Such a beautiful day! or what had been till that odious woman's voice reduced it to an epithet, and she shook her head as though to empty it of that jangling echo of words cluttering all that lay about her coming down the lawn toward the pond, toward the swans look at them! but they were already a distant trail of white across the water fled, like her, to rescue their serenity from a raucous visitation as she descended to the narrow strand, picking her way more slowly now the sandy edge gave way to reeds, to shoals of mud, to stagnant pools where suddenly the crows burst in a rage of cries that drowned her own, where a step further would have trampled what had been a sort of face snaggle toothed and staring up from eye sockets plucked clean, staggering back to recover her foot from the paw gently stirred there on the still backwater her balance almost lost again blinded by the flats of her hands, deprived like the breath she gasped for retreating to the hard crest of the road leading her away past those silent hulks shuttered for winter and on to the dunes looking far down the beach to the cut where turning the pond brackish came silent, flooding in, the main, a stiff breeze harassing her every retraced step and garbled metaphor the long way back under those mangled pines strewn with the jangling echoes of a million just for landscaping to clatter up the steps of that perilous veranda and the doors closing behind her, and her name reaching her the length of the hall, — Is that you Christina? You had a phone call, it was…
— Harry? When is he coming out.
— No, no Lily said it was somebody from his office, they said it was urgent and…
— Well if it's so urgent couldn't he have simply picked up the phone and called me himself? No I've told you what's urgent haven't I? signing these things and getting this memento mori with his green sock out of here, have you done anything about it?
— Yes I, it's a brown sock now he said something about a hair of the dog and…
— I, don't tell me about a hair of the dog! just, some tea, some hot tea.
— She'll get it but listen, there's only one thing for us to sign Christina that's all, it's a waiver and consent saying we won't contest the will so it can be probated that's all he brought.
— Well it can't be! Coming all the way up here just for, couldn't he have mailed it? both of them closing in — I mean, simply have mailed it? coming down on the sofa, the strength gone out of her — oh Lily, thank God bring me some tea will you?
— You okay? You look real pale.
— I'm, please just, just bring me a drink.
— There was this call for you, they said can you come right in there they sounded real serious, they…
— All right I'll call them! Now will you do as I ask? and she was back up for the phone, Mister Lutz? All right, Mister Peyton then? out of town? both of them? but who was the, — what? I said I'm his wife aren't I? This is ridiculous, why don't you know how to reach them! finally banging it down — my God, you never heard such confusion, they all sound scared out of their wits I mean no wonder Harry thinks the whole ship may go down. Sailing in there to confront Bill Peyton over pensions and balance sheets, if they're forcing him out can't he simply call me? already assailing the phone again — you see? He's not answering, I suppose I've got to simply go in, driving all of us out of our minds he'll be standing there in a towel naked with a drink in one hand like the last time just didn't want to upset me, stupid predicament he got himself in no reason he should bother me with it, nothing I could have done with my hands full out here running this madhouse find my sweater will you, Lily? I thought you were making tea, the beige one, Oscar stop standing there, he found this idiotic paper to be signed didn't he? Well where is it.
— With the will, here, he wants us to read the will before we sign to make sure we under…
— But I thought it was already probated, I mean why in God's name would we contest it if we're the sole beneficiaries, equal shares and per stirpes and the rest of that nonsense?
— There's a bequest in there for him Christina, a bequest for five hundred dollars and he must be afraid that we'd…
— And that's why he came all the way up here? My God I've never heard such a miserable, where's a pen, can we get this ridiculous business over with?
— When it's signed by a witness and…
— Well Lily can write her name can't she? Has he got a pen? and she stood over him searching deep among worn folds of worsted, reminded of a case down there where they had an old night watchman who couldn't write signed his pension checks with his thumbprint till somebody noticed he must be over a hundred and ten years old with the checks still coming through and when they investigated they found his thumb in a bottle of formaldehyde up on a kitchen shelf with the green tomato preserves and — just give me the pen!
— But Christina wait, you're not taking my car are you? one step behind her up the hall — you can't just leave us here you can wait for him to call, can't you? and at the door — you're just using this! You're just using it as an excuse to get away and leave us with…
— Exactly.
Name three African countries beginning with C.
— You ought to get on one of those Oscar.
— One of what! he snapped over the clamour of the studio audience greeting Cameroon.
— He's already up to almost four thousand dollars, they let you choose your own category and you could…
— Listen, we've got a game show going right here, she just drove out with my car how are we going to get him out of here, I don't know when she'll be back we've got to shop for food and…
— You want a ham sandwich?
What breed of African antelope is named after an American car?
And the din went on interspersed with graphic portrayals of lower back pain and laxatives, arthritic fingers and acid stomach, incontinence and hemorrhoids each summoning a moan of satisfaction embracing fellowship with this geriatric fraternity in armchairs, loungers and contorting mattresses throughout the land gnashing dentures over Black Bean Nacho Chips and Tater Skins with another pull at the brown sock as afternoon displaced the morning and the conquest of Africa eighteen thousand dollars the richer had long since given way to the interminable war between the animal and vegetable kingdoms on the nature program where a potato leaf under attack by a caterpillar provoked a lethal case of indigestion in its assailant and a belch from the solitary audience intruded upon with suggestions for his departure by bus? by plane? He must have got a round trip ticket hadn't he? as mountain pine beetles busy boring out lodgings to lay eggs for a new generation in the mighty ponderosa pine were assailed by a noxious flow of resin engulfing the tiny nursery, they could even call a cab to get him to the airport while the weather was still fine, it could change overnight with a storm, a blizzard, marooned here with the ham whose aroma even now crept near lending its pungent emphasis to a coyote tobacco plant rewarding a jack rabbit's ravin with a severe attack of diarrhea, she'd found this can of creamed corn in the recipe book where it told you how to make these ham croquettes for supper when darkness had set in and the flowering clusters of wild parsnip flooding their grazing predators with poison had been displaced by Serbs slaughtering Croats on the evening news.
— Well he's dead isn't he? she said as he gasped scraping the last of his croquette into the trash. — He was floating around on top of the fishtank so I threw him away. You think I should go down there Oscar? I tried to call Mama before they do this operation on him only they were busy getting all this spiritual counseling in case the Lord calls him so I hardly know what I'm doing. You think you should go in there and feel his pulse? With those ashes he's got in that can up there on the shelf by your grandfather's picture in that black smock thing we can just leave this croquette and everything out here on the table for when he gets up in the night, you want to finish this wine? He gets up about five times and you hear this trickle trickle trickle in there, couldn't he close the bathroom door and just get it all done at once like everybody else? Old men, he muttered something about old men pouring off the last of the wine, a gland called the prostate that can swell up when men get old and cut off the flow from the bladder so — that's what Daddy has! she'd got her breath again, — this operation where they're going inside him and cut if off that's why I'm scared, you think I should go down there? A fairly common operation from all he'd heard, the real danger was cancer, if they got in there and found — cancer? What about me! she took up later pressing his hand to her breast there in the half dark — feel it? did it get any bigger? Well? she'd been told to have an x-ray hadn't she? a mammogram? — I'll go tomorrow, I'll go when she brings the car back out tomorrow.