“Where’s my car?”
“Thelma said she’d leave it at the house for you. Nancy’s expecting us, let’s get going.”
“I don’t want to go. I’m not a child. I can’t be ordered around.”
“You are and you can.”
“I thought you were my friends!”
“If we weren’t your friends, we’d both be home having a nice quiet dinner. Now let’s go.”
“All right, all right.”
Harry got up and went out the door, muttering to himself. He paused at the bottom of the veranda steps and glanced back at the door as if he had an irrational hope that Thelma was going to appear and ask him not to leave.
Mrs. Malverson was out on her front lawn watering a bed of daffodils. She spotted Harry and waved the hose playfully by way of greeting.
“Hello there, Mr. Bream.”
“Hello, Mrs. Malverson.”
“Beautiful weather for daffodils, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.” He hung back while the other two men approached the car parked at the curb. “Mrs. Malverson, I’m — well, I won’t be around for a while. Business, you know how it is. I was wondering perhaps if you could drop in on Thelma now and then, cheer her up a bit. She hasn’t been well lately.”
“I know. I told her that myself only last Sunday. Child, I said, you look as if you’ve been up all night, and crying too. I’m sure it was Sunday. Yes, it was, because I remember now I asked her to go to church with me for the reading of the flowers. She dropped a bottle of milk, she was that nervous. And all this week she’s been avoiding me. Me, her friend. Of course that’s what you can expect from a woman at certain times.”
“Certain times?”
“Oh, come now, Mr. Bream. Surely you’ve suspected that a little stranger is coming into your life?”
“Stranger? Yes. Yes, that’s the right word.” He turned so abruptly that he almost lost his balance, and walked toward the waiting car.
Mrs. Malverson stared after him, her mouth open in surprise. Now what does that mean? Maybe I shouldn’t have blurted it out like that, but my goodness, these are modern times. People don’t hide things like a baby, they go around shouting it from the housetops as soon as they’re sure. Unless...
“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” she said aloud, with a violent tug on the hose. “Never have I seen a more devoted wife than Thelma Bream. Keeps the house spotless, airs the mattresses every second Thursday. And never a cross word between the two of them. She’s always quoting Harry, Harry this, Harry that, as if he was some kind of god instead of an ordinary little man that sells pills, and some of them no darn good either. And every morning when he leaves for work out she traipses to the car to kiss him good-bye. A real womanly woman, if I ever saw one.”
Unless...
“Absolutely ridiculous,” Mrs. Malverson repeated weakly. “I ought to be downright ashamed of myself.”
When they reached Turee’s old three-story house on Woodlawn, Nancy came to the door to greet them. Though she looked red-eyed and worn, she spoke cheerfully: “Hello Harry — Ralph... Where’s Billy? Isn’t he coming in for a drink?”
“Not tonight,” Turee said. “His wife has a cold and he wants to go home and catch it, so he’ll have an excuse to cry.”
“What a time to try to be funny.”
“I’m quite serious.”
“Well shush, anyway. Harry, where’s your suitcase?”
“In my car. Wherever that is.”
“Thelma left it for you in the driveway. Here are the keys. Now go get your suitcase.”
“I can’t stay here. I’ve been enough bother...”
“Nonsense. You’re perfectly welcome to sleep on the sun porch. This is practically the only time of year it’s usable. You won’t freeze and you won’t stifle. Now how’s that for an offer?”
“Well...”
“Of course you’ll stay. It’ll be just like old times, before you were marrie—”
Nancy’s tactlessness was sometimes as overwhelming as her hospitality, and Harry stood silent and embarrassed in the face of both, looking down at the carpet which was muddy with the tracks of children and worn in places right through to the padding.
Nancy touched his arm in gentle apology. “I’m always saying the wrong thing. Without meaning to. Come on, I’ve got dinner ready for you. Ralph will get your suitcase later.”
The children had already been fed and sent upstairs with instructions to amuse themselves, no holds barred, and the two men were left alone at the round oak table in the big old-fashioned kitchen. They were both preoccupied and hungry and the meal was disturbed only by the sounds from upstairs, sometimes loud, sometimes muffled, running feet, squeals and giggles, stifled screams, an occasional howl.
There was a hectic quality in the children’s playing, as if they knew something secret and strange and terrifying had happened and they were combating the knowledge with hysterical denial. “Uncle Ron is dead,” Nancy had told them calmly. “Now if you have any questions I’ll answer them as best I can.” It was like asking a roomful of grade-schoolers if they had any questions about the mechanism of a hydrogen bomb. No questions were asked, out loud.
Death. A sacred word, yet an evil one, a beginning and a finality, heaven and hell, streets of gold and pits of fire, angels and demons, bliss and brimstone. If you have any questions...
The din from the second floor grew louder and more frantic. Nancy’s voice plunged into it, sharp as a scalpel. “What are you four doing up there? Avis? Sandra? You hear me?”
Sudden and complete silence, as if all four, simultaneously, had been anesthetized.
“I want an answer. What are you doing?”
A girl’s voice, brassy with defiance, “Nothing.”
“It doesn’t sound like nothing.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Well, please do it more quietly.”
Whispers. A gasp. A frightened giggle. Then the muted chant of children:
The sounds floated down into the kitchen and Harry shivered and turned white. “I missed it.”
“Missed what?”
“Ron’s funeral.”
“That doesn’t matter. Barbaric custom, anyway.”
“Thelma, she was there?”
“Yes.”
“There wasn’t any scene, any trouble? I mean, with Esther?”
“The ladies,” Turee said with some irony, “are ladies, and don’t make scenes at funerals.”
“I was just wondering.”
“You wonder too much.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve got to stop it.”
“I know.”
“Start thinking on the positive side. You’re young, healthy, competent, you’ve got a future.”
“I can’t see it.”
“Not with your eyes closed and pictures of Thelma pasted inside the lids. Start looking around. The sky hasn’t fallen. The city is still here. The blood is still bouncing around in your veins. Here, have some of this port. An uncle of mine sent me a dozen bottles. He had to choose between his wine cellar and his ulcer.”
Harry eyed the glass of port with suspicion, then shook his head gravely. “No thanks. I haven’t had a drink since Monday.”
“Why not?”
“I was afraid it might interfere with my thinking.”
“Something should have.” Turee sipped at his port and made a wry face. “No wonder the old boy developed ulcers. This stuff’s god-awful. Try it.”
Harry tried it. “It’s not so bad.”
Nancy came into the kitchen to ask Turee to go upstairs immediately and discipline the children.