The telegram arrives in the middle of the day, the delivery boy with his head down as he hands it to Nancy at the front door. Nancy feels for the boy as he returns to his bike, as she slices open the telegram. How much bad news he must be delivering now, day after day. Even in their little town, so many families have sent their boys off. The Swifts, down the street, have all four of their boys overseas. She reads the telegram, covering her mouth with her hand, not letting a sound escape. It doesn’t seem right, she thinks, as she rushes over to Ethan’s office, forgetting to take off her apron, that the skies be so blue and the leaves so yellow. It’s Reginald, she says, bursting in, not waiting for him to answer her knock, but not what we ever imagined. A heart attack while on guard. He’s dead, Ethan, he’s gone. How shall we ever tell Bea? Should we get her out of class? How dreadfully awful.
No, Ethan says. No. He takes the telegram she waves in his face and lays it down on his desk, taking off his glasses to read it up close. Calm down, Nan, he says finally. He looks again at the telegram. Sit down, will you? he snaps. You’re making me nervous.
Nancy sits in the chair where so many boys have sat over the years. She rarely comes to his office. She feels like one of those boys, waiting for him to speak. Her legs are short enough that they don’t quite touch the ground, and she’s tempted to swing them back and forth. Ethan cleans his glasses with his handkerchief. His stalling technique. Sad, he finally says. So very unexpected. The poor girl. His voice trails off.
How should I tell her? Nancy asks. What is the right way to tell a girl her father has died? Ethan shakes his head. No, he says. He stands and walks to the front of his desk, facing Nancy. You’re not to tell her anything. I’ll handle this when I get home. Oh, Ethan, no. I can’t spend the afternoon with her and not tell her. You need to come home early then. No, he says. I can’t. You’ll simply have to wait. She looks at his face and wants to slap him. He treats her like a child. But she knows there’s nothing she can do to change his mind. Very well, she says, very well, and she slams the office door on her way out.
Back at home, she paces in the kitchen, looking at the clock. She can’t figure out what to do with the telegram. She folds it in half and then in quarters. She tucks it into the top drawer of her desk, but then worries that Bea might look for stamps there, so she puts it in her apron pocket, where she touches it from time to time as she cleans up the house and begins to make dinner. She can’t keep her mind on anything, and she ruins the corn bread for dinner by adding a quarter cup of salt instead of sugar. It feels wrong, not to tell Bea. What will she talk with her about? She knows that Bea will see it on her face.
Before the children get home, she takes out the telegram and reads it again. REG IN HOSPITAL STOP HEART ATTACK STOP DIED 7 THIS MORNING STOP SEND LOVE TO MY GIRL STOP. Nancy heads out to the back patio and lights the telegram on fire with a match. She holds it until the flames come too close to her hand and then she throws it to the ground, stomping on the ashes and pushing them into the dirt.
She always does what Ethan says. Most of the time she agrees with him. But with Bea, they’ve disagreed. She suspects he’s jealous of their relationship. She did stop giving Bea baths last summer, after he asked, and she misses their time together. They’ve taken, instead, to spending their afternoons in the kitchen, Bea doing homework, Nancy cooking dinner. Ethan was probably right about the baths. But here, today, he’s wrong. He should not be the one to tell her that Reg has died. This is not doing as Millie requested. This is not sending love.
When the children come home, Nancy sends the boys to their rooms after their snack. Then she sits at the kitchen table, takes Bea’s hands in her own, and tells her the news.