“Did you say all we wanted was a nurse, pure and simple? No other problems dumped on her? Did you tell her we’d let her go back afterward to her old life?”
“Well, of course we’d let her go back,” said Mary. “Why should I bother telling her that?”
“You did it all wrong, then,” Margaret told her.
“I did the best I knew how.”
“We should call her again and give her a limit. Six weeks, say. Tell her six weeks is all she’d—”
“Margaret,” said Andrew, very quietly, “I’d like to state a preference, please.”
“You get sick and you can state your preferences,” Margaret told him. “This time it’s Mother that’s sick. Shall I call Elizabeth now? Matthew?”
“Babcock,” said Matthew.
They stared at him.
“I just remembered Emmeline’s last name. Babcock.”
“You’re right,” Mary said.
But Margaret said, “Emmeline’s not the one Mother asked for.”
“She’s much superior, though,” Andrew said.
“Emmeline wouldn’t even come! I’m sure of it! She never forgave Mother for firing her like that. Can’t I call Elizabeth?”
It was Matthew who settled it. “No,” he said. “I’m too tired. I don’t feel like any more complications.”
They finished their supper in silence. Even Andrew wore a defeated look.
At night they watched television. Mrs. Emerson had awakened but refused to eat. She stared at the ceiling while her children watched westerns they had no interest in, and when the picture grew poor no one had the strength to do anything about it. The frames rolled vertically; their eyes rolled too, following the bar that sliced the screen. “I’m sorry,” Mary said finally. “I seem to be sleepy. I don’t know why.” She kissed her mother good night. “Well, Susan will be up so early in the morning—” Margaret said, and she left too. Matthew followed shortly afterward. Andrew stayed behind, gazing at them reproachfully, but before Matthew was even in his pajamas he heard Andrew’s feet on the stairs.
Matthew slept in his old room on the second floor. He associated the room only with his early childhood; in his teens he had moved to the third floor with the others. The fingerprints on the walls here reached no higher than his waist, and the scars were from years and years ago — crayon marks, dart punctures, red slashes of modeling clay rubbed into the screens. Even the bed, which was full size, seemed hollowed to fit a much smaller body. He sank down on it and stretched out, without bothering to turn down the blankets.
There was some disappointment far in the back of his mind, a dull ache. Elizabeth. Had he really wanted her to come, then? But even thinking of her name deepened his tiredness. He pictured all the strains she would have brought — his own love and anger, knotted together, and Andrew’s bitterness. “I hate her,” Andrew had once told him. “She killed my twin brother.” “That’s ridiculous,” Matthew had said, but he had had no proof of it. He had spent years wondering exactly how Timothy’s death had happened; yet the one time Elizabeth seemed likely to tell him, down in Mr. Cunningham’s kitchen, he had been afraid to hear. Now he felt grateful to her for keeping it to herself. The worst strain, if she came, he thought, would be Elizabeth’s own. At least she had been spared that. Then he relaxed and slept.
When he woke it was still dark, but he heard noises downstairs. He switched on a lamp and checked his watch. One-thirty. Someone was running water. After a moment of struggling against sleep he rose, felt for his glasses, and made his way down the stairs. It was Mary in the kitchen, heating something in a saucepan. She looked blowsy and plump in a terrycloth bathrobe, with metal curlers bobbing on her head. “What are you doing here?” he asked her.
“Mother wants hot milk.”
“Have you been up long?”
“All night, off and on,” Mary said. “Didn’t you hear the bell? She wanted water, and then a bedpan, and then another blanket—”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“Oh, we’re all tired,” said Mary. “You too. And each time I thought it would be the last. It’s not even two o’clock yet. Do you think this will go on all night?”
“Maybe she’s uncomfortable,” Matthew said.
“She’s nervous. She wants someone to talk to. That water she didn’t even drink, and I bet it will be the same with the milk. Oh, I don’t know.” She slumped over the stove, stirring the milk steadily with a silver spoon. “I ended up getting cross with her, and now I feel bad about it,” she said. “There’s too much on my mind. I worry how the children are doing. And Morris, he can barely tie his own shoelaces, and his mother will be feeding him all that starchy food—”
“Go to bed,” said Matthew. “Let me take over.”
“Oh, no, I—”
But she gave up, before she had even finished her sentence, and handed him the spoon and turned to leave. Her terrycloth slippers scuffed across the linoleum, and the grayed end of her bathrobe sash followed her like a tail.
He filled a mug with hot milk and brought it in to his mother, who lay rigid in the circle of light from the reading lamp. “Oh,” she said when she saw him. Since the stroke, she had not spoken his name. She must be afraid that it wouldn’t come out right. She hadn’t said Margaret’s or Andrew’s names, either, and although he could see why — they were all such a mouthful — still he wished she would try. The only one she mentioned was Mary. Was there some significance in that? Was it because Mary was the only one who hadn’t eloped or had a breakdown or refused to give her mother grandchildren?
He propped up a pillow for her and handed her the milk, but after one sip she gave it back to him. “I hear you’re having trouble sleeping,” he said. “Would you like me to read to you?
She shook her head. “When—” she said, and then struggled with her lips. “When you were—”
“When we were children,” Matthew said, knowing how often she began things that way.
She nodded and frowned. “I, I read to—”
“To us,” said Matthew.
She nodded again.
“I remember you did.”
“I never—”
“You never?”
“I never—”
“You never refused?” said Matthew. “You never got tired? You never—”
“No.”
He waited, while she took a deep breath. “I never asked, asked you to—”
“You never asked us to read to you,” said Matthew. But that made so little sense that he was surprised when she seemed satisfied. He turned the sentence over in his mind. “Well, no,” he said finally, “you didn’t.”
“Money, Mary, Mary nooting, knitting—”
“Mary knitting,” said Matthew. “Beside your bed? In the hospital?”
“Gave my life,” his mother said.
“Oh. Saved your life. By calling the police.”
“Gave.”
“Gave your life?”
“Like a mud, a mother,” his mother said. Matthew puzzled over that for a long time. Finally he said, “Are you worried that it’s us taking care of you now?”
She nodded.
“Oh, well, we don’t mind,” he said.
His mother didn’t speak again, but she might as well have. The words locked in her head crossed the night air, crisp and perfectly formed: I do. I mind. But all she did was turn on her side, away from him. Matthew switched off the lamp, unfolded an afghan, and settled himself in an easy chair at the other end of the room. Shortly afterward he heard her deep, even breaths as she fell asleep.