“I don’t know as I’ve any call to have to support my son’s wives and children.”
She spoke suddenly for them all. “We work, all of us,” she said clearly. She was not afraid of him.
“Lot of women in the house,” he muttered, his mouth full of dripping crusts.
“Not all the children can be as good as Paul is,” said Bart’s mother. “Anyway, he’s not much trouble.”
“No,” Bart said, pausing in his chewing, “you’re right, Ma. Paul isn’t any trouble.”
… No, she thought drearily, listening, only trouble enough to break his mother’s heart. And David was coming across the sea, who was always running away. He would want to run away from this house. Walls could not hold David. She had less than two hundred dollars left, and there were three children — and Frankie — four children.
In the church on Sunday she sat anxiously, planning, thinking. Paul was still to be healed, but here were these two, coming. She could not pray. The church was not full of remembering, now. She could not sit thinking about the past, even about her mother and father. She had to plan for what was to come. The minister began to speak. “Today we are to pray for one of our members who is in sore affliction. God has seen fit to take to himself as martyrs Robert Winters, son of Mr. and Mrs. Winters, a missionary to China, and his wife. Eight years ago the young couple went out from this church, and today they lie in their graves. Let us pray for our friends, the bereaved parents, the motherless children—” He did not put her name among the bereaved. He did not know her.
His unctuous voice flowed on. The people bowed their heads. She felt the tears rush to her eyes and got up abruptly in the middle of the praying. Yes, but something had to be done. She had to do something. She felt herself betrayed. While she had been praying … She walked swiftly down the street to the Winters’ house. At a window next door she saw Mrs. Kinney’s old withered head like a skeleton trembling at the window, but she did not call or make a sign of greeting — old Mrs. Kinney’s taking care of herself, living on and on, uselessly. She ran up the steps and rang the doorbell, and Mr. Winters came to the door. They had not gone to church today, but he wore his coat, because it was more decent in such sorrow. It was real sorrow. He choked a little when he saw her and said more loudly than he usually spoke, “It’s been a long time since I saw you, Joan. Come on in. Mattie’s lying down. She’s terribly upset. It seems as though she blames Rob and Rose for it.”
He followed her into the square neat sitting room. “I’ll go and tell her.” At the door he paused and looked back, his long pallid face melancholy. His voice broke in a sudden squeak and he pattered away, his bedroom slippers clacking.
She sat waiting. Once in this very room Rob had had a birthday party and the cake had been on the square carved center table, and he had given the first piece to Rose, and Rose had eaten a little of it and tied the rest in her handkerchief and had taken it home. That was the difference between Rose and herself. Joan always ate her cake immediately. Rose said, “I knew there’d be ice cream and things I couldn’t take home, so I saved the cake and two pieces of candy.” But she couldn’t think ahead like that. Rose had worn a pink dress, and she a yellow one.
Mrs. Winters came in suddenly. She looked older. She was thinner, much thinner. Her skin seemed loose on her, as though the flesh had melted away from under it. Although the day was warm she wore an old black cloth cape around her shoulders.
“Well, Joan,” she said, “I’m sure—”
Joan rose quickly and put her arms about her and for a second Mrs. Winters leaned against her. Then she withdrew herself and sat down, dabbing her eyes quickly with her handkerchief. “If I’d been listened to,” she said. Her full bluish lips trembled a little. “I was never listened to. Now this has happened — the two children — I’m not a bit well myself, and business has been dropping these two years in the store. If Rob had only listened to me and stayed home. What are Reds? I couldn’t seem to understand.”
Joan said quickly, “We can never understand. I’m to have the children.”
Mrs. Winters looked at her dubiously. “But how are you fixed?” she said.
Joan smiled. In this room she had once eaten all the cake on her plate at once, not thinking of tomorrow. “I’m all right,” she said sturdily. “I live on a farm. I have a little son of my own, you know. There’s a big house — plenty of room in the house.” She’d take the house and wrap it about the children, her children.
“I’m not real well,” said Mrs. Winters at last, looking about the neat room. “Rob was such a good boy. He never upset a thing. What I say is, people have no right to go off to the ends of the earth and leave their children for other people to bring up. But I’ll do my duty by my own son’s children, of course.”
Mr. Winters sat drooping, saying nothing.
“But I want them — they’re Rose’s children too,” Joan cried. “I’ll come to you sometimes and you can advise me and help me—”
Mrs. Winters shook her head sadly. “I’ll do all I can, I’m sure,” she said. “I always want to do all I can — and I do—”
“Of course you do,” said Joan quietly. Mrs. Winters looked old and tired and bewildered, more completely bewildered than she had on the day when Rob and Rose were married. “Goodbye,” said Joan. “Don’t worry. I can manage.” She went away quickly.
She strode through the street and down the road, her heart firm and sorrowful and exulting. She was to have the children. She went recklessly, her big body impetuous with generosity. She didn’t know how to manage, but she would manage. She must write to Francis and tell him. He never wrote to her, but she kept on writing to him anyway, because her mother would have wanted her to.
And then there she was at Mrs. Mark’s little stone house. She stopped short. She might go in, since she was early today. She hadn’t heard anything of Mrs. Mark for a long time, and she had not gone to see her. She had not wanted Mrs. Mark’s ruthlessness probing her — Mrs. Mark’s disgusted voice, “What’d you go and marry in a hurry like that for? A lout—”
But today she could forestall Mrs. Mark. She did not matter today — nor what she had done. She opened the door and called and a small voice answered and she followed it. Mrs. Mark lay buried under a thick cotton quilt. Her face looked out at her with the withered waiting look of an aged and suffering monkey. “I’m glad you’ve come, Joan Richards,” she said. “I’ve waited a mortal time for anybody to come. I been dead since yesterday noon from the waist down. I’ll never stir out of my bed again.”
“Oh, Mrs. Mark!”
She waited, groaning a little, while Joan heated soup she found congealed in a pot. She drank it slowly, and a thawed look came about her wrinkled mouth. “Wash me off,” she commanded. “Hot or cold water, it doesn’t matter from the waist down, but make it hot above. I like to feel as far as I can.”
When she was cleaned and fed, Joan said anxiously, “I’ll have to find someone to come and stay with you.”
“I won’t have a soul,” said Mrs. Mark promptly. “You can put some bread and milk by me and the clean bedpan and come back in a day or so. I hate fuss. It isn’t going to be but a week or two at most. An inch or so and it’ll hit my heart.”
“And maybe you’ll be alone!” Joan cried.
“Everybody’s alone,” said Mrs. Mark.
“I’m glad I came by when I did,” Joan answered.
But Mrs. Mark looked at her with suspicion. “Don’t you go thinking I prayed and you came by. I don’t pray. I lie here and take it, though it’s not coming to me more than to another. It’s chance — just as it was chance you came by. There wouldn’t have happened anything different, no matter what—”