The Optimist's Daughter - Eudora Welty [3]
There was a sharp, cold wind blowing through Canal Street. Back home, Judge McKelva had always set the example for Mount Salus in putting aside his winter hat on Straw Hat Day, and he stood here now in his creamy panama. But though his paunch was bigger, he looked less ruddy, looked thinner in the face than on his wedding day, Laurel thought: this was the last time she had seen him. The mushroom-colored patches under his eyes belonged there, hereditary like the black and overhanging McKelva eyebrows that nearly met in one across his forehead—but what was he seeing? She wondered if through that dilated but benevolent gaze of his he was really quite seeing Fay, or herself, or anybody at all. In the lime-white glare of New Orleans, waiting for the ambulance without questioning the need for it, he seemed for the first time in her memory a man admitting to a little uncertainty in his bearings.
“If Courtland’s all that much, he better put in a better claim on how good this is going to turn out,” said Fay. “And he’s not so perfect—I saw him spank that nurse.”
2
FAY SAT AT THE WINDOW, Laurel stood in the doorway; they were in the hospital room waiting for Judge McKelva to be brought back after surgery.
“What a way to keep his promise,” said Fay. “When he told me he’d bring me to New Orleans some day, it was to see the Carnival.” She stared out the window. “And the Carnival’s going on right now. It looks like this is as close as we’ll get to a parade.”
Laurel looked again at her watch.
“He came out fine! He stood it fine!” Dr. Courtland called out. He strode into the room, still in his surgical gown. He grinned at Laurel from a face that poured sweat. “And I think with luck we’re going to keep some vision in that eye.”
The tablelike bed with Judge McKelva affixed to it was wheeled into the room, and he was carried past the two women. Both his eyes were bandaged. Sandbags were packed about his head, the linen pinned across the big motionless mound of his body close enough to bind him.
“You didn’t tell me he’d look like that,” said Fay.
“He’s fine, he’s absolutely splendid,” said Dr. Courtland. “He’s got him a beautiful eye.” He opened his mouth and laughed aloud. He was speaking with excitement, some carry-over of elation, as though he’d just come in from a party.
“Why, you can’t hardly tell even who it is under all that old pack. It’s big as a house,” said Fay, staring down at Judge McKelva.
“He’s going to surprise us all. If we can make it stick, he’s going to have a little vision he didn’t think was coming to him! That’s a beautiful eye.”
“But look at him,” said Fay. “When’s he going to come to?”
“Oh, he’s got plenty of time,” said Dr. Courtland, on his way.
Judge McKelva’s head was unpillowed, lengthening the elderly, exposed throat. Not only the great dark eyes but their heavy brows and their heavy undershadows were hidden, too, by the opaque gauze. With so much of its dark and bright both taken from it, and with his sleeping mouth as colorless as his cheeks, his face looked quenched.
This was a double room, but Judge McKelva had it, for the time being, to himself. Fay had stretched out a while ago on the second bed. The first nurse had come on duty; she sat crocheting a baby’s bootee, so automatically that she appeared to be doing it in her sleep. Laurel moved about, as if to make sure that the room was all in order, but there was nothing to do; not yet. This was like a nowhere. Even what could be seen from the high window might have been the rooftops of any city, colorless and tarpatched, with here and there small mirrors of rainwater. At first, she did not realize she could see the bridge—it stood out there dull in the distance, its function hardly evident, as if it were only another building. The river was not visible. She lowered the blind against the wide white sky that reflected it. It seemed to her that the grayed-down, anonymous room might be some reflection itself of Judge McKelva’s “disturbance,” his dislocated vision that had brought him here.
Then Judge McKelva began grinding and gnashing