Melvina caught cold in January. Peter cared for her, worried about her, made soup for her. Peter, she thought, was a fussbudget.
“I told you I have cancer. I’m hardly going to die of a cold.”
But she insisted on returning to the house on Ellis Avenue in any case. On dying in her own old bed if it came to it. Monsignor O’Neill gave her the last sacraments twice. She enjoyed the attention.
As she had predicted, she did not die. And one afternoon, in the grayness of a dark January day, she came downstairs.
Peter had accumulated her mail on a sideboard near the front door. She thought there was an awful lot of it. She picked at the mail like a shopper, considering this and rejecting that.
A letter from Florence Callaghan took her interest. She opened it, read it twice. An indomitable old lady was Florence, surrounded by family who scuffed shoes impatiently in her imperious presence and grumbled about her longevity. Florence said in the letter she was as mean as Melvina and intended to die only after Melvina showed the way.
Melvina smiled, put the letter down, decided she would reread it later.
Then she saw the package.
It annoyed her.
She picked it up, shook it, realized she had not ordered anything. It was from Field’s. She’d send it back.
But she opened it. And then it was no good. Her eyes swelled with tears, so sudden and unexpected that she forgot to be stern with herself for crying.
She hadn’t cried like this since she got the letter from a Mr. Hanley at something called the Government Research Bureau of the Department of Agriculture. A letter regretting to inform her that her great-nephew had died in service of his country. And enclosed for her a medal, awarded posthumously.
She let the tears fall and she let her thin, old body shake with sobs for a moment because no one was in the house and no one would see her weakness.
She opened the box because she knew what it was, who it was from. Blue stationery with her name on it. And matching blue envelopes.