A Death in the Family - James Agee [80]
They stopped at the foot of the stairs.
“Mary,” Hannah asked, “is there anything I can do?”
You want to come up with me, Mary realized. “I think I just better be alone,” she said. “But thank you. Thank you, Aunt Hannah.”
“Just call if you want me. You know how lightly I sleep.”
“I’ll be all right, I really will.”
“You rest in the morning. I’ll take care of the children.”
Mary looked at her with brightened eyes, and said, “Aunt Hannah, I’ll have to tell them.”
Hannah nodded, and sighed: “Yesss. Good night then,” she said, and kissed her niece. “God bless you,” she said, in a broken voice.
Mary looked at her carefully and said, “God help us all.”
She turned and went up the stairs, and leaned, smiling, just before she disappeared, and whispered, “Good night.”
“Good night, Mary,” Hannah whispered.
She turned off the hall light and the light in the living room and went into the lighted bedroom and pulled down the shade and shut the doors to the kitchen and the living room. She took off her dress and laid it over the back of a chair and sat on the edge of the bed to unlace her shoes, and hesitated, until she was certain that she remembered, clearly, putting out the lights in the kitchen and bathroom. She put on the nightgown except for the sleeves and finished undressing under the nightgown; it was rather large for her and she gathered and lifted it about her. She knelt beside the bed and said an Our Father and a Hail Mary, and found that her heart and mind were empty of further prayer or even of feeling. May the souls of the faithful, she tried; she clamped her teeth and, after a moment, prayed angrily: May the souls of everyone who has ever had to live and die, in the Faith or outside it, rest in peace. And especially his!
Strike me down, she thought. Visit upon me Thy lightnings. I don’t care. I can’t care.
Forgive me if I’m wrong, she thought. If You can. If You will. But that’s how I feel, and that’s all there is to it.
Again her heart and mind were empty; even now, feeling the breath of the abyss, she could not feel otherwise, or even care or fear.
Lord, I believe. Help Thou mine unbelief.
But I don’t really know’s I do.
I can’t pray, God. Not now. Try to forgive me. I’m just too tired and too appalled.
Thirty-six years old.
Thirty-six.
Well, why not? Why one time worse than another? God knows it’s no picnic or ever was intended as such.
Into Thy hands I commend my spirit.
She made the sign of the Cross, raised the shade, opened the window, and got into bed. As her bare feet slid along the cold, clean linen and she felt its cold, clean blandness beneath her and above her, she was taken briefly by trembling and by loneliness, and remembered touching her dead mother’s cheek.
Oh, why am I alive!
She took off her glasses and laid them carefully in reach at the foot of the lamp, and turned out the light. She straightened formally on her back, folded her hands upon her breast, and shut her eyes.
I can’t worry any more about anything tonight, she said to herself. He’ll just have to take care of it.
Till morning.
Mary did not bother to turn on the light; she could see well enough by the windows. She put on her nightgown and undressed beneath it, and saw to it that the door was left ajar for the children, and climbed into bed before she realized that these were the same sheets and before it occurred to her that she had not said her prayers; and for such a while now she had felt that if only she could be alone, only for that!
It’s all right, she whispered to herself; it’s all right, she whispered aloud. She had meant that