He glanced across the bed at Mary, who was knitting a child’s sweater. Every time she came to the end of a row she reeled more yarn off the ball with a long, sweeping motion and frowned into space a moment, as if she were trying to remember something. Once she sighed. “You must be tired,” Matthew said. “Why don’t you go on home?”
“Oh, no.”
And then she returned to her knitting. She had spent more time here than Matthew, even — two full days, planted in that armchair. And at night, when he took her home, her mind was still back with her mother. “If only I hadn’t quarreled with her,” she kept saying. “I mean, stated my case, but quietly. Put her off a little instead of coming right out with things. Do you think she blames me?”
“No, of course not.”
But there was no real way of telling. Their mother’s speech was difficult; she could talk, but only after false starts and hesitations. To save effort she kept to the bare essentials. “Water,” she said, and it could have been a polite request or a surly order, no one knew. Yet the doctor said she would be back to normal in no time. Already the paralysis was lifting. Her face merely had a numb look, as if she were under Novocain. Her hand was beginning to respond to massage, and she was anxious to try walking. “Your mother’s a remarkable woman,” the doctor said. Mary frowned, as if he had told her something she didn’t want to hear.
Margaret had come, but she had had to bring the baby. She only visited the hospital when Mary was home to babysit. And Andrew had arrived on the bus the day before, still pale and shocked over the news. “She’s fine, she’s going to be fine,” they told him. But he barely heard. In the hospital room he prowled nervously, stopping every now and then to lay a hand on his mother’s forehead, and finally they had sent him home in a cab. “But I want to be with her,” he kept saying. “Hush, now,” Mary told him, “you’ll only make her worse, going on like this.”
“Can I come back this evening?”
“She’ll be home day after tomorrow, Andrew.”
“Who will stay with her later on? Are you all going to leave her alone again?”
“No, no.”
“I’ll stay. I’ll come here to live, I’ve been meaning to for years.”
“No, Andrew.”
But who would stay with her? It was on all their minds. The girls had to go home soon. Matthew was planning to spend his nights there for a while, but his mother needed someone in the daytime. “Where is Alvareen?” Mary asked. No one had thought to wonder before. They looked at the house, which seemed stale and dusty. Not even Alvareen would have let it get that way. Had she quit? They asked Mrs. Emerson, who merely closed her eyes. “What’s her last name?” Mary said. “Do you have her phone number? We want her to come look after you.”
“No,” said Mrs. Emerson.
“No, what? You don’t have her number? Or you don’t want her to come.”
“I don’t want—”
“You don’t need a nurse, exactly,” Mary said.
“No.”
“Is there someone you can think of?”
Mrs. Emerson raised her good hand to her lips and frowned. She sighed, apparently about to give up, and then just as she was turning her head away she said, “Gillespie.”
Mary looked at Matthew, puzzled. “Gillespie?”
“Gil—” Mrs. Emerson struggled to a half-sitting position. She looked irritated. “Gillespie,” she said.
“Elizabeth,” Matthew said suddenly.
“Elizabeth? The handyman?”
Mrs. Emerson sank down again. Mary raised her eyebrows at Matthew.
“She’d be good if she’d do it,” Matthew said. “I saw her taking care of a sick old man once.”
“But you don’t think she’d do it,” Mary said.
“I don’t know.”
“You know better than anyone else.”
“What makes you say that?” Matthew asked. “Do you think I keep in touch with her or something?”
“Well, excuse me,” said Mary.
“Sorry,” Matthew said. “Well, give it a try, if you want. I don’t know what she’ll say.”
Mary tracked down Elizabeth’s parents right then, from the phone in the hospital room. She had the operator place the call person-to-person to Elizabeth. While she waited Matthew stood at the window with his back to the room, pretending to be looking at the view. He wound a venetian blind cord around his fist. “Lots of visitors today,” he told his mother. Mrs. Emerson made some small, impatient gesture that rustled the sheets. Then Mary tensed, listening. “I see,” she said. “Well, place the call there, then. Thank you.” She cupped the receiver and turned to Matthew. “They say she lives in Virginia now. They gave us the number to call her at work — some kind of children’s school.”
“School? Elizabeth?”
“They said—” She uncupped the receiver. “Yes? All right, I’ll hang on. They’re trying to reach her now,” she told Matthew.
But Matthew didn’t stay to hear. He had a sudden urge to get away, as far as he could from Elizabeth and even from the phone that connected her. “Think I’ll buy a cup of coffee,” he said, and he bolted from the room while Mary stared at him. Once he was outside he took several deep breaths. He pressed the elevator button, and then when it didn’t arrive immediately he pushed out the swinging door beside it and started down the stairs.
Elizabeth would never come. He didn’t even want her to. He had stopped thinking about her long ago. The hole she left, after the last time he saw her, had made him realize that he wasn’t happy living alone; and he had conscientiously taken out several other girls in that first empty year. One he had grown serious about. He had considered asking her to marry him. Then Elizabeth had unfolded herself from a dim corner in the back of his mind, shaken the dust off her jeans and stretched her legs. Her face was bright, threaded across with wisps of blond hair blowing in the wind. She was laughing with a careless kind of joy that took itself for granted. But once he had made his decision — broken off with the other girl, although he sometimes regretted it — he was no longer troubled by Elizabeth. His life had solidified. He was a man in his thirties who lived by himself, encased in a comfortable set of habits and a plodding, easy-going job. He liked things the way they were. Change of any kind he carefully avoided.
He bought a cup of coffee from a vending machine and drank it very slowly. Then he returned to his mother’s floor, using the stairs again, and when he got back Mary was peacefully knitting in her armchair. “Sssh,” she told him. “Mother’s asleep.”
He went over to the window. “Sun’s out,” he said.
“Is it?”
“The forecast was rain.”
“I talked to Elizabeth,” Mary told him. He stayed quiet. Mary untwined another length from her ball of yarn.