Death In The Family, A - James Agee [65]
“I see,” she said (“I see, said the blindman,” Andrew said), and gave her polite, tinkling, baffled little laugh. “But of course it wasn’t the—question of spirits that I meant. I just felt that perhaps for poor dear Mary’s sake we’d better ...”
“Of course,” Andrew shouted. “We understand, Mama. But Mary’d rather hear now. She’d already said so.”
“Yes, Mama,” Mary screamed, leaning across towards her “good” ear.
“Well in that case,” Catherine said primly, “I think it would have been kind so to inform me.”
“I’m awfully sorry, Mama,” Andrew said. “We would have. We really would have. In about another minute.”
“Well,” Catherine said; “no matter.”
“Really we would, Mama,” Mary said.
“Very well,” Catherine said. “It was just a misfortune, that’s all. I know I make it—very difficult, I try not to.”
“Oh, Mama, no.”
“No, I’m not hurt. I just suggest that you ignore me now, for everybody’s convenience. Joel will tell me, later.”
“She means it,” Joel said. “She’s not hurt any more.”
“I know she does,” Andrew said. “That’s why I’m Goddamned if I’ll leave her out. Honestly, Mama,” he told her, “just let me tell you. Then we can all hear. Don’t you see?”
“Well, if you’re sure; of course I’d be most grateful. Thank you.” She bowed, smiled, and tilted her trumpet.
It required immediate speech. That trumpet’s like a pelican’s mouth, he thought. Toss in a fish. “I’m sorry, Mama,” he said. “I’ve got to try to collect my wits.”
“That’s perfectly all right,” his mother said.
What was I—oh. Doctor. Yes.
“I was telling you what the doctor said.”
Mary drank.
“Yes,” Catherine replied in her clear voice. “You were saying that it was only by merest chance, where the blow was struck, a chance in a million, that ...”
“Yes, Mama. It’s just unbelievable. But there it is.”
“Hyesss,” Hannah sighed.
Mary drank.
“It does—beat—all—hell,” Joel said. He thought of Thomas Hardy. There’s a man, he thought, who knows what it’s about. (And she asks God to forgive her!) He snorted.
“What is it, Papa?” Mary asked quietly.
“Nothing,” he said, “just the way things go. As flies to wanton boys. That’s all.”
“What do you mean?”
“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.”
“No,” Mary said; she shook her head. “No, Papa. It’s not that way.”
He felt within him a surge of boiling acid; he contained himself. If she tries to tell me it’s God’s inscrutable mercy, he said to himself, I’ll have to leave the room. “Ignore it, Poll,” he said. “None of us knows one damned thing about it. Myself least of all. So I’ll keep my trap shut.”
“But I can’t bear to have you even think such things, Papa.”
Andrew tightened his lips and looked away.
“Mary,” Hannah said.
“I’m afraid that’s something none of us can ask—or change,” her father said.
“Yes, Mary,” Hannah said.
“But I can assure you of this, Poll. I have very few thoughts indeed and none of ’em are worth your minding about.”
“Is there something perhaps I should be hearing?” Catherine asked.
They were silent a moment. “Nothing, Mama,” Andrew said. “Just a digression. I’d tell you if it was important.”
“You were about to continue, with what the doctor told you.”
“Yes I was. I will. He told me a number of other things and I can—assure—everybody—that such as they are, at least they’re some kind of cold comfort.”
Mary met his eyes.
“He said that if there had to be such an accident, this was pretty certainly the best way. That with such a thing, a concussion, he might quite possibly have been left a hopeless imbecile.”
“Oh, Andrew,” Mary burst out.
“The rest of his life, and that could have been another forty years as easily as not. Or maybe only a semi-invalid, laid up just now and then, with terrific recurrent headaches, or spells of amnesia, of feeble-mindedness. Those are the things that didn’t happen, Mary,” he told her desperately. “I think I’d just better get them over and done with right now.”
“Yes,” she said through her hands. “Yes, you had. Go on, Andrew. Get it over.”
“He pointed out what would have happened if he’d stayed