He was still in the hall, and I marched myself out there, slow. Now there’s something about a big guy, walking toward you step by step, that somewhat dampens courage, and that’s how it was with him. I held out my hand and he gave me the hammer, handle first, though giving the head a flip to indicate his contempt. I motioned him into the parlor. “Sit down,” I said. “The both of you, sit down.”
They sat, and I asked him: “You spent the night in this house?”
“What’s it to you where I spent the night?”
“Answer me!”
“Yes!” she whined. “With me! In my bed!”
“Having intimacies with you?”
“Oh! And how! More than you ever did!”
“It would appear I’ve been missing something.”
“It certainly would, Mr. Graham!”
“Okay, let’s get on.”
“Let’s not! You may give me my check and go!”
“Honey, you’re not taking his check.”
He went over, knelt by her chair, put his arms around her, and kissed her. She inhaled him, and it crossed my mind, he may have smelled like feet to Sonya, but apparently smelled different to her.
She kissed him, and said, “When I take money off a crumb, I figure he’s still a crumb, but I’ve got the money.”
“But Honey, I have money.”
“Oh Burl, my little Burl — that’s the sweetest thing that ever was said to me, that ever was said to me in my whole life.”
“The reason is, I love you.”
“Now you’re making me cry.”
She mumbled kisses all over his cheek, and then he turned to me. “So, brother-o’-mine, we’re done. Beat it.”
“Just a moment,” she said.
“You taking this check or not.”
“I’ve been forbidden to take it, so no. But there’s one more thing, Gramie. Did you bring my will too?”
“Your will’s at the bank, in my box.”
“I want it. I want it today.”
“You’ll get it, when I find it convenient to open my box at the bank, get it out, and bring it to you.”
“Mail it over, you mean.”
“I’ll say what I mean, Mrs. Sibert.”
“I want my will!”
“I bid you good day.”
“And a good day to you, Gramie, boy — and it is a good day for you, come to think if it, isn’t it? Here I get the girl with the looks and the shape and the million-dollar farm, but look what you get, Gramie. The girl with the bastard inside — and my little bastard at that, which guarantees he’s really good stock. You lucky dog!”
“How’d you like to go to hell?”
“If this be hell, they ought to charge me for it!”
As I left, she burst into silvery laughter.
I went home to make my report, and found Mother waiting for me, with Sonya, over café au lait in the living room. They both listened, and all Sonya said was: “At least you know where you stand.”
“Poor thing, she’s not old — Jane is fifty-eight, still in rosy middle age, and she was forty-three when she took you, Gramie, widowed, wet, and willing. So you let her down — I’m still amazed at that, as I had taken for granted, all this time ever since, that she had an arrangement with you. But if that’s how it was, that’s how it was.
“Anyway, for fifteen years she yearns and nothing happens. And then one day, you jolt her back teeth out by calmly announcing, ‘Jane, I got married.’ That she can’t forgive you. And then, to top it off, appears this practiced seducer, and the rest was a foregone conclusion. But it had to come sooner or later, once you and Sonya got married. That it came with Burl was unfortunate, but it’s her life, and we can’t choose for her. Still, I should call Stan Modell.”
Stan Modell was our lawyer, and she called from the hall extension, with me standing by, in case. The call went on for some time, after she sketched out what had happened, touching on Burl lightly, and bearing down on the will. When she hung up she said, “He wants to see me this afternoon, wants me to come to his office, so he can look things up, in connection with her farm, and ‘try to work something out,’ as he said. But he says hang on to the will — under no circumstances let it out of your hands. We don’t know what will come up, and if you have it you have it.”
So it seemed I’d done the right thing, in giving Jane a stall about sending it back. Sonya suggested that Mother come to the house, when she got back from Upper Marlboro, “so I can give you dinner, and you won’t do any talking at Gramie’s office about it.” Mother agreed and accepted, and left.
I left, for a day that was endless — I had two houses to look at, to get the history of, to make an appraisal on, and it took me all afternoon, until after six o’clock. But at that I got home before Mother, who had had to wait in Stan’s office until Mort Leonard got back from a trip to the District and could talk when Stan called him.
“I heard the call,” said Mother. “Stan made it perfectly plain that he felt we had a suit, the basis for an action, to recover the money you’ve paid, the ten thousand or so Jane’s accepted, in return for the will she drew, making you her beneficiary. But he wasn’t exactly threatening — he was ‘hoping it wouldn’t be necessary,’ and reminding Mort of what it might mean to Jane to have it come out in a lawsuit that though she pretended to farm this land, she was actually living off you, so the farm was not her main income, and her Rural Agricultural tax status more or less, mostly more, phony. These lawyers can figure angles, but I told him hold his horses, not to move unless I gave the word.
“Gramie, I don’t know much, but this much I’ve learned in my life: Stay out of lawsuits. It looks as though we’ve lost it, but if we just do nothing, refrain from aggravation, and mark time, Jane may come to her senses, may kick this scavenger out, may resume her life. After all, she’s not married yet.”
“I’m sorry to say she is.”
That was Sonya, very quiet. She’d brought the cocktail tray, and was watching me stir the martinis. “What did you say?” I asked her.
“She got married. To Burl.”
“She couldn’t. In Maryland, they must wait two days, as who knows better than we do, before they can get their license.”
“They drove to Dover, Delaware, and had it done there. She called from the motel they’re in — she wanted you to know, ‘wanted Gramie to be the first one.’ Also she asked me to tell you, don’t bother about the will, sending it back to her. She’s having a new one drawn when she gets back tomorrow, leaving the farm to Burl, and voiding the one you have.”
I poured the martini, raised my glass, said “Mud in your eye.” But Mother didn’t raise hers, and Sonya didn’t raise hers, and pretty soon Mother said: “I’m scrubbing her — putting her out of my mind.”
“Well I certainly am,” I assured her.
“You’re not, Mrs. Stu isn’t, and I’m not.”
Mother stiffened so you could see it, not being used to that kind of talk, from a sixteen-year-old snip. But Sonya went right on: “Father was here when she called, and the first thing he said was: ‘Jesus, who’s on that hook now?’”
“He has that hook on the brain.”
I was fairly disagreeable about it, but she kept her cool as she said: “Yes, he has, hasn’t he? It rides him all the time.”
But Mother cut in then, very cold, and very much in the grand style: “Sonya, I’m done with Mrs. Sibert, so stop talking about her please, as I’ve heard all I mean to listen to on a most unpleasant subject.”
“Mrs. Stuart, I think you mean.”
“Ah yes, Mrs. Stuart, of course.”
“Your daughter-in-law has the same name as you.”
“Sonya, I’ve accepted your correction.”
“And in my house, I decide what I talk about.”
“Very well, I withdraw my remark.”
“And you’re listening, whether you mean to or not.”
If Mother replied to that, I don’t just now recollect, but Sonya had cut her to size, and now got up from her chair and sashayed over to her, in kind of a slow way she had, one hand on her hip. “So the dream,” she said, “is kerflooie — the white moon, the white shells, the white cotton, are gone, except the lilies aren’t.”
“When did lilies get in it?” I snapped.
“White ones, on Miss Jane, before they close the lid.”
“Of the coffin, you mean?”
“The casket, they call it now.”
That settled my hash for a while, as it was the part of the dream I tried not to think about.
She went on then, to Mother: “You’re not scrubbing Miss Jane — she’s married to your son.” Then, to me: “And you’re not — she’s been your godmother, and she’s now your brother’s wife.” And then, tapping her own wishbone: “And I’m not — I’m the cause of it all.” And after letting that much sink in: “One of us, one of us three in this room, is on that hook, the one my father worries about. Because, if she signs a new will, making Burl her heir, she won’t live to see the snow — it’ll drift down on her grave before it falls on her. Somebody here must see that she doesn’t die.”
She picked up her cocktail glass, raised it, and said: “Here’s to the lucky one, whichever of us gets elected.”