“This is Miss Green,” Sands said quietly. “Cora Green’s sister.”
“C... Cora Green...?”
Janet flushed. “I agree, I shouldn’t have come. I’ll leave immediately.”
“It’s all over anyway,” Edith said harshly.
“I’m sorry. I thought of calling on you — but then I’m a stranger to you.”
“Why did you want to call?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I thought I could help, perhaps.
I met Mrs. Morrow at the hospital...” She knew she was saying all the wrong things and turned to Sands for help. But he had slipped away. She couldn’t see him anywhere.
She turned back and met Edith’s gaze.
“I was rude,” Edith said. “The apology should be mine.”
“No, not at all.”
“It was your sister who died?”
“Yes.”
“We — one of us...”
“Oh, I don’t look at it like that at all,” Janet said in embarrassment. “I just thought I’d — like to see you all.”
“To judge us?”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“You’ve seen us now.” Edith leaned closer and her voice was a whisper. “Tell me, which one of us? Look at us and tell me, which one of us?”
There was a silence. Then Janet said, with warm deep sympathy, “You poor woman. It must be terrible for you!”
She no longer felt uncomfortable herself because here was someone who needed comforting.
“Mr. Sands could be wrong, you know,” she said in her rich voice. “Policemen often are. Very likely it’ll turn out that he’s been far too imaginative, and some day perhaps you’ll all be laughing about how suspicious you were of each other.”
“If I could think that...”
“Well, I do think it. We’re all inclined to take things too seriously, all except Cora. She was a great laugher. Sometimes when I’m alone at night and feeling mopey I remember some of the jokes she made and get to laughing myself. I haven’t any real friends, you know, there was just Cora.”
“Nor have I.”
“I’ve always been too busy to make friends, and now when I could use some I don’t know how to go about it.”
“I wouldn’t know either,” Edith said. She was astonished to find herself talking so personally and at such an odd time to a total stranger. The wind had whipped a little color to her cheeks, and she felt her rigid neck relaxing and the hard dry lump in her throat dissolving. She had stepped temporarily outside the walls of her own world and was reluctant to go back. They were waiting for her, she knew, but she kept her eyes fixed deliberately on Janet, a stranger, and so one who could be trusted.
“What do you do?” Edith said. “I mean, suppose you want to have a — a good time, what do you do?”
“Oh, I dress all up and take myself to dinner,” Janet said, smiling. “And then to a concert or a movie, perhaps.”
“I’d like that.”
“There’s no reason why we couldn’t go together some time.”
“You wouldn’t mind having me along?”
“I’d like it very much. We could get really silly and buy a bottle of champagne.”
“Do you ever do that?”
“Once. I felt very frivolous and giggled through a whole performance of Aida.”
Champagne, Edith thought, a gay giddy drink, for weddings, for youth, not for two lonely aging women...
“Yes, I’d like that,” she said, without hope. “I guess — they’re waiting for me. I’d better go.”
“No, wait. I really mean it, about having dinner together. We’ll make it a definite day.”
“Any day. They’re all the same.”
“How about next Tuesday?”
“Tuesday. That would be fine.”
“I could meet you in the Arcadian Court and we’ll go to see The Doughgirls if you like.”
She had the uncomfortable feeling that Edith was no longer listening to her, that the two of them had, in a few minutes, gone through the emotional experience of months or years — from antagonism through friendship to mutual boredom.
“See you Tuesday then,” she said with extra heartiness to compensate for her thoughts. “In the meantime don’t worry too much. We and our troubles aren’t so important as we think.” She laid her hands for an instant on Edith’s arm. “Good-bye and good luck.”
“Good-bye,” Edith said, and turned and stepped back into her own world.
Janet’s eyes followed her, full of pity and understanding. The little group beside the grave was waiting for her. When Edith had almost reached them she stumbled and the younger man put out his hand to steady her. Edith shrank away from him and pulled the black veil down over her face.
It was only a gesture, yet Janet felt ashamed to have witnessed it. She walked quickly back to her car.
On the way home she began to make further plans for Tuesday. Perhaps the Arcadian Court was too stuffy. They might try Angelo’s if Edith liked spaghetti — or some place down in the village where you saw such queer people, sometimes...
By the time she got home she had everything planned, but she never saw Edith again.
Chapter 12
“Who was that?” Martin said.
“A friend of mine,” Edith replied, pressing her lips together tightly behind the veil. “Someone you don’t know.”
“In brief, none of my business?”
“Exactly.”
“All right. I was just trying to be pleasant.”
He opened the car door and she got in the back seat. She was breathing fast, as if she was excited.
“You should take it easier, Edith,” Andrew said, and sat down beside her and shut the door. “There’s no hurry. Is there?”
“No.”
He raised his voice. “Martin, you might stop and pick up some cigarettes some place.” He spoke easily and naturally, as master of the house setting the tone and pace for a new set of circumstances.
Edith looked at him gratefully and covered his hand with hers. “That was kind of you, Andrew.”
He professed not to understand. “What was?”
“Oh, you know, just being ordinary.”
He closed his eyes wearily. “I’m always ordinary.”
“No, I mean...”
“Now don’t be silly, Edith.”
They fell into a companionable silence while in the front seat Polly and Martin discussed a book he was reviewing.
At the first drugstore Martin stopped the car and got out to buy the cigarettes. When he came out of the store he was whistling, but as soon as he saw the car he became silent and adjusted his face self-consciously as if he’d just caught sight of himself in a mirror, wearing the wrong expression.
It was a small thing and no one noticed it but Edith. Behind the veil her eyes glittered. Martin flung her a mocking glance and slid behind the wheel.
We watch each other, she thought.
The phrase echoed in her mind. We watch each other. Someone had said that recently. Who was it?
She remembered with a shock that she herself had written it to Lucille. It was the first time she’d thought of the letter since she’d sent it, and she flushed with shame at her own stupidity. She should never have written it. Where was it now? Destroyed, surely. But suppose it wasn’t destroyed? Suppose it was in the bundle of clothes and things that the hospital had sent back this morning?
Her mind set up a wild clamor: I must get the letter, Andrew mustn’t see it — no one...
As soon as they arrived home she excused herself with a headache and went upstairs. She had intended to go straight to Lucille’s room to look for the bundle and make sure the letter had been destroyed. But Annie was in the hall, vacuuming the rug.