“Donna,” she said.
She was almost unable to say it at all. The name was hardly more than the shape of the sound with her lips. She lifted a hand above the covers, and Donna caught it as it was falling.
“I’m sick,” she said. “I’m so very sick.”
Donna had to lean far down in order to hear the words. Besides being faint, they were distorted by pain.
“How do you feel?” Donna said. “In what way do you feel sick?”
“I am cold and hot by turns, and I am sick to my stomach. And my legs and back hurt. I can’t understand why my legs and back hurt me so much.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I didn’t want to bother you. I was sure I would begin to feel better soon.”
“You should have called me. Surely you know that I want you to call me when you need me. Certainly, at any rate, you should have called a doctor.”
“Doctors are expensive. I thought I would get better without it.”
“Why didn’t Father call one? Damn it to hell, doesn’t he have any judgment whatever?”
“You mustn’t blame your father, dear. Things are so difficult for him just now.”
“Oh, hell! Things are always so difficult for Father. Well, never mind. I’m sorry. You lie still, now, and I’ll go call a doctor at once. Would you like the window opened a little before I go? The air is so stale in here.”
“If you think so, dear. Only a little, though. I have such chills.”
Donna released her mother’s hand and crossed to a window, which she lowered about a foot from the top, and then went out and downstairs to the telephone in the hall. She looked up the number of a doctor who had been called to the house before and dialed it with a kind of restrained violence. She was furious with her father for not having called earlier, and the fury was at the same time a useful defense against the guilt she felt herself for having stayed away so long. The doctor agreed to come, and she hung up the telephone and turned to face her father, who had come out of the living room.
“What have you done?” he said.
“I have done what you should have done yourself,” she said. “I have called a doctor.”
“We don’t need you to run our affairs. Your interference is not wanted.”
“You would let Mother die without attention, but I will not. I have called a doctor, whose bill I will pay, if that concerns you, and you can go to hell.”
“I will not allow you to talk to me like this in my own home. You are not welcome here any longer. Get out of here and don’t come back.”
“I’ll leave your Goddamn house, all right, if that’s what you want, but I’ll not leave until I’ve seen the doctor. In the meanwhile, you stay the hell away from me and leave me strictly alone. Do you hear?”
She was certain for a moment that he was going to strike her, something he had not done since that night on the porch when she was fifteen years old, but then he turned abruptly and went back into the living room. She stood and listened while he crossed to his chair and dropped heavily into it, after which she ascended the stairs and entered her mother’s room, stopping by the door and staring across at the figure on the bed, which did not move. The sick woman had not gone to sleep, but at least she had become quiet, and it would surely be better not to disturb her until the doctor came. In the meanwhile, it would be quite impossible merely to stand and wait in the shabby, sour room. What was needed was a cigarette, which would be in a measure sustaining and would make time endurable, but it might not be wise to add smoke to the already fetid air in which a sick woman already breathed with a strangled sound.
Stepping back into the hall, leaving the door slightly open behind her, Donna lit the needed cigarette and drew smoke deeply into her lungs. She wondered how long the doctor would be in coming. She hoped that he would not be long, for the last thing she wanted was to stand here waiting and waiting, with guilt and loathing in her heart for herself and her father, and the old ambivalence of contempt and love for her mother, who was very ill and possibly even dying. Perhaps it would be best, after all, if she did die, and perhaps her mother herself thought it would be best and wanted it and for that reason had not called the doctor or expressed any need for one. She had wasted everything — everything was gone and nothing at all of any value was left to waste — and perhaps she simply recognized and accepted that it was time to die.
Leaning against the wall, staring across at the ugly, faded pattern of roses on the wall opposite, she began to remember — in no particular order, without relationship to the chronology of their occurrence — some of the things she had seen and done and been a part of in this house. The sewing machine singing in the room where women came and stood for fittings. The small girl working the treadle with her hands, sometimes in a colored tent of silk or wool or brightly printed cotton. Mrs. Kullen in her corset in a slant of sun, an oddment with downy thighs. Wayne Buchanan saying grace to God and hating God’s world for reasons of his own. A dozen scattered fragments of a part of life renounced and outgrown but still in remembrance an oppression and a threat.
Why does that bastard Tyler wait so long? she thought. Why in God’s name doesn’t he simply tell me whether he will or will not let me have the money?
Downstairs, the front door bell rang and stopped ringing and rang again. Moving to the head of the stairs, she looked down into the hall and watched her father come out of the living room and admit the doctor, a short, plump man carrying the black leather bag that was as much the sign of his profession as the caduceus. After an exchange of words, the doctor came up the stairs alone. He had a round face with sharp little eyes in puffs of darkened flesh. As he rose to her level on the stairs, he looked at Donna, and away, and changed the bag from one hand to the other. He gave the impression of being uncertain as to why he had been called, and what might be expected of him now that he had come.
“This way, doctor,” Donna said.
She preceded him to the door of her mother’s room and opened it and stood aside for him to enter. She did not follow him inside, but remained waiting in the hall, and after a while lit and smoked another cigarette. When the cigarette had burned to a stub, she lit still another from it. The last cigarette was also a stub when the doctor came out into the hall at last. He blinked and rubbed his eyes with his thumb and index finger and shook his head in a way that she interpreted to indicate solemnity.
“She’s sick,” he said. “Very sick.”
“What’s the matter with her?”
“Well, it’s risky to say on the basis of a cursory examination, but the symptoms seem quite definite. Chills and fever, pain in the legs and back. Nausea. Frequent and painful urination. I would say, as a tentative diagnosis at least, that pyelitis is strongly indicated.”
“Pyelitis? What’s that?”
“A kidney infection.”
“Should she be in a hospital?”
“Yes. It would be better. I recommend that she be taken immediately.”
“Will you make the arrangements?”
“Yes, yes. I’ll call and have an ambulance sent. In the meanwhile, perhaps you could pack a few essentials and prepare her to go.”
“All right. I’ll get her ready while you’re calling.”
The doctor went down the hall and downstairs to the telephone, and Donna went into her mother’s room. She found a small bag in the closet and put into it the articles of clothing and toilet that she thought her mother would need in the hospital. When she had finished doing this, she went over to the bed and looked down at her mother’s face.
“You are going to the hospital, Mother,” she said.