A Death in the Family - James Agee [59]
“But you gotta go through with it,” he said.
Against his shoulder he could feel her vigorous nodding. You will, he thought; you’ve got spunk.
“No way out of it,” he said.
“I think I will sit down.” She broke from him and with an almost vindictive sense of violation sat heavily at the edge of the bed, just where it was turned down, next the plumped pillows. He turned the chair and sat with her knee to knee.
“Something I’ve got to tell you,” he said.
She looked at him and waited.
“You remember what Cousin Patty was like? When she lost George?”
“Not very well. I wasn’t more than five or six.”
“Well, I do. She ran around like a chicken with its head off. ‘Oh, why does it have to be me? What did I ever do that it happened to me?’ Banging her head against the furniture, trying to stab herself with her scissors, yelling like a stuck pig: you could hear her in the next block.”
Her eyes became cold. “You needn’t worry,” she said.
“I don’t, because you’re not a fool. But you’d better, and that’s what I want to warn you about.”
She kept looking at him.
“See here, Poll,” he said. “It’s bad enough right now, but it’s going to take a while to sink in. When it really sinks in it’s going to be any amount worse. It’ll be so much worse you’ll think it’s more than you can bear. Or any other human being. And worse than that, you’ll have to go through it alone, because there isn’t a thing on earth any of us can do to help, beyond blind animal sympathy.”
She was gazing slantwise towards the floor in some kind of coldly patient irony, he felt sick to death of himself.
“Look at me, Poll,” he said. She looked at him. “That’s when you’re going to need every ounce of common sense you’ve got,” he said. “Just spunk won’t be enough; you’ve got to have gumption. You’ve got to bear it in mind that nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice. You’ve got to keep your mind off pitying your own rotten luck and setting up any kind of a howl about it. You’ve got to remember that things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they’ve come through it and that you will too. You’ll bear it because there isn’t any choice—except to go to pieces. You’ve got two children to take care of. And regardless of that you owe it to yourself and you owe it to him. You understand me.”
“Of course.”
“I know it’s just unmitigated tommyrot to try to say a word about it. To say nothing of brass. All I want is to warn you that a lot worse is yet to come than you can imagine yet, so for God’s sake brace yourself for it and try to hold yourself together.” He said, with sudden eagerness, “It’s a kind of test, Mary, and it’s the only kind that amounts to anything. When something rotten like this happens. Then you have your choice. You start to really be alive, or you start to die. That’s all.” Watching her eyes, he felt fear for her and said, “I imagine you’re thinking about your religion.”
“I am,” she said, with a certain cool pride.
“Well, more power to you,” he said. “I know you’ve got a kind of help I could never have. Only one thing: take the greatest kind of care you don’t just—crawl into it like a hole and hide in it.”
“I’ll take care,” she said.
She means there is nothing I can tell her about that, he thought; and she is right.
“Talk to Hannah about it,” he said.
“I will, Papa.”
“One other thing.”
“Yes?”
“There are going to be financial difficulties. We’ll see just what, and just how to settle them, course of time. I just want to take that worry off your hands. Don’t worry. We’ll work that out.”
“Bless you, Papa.”
“Rats. Drink your drink.”
She drank deeply and shuddered.
“Take all you can without getting drunk,” he said. “I wouldn’t give a whoop if you got blind drunk, best thing you could do. But you’ve got tomorrow to reckon with.” And tomorrow and