When he saw his mother in the hospital that evening, he was deeply shocked at the way she looked, and at the uncontrolled trembling of her hands. He stayed in the house. Mrs. Geraldine Davis made up a bed there for him with what he thought was an unwarranted surliness.
He had a long talk with the doctor the next day. Due to the nature of the fracture, they had had to set it immediately. Splintered bones had had to be pinned. Her heart had stood up well under the general anesthetic, but they had had to give her plasma for shock. The doctor would not commit himself on whether she would be able to walk again, but he was ready to admit that she would be bedridden for quite a long time. Ben signed a hospital form accepting financial responsibility. He stayed that day and the next, spending as much time with her as he could, but he was never alone with her. Geraldine Davis was there the entire time. The women were obviously close.
He flew back the morning of the third day, told Ginny the details he had not told her over the phone, and that evening they phoned Martha at the hospital. Ben had arranged for a phone to be put by her bed. Ginny and the three children talked to her. Ben dived back into a brute load of work, work so heavy and demanding that he had no time to think of the extra financial burden her fall had entailed.
Six days later, at midnight, the doctor in Columbus phoned and woke him from a sound sleep to tell him that his mother had contracted pneumonia and she was not responding to medication. She was in an oxygen tent, and it was perhaps best that he come as soon as possible. Ginny packed his things and drove him to the airport.
Air connections were bad. He did not arrive at the small hospital until quarter after ten the next morning. She had been dead for not quite an hour. He made arrangements for the funeral service and the burial with the same firm that had buried his father so long ago. He phoned Ginny, and she said she would make arrangements about the children and arrive the next day. He said he saw no reason for it. It was just an added expense, and it could not possibly do any good. She seemed hurt at his attitude.
But he was delighted to see her when she arrived. He had seldom felt as lonely, and the town where he had been brought up had never looked so strange to him.
And he was glad to hold his wife in his arms for a long reassuring moment because he was ashamed of himself. It had happened the night of the day she had died. He had awakened in the night and he had been unable to go back to sleep. Suddenly, in the darkness, there had come to him a sudden tingle of excitement and pleasure and relief as he realized he could now sell the house, and even in a hasty sale it would bring far more than the hospital and the burial expenses. It was a sound house, and the location was convenient to the downtown area. He would come out of it with a profit, and it would no longer be necessary for him to send the $2400 a year to her. It was a despicable and degraded rejoicing that made him feel soiled, but he could not help himself. He mourned her. But mourning was stained by his awareness of being freed by her death from the nagging trap he was in.
Ginny had met Geraldine Davis on previous visits, and it seemed to Ben that Geraldine seemed more friendly toward Ginny than toward him. But when Ben and Ginny were alone later, Ginny said, “I don’t think we’re the most popular people who ever stayed here, darling.”
“I was born in this house and I swear she makes me feel like an interloper.”
“The poor thing is probably worried sick about what she’ll do now. You can’t blame her, you know.”
“That must be it,” he said.
The service at the church was well attended. The Weldons were an old family. The great majority of the people at the church were elderly. There was the traditional ceremony at the grave, and then Ben and Ginny rode back into town in the limousine provided by the funeral director. There were no words with which Ben could tell Ginny how necessary it was to have her beside him.
They were back in town at two o’clock, and Ben had the driver let them out in front of the old office building that housed the offices of Gebbert and Malone. Old Willis Gebbert had been a friend of his father, and had handled what small legal business the family had had for sixty years. He had made the appointment earlier. Judge Gebbert had been at the church, and Ben had pointed him out to Ginny. “Must be ninety and still practicing,” he whispered.
The old-fashioned office was full of dark, heavy furniture and it smelled like dust and medicine.
Ben introduced Ginny to the judge, and he was courtly with her. His hair was wispy white, his blue eyes watery, his head in a constant visible tremor, brown spots on the backs of his large white hands. But his voice had not lost its deepness and resonance.
“A sad thing,” Judge Gebbert said. “She was a wonderful woman. She made Sam Weldon a wonderful wife, Benjamin.”
“I appreciate your saying that, sir. We’re going to have to leave today and get back to the children and the job. I was wondering if you’d take on a last chore for the Weldon clan. I’d like to give you a power of attorney to sell that house for me and pay off the medical and funeral expenses — I can have the bills sent directly here — and remit the balance to me.”
Judge Gebbert coughed in a slightly artificial way and stared out the window for a few moments, then sighed and said, “Nobody can say Martha wasn’t in her right mind, and nobody can say her mind wasn’t made up. She came in here almost two years ago, son, and I made up a will for her. Geraldine Davis gets the house and furniture and the money in her savings account, and you get the right to go over the house and take any personal stuff you might want to keep. Want to look at my copy of it, Benjamin? I can get it in no time at all.”
“No. Don’t bother. I’m sure it’s just as you describe it, judge.” His mouth felt dry and he felt far away, as though he were dreaming all this.
“She said to me you were doing so good you wouldn’t need it, and if anything happened to her, Geraldine’d have no place to lay her head, no kin and no money, and by making out the will that way, she could stop fretting about it. It was going to be a secret, but she told Geraldine about it all later on so Geraldine wouldn’t worry either — you know the way your mother was, son.”
“Judge, how about the... bills?”
Judge Gebbert looked at him with a slight frown. “I guess you can do that much, can’t you? I don’t know who else would be responsible.”
“Thank you for your time, judge,” he said, getting up.
“Geraldine talked to me on the phone just before you came here. Seemed to know you were coming. Asked me about occupancy. I told her she’s in her legal rights to stay right here, and it’ll go through Probate Court with no trouble at all.” He gave an astonishingly vital baritone laugh. “If after all these years I can’t draw a will, I better get out of the law business.”
They walked the six blocks to the house. There was a faint rumor of spring in the air. Ginny held his arm.
“Darling,” she said gently, “we’re jinxed. If molten gold was coming down, we’d be out there with sieves, wouldn’t we?”
“Don’t make with the gallant little jokes. Not now, please.”