Neither of them seemed to hear me. Sonya asked: “Mrs. Stu, would you like some coffee?”
“Sonya, I’d love it.”
So Sonya made her coffee the way she likes it, with milk — café au lait, from freeze-dry coffee, with sugar lumps, in a glass, with a silver coaster she’d bought. Mother stirred it, touched her tongue to the clots of coffee, and asked: “Sonya, was that your arrangement of ‘Chopsticks’ you played at the school that day?”
Sonya stared, then went over, knelt, put her head on Mother’s shoulder, and whispered: “Oh, Mrs. Stu, just to think you noticed, that you remember it now, what I played!”
“I loved it,” said Mother. “Play it.”
So she went to the piano, while Mother moved to the bench beside her, still holding the coffee, and played some crazy arrangement of “Chopsticks.” “I just boogie-woogied the left hand,” she explained. “But of course, as boogie-woogie’s four-four and Chopsticks is six eights, there was kind of an accent problem, till I fudged them together a bit.”
“It’s most effective,” said Mother.
“Will you kindly tell me,” I asked, “what ‘Chopsticks’ or boogie-woogie has to do with the price of fish, or Jane Sibert, or her farm, or anything we’ve been talking about?”
“It has plenty to do with it!” screamed Sonya, jumping up. “It means it’s not my fault! It means she’s not blaming me.”
“Well I’m certainly not blaming you,” said Mother.
“Thanks, Mrs. Stu. Thanks, thanks.”
She plumped down on the bench again and started to cry. “Mrs. Stu,” she blubbered, “would you do something for me? I know I have to go, I said I would, I promised, that I wouldn’t be inny pest, and I won’t be. I offered to go before, right here in this very room, the morning we got married, but he said do as he said, or he’d give me a boot in the tail; when he boots me in the tail is when I love him so. So I did. But now everything’s changed.
“Mrs. Stu, would you kid her along a little? Tell her hold everything, that things are going to get better, so wait for the silver lining, so I have a few days to think. To face what’s left of my life. To figure out what I’m going to do?”
“Put it that way, Sonya, I have to.”
“I do put it that way.”
“Then I’ll do what I can.”
At last this queer conversation ended, and Mother left. I left, and carried on business as usual, I don’t recall the details. When I got back that night, Goodwill had come for the beds, and Sonya seemed feverishly pleased they were gone, giving the subject no peace.
Late that night Mother called, and when she made sure Sonya was there, on the kitchen extension I mean, she gave her first report: “She was over tonight, and I started in on Sonya’s campaign, to kid her along, as she said, and try to persuade her to wait, to keep a stiff upper lip, to look on the bright side, ‘until things have a chance to change.’ She seemed to feel better, sensing something, under sly hints, and was able to drive home herself.”
Sonya seemed pleased, when she joined me in the living room, and I can’t quite say that I was, but of course I was playing a different ballgame, one that wouldn’t start until my check went out, the first of the following week. If it got cashed, it seemed to me the kidding along would stop, and we could make a fresh start, so life would go on from there. If not, I doubted if kidding along would help, or that anything would.
The next day, the next night, were practically a retake, but the night after that was different, I’m here to tell you it was. Mother called late, as usual, around midnight I would say, and from the very first word she spoke, acted all wrung up and excited. She wouldn’t begin until she made sure that Sonya was on the extension and could hear what she would say.
“Chiliens, hold your breath and hold on to your hats... it worked, Sonya’s idea did, beyond our wildest dreams, her dreams, my dreams, and Gramie’s dreams, all of our dreams, put together. Feature this if you can: She’s resigned to losing Gramie — she loves him, that she betrays with every word she says, but knows she can’t get him back. But, she’s leaving the farm to me! To me — or in other words, the dream is left as it was, because on this, of course, Gramie and I are one! She’s leaving it all to me, and all because Sonya made me kid her along. Made me act with compassion, made me do the decent thing by a stricken soul, because she was willing to do the decent thing! I’m so happy I could sing.”
“Mrs. Stu,” yelped Sonya, “how wonderful!”
“Sonya, you don’t have to go!”
“Well not that I ever wanted to!”
It went on for at least twenty minutes, with Mother giving details of how Jane “had thought it over all day, and then was ready, when she came, to say what she would do”; and also giving credit to Sonya, for thinking the idea up of smoothing Jane down and stringing it out, and heading the explosion off. And then at last when she hung up, came the sound of running feet, and the clutch of arms flung around me. I carried her up to our cloud, and we stayed on it all night, all next day, which was Sunday, and all Sunday night.
Or part of Sunday night.
Sunday evening, being exact.
The phone rang around twelve, and we both went piling downstairs, but I didn’t lift the receiver, there on the hall phone, until she gave me a shout from the kitchen. Then I answered, but all I could hear at the other end was what sounded like somebody crying. I said: “Hello? Hello? Hello?” but still nothing was said.
Then Sonya asked: “Mrs. Stu, is that you?”
“Yes, Sonya... I’m sorry.”
“Where are you? Home?”
“Yes. In bed.”
“But what happened?”
“Sonya, everything happened. She came over again, and was friendlier than ever — she’d called Mort Leonard, her lawyer, and made arrangements to see him tomorrow. And so on and so on. And then he had to come!”
“He? Who’s he?”
“Well who do you think?”
“Burl?”
“He walked from that dump he has to bring back a corkscrew he took, by mistake, thinking I might need it. That’s all it took.”
“You mean, he told how Gramie beat him up? Or what?”
“He told about your pregnancy!”
“Well that was nice of him!”
“I hadn’t mentioned it to her; well why should I? It was no business of hers! But she turned on me like a viper for ‘concealing the truth from her!’...don’t ask me to tell you the rest. He treated her like his child, patting her, kissing her, calming her. Perhaps women are his specialty, and perhaps I don’t respect it, but don’t think he’s not good at it, that he doesn’t know how to handle them. They left together — as soon as she could talk, she offered to drive him home. That was a half hour ago — I called as soon as I could. Now I’ve been like something demented.”
“Mrs. Stu, don’t take it so hard.”
She came, when Mother hung up, but not on running feet, and we went upstairs very slow, taking separate beds once more. I turned out the light, and after a long time she turned it on.
“Her check goes out tomorrow? Is that what you said, Gramie?”