We drove for twenty minutes or so, and slowed down in front of a small white-frame place on a blacktop road not quite in or out of town. The yard was large and littered with wrecked and cannibalized autos. The metal bones of an old Hudson canted into the rubble of a ’42 Ford convertible. Super deluxe. There was a shed which must have been an enlarged garage. Inside I could see tools, a lathe, work benches. A young man in overalls without a shirt looked out at us and waved casually. He had a piece of drive shaft in his hand. Chickens ambled stupidly in the grassless yard, pecking at oil patches and clumps of rust.
We had eggs and sausage and biscuits and talked quietly. They were not curious about me. They had seen a great deal during the years and there was nothing to be had from curiosity. You come to learn that things have to be taken as they come and it is no use to probe the gestations of tomorrows before they come. There is very little you can do to prepare.
It turned out there had been no quarrel between Irma and her sister’s family. Her sister, plain as Irma was beautiful, who wore thick glasses and walked slowly because of her varicose veins, talked almost without expression, but with some lingering touch of her mother’s French accent. She talked on as if she had saved everything she had seen and come to know, saved it all in exhaustive detail, knowing that someone would one day come for her report.
— It wasn’t never any quarrel, and Howard had got to know better. Oh, we fussed, sure. My daddy always favored Irma and so I used to take after her over anything, you know. Jesus spare me, I guess I hated my own little sister. Till the baby come, and the Lord lifted the scales from my eyes. I dreamed He come down just for me. He looked like Mr. Denver, the station agent down to the L&N depot, and He said, “Elenor, I had enough stuff out of you, you hear? You see Albert Sidney? You satisfied now? Huh? Is that enough for you? You tell me that, ’cause I got to be getting on. I don’t make nobody more beautiful or more smart or anything in this world, but I do sometimes take away their looks or ruin their minds or put blindness on ’em, or send ’em a trouble to break their hearts. Don’t ask why ’cause it’s not for you to know, but that’s what I do. Now what else you want for Irma, huh?”
Tears were flowing down Elenor’s face now, but her expression didn’t change. — So I saw it was my doing, and I begged Him to set it right, told Him to strike me dead and set it right with that helpless baby. But He just shook His head and pushed up His sleeves like He could hear a through-freight coming. “It’s not how it’s done. It ain’t like changing your mind about a hat or a new dress. You see that?”
— Well, I didn’t, but what could I say? I said yes, and He started off and the place where we was began getting kind of fuzzy, then He turned and looked back at me and smiled. “How you know it ain’t all right with Albert Sidney?” He asked. And I saw then that He loved me after all. Then, when I could hardly see Him, I heard Him say, “Anything you forgot, Elly?” but I never said nothing at all, only crossed myself the way Momma used to do.
Elenor touched her sister’s shoulder shyly. Irma was watching me, something close to a smile on her lips. — Well, Elenor said, — We’ve prayed together since then, ain’t we, hon? Irma took her sister’s hand and pressed it against her cheek.
— We been close since then, Charlie, Elenor’s husband said. — Done us all good. Except for poor Howard.
It seemed Howard had hardened his heart from the first. Charlie had worked for him in the Rambler franchise, manager of the service department. One day they had had words and Charlie quit, left New Orleans which was a plague to him anyway, and set up this little backyard place in Alex.
Why the fight? I asked Charlie. He was getting up to go out to work. — Never mind that, he said. — It... didn’t have nothing to do with... this.
Elenor watched him go. — Yes it did, she began.
— Elenor, Irma stopped her. — Maybe you ought not... Charlie’s...
Elenor was wiping her cheeks with her apron. — This man’s a lawyer, ain’t he? He knows what’s right and wrong.
I winced and felt tired all at once, but you cannot ask for a pitcher of martinis at seven thirty in the morning in a Louisiana country house. That was the extent of my knowledge of right and wrong.
— A couple of months after Albert Sidney was born, I was at their place, Elenor went on. — Trying to help out. I was making the beds when Howard come in. It was early, but Howard was drunk and he talked funny, and before I knew, he pulled me down on the bed, and... I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t. Irma had the baby in the kitchen... and he couldn’t. He tried to... make me... help him, but he couldn’t anyhow. And I told Charlie, because a man ought to know. And they had words, and after that Charlie whipped him, and we moved up here...
Elenor sat looking out of the window where the sun was beginning to show over the trees. — And we come on up here.
Irma looked at her sister tenderly. — Elly, we got to go on over to the hospital now.
As we reached the door, Elenor called out. — Irma...
— Yes...?
— Honey, you know how much I love you, don’t you?
— I always did know, silly. You were the one didn’t know.
We took the old station wagon and huffed slowly out of the yard. Charlie waved at us and his eyes followed us out of sight down the blacktop.
IV
Irma was smiling at me as we coughed along the road. — I feel kind of good, she said.
— I’m glad. Why?
— Like some kind of washday. It’s long and hard, but comes the end, and you’ve got everything hanging out in the fresh air. Clean.
— It’ll be dirty again, I said, and wished I could swallow the words almost before they were out.
Her hand touched my arm, and I almost lost control of the car. I kept my eyes on the road to Pineville. I was here to help her, not the other way around. There was too much contact between us already, too much emptiness in me, and what the hell I was doing halfway up the state with the wife of a man who could make out a showing that he was my client was more than I could figure out. Something to do with the Gulf. — There’s another washday coming, she whispered, her lips close to my ear.
Will I be ready for washday? I wondered. Lord, how is it that we get ready for washday?
The Louisiana State Hospital is divided into several parts. There is one section for the criminally insane, and another for the feebleminded. This second section is, in turn, divided into what are called “tidy” and “untidy” wards. The difference is vast in terms of logistics and care. The difference in the moral realm is simply that between the seventh and the first circles. Hell is where we are.
Dr. Tumulty met us outside his office. He was a small man with a large nose and glasses which looked rather like those you can buy in a novelty shop — outsized nose attached. Behind the glasses, his eyes were weak and watery. His mouth was very small, and his hair thin, the color of corn shucks. I remember wondering then, at the start of our visit, whether one of the inmates had been promoted. It was a very bad idea, but only one of many.
— Hello, Irma, he said. He did not seem unhappy to see her.
— Hello, Monte, she said.
— He had a little respiratory trouble last week. It seems cleared up now.
Irma introduced us and Dr. Tumulty studied me quizzically. — A lawyer...?
— Counselor, she said. — A good listener. Do you have time to show him around?