“A directly domineering woman is one thing, a sly managing female is another.”
“Very feministic.”
“And I didn’t come here to argue.”
“Then back to Sunday.”
“I’ve told you everything. It was the most ordinary day in the world until we ran into the train wreck. From then on it became very confused. We all worked steadily until late that night. I hardly saw any of the others. I helped undress and wash the wounded and make beds and things like that. I haven’t had much real hospital training, that’s all I could do. I took time off to phone home because I knew Edith would be worried.” Again the grudging note in her voice. “Lucille, too, I suppose, though not about us. That’s really all I can tell you.”
She got up, a stocky, healthy-looking girl with a direct and somewhat defiant gaze.
“I’ve talked too much,” she said curtly, pulling on her gloves.
“You’ve been very helpful.”
“I... I’d rather you didn’t tell the others I came here this morning. They wouldn’t like it.” She raised her head proudly. “Not that I’m in the least frightened.”
“It might be wise to be a little frightened.”
“If I admitted, in words, that I was even a little frightened, I’d never go home again.”
She went out, the echo of her own words ringing in her ears: never go home again, never go home again.
But she could not resist a challenge, especially one that she presented to herself. And so she drove straight home.
She let herself in with her own key. As soon as the door opened she could smell the flowers, the heavy cloying calla lilies and the poisonously sweet carnations. Funeral flowers.
With Deepest Condolences — With Sincerest Sorrow.
Please omit flowers, the notice in the paper had read. But some of their friends thought a funeral just wasn’t a funeral without flowers. And so they kept arriving by personal messengers and florist vans, to be unwrapped by Annie, and stacked up haphazardly in the living room by a distraught and red-eyed Edith.
“Idiots,” Polly said through clenched teeth. “Idiots, idiots.”
Edith came out of the living room. She looked old and tragic and she kept pressing one hand to her head as if to press away the pain.
“I’m so tired. I don’t know what to do with all these flowers.”
“Throw them out.”
“It wouldn’t look right. Someone might see us. It seems so silly, sending flowers when she isn’t even here.” Her words ended in a sob. “I have this blinding headache, I can’t seem to think.”
“Ask Father to give you something.”
“No, I can’t bother him. He didn’t sleep all night.” The front door opened and Martin came in. A blast of cold air swept down the hall.
“Hello,” Martin said cheerfully. “You’ve been out, Polly?”
Edith turned away and went quickly up the stairs without speaking to him.
Martin frowned at her back. “What’s the matter with her lately? As soon as I come she goes.”
“You get on her nerves, which doesn’t surprise me. Give me a cigarette.”
He tossed a package of cigarettes toward her. “Well, why do I get on her nerves?”
“Respect for the dead. That sort of thing.”
“She’s been doing this for two weeks. Lucille wasn’t dead two weeks ago.”
“If you’re worried, why not ask her?”
“No, thanks. My policy is to stay away from the rest of the family as much as I can.”
“Mine too,” Polly said dryly. “And isn’t that a coincidence?”
Martin looked at her with detachment. “Pretty long in the tooth and claw this morning, aren’t you? Where have you been?”
“Here and there.”
“Well, well.” He looked amused but she could tell from the way his eyes narrowed that he was angry. “I don’t seem to be much of a success with the ladies today. One walks out, the other shuts up.”
“It’s just pure envy. We’d like to be able to bury ourselves in books too.”
“My work has to be done.”
“Come hell or high water. You’ve made that clear.”
“Oh, Lord.” He put his hand out and caught her arm and smiled suddenly. “Look, there’s no sense in the two of us fighting. We’re the ones that have to stick together — aren’t we?”
For a minute she couldn’t speak. She felt the tenseness in his voice and in his eyes, crinkled at the corners with smiling lines, yet cold because they were always turned in upon himself.
“Oh, sure,” she said calmly, and shrugged away his hand. “We’ll all stick together. There’s not much else we can do.”
“I’ll be away this afternoon,” Janet Green told her secretary. “See that these are ready for me in the morning and that Miss Lance gets the samples, and...” Her eyes settled vacantly on the desk. “Oh, that’s all.” The secretary picked up the samples, frowning. Miss Green had been very absent-minded for the past few days. She was always forgetting things and breaking off sentences in the middle. In the secretary’s opinion, Miss Green had been working too hard and should have had a holiday after the death of her sister.
As she passed across the front of the desk she gave Miss Green a sharp glance. Janet caught it.
“Damn,” she muttered when the door closed. “I’ll have to keep my mind on business. I shouldn’t go there this afternoon. It’s not my affair.”
But it is, she answered herself silently. I have every right to go to her funeral; Cora died because of her.
Since she had read of Lucille’s suicide in the paper, Janet’s conscience had been troubling her. She felt that she had not done enough to help Lucille and that she was, in a sense, responsible for what happened. Twice she had begun to call Sands on the telephone seeking reassurance and explanations, but each time she had hung up again. Then the urge had seized her to go and see the Morrow family. She felt vaguely that once she had seen them, things would be clearer and the whole “business less mysterious and frightening.
Since she did not want an actual encounter with the family she decided to go to the cemetery where Lucille was to be buried. There would be a crowd of curiosity-seekers there; no one would notice her.
But Janet’s hope of remaining unnoticed was dispelled almost as soon as she arrived. Bad weather had kept most of the curiosity-seekers away; and to make it worse, she arrived late and the first person she saw was Sands.
He was standing apart from the little group of people clustered around the open grave. He had his hat off and the driving snow had whitened his hair. She began to walk around to the other side, conscious of the crunching noise her feet made in the snow.
He heard it, and looked up and nodded at her.
Janet hesitated and stood still. What bad taste to come here, she thought, what idiocy. If I could only get away quietly...
But it was too late, she couldn’t get away. The minister was praying, and one of the group around the grave had turned around and was looking at her. It was an older woman, heavily draped in black, with a pale pinched face and dark tired eyes which said, without anger, without bitterness: What are you doing here? Leave us alone.
Ashes to ashes.
“Edith Morrow,” Sands’ voice said in her ear. Janet jumped. She hadn’t heard him approaching and there was something sinister in the way he said, “Edith Morrow.”
Dust to dust.
“Dr. Morrow’s sister,” Sands said. “Why did you come?”
“I wanted to see the Morrows.”
“Well, there they are. Standing together, as usual. They do it well.”
As if to disprove his statement, Edith Morrow turned and began walking toward them.
“You have no right to be here,” she said to Sands in her high desperate voice. “Trailing us even to the grave — despicable...” She made a nervous gesture with one black-gloved hand. “And these others — why did they come? Why can’t they leave us alone?”