“I never knew. Why didn’t you tell me? Is it getting worse?”
“She’s sensitive about it, and won’t talk about it. But, of course, things like that don’t improve as you get on in years,” he said gently.
She put her head against his shoulder, in silent sympathy.
He patted her hand consolingly. “She’ll be all right. We’ll see that she is between us, won’t we?”
She shivered a little, and could find no words to answer.
“It’s just that we’ve got to cushion her against all shocks and upsets,” he said. “You and the young fellow, you’re about the best medicine there is for her. Just having you around—”
And if in the morning she had asked for Patrice, asked for her grandchild, he would have had to tell her they had deserted her. If she’d come out of her room five minutes later, she might have been responsible for bringing death into this house. A poor repayment for all the love that had been lavished on her. She might have killed the only mother she’d ever known!
He misunderstood her abstraction, and patted her chin comfortingly. “Now don’t take it like that; she wouldn’t want you to, you know. And Pat, don’t let her know you’ve found out about her illness. Let her keep on thinking it’s her secret and mine. I know she’ll be happier that way.”
She sighed deeply. It was a sigh of decision, of capitulation to the inevitable. She turned and kissed him on the cheek. Then she stood up.
“I’m going up,” she said quietly. “You forgot to put out the hall light, Dad.”
He retraced his steps momentarily. She picked up the valise, the coat, the hat, and quietly re-opened the door of her own room.
She closed the door softly behind her, and in the darkness on the other side she stood still a minute. A silent, choking prayer welled up in her.
“Give me strength, for there’s no running away. I see that now. The battle must be fought out here where I stand, and I dare not even cry out.”
The anonymous notes stopped suddenly. The days became a week, the week became a month. The month lengthened toward two. And no more plain white envelopes came. It was as though the battle had been broken off, held in abeyance, at the whim of the crafty, shadowy adversary.
She clutched at clues — any little bits of news that would give her comprehension — and they all failed her.
Mother Hazzard said; “Edna Harding got back today. She’s been visiting their folks in Philadelphia the past several weeks.”
But no more came.
Bill remarked: “I ran into Tom Bryant today. He tells me his older sister Marilyn’s been laid up with pleurisy. She only got out of bed for the first time today.”
“I thought I hadn’t seen her.”
But no more came. Things like that didn’t just happen and then stop. They either never began at all, or else they ran on to their shattering, destructive conclusion.
But in spite of that, security crept back a little, tentatively, reassuring — incomplete, but there.
In the mornings the world was bitter-sweet to look at, seeming to hold its breath, waiting to see—
Mother Hazzard knocked on her door just as she’d finished tucking Hugh in. The filching of a last grandmotherly kiss just before the light went out was a nightly ritual. Tonight, however, she seemed to want to talk to Patrice herself. And she didn’t know how to go about it.
She lingered on after she’d kissed the little boy and the side of the crib had been lifted into place. There was a moment’s awkwardness.
“Patrice.”
“Yes, Mother?”
Suddenly she’d blurted it out. “Bill wants to take you to the country club dance with him tonight. He’s waiting down there to find out if you’ll go.”
Patrice was so completely surprised she didn’t answer for a moment, just stood there looking at her.
“He told me to come up and ask you.” Then she rushed on, “They have one about once each month, you know, and he’s going himself. He usually does, and— Why don’t you get dressed and go with him?” she ended on a coaxing note.
“But I... I—” Patrice stammered.
“Patrice, you must begin to go out sooner or later. It isn’t good for you not to be with young people more often. You haven’t been looking as well as you might lately. We’re a little worried about you. Hugh wasn’t the kind— He’d be the last one to want you to become a recluse. You do what Mother says, dear.” It was an order. Or as close to an order as Mother Hazzard could summon.
She had opened Patrice’s closet-door, meanwhile, and was peering helpfully inside. “How about this?” She took down a flowered linen with a gay contrasting jacket, and held it up appraisingly. “It’ll do nicely.” The dress landed on the bed. “They’re not very formal there. Bill will buy you an orchid or gardenia on the way, that will dress it up enough. You just go and get the feel of the place tonight. You’ll get back in the swing of things little by little. I’ll tell Bill you’re getting ready.”
He was standing waiting for her just inside the door when she came downstairs.
“Am I all right?” she asked.
He was suddenly shy with her. “Gee, I... I didn’t know how you could look in the evening,” he said haltingly.
For the first few moments of the drive, there was a sort of tenseness between them, almost as though they’d met tonight for the first time. He turned on the radio in the car. Dance music rippled back into their faces. “To get you into the mood,” he said, a little self-consciously.
He stopped, and got out, and came back with a corsage of gardenias. “Somehow these seemed to suit you better than an orchid,” he said with a grin. “Mother always did think orchids wow the girls... ”
“They’re beautiful Bill. Here, pin them on for me.”
Abruptly, he balked at that — all but shied away. “Oh no, that you do yourself,” he said. “I might stab myself,” he added lamely as an afterthought. The pause was a little too long.
“Why, you great big coward.”
His hands were a trifle unsteady, she noticed, when he first put them back to the wheel. Then they quieted.
They drove the rest of the way through open country, the stars only finger-tip distance above them.
“I’ve never seen so many!” she marveled.
“Maybe you haven’t been looking up enough,” he said gently.
Toward the end, just before they got there, a peculiar sort of tenderness seemed to overcome him for a minute. He slowed the car a little, and turned his head toward her.
“I want you to be happy tonight, Patrice,” he said earnestly. “I want you to be very happy.”
“I’ll try, Bill,” Patrice said. “And I know I will be.”
And she was happy. For dance after dance. She always remembered that afterward. She was dancing with Bill. For that matter she’d been dancing with him steadily ever since they’d arrived. She wasn’t watching, she wasn’t looking around her. She wasn’t thinking of anything but the two of them.
Smiling dreamily, she danced. Her thoughts were like a little brook running swiftly but smoothly over harmless pebbles, keeping time with the tinkling music.
I like dancing with him. He dances well, you don’t have to keep thinking about your feet. He’s turned his face toward me and is looking down at me. I know it. Well, I’ll look up at him, and then he’ll smile at me. But I won’t smile back at him. Watch. There, I knew that was coming. I will not smile back. Oh, well, what if I did? Why shouldn’t I smile at him, anyway? That’s the way I feel about him — smilingly fond.
A hand touched Bill’s shoulder from behind. She could see the fingers slanted downward for a second, without seeing the person they belonged to.