The Optimist's Daughter - Eudora Welty [15]
“Well, I didn’t know I was giving a reception,” said Fay. She came as far as the dining room doors and stared in.
“We’re Laurel’s friends, Fay,” Tish reminded her. “The six of us right here, we were her bridesmaids.”
“A lot of good her bridesmaids will ever do me. And who’s making themselves at home in my parlor?” She crossed the hall.
“Fay, those are the last, devoted remnants of the old Garden Club, of which I’m now president,” said Miss Tennyson. “Here now for—for Laurel’s mother’s sake.”
“What’s Becky’s Garden Club got to do with me?” exclaimed Fay. She stuck her head inside the parlor door and said, “The funeral’s not till tomorrow.”
“They’re a hard bunch to put off till tomorrow,” said Miss Tennyson. “They picked their flowers and they brought ’em.”
Laurel left her chair and went out to Miss Tennyson and the gathering ladies. “They’re all Father’s friends, Fay. They’re exactly the ones he’d have counted on to be here in the house to meet us,” she said. “And I count on them.”
“Well, it’s evermore unfair. I haven’t got anybody to count on but me, myself, and I.” Fay’s eyes travelled to the one man in the gathering and she accused him. “I haven’t got one soul.” She let out a cry, and streaked up the stairs.
“Poor little woman, she’s the helpless kind,” said Major Bullock. “We’re going to have to see about her.” He looked around him, and there were the suitcases, still standing near the front door. Three of them: one was Judge McKelva’s. Major Bullock loaded himself and walked upstairs with them. When he came back, almost immediately, his step was even heavier. Straight-armed, he carried at full length on its hanger a suit of black winter clothes. It swayed more widely than he swayed in negotiating the turn on the landing. There was a shoebox in his other hand and a leather case under his arm.
“She’s sending me down to Pitts’, Tennyson,” he said. “Carrying him these.”
“Naked through the streets?” Miss Tennyson objected. “But I suppose you couldn’t let her go to the trouble of packing them.”
“A man wanted to get on out of the room,” he said stiffly. But his arm gave at the elbow, and the suit for a moment sagged; the trousers folded to the floor. He stood there in the middle of the women and cried. He said, “I just can’t believe it yet! Can’t believe Clint’s gone for good and Pitts has got him down there—”
“All right, I’ll believe it for you,” said Miss Tennyson, on her way to him. She rescued the suit and hung it over his arm for him, so that it was less clumsy for him and looked less like a man. “Now go on and do like she told you. You insisted on being here tonight!”
Upstairs, the bedroom door was rather weakly slammed. Laurel had never heard it slammed before. She went and laid her cheek for a moment against Major Bullock’s, aware of the tears on it and the bourbon on his breath. He propelled himself forward and out of the lighted house.
“Daddy, wait! I’ll drive you!” Tish called, running.
It was the break-up, and when they’d all said goodnight, promising to return in the morning in plenty of time, Laurel saw them to the door and stood waiting until their cars had driven away. Then she walked back through the parlor as far as the doorway into the library behind it. There was her father’s old chair sitting up to his desk.
The sound of plates being laid carefully one on top of the other reached her then from the kitchen. She walked in through the pantry.
“It’s I.”
Laurel knew that would be Miss Adele Courtland. She had finished putting the food away and washing the dishes; she was polishing dry the turkey platter. It was a piece of the old Haviland in the small arbutus pattern—the “laurel”—that Laurel’s mother had loved.
“Here in the kitchen it will all start over so soon,” Miss Adele said, as if asking forgiveness.
“You can’t help being good. That’s what Father said about you in New Orleans,” Laurel said. Then, “He was the best thing in