“I followed Peter. He’s the one who was watching.”
“You’re a lousy rat, Sarah,” Peter said. “A real lousy rat.”
“Never mind name-calling. I want to know what went on What is she talking about, Francis?”
“Nothin’. I work for her, that’s all. She’s a nice person.”
“She was naked,” Sarah said.
“Naked!” Kathryn said, and she stood up and grabbed Francis by the ear. “What’ve you been doing, young man?”
Francis stood and jerked his head out of his mother’s grip. “I walked into her room when she was dressin’,” he said. “It was a mistake.”
“He’s lying again,” Sarah said. “He was painting and she took her robe off and was naked and then she threw her arms around him and he did the same thing to her.”
“Is that true?” Kathryn asked, her face inches from Francis.
“She’s a little crazy sometimes,” Francis said. “She does funny things.”
“Taking her clothes off in front of you? You consider that funny?”
“She doesn’t know what she’s doin’ sometimes. But she’s really all right.”
“He put his arms around her and they kissed for a long time,” Sarah said.
“You bitch,” Francis said. “You stinkin’ little sister bitch.”
Kathryn swung her left hand upward and caught Francis under the jaw. The blow knocked him off balance and he fell into the china closet, smashing its glass door, shattering plates, cups, glasses, then falling in a bleeding heap on the floor.
Four
Thirty-six years gone and here he is back again, Peter thought, and there is the china closet, and here we all are (Sarah will come down from her room eventually; she will have to face the reality of his return), and here minus Julia are the non-conspirators, Molly, Chick, Tom-Tom, Orson, the added starter, about the same age I was when all this happened, and Francis, who is no more repentant today of whatever sin than he was when Mama knocked him down with her left hook.
“I thought Sarah was comin’ down,” Francis said.
“She’ll be down,” Molly said. “She’s getting dressed for tonight.”
“You look pretty, Moll. Real, real pretty. You got a beau? Somebody sweet on you?”
Molly put her eyes down to her plate. “Not really,” she said.
“How about Sarah? She didn’t marry, did she?”
“No,” said Molly.
“I ran into Floyd Wagner down in Baltimore. I’m on my way to Georgia and old Floyd, he’s a cop now, was gonna arrest me. Then he seen who I was and instead of arrestin’ me he bought me a beer and we cut it up about the old days. He said he went out a few times with Sarah.”
“That’s so,” said Molly. “Sarah broke it off.”
“So Floyd said.”
“Never mind about Floyd Wagner,” said Sarah, descending the back stairs into the room. She was in total mourning, even to the black combs that held her hair, her dress a high-necked, ankle-length replica of the recurring dress that Kathryn Phelan had worn most of her life, always made by the perfect, homemade dressmaker, Sarah. It was less a mourning garment than a maternal uniform — black cotton in the summer, black wool in winter — that asserted that unbelievable resistance to anything that smacked of vanity, though not even that: of lightness, of elevation. Her children and relatives had tried to sway her with gifts of floral-patterned dresses, colored skirts and blouses, but the gifts remained in boxes for years until finally Kathryn gave them to the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Francis looked at Sarah and retreated in time. Here was the mother incarnate in Sarah, now fifty-one, a willful duplicate; and Francis remembered that Sarah had even wanted to call herself Sate when they were young, because people called their mother Kate; but Mama would have none of that. Sarah would be Sarah, which was no hindrance at all to emulation, as this presence now proved; uncanny resemblance, even to the combing and parting of the hair and the black-and-white cameo brooch that Kathryn always wore at her throat.
“Hello, Sarah,” Francis said. “How you been?”
“Fine, thank you.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“Sarah looks like Mama,” Tommy said.
“I noticed that,” Francis said.
“So you’re back,” Sarah said to Francis. “You’re looking well.”
“Is that so?” Francis said. “I wouldn’ta said so.”
“Francis can be a bearer,” Chick said. “I just thought of that. Then we only need one more.”
“Francis won’t be here,” Sarah said. “Francis isn’t staying.”
“What?” said Peter.
“He’s not staying,” Sarah said. “He’s not a part of this family and hasn’t been for over thirty years. Feed him if you like, but that’s all he gets out of us.”
“Sarah,” Molly said, “that’s wrong.”
“No,” said Sarah, “nothing wrong except that he’s back among us and I won’t have it. Not on the day my mother is waking.”
“Right,” Francis said. “I seen her wakin’. I seen her dead, and now I see her again, not dead at all. Nothin’ changed here since I left the first time, and now I remember why I left. Sarah’s got a way of joggin’ your memory.”
“Sarah doesn’t run this house,” Peter said.
“Right,” Chick said. “Absolutely right. Sarah don’t run nobody.”
“It’s okay,” Francis said. “Not a thing anybody’s gotta worry about. I’m a travelin’ man, and that’s all I am. Never counted on anything more than seein’ she was really dead. I figure, she’s dead, I’m free. Know what I mean, Chickie pie?”
“No.”
“What’s gone’s gone, and I figure, good riddance. She wanted me dead is the way I figure it. Ain’t that right, Sarah?”
“You were dead for years. You’re dead now. Why don’t you go live in the cemetery?”
“You know, you turned out just right, Sarah,” Francis said. “Just like I knew you would. You ain’t got a speck o’ the real goods in you. You ain’t got one little bit of Papa. You got it all from the other side of the family, all from that Malachi crowd. You’re somebody they oughta cut up and figure out, ’cause you ain’t hardly human, Sarah.”
“You’re a tramp, Francis. You were a tramp when you were a child. You and your Katrina.”
Francis turned his eyes from Sarah and faced Peter, who could not take his eyes from Francis. Francis smiled, a man in control of his life. Oh yes.
“She remembers Katrina, Pete. Got a memory like a elephant, this sister of ours. You remember Katrina too?”
“Everybody remembers Katrina,” Peter said.
“Unforgettable lady,” Francis said.
“Don’t bring that old filth back in here,” Sarah said.
“Filth,” Francis said, “that’s Sarah’s favorite word. Where you’d be without filth I can’t even figure, Sarah. You and filth — some double play. Old Floyd Wagner told me how you and him talked about filth all them years ago.”
“Make him leave,” Sarah said to the entire table.
“Floyd said the last time he saw Sarah. .”
“Never mind anything Floyd Wagner said,” Sarah said.
“Sarah, let him talk,” Peter said.
“What about Floyd Wagner?” Chick asked.
“Old Floyd. He came to see Sarah one night and she threatened to stab him with a pair of scissors.”
“What?” Molly said.
“It’s a lie,” Sarah said.
“Floyd said she was afraid he might kiss her and start doin’ other filthy stuff, so she snatched up the scissors and told him to keep his distance or she’d stab him in the belly.”
“Oh, you foul thing,” Sarah said, and she pushed her chair back and walked to the living room.