It seemed needless to phone ahead to Garrison from here; she was already two-thirds of the way there. And then there was always the thought that if she should get worse news than she’d already had in the telegram, it would make the rest of the trip an unendurable torment. It was better to wait until she got there herself to find out.
They arrived strictly on schedule, ten-thirty on the dot. She was the first one down, elbowing her way through the other passengers.
She wasn’t disappointed that there was no one waiting to meet her, because she realized Ada must have her hands full at the house; it couldn’t be expected at such a time.
Garrison’s brief, foreshortened nightlife was in mid-career immediately outside the bus station. Which meant the movie-theater entrance was still lighted on one side of the way and the drugstore on the other.
She passed a group of chattering young girls in their late teens and early twenties holding down a section of the board sidewalk just outside the drugstore entrance. One of them turned her head to look after her as she went by, and she heard her say, “Isn’t that Margaret Peabody — now?”
She hurried along the plank walk, head lowered, into the surrounding darkness. Luckily they didn’t yoo-hoo after her to try to make sure. She didn’t want to stop and talk to near strangers. They might have news. She didn’t want to hear it from them first. She wanted to go straight home and get it there, good or bad. But that “now,” it hung trembling over her, roaring in her mind. What did it mean, that it was already—?
She hurried up the dark tunnel-like length of Burgoyne Street, smothered under trees, turned left, continued on for two house lengths (which here meant two city blocks, very nearly), turned in at the well-remembered flagstone walk with its tricky unevenness of edges. Each one went up a fraction of an inch higher than the one adjoining. Many a fall in childhood’s awkward days—
She caught her breath with a quick little suction as the house swiveled around full face to her. Oh, yes, oh, yes, there were too many lights lit, far too many. Then she curbed her mounting panic, forced it down. Well, even... even if mother was laid up in bed at all with the slightest of attacks, Ada would have more than the usual number of lights lit, wouldn’t she? She’d have to, to be able to look after her.
But then as she stepped up on the little white-painted porch platform, dread assailed her again. There were too many shadows flitting back and forth behind the lowered linen shades, you could hear the hum of too many voices coming from inside, as at a time of crisis, when neighbors are called in. There was something wrong in there, there was some sort of commotion going on.
She reached out and poked the bell button with an icicle for a finger. Instantly the commotion became aggravated. A voice screamed, “I’ll go!” Another shrieked, “No, let me!” She could hear them clearly out where she was. Had one of them been Ada’s, high-pitched and unrecognizable with uncontrollable grief? It seemed to her it had. She must be hysterical, all of them must be.
Before her heart had time to turn over and drop down through her like a rock, there was a quick shuffle of frenzied footsteps, as though someone was trying to hold someone else back. The door billowed open and a great gush of yellow interior light fanned out all over her. There were two unrecognizable figures silhouetted in it, grotesques with strange shapes on their heads.
“I got to it first!” the smaller one proclaimed jubilantly. “I was opening doors before you were born—” The music and the welter of hilarious voices streamed out around them into the quiet country night.
Her heart didn’t drop, her overnight bag did instead — with a slap to the porch floor. “Mother,” she gasped soundlessly.
The other figure in the paper party cap was Ada. “Margaret, you darling! How did you remember it was my birthday? Oh, what a dandy surprise, I couldn’t have asked for anything—”
They were talking at cross-purposes, the three of them. “Oh, but Ada—” Margaret Moran was remonstrating in a shaky, smothered voice, still unmanageable from the unexpected shock. “How could you do it that way! If you knew what I went through on the way up here! No, mother’s health is one thing I don’t think you have any right to joke about. Frank won’t like it a bit when he hears it!”
A puzzled silence had fallen over the two standing in the doorway. They turned to look after her. She was inside in the crepe-paper-lighted hallway now. The vivacious old lady asked Ada with a birdlike, quizzical cock of her head, “What does she mean?”
Ada asked at the same time, “What on earth is she talking about?”
“I got a telegram from you at one this afternoon. You told me Mother’d had another of her attacks, and to come at once. You even mentioned Dr. Bixby’s name in it—” Margaret Moran had begun to cry a little with indignation, a natural reaction from the long strain she had been under.
The mother said: “Dr. Bixby’s in there now; I was just dancing a cakewalk with him, wasn’t I, Ada?”
Her sister’s face had gone white under the flush of the party excitement. She took a step backward. “I never in the world sent you any telegram!” she gasped.
Moran surreptitiously stuck a thumb under the waistband of his trousers to gain a little additional slack. “Margaret couldn’t have done any better herself,” he said wholeheartedly, “and when I say that, I’m giving you all the praise I know how.”
“It’ll make her your friend for life when I tell her how you walked in here and saved the day. You must come over and have dinner with the two of us — I mean without working for it — when she gets back.”
She eyed the empty plates with a cook’s instinctive approval, flattered to see that her efforts have not been slighted. “Thank you,” she said, “I’d love to. I don’t get as much home cooking as I might myself. I’ve had a room at the Women’s Club since I’ve had this school job, and there are no facilities. Before then, of course, at home, we all took turns in the kitchen.”
She rose slowly, stacked the dishes together. “Now you just sit there and take it easy, Mr. Moran, or inside in the next room or wherever you please. I’ll get through these in no time.”
“You could leave them in there,” he remonstrated. “Margaret’s cleaning lady comes tomorrow, and shell do them—”
“Oh, well,” she shrugged deprecatingly, “it’s not much trouble, and one thing I can’t bear to see left lying around is dirty dishes, in my own or anybody else’s kitchen. I’ll be all finished before you know it.”
She was going to make some lucky stiff a mighty fine little wife one of these days, Moran thought, watching her bustle back and forth; the wonder of it was she hadn’t already. What was the matter with the young fellows around these parts, didn’t they have eyes in their heads?
He went into the living room, turned on the double-globed reading lamp and sat down with his paper, to give it a second and more exhaustive going-over. It was just as good as though Margaret were home, really; you could hardly tell the difference. Except maybe that she didn’t say, “Don’t” to Cookie quite so often. Maybe too much of that wasn’t good for a kid. She was a teacher, she ought to know.
She came out to the dining-room door one time and spoke to him, drying a large dish between her hands with a cloth. “Nearly through now,” she announced cheerfully. “How’re you two getting along in here?”