A Death in the Family - James Agee [49]
“Is Jay a man for soft soap?”
“No,” she smiled a little, “he certainly isn’t, ordinarily. But what am I to make of it? Here he was praising Jay to the skies on the one hand and on the other, why practically in the same breath, telling me one reason after another why it would be plain foolhardiness to marry him. What would you think!”
“Can’t you see that both things might be so—or that he might very sincerely have felt that both things were so, rather?”
Mary thought a moment. “I don’t know, Aunt Hannah. No, I don’t see quite how.”
“You learned how yourself, Mary.”
“Did I!”
“You learned there was a lot in what your rather—in all our misgivings, but learning it never changed your essential opinion of him, did it? You found you could realize both things at once.”
“That’s true. Yes. I did.”
“We had to learn more and more that was good. You had to learn more and more that wasn’t so good.”
Mary looked at her with smiling defiance. “All the same, blind as I began it,” she said, “I was more right than Papa, wasn’t I? It wasn’t a mistake. Papa was right there’d be trouble—more than he’ll ever know or any of you—but it wasn’t a mistake. Was it?”
Don’t ask me, child, tell me, Hannah thought. “Obviously not,” she said.
Mary was quiet a few moments. Then she said, shyly and proudly, “In these past few months, Aunt Hannah, we’ve come to a—kind of harmoniousness that—that,” she began to shake her head. “I’ve no business talking about it.” Her voice trembled. “Least of all right now!” She bit her lips together, shook her head again, and swallowed some tea, noisily. “The way we’ve been talking,” she blurted, her voice full of tea, “it’s just like a post-mortem!” She struck her face into her hands and was shaken by tearless sobbing. Hannah subdued an impulse to go to her side. God help her, she whispered. God keep her. After a little while Mary looked up at her; her eyes were quiet and amazed. “If he dies,” she said, “if he’s dead, Aunt Hannah, I don’t know what I’ll do. I just don’t know what I’ll do.”
“God help you,” Hannah said; she reached across and took her hand. “God keep you.” Mary’s face was working. “You’ll do well. Whatever it is, you’ll do well. Don’t you doubt it. Don’t you fear.” Mary subdued her crying. “It’s well to be ready for the worst,” Hannah continued. “But we mustn’t forget, we don’t know yet.”
At the same instant, both looked at the clock.
“Certainly by very soon now, he should phone,” Mary said. “Unless he’s had an accident!” she laughed sharply.
“Oh soon, I’m sure,” Hannah said. Long before now, she said to herself, if it were anything but the worst. She squeezed Mary’s clasped hands, patted them, and withdrew her own hand, feeling, there’s no little comfort anyone can give, it’d better be saved for when it’s needed most.
Mary did not speak, and Hannah could not think of a word to say. It was absurd, she realized, but along with everything else, she felt almost a kind of social embarrassment about her speechlessness.
But after all, she thought, what is there to say! What earthly help am I, or anyone else?
She felt so heavy, all of a sudden, and so deeply tired, that she wished she might lean her forehead against the edge of the table.
“We’ve simply got to wait,” Mary said.
“Yes,” Hannah sighed.
I’d better drink some tea, she thought, and did so. Lukewarm and rather bitter, somehow it made her feel even more tired.
They sat without speaking for fully two minutes.
“At least we’re given the mercy of a little time,” Mary said slowly, “awful as it is to have to wait. To try to prepare ourselves for whatever it may be.” She was gazing studiously into her empty cup.
Hannah felt unable to say anything.
“Whatever is,” Mary went on, “it’s already over and done with.” She was speaking virtually without emotion; she was absorbed beyond feeling, Hannah became sure, in what she was beginning to find out and to face. Now she looked up at Hannah and they looked steadily