You frightened me,” she cried in relief. “I couldn’t see you. What do you want for supper, darling Mother?”
“Joan,” her mother said in that small voice, “Joan, do you suppose you could do one thing for me—just one thing?”
“Why, yes—anything,” she answered, surprised, tender. She felt for her mother’s hand and found it. It was not a small hand. Awake it was shapely, beautiful and strong. Now it was asleep. Without life it seemed larger than it was, inert, stiff, difficult to hold, the fingers limp and sprawling. Out of the shadows her mother lifted her head from the pillow, suddenly intense. Her eyes came out to beseech Joan. “Don’t let him come in here by me—make up the bed in the guest room. I’m too … tired …”
She dropped the stiff hand “You mean—Father?”
“Yes.” Her mother sank back again and Joan could not see her eyes. They were closed in the even pallor of the face vaguely outlined.
“Tell him—I’m—tired,” her mother said with weak urgency.
She had sat down on the bed. Now she rose, aware again of repulsion—that subdued quarreling in the night—was it this? She would not think of it.
“Of course,” she said resolutely, turning to the door. But her mother was not eased yet.
“Don’t let him even come in—not tonight,” she said. “Tell him I’m sleeping—tell him—”
“I’ll tell him,” said Joan, and shut the door behind her. She wanted to hear no more. This was not for her to hear.
But still he must be told. How could she tell him? She wondered, her hands busy about his solitary bed. How tell a man who had slept with his wife for thirty years that he could sleep beside her no more? Before she could plan she heard his steps upon the stair, soft footfalls, the left foot dragging a little. She ran out to meet him at the head of the stairs.
“What did the doctors say?” he asked.
“Dr. Crabbe said he was coming back, but he hasn’t,” she answered, putting him off.
He hesitated, and then moved to go in. Now she must speak, now before he went on. She stood before him, stopping him, her blood beating in her ears. “Father,” she cried above its beating, “Don’t—you mustn’t go in!”
“I mustn’t go in—to my own room?” he said, astonished.
“No—Father—I’ll explain—”
“Did the doctors—”
“No—she did—she—she’d rather you didn’t come in—she wants to sleep—to be alone. I’ve made the other bed for you. She’s very, very tired.”
They looked at each other, father, daughter. The daughter cried at him in her heart, “What have you done to make her so tired?” The father answered with his calm righteous look. His look said, “I have done nothing that is not my right to do.”
But she was stronger than he. Without a word he turned and went downstairs.
She was not herself anymore, not Joan, not a young woman home from college who had been waiting. She was some strange composite creature, more than a sister to Francis, more than a daughter to her father, less than herself. Her mother, lying in her bed, shut into her room, was a secret life to her. She was living secretly there. Though outwardly they called her Joan, though outwardly she was doing the things her mother had always done in the house, her secret, intense life was in the room upstairs. It set a wall about her, it made all else unreal. Now the only reality was this woman, whose body was dying while her mind was full of ferocious life. There was the reality, and it removed her from everything.
It removed her even from the memory of Martin. Sometimes like an echo, far away, she heard music coming from the church, but when she heard it she went steadily on about her moment’s business. She threw open no window to catch a chord or to hear the fragment of a melody. Music—even her own music—she had put aside and why should she stay her feet to listen to the echoes of his music? Nor did she ever hear his name anymore. Her mother had forgotten that the name was once a quarrel between them, and she could forget, for now she had her child back home again, completely returned. And in Joan’s heart there was no name either, and if there was the faintly echoing music she passed without listening to it and went on to what was now her work.
One morning the doorbell rang and passing by on her way upstairs, she opened the door and there he stood, smiling his faint melancholy smile. For a second it was familiar as seeing her own face unexpectedly in a mirror might be familiar. He said, “I’ve waited—I thought surely you would give me a sign—I thought you would come back—”
His voice was known to her. Once she had heard it with ecstasy and painful desire. Now she heard it only as something once known, a voice to which she had once listened but wanted no more to hear. He leaned with both hands on his stick, his hat in his hands, his music rolled under his arm. She stared at his narrow dark aging face, the white sides of his smooth dark hair, his sad hazel eyes, his thin beautiful mouth.
“Come back to me, Joan? I am not changed—I shall never change.”
Strange that his eyes, fixed deeply upon her, were no more than the eyes of a photograph, now put aside! Yes, he was not changed. He would never change. So he was not enough.
“I am busy with my mother now. She’s very ill.” She waited a moment. It was said rudely, like a child, and she thought an instant for something to add to it, to soften it. But when she tried to think of more, there was no more. She stared beyond him into the garden, and saw what she had not seen, that it was a sunny morning, gentle with spring. So after the moment’s waiting she shut the door on him quietly and without anger, and even with a little remorse lest it be too rude. She did not even care enough now to be rude to him or to hurt him.
Then she went upstairs.
At first the village came clustering about her mother. Miss Kinney was often at the door with flowers. “A few flowers, dear Joan—and if there is anything I can do—sit with her a little if you want to go out.”
“Thank you, Miss Kinney,” Joan said.
Mrs. Bradley brought calf’s-foot jelly. “It’s toothsome,” she explained. “Martin’s fond of it. How is she, Joan?”
She looked into Mrs. Bradley’s small stubborn gray eyes. “Thank you, Mrs. Bradley.” But the jelly she would not give her mother. She threw it into the garbage when Hannah was busy in some other room.
They all came to the door, all the old people—asking for her mother, missing her. At first they came often. They came expecting to sit by her mother’s bedside, and at first, because they had been middle-aged when she was a child, she thought she must let them have their way. It seemed impossible to say to Mrs. Winters, who had taken over the missionary society and the Ladies’ Aid work, that she could not come in to see her mother. “I’m sure your mother would want to know about the meeting—if she’d listen to me a minute. I won’t stay, but a minute.”
But Joan saw her mother did not care about the missionary meeting any more or want to listen to Mrs. Winters. Her mind was turned now upon her own life. For the first time she was absorbed in what was to happen to herself. Her eyes were dull and empty, staring at Mrs. Winters. “It’s very nice, I am sure,” she said faintly. “I’m very pleased—so pleased—Joan, my feet are cold.”
“You must get well, dear Mrs. Richards,” said Mrs. Winters warmly. “We miss you very much. I can never take your place with the ladies. You have such a way with you—you keep us all laughing so nicely that it isn’t so hard when the collection comes round—there, you dear soul!” She bent and kissed the sick woman, her corsets creaking over her large bosom. “Now you just listen to me!”
But after she was gone Joan saw her mother’s eyes full of wonder, staring at the wall opposite her. “I’m finished with it all,” she said in a half-whisper. “It’s all gone far from me, all I ever used to do. I’m only in this body lying here.”
So after a while Joan kept them all away and so
on they forgot and went about their days only remembering sometimes to ask how she did and to murmur or cry heartily, “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” or sometimes, on Sunday, when good deeds were natural to think of, they wrote little notes: “We remember you in our prayers, dear friend.”
Prayers! Joan smiled bitterly. At first prayers had gone up from the village like smoke to heaven. Everywhere people were praying for her mother. Her father came home from Wednesday night meetings comforted by the prayers of his people. He went straight to the sick room. “Mary, I wish you could have heard Mr. Parsons’ prayer for you tonight and the ‘Amen’ that went up from the people. It may be the Lord is going to use your illness to stir the people’s souls into life again.” He spoke happily and unusually quickly, his pale guileless eyes beaming. He could bear even his dear wife’s illness if he saw God’s will in it. He hurried downstairs to pour himself out to God gratefully. Joan, listening to his footsteps, thought to herself that one could not be sure about praying. “Do you pray, Mother?” she asked timidly. There was no physical shyness left now between them. She tended her mother’s body as she did her own. But her mother’s soul she had not penetrated. She dared not think of it. Did her mother know she must die?
“No, I don’t pray,” her mother said simply, “I don’t pray anymore. I guess I began to get out of the habit when you children were little. You woke me so early in the morning and at night I was too tired. And it never seemed worth while to pray for myself.”
And so it was after a while with all praying. It became tedious to pray for a woman who steadily grew weaker. It became rebellion against God finally to keep on praying when obviously she would not get well. Even the father at last prayed only thus, “Thy will be done, O God.” Or he prayed, “Help us to be ready for sorrow.” So the mother slipped gradually out of life and out of the minds of the people. She was not yet dead but since she was not seen or heard and since her struggle was solitary, she had no more to do with them. Only Miss Kinney still brought flowers faithfully to her door.
“I won’t come in,” she said, standing drooping upon the threshold, her narrow length topped by her flopping leghorn hat. “Just a nosegay for your dear mother! I love her, you know. She always understood so well about Africa. No one else will ever understand so well as she did—just as though she had been there. She used to see it all, just as it was!”
And so the spring passed, and summer came and it was the grave autumn once more, and it seemed as if her mother had always lain like this, helpless and to be cared for, as if for years she had been in her mother’s place. Rose came home and the summer passed and it was autumn and Rose was gone again.
Now Joan and her mother lived quite alone together. If her father or Francis or even Dr. Crabbe came to see her mother, Joan was the gate through which they must pass. Her father was no more her mother’s husband. She stood between these two, her father and her mother, at first shyly, feeling herself between them, knowing there must be some secret life she interrupted. Then she came to see there was no such secret life. She intercepted nothing, no warmth, no hidden tenderness. Twice each day her father said to her, “Would your mother like to see me?” She went in and asked her mother, “Do you want to see Father?”
Her mother always paused to consider it, bringing her mind back from afar to consider, and her mood changed. Though she had been cheerful now she would say fretfully, “I want to sleep,” or she would say with suspicion, “What does he want?” or sometimes, and usually, she would say, “A little while, perhaps,” and unknowingly she sighed. Then her father went in and they talked. “Well, Mary, how are you today?” “Thank you, Paul, I am about as usual.” “Would you like me to read to you?” “No, thank you, Paul. Joan reads to me a good deal.” He paused, searching his mind for something to tell her, and then he began again carefully, “You will be glad to hear, my dear, that at the mission at South End I have baptized—”
“Yes, dear Paul.” Her eyes closed. Soon he would leave the room on tiptoe to find Joan and say, “She is asleep. She seems to sleep a great deal. It is best, perhaps.”
“It’s best,” she answered, with pity for this unearthly man. In some sort of momentary human warmth she must have been conceived, but there was no human warmth in him now. All significance of him had passed from that room upstairs. It was as though he had never been there at all. The room was given over to her mother, now.
In the evening after supper Francis rose from the table quickly. “Mom ready for me?” She nodded, for she did not come down to supper until her mother was ready for Francis. She had brushed her mother’s hair and put on her fresh bed-jacket and touched her face with rouge. For one evening her mother had asked for the mirror from the bureau. “I want to see how I look,” she said. “I don’t want my son to remember me ugly. I look ghastly—” She stared at herself mournfully.
Joan said playfully. “I could dress you up with a little rouge.” Her mother had never worn rouge. She would have felt ashamed, as though she were aping a worldly woman. But now she looked at Joan with a gleam of the old mischief suddenly shining out of her eyes. “Why not?” she said. “It can’t matter much what I do now. I have to stand or fall by what’s done. A little rouge here and there won’t weight the scales much.”
So laughing together a little sadly, they did it. Joan fetched her rouge pot and touched with delicate faint rose her mother’s wan cheeks, while her mother held the mirror. “It does look nice,” her mother said with great interest. “I do believe I’m a little pretty even yet.” She looked up at Joan shyly and the tears rushed into the girl’s eyes. She bent to kiss her mother quickly and as she bent she caught from her mother’s body that smell of death. No washing with perfumed soaps, no sprinkled scent could hide it. But her mother did not know it was there, since it was the atmosphere in which she must now live. She was sprightly for the moment.
“Don’t you tell on me,” she cried gaily.
So every morning the rouge was put on and every night she would have it there, peach bloom upon her deathly pallor.
But Joan did betray her a little. She coaxed Francis, “Tell Mother how pretty she looks, Frank—tell her over and over.”
“Gee,” he muttered, and the father looked up astonished to say in mild rebuke, “Your mother hates flattery, Joan.”
“You tell her, Frank,” she insisted. “Tell her and see what she says.”
“Oh, sure, if it’ll do her any good,” he shouted back, leaping up the stairs. Ten minutes later he thrust his head into the kitchen, where she was cutting raw beef into cubes for beef tea. “Gosh, she did like it,” he said. “Looked like a kid when I told her—cheeks all pinked up.” He hesitated and she saw sudden tears in his eyes. He swallowed and snorted, “Wasn’t any lie I told, either,” and slammed the door.
And Dr. Crabbe, bursting open the front door in the mornings, shouted to her, “Joan, you got her ready for me?” Afterwards, to Joan alone, waiting in the hall, forcing his voice to low hoarseness he said, “Can’t be long now—just give her whatever she wants—don’t matter now except to keep her happy.”
“How long, Dr. Crabbe?”
“A month—two—maybe six—she’s got such a vitality—don’t tell her—” He was gone in a small cyclone of speed.
Joan, running upstairs with wine, with broth, with delicately seasoned milk soups, cried to herself fiercely. “She shall have all my strength. I’m strong! I’ll pour myself into her. I’ll make her live months, a year, maybe two years—”
She poured her huge vitality into her mother’s body. Tirelessly she washed her mother’s flesh and rubbed olive oil into the wasting muscles to nourish her. She centered her heart into her hands, willing her own strength into her strong hands, into her strong palms, pressing upon her mother’s flesh until she could almost believe a current passed, taking virtue out of her. She wheeled the bed to the window and uncovered her mother’s body to the sunlight and to the warmth of the noonday, standing watch in hand to force the last mo
ment she dared of sun and wind. She wanted all the power from the sun and the warm wind to pour into her mother’s body. Food and sun and sweet air and her own steadily cheerful young strength she poured into her mother’s body, fighting that death in her. But that living death grew, too, upon all she did.
In the night there was no sun and it was hard to laugh in the night. Then everyone lay asleep and apart and the house was silent and she was alone with her mother in the darkness. Beyond the shadowy walls of the room was the universe, waiting in endless empty space. Soon, soon her mother would escape her and be lost in those empty spaces. She lay on her little cot by her mother’s bed, listening and watching for that escape. Out of the moment of her young exhausted sleep, she rose instantly if her mother moved. She heard her mother whisper, “Joan, am I to die?”
Passionately she cried in a loud strong voice, “I will not let you die!”
“Touch me—let me feel you—”
She seized her mother’s hand and held it, rubbing it, fondling it fiercely. From it, too, rose that faint stench. Her mother’s voice came small and far away out of the darkness. “I am always half asleep—Don’t let me slip away while I sleep—”
“No—no—” she said. “I have you hard—”
In the stillness she listened to her mother’s breathing. If it grew too faltering she must give a stimulant, but not unless she must, because there would be greater need at the end when the pain would be so great they must give it constantly. She had asked steady questions of Dr. Crabbe. She knew how each day must go. Curled against the bed in the darkness, kneeling upon the floor, holding her mother’s hand, her body strong and tense, she fought the universe.
Out of her sleep her mother woke again and again to clutch at life. She struggled against this insidious constant deathly sleeping. She forced her eyes open, frowning, thinking of something she wanted to do. “Tell Paul to come here,” she commanded in a strange loud voice. Her ears were dulled so that now she spoke loudly, to hear herself. “I have something on my mind to tell Paul.”
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