“Sure thing,” Ian said.
He stood with his palms clamped in his armpits and watched them drive off.
His roommate was a zany, hooting, clownish boy named Winston Mills. Not only was the hand-shaped chair his, but also a bedspread made from an American flag, and a beer stein that tinkled out “How Dry I Am” when you lifted it, and a poster for a movie called Teenage Robots. The other boys thought he was weird, but Ian liked him. He liked the fact that Winston never had a serious discussion or asked a serious question. Instead he told the entire plots of movies Ian had never heard of—werewolf movies and Japanese westerns and monster movies where the zippers showed clearly between the scales—or he read aloud in a falsetto voice from a collection of syrupy “love comics” he’d found at a garage sale, meanwhile lolling in his butterfly chair with the huge pink fingers curving up behind him.
Ian dreamed Danny drove onto the quad in his Chevy, which didn’t have so much as a dented fender. He leaned out his window and asked Ian, “Don’t you think I knew? Don’t you think I knew all along?” And Ian woke and thought maybe Danny had known. Sometimes people just chose not to admit a thing, not even to themselves. But then he realized that was immaterial. So what if he’d known? It wasn’t till he’d been told point-blank that he’d felt the need to take action.
As far as Ian could see, college was not much different from high school. Same old roots of Western civilization, same old single-cell organisms. He squinted through a microscope and watched an amoeba turn thin and branchy, curve two branches around a black dot, thicken to a blob and drift on. His lab partner was a girl and he could tell she liked him, but she seemed too foreign. She came from someplace rural and said “ditten” instead of “didn’t.” Also “cooten”. “I cooten find my notebook anywhere.” He lived for the weekends, when Cicely rode out to Sumner on a tiny, rattling train and they hung around his dorm in the hope that Winston might leave for one of his movies at some point. Supposedly Cicely was bunking with the older sister of a girl she knew from home, but in fact she shared Ian’s narrow bed where late at night—silently, almost motionlessly, all but holding their breaths—they made love over and over again across the room from Winston’s snoring shape.
He called home collect every weekend; that was easier than his parents’ trying to call him. But the Wednesday before Halloween his mother phoned, reaching him purely by chance as he was passing through the dorm between classes. “I hate to bother you,” she said, “but I thought you’d want to know. Honey, it’s Lucy.”
“Lucy?”
“She died.”
He noticed that a sort of whirring silence seemed to be traveling down the corridor. He said, “She what?”
“We think it was pills.”
He swallowed.
“Ian?”
Oh, God, he thought, how long will I have to pay for just a handful of tossed-off words?
“Are you all right, Ian?”
“Sure,” he said.
“We got a call from Agatha last night. She told us, ‘Mama keeps sleeping and won’t wake up.’ Well, you know that could have meant anything. Of course I made plans to get right over there but I did say, ‘Oh, sweetie, I bet she’s just tuckered out,’ and that’s when Agatha said, ‘She wouldn’t even wake for breakfast.’ I said, ‘Breakfast?’ I said, ‘This morning?’ Ian, would you believe it, those children had been on their own since the night before when she put them to bed. Then she went to bed herself and just, I don’t know, I mean there’s no sign she did it on purpose but when we walked in she was flat on her back and breathing so slowly, just a breath here and another breath there, and this pill bottle sat on her nightstand totally empty. There wasn’t any letter though or anything like that. So it couldn’t have been on purpose, right? But why would she take even one of those pills? Our family’s never held with sleeping pills. I always say, get up and scrub the floors if you can’t sleep! Do some reading! Improve your mind! Anyhow, we called the ambulance and they took her to Union Memorial. She had gone on too long, though. If they’d got to her right away, well, maybe; but she’d been lying there a whole night and a day and there wasn’t much they could do. She died this noon without ever regaining consciousness.”
Can’t we just back up and start over? Couldn’t I have one more chance?
“Ian?” his mother was saying. “Listen, don’t breathe a word to the children.”
He found his voice from somewhere. He said, “They don’t know yet?”
“No, and we’re not ever going to tell them.”
Maybe the shock had sent her around the bend. He said, “They’re going to have to find out sometime. How will you explain it when she doesn’t come home from the hospital?”
Or when she fails to show up for Thomas’s high-school graduation or Agatha’s wedding, he thought wildly, and he almost laughed.
“I mean we’re not going to tell them they might have saved her,” his mother said. “If they’d phoned earlier, I mean. They’d feel so guilty.”
He leaned against the wall and briefly closed his eyes.
“So we’ve set the funeral for Friday,” his mother said, “assuming her people agree to it. Did she ever happen to tell you who her people were?”
“She didn’t have any. You know that.”
“Well, distant relatives, though. Isn’t it odd? I don’t believe she once mentioned her maiden name.”
“Lucy … Dean,” Ian said. “Dean was her name.”
“No, Dean would have been her first husband’s name.”
“Oh.”
“There must be cousins or something, but the children couldn’t think who. We said where could we reach their daddy, then? They didn’t have the slightest idea.”
“He lives in Cheyenne, Wyoming,” Ian said. As clearly as if he’d been present, he saw Lucy heaving her package onto the post office counter. She looked up into Danny’s face and asked in her little cracked voice how much it would cost to airmail a bowling ball to Wyoming.
“Your father has already called every Dean in the Cheyenne directory,” his mother said, “but he came up empty. Now all we have to rely on is someone maybe seeing the obituary.”
Two boys were walking down the corridor. Ian turned so he was facing the other way.
“Ian? Are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“I told your father I wasn’t going to phone you. I said, why interrupt your studies? But he thought maybe you could come on account of the children. Well, goodness, I can handle the children but they’re so … the baby hasn’t slept since she got here. And Thomas just sits around hugging that doll of his, and Agatha’s being, oh, Agatha; you know how she is. Somehow I just never have felt like those two’s grandma. Isn’t that awful? They can’t help it! But somehow … and your sister’s all tied up with Davey’s measles …”
Ian could guess what this was leading to. He felt suddenly burdened.
“So your father said maybe you could come help out a few days.”
“I’ll catch the next Greyhound,” he said.
He rode to Baltimore that evening on a nearly empty bus, staring at his own reflection in the window. His eyes were deep black hollows and he appeared to have sharper cheekbones than he really did. He looked stark and angular, bitterly experienced. He wondered if there was any event, any at all, so tragic that it could jolt him out of this odious habit of observing his own reaction to it.
His father met him at the terminal. Neither of them knew yet how they were supposed to greet each other after long separations. Hug? Shake hands? His father settled for clapping him on the arm. “How was the trip?” he asked.
“Pretty good.”
Ian hoisted his knapsack higher on his shoulder and they walked through the crowd, dodging people who seemed to have set up housekeeping there. They threaded between stuffed laundry bags and take-out food cartons; they stepped over the legs of a soldier asleep on the floor. Outside, Howard Street looked very bustling and citified after Sumner.
“So,” his father said, once they were seated in the car. “I guess you heard the news.”
“Right.”
“Terrible thing. Terrible.”
“How’re the kids?” Ian asked him.
“Oh, they’re okay. Kind of quiet, though.”
They entered the stream of traffic and drove north. The evening was still warm enough for car windows to be open, and scraps of songs sailed past—“Monday, Monday” and “Winchester Cathedral” and “Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On.” Ian’s father said, “Your mom put me to work this afternoon hunting Lucy’s relatives. I don’t know if she told you.”
“She told me you tried calling Cheyenne.”
“Yes, well. No luck. And I stopped by the Fill ’Er Up Café—remember the Fill ’Er Up? Where Lucy used to work? I was hoping to find those two waitresses from the wedding. But the owner said one had walked out on him and the other moved south a couple of months ago. So then I went through Lucy’s drawers, thinking there’d be, oh, an address book, say, or some letters. Didn’t find a thing. Hard to figure, isn’t it? This is what we’ve come to, now that people phone instead of writing.”
“Maybe there just aren’t any relatives,” Ian told him.
“Well, in that case, what’ll we do with the children?”
“Children.”
“The older two have their father, of course. Soon as we track him down. But I suppose it’s expecting too much that he would raise the little one as well.”
“Well, naturally,” Ian said. “She isn’t even kin!”
“No, I guess not,” his father said. He sighed.
“He doesn’t even keep in touch with the two that are!”
“No.”
“Couldn’t you and Mom, maybe …”
“We’re too old,” his father said. He turned up Charles Street.
“You’re not old!”
“We’ve just reached that time in our lives, Ian, when I think we deserve a rest. And your mother’s not getting around so good lately; I don’t know if you’ve noticed. Doc Plumm says this thing in her knees is arthritis. Can’t exactly picture her chasing after a toddler.”
“Yes, but—”
“Never mind, I’m sure we’ll come up with someone or other,” his father said, “once we find that ex-husband.”
Then he went back to deploring how no one wrote letters these days. Pretty soon, he said, this country’s mail service would be canceled for lack of interest. Turn all the post offices into planters, he said, and his lips twisted into one of his wry smiles before he recollected himself and grew serious again.
At home, Beastie nosed Ian’s palm joyfully and lumbered after him into the living room, where his mother was walking Daphne up and down. She kissed him hello and then handed him the baby, who was too near sleep to do more than murmur. “Oh, my legs!” Bee said, sinking onto the couch. “That child has kept me on my feet all evening.”
Thomas sat at the other end of the couch with his doll clutched to his chest, her yellow wig flaring beneath his chin like a bedraggled sunflower. Agatha sat in an armchair. She surveyed Ian levelly and then returned to her picture book. Both of them wore pajamas. They had the moist, pale, chastened look of children fresh from their baths.
“Have you eaten yet?” Ian’s mother asked him. “I fed the children early because I didn’t know.”
“I can find something.”
“Oh. Well, all right.”
Daphne had gained weight, or maybe it was her sleepiness that made her feel so heavy. She drooped over Ian’s shoulder, giving off a strong smell of apple juice.
“Your father’s been through … various drawers,” his mother said. She glanced toward Agatha. Evidently Lucy’s name was not supposed to be spoken. “He didn’t find a thing.”
“Yes, he told me.”
Agatha turned a page of her book. Ian’s father crossed to the barometer on the wall and tapped the glass.
“Ian, dear,” his mother said, “would you mind very much if I toddled off to bed?”
“No, go ahead,” Ian said, although he did feel a bit hurt. After all, this was his first visit home.
“It’s been such a long day, I’m just beat. The older two are sleeping in Danny’s room, and I’ve set up the Port-a-Crib in your room. I hope Daphne won’t disturb you.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“He looks downright domestic, in fact,” his father said, and he gave a snort of laughter. Doug belonged to an era when the sight of a man holding a baby was considered humorous. He liked to say he’d changed a diaper only once in all his life, back when Bee had the flu and Claudia was an infant. The experience had made him throw up. Everyone always chuckled when he told this story, but now Ian wondered why. He felt irked to see his father drift behind Bee toward the stairs, although his knees were not arthritic and he might easily have stayed to help. “Night, son,” he said, lifting an arm.
“Good night,” Ian said shortly.
He sat on the couch next to Thomas. Daphne instantly made a chipped sound of protest, and he stood up and started walking again.
“Ian,” Agatha said, “will you read us a story?”
“I can’t right now. Daphne won’t let me sit down.”
“She will if you sit in a rocking chair,” Agatha said.
He tried it. Daphne stirred, but as soon as he began rocking she went limp again. He wondered why his mother hadn’t thought of this—or why Agatha hadn’t informed her.
Agatha was pulling up a footstool so she could sit next to him. Her eyes were lowered and her plain white disk of a face seemed complete in itself, ungiving. “Get a chair, Thomas,” she ordered. Thomas slid off the couch and dragged over the miniature rocker from the hearth. It took him awhile because he never let go of Dulcimer.
The book Agatha placed on Ian’s lap dated from his childhood. The Sad Little Bunny, it was called. It told about a rabbit who got lost on a picnic and couldn’t find his mother. Ian wondered about reading this story under these particular circumstances, but both children listened stolidly—Thomas sucking his thumb, Agatha turning the pages without comment. First the rabbit went home with a friendly robin and tried to live in a tree, but he got dizzy. Then he went home with a beaver and tried to live in a dam, but he got wet. Ian had never realized what a repetitive book this was. He swallowed a yawn. Tears of boredom filled his eyes. The effort of reading while rocking made him slightly motion-sick.
On the last page, the little rabbit said, “Oh, Mama, I’m so glad to be back in my own home!” The picture showed him in a cozy, chintz-lined burrow, hugging an aproned mother rabbit. Reading out the words, Ian noticed how loud they sounded—like something tactless dropped into a shocked silence. But Agatha said, “Again.”
“It’s bedtime.”
“No, it’s not! What time is it?”
“Tell you what,” he said. “You get into your beds, and then I’ll read it once more.”
“Twice,” Agatha said.
“Once.”
What did this remind him of? The boredom, the yawns … It was the evening of Danny’s death, revisited. He felt he was traveling a treadmill, stuck with these querulous children night after night after night.
In the morning the minister came to discuss the funeral service. He was an elderly, stiff, formal man, and Bee seemed flustered when Ian led him into the kitchen. “Oh, don’t look at all this mess!” she said, untying her apron. “Let’s go into the living room. Ian can feed the children.”
But Dr. Prescott said, “Nonsense,” and sat down in a kitchen chair. “Where’s Mr. Bedloe?” he asked.
Bee said, “Well, I know it sounds heartless, but he had to take the day off yesterday and of course tomorrow’s the funeral so … he went to work.”
“Is that good?” Dr. Prescott asked Daphne. She was squirting a piece of banana between her fingers and then smearing it across her high-chair tray.
“It’s not that he doesn’t mourn her. Really, he feels jus
t dreadful,” Bee said. “Ian, could you fetch a cloth, please? But substitute teachers are so hard to get hold of—”
“Yes, life must go on,” Dr. Prescott said. “Isn’t that right, young Abigail.”
“Agatha,” Bee corrected him. “It’s Claudia’s girl who’s named Abigail.”
“And will the children be attending the service?”
“Oh, no.”
“Sometimes it’s valuable, I’ve learned.”
“We think they’ll have a fine time staying here with Mrs. Myrdal,” Bee said. “Mrs. Myrdal used to sit with them when they lived above the drugstore and she knows all their favorite storybooks.”
She beamed across the table at Agatha. Agatha gazed back at her without a trace of a smile.
Dr. Prescott said, “Agatha, Thomas, I realize all that’s happened must be difficult to understand. Perhaps you’d like to ask me some questions.”
Agatha remained expressionless. Thomas shook his head.
Ian thought, I would! I would! But it wasn’t Ian Dr. Prescott had been addressing.
He’d remembered to bring his suit but he had forgotten a tie, so he had to borrow one of his father’s for the funeral. Standing in front of his mirror, he slid the knot into place and smoothed his collar. When the doorbell rang, he waited for someone to answer. It rang again and Beastie gave a worried yap. “Coming!” Ian called. He crossed the hall and sprinted downstairs.
Mrs. Myrdal had already opened the front door a few inches and poked her head in. Her hat looked like a gray felt potty turned upside down. Ian said, “Hi. Come on in.”
“I worried I was late.”
“No, we’re just getting ready.”
He showed her into the living room, where she settled on the sofa. She was one of those women who grow quilted in old age—her face a collection of pouches, her body a series of squashed mounds. “My, it’s finally getting to be fall,” she said, removing her sweater. “Real nip in the air today.”
“Is that so,” Ian said. He was hanging about in the doorway, wondering whether it was rude to leave.
“And how are those poor children bearing up?” she asked him.