— Oscar? the packet came sailing through the air — you can put them with your ashes in there and here, Hiawatha's Magic Songbook? and some old letter from your Ace insurance company, you want it? Oscar?
— My God give it to him, Oscar call them and find out who dumped that car out there, I told you I want it off the property didn't I? will you call them? right now? And Lily that's really enough for now, just throw the rest of it out and let us get our breath.
— I'm going down and do the laundry, you want to bring down your sheets from upstairs?
— I said isn't this enough! I mean my God we're all exhausted, I'm still spinning with those awful voices of Harry's sisters and his whole, and, and his obituary in the paper like something you just happen to read in the paper and tomorrow there's another paper and nobody, and Oscar look at him sitting there with his lapful of trash all his wildest hopes for his award from the appeals court gone up in smoke, gone up in some bookkeeper's creative accounting my God can't we just, can't we do the laundry tomorrow and just stop and, and have a cup of tea and get our breath?
— That's all we do around here Christina! We sit around and have a cup of tea and catch our breath, there's nothing you can do about Harry anymore is there? there's nothing Oscar can do about this lousy reward he got for this play is there? there's nothing I can do about Daddy cutting me off like some orphan till he gets to the other side is there? or get my breasts fixed up till I get some money to pay for it is there? I mean it's like some crazy Halloween where we sit around here waiting for dark surrounded by these ghosts waiting for supper turning into this bunch of mummies waiting for the evening news with all these things we can't do anything about so that's why you have to do something about something you can do something about like the laundry, Oscar? You want to get a wastebasket for all that crap over there you're throwing away and bring in a broom to sweep up around here?
— Yes but wait Lily, I mean there's something you certainly can do something about immediately and get yourself into a proper hospital for this business about your implants, I mean my God to let a thing like money stop you? I can write a check right now can't I?
— That's not what I meant Christina. I mean I never meant for you to offer to pay for it, it was my own dumb fault wasn't it? letting them do that to me? just so Al could have a good time with…
— Don't be ridiculous. I mean you can't wait to sue Doctor Kissinger while this gel's running around plugging up every crack and cranny in your body God knows what would happen.
— They said this one lady lost her hair and her memory and she's so worn out she can hardly do anything.
— Well my God we can't have you going around the house like that can we, now let's have some tea while Oscar makes his call before it gets dark and we can think about supper.
Frozen fishcakes? and freeze dried, what were they, just add contents of package to 1 cup of cold water bringing to a full boil while stirring gently, turn heat down and simmer for 2 minutes. For a thicker sauce add less water, for a thinner sauce add more water, serve piping hot with your favorite fish, meat or other choice. For a delicious variation sprinkle with grated Parmesan cheese and season to taste following hard upon the visual banquet of Sikhs killing Hindus, Hindus killing Muslims, Druses killing Maronites, Jews killing Arabs, Arabs killing Christians and for a delicious variation Christians killing each other seasoned to taste and served piping hot by the snappy dresser on the evening news but, frozen fishcakes? — Because they were cheap, she said up scraping plates, and later, in the pall fallen over the room, the dark casements and the cold hearth, the only movement a fugitive couple kissing on the silent screen and the unascribed bleat of digestive juices — you know what I never understand here? where all this time we're stuck together in this house, that I don't ever see you read? I mean with all those books in there in the library and these ideas and people from books you're always talking about where all anybody reads around here is the paper and bills and the crosswords and this junk mail and the dumb television but I mean books? reading a book?
— Yes we, we used to, Lily we used to, we used to do a lot of things. We used to play the piano up there, four hand pieces for the piano, that little Mozart sonata, the sonata in D? her voice taking up with an almost desperate eagerness — within three bars he'd flatted the G, Oscar? It was so long ago.
— No, no every time we did it you failed to play the A on time Christina, that's what I remember. We'd have to start again because you'd fail to play the A on time.
— Well my God it happened when we changed places too didn't it? because you couldn't turn the page fast enough to give us the next phrase?
— Because you always wanted to play the upper part, because you were supposed to be the stronger pianist so you'd always take the upper part because you said it was harder, it's just more strident that's all Christina. You took it because it dominates, the upper part always dominates that's why you took it.
— It was the pedals Oscar, because the lower part takes the foot pedals and back when we were first learning you always wanted…
— It wasn't like that, Christina. That wasn't it at all.
— I've never seen that, I wish I could see you playing it.
— Hear us Lily, hear us but with the music room locked off like all the rest of them to save heat and God only knows when it was tuned last, the sounding board's probably warped with all the dampness out here and, and it was all so long ago. When we read everything then didn't we, we even read Shakespeare aloud sometimes but Oscar would never go to a performance would you Oscar, he'd only read it. They showed Henry the Fifth on television not long ago and he turned it off sputtering after five minutes.
— Because it's on the page! he suddenly erupted, — it's always been that way, the silent beautiful words coming off the page together to stop and listen to them to, to savour them without some vain fool in a costume prancing around up there just getting in their way, any of them! Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more God it sends a chill down your spine doesn't it? Christina? but she'd gone silent, her still hands arched up to her face leaving only her cold eyes staring somewhere back, staring within, and she shivered.
A little touch of Harry in the night.
When they came out next morning she was gone: the morning's paper, tea cold in a cup and even some mail there on the kitchen table, a pale sun well up in the sky and now up the hall the clatter of doors.
— Oscar? There's this little man in a black suit out here to see you.
— No wait! don't…
— Frank Gribble, Ace Worldwide Fidelity, may I come in? You remember me Mister Crease? We got your message yes, thank you for calling. How are we feeling. May I sit down? and he'd done so, flattening a plastic portfolio on his lap, — I hope your pain is all a thing of the past? and he had out a yellow pad, — now. Let's not take too much of your valuable time Mister Crease. Just a paper or two here for you to sign and we can put this whole episode behind us, a lot of water has gone under the bridge but the mills of the gods, as they say? Now. Will you bring me up to date?
— I think the last thing I, I've got a letter here somewhere from my lawyer who…
— A Mister Preswig yes, I have a communication from him here but I believe he's no longer in the picture? digging into the portfolio and bringing forth papers — we understand that he has found employment elsewhere and in the interests of expediency I thought if I simply dropped in on you we could work things out together without all the bother and expense of further legal proceedings which seem calculated to merely muddy the waters as they say and to save you the costly annoyance of going to trial?