The Optimist's Daughter - Eudora Welty [17]
“Do it for him,” said Missouri. Her face softened. “He mightily enjoyed having him somebody to spoil.”
In a little while, just as Missouri walked out with the tray, Miss Adele Courtland came in at the back door. She was wearing her best—of course, she’d arranged not to teach her children today. She offered Laurel a double-handful of daffodils, the nodding, gray-white kind with the square cup.
“You know who gave me mine—hers are blooming outside. Silver Bells,” Miss Adele prompted her. “Is there a place left to put them?”
They walked through the dining room and across to the parlor. The whole house was filled with flowers; Laurel was seeing them for the first time this morning—the cut branches of Mount Salus prunus and crab, the thready yellow jasmine, bundles of narcissus, in vases and pitchers that came, along with the flowers, from houses up and down the street.
“Father’s desk—?”
“Miss Laurel, I keep a-calling Miss Fay but she don’t sit up to her breakfast!” called Missouri on the stairs.
“Your day has started, Laurel,” said Miss Adele. “I’m here to answer the door.”
Laurel went up, knocked, and opened the door into the big bedroom. Instead of her mother’s writing cabinet that used to stand between those windows, the bed faced her. It seemed to swim in a bath of pink light. The mahogany headboard, rising high as the mantelpiece, had been quilted from top to bottom in peach satin; peach satin ruffles were thrown back over the foot of the bed; peach satin smothered the windows all around. Fay slept in the middle of the bed, deep under the cover, both hands curled into slack fists above her head. Laurel could not see her face but only the back of her neck, the most vulnerable part of anybody, and she thought: Is there any sleeping person you can be entirely sure you have not misjudged? Then she saw the new green shoes placed like ornaments on top of the mantel shelf.
“Fay!” she cried.
Fay gave no sign.
“Fay, it’s morning.”
“You go back to sleep.”
“This is Laurel. It’s a few minutes before ten o’clock. There’ll be callers downstairs, asking for you.”
Fay pushed herself up on her arms and cried over her shoulder, “I’m the widow! They can all wait till I get there.”
“A good breakfast do you a lot of good,” said Missouri, bringing it in, letting Laurel out.
Laurel bathed, dressed. A low thunder travelled through the hall downstairs and shook in her hand as she tried to put the pins in her hair. One voice dominated the rest: Miss Tennyson Bullock was taking charge.
“So this time it’s Clint’s turn to bring you home,” said an old lady’s voice to her as she came down the stairs. All Laurel could remember of her, the first moment, was that a child’s ball thrown over her fence was never to be recovered.
“Yes, daughters need to stay put, where they can keep a better eye on us old folks,” said Miss Tennyson Bullock, meeting Laurel at the foot of the stairs with a robust hug. “Honey, he’s come.”
Miss Tennyson led the way into the parlor. Everything was dim. All over the downstairs, the high old windows had had their draperies drawn. In the parlor, lamps were burning by day and Laurel felt as she entered the room that the furniture was out of place. A number of people rose to their feet and stood still, making a path for her.
The folding doors between the parlor and the library behind it had been rolled all the way back, and the casket was installed across this space. It had been raised on a sort of platform that stood draped with a curtain, a worn old velvet curtain, only halfway hiding the wheels. A screen of florist’s ferns was being built up before her eyes behind the coffin. Then a man stepped out from behind the green and presented a full, square face with its small features pulled to the center—what Laurel’s mother had called “a Baptist face.”
“Miss Laurel, I’m Mr. Pitts again. I recall your dear mother so clearly,” he said. “And I believe you’re going to be just as pleased now, with your father.” He put out his hand and raised the lid.
Judge McKelva lay inside in his winter suit. All around him was