So much for that. On July, the fifteenth, I will be alive, perhaps really, perhaps apparently. Willett and Ethel will then return to San Francisco and resume their life.
But what of Rose?
She’s the problem. Obviously she cannot continue to be me forever. She cannot take my place among my friends and family, in my home. Even if it were remotely possible, I couldn’t stand the idea of it. No. Rose must die. She must die as me. If I die as her, she must die as me.
Once or twice lately I have caught her looking at me queerly. I believe she knows what I am thinking. When she is sober, there is fear in her eyes, but I have no sympathy to waste on such a woman. Rose has seen much life, many beds; why this childish greed for more?
I was amused, at first, by her mimicry. No longer. It has become more cruel and cunning and exaggerated as if she is saying to me, see this irritable and autocratic old woman? It is you.
Yes, I have come to despise her. But I am not sure which I am despising, the Rose who is Rose or the Rose who is me. Rose. I dislike the very name. That old song keeps running through my head: The last rose of summer left blooming alone, all her lovely companions have faded and gone.
Rose hates to be alone. She should join her lovely companions.
May 19. Murder. The word occurred to me in the middle of the night. I woke up with it on my lips. Then I went back to sleep, and when I woke up again there were church bells ringing. The incongruity amused me. Murder and church bells.
It is Sunday. Murphy had the day off so Rose came out this afternoon. She had been drinking, using alcohol to dissolve her fear. But it wouldn’t dissolve. It has become too hard and dense; a diamond of fear, nothing can dissolve it, nothing can make a mark on it.
She sat by the window, mute and morose.
“Talk to me,” I said.
She shook her head.
“Why won’t you talk to me?”
“I’ve been talking.”
“Oh, you have? To whom?”
“A friend of mine. You don’t know him. His name is Frank.”
“And did you talk quite frankly?” I smiled at the pun, expecting that Rose would smile, too.
“I never talk frankly anymore. I talk like you, pretending to be frank but never saying the truth.”
“You find that unpleasant?”
“I hate it.”
“You hate me, too, Rose. Don’t you?”
She wouldn’t answer.
I spoke to her again in a soft, friendly way: “Perhaps you hate yourself, too, Rose. We are almost twins.”
She sat all huddled up in the chair, watching me, hugging her knees as if for warmth and comfort.
“Practically twins,” I repeated. “Come here. Stand beside my bed, look into the mirror. What do you see?”
She came and stood beside my bed and looked into the mirror on the door.
“What do you see, Rose?”
“I see two dreadful old women,” she said quietly, and picked up her coat and left.
The door closed behind her, and its mirror sprang back at me like a beast out of ambush.
I could not take my eyes away. The dreadful old woman fascinated me. Surely it was not I. I had picked up my coat and walked out of the door. I could hear my own footsteps on the stairs.
“Ethel,” I said. “Ethel, Ethel, Ethel!”
When I became conscious again, Ethel and Willett were bending over my bed. I felt quite cleansed, pure. My body was light as a bird’s, my mind extraordinarily clear. There was nothing it could not have solved in that moment, no mathematical formula too involved, no problem too difficult.
I said, “Willett, I must talk to you alone.”
“You mustn’t talk. I’ve sent for the doctor.”
“Cancel it.”
“No. No, I can’t, I won’t.”
“Cancel it,” I said. A doctor. I didn’t need a doctor. My mind was so clear and bright. There was nothing it could not solve.
“The doctor will help you,” Willett said.
I called him a name, just a quiet little name, and he went downstairs and canceled the doctor’s call.
When he came back up again, he sat on the edge of my bed and his breathing sounded hard and painful.
“Willett, you love me?”
“Yes, Mother.”
“You would do anything for me?”
“Yes.”
“When the time comes,” I said, “when the time comes, Rose must disappear.”
“I know that. It’s all been arranged. She has promised—”
“Promises are only words, only air going in and out of the lungs and shapes of sounds in and out of the larynx. Promises are nothing, Willett. You understand?”
“They’re all I have.”
“You must have more. You must have certainty.”
“There aren’t many certainties in this world.”
“There are two,” I said. “Death and taxes.”
“You should be resting, Mother.”
“Death and taxes,” I repeated. “She’s not a good woman, Willett. It isn’t as if she were. No one will miss her. No one will care.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She’s a dreadful old woman, really. Haven’t you noticed? Don’t you hate the way she looks, the way she talks? Don’t you think she’s dreadful?”
“No. No.”
“Those eyes, mean, hard, little eyes. They would be better off sealed.”
“Mother—”
“Seal them.”
“You’re not rational, Mother.”
“Make Rose a certainty. Seal those horrid, little eyes.”
Willett looked at me with such sadness. Then he got up and leaned over me and pressed his hand on my forehead and touched the lids of my eyes. “Go to sleep, Momma, you’re tired.”
I am tired. But I must not sleep. I must plan. Willett thinks I am losing my mind. He doesn’t understand, he hasn’t looked into that mirror, he hasn’t seen what I have. Tomorrow I will show him what springs out at me when the door closes. Tomorrow he will see that dreadful old woman...
But tomorrow was too late.
She went to sleep with the pen in her hand, and the sound of church bells in her ears, and in the morning she did not awaken.
The drawing room was still hot, still humid. There was too much of everything in it, too much sun and furniture and gilt, too many mirrors.
Ethel looked at Willett across the excess of everything and spoke to him without words: Take it easy, old boy. Everything will be all right. You still have me.
27
The front left, second-floor room of Mrs. Cushman’s boarding house was beginning to look normal again. Rose’s clothes were strewn across the bed, a tomato and half a dozen oranges were ripening on the windowsill and Rose herself was rehanging her pictures on the wall. She had on a red plaid dress that Ethel had given to her. The dress was two or three sizes too large and made her resemble a scarecrow, a fact which Rose used to her own advantage.
“Look at me,” she said. “Just look. I’ve lost pounds.”