"Clara, I hate to rush you, but…"
The old lady stared at him as if she couldn't remember his name or business; Jeannie was just about to remind her when she brightened. "Oh-yes, Sam, of course. The power of attorney. Now what I thought was, since Jeannie's come to stay, and take care of me, that she will need to write checks and things. You know how the bank is these days… and the people at the power company and so on don't seem to remember me as well…" What she meant was lost bills, checks she never wrote, and a lifetime's honesty ignored by strangers and their computers. But it had never been her habit to accuse anyone of unfairness. "Jeannie can take care of all that," she said finally.
In the face of the lawyer's obvious doubts, Jeannie's attempt at an expression that would convey absolute honesty, searing self-sacrifice for her nearest relative, and steadfast devotion to duty slipped awry; she could feel her lower lip beginning to pout, and the tension in the muscles of her jaw. Silence held the room for a long moment. Then Pearl, carefully not looking at Jeannie, said, "But Sam's been doing all that, hasn't he, Clara?"
"Well… yes…" Clara's voice now was the trembling that meant a lapse into confusion, into dismay and fear, as the edges of her known world crumbled. "I mean… I know… but he is a lawyer, and lawyers do have to make a living… and anyway, Jeannie's family… ." In that rush of broken phrases, in that soft old voice, the arguments Jeannie had tried to teach her aunt to say sounded as silly and implausible as they might printed on a paper. Jeannie knew-as Clara would remember in a moment, if she calmed down-that Sam had not charged her a penny for managing her money since he'd taken it over. Jeannie thought it was stupid; Clara claimed to know the reason, but would never explain.
The lawyer's face stiffened at the mention of money, and Jeannie wished she had not put those words in her aunt's mouth. Yet that seemed to do what she had wished of the whole conversation; his warm voice chilled, and he said "If that's how you feel, Clara-Mrs. Timmons-then of course there's no question of not doing exactly as you wish. I brought the papers, as you asked." Jeannie left the room on a pretext of making iced tea for everyone, while Clara signed and Pearl witnessed; she was not surprised, when she returned, to find them on the point of leaving. The lawyer's glance raked her up and down like an edged blade, but his voice, in deference to Clara, was gentle.
"I'm quite sure you'll take excellent care of your aunt, Mrs. Becker. She's one of our town's favorites, you know-if you need help, you have only to ask."
"Thank you," said Jeannie softly, in her best manner. Great-aunt Clara must have told him she'd been married. She herself liked the modern fashion of "Ms." which left her marital status handily obscured. Keith had been a mistake, and the divorce had been messy, what with the battle over the kids. He had custody, on account of her drinking-not that she was really an alcoholic, it was just that one time and unlucky for her that the roads were wet. But she could trust Great-aunt Clara not to have told anyone about that; she had too much family pride.
Pearl shook hands with her firmly. "I'll be dropping by every day, you know," she said, with her big old teeth showing in a fierce grin. "If you need a few minutes to go downtown, that kind of thing."
The old lady. Clara. She had a heart condition, for which she was supposed to take two of these little pills (morning and evening) and three of those (with each meal.) There were pills for the chest pain that came on unexpectedly, and pills for the bloating. She could just get out of bed, with help, to use the toilet and sit for a few minutes while Jeannie changed her bed. Jeannie was very careful and very conscientious, those first weeks. She kept the rasping whine out of her voice, the note Keith had told the judge was his first sign that something was really wrong.
And in return, Great-aunt Clara talked. She had had no full-time companion for years, not since her last sister died, and she had a life's stored memories to share. Jeannie gritted her teeth through the interminable tales of Clara's childhood: the pony her brother had had, the rides in the buggy, the first automobile, the first electric light in the town. And endlessly repetitive, the stories of Clara's favorite cat, Snowball.
"He looked just like that," Clara would say, waving feebly at the cheap print of a sentimental painting on the wall, the picture of a huge fluffy white cat with a blue bow around its neck, sitting beside a pot of improbable flowers on a stone wall. It was a hideous picture, and Jeannie was sure Snowball must have been a hideous cat. The picture was not the only reminder of Snowball. Clara had an old, yellowing photograph of the animal himself (he looked nothing like the cat in the painting… merely a white blur beneath a chair), several white china cats of various sizes, and a cat-shaped pillow covered with rabbit fur. At least Jeannie hoped it was rabbit-fur, and not the cat himself, stuffed.
She did not care enough to ask. She was sick and tired of Snowball stories, from the time he caught the mouse in the kitchen ("And carried it outside without making any mess on the floor at all…") to the time he hid in the car and startled Clara's father by leaping on his shoulder as they were driving to church, and the car swerved, and everyone thought her father had been… indulging, you know… until the cat leapt out. The town had laughed for days. Jeannie felt she had been trying to laugh for days, a stiff grin stretched across a dry mouth.
She wanted a drink. She needed a drink. But she would not drink yet, not while Pearl came by once a day or more, and the lawyer stopped her on the street to see how things were coming. First they must see what good care she took of Clara; first they must believe she was what she appeared.
Day after dull day passed by. Summer in a small town, to one used to a large city, is largely a matter of endurance. Jeannie didn't know any of the faces that fit the names in Clara's stories. She tried harder to follow them when Pearl was there, but the women had been close for over seventy years, and their talk came in quick, shorthand bursts that meant little to an outsider. Pearl, quick to notice Jeannie's confusion, tried to explain once or twice, but gave it up when Clara insisted "Of course she knows who we mean-she's family." The two women giggled, chattered briefly, giggled, shed tears, and to Jeannie it was all both boring and slightly disgusting. All that had happened years ago-before she herself was born-and what did it matter if some long-dead husband had thought his wife was in love with a Chinese druggist two towns away? Why cry over the death of someone else's child in a fire forty years ago? They should have more dignity, she thought, coming in with the tray of iced tea and cookies to find them giggling again.
Grimly, with a smile pasted to her face, she cooked the old-fashioned food Clara liked, washed the old plates and silver (real silver: she didn't mind that), and dusted the innumerable figurines on the shelves that seemed to crawl all over the walls. Not just white china cats, but shepherds and shepherdesses, barking dogs, fat-bellied ponies in lavender and cream, unbearably coy children being bashful with each other in costumes that reminded Jeannie of the more sickening children's books of her past. Blown-glass birds and ships and fish, decorative tiles with flowers hand-painted, Clara explained carefully, by the girls of her senior class. Pearl 's tile had a wicked-looking yellow rose, thorns very sharp, on pale green. Jeannie thought it was typical of her… sallow and sharp, that's what she was. She dusted the old photographs Clara had on every wall surface not covered by shelves of knickknacks: hand-colored mezzotints of a slender girl in a high-necked blouse with leg-o-mutton sleeves…"your great-grandmother, dear"… and a class portrait from Clara's high school days. Ben and Larry, the boys Clara and Pearl had loved (or whatever it was) were two stiff, sober-faced lads with slicked-down hair in the upper right and upper left-hand corners. Jeannie tried to imagine them in ordinary clothes and hair, and failed. All the faces were sober, even frightened; it had been the class of '17.