Death In The Family, A - James Agee [28]
“Jay?” Andrew called over the banisters.
“No, just talking to Mary,” Hannah said. “I guess it can’t be so very serious, after all.”
“Let’s hope not,” said Andrew, and went back to his painting.
Hannah made herself ready for town. When Rufus arrived, all out of breath, he found her on a hard little couch in the living room, sitting carefully, not to rumple her long white-speckled black dress, and poring gravely through an issue of The Nation which she held a finger length before her thick glasses.
“Well,” she smiled, putting the magazine immediately aside. “You’re very prompt” (he was not; his mother had required him to wash and change his clothes) “and” (peering at him closely as he hurried up) “you look very nice. But you’re all out of breath. Would you really like to come?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, with a trace of falseness, for he had been warned to convince her; “I’m very glad to come, Aunt Hannah, and thank you very much for thinking of me.”
“Huh ...” she said, for she knew direct quotation when she heard it, but she was also convinced that in spite of the false words, he really meant it. “That’s very nice,” she said. “Very well; let’s be on our way.” She took her hard, plain black straw hat from its place on the sofa beside her and Rufus followed her to the mirror in the dark hallway and watched her careful planting of the hat pin. “Dark as the inside of a cow,” she muttered, almost nosing the somber mirror, “as your grandfather would say.” Rufus tried to imagine what it would be like, inside a cow. It would certainly be dark, but then it would be dark inside anybody or anything, so why a cow? Grandma came prowling dim-sightedly up the hallway from the dining room, smiling fixedly, even though she fancied she was alone, and the little boy and his great-aunt drew quickly aside, but even so, she collided, and gasped.
“Hello, Grandma, it’s me,” Rufus shrilled, and his aunt Hannah leaned close across her to her good ear at the same moment and said loudly, “Catherine, hello; it’s only Rufus and I”; and as they spoke each laid a reassuring hand on her; and upstairs Rufus heard Andrew bite out, “Oh, G-godd”; but his grandmother, used to such frights, quickly recovered, laughed her tinkling ladylike laugh (which was beginning faintly to crack) very sportingly, and cried, “Goodness gracious, how you startled me!” and laughed again. “And there’s little Rufus!” she smiled, leaning deeply towards him with damaged, merry eyes and playfully patting his cheek.
“So you’re ready to go!” she said brightly to Hannah.
Hannah nodded conspicuously and leaning again close across her to get at her good ear, cried, “Yes; all ready!”
“Have a nice time,” Grandma said, “and give Grandma a good hug,” and she hugged him close, saying “Mum-mum; nice little boy,” and vigorously slapping his back.
“Good-bye,” they shouted.
“Good-bye,” she beamed, following them to the door. They took the streetcar and got out at Gay Street. There was no flurry and no dawdling as there would have been with any other woman Rufus knew; none of the ceremony that held his grandmother’s shopping habits in a kind of stiff embroidery; none of the hurrying, sheepish refusal to be judicious in which men shopped. Hannah steered her way through the vigorous sidewalk traffic and along the dense, numerous aisles of the stores with quiet exhilaration. Shopping had never lost its charm for her. She prepared her mind and her disposition for it as carefully as she dressed for it, and Rufus had seldom seen her forced to consult a shopping list, even if she were doing intricate errands for others. Her personal tastes were almost as frugal as her needs; hooks and eyes, lengths of black tape and white tape, snappers so tiny it was difficult to handle them, narrow lace, a few yards, sometimes, of black or white cotton cloth, and now and then two pairs of black cotton stockings. But she loved