The Moons of Jupiter - Alice Munro [46]
Then came some knocking at the door.
“Ssh. It’s all right. They’ll go away.”
“Mr. Makkavala!”
It was the secretary.
“Ssh. She’ll go away.”
The secretary was standing out in the hall wondering what to do.
She was fairly sure that Ted was in there, and that Frances was with him. Like almost everybody else in town, she had known about them for sometime. (Among the few people who apparently did not know were Ted’s wife, Greta, and Frances’ mother. Greta was such an unsociable woman that nobody had found a way to tell her. People had tried in various ways to tell old Mrs. Wright, but she did not seem to take it in.)
“Mr. Makkavala!”
Directly in front of Frances’ eyes that workman was losing color, was drooping, and looking gentle and forlorn.
“Mr. Makkavala! I’m sorry. Your son’s been killed!”
TED’S SON Bobby, who was twelve years old, had not been killed, but the secretary did not know that. She had been told that there had been an accident, a terrible accident in front of the post office; the O’Hare boy and the Makkavala boy killed. Bobby was very badly hurt and was taken to London, by ambulance, immediately. It took nearly four hours to get there, because of the snowstorm. Ted and Greta followed in their car.
They sat in the waiting room of Victoria Hospital. Ted noticed the old queen, the grumpy widow, in a stained-glass window. Like a saint, and what an unsatisfactory one. Rival, he supposed, for the plaster St. Joseph they had in the other hospital, stretching out his arms ready to topple on you. One as bad as the other. He thought of telling Frances. When something amused or enraged him—a number of things did both, and at the same time—he thought of telling Frances. That seemed to satisfy him, as another man might be satisfied by writing a letter to the editor.
He thought of phoning her, not to tell her about Queen Victoria, not now, but to let her know what had happened, that he was in London. He had not told her, either, that he would not be able to see her on Wednesday night. He had meant to tell her afterward. Afterward. It didn’t matter now. Everything was changed. And he couldn’t phone her from here; the phones were in plain view of the waiting room.
Greta said that she had noticed a cafeteria, or a sign with arrows pointing to a cafeteria. It was after nine o’clock, and they had not had any supper.
“You have to eat,” said Greta, not addressing Ted in particular, but speaking out of her fund of general principles. Probably at this moment she would like to have spoken Finnish. She did not speak Finnish to Ted. He knew only a few words, had grown up in a home where there was an insistence on English. Greta’s home was the opposite. There was no one in Hanratty she could speak Finnish to; that was one of her problems. The phone bill was their main extravagance, because Ted did not feel that he could object to her long, dreary-sounding but apparently revitalizing conversations with her mother and sisters.
They picked up ham and cheese sandwiches, and coffee. Greta took a piece of raisin pie. Her hand hovered over it a minute before picking it up, maybe just in hesitation about what kind of pie she wanted. Or maybe she was shy about eating pie at this time, and in front of her husband. When they were sitting down it occurred to Ted that now was the time to excuse himself, go back to the phones, call Frances.
He watched Greta’s heavy white face, her pale eyes, as she applied herself devoutly, perhaps hopefully, to the food. She ate to keep her panic down, just as he thought about Queen Victoria