Yes, she said. Her voice was dry and flat, without inflection.
Hello, Mother.
Is something wrong? She cupped one hand over her eyes against the bright afternoon sun.
We just wanted to see you. They felt embarrassed and they turned away, looking back across the empty street toward the spot at the curb from which they had watched the house.
Did you want to come in? she said.
If you don’t care.
They followed her into the little front room where at any time, day or night, her clothes had been discarded and dropped over the anonymous furniture and where dishes from the kitchen, coffee cups and saucers and bowls of shrinking drying food, had been put down at random on the bare rug.
I wasn’t expecting anyone, she said.
She sat down on the couch and drew her feet up under her. The boys were still standing.
Can’t you find a place to sit?
They seated themselves on the two wood chairs opposite the couch and looked in her direction and after the first time they didn’t look at her eyes again. She was playing with the belt of her bathrobe, wrapping it around one finger and then unwrapping it. Her pale legs, the pale shins and her yellowish sallow feet, were visible beneath the hem of her robe.
Did your father send you here? she said.
No, Ike said. He didn’t send us.
He doesn’t even know we came, Bobby said.
Does he ask about me?
We talk about you, Ike said.
What do you say?
We say we miss you. We wonder how you are.
We wonder how you’re doing all alone in this new house, Bobby said.
I appreciate that, she said. Knowing that much makes me feel better. She looked across the room. How is he?
Dad?
Yes.
He’s okay.
I understand he stays out all the time now.
He goes out at night sometimes after we’re in bed, Ike said.
Where does he go?
We don’t know.
Doesn’t he tell you?
No.
I don’t like that, she said. She examined her hands, the ends of her long slender shapely fingers. He must think I’m crazy now. That I’ve gone over the other side. He must think that about me. She looked up. Did you know he doesn’t want me to come back anymore. Even if I wanted to. He told me as much.
We want you to come back, Mother.
I’m not crazy yet, she said. I don’t think I am. Do you think I’m crazy?
No.
No. I haven’t gotten there yet. I don’t think I’m going to now. She stared off fixedly across the room. I thought I would but I don’t think so now. It’s just that I don’t know what to do about what I’m thinking. I think all the time and I can’t seem to stop, but I don’t know what to do about that yet either. She was looking at them again. Isn’t that a nice fix to find yourself in?
Maybe you should go outside more, Ike said.
Do you think that would help me?
It might.
But when do you think you will be coming home again? Bobby said.
I can’t say about that. You mustn’t rush me. I need time. Don’t ask me that now, all right?
All right.
She smiled at him sadly. Thank you, she said.
Mother, do you want us to pick up for you? Ike said.
Why? What do you mean?
The things here. In this house. He looked around the room and waved his hand.
Oh. No. That’s nice of you. But I’m feeling kind of tired. She pulled the neck of her robe together. I think I’ll lie down. I feel kind of sick.
You should see the doctor.
I know. Would you mind if I lie down now?
You look tired, Mother.
We’ll come back later, Bobby said.
Can we bring you anything? Ike said.
She looked into their faces. Well. I don’t know. I am out of coffee, she said. Could you get me some coffee?
Yes.
You could charge it at Johnson’s in my name.
She stood up and went back slowly to the bedroom, and they went outside and talked about it between themselves on the street curb and then rode downtown to Johnson’s grocery store on Main Street and went back along the wood floor to the ranked shelves of coffee that were arranged by brand and price and chose a green can that looked familiar to them and charged it to their mother at the register. Afterward they went over to Duckwall’s, still on Main Street in the middle of the same block, and stood in front of the perfume counter, debating for fifteen minutes, while the clerk behind the glass case showed them little bottles.
How much is that one? Ike said.
This one here?
Yes.
This one is five dollars.
Finally they chose the one they could afford out of their paper-route money and from what was left of the dollars Raymond McPheron had given them for helping work cattle — a little blue bottle that said Evening in Paris on the label and had a very sweet scent and a silver stopper that closed it, and they still had enough money left over to buy a small box with a clear lid that contained a dozen round soft vari-colored balls of bubble bath. They had the clerk, the middle-aged woman, wrap the two boxes in paper with a bow.
Then they rode back to her house on Chicago Street. By now it was late afternoon and getting cold outside. The long shadows were reaching across the street. They waited a long time before she answered their knock, and when she came to the door she looked as though she had risen from a deep sleep.
They offered the can of coffee to her and she took it fumbling and then they held out the two boxes from Duckwall’s.
Did you buy these too?
Yes.
What are they?
Open them why don’t you, Mother?
But what are they?
They’re for you.
She slowly untied the bows and unwrapped the bright paper and saw what was in the boxes. She began to cry then. The tears ran unregarded down her face. Oh, dear God, she said. She was crying. She hugged the two boys with the boxes still clutched in her hands. Oh God, what am I going to do about any of this?
McPherons
Maggie Jones drove out to the McPherons’ on a cold Saturday afternoon. Seventeen miles southeast of Holt. Beside the blacktop there were patches of snow in the fallow fields, drifts and scallops wind-hardened in the ditches. Black baldy cattle were spread out in the corn stubble, all pointed out of the wind with their heads down, eating steadily. When she turned off onto the gravel road small birds flew up from the roadside in gusts and blew away in the wind. Along the fenceline the snow was brilliant under the sun.
She drove up the track to the old house set back off the road a quarter mile. Beside the house a few low elm trees stood leafless inside the yard that was closed in by wire hogfencing. When she got out of the car a mottled old farm dog scuttled up to her and sniffed her leather boots and she patted his head and went through the wire gate up to the house and knocked on the screen door. Above the steps was a little screened porch, the mesh mended in places with white cotton string where it had been torn or poked through with something sharp. Beyond was the kitchen. She went up the steps onto the porch and knocked again. She looked in, the kitchen was more or less orderly. The table was cleared of dishes and the dishes laid in the sink, but there were stacks of Farm Journals and newspapers loaded up against the far walls, and greasy pieces of machinery — cogwheels, old bearings, shank bolts — were set out on mechanics’ rags on each of the chairs except the two that were placed opposite each other at the pine table. She opened the door and hollered in. Hello? Her voice echoed, it died out in the far room.
She came back off the porch and out to the car. Now there was the far-off sound of a tractor muttering and popping, coming up from the pasture to the south. She walked down to it and stood around the corner of the horse barn out of the wind. She could see them now. Both brothers were on the tractor, Raymond standing up behind Harold, who sat behind the wheel driving an ancient red sun-faded Farmall with the canvas wings of the heat houser bolted over the block onto the fenders for protection from the wind, pulling an empty flatbed hay wagon. They’d been feeding cattle out in the winter pasture, hay bales and pellets of cottonseed cake, scattering the cake in the feed-bunks. They jolted through the gate and stopped and Raymond got off and swung the gate closed and climbed back on, and they came banging and clattering past the corrals and past the loading chute up to the barn. The lid on the tractor’s exhaust stack flapped with bursts of black smoke, then they shut the engine off and the lid dropped shut and suddenly Maggie Jones could hear the wind again.