Then to top it off, Mother’s place still seemed deserted. The only lit window was on the second floor. There was the same echo when we rang the doorbell. Laura said, “Oh, what if we’re locked out? Where will we stay?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I told her. “This house is teeming with boarders, if nothing else, and you can see that someone’s been and taken our suitcases in.” For the vestibule was bare again. Nothing remained but the flowerpot.
I put my finger on the doorbell and held it there. Eventually a light came on in the hallway, and then we saw a shadow behind the lace curtain. Mr. Somerset, hitching up his suspenders as he shuffled toward us. I knew him by his bent-kneed walk and his rounded shoulders. He was as familiar to me as some elderly uncle, though no uncle I ever asked for. “Now this,” I told Mother once, “is what I mean about your boarders, Mother: Mr. Somerset is a depressing old man and I don’t know why you’ve put up with him so long.” “Yes, but all he has is his pension, poor man,” she said. She didn’t mean that. She meant, How will I tell him to go? How will I get used to someone new? Can’t we just let things stay as they are?
“Miss Pauling,” Mr. Somerset said. “And Mrs. Bates. You’ve come about your mother, I reckon.”
“Why, yes, we have,” I said, “and we’ve been all afternoon at the funeral parlor without seeing a sign of Jeremy. Now, where might he be, Mr. Somerset?”
“He’s setting on the stairs,” he said.
“On the stairs?”
“On the stairs where your mother passed. He’s been there all day.”
“We came before now, Mr. Somerset. At noon. We rang the doorbell.”
“I must’ve been out.”
“My brother was here, you say.”
“He don’t answer doorbells,” said Mr. Somerset, “and he don’t move from where he’s at. Sets in the dark.”
“For mercy’s sake,” I said. “Jeremy?”
But it was Laura who went to find him, running up the stairs with her galoshes still on. I heard her flick a light switch, start on up toward the third floor calling, “Jeremy, honey!”
“He’s not himself at all today,” Mr. Somerset told me.
People say that about Jeremy quite often, but what they mean is that he is not like other people. He is always himself. That’s what’s wrong with him. I called, “Jeremy, come down here please. Laura and I have been looking for you.”
“He won’t,” said Mr. Somerset. “He’s setting on the step where—”
“She passed on the stairs?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, of all places!”
“Way I heard it, he sat by her side till Mrs. Jarrett come home. Hours maybe. Nobody knows. It was Mrs. Jarrett dialed your number on the telephone. Otherwise he might never have done so. And then she sent him to bed, for after the fuss with the funeral parlor and the doctor and so on he just come right back to that step up yonder, planning on passing the night there, I believe. Mrs. Jarrett said, ‘Mr. Pauling, I think you should lie down on a regular bed now,’ and he did. But I noticed this morning he was setting on the stairs again, sat there all day. I told Miss Vinton that. She said let him be. I said how long were we supposed to let him be? ‘This is not natural, Miss Vinton,’ I told her, but she wouldn’t—”
“Well, he’s come to the end of that,” I said, and I took off my Rain Dears and hung my coat and hat in the closet and went upstairs. I crossed the second floor hallway, which smelled of damp towels. I climbed on to the third floor, where Jeremy works and sleeps all alone, seldom letting other people in. There he was, hunched over on the uppermost step, with Laura crouching beside him. She was out of breath; she never takes exercise. “Jeremy, honey, you don’t know how worried I was,” she was telling him. “Why, we rang and rang! I thought for certain you would be here.”
“I was sitting on the stairs,” Jeremy said.
“So I hear,” I said, climbing till my face was even with his. “The least I expected was to see you at the funeral parlor.”
“Oh, no.”
“Well, you’ll have to come downstairs now,” I told him.
“I don’t believe I feel like it just now, Amanda.”
“Did I ask if you felt like it?”
He spread his fingers and looked at the bitten nails, not answering. Speak sharply to Jeremy and you will bowl him over; he can’t stand up to things. You’ll get further being gentle with him, but I always remember that too late. He puts me in a fury. I don’t see how he could let himself go the way he has. No, letting yourself go means you had to be something to start with, and Jeremy never was anything. He was born like this. He is, and always has been, pale and doughy and overweight, pear-shaped, wide-hipped. He toes out when he walks. His hair is curly and silvery-gold, thin on top. His eyes are nearly colorless. (People have asked me if he is an albino.) There is no telling where he manages to find his clothes: baggy slacks that start just below his armpits; mole-colored cardigan strained across his stomach and buttoning only in the middle, exposing a yellowed fishnet undershirt top and bottom, and tiny round-toed saddle oxfords. Saddle oxfords? For a man? “Pull yourself together, Jeremy,” I said, and he blinked up at me with his lashless, puffy eyes.
“She’s only concerned for you,” Laura told him.
“I’m concerned for all of us,” I said. “How would it be if everyone just sat in one place when they didn’t feel like moving?”
“In a while I will move,” Jeremy said.
“At the funeral parlor they said they hadn’t seen a sign of you.”
“No.”
“Said you hadn’t even stopped in to check on how they laid her out.”
“I couldn’t manage it,” Jeremy said.
“We managed, didn’t we?”
“She looked very peaceful,” Laura said. She had leaned forward to grasp both his shoulders. He gave the impression that if she let go he would crumple very slowly to one side with his eyes still wide and staring. “You might think she was just asleep,” she told him.
“She fell asleep over solitaire a lot,” Jeremy said.
“She looks as pretty as her wedding picture.”
Now, where did she get that? Mother looked nothing like her wedding picture. It would have been mighty strange if she had. But all Jeremy said was, “The one in the album?”
“That’s the one.”
“Her face was kind of full in that picture,” Jeremy said.
“Her face is full now.”
“I suppose they have some way of doing that.”
“Her color is good, too.”
“Does she have a bit of color?”
“They’ve put on rouge, I imagine. Nothing garish, though. Just enough to—and they’ve waved her hair.”
“Mama never waved it.”
“Yes, but it looks just lovely, Jeremy. And that dress, it sets off her complexion. Did you choose the dress? You did just fine. I think I might have picked the flowered beige, the one she always wore at Easter, but this is nice too, and the color sets off her—”
“The funeral man suggested that,” Jeremy said.
“I suppose he knows about these things.”
“I had to go looking for clothes in her closet.”
“Really. And then the way they’ve done her—”
‘ “Had to push down all the rack of things in her closet.”
“Yes, I know.”
“They told me I had to,” Jeremy said. “I said, couldn’t they do it? They said no. They were scared they would get into trouble somehow, be accused of choosing wrong or maybe even stealing, I guess, if anything turned up missing. But I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t accuse them.”
“No, of course not,” Laura said.
“I had to slide down all the rack of dresses in her closet.”
“Yes, well.”
“I had to find some, find her undergarments in the bureau. Open up her bureau.”
“Well, Jeremy.”
“Go through her bureau
drawers taking things out.”
“Jeremy, honey. There, now. There, there.”
For Jeremy just then leaned over against Laura, set his head alongside that pillow of a bosom. And there sat Laura patting his back and clicking her teeth. She always did pamper that boy. Well, she was only seven when he was born—the age when you look at a baby brother as some kind of super-special doll. It never occurred to her that she was being displaced in Mother’s affection. It occurred to me, of course. I was the oldest. I had been displaced years ago. I saw how Mother had room for only one person at a time, and that one the youngest and smallest and weakest. I saw how, while she was expecting Jeremy, she curled more and more inside herself until she was only a kind of circular hollow taking in nourishment and asking for afghans. In all other situations Mother was a receiver, requesting and expecting even from her own daughters without ever giving anything out, but she spoiled Jeremy from the moment he was born and I believe that that is the root of all his troubles. A mama’s boy. She preferred him over everyone. She gave him the best of her food and the whole of her attention, kept him home from school for weeks at a time if he so much as complained of a stomach ache, which he was forever doing; read to him for hours while he sat wrapped in a comforter—oh, I can see it still! Jeremy on the windowseat, pasty and puffy-faced, Mother reading him Victorian ladies’ novels in her fading whispery voice although she never felt quite up to reading to us girls. By this time our father had left us, but I don’t believe she truly noticed. She was too wrapped up in Jeremy. She thought the sun rose and set in him. She thought he was a genius. (I myself have sometimes wondered if he isn’t a little bit retarded. Some sort of selective, unclassified retardation that no medical book has yet put its finger on.) He failed math, he failed public speaking (of course), he went through eighth grade twice but he happened to be artistic so Mother thought he was a genius. “Some people just don’t have mathematical minds,” she said, and she showed us his report card—A+ in art, A in English, A+ in deportment. (What else? He had no friends, there was no one he could have whispered with in class.) This was when we were in college, working our way through teachers college waiting tables and living at home and wearing hand-me-downs, and he was still in high school. When he graduated—by proxy, claiming a stomach ache, not up to facing a solitary march across the stage to receive his diploma—where did he go? The finest art school in Baltimore, with Mother selling off half her ground rents to pay the tuition. And he was miserable for every minute of it. Couldn’t stand the pressure. Scared of the other students. Stomach was bothering him. He lost one whole semester over something that might or might not have been mononucleosis. (In those days we called it glandular fever.) And even in good health, he rarely went to class. He would come home halfway through the morning and crawl into bed. What can you say to someone like that? What Mother said was, “Those people are just asking too much of you, Jeremy.” Then she made him all his favorite foods for lunch. (His favorite dessert is custard. Boiled custard.) Well, they did like his work, it seems. They gave him top grades and let him graduate. But even after that, he had no way to make a living. Can you imagine Jeremy teaching a class? Finally Mother gathered up strength to place a permanent ad in the newspaper: Trained artist willing to give private lessons in his studio. His studio was the entire third floor, which she had turned over to him without a thought. It had a skylight. Every now and then some poor failure of a pupil might ring the doorbell—girls mostly, anemic stringy-haired girls that scared him half to death. But they never lasted long. It seemed all they had to do was get a whiff of his studio to know that he was a bigger failure than they would ever be. Eventually they left and he would be back where he started: working alone, living off Mother. Relying on her insurance payments and her boarders and the last of her ground rents. To be fair I will admit that he has sold some of his work for money, but not much. An acquaintance from art school showed the good sense to switch from painting to dealing. Opened some sort of gallery. Fortunately for Jeremy. I often tell him he is lucky to have Brian to give him a hand but Jeremy just stares at me. He takes everything for granted, he tosses what he has made in Brian’s general direction and goes on his way without even checking to see if it has landed safely. Well, I suppose we should be grateful he doesn’t view his art too seriously. But still, the amount of money he uses up! Not to mention the time wasted. Do you think Mother would have let Laura or me get away with that? Never for a minute. We were always expected to make our own way in this world. For twenty-five years now I have been entirely self-supporting, and so has Laura ever since she was widowed. Does that seem fair? Well, Jeremy isn’t as strong as we are, Laura always says. That’s for sure. Give him a little time, Laura says. She has never seen him as he really is. She just went right along with Mother, coddled and babied him. Sat on the step now with both arms cradling him, saying, “Now, now, Jeremy,” while he wrinkled the front of her good knit dress.
“How long are you planning to sit here, Jeremy?” I asked him.
He straightened up then, but he didn’t answer.
“We do have things to get done, you know,” I said. “First you’ll have to change and go over to the funeral parlor.”
Laura said, “Amanda—”
“Then we have to make some plans for your future. I don’t know whether you’ve thought yet about what you’re going to do.”
“Do?” Jeremy asked.
“Oh, why don’t we talk about this after supper?” Laura said. “For now we’ll just get you off these stairs, Jeremy. I know you must be ready to come down. Aren’t you?”
It was plain he hadn’t thought of it, but he let her knead and pull him like so much modeling clay until he was finally in a standing position, and then she guided him down the stairs. I came behind. I arrived on the bottom step to find Mr. Somerset still at the front door, gaping at Jeremy. (In this house, I believe everyone does stay just where he wants. As if Mother’s inertia were contagious.) I said, “Mr. Somerset, did you put the suitcases in my mother’s room?”
“What’s that you say?”
“Our suitcases. Did you put them somewhere?”
“I never saw no suitcases.”
“Well, someone did,” I said. I bypassed Jeremy and Laura and went to Mother’s bedroom, off the dining room. There were no suitcases there. Only her unmade bed, stopping me in my tracks for a moment. I slammed the door shut again and said, “Jeremy? I want to know where our suitcases are.”
“Um, what suitcases are those, Amanda?”
I went through the entire first floor, flicking on lights in the kitchen, the bathroom, the dining room, the parlor. No suitcases. And they wouldn’t be upstairs; all the second floor belonged to boarders. “Mr. Somerset,” I said, “think, now. Who else has come in while we were out?”
“Why, nobody,” said Mr. Somerset. “The two ladies have been gone all day, and Howard left at seven this morning and never come back. I heard him go. I heard him whistling at seven A.M. outside my bedroom door, not a particle of consideration, and nights he comes in from a date eleven, eleven-thirty, twelve o’clock sometimes still whistling, never thinks to—”
“Someone has stolen our suitcases,” I said to Laura.
She was just settling Jeremy into a parlor chair, like an invalid. She looked up at me with her mind on something else and said, “Oh no, Amanda, I’m sure they would never—”
“They’re gone, aren’t they? And no one’s been in that door but us and Mr. Somerset, he says he never saw them.”
“It’s true, it’s true,” said Mr. Somerset, and then beat a retreat up the stairs as if I might accuse him of something. Just before disappearing he leaned over the banister to say, “You might ask Howard when he comes in, though as I say I don’t believe he—and you might talk to him about making noise. I don’t sleep too good as it is. You might mention it to him.”
“We’ve been robbed,” I said to Laura.
“Oh, they’ll show up. I’m sure of it.”
“No, they’re gone,” I told her. “We’ve seen the last of them.”
Isn’t that always the way it is? You would think that in time of tragedy the trivial things would let themselves go smoothly for once, but they never do.
I sat down in an armchair, just crumpled into it. “Imagine!” I said. “Someone who would rob a house in mourning. Oh, I’ve heard of such things. Burglars who check obituaries daily, they know the bereaved are too upset to take good notice. Isn’t it shameful?”
“Oh, I’m sure they didn’t do that.”
“What, then?”
“We could call the police,” Laura said.
“They’d be no help. They’re paid to keep their eyes closed.”
“Well, all that worries me is what will I do for a nightgown,” Laura said. “And a funeral dress. Will this be suitable?” She opened her coat wider to show the maroon knit, all creased across the front. “Lucky you” she told me. “You wore your black on the train.”
People always call it luck when you’ve acted more sensibly than they have.
I said, “This never would have happened in the olden days. There was a time when our neighborhood was so safe you could walk it at night without a thought, but now look! I don’t know how often I told Mother she ought to move.”
“One thing,” Laura said, “it’s not as if we had any valuables in our bags.”
“Speak for yourself,” I told her, “there are valuables and valuables. My suitcase was Mother’s graduation gift. The only useful thing she ever gave me.”
“We should talk about something more cheerful,” Laura said.
“Other times it was sachets and pomander balls and religious bookmarks, but that suitcase was top-quality cowhide.”