“Sit down,” Mrs. Bartlett said. “No, not in that one. This one’s better. The spring’s broken in that.”
Madeline changed accordingly.
She kept thinking, She used to live here. This is where she lived. Here, where I am now. And because of me, she doesn’t live here anymore. She doesn’t live anywhere anymore. I did that. I. How can I face those black eyes looking at me right now? How can I look into them?
“You haven’t given me your name,” Mrs. Bartlett said, smiling at her. She rested her hand endearingly on Madeline’s shoulder for a minute.
“Madeline Chalmers,” Madeline said. “Murderess. Your daughter’s murderess.” But only the first part passed her lips.
“Did you know her long?” Mrs. Bartlett said. A jet cross at the base of her neck blinked in the reflected sunlight, as though it had just shed a tear.
“It seems longer — than it was. Much longer. A lifetime.”
The answer, carefully chosen as it was, made no impression. Mrs. Bartlett had averted her head, suddenly, sharply. “Excuse me a minute,” she said in a racked voice. “I’ll be right back.” She went through the doorway — it was an opening really, it had no door — turned right, and went into the next room, the bedroom apparently. She’d gone in there to cry, Madeline knew.
She heard no sound, and tried not to, in case there had been any. But there wasn’t any.
It didn’t make it easier for her, this temporary digression. She tried to take her mind up, looking at little things. Little things that really didn’t interest her.
One of the lamps, because there was an insufficiency of outlets no doubt, had its cord hoisted and plugged into a socket in the ceiling fixture. The wall, at least on the one side facing her, was in two shades of green. Most of its surface a fading yellowing green, like peas when they’ve begun to wither and dry up. And then in the middle of this, an oblong patch of a much darker green, looking as fresh as if it had just been dampened with water. A vacant nail protruded from the middle of it, giving the explanation. A picture had once hung there long ago, and then been moved. Before the window there was a brilliantly bright stepladder. But not a real one, a phantom step-ladder of firming sun motes, placed there as though for some angel in domestic service to step up on and hang the curtains. Its luminous slats were made by the openings in the fire-escape platform outside the window above.
On the roof, visible only in a slanting diagonal that cut across one upper corner of the window, a woman was hanging wash. You could hear the pulley squeak querulously each time she paid out more rope to herself, but not see her or the wash.
Mrs. Bartlett came back again. You could not tell she had been crying.
“Let me get you something,” she said. “I’m forgetting myself. Would you like some coffee?”
“Nothing, please,” Madeline begged her with utmost sincerity. Almost with abhorrence. “I just came here to talk to you, really I did.”
“You wouldn’t refuse Starr’s mother, now would you?” the other woman said winningly. “It won’t take a minute. Then we can sit and talk.” She went into a narrow little opening, almost like a crevice, over at the far side of the front door, and Madeline could hear water running, first resoundingly into the drumlike hollow of a porcelain sink, then smotheredly into tin or aluminum. Then she heard the pillow-soft fluff that ignited gas gives.
Mrs. Bartlett came back again. For the first time since she’d admitted her, she sat down with Madeline.
“You look tired,” Madeline remarked compassionately.
“I don’t sleep much anymore since she’s gone,” she said. ‘‘At nights, I mean. That’s why I have to sleep when I can. I was napping when you rang, that’s why it took me so long to open the door.”
“I’m sorry,” Madeline said contritely. “I would have come some other time.”
“I’m glad you came when you did.” She patted Madeline’s arm and gave a little snuggle within her chair that was pure anticipation. “You haven’t told me a word about her yet.”
“I don’t know where to begin,” Madeline said. And it was true.
“Was she happy?”
“That,” Madeline said with infinite slowness, “I don’t know. Don’t you?”
“She didn’t tell me,” Mrs. Bartlett said simply.
“Was she happy when she was here with you?”
“She was at first. Later on — I’m not so sure.”
Madeline thought, There could be something there. But how to get it out?
“Did she have any particular — ambitions, that she ever spoke of to you?”
“All girls are ambitious. All young things are. Not to be ambitious is not to be young at all.” She said it sadly.
“But any particular?” Madeline persisted.
“Yes,” Mrs. Bartlett said. And then again, “Yes.” And then she stopped as if mulling it over.
Madeline waited, breath held back.
“Wait a minute,” cautioned Mrs. Bartlett, getting up. “I hear the coffee bumping.” She went out to get it.
Madeline softly let her breath out, like a slow tire leak. Oh, damn this coffee break, she thought. Just when we seemed to be getting somewhere.
Mrs. Bartlett bustled with cups and saucers and spoons, and a glass holding little lumps of sugar (she kept them in a water tumbler in lieu of a bowl), and it was impossible to continue consecutively. Whatever ground had been on the point of being gained, which was the most she could say for it, was lost again for the time being.
Mrs. Bartlett sat there and sipped, and the black eyes watched Madeline over the rim of the tipped cup, but in a friendly, trusting manner.
I can’t eat her bread, Madeline thought. Meaning the beverage. Her gorge rose. I’m a murderess. I can’t sit here taking food and drink with her. I killed her daughter. It’s inconceivable, abominable, to do this.
“Don’t you like it?” Mrs. Bartlett asked ruefully.
Madeline forced some into her mouth. And that was all she could do.
“I think I understand,” said Mrs. Bartlett softly, after a great while. For the first time since they’d met, she dropped her eyes, lowered them away from Madeline’s face.
Madeline removed the saucer from below its cup, and let the mouthful of coffee she had already absorbed run back on it again. This wasn’t just a gesture of sentimental delicacy. Her throat had closed up; she would have strangled on just one swallow of the blood-warm liquid. She set the cup and saucer aside.
Mrs. Bartlett moved, very tactfully, very inconspicuously now, and suddenly the cups were gone from sight.
When she came back, Madeline had moved to another chair and was briefly sheltering her eyes with the edge of her hand.
“You are a real friend,” Mrs. Bartlett said in gentle admiration. “You are.” And she said it a third time. “You are.”
“Yes,” Madeline said with bitter mockery. “Yes. Oh, yes.”
They were silent for a short while. Then abruptly Madeline turned around toward her — one shoulder had been turned away until now — and said. “You know how it happened, I suppose?”
The older woman seemed to shrink lower in her chair. Settle, like something deflating. “Yes, I know,” she said. “They told me.” And then she whispered, “A shot — on the street.” Whispered it so low that Madeline couldn’t hear the words at all. But she knew what they were, because those were the words that belonged in that place. And the lip movements imaged them, fitted them.
After a while Madeline started to ask her, “Did you—?” Then didn’t know how to say it.
“Did I what?” prompted Mrs. Bartlett, eyes on the floor.
“Did you — go there, did you go in to the city, when they notified you? Did you — bring her back with you? Is she resting out here?”