“I saw a man in Spanish moss, a whole suit of Spanish moss, all by himself on the sidewalk. He was vomiting right in public,” said Fay. “Why did I have to be shown that?”
“Where you come from?” the driver said scornfully. “This here is Mardi Gras night.”
When they reached there, they found that the Carnival was overflowing the Hibiscus too. Masqueraders were coming and going. The cat was off its chain and let inside; it turned its seamed face to look at them and pranced up the staircase and waited for them on the landing, dressed in a monkey coat sewn with sequins.
“All on my birthday. Nobody told me this was what was going to happen to me!” Fay cried before she slammed her door.
Her sobbing, the same two close-together, accusing notes running over and over, went on for a time against the thin sounding-board between the two beds. Laurel lay in the dark waiting for it to reach its end. The house took longer than Fay did to go to sleep; the city longer than the house. Eventually she heard the ludicrous sound of chirping frogs emerge from the now completed excavation next door. Toward morning there was the final, parting shot of a pistol fired far off. Nothing came after that; no echo.
They got away in the afternoon. Judge McKelva’s body was on board the smooth New Orleans-Chicago train he had always so enjoyed travelling on; he had taken full pleasure in the starched white damask tablecloths, the real rosebud in the silver vase, the celery crisp on ice, the strawberries fresh from Hammond in their season; and the service. The days of the train itself were numbered now.
In the last car, the two women lay back in chairs in their compartment partitioned off from the observation section behind. Fay had kicked off her shoes. She lay with her head turned away, not speaking.
Set deep in the swamp, where the black trees were welling with buds like red drops, was one low beech that had kept its last year’s leaves, and it appeared to Laurel to travel along with their train, gliding at a magic speed through the cypresses they left behind. It was her own reflection in the windowpane—the beech tree was her head. Now it was gone. As the train left the black swamp and pulled out into the space of Pontchartrain, the window filled with a featureless sky over pale smooth water, where a seagull was hanging with wings fixed, like a stopped clock on a wall. She must have slept, for nothing seemed to have changed before her eyes until the seagull became the hands on the clock in the Courthouse dome lit up in the night above Mount Salus trees.
Fay slept still. When Laurel had to touch her shoulder to wake her, Fay struggled and said, “Oh no, no, not any more!”
Two
1
THE ANCIENT PORTER was already rolling his iron-wheeled wagon to meet the baggage car, before the train halted. All six of Laurel’s bridesmaids, as they still called themselves, were waiting on the station platform. Miss Adele Courtland stood out in front of them. She was Dr. Courtland’s sister, looking greatly aged. As Laurel went first down the steps, Miss Adele softly placed her hands together, then spread her arms.
“Polly,” she said.
“What are you here for?” asked Fay, as Laurel moved from one embrace into another.
“We came to meet you,” Tish Bullock said. “And to take you home.”
Laurel was aware of the row of lighted windows already sliding away behind her. The train gathered speed as swiftly as it had brought itself to a halt. It went out of sight while the wagon, loaded with the long box now, and attended by a stranger in a business suit, was wheeled slowly back along the platform and steered to where a hearse, backed in among the cars, stood with its door wide.
“Daddy wanted to come, Laurel, but we’ve been trying to spare him,” said Tish, with protective eyes following what was happening to the coffin. Her arm was linked in Laurel’s.
“I’m Mr. Pitts, hope you remember me,” said the businessman, appearing at Laurel’s other side. “Now what would you like done with your father?” When she didn’t speak, he went on, “May we have him in our parlor? Or would you prefer him to repose at the residence?”
“My father? Why—at his home,” said Laurel, stammering.
“At the residence. Until the hour of services. As was the case with the first Mrs. McKelva,” said the man.
“I’m Mrs. McKelva now. If you’re the undertaker, you do your business with me,” said Fay.
Tish Bullock winked at Laurel. It was a moment before she remembered: this was the bridesmaids’ automatic signal in moments of acute joy or distress, to show solidarity.
There was a deep boom, like the rolling in of an ocean wave. The hearse door had been slammed shut.
“—and you may have him back in the morning by ten A.M.,” the undertaker was saying to Fay. “But first, me and you need to have a little meeting of the minds in a quiet, dignified place where you can be given the opportunity—”
“You bet your boots,” said Fay.
The hearse pulled away, then. It turned to the left on Main Street, blotted out the Courthouse fence, and disappeared behind the Presbyterian Church.
Mr. Pitts turned to make his bow to Laurel. “I’ll return this lady to you by-and-by,” he said.
Miss Adele took Laurel’s coat over her arm and the bridesmaids gathered up all the suitcases. The old Bullock Chrysler had been waiting.
It was first-dark in the town of Mount Salus. They turned right on Main Street and drove the three and a half blocks.
The McKelva house was streaming light from every window, upstairs and down. As Tish passed the row of parked cars and turned up into the driveway, Laurel saw that the daffodils were in bloom, long streamers of them reaching down the yard, hundreds of small white trumpets. Tish lightly touched the horn, and the front door opened and still more light streamed out, in which the solid form of Miss Tennyson Bullock walked out and stood on the porch.
Laurel ran from the car and across the grass and up the front steps. Miss Tennyson—Tish’s mother—was calling to her in ringing tones, “And he was such a precious, after all!” She folded Laurel close.
Half a dozen—a dozen—old family friends had been waiting here in the house. They came out into the hall from the rooms on both sides as Laurel walked in. Most of them had practiced-for smiles on their faces, and they all called her “Laurel McKelva,” just as they always called her. Here at his own home, inside his own front door, there was nobody who seemed to be taken by surprise at what had happened to Judge McKelva. Laurel seemed to remember that Presbyterians were good at this.
But there was a man’s deep groan from the dining room, and Major Bullock came swinging out into the hall, cutting through the welcomers, protesting. “I’m not even going to have it, I say. He was never sick a day in his life!” Laurel went to meet him and kissed his flushed cheek.
He was the only man here. It might have been out of some sense of delicacy that the bridesmaids and the older ladies, those who were not already widows, had all made their husbands stay home tonight. Miss Tennyson, who had relieved Laurel of her handbag and crushed gloves, smoothed back the part into her hair. She had been Laurel’s mother’s oldest friend, the first person she’d met when she came to Mount Salus as a bride.
Now she gave a sidelong glance at Tish and asked her, “Did Mr. Pitts manage to catch Fay?”
“He’s going to return her to us by-and-by.” Tish mocked him perfectly.
“Poor little woman! How is she taking it, Laurel?” asked Major Bullock.
At last she said, “I don’t think I can safely predict about Fay.”
“Let’s not make Laurel try,” suggested Miss Adele Courtland.
Miss Tennyson led Laurel into the dining room. The bridesmaids had been setting out a buffet. On the little side table, where Major Bullock, standing with his back to them, was quickly finishing up something, was the drinks tray with some bottles and glasses. Laurel found herself sitting at her old place at the dinner table, the only one seated, while everybody else was trying to wait on her. Miss Tennyson stood right at her shoulder, to make her eat.
/> “What are all these people doing in my house?”
That was Fay’s voice in the hall.
“You’ve got pies three deep in the pantry, and an icebox ready to pop,” said Miss Tennyson, going out to meet her. “And a dining room table that might keep you from going to bed hungry.”
“Well, I didn’t know I was giving a reception,” said Fay. She came as far as the dining room doors and stared in.
“We’re Laurel’s friends, Fay,” Tish reminded her. “The six of us right here, we were her bridesmaids.”
“A lot of good her bridesmaids will ever do me. And who’s making themselves at home in my parlor?” She crossed the hall.
“Fay, those are the last, devoted remnants of the old Garden Club, of which I’m now president,” said Miss Tennyson. “Here now for—for Laurel’s mother’s sake.”
“What’s Becky’s Garden Club got to do with me?” exclaimed Fay. She stuck her head inside the parlor door and said, “The funeral’s not till tomorrow.”
“They’re a hard bunch to put off till tomorrow,” said Miss Tennyson. “They picked their flowers and they brought ’em.”
Laurel left her chair and went out to Miss Tennyson and the gathering ladies. “They’re all Father’s friends, Fay. They’re exactly the ones he’d have counted on to be here in the house to meet us,” she said. “And I count on them.”
“Well, it’s evermore unfair. I haven’t got anybody to count on but me, myself, and I.” Fay’s eyes travelled to the one man in the gathering and she accused him. “I haven’t got one soul.” She let out a cry, and streaked up the stairs.
“Poor little woman, she’s the helpless kind,” said Major Bullock. “We’re going to have to see about her.” He looked around him, and there were the suitcases, still standing near the front door. Three of them: one was Judge McKelva’s. Major Bullock loaded himself and walked upstairs with them. When he came back, almost immediately, his step was even heavier. Straight-armed, he carried at full length on its hanger a suit of black winter clothes. It swayed more widely than he swayed in negotiating the turn on the landing. There was a shoebox in his other hand and a leather case under his arm.
“She’s sending me down to Pitts’, Tennyson,” he said. “Carrying him these.”
“Naked through the streets?” Miss Tennyson objected. “But I suppose you couldn’t let her go to the trouble of packing them.”
“A man wanted to get on out of the room,” he said stiffly. But his arm gave at the elbow, and the suit for a moment sagged; the trousers folded to the floor. He stood there in the middle of the women and cried. He said, “I just can’t believe it yet! Can’t believe Clint’s gone for good and Pitts has got him down there—”
“All right, I’ll believe it for you,” said Miss Tennyson, on her way to him. She rescued the suit and hung it over his arm for him, so that it was less clumsy for him and looked less like a man. “Now go on and do like she told you. You insisted on being here tonight!”
Upstairs, the bedroom door was rather weakly slammed. Laurel had never heard it slammed before. She went and laid her cheek for a moment against Major Bullock’s, aware of the tears on it and the bourbon on his breath. He propelled himself forward and out of the lighted house.
“Daddy, wait! I’ll drive you!” Tish called, running.
It was the break-up, and when they’d all said goodnight, promising to return in the morning in plenty of time, Laurel saw them to the door and stood waiting until their cars had driven away. Then she walked back through the parlor as far as the doorway into the library behind it. There was her father’s old chair sitting up to his desk.
The sound of plates being laid carefully one on top of the other reached her then from the kitchen. She walked in through the pantry.
“It’s I.”
Laurel knew that would be Miss Adele Courtland. She had finished putting the food away and washing the dishes; she was polishing dry the turkey platter. It was a piece of the old Haviland in the small arbutus pattern—the “laurel”—that Laurel’s mother had loved.
“Here in the kitchen it will all start over so soon,” Miss Adele said, as if asking forgiveness.
“You can’t help being good. That’s what Father said about you in New Orleans,” Laurel said. Then, “He was the best thing in the world too—Dr. Courtland.”
Miss Adele nodded her head.
“What happened was not to Father’s eye at all. Father was going to see,” Laurel told her. “Dr. Courtland was right about the eye. He did everything right.” Miss Adele nodded, and Laurel finished, “What happened wasn’t like what happened to Mother.”
Miss Adele lifted the stacked clean dishes off the kitchen table and carried them into the dining room and put them away in their right places on the shelves of the china closet. She arranged the turkey platter to stand in its groove at the back of the gravy bowl. She put the glasses in, and restored the little wine glasses to their ring around the decanter, with its mended glass stopper still intact. She shut the shivering glass door gently, so as not to rock the old top-heavy cabinet.
“People live their own way, and to a certain extent I almost believe they may die their own way, Laurel.” She turned around, and the chandelier threw its light down on her. Her fine-drawn, elegant face might almost have withered a little more while she was out here with the kitchen to herself. She wore her faded hair as she had always worn it from the day when she was Laurel’s first-grade teacher, in a Psyche knot. Her voice was as capable of authority as ever. “Sleep, now, Laurel. We’ll all be back here in the morning, and you know we won’t be the only ones. Goodnight!”
She left by the kitchen door, as always, and stepped home through the joining backyards. It was dark and fragrant out there. When the Courtland kitchen light went on, Laurel closed her back door too, and walked through the house putting out lights. The only illumination on the stairs came from the lamp that they had turned on for her by her bed.
In her own room, she undressed, raised the window, got into bed with the first book her fingers found, and lay without opening it.
The quiet of the Mount Salus night was a little different now. She could hear traffic on some new highway, a sound like the buzzing of one angry fly against a windowpane, over and over.
When Laurel was a child, in this room and in this bed where she lay now, she closed her eyes like this and the rhythmic, nighttime sound of the two beloved reading voices came rising in turn up the stairs every night to reach her. She could hardly fall asleep, she tried to keep awake, for pleasure. She cared for her own books, but she cared more for theirs, which meant their voices. In the lateness of the night, their two voices reading to each other where she could hear them, never letting a silence divide or interrupt them, combined into one unceasing voice and wrapped her around as she listened, as still as if she were asleep. She was sent to sleep under a velvety cloak of words, richly patterned and stitched with gold, straight out of a fairy tale, while they went reading on into her dreams.
Fay slept farther away tonight than in the Hibiscus—they could not hear each other in this house—but nearer in a different way. She was sleeping in the bed where Laurel was born; and where her mother had died. What Laurel listened for tonight was the striking of the mantel clock downstairs in the parlor. It never came.
2
AT THE INEVITABLE HOUR, Laurel started from her bed and went downstairs in her dressing gown. It was a clear, bright seven o’clock, with morning shadows dappling the shine of the floors and the dining room table. And there was Missouri, standing in her hat and coat in the middle of the kitchen.
“Am I supposed to believe what I hear?” asked Missouri.
Laurel went to her and took her in her arms.
Missouri took off her hat and coat and hung them on the nail with her shoulder bag. She washed her hands, and then she shook out a fresh apron, just as she’d started every morning off during Laurel’s mother’s life in Mount Salus.
“Well, I’m here
and you’re here,” said Missouri. It was the bargain to give and take comfort. After a moment’s hesitation, Missouri went on, “He always want Miss Fay to have her breakfast in bed.”
“Then you’ll know how to wake her,” said Laurel. “When you take it up. Do you mind?”
“Do it for him,” said Missouri. Her face softened. “He mightily enjoyed having him somebody to spoil.”
In a little while, just as Missouri walked out with the tray, Miss Adele Courtland came in at the back door. She was wearing her best—of course, she’d arranged not to teach her children today. She offered Laurel a double-handful of daffodils, the nodding, gray-white kind with the square cup.
“You know who gave me mine—hers are blooming outside. Silver Bells,” Miss Adele prompted her. “Is there a place left to put them?”
They walked through the dining room and across to the parlor. The whole house was filled with flowers; Laurel was seeing them for the first time this morning—the cut branches of Mount Salus prunus and crab, the thready yellow jasmine, bundles of narcissus, in vases and pitchers that came, along with the flowers, from houses up and down the street.
“Father’s desk—?”
“Miss Laurel, I keep a-calling Miss Fay but she don’t sit up to her breakfast!” called Missouri on the stairs.
“Your day has started, Laurel,” said Miss Adele. “I’m here to answer the door.”
Laurel went up, knocked, and opened the door into the big bedroom. Instead of her mother’s writing cabinet that used to stand between those windows, the bed faced her. It seemed to swim in a bath of pink light. The mahogany headboard, rising high as the mantelpiece, had been quilted from top to bottom in peach satin; peach satin ruffles were thrown back over the foot of the bed; peach satin smothered the windows all around. Fay slept in the middle of the bed, deep under the cover, both hands curled into slack fists above her head. Laurel could not see her face but only the back of her neck, the most vulnerable part of anybody, and she thought: Is there any sleeping person you can be entirely sure you have not misjudged? Then she saw the new green shoes placed like ornaments on top of the mantel shelf.