He sat tight and watched her shell peas, which she did very quickly. She seemed to concentrate on the job, though he knew she didn’t have to. He wondered what she was thinking and tried to think of something to say, but she didn’t seem to be very receptive. He heard a footstep from inside the door and the screen door swung open. He had expected the mother, but a girl came out. He knew immediately that she was Brian’s twin. There was the same beauty, marred by the vacant look.
“You finished the peas yet, Leonie?” the girl asked. She looked shyly at Howell.
“Just about, honey,” her sister replied. “Mary, this is John Howell. He’s come to see Mama about something.”
“Hey, John,” the girl said, and smiled.
“Hey, Mary.” Howell said back to her. She had the same beautiful teeth that her brothers had. He wondered if Leonie had them, too. He hadn’t been able to tell, yet.
Leonie held out the pot of freshly shelled peas. “Here, honey, you can take them to the kitchen. Don’t cook them for more than five minutes, now. Remember to set the timer.” The girl took the peas and went happily away.
“She seems like a nice kid,” Howell said. “So does Brian.”
“Well, they’re as alike as two of those peas,” Leonie said and permitted herself an affectionate smile. “And just as sweet.”
Howell thought of how they had surely come to be retarded and was suddenly stuck for something to say. He was saved by a voice from inside the house.
“Leonie!”
Howell was brought sharply back to why he was here, and he was suddenly as nervous as a cat.
“Yes, Mama,” Leonie called back. “All right,” she said to Howell, “Let’s go see her.” She stood up and led the way into the house, walking slowly so that Howell could keep up with her. In the living room she stopped and said, “Wait here for just a minute, while I sit her up and brush her hair. She likes to look nice when people come.”
Howell sank gratefully into an easy chair and looked around the room, trying to get some further sense of the Kelly family. The first thing he noticed was books; there were books everywhere. They seemed to be mostly book club selections, fiction and biography, but then he saw a familiar binding stretching eight feet or so along a bottom shelf. The Harvard Classics. He had the set, too, he’d bought them in a used book shop years before with the best of intentions, but he’d never cracked a one of them. He wondered if somebody in this house had. He scanned the other shelves quickly, looking for his own book, like any author. It was there; it had been a selection for a book club. The bookcases meandered around the room, banged together, it seemed, by a poor carpenter. The shelves sagged and fell off at odd angles. There were some family photographs, some of them quite old. He picked up one from the table next to his chair. It was a group of people sitting on the steps of a house much like the one he was in, but not quite. Must have been during World War II or just after; a man was in an Army uniform. The others’ clothes looked about right for the period. There was an oddly familiar face in the group, a child. Not the child in the window; he hadn’t seen her face. He was trying to place it when Leonie’s voice made him jump.
“All right, you can come on in now.” She was standing in the door of what must be Mama Kelly’s room.
Howell struggled up and shuffled across the living room rug, feeling more and more nervous with each step. He entered the bedroom slowly and, at first, saw only the foot of a hospital bed and some covered feet. The head of the bed was behind the door he was entering. Leonie was standing at the foot of the bed and beckoned him to join her. He was glad of that, because, when he reached the end of the bed he could lean on it. He turned to face Mama Kelly.
He had built up a fantasy of some shriveled old hag who would be waiting for him, and he turned his eyes reluctantly toward the head of the bed to be met with a steady gaze from large, blue eyes set in a handsome, nearly unlined face. He was sure that, before her illness, she had been quite a beautiful woman. She seemed large, like Leonie, though frail; she must have lost considerable weight, he thought. Her hair was very white and quite thin, and Leonie had arranged it carefully.
She smiled broadly, as if welcoming a long lost friend. The teeth were perfect.
“Welcome, John Howell,” she said. “I’ve waited an awful long time for you to come.”
His unease left him immediately. “How do you do, Mrs. Kelly, I’m sorry I didn’t get by sooner. I wanted to thank you for sending Dermot to me and for the firewood. I’ve let too much time pass before coming to see you.”
“Oh, I’ve been waiting for longer than that, John – may I call you John?”
“Of course. I don’t know quite what you mean, though.”
She smiled again. “Oh, you will in time, don’t you worry.” She patted the bed beside her. “Will you come and sit down here next to me?”
He moved carefully to her side and sat on the edge of the bed. She took his hand in the two of hers. Her hands were warm and rough, as if they had done hard labor. He felt perfectly comfortable, as if he were visiting a favorite aunt that he hadn’t seen for years.
“You’re in a great deal of pain, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s…”
“It’s in your back, I can feel it,” she said, and a shadow, a wince crossed her face.
“Mama,” Leonie spoke up, “Don’t you do this. You’re not up to it.”
Howell was alarmed that she might be somehow taking on his pain. “No ma’am,” he said, withdrawing his hand. “You mustn’t do that. I can go back to the doctor.”
She took his hand back and held it. “I’m perfectly all right, it’s just that I’m a little tired. I know that you had trepidations about coming to see me. I know this is all a little strange to you. But we’re going to help you with your back, and with the other thing, too. You see, you’re stronger than you think, but you need the help.”
Howell frowned. There was no question that he needed all the help he could get with his back, but the rest of what she was saying baffled him.
“Don’t worry,” she said again. “You’ll know, you’ll understand in time. It will come to you one way or another.” She looked up at her daughter. “Leonie, come around here.” She gestured to the other side of the bed. Leonie came and took her hand. Then, one hand holding Leonie’s and one holding Howell’s, Mama Kelly said, “John, my powers are waning with my own sickness, but my daughter’s are just beginning.”
Leonie looked embarrassed. “Mama, I don’t think…”
“Hush, girl, listen to me. God gave you these powers, and it didn’t matter that you didn’t want them, not until now, it didn’t. But now, I can’t carry on, and it’s time for you to take this on. Now is a good time, because John has come here to help us, and it’s only right that we help him. Do you understand?”
Leonie nodded and squeezed her mother’s hand.
Mama Kelly turned back to Howell. “Now, John, I need to talk to Leonie for just a minute. You go up to her room – it’s the first door at the top of the stairs – and lie down and rest for just a bit. It’s better if you’re relaxed, and I know you’re uncomfortable standing up.”
Howell looked up at Leonie questioningly. She nodded.
Mama Kelly spoke again. “You go on up, now, and I want you to come and see me again if things seem to get too much for you, you hear?”
“Yes, Ma’am, I’ll do that,” Howell said, and left the mother and daughter alone. He found the stairs and limped painfully up them, putting as much weight as he could on the bannister. At the top of the stairs he opened a door and found a neat, sunlit room filled with country arts – needlework and quilts – and a fourposter bed. The pain was gaining fast on him; he kicked off his shoes and threw himself onto the bed, panting, and waited for it to subside. It was a feather mattress, and he sank gratefully into it. The pain slowly drained away and with it, the tension that he had brought to this house. He let it go and, soon, fell into a light doze. What must have been a few minutes later he heard the bedroom door open and close and a light footstep on the rug. There was the tiny rasp of a window shade, and the light in the room grew dimmer.