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By Root 635 0

this house without knowing it. Between the main course and dessert she slipped out of her chair and stood on tiptoe to feel in the candy bowl, and sure enough, there they were. A little dirtier, a little more chipped. She squatted by the lower door and screwed the first one on. “Elizabeth?” Mary said. “Would you care for coffee?” Elizabeth turned and said, “Oh. No, thanks.” Mary’s face was puzzled and courteous. “If you have things to do,” she said, “maybe you want to be excused.” But Matthew was smiling at Elizabeth as if she’d done exactly what he’d always known she would.

In the night Mrs. Emerson kept calling for things. She wanted food brought in, or errands run, or the sound of someone’s voice in the dark. “Gillespie. Gillespie,” she said. Elizabeth, on her cot, slept on, incorporating Mrs. Emerson’s voice into her dreams. “Gillespie.” Then she opened her eyes, and struggled up among a tangle of sheets.

“What,” she said.

“Water.”

She lifted the pitcher on the nightstand, found it empty, and padded off to the kitchen. While she was waiting for the water to run cold she nearly went to sleep on her feet. The name Gillespie rang in her ears—the new person Mrs. Emerson was changing her into, someone effective and managerial who was summoned by her last name, like a WAC. Now Mary had started calling her Gillespie too. It was contagious. She jerked awake, filled the pitcher, and brought it to the sunporch. “Here,” she said, and dropped into bed again.

“Gillespie.”

“What.”

“A blanket.”

The third call was for pills. “Pills?” Elizabeth said blurrily. “Sleeping pills? You’ve had them.”

“I can’t—”

“The doctor said no more than two. Remember?”

“But I can’t—”

Elizabeth sighed and climbed out of her cot. “How about warm milk,” she said.

“No.”

“Would you like a glass of wine?”

“No.”

“What, then.”

“Talk,” said Mrs. Emerson.

Elizabeth sat down on the foot of the bed, and for a minute she only frowned at the moonlit squares on the floor. Soft night air, as warm as bath water, drifted in the open windows. Her pajamas smelled of Ivory soap and clean sheets, a dreamy, comforting smell. But Mrs. Emerson said, “Talk,” and sat straighter, waiting.

“When you called, I was asleep,” Elizabeth said.

“Sorry,” said Mrs. Emerson.

“I dreamed that your voice was a little gold wire. I was chasing a butterfly with my fourth-grade science class. My fingers would just brush the butterfly; then the wire pulled it away again. There was gold in the butterfly, too. Threads of it, across the wings.”

She pulled her feet off the cold slate floor and tucked them under her. “You may be scared of the dark,” she said.

“No.”

“Why not? What would be so strange about that? Look at all the dark corners there are, and the moonlight makes them look darker. I used to think that skinny ladies in bathrobes were waiting in corners to get me. I don’t know why. My father had a lady like that in his church—sick for years, about to die, always wore a pink chenille bathrobe. Whenever my mother said ‘they’—meaning other people, just anyone—that’s who I pictured. ‘They’ve put a stop sign on Burdette Road,’ she’d say, and I would picture a whole flock of ladies in pink bathrobes, all ghostly and sure of themselves, hammering down a stop sign in the dead of night. Funny thing to be scared of. They weren’t only in corners, they were in the backs of closets, and under beds, and in the slanty space below the stairs. Now I’m grown up and don’t think of them so much, but if something is worrying me, dark corners can still make me wonder what’s in them. Possibilities, maybe. All the bad things that can happen to people. Or if I’m worried enough, ladies in pink bathrobes all over again.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Emerson. But she didn’t seem to be dropping off to sleep yet.

“When you’re independent again it won’t be so bad,” Elizabeth told her. “It’s feeling helpless that scares you.”

“But I won’t—”

Elizabeth waited.

“I won’t be—”

“Of course you will. Wait and see. By the time I leave you’ll be running this house again.”

“Gillespie.”

Elizabeth stiffened.

“Can’t you