Death In The Family, A - James Agee [58]
“Now that’s ever so kind,” Walter said, “but I can’t stay. Really must be off. Now if ...”
“Walter, I want to thank you,” she said; for now she too had reconsidered.
“So do we all,” Andrew said.
“More than I can say,” Mary finished.
He shook his head. “Nothing. Nothing,” he said. “Now I just want you to know, if there’s anything in the world I can do, be of help in any way, let me please, don’t hesitate to tell me.
“Thank you, Walter. And if there is, we certainly will. Gratefully.”
“Good night then.”
Andrew walked with him to the front door. “Just let me know, Andrew. Anything,” Walter said.
“I will and thank you,” Andrew replied. Their eyes met, and for a moment both were caught in astonishment. He wishes it was me! Andrew thought. He wishes it was himself! Walter thought. Perhaps I do, too, Andrew thought, and once again, as he had felt when he first saw the dead body, he felt absurd, ashamed, guilty almost of cheating, even of murder, in being alive.
“Why Jay, of all people?” Andrew said, in a low voice.
Still watching his splintered eyes, Walter heavily shook his head.
“Good night, Andrew.”
“Good night, Walter.”
He shut the door.
Mary’s father caught her eye; with his chin he beckoned her to a corner of the kitchen. “I want to talk to you alone a minute.” he said in a low voice.
She looked at him thoughtfully, then took her glass from the table, said, “Excuse us a minute,” over her shoulder, and ushered him into the room she had prepared for her husband. She turned on the bedside lamp, quietly closed both doors, and stood looking at him, waiting.
“Sit down, Poll,” he said.
She looked about. One of them would have to sit on the bed. It was neatly laid open, cool and pleasant below the plumped pillows.
“I had it all ready,” she said, “but he never came back.”
“What’s that?”
“Nothing, Papa.”
“Don’t stay on your feet,” he said. “Let’s sit down.”
“I don’t care to.”
He came over to her and took her hand and looked at her searchingly. Why he’s just my height, she realized again. She saw how much his eyes, in sympathy and pain, were like his sister’s, tired, tender and resolute beneath the tired, frail eyelids. He could not speak at first.
You’re a good man, she said to herself, and her lips moved. A good, good man. My father. In an instant she experienced afresh the whole of their friendship and estrangement. Her eyes filled with tears and her mouth began to tremble. “Papa,” she said. He took her close to him and she cried quietly.
“It’s hell, Poll,” she heard him say. “Just hell. It’s just plain bell.” For a few moments she sobbed so deeply that he said nothing more, but only stroked the edge of her back, over and over, from her shoulder to her waist, and cried out within himself in fury and disgust, Goddamn it! God damn such a life! She’s too young for this. And thinking of that, it occurred to him that it was at just her age that his own life had had its throat twisted, and not by death, but by her own birth and her brother’s.
“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.