“That’s the best way to be,” Debby said. “Why hold grudges?” She smiled at him and her voice was drowsy.
Bannion picked up one of her thin hands, and wondered if he should call the doctor. “She used to get impatient with the baby, too,” he said. “I don’t think Brigid really minded though.” He wet his lips. “She was shrewd enough to work through me when she was in the dog-house with Kate. She’s just four, but she’s already got the makings of a politician.”
“You’ve got a little girl,” Debby said.
“Yes, and she’s quite a person.” He tried to put a smile in his voice. “When I worked days Kate would have her dressed up like a queen when I got home. I suppose it’s the same in most families, but that was a big moment for me, to walk in and see her looking like something that had climbed down from a birthday cake.”
“That must have been nice,” Debby said, and sighed. “I’m glad you told me about her, Bannion.” She didn’t say anything else; she turned her head to one side and closed her eyes. Bannion was still holding her hand when the doctor came in, checked her pulse and told him that she was dead.
Bannion got stiffly to his feet. “I might as well go then,” he said. “See about an undertaker, will you please? There’ll be money for it.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Thanks, Doctor.”
Bannion came out of the hospital into the cold, still, purple gray light of dawn. He stood on the sidewalk for a few moments, breathing deeply, and then he turned and walked slowly toward the center of the city.
There were garbage cans at the curb, and a rubber-tired milk wagon ahead of him in the next block. The city was coming to life.
Bannion was tired and gloomy, but something inside him had melted, something which had been frozen since Kate had died, and he now felt suddenly free and reanimated. He had found some small strength and sympathy left in him to give to Debby, and that meant he must count himself with the living instead of the dead.
The milk wagon in the next block was moving, and the clopping ring of the horses’ hooves was a pleasant and familiar sound in the stillness. “—My house being now at rest.” The lines of St. John came to Bannion unconsciously, and they seemed as fresh as the day he had first read them, and as strangely sustaining and familiar as the clattering horse in the next block.
Bannion turned onto Broad Street, and took a long, deep breath, enjoying the cold, misty air of the city. It was only his imagination, he knew, but it seemed to smell a bit cleaner this morning. Suddenly he remembered, he still had a present to buy for Brigid.
He stood for a moment or two, savoring the early-day sights and sounds of the city, and then he lit a cigarette and waved to a cruising cab. Something had ended this morning, he knew. Now he was starting over, not with hatred but only sadness.
That wasn’t too bad, he thought.