So she bathed the hen and set it in water with the carrots and an onion and the bay leaves. Some salt, of course. And she turned on the heat. Poor little animal. This life on earth is a strange business.
SHE HAD SAT BY THE SPUTTERING RADIO, TRYING TO INterest herself in The High and the Mighty. She went into the kitchen to turn the little hen onto her belly, and she saw that a blue Chevrolet had pulled into the driveway. Teddy. Of course, Teddy would come just now. Glory felt anxiety, and relief, and resentment. If he had come even a week earlier, he’d have found everything much better, another atmosphere in the house. Instead, he was walking in on failure and shame. She should have called him weeks ago, asked him to come while her father was still a little sprightly and Jack was still all right, even, she had thought, healthy. At least not unhealthy, not miserable. She had felt, she knew now, that she was sustaining a familial peace — fragile, certainly, and only more remarkable for that. Jack, who had never trusted any of them, trusted her. Not always, not wholly, not without reservations of a kind he did not divulge and she could not interpret. Still, even Teddy would have envied the talking and joking and the moments of near-candor, the times they were almost at ease with each other. She had been so proud of all that, pleased to believe it was providential that she should be there, having herself just tasted the dregs of experience, having been introduced to something bleaker than ordinary failure — it was a sweet providence that sent her home to that scene of utter and endless probity, where earnest striving so predictably yielded success, and Boughton success at that, the kind amenable to being half-concealed by the rigors of yet more earnest striving. Not that she could entirely forget the bitterness of her chagrin, not that she preferred the course her life had taken to the one she had imagined for it. But she did feel she had been rescued from the shame of mere defeat by the good she was able to do her brother.
Teddy walked into the porch, into the kitchen, threw his arms around her, and kissed her forehead. “Hiya, babe,” he said, making a brief study of her face, noting and ignoring the weariness of it. “Good to see you! How’s it going? Do you mind if I make a few phone calls?”—all this in a very soft voice, since he knew his father was probably asleep. He leaned in the hallway, giving advice and assurance, making three attempts to reach someone who didn’t answer. Then he hung up the phone and came back and hugged her again, comforting her, though he said nothing. Teddy used to be just Jack’s height, a slightly sturdier version of him, without the tentativeness that made Jack always seem to be taking a step back. Now Teddy was taller, she thought, no doubt the effect of quiet purposefulness on the one hand and evasiveness and generalized reluctance on the other. Once again he studied her face. She had been frightened so recently, and she was sad, and so tired, and it was all surely visible to him. “I hope I haven’t come at a bad time,” he said. “It’s been hard to stay away. I finally gave in.”
“This is a good time. As good as any, I suppose.” What excuse was there for keeping him, all of them, away while their father dozed through whatever time remained to him, even though the old man himself did not ask her to send for them? Teddy could have blamed her for letting things get worse without calling him. It was pride, or it was shame that had made her hope Jack would recover himself enough to let the others see that things had been good between them. Though there was their father, too. But she saw nothing of anger or accusation in Teddy’s manner. A calm, affable man who went about his doctoring with scrupulous detachment and a heavy heart, he saw enough misery in the ordinary course of his life to avoid adding to it, except when compelled to on medical grounds.
“Is he here?”
She said, “He’s upstairs.”
“Would he mind if I said hello to him?”
She said, “Why should he mind?” and they laughed, ruefully. “I’ll tell him you’re here.”
JACK WAS LYING ON HIS BACK WITH AN ARM ACROSS HIS face, to shield his eyes from the light that came through the drawn blinds. When he heard her at the door he rolled away from her.
“What,” he said. “What is it.”
“Teddy’s here.”
He laughed. “I wondered when you were going to get around to that. Calling Teddy.”
“I didn’t ask him to come. He just came on his own, as far as I know.”
He turned to look at her. “You’re whispering. So he must be downstairs.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t hear his car. I guess I was asleep.”
“Well, he’d like to see you.”
“Have you told him?”
“No. Should I?”
“Please don’t. Don’t, Glory. It will never happen again, I swear.” He rubbed his face. “I’ll have to wash up. I shouldn’t have slept in this shirt. I could use an aspirin.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. “Where did I leave my shoes?” He rubbed his eyes. “Teddy,” he said. “That’s just what I need right now.”
She brought him the bottle of aspirin and a glass of water. Then she brought him a washcloth and a towel.
“Thanks,” he said.
“I’ll tell him you’ll be down in a few minutes. I’ll start some coffee.”
“Yes, coffee,” he said, scrubbing his face and his neck, then his face again. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry about all this.”
She went down to the kitchen. Teddy was standing in the porch looking out at the garden. “You’ve been busy,” he said.
“Jack did most of it.”
He looked at her, to gauge the ratio of truth to loyalty in what she said, ready to be pleased with either of them, just wanting the information. “Then he must be doing all right.”
“He was for a while.”
“I see.” Teddy with his crisp hair and his groomed hands, his soft brown sweater and his tortoiseshell glasses. He was mild and reassuring in every way he could be, by nature, habit, and intention. There was something of the scent of rubbing alcohol about him, so faint that he must have known it suggested illness or emergency and have scrubbed it off as carefully as he could. That would account for the cologne he wore, his only departure from decorous simplicity. After a few minutes he said, “I can leave, if that’s what he wants. I knew he wouldn’t be too happy to see me. You can tell him I won’t stay long.”
“Give him a few more minutes. He’ll be down. He probably wanted to clean up a little.”
Teddy laughed. “And polish his shoes, I suppose. Has he changed a lot?”
“I didn’t know him as well as you did. He’s still Jack.”
“Dad told me you and he get along. He worried about that.”
Jack came down the stairs in his stocking feet, wearing one of his own shirts, still trying to button a sleeve. He stopped by the door, glanced at Glory, and smiled. He folded the cuff over twice, then unbuttoned the other sleeve and rolled it up, too.