“I thought you’d do that,” said Mr. Pike.
“You can.”
“You’re not working today; you can spare a minute.”
“No, I’d rather you do it.”
“Oh now,” Mr. Pike said suddenly. “You two have a fight?”
Joan took another sip of coffee. It still had no taste. A hummingbird swooped down to the window and just hung there, suspended like a child’s bird-on-a-string, its small eyes staring curiously in and its little heart beating so close and fast they could see the pulsing underneath the feathers. Mr. Pike gazed at it absently.
“I never did hold with long engagements,” he said.
“What?”
“Longer the engagement, the more time for fights. Shouldn’t allow it, Joan.”
“I’m not engaged,” Joan said shortly. “And anyway, it’s none of my doing.” Her uncle looked away from the hummingbird and frowned at her.
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “And I’ll tell you. Some men need a little shove.”
“I don’t believe in shoving.”
“Only way, sometimes. I ever tell you how I came to marry your aunt?”
“I’m not in the mood for that,” said Joan.
“I was only going to mention.”
“No, I don’t want to hear,” she said, and pictured suddenly her aunt, no longer young, lying so still upstairs. “You go tell James,” she said.
“Aw, Joan.”
“Someone has to.”
“Aw, Joan, you know how it is. I’ll go over and there will be Ansel, all talkative and cheerful. Cheerful in the morning—can you feature that?”
“Maybe he’s still asleep,” Joan said.
“Ansel? No. I heard him come in long after midnight just singing away, and I reckon he sang all night and is singing still. Where’s Simon?”
“In bed.”
“Been days since I seen that boy. Send him over.”
“He won’t go either.”
“Look,” said Mr. Pike. He stood up, jarring the table, and the hummingbird flew away without even preparing to go. “I can’t see Ansel today,” he said. “I don’t know why but he gets under my skin nowadays. Will you please go?”
“Oh, all right,” Joan said.
“All right, that’s settled. Thank you very much.”
He sat down again, and Joan went back to looking at the patterns in the kitchen. Everything she saw made her homesick, but not for any home she’d ever had. The sunlight on the linoleum reminded her of something long ago and lost; yet she had never lived in a house with a linoleum kitchen, never in all her memory. She kept staring at the design of it, the speckled white floor with bars of red and blocks of blue splashed across it, and the sun lighting up the dents and scrapes made by kitchen chairs. Finally she looked away and into her uncle’s frowning, leather-brown face, but her uncle only said, “We need the money,” so she looked away again. Her coffee had cooled, and the surface of it was greasy-looking. She drank it anyway.
When her uncle was through with his coffee he pushed the cup toward the center of the table and rose, clamping the mesh cap on the back of his head. “You can take care of things here, I guess,” he said.
“Yes.”
“I’ll be running along, then.”
He clomped off toward the front of the house, swinging his boots in that heavy way that Simon always tried to copy. His steps made the whole floor shake. She heard the screen door swing open with a twang of its spring and then slam shut again, rattling on its hinges. Then the clomping continued across the porch, and she waited for the extra-heavy sound of his boots descending the wooden steps to the yard but it didn’t come. “Joan?” he called.
“What.”
“Joan!”
She rose and went out front, wondering why men always had to shout from where they were instead of coming closer. Her uncle was standing on the edge of the porch with his back to the house and his cap off, scratching the back of his head. “What is it?” she asked him, and he turned toward her.
“Well, I already informed your aunt,” he said, “but I’m not certain she heard.”
“Informed her about what?”
“About my working. But I’m not certain she heard. Will you tell her again?”
“All right,” said Joan.
“Say we need the money, tell her. Say I’m sorry.”
“All right, Uncle Roy.”
“I can’t sit looking at trees all my life.”
“No, I know,” said Joan, and reached out to give his shoulder one gentle push so that he would turn and leave. He did, still frowning. Then halfway across the yard he slapped his cap back on his head and thrust his hands in his pockets and began walking more briskly, getting ready to go out into the world again. Joan watched after him till he was out of the yard, and then she went down toward the Greens’ end of the porch.
Ansel was in his window, chewing sunflower seeds. He looked very happy. He spit the hulls out on the porch floor and then leaned over, his hands on the windowsill and his elbows jutting behind him like bird wings, and tried to blow the hulls all the way across the porch and into the yard. Joan wished he would fall out. She stood over him with her hands on her hips and waited until he had straightened up again, and then she said, “Ansel.”
“Morning, Joan.”
“Ansel, will you give James a message?”
“If I can remember it,” said Ansel. “My health is poorly this morning. Seems to be growing worse and worse.”
“Doesn’t look to me you could get much worse,” Joan said.
“At least you noticed. James just don’t even care. He’s in an ill mood today.”
Joan gave up on him and stepped over to the door and knocked. For a minute Ansel stared out his window at her, puzzling this over; then he shrugged and withdrew. He came to the door and opened it with a flourish.
“Morning, Joan,” he said.
“Where’s James?”
“Ain’t seen you in a long time. James? He’s in the back yard, emptying out the garbage.”
“Will you tell him he doesn’t have to work today? Make up your mind, now. If you’re planning to forget I’ll just do it myself.”
“Oh, I’ll tell him,” Ansel said. “Come in and set, why don’t you. Old James’ll be back any minute.”
“No, thank you,” said Joan.
“Well, suit yourself.” He yawned. “Saw your uncle go off to work this morning,” he said. “Seems kind of soon for him to be doing that, don’t it?”
“No.”
“Well, I just thought I’d point it out.” He yawned again and fished another sunflower seed from the packet in his hand. The shirt he had on was James’s, she saw. It was a dark red plaid and hung too loosely on him. She stared at it a minute and then, without a word, turned and went back up the porch. “Hey!” Ansel called after her, but Joan was inside her own parlor by now, letting the door slam shut behind her.
Upstairs, Simon was sound asleep, with his pajamaed legs sprawled and all his covers kicked loose from the foot of the bed. Joan went over and touched him gently, just on the outflung, curled-in palm of his hand. He stirred a little and then mumbled and turned away from her.
“Get up, Simon,” she said.
“I am up. I am.”
“Come on.”
“I’m half dressed already. I got my—”
“Simon.”
He opened his eyes. “Oh light,” he said, and Joan smiled and sat down on the bed beside him.
“I got something I want to talk over,” she told him.
“Okay.”
“You listening?”
“I just can’t find any clean jeans,” he said, and closed his eyes and was asleep again. Joan picked up his hand and shook it, but it hung loose and limp.
“Simon, this is about your mother,” she said.
“I’m listening.”
“I think your mother should start working today.”
He turned over and s
quinted at her, through foggy brown eyes. “What at?” he asked.
“At her sewing. I want you to stay around and help with the conversation, all right? Missouri says I’m no walking newspaper.”
“What?”
“Will you help me out?”
“Oh, why, sure,” Simon said, and would have been asleep again if Joan hadn’t pulled him to a sitting position. He stayed there, slumped between her hands, with his head drooping to one side. “I was in this boat,” he said.
“Come on, Simon.”
“Then we started sinking. They told me I was the one that had to swim for it. Do you believe that’ll happen someday?”
“No,” said Joan, and pulled hard on him till he was standing beside the bed.
“They say everything you dream will happen,” Simon told her. “It’s true. Last year I dreamed Mama would find out about me smoking and sure enough, that night at supper there was my half-pack of Winstons lying beside my plate and Mama staring at me. It came true.”
He bent down to examine a stubbed toe and Joan stood up, preparing to go. “You come down when you’re dressed,” she said.
“I don’t have any clean jeans to wear.”
“That’s just something you said in your sleep. You have lots of jeans.”
“No, really I don’t,” Simon said. “No one’s been doing the laundry.”
Joan crossed to his bureau and pulled open his bottom drawer. It was bare except for a pair of bermudas. “Oh, Lord,” she said. “I forgot all about the laundry.”
“I told you you did.”
“Well, wear bermudas till this afternoon, why don’t you. By then I’ll have you some jeans.”
“Have my knees show?” Simon asked.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Boys don’t have their knees out any more. You ought to know that.”
“Well, la de da,” said Joan, and rumpled the top of his hair. “Wear a pair of dirty jeans, then.”
“They’d all call me sissy if my knees showed.”
“All right. Hurry up, now.”
She closed the door behind her and went downstairs. In the parlor she sat down on a faded plush footstool and reached for the telephone, which sat on a table beside her. She hooked the receiver over her shoulder and then opened the telephone book to the very back, where there was space for frequently used numbers. The page was filled to the bottom, and looked messy because of so many different handwritings. Mr. Pike had listed the names of bowling pals in a careful, downward-slanting script, and Simon had scrawled the names of all his classmates even though he never talked to them by telephone, and Janie Rose had printed names in huge capitals that took two lines, after asking several times how to spell each one—the four little Marsh girls, each listed separately, and the milkman who had once brought her a yellow plastic ring from a chicken’s leg, which she had worn every day until she lost it. Mrs. Pike’s handwriting was small and pretty, every letter slanting to the same degree, naming off her steady customers one by one with little memos to herself about colors and pattern numbers penciled in lightly beside them. Joan went down the list alphabetically. Mrs. Abbott, who never talked. Mrs. Chrisawn, who was in such a black mood most of the time. Davis, Forsyth, Hammond … She stopped there. Connie Hammond was always good to have around during a tragedy. She brought chicken broth whether people wanted it or not, and she knew little things like how to make a bed with someone in it and what to say when no one else could think of anything. As far as Joan was concerned, having a person talk incessantly would be more harm than help; but her aunt felt differently. Her aunt had actually sat up and answered, the last time Connie Hammond came. So Joan smoothed the phone book out on her knees and dialed the Hammonds’ number.
Mrs. Hammond was talking to somebody else when she answered. She said, “If that’s not the worst thing—” and then into the phone, “Hello?”
“Mrs. Hammond, this is Joan Pike,” said Joan.
“Why, Joan, honey, how are you?” Mrs. Hammond said, and then softened her shrill voice to ask, “How’s your poor aunt?”
“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” said Joan. She spoke at some distance from the receiver, in case Mrs. Hammond should grow shrill again.
“What’s that you say?”
“I said I wanted to talk to you about that. Aunt Lou is just miserable.”
“Oh, my.” There was a rustling sound as Mrs. Hammond cupped her hand over the receiver and turned away. “Lou Pike is just miserable,” she told someone. Her hand uncupped the receiver again and she returned, breathless, to Joan. “Joan, honey, I told Mr. Hammond, just last night. I said, I haven’t ever seen someone take on so. Well, of course she has good reason to but the things she says, Joan. It wasn’t her fault; it was that noaccount Ned Marsh who did it. How he manages to drive even a tractor recklessly is more than I can—”
“Um,” Joan said, and Mrs. Hammond stopped speaking and snapped her mouth shut audibly, to show she had been interrupted. “Um, she hasn’t even gotten up today. She’s still in bed. And Uncle Roy’s at the tobacco barns—”
“The where?”
“Tobacco barns. Working tobacco.”
“Why, that man,” said Mrs. Hammond.
“Well, he can’t just sit staring at the trees all—”
“He could comfort his wife,” Mrs. Hammond said.
“She won’t listen. So I was thinking, as long as he’s away today—”
“Men are like that,” Mrs. Hammond said. “Work is all they think about.”
“As long as he is at work,” Joan said firmly, “I think maybe Aunt Lou should start working too.”
“Working?”
“Working at sewing. Missouri said—”
“Mrs. who?”
“Mrs.—never mind. Wait a minute.” Joan switched ears and leaned forward, as if Mrs. Hammond could see her now from where she stood. “Mrs. Hammond,” she said, “I know how good you are at helping other people.”
“Oh, why, I just—”
“I know you could help Aunt Lou right now, if anybody could. You could bring that dress she was working on, that—was it purple?”
“Lilac,” said Mrs. Hammond. “Princess style.”
“That’s the one.”
“Lou said it would add to my height a little, a princess style would.”
“That’s right,” Joan said. “That’s the one.”
“Especially since it has up-and-down pinstripes.”
“Yes. Well, I was thinking. If you could just bring it over and get her to work on it for you, just take her mind off all the—”
“You might be right,” said Mrs. Hammond. “Why didn’t I think of that? Why, the day before the funeral, when I came—you remember—I did feel she was doing wrong to sit so quiet. I said so. I have always believed that baking calms the nerves, so I said to her, ‘Lou,’ I said, ‘why don’t you make some rolls?’ But she looked at me as if I’d lost my senses. After all, I’d just brought two dozen, and a cake besides. Yet I felt she ought to be doing something; that’s what I was trying to tell her. You just might be right, Joan.”
“Well, then,” said Joan, “do you think you could come over sometime today?”
“I’ll come over right this minute. I just wouldn’t feel at rest until I had. You say your aunt’s still in bed?”
“She was a minute ago,” Joan said.
“Well, you try and get her up, and I’ll be there as fast as I can find the dress. I’ll be there, don’t you worry.”
“All right,” Joan said. “It certainly is nice of you to come, Mrs. Hammond.”
“Well. Goodbye, now.”
“Goodbye.”
Joan hung up and sat back to rub her ear, which felt squashed. Now that all that was settled, the next step was to get Simon downstairs. He would have to back her up in this.
Simon was standing in front of his mirror when Joan came in. He was wearing blue jeans but no shirt, and scratching his stomach absently.
“Hey,” Joan said, and he jumped and looked up at her. “Find yourself a shirt,” she told him. “Connie Hammond’s coming.”
“Aw, gee, Joan. Mrs. Hammond?”
“She’ll be here any minute. Come on, now. It’s a special favor to your mother.”
“I bet she’ll never notice,” Simon said, but he pulled a bureau drawer open. Joan closed the door and went on to her aunt’s room.
Mrs. Pike was sitting up against two pillows, fat and soft in a gray nylon nightgown. She had her hands folded across her stomach and was looking vaguely at the two points her feet made underneath the bedspread. “Good morning,” Joan said, and Mrs. Pike raised her eyes silently and peered at her as if she were trying to pierce her way through mist. But she never answered. After a minute her eyes passed on to something else, dismissing Joan like the wrong answer to a question she had asked. Joan came to stand at the foot of the bed.
“Aunt Lou,” she said, “would you like to get up?”
Her aunt shook her head.
“Mrs. Hammond’s coming. Do you want her to find you in bed?”
“No,” said Mrs. Pike, but she didn’t do anything about it. She settled lower into the pillows, with her eyes worrying at the wallpaper now, and in so much dim clutter she appeared to be sinking, overcome by the objects around her. Under Joan’s feet were cast-off clothes, everywhere, everything her aunt had been persuaded to put on in the last few days. She had stepped out of them and left them there, returning wearily to her gray nightgown. Mr. Pike, on the other hand, had made some effort at neatness. He had laid his clothes awkwardly on the back of the platform rocker, where they rose in a layered mountain that seemed huge and overwhelming in the half-dark. On the bureau were hairbrushes and bobby pins and old coffee cups with dark rings inside them. The sight of it all made Joan feel caved in and despairing, and she went over to raise the window shade but the light only picked up more clutter. “Aunt Lou,” she said, “we just have to get organized here.”
“What?”
“We have to start cleaning things up.”
Her aunt nodded, without seeming to pay attention, but then she surprised Joan by moving over to the edge of the bed and standing up. She stood in that old woman’s way she had just acquired—searching out the floor with anxious feet, rising slowly and heavily. For a minute she stood there, and then she shook her nightgown out around her and faltered toward the bureau. “I’m going to clean up,” she told Joan.