“Fine,” said Elizabeth. “Thank you very much, Mrs. Barker.”
“You’re very welcome.”
Elizabeth hung up. “Oh, my,” she said, and pressed her index fingers to her eyelids. Then she rose and went over to the door. She knocked. “Timothy, I want to come out,” she said.
“Did you call Matthew?”
“This is getting silly.”
“Call Matthew.”
She went back to the telephone. With the receiver to her ear she stared vacantly out the window a minute, popping her chewing gum, and then she smiled. She dialed the operator. “I’d like to make a long-distance call,” she said, “to Ellington, North Carolina. Person-to-person. First class. Any other special charges you can think of.” Then she settled back, still smiling, unraveling a thread from the ribbing of one sock.
It was her mother who answered. “Oh, Elizabeth, what now,” she said.
“What?”
“Aren’t you calling to put off your visit again?”
“Not that I know of,” Elizabeth said.
“What is it, then?”
“I’m just saying hello.”
“Oh. Hello,” her mother said. “It’s nice to hear your voice.”
“Nice to hear yours.”
“Do you have enough money to be spending it like this?”
“That’s no problem,” Elizabeth said. “How is everything? Everybody fine? Spring there yet? Trees in bloom?”
“Well, of course,” said her mother. “Bloomed and finished. You’re using up your three minutes, Elizabeth.”
“How’s that dog getting along? Pop used to her yet?”
“You know he doesn’t like you calling him Pop.”
“Sorry. Well. Is Dommie still hanging around?”
“Elizabeth, that’s the saddest thing. I told you how often he’s asked after you, well, then Sunday he came to church with a red-headed girl. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, she could have been his cousin or something. But now what I hear: they’re engaged. Planning a fall wedding. Well, I suppose you could care less, I know you’re bringing home some Baltimore boy, but I always hoped, don’t you know, just way in the back of my—”
Oh, Dommie was good for a full fifteen minutes. Elizabeth stretched out on the bedspread and listened, every nowc and then sliding in a question to keep the flow going. When that was exhausted they talked about her father. (“I feel I ought to warn you,” her mother said, “that he looks upon this visit as a sign of some turning point in your faith. What are you laughing at? I won’t have you hurt his feelings for the world. He expects you to have changed some, and if you haven’t I don’t want to hear about it.”) Then Polly’s new baby. (“Her hair is brown, and I believe it’s going to curl. I’m so glad she has some, I never could warm to a bald-headed baby. Her eyes are a puzzle to me. They’re blue but may be turning, there’s that sort of opaque look beginning around the—”) Once, in mid-sentence, the bedroom doorknob rattled. What would happen if she said, “Excuse me, Mother, but I just wanted to say that I’ve been taken prisoner”? The connecting of her two worlds by a single wire made her feel disoriented, but when her mother ran out of conversation Elizabeth said, “Wait, don’t hang up. Isn’t anyone else there who would like to talk?”
“Have you lost all common sense? How much is this going to cost you?”
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said.
But she found out, as soon as the call was finished. She dialed the operator, who said, “Eight-sixty,” and then “Ma’am?” when Elizabeth laughed. “Ho there, Timothy,” she said. “Can you hear me? I just made an eight-sixty phone call.”
Silence.
“Timothy? Now I’m going to call California station-to-station. I’m going to tell some store they delivered the wrong package, and get switched from department to department to—”
Something was thrown against the door. Then he kicked the door until it shook, and then he turned the key and rattled the knob. It was still locked from inside, but Elizabeth didn’t open it. “Damn it, let me in,” he said.
“You’re beginning to get on my nerves,” she told him.
“Do I have to break the door down? I want to talk to you.”
“Say please.”
“I’m warning you, Elizabeth.”
“Pretty please?”
There was a pause. Then he said, “I’m pointing a gun at you.”
“Ho ho, I’m scared stiff.”
“I’m pointing Andrew’s gun. I’ll shoot straight through the door.”
“Oh, for goodness sake,” Elizabeth said. The whole situation was getting out of hand. She slid off the bed and went over to open the door. “You’re lucky I’m not the hysterical type,” she said, brushing past him. “How do you know that’s not loaded? Put it down. Send it out with the garbage.”
She stopped off by the couch to slip into her moccasins, and then she headed out to the entrance hall. It was a pity she had no money; she would have to thumb her way home. Or take a taxi, and have Mrs. Emerson pay for it.
Behind her there was a click, a metallic, whanging sound. She wheeled around.
“Stop there,” Timothy said.
But it wasn’t at her the gun was pointing, it was at himself, at an upward angle near the center of his chest. His wrist was turned in a sharp, awkward twist. “Timothy Emerson,” she said. “Did you just pull that trigger? What if there’d been bullets in it? Of all the—”
“No,” Timothy said, “I think I took the safety catch off.”
She started walking toward him, slowly and steadily. Timothy kept his eyes fixed on her. His hand was shaking; she saw a glimmer trembling on the gun barrel. “Stop there,” he said. But an edge of something was moving into his face, and she could tell that in a moment there would be a shift in the way he saw all this: he would laugh. Didn’t he always laugh? So she kept chewing her gum all the way across the room, the eternal handyman, unafraid. “This family is going to drive me up a wall someday,” she told him. “What did you do before I came along? What will you do when I’m gone?” Then she lunged.
Her hand closed on his. She felt the short blond hairs prickling her palm. There was an explosion that seemed to come from somewhere else, from inside or behind him, and Timothy looked straight at her with a face full of surprise and then slid sideways to the floor.
5
It was all up to Matthew. It was Matthew who made the funeral arrangements, brought his mother endless cups of tea that he had brewed himself, met his brother and sisters at the airport and carted them home, answering their questions as he drove. “But why—?” “How could he—?” “I really don’t know,” Matthew said. “I’ll tell you what little I’ve pieced together, that’s all I can do.”
Peter came from college, looking young and scared with his hair slicked back too neatly. Mary flew out from Dayton with her little boy; Margaret came from Chicago and Melissa from New York. Andrew had not been told. He would arrive on Saturday, as he had planned before all this happened. Then they could sit him down and lay comforting hands on his shoulders and tell him gradually, face to face. The funeral would be over by then, but just barely, which made Matthew picture his family burying Timothy in haste. They didn’t really, of course. There was the usual waiting period, with the usual tears and boredom and the sense that time was just creeping until they could get this business finished. They wore out the subject of Timothy; they began to feel bruised and battered at the sound of his name. People kept paying formal calls, requiring them to make hushed and grateful conversation that did not sound real even though it was. No one ate regular meals. No one went to bed at regular hours. Any room Matthew went into, at any time of day, he might find several members of his family sitting in a silent knot with coffeecups on their knees. Sometimes a piece of laughter broke out, or an accidental burst of enthusiasm as they veered to other subjects. Then they caught themselves, checked the laughter, dwindled off in mid-sentence, returning to a silence that swelled with inappropriate thoughts.