“Can’t I?”
He picked up his suitcase again. “You know where I am if you want me.”
“Certainly.”
She turned and walked toward the house without looking back. With a savage bewildered, “Damn,” he strode to the taxi and opened the door.
Slowly Polly went into the living room and stared for a minute, her eyes hot with rage, at the small photograph of Lucille on the mantle. “She did it,” she said through clenched teeth. “She did it, it’s her fault. She’s always spoiled everything for me.”
The occupational-therapy department consisted of two large cheerful rooms with wide windows through which the sun was pouring. There were two nurses in the room as well as the teacher, but they wore bright-colored smocks over their uniforms and the place had the atmosphere of a friendly informal workshop.
In one corner fibers of willow-wood were soaking in a tub of water and standing beside the tub was Mrs. Hammond weaving the wood on an upright frame. She paid little attention to detail but seemed to enjoy flipping the strands violently around.
“Come, come, Mrs. Hammond,” the teacher said. “Let’s take it a little more slowly.” She turned to Lucille. “Mrs. Hammond is making a lampstand. Isn’t she doing well?”
“Yes,” Lucille said.
Mrs. Hammond went on flipping.
“If you see anything you’d especially care to work at, Mrs. Morrow...”
“No. No — anything... anything at all.”
“Come, Cora,” the teacher called across the room. “Let’s get to work now. Show Mrs. Morrow your lovely picture. Perhaps she’d like to do one like it.”
“I’m sure she would,” Cora said primly.
Cora had a small niche of her own occupied by a wooden frame with a piece of burlap stretched across it. On a table Reside it lay little bowls of macaroni, barley, rice and similar foods.
“We glue these to the burlap,” the teacher said to Lucille. “And when the whole thing is done, it is painted. Some of the work is really amazing, though Cora, I’m afraid, is not very diligent.”
“It isn’t diligence that counts,” Cora said with a wink. “It’s the artistic impulse, and scope.”
“It certainly has a great deal of scope,” the teacher said and glanced at the odd pieces of rice and barley scattered haphazard over the frame. “I’m still not quite sure what it’s going to be.”
“It’s a pictorial representation of James Joyce’s Ulysses. I believe I told you that before. The medium is perfect for the work.”
The teacher hesitated. “Well, in that case... Would you care to do something along this line, Mrs. Morrow?”
“She could work on this with me,” Cora said.
“Let Mrs. Morrow answer for herself, Cora. We must be polite.”
“All right,” Lucille said. “I don’t care.”
Mrs. Hammond had stopped work and was staring at the bowls of food with somber eyes. Unobtrusively, one of the nurses moved across the room and stood beside her.
“Give me more food and more clotherings,” Mrs. Hammond intoned. “Give me...”
“Now, Mrs. Hammond, you’ve just had your breakfast. We’ll give you a little lunch later on. What a really good job you’re...”
“...more food and more clotherings.”
The nurse picked up a strand of willow and handed it to her. Mrs. Hammond flung it down again. It whistled through the air and struck the nurse’s leg.
“Give me more food and more clotherings.”
“All right. Come along.”
The two went out, the nurse’s arm tucked inside Mrs. Hammond’s in a firm friendly way.
“She’s always worse on visitors’ day,” Cora explained. “Her husband comes to see her. Here, pretend you’re working and the teacher won’t interrupt us talking.”
Lucille selected a piece of macaroni from the bowl. She held it up between her fingers and gazed at it dully. It seemed to expand before her eyes, to become the symbol of her future life.
All of my life, she thought, all of my life, while Cora’s voice tinkled on: “Mrs. Hammond came from a very wealthy Jewish family. Then she married this man, a clerk of some kind, and her family cut her off because he wasn’t Jewish. They were very poor, and then she lost her baby at birth. Since they told her she’s never said a word but that one sentence. On visitors’ day her husband comes and talks to her, but I don’t think she hears anything. She’s been here for a long time.”
A long time? Lucille thought. So will I.
“You aren’t listening,” Cora said.
“Yes, I am.”
“Well, then, Mrs. Hammond must feel that her husband starved her and killed the baby. And at the same time she must blame herself too, for renouncing her religion.”
The Filsinger twins came in with Miss Scott. Mary identified herself immediately.
“I have told the superintendent a thousand times that when Betty doesn’t feel well she shouldn’t have to come down here.” She threw back her head and shouted, “Superintendent. Super — in — ten — dent!”
“Hush, Mary,” Miss Scott said, and turned to Betty. “How do you feel, Betty?”
“I feel fine,” Betty said vacantly.
“She’s putting on a brave front!” Mary cried. “She doesn’t look well — oh, any simpleton could see how pale she is.”
She stroked her sister’s rosy cheek.
The teacher appeared from the other room.
“Mary, Miss Sims is going to have her washrag finished before you if you don’t hurry. She’s tatting the edge right this minute.”
Mary snorted. “Come on, Betty, come on, Betty. Watch you don’t fall. Oh, you shouldn’t be allowed to come down here in your condition. Don’t fall, Betty.”
“I feel fine,” Betty said.
“Oh, you’re so brave, dear. If it wasn’t for Miss Sims beating me, I’d go right to the superintendent this minute. Oh, dear. Oh, Miss Scott, am I doing right?”
“Perfectly right,” Miss Scott said.
The morning went on. Except for Mary Filsinger’s occasional cries for the superintendent, there were no disturbances. Lucille and Cora were skillfully separated by the teacher and Lucille found herself becoming genuinely interested in Mrs. Hammond’s abandoned lampstand. She liked the feel of the willow fibers, smooth and pliant, and for the first time in years she felt the satisfaction of actually constructing something with her hands. When the luncheon bell sounded she had almost forgotten where she was and that she was to stay there the rest of her life.
“I won’t go down.” Lucille stood by the window in her room, her hands clenched against her sides. “I don’t want to see anyone.”
“Oh, come now,” Miss Scott said. “We all have visitors today, even the twins. You’ll be all alone up here. And after your family sent you those lovely roses...”
“I don’t want the roses. Give them to someone else.”
She had never dreamt that the family would come to see her, openly and casually like this. She had imagined one of them sneaking in, in the dead of night, to find her, to make her suffer. Yet they were here now, all of them, waiting downstairs to see her as if nothing had happened, sending her roses, and pretending this was an ordinary hospital and she herself was merely a little ill.
“We know it’s always hard to see your family for the first time,” Miss Scott said, “but if you could make the effort we feel it will do you worlds of good.”
“Like Mrs. Hammond,” Lucille said.