A Death in the Family - James Agee [13]
“Don’t you worry,” she smiled at him. “You won’t get any from me that’s all the way like it!”
He frowned at her.
“Come on sit down, sweetheart,” he said.
“In a minute ...”
“Come on. I imagine two are gonna be enough.”
“You think so?”
“If it won’t I’ll make the third one.” He took her hand and drew her towards her chair. “You’ll sit here.” She sat down. “How about you?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“I know what.” He got up and went to the icebox.
“What are you—oh. No, Jay. Well. Thanks.”
For before she could prevent him he had poured milk into a saucepan, and now that he put it on the stove she knew she would like it.
“Want some toast?”
“No, thank you, darling. The milk, just by itself, will be just perfect.”
He finished off the eggs. She got half out of her chair. He pressed down on her shoulder as he got up. He brought back the pancakes.
“They’ll be soggy by now. Let me ...” She started up again; again he put a hand on her shoulder. “You stay put,” he said in a mockery of sternness. “They’re fine. Couldn’t be better.”
He plastered on butter, poured on molasses, sliced the pancakes in parallels, gave them a twist with knife and fork and sliced them crosswise.
“There’s plenty more butter,” she said.
“Got a plenty,” he said, spearing four fragments of pancake and putting them in his mouth. “Thanks.” He chewed them up, swallowed them, and speared four more. “I bet your milk’s warm,” he said, putting down his fork.
But this time she was up before he could prevent her. “You eat,” she said. She poured the white, softly steaming milk into a thick white cup and sat down with it, warming both hands on the cup, and watching him eat. Because of the strangeness of the hour, and the abrupt destruction of sleep, the necessity for action and its interruptive minutiae, the gravity of his errand, and a kind of weary exhilaration, both of them found it peculiarly hard to talk, though both particularly wanted to. He realized that she was watching him, and watched back, his eyes serious yet smiling, his jaws busy. He was glutted, but he thought to himself, I’ll finish up those pancakes if it’s the last thing I do.
“Don’t stuff, Jay,” she said after a silence.
“Hm?”
“Don’t eat more than you’ve appetite for.”
He had thought his imitation of good appetite was successful. “Don’t worry,” he said, spearing some more.
There wasn’t much to finish. She looked at him tenderly when he glanced down to see, and said nothing more about it.
“Mnh, ” he said, leaning back.
Now there was nothing to take their eyes from each other; and still, for some reason, they had nothing to say. They were not disturbed by this, but both felt almost the shyness of courtship. Each continued to look into the other’s tired eyes, and their tired eyes sparkled, but not with realizations which reached their hearts very distinctly.
“What would you like to do for your birthday?” he asked.
“Why, Jay.” She was taken very much by surprise. “Why you nice thing! Why—why ...”
“You think it over,” he said. “Whatever you’d like best—within reason, of course,” he joked. “I’ll see we manage it. The children, I mean.” They both remembered at the same time. He said, “That is, of course, if everything goes the way we hope it will, up home.”
“Of course, Jay.” Her eyes lost focus for a moment. “Let’s hope it will,” she said, in a peculiarly abstracted voice.
He watched her. That occasional loss of focus always mystified him and faintly disturbed him. Women, he guessed.
She came back into this world and again they looked at each other. Of course, in a way, they both reflected, there isn’t anything to say, or need for us to say it, anyhow.
He took a slow, deep breath and let it out as slowly.
“Well, Mary,” he said in his gentlest voice. He took her hand. They smiled very seriously, thinking of his father and of each other, and both knew in their hearts, as they had known in their minds, that there