Bess, wake up.” Harriet sat on the edge of Bess’s bed, shaking the girl’s shoulder.
Bess turned over, picked sleep from her eyes, and glanced at the clock. Six-thirty. “I’ve got fifteen minutes yet. I don’t go to work till seven-thirty.” She peered at Harriet, who was still in her robe. “What’re you crying about? If it’s—”
“I called Dora at home and told her you wouldn’t be in.” Harriet pulled a Kleenex from the box beside the bed and blew her nose. She’d meant not to cry. For Bess’s sake she’d meant to be as solid as bricks.
Alarmed, Bess sat up. “What’s wrong?”
“I have bad news, little girl.” She reached for Bess’s hand and patted it. She was sinking under a wave of loss and bewilderment, and she held Bess’s hand as much to keep from going under as to comfort.
“What is it?”
Harriet sucked a deep, shuddering breath and squared her shoulders. “Kate’s gone.”
“Gone?”
“You’re lying.”
Harriet shook her head and put her arms around Bess, her throat so tightly closed off that she couldn’t speak.
“I don’t believe you,” Bess said, shrugging the woman off.
“I found her when I went downstairs. I’ve called Gus and Archie Voss.” The constable and the mortician. “And Dr. White and Frieda.” Had she forgotten anyone?
“I’m still dreaming,” Bess cried, throwing back the sheet and pushing Harriet aside. “Aunt Kate!” she shrieked, running to Kate’s room. Faced with an empty bed, she wheeled, racing into the hall and down the stairs. “Aunt Kate!”
Harriet followed, dabbing her eyes dry with the tissue and cinching her robe.
Kate was sitting on the living room sofa, head thrown back, arms flung out to either side, one resting on the sofa arm, the other on a seat cushion, as if—as if what? As if she had been thrown there with great force, Harriet thought.
Bess knelt and reached out tentative hands to lay them on Kate’s knees. “Aunt Kate.” She stroked the cool, lifeless hand lying on the sofa.
Harriet stood in the doorway. “I closed her eyes.”
“Oh, God,” Bess moaned and lay her head on Kate’s knees.
Steps sounded on the front porch. Frieda and Arnold. Stripped of all her starch and looking as if her rough, sturdy knees might give way, Frieda came first, still in hair curlers and carrying a cake pan.
“I had this coffee cake …” she said, holding out the pan, as if offering it to a lifeless Kate.
When Harriet had taken the cake from her, Frieda stood, her thick, reddened fingers held prayerfully at her waist, as if she were at the Communion railing. “I told her I’d call her after supper. But we went to The Quiet Man.”
Harriet said, “I’ll put this in the kitchen and start some coffee.” She hesitated. Was Frieda all right? Should she fetch the ammonia?
“Sit down, Frieda,” Arnold told his wife, guiding her to a chair.
Frieda obeyed, though her gaze remained fastened on Kate. She shook her head as if Kate’s pose puzzled her. Aloud but to herself she said, “She doesn’t look frightened, does she?”
Bess still knelt at Kate’s feet, clinging to her aunt’s knees.
Carrying the coffee cake to the kitchen, Harriet filled the electric percolator, adding a few grains of salt to the coffee as Kate always did to bring out the flavor. When she’d plugged in the perc, she sat down on Kate’s stool.
She was no Kate, but she would be the best Harriet she could be. She had to consider that wild and willful little girl in the living room.
However much she came to love DeVore’s children, they would never mean to her what Bess did. Wasn’t it strange, maybe even wrong, how a person loved the unlovable one fiercest of all?
Someone knocked softly at the screen door, and Arnold went. “Gus.”
Within minutes the doctor and the mortician followed the constable into the house, bringing with them the stamp of certitude. Indeed, Kate Drew was dead. Harriet drew Bess away from the body so that Archie Voss and Gus Wall could lift Kate onto a gurney, cover her with a sheet, and wheel her out to the waiting hearse.
Still in her nightgown, Bess followed, out the front door, down the steps and the sidewalk to the street. Harriet pulled her back before she could climb into the hearse.
“She shouldn’t be alone,” Bess cried.
Holding the girl, Harriet stroked her long, disordered hair. What she means is she shouldn’t be alone. Harriet was pleased with herself for recognizing this. It was the sort of thing that Kate would have seen.
When the hearse had disappeared, Harriet led Bess inside, telling her, “Why don’t you have a bath while I make breakfast for Frieda and Arnold? Frieda looks like the frayed end of a rope.”
Later, when she had bathed and dressed, Harriet sat down at Kate’s desk to draw up a list. If you didn’t know what to do, if you were half crazy, the best thing to do was draw up a list. Taking up a pen, she wrote, “People to Call.” DeVore. The new Methodist minister, Reverend Hinks. Well, new a year ago. Dry as dust, but the best that they had.
Then she must call the nursery about floral sprays. And what about the Ladies’ Aid Circle? They’d need to know. They’d be helping with the reception after the service. Come to think of it, she had to notify a lot of people. Mr. Hardesty at the Standard Ledger. Oh, no, he was on vacation. That new young reporter, then. And so on and so on. Good thing she had a head for detail.
Harriet knew better than to trust this composure. She was running on disbelief. But that was all right, a sight better than collapsing and crawling into bed, which was what she wanted to do.
Her several lists completed, she climbed the stairs. From Kate’s closet she withdrew a couple of dresses, laying them across the unmade bed.
“Bess,” she called, “could you come here?”
Bess appeared, looking sightless. Though she wasn’t crying, her face was puffy and flushed as if stung all over by bees.
“Which of these dresses do you think I should take to Voss’s?”
“The dark red was her favorite.”
Returning the blue dress to the closet, Harriet said, “You might want to come to Voss’s with me.”
“What’re you going to do?”
“Well, the most important thing is to pick out a casket.” Harriet swallowed hard.
For Bess the content of Harriet’s words lagged far behind the sound. “Yes. All right,” she said after several moments.
Before they left Voss’s but after they’d concluded their business, Archie Voss brought out the gown and seersucker robe Kate had been wearing, handing them to Harriet.
“Would you like these?” Harriet asked Bess.
Bess took them, observing that her note to Kate was sticking partway out of the robe pocket. Aunt Kate—In case you get up in the night … Someday she would be glad that Kate had read her note. But now, nothing mattered except that Kate was dead. In the night without farewell or trumpets.
Bess was disconnected, untethered. That Kate had been her tether all these years only now occurred to her. She must hang on to things if she was not to float away entirely. In her room she picked up books from the floor and from the bed and held them for ballast. Returning them to the shelf, she held on to the bookcase as if to a mooring.
When she had returned all of the books, she gathered up the many items of clothing lying scattered, clasping them to her as though their mass and history lent them weight. Laying them in the laundry basket, she stood beside the closet door, clutching the basket in her arms.
At length she set the laundry down beside the door and pulled the sheets and pillow slips from the bed, dumping them in with the soiled clothes.
Climbing onto the bed, she clung to it for half an hour.
In Kate’s room later, she saw the unmade bed, hardly rumpled because Kate was unable to fling herself about. Had been unable to fling herself about. Lifting Kate’s pillow, Bess held it against her face, breathing in the scent of Pond’s cold cream and Lady Esther dusting powder.
“Would you like to sleep in here now?” Harriet asked from the doorway.
Eventually the question reached Bess. Without turning, she said, “Yes.”
“Should I change the linens? I’m doing some wash.”
“No. Thank you.”
Still holding the pillow, Bess sat down on Kate’s little bedroom rocker, the one in which Kate had rocked Celia when Celia was small, singing lullabys to her and reciting nursery rhymes. Bess knew this because Celia had told her and because Kate had done the same for Bess when she was small.
“The Queen of Hearts
She made some tarts,
All on a summer’s day.
The Knave of Hearts
He stole the tarts,
And took them clean away.
“The King of Hearts
Called for the tarts,
And beat the Knave full sore;
The Knave of Hearts
Brought back the tarts,
And vowed he’d steal no more.”
Throughout the day neighbors brought food. The funeral was set for Monday, a long way off, but no one wanted it on Sunday. Harriet hoped the casseroles and cakes would keep until the wake Sunday night. She’d carried several dishes over to Marie Wall’s to store in her refrigerator and several to Frieda’s.
Between phone calls and visits, Harriet tried to keep an eye on Bess. At noon she called her down for a little lunch. Bess came willingly enough, but she only drank iced tea and ate a bit of watermelon, not enough to keep her strength up.
Later, Harriet rang Mrs. Olson, who had already heard about Kate from Marie Wall. Maybe Donna could talk to Bess, Harriet thought. Maybe she could find out if Bess was, well, all right. But Donna was baby-sitting. She had a job for the summer, baby-sitting part-time while the mother filled in at the Friendship Arms Nursing Home. Harriet had forgotten.
With the wash hung out on the line, Harriet donned an apron, tied a scarf around her head, then fetched the Hoover, dust mop, and rags from the closet in the kitchen. In the living room she gathered up the pile of Country Gentlemans, wondering where to put them. “Well, of course,” she said aloud and carried them up to her room, stacking them on top of the Better Homes and Gardens.
Cleaning house felt sacrilegious to Harriet, but, like washing clothes, it answered the need to be doing something.
After supper Donna showed up. In the living room on the sofa, in the very spot where Kate had died, Bess heard Harriet tell her, “She’s in there. Go ahead in.”
“I’m real sorry about Kate,” Donna said from the door.
Receiving no answer, she crossed to the sofa, sitting down at the opposite end. No one had turned on a lamp, and the east-facing room, with a porch in front of it, was thick with dusk.
“Was it a heart attack?”
At length Bess cleared her throat. “I guess.”
“Did you know she had a bad heart?”
Bess shook her head slowly.
“Probably between one and three this morning, Dr. White said.”
They sat in silence, then Donna asked, “Were you home?”
Again, Bess shook her head.
Donna leaned toward Bess to study her face. Bess turned toward her but she was floating, not connecting. Donna edged closer, taking Bess’s hand.
That was better, Bess thought.
For half an hour they sat like this, not talking. Harriet came in to flick on a lamp but, seeing the girls together on the sofa, thought better of it and left. Somewhere in the back of the house, voices murmured, a syllable or two drifting now and then through the dining room and into the living room, arriving too diminished to be recognizable. Both the kitchen and yesterday lay miles distant.
In a low voice Donna asked, “Did you find Kate when you came home?”
“No.” Bess sighed. “I didn’t look in here. This is where …”
“What time …?”
“Nearly four-thirty.”
Donna stirred but did not let go of Bess’s hand.
Bess’s voice was nearly inaudible. “Nothing happened,” she said, answering the unasked question. “Nothing is going to happen.”
When Donna left, the two girls walked to the door hand in hand. Afterward Bess was again without anchor.
In Kate’s room she sat on the bed, her back against the metal headboard, hugging the pillow to her. She wanted to think about Kate, to caress, like rosary beads, memories of her aunt, but her mind wouldn’t grasp hold of memory.
Much later, Harriet stood at the bedroom door, silhouetted by the hall light. “May I come in, little girl?”
“Gracious, it’s warm in here,” she said, switching on the electric fan on the chifforobe.
Harriet perched on the edge of the rocker. “DeVore was here. He said to tell you how sorry he is. And Arnold and Frieda. I don’t think Frieda’s stopped crying all day. I’d have thought she would be stronger than any of us. I told Reverend Hinks that you were resting.” Harriet eased back into the rocker and folded her hands in her lap.
“I let Frieda bring the wash in,” she went on. “She folded the towels and washcloths, and sprinkled the ironing. She’s coming over tomorrow to scrub the kitchen floor and iron. She’ll make herself sick if she doesn’t stop. But she has to be doing something. For Kate, I guess.”
Harriet fell silent. She got up and crossed to the bed, laying her hand on Bess’s hair, reeling the girl in from that place in the ether where she drifted. When she spoke again, Harriet was more hesitant.
“Arnold and DeVore and I talked while Frieda was taking care of the wash. The men said there were things I should tell you, and of course they were right. First of all, this house is yours, and you don’t have to decide this minute what you want to do with it. When you go to college, we’ll look after it. I’ll be living here till next Valentine’s anyway, and after that Arnold and Frieda will keep an eye on things.”
College? Bess thought. What college was that?
“If you decide sometime down the road that you want to sell the house, you will always have a place with me and DeVore or Frieda and Arnold. We all want you to know that.”
She bent and kissed Bess’s cheek. “Try to sleep.”
And indeed Bess did fall asleep, waking in the deepest cave of night to shamble along in the dark to the bathroom, half asleep and still wearing the skirt and blouse she had worn to Voss’s Funeral Home. She turned on the bathroom light, putting a hand up to shield her eyes from the glare. When she had used the toilet, she shucked off her clothes and pulled on the nightgown draped over the rim of the tub, where she had left it.
Rinsing her face and brushing her teeth, she padded back down the dark hall, not bothering with a light, noting as she passed Harriet’s open door the rhythmic drone of Harriet’s oscillating fan.
From Kate’s room came a low voice, nearly lost in the hum of electric fans. Harriet must have gotten up and come in while Bess was in the bathroom.
At the door, Bess paused. Only now were her eyes growing accustomed to the darkness. “Harriet?”
The voice in the far corner grew more distinct:
“I saw a ship a-sailing,
upon the silver sea;
And, oh! it was all laden
with pretty things for thee!”
Bess grabbed for the doorjamb and clung to it.
“There were comfits in the cabin,
and apples in the hold;
The sails were all of silk, dear Bess,
the masts were made of gold.”
“Celia?” Bess breathed.
She crept forward. Behind the rocker, outside the watery shaft of streetlight, stood Celia in her mauve cotton dress, pale face gazing down on the baby in Kate’s arms.
Wearing her white muslin gown, Kate laughed and cooed:
“The Knave of Hearts
Brought back the tarts,
And vowed he’d steal no more.”
“Aunt Kate?” Neither figure glanced up.
Bess’s fingers pleaded to touch them, but they might melt. Never taking her eyes from them, she climbed into bed and lay listening.
“… And vowed he’d steal no more.”
Blinking hard again and again, Bess tried not to sideslip across the boundary of wakefulness. But at twenty minutes to two, by the luminous hands of the Big Ben, she was coaxed across the frontier into seamless sleep.