THE FALL days known as “glorious” were over. Warren Coe’s mother’s death and the storm that accompanied it marked the annual break in the weather. A black frost followed, putting an end to Martha’s herbs and Dolly’s swamp foliage. There were no more fairy-ring mushrooms on the golf course or boletus in the woods. The sky clouded over by noon every day, and the wind whistled about the boarded-up summer cottages. The borders of the ponds grew sodden, with only a fringe of wild cranberry. The bay was gray and choppy. Blue jays and woodpeckers kept desolate house in the woods. It would be like this, said Martha, until May, though there might be days in late November when you could swim heroically in the ponds, and days, if you were lucky, in January, when you could ice-skate through the dark afternoons, coming home to hot rum toddies and big fires.
But in an ordinary year, there would be only a perpetual March, from the first black frost till the shadbush bloomed in May. Winter here was a limbo—a wind-torn parking area, closed shops and inns, vandalism, and divorces. Nearly everybody who could afford to got away, as the phrase went, after Christmas; the rest stayed on creakily, like a skeleton staff. Already, in early November, the village had a forlorn, rejected look. The last permanent summer people had shut up their houses; the last canned luxury items disappeared from the grocery shelves; the ferry from Trowbridge to the mainland had made its last run for the season—to get off the peninsula, you had to go all the way round. Town boys were breaking into summer houses; police and caretakers made their rounds; mice came in from the fields and big rats from the dump. The fish-man from Digby stopped delivering; the laundromat closed up. The sirens of the ambulance and the fire engine shrieked through the night.
It was the best time of the year, Sandy Gray told Dolly: with the outsiders gone, you finally got the feel of the place. He had been opening scallops, along with the native women, getting $1.50 an hour. Next month, he was going to decorate bureaus for the New Leeds Craftsmen, on a cooperative basis. In January, he would start work at the fish-storage plant, over at North Digby. He was not doing this for the pay check but for the sake of the kids. With the custody case coming up and their whole future at stake, he had pocketed his principles, temporarily, and put himself in the hands of his lawyer, who told him to find a job and make his peace with society. On the advice of his lawyer, too, he had shaved his beard and had his hair cut. First things first, he told Dolly, who regarded these changes with bewilderment. Would you hire a doctor to save your life and then refuse to follow his prescriptions? “But I liked you better the way you were,” she said doubtfully. “That’s because you’re afraid of change,” he explained, in his gentle, gusty voice. “The true individualist has the courage to wear a mask.”
When she came in her jeep to pick him up the morning the case was scheduled, he was wearing a leather jacket, a pair of dark trousers, and a white silk evening scarf wrapped about his neck in lieu of a necktie. His lawyer, he said, had warned him to appear on time at the courthouse in Trowbridge, in conventional dress, and to see that his witnesses did the same. Dolly’s costume Sandy had chosen himself from her closet—an unbecoming gray tweed suit she had had made up in England. But it worried him that she had no hat. All the way down in the jeep, he kept fuming with impatience and cursing the stop lights and the midmorning traffic in the villages. The judge, he reminded her, was a stickler for punctuality, and his case was third on the docket. “We have plenty of time,” she shouted, repeatedly, over the noise of the jeep. His fretfulness alarmed Dolly. This was not the Sandy she knew. The loss of his beard had done something strange to him. Whenever she glanced at him, sideways, she had a sense that she was intruding. At the same time, she could not help noticing that his chin was recessive.
She was going to be a character-witness for him. How this had come about she scarcely knew now. How could she testify to his character when she had been in New Leeds exactly one month? But it was not the length of the association but the frequency that counted, Sandy had assured her. For the past two weeks, she had been with him every day. She had ridden pillion on his motorcycle and washed his hair in her basin and helped him deliver furniture, down the peninsula, for the New Leeds Craftsmen. They had gone to see Miles Murphy, while Dolly had waited outside, in the jeep, because of Martha, and they had taken a bottle to call on Sandy’s fourth wife, to persuade her to testify. They had been sharing a Sunday paper and doing the crosswords together. The fact that she had come here as a stranger, said Sandy, would make her testimony more impressive. She had no axe to grind, and the judge would see at a glance that there was no sexual involvement.
It was true; there was nothing between them. His second wife, Ellen, was coming back in December; he talked about that constantly, when he was not talking about the children and Barney, his lawyer. Her return, he said, could only mean one thing—she wanted him back. Her second husband had finally made a settlement on her, so that she was free now to remarry. Sandy was fixing up his house, to be ready for her; Dolly had been with him to buy curtains and look at some linoleum for the kitchen. He had even had the plumber around, to get an estimate on putting in heat, which he could pay for by selling some pond frontage to a developer. His excitement touched Dolly almost painfully. She had never been so close to a man, on the one hand, or been so disregarded, on the other. After the first day, he never even glanced at her paintings; as soon as he got to know her, his abrupt honest mind had simply dropped the idea that she could ever do anything serious. And after his first enquiries, he paid no heed to her sex. It never occurred to him, apparently, that Dolly could be jealous, or sad that their relationship would end when this “real woman” came back. He never considered her feelings, which made Dolly feel safe with him, though somewhat depreciated, like a thin dime nestling in his pocket, while he reckoned his future in gold. And yet it was wonderful—upsetting and enlightening—to be treated so objectively. Being with him, she had decided, was like posing naked for a life-class: you had to forget the you.
But now, as she climbed the courthouse steps, looking up at the huge granite columns of the neo-classic front, she felt as if she were awakening from a dream. She had a slight hangover, and her eyes, which had sunk back into her head, had a bleary glazed look; she kept blinking them to focus on her surroundings, as if she had been playing Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. It was the first time she had had any contact with the law, and the courthouse, with its Civil War cannons, inspired her with terror. It belonged in a dark mill town of the nineteenth century—the kind of town she had been born in. Her sense of proportion protested at its presence here, overlooking a village green, a general store, and a double row of clapboard cottages, advertising rooms for tourists, home-made jellies, and sea-captain’s chowder. “Probate court” they were going to, and the very name evoked her childhood, her two aunts, wills, trustees, tombstones, granite faces.
With her coat-collar turned up and her hands thrust in her pockets, she stood under the portico, alone, taking no notice of the other people passing in and out, her eyes smarting with tears from the bitter wind. Sandy had hurried inside, to confer with his lawyer. When he came out and joined her, lighting his pipe, he was in jubilant spirits because his ex-wife, Clover, was late. Everybody else—the two lawyers, the witnesses—was present and accounted for, inside the gray building. Clover’s lawyer was pacing up and down the corridor and telling Sandy’s lawyer that he had half a mind to throw the case up. She had missed the morning bus, it seemed, and somebody had called the clerk of the court to say that she was hitchhiking. Her ex-stepmother—one of the old-timers here—was trying to calm the lawyer down by explaining Clover’s character. Sandy’s lawyer was very hopeful; he had finally got an affidavit from the New Leeds dentist about the state of the kids’ teeth. She had been feeding them on candy bars and cookies—too lazy to open a can.
Dolly put her hands to her ears. She did not want to hear any more. It was all true, no doubt; Sandy had convinced her. But these dreadful details, hammered home, had the effect of dividing her sympathies. “Why shouldn’t she hitchhike?” she said suddenly, in a clear stubborn voice. “My dear, I don’t mind,” said Sandy, smiling. “It’s what the judge will think. Hitchhiking is illegal in this state.” “But she can’t afford a taxi,” argued Dolly, striving to be composed and reasonable. “She should have thought of that before she missed the bus,” Sandy replied. “Everybody else got here. It’s no good feeling sorry for her. We’re all sorry for her; we’ve all tried to help her. She’s a tragic kid, really—a natural delinquent; no mother, father a drunkard, four stepmothers in a row. The leopard can’t change its spots.” He turned up Dolly’s coatsleeve and glanced at her watch.
“Look,” he said softly. “There she is now.” On the highway below them, a Nehi truck had stopped. Two children and a woman clambered out, waving to the driver. “Watch!” said Sandy, gripping Dolly’s arm, as the boy and girl raced across the road, without looking either way to see whether any cars were coming. “I wish the judge could have seen that,” he added, when they had safely crossed the road, followed by their mother. An afterthought struck him. “You saw it!” he cried, elatedly, tightening his hold on her arm. “Put it in your testimony. I’ll tell Barney to ask you about it.” “I couldn’t,” said Dolly faintly. Sandy had made her believe that she would not be harming Clover if she merely testified to his character; some of his best friends were going to be character-witnesses on her side, and he did not hold it against them. But now he wanted her to go further, and he dropped her arm impatiently when she tried to explain that she could not magnify this little incident on the road into criminal negligence. “I know, I know,” he said. “You ‘don’t want to take sides.’ ”
Hurt, Dolly made her way into the building; the court was sitting on the second floor. “Barney” had told her where to go, but she took the wrong staircase and got lost. She hated the lawyer and the effect he was having on Sandy. He kept warning Sandy that the courts favored the mother, and that Sandy would lose the case if he did not “get in there and fight.” He had been very short with Dolly, when Sandy had brought her to his office, to be rehearsed in her testimony. As soon as he heard that she had known Sandy only a month, he had slammed down his pencil. He pretended that Sandy had given him the impression that they had known each other before. When Dolly said no, firmly, he shot her a peculiar look and suggested that they might have known each other “in the big city.” “You being a painter and him being an art critic, it would stand to reason that you’d met.” “No,” Dolly had repeated, lowering her gaze. “I’m afraid your testimony won’t be of much help then,” he said irritably, shutting up a folder. “I told him that!” cried Dolly, indignant. “Oh, well,” sighed the lawyer. “Let’s take down what you’ve got. You never know what the judge will stand for. Unmarried, I take it,” he said, pulling a pad of yellow paper to him.
Contempt for her scruples, Dolly felt, underscored those last words and the measuring, smooth look that accompanied them. He diagnosed her, she inwardly protested—as if telling the truth were a symptom, like being unmarried, like, if he only knew it, her dainty, fainthearted canvases stacked against the wall, unfinished. She began to feel guilty, as though she had to explain herself. He wanted to know what she was doing here, out of season. Mentioning the Sinnotts, Dolly flushed. Because of Sandy, she had hardly seen them since the play-reading. She did not dare think what they would say if they knew she had let herself get involved in the custody suit. “Sinnott?” said the lawyer. “Oh yes, the girl in the nightgown. She’s back again, I hear.” Dolly nodded. “Come to think of it, you look kind of alike. Same type.” “We went to college together,” murmured Dolly, as if in extenuation. “Uh huh,” said the lawyer, writing. By the time she left the office and joined Sandy outside, on the motorcycle, she felt she had done wrong not to stretch her testimony a little. But when she told Sandy what had happened, saying that she was sorry, he wearily cut her off. “Why should you lie for me?” he said. “Barney didn’t expect that. It was just a misunderstanding.”
A janitor showed Dolly into the courtroom. Another case was being heard. She settled herself on a bench and peered around. On her left, at a little desk, was a man in a blue uniform with a star. High up, on a platform, at a long table, was the judge, a long-nosed man in a black robe, like a college professor’s. The witness stand, at his right, was empty; the judge was whispering with two men, who, Dolly presumed, were lawyers. On the far side of the room, by the window, stood Barney, looking out. “Divorce case,” a man next to Dolly informed her. When the testimony resumed, and a big black-haired woman took the stand, nobody paid any attention, except the judge and the two lawyers. People kept passing in and out, in desultory style, rather, Dolly thought, like tourists in a European church, where a droning mass was being said in one of the chapels. The proceedings seemed very lifeless; she had to strain her ears to catch what the witness was saying, in a monotone, like a lesson learned. It was a case, apparently, of wife-beating. “Two beautiful big black eyes,” she heard the witness intone, and the lawyer picked up the phrase and repeated it, like a chant. Then, before Dolly knew it, the case was over, and the man in the blue uniform was calling their case: Alexander Gray against Clover Gray. Nearly everybody in the courtroom moved forward, past a brass railing, and Dolly moved with them and took her seat on a wooden bench at the right. Sandy was not yet in the courtroom, and all these people, at first glance, were strangers to Dolly. She found herself sitting next to a tall white-haired man in a sort of cowboy costume, with a sombrero on his knees. Across the room, to her surprise, she recognized the milkman, in a pink shirt and Windsor tie.
The courtroom door swung open, and Clover sauntered in, accompanied by a small gray-haired man with a briefcase. She had little bright blue eyes, like Christmas tree bulbs, lit up. Her brown hair was pulled up in a horse’s tail, with a big plaid ribbon tied around it. She had on a great deal of rouge, and her lipstick had come off on her front teeth. She wore an old, shapeless winter coat, red knee socks, moccasins, and a plaid skirt and vest. The skirt was much too big for her, and to Dolly’s eyes, she looked pathetically unreal, like a child painted up and dressed in adult clothes to beg on the street at Thanksgiving. The two children had disappeared. She was walking straight toward Dolly, who lowered her eyes and laced her fingers on her lap. “Aren’t you in the wrong pew?” Clover said, in a deep husky voice.
Dolly started and looked about her in perplexity. “You’re his witness, aren’t you?” said Clover. “These are my witnesses.” Dolly reddened and jumped up, dropping her pocketbook. The uniformed man, the sheriff, was hurrying toward her. Somebody handed her her pocketbook. The whole courtroom stared while Dolly changed places. She stumbled into a seat at the end of the front row, by the witness stand, while across the room Clover took the seat she had vacated. The two “teams” of witnesses, facing each other, made Dolly think of a spelling bee or a give-away program on television. She could not imagine where they had come from, where the lawyers had found them; they were like professional mourners, too, or like floaters rounded up to vote in an election. She could not remember seeing any of them, except the milkman, before. But gradually she began to recognize faces. At the end of the back row, on her side, was Sandy’s fourth wife, Margery, the girl who worked in the grille. Across the room, on Clover’s side, was the oysterman. Next to him was one of the New Leeds Craftsmen; Dolly had not known him, with his hair combed and a shave. All of them were transformed for the occasion; that was what had confused her. In their ordinary gear, she had been seeing them every day at the post office or the First National check-out. But now they wore “city clothes” or, to be exact, parts of them. One man had on striped trousers over bare feet and sandals; another had a necktie and pearl stickpin with a pea jacket. Ancient waistcoats, long earrings, tarnished metal blouses, old fur pieces, a gold watch chain with a Phi Beta Kappa key, velvets, nodding plumes, a motoring veil, proclaimed the community’s notion of a solid respectable front. The man next to Dolly wore a white suit, like Mark Twain. But his feet, she could not help noticing, were in leather bedroom slippers. It was the same all along the row: an uneven satin hemline ended in bare legs and tennis shoes; a black tailleur, in a set of espadrilles. A kind of defiance, evidently, had set in with the feet, which refused to render unto Caesar.
A strange smell rose from the witnesses—a combination of stale alcohol and mothballs. Dolly could still taste last night’s liquor on her own breath, and she wondered whether these perfumes could be wafted up to the judge. Just below her, near the sheriff’s desk, sat a small woman in a plain suit, with a notebook and briefcase. The man next to Dolly leaned over. “S.P.C.C.,” he whispered, cupping his mouth with one hand while his elbow nudged Dolly in the ribs. “S.P.C.C.,” he repeated, opening his red-rimmed eyes very wide.
Dolly stared miserably at the network of empurpled veins in his cheeks. To her horror, she had begun to feel ashamed of these New Leedsians and to look upon them with the eyes of an outsider—the caseworker, the judge. Nearly all of them seemed the worse for drink, swollen and dropsical, or lean and red, with popping eyes and stiff veins and shaking hands. Several of the men had bits of dried blood on their faces, where they had cut themselves, apparently, while shaving. One young man—he could not have been more than thirty—had stone-gray hair and a face as white as leprosy; his arm was in a sling. And yet they were all in good spirits. It was only she who was depressed and self-conscious. Dolly could hear them discussing the judge. “He always favors the woman,” said a young man in a corduroy coat and turtle-necked sweater. “I had him when Carol divorced me.” “You’re wrong, darling,” said an old woman in slacks. “I had him and he cut off the maintenance.”
A woman with dyed red hair and a face like a monkey suddenly addressed Dolly. “Did you hear about my case?” Dolly shook her head; she had never met this person, who seemed to be drenched in the perfume called Femme. “I’ve seen you in the liquor store,” the woman went on. “I’m a friend of Paul’s. Do you know what happened to me last year? They brought me into court for lowering the birth rate.” Dolly looked perplexed. “I ran into a car carrying three pregnant women. They all had miscarriages and sued me.” The woman’s voice was loud and laughing. The caseworker looked up and frowned. Dolly reddened. “I’m a sort of jinx,” her new friend continued. “Last year, a man dropped dead on my sofa. I thought he had passed out.”
Sandy slipped into the seat next to Dolly. He had been talking with the children. “She has them coached,” he said angrily. “Her lawyer’s got it rigged up for them to talk to the judge in chambers.” Dolly indicated the sheriff. “I don’t give a damn if he hears,” Sandy muttered, lowering his voice. “She has no right to bring the kids into a thing like this. It’s criminal, having their feelings pawed over. ‘Do you love Mother best or Daddy? Come on, tell the Judge.’ Imagine what that will do to them twenty years from now.” He sat back with an air of dark satisfaction, then jumped up, in response to a signal from Barney, who had been talking with Clover’s lawyer by the window. Dolly rubbed her forehead. He was right, she thought remorsefully; such a decision was horrible for a child.
“They want to make a stipulation,” volunteered the man in the white suit, nudging Dolly again, to direct her attention to Sandy, who seemed to be arguing with his lawyer. “What’s that?” said Dolly, uneasily; she could see that Sandy was getting worked up, by his gestures. “The lawyers get together,” said the young man behind her, eagerly, “and try to agree to shorten the testimony. Clover doesn’t defend, and they fix it up with the judge to award divided custody. They always try to pull that.” The man in the white suit nodded. “But wouldn’t that be the best thing?” timidly suggested Dolly. “After they’ve got us all down here . . . ?” said the man in the pea jacket, looking at his watch. “If they don’t start soon, damn it, I’m going to step out for a drink.” “Oh, please don’t,” cried Dolly. “The town’s dry, Jack,” said the man in the white suit. “Local option.” The man in the pea jacket settled back on the bench. “Oh, it’s all a farce,” declared the man in the white suit. “We’re all wasting our time. We come down here to be nice, to do a favor. Who knows the rights and wrongs of these things? I don’t. I’m just a character witness. You too?” Dolly nodded. “I don’t judge between ’em,” said the man, dropping his voice, as Sandy started back to his place. “In my opinion, the best thing would be to give the children to the state. Let the town bring ’em up. The town spawned ’em, you might say.”
“Barney’s sore,” reported Sandy, sitting down. “He wanted me to compromise.” “And you wouldn’t?” said Dolly. Sandy shook his head. All at once, the courtroom grew quiet. The judge sat up, under the American flag; a woman (the assistant registrar, said Dolly’s neighbor) took her place at the other end of the judicial bench, under the state flag. Spectators tiptoed into the rear benches. The first witness was being sworn: Mrs. Mary Viera, a cleaning woman who worked by the day. “Our star witness,” said Sandy. She was a small, black-eyed person in a dark suit and white blouse—the only respectable-looking person, thought Dolly, in the whole array of witnesses. Her English was surprisingly broken, and she had a voice queerly pitched, like a parrot’s. She worked, it seemed, occasionally for Clover, and she testified to the state of the house, on the days when she came to clean. It was very dirty, she agreed, under Barney’s questioning. Cat pee (“Excuse me, Mister,”) in the corners; children’s beds dirty; food stuck on the table; food on the walls; icebox dirty, food with beards inside; grease burned on pans; dog food all over, on floors, no vacuum cleaner; old smelly mop; no light bulb in toilet.
Dolly tried to shut her ears. She hated Mrs. Viera, with her spying black eyes. The man in the white suit cupped his mouth. “Worst damn cleaning woman in New Leeds,” he whispered, with a wink, to Dolly. Sandy frowned. He was following the testimony intently, leaning forward and nodding as Mrs. Viera spoke. Bottles, yes, bottles everywhere; garbage spilled outside; children barefoot. The S.P.C.C. woman was writing in her notebook. A pair of spectators moved closer, and Mrs. Viera, obligingly, raised her parrot-voice. Barney’s voice, prompting, had a smooth, smiling tone. “And what about this fellow that lives there?”
To Dolly’s surprise, Mrs. Viera became guarded. “What fellow? I don’t know.” “Oh, come on now, Mrs. Viera,” Barney said impatiently. “You know there’s a man living there. The whole town knows it.” Clover’s lawyer rushed in with an objection. The judge leaned forward. “Is there a man living with Mrs. Gray or not?” he said to Clover’s lawyer. “Does your client deny this?” Everyone looked at Clover. “We don’t deny it,” said Clover’s lawyer, easily. “We will show that he is a paying guest.”
Barney took a step backward; the judge raised his eyebrows; even Clover’s witnesses appeared to take this as news. Sandy half-started to his feet, but Dolly pulled him down, by the leather jacket. “Proceed,” said the judge, rapping lightly with his gavel. “Have you seen this man there?” Barney demanded of Mrs. Viera. “Sometimes.” “Where does he sleep?” Mrs. Viera did not know. She was asked to describe the layout of the house. There were two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and a little room, with a couch in it. “Maybe he sleep there,” she volunteered. Barney frowned. Had she ever, he wanted to know, seen that couch made up, with sheets on it? No, agreed Mrs. Viera, but most of the times she had been there, the fellow had been away; he worked, she had heard, as a truckdriver.
Sandy made a soft, groaning sound. “She’s changed her testimony,” he whispered angrily. “They all do it—these damned Portuguese. You get them in the courtroom, and they get scared.” “Where does he keep his clothes?” said Barney. Mrs. Viera did not know. Had she ever seen his clothes in Mrs. Gray’s bedroom? The courtroom seemed to catch its breath while Mrs. Viera reflected. She was not sure, she answered finally. Barney protested: this was not what she had told him when he came to her house to talk to her. “What do you mean—not sure?” he said in a hectoring tone. “Not sure,” mumbled Mrs. Viera. Sandy’s witnesses looked wonderingly at each other. The judge intervened. It was an important question, he said, and she could help the court clear it up. She must try to search her memory. “No good, Judge,” said Mrs. Viera, simply. “When he”—she pointed to the lawyer—“come to my house, he ask me if I ever see man’s clothes in Mrs. Gray’s bedroom. I say yes.” “Well?” prompted the judge. Mrs. Viera grinned. “But Mrs. Gray wear man’s clothes herself—man’s shirt, pants, old coat. This the first time I see her in skirt.”
Laughter shook the courtroom, led by Mrs. Viera. “And is that why you’ve changed your story?” Barney demanded sternly. “My daughter explain me my mistake,” said Mrs. Viera serenely, turning to the judge. “She tell me I not understanding questions.” “You mean,” said the judge, “that you sometimes saw men’s clothes in Mrs. Gray’s bedroom, but you are not sure, now, whose they were?” Mrs. Viera nodded. “Maybe hers. Maybe his.” Barney mopped his brow. Surely she knew the difference, he insisted. But Mrs. Viera would not be budged. “Maybe hers. Maybe his,” she repeated, with a gleeful look at the judge.
When Clover’s lawyer’s turn came, he started on a fresh tack. He asked Mrs. Viera how long she had lived in New Leeds and how many residents she had worked for and whether she kept a clean house herself. “Oh yes,” said Mrs. Viera proudly. “I believe you, Ma’am,” said Clover’s lawyer, who spoke with a slight southern accent. “But now tell me. The conditions you describe in Mrs. Gray’s residence—are they unusual?” Mrs. Viera looked puzzled. “I mean the dirt on the floors, the dog food, the moldy icebox, and so on—do you often see these things when you come to clean for your ladies?” Mrs. Viera brightened. “Oh yes,” she said happily. “All the time. All the time. Summer people too. Everybody live like that here in America. Like pigs.” There was a movement of recoil on the benches; the sheriff stiffened and fixed his eyes on the Stars and Stripes. “Watch what you’re saying here,” the judge commanded, sharply. “You don’t mean everybody.” “Everybody I working for,” explained Mrs. Viera. “Not poor people—Portuguese people, Finnish people, Yankee people. They keep clean house; don’t have cleaning woman.” She appeared to search for her meaning. “Rich people, college people, famous people, lawyer, writer, painter—just like Mrs. Gray. Live like bootlegger.” Another laugh rose. “I think she must mean me,” giggled a woman in Dolly’s row. “She’s pathological,” said another woman, with bitter emphasis. “I wouldn’t have her in the house.” The judge rapped for silence. “Have you ever worked for Mr. Gray?” continued Clover’s lawyer. Mrs. Viera shook her head. “But Mr. Gray just the same. I have friend who tell me—” The judge cut her off. “You can only testify to what you’ve seen yourself,” he told her. “I don’t know what this testimony proves,” he went on, in tones of irritation, to Clover’s lawyer. “The general standard of living that prevails in New Leeds,” the lawyer went on, undaunted. “I’m trying to set Mrs. Gray’s housekeeping in its context, your honor. Many of the older ladies here, in our permanent winter colony, are famous housekeepers, but the breed is dying out. Other times, other customs.”
“Proceed,” said the judge. “Would you say that Mrs. Gray was a good mother?” Clover’s lawyer asked Mrs. Viera. “Kind, considerate, thoughtful?” Mrs. Viera scratched her head. “Mrs. Gray very nice woman. Very friendly. Good mother, I don’t know.” She turned to the judge. “It’s the same like I was saying, Judge. All the women I work for, not like poor women. Easy with the kids, not strict, not scolding. But not paying attention. Not mending clothes, ironing, fixing hair, cooking, sending to church, sending to Sunday school. ‘Listen to radio,’ ‘Go away and play now.’ Open can. ‘Here, eat.’ Mrs. Gray, I think, have big heart, play with the kids, cut out magazines, draw pictures, play the guitar to them, sing. But not careful for kids. Not worrying.” “Do you think a worrying mother is a good thing, Mrs. Viera?” demanded Clover’s lawyer. “Sometimes,” she said, turning thoughtfully to the judge. “I don’t talk so good in English. What I mean, Mrs. Gray not bringing them up, not teaching, not feeding right, not putting to bed—” “And all your employers are like that?” cut in Clover’s lawyer. “Oh yes,” beamed Mrs. Viera. “Oh yes.”
Dolly’s head was aching when they went across the highway for lunch at a counter. Barney came to sit with them; most of the other witnesses, on their side, had finished their testimony, and gone off to eat at the hotel in the next township, which had a cocktail lounge. Dolly’s testimony, Barney said, was going to be very crucial, as things were shaping up. Mrs. Viera had turned the whole case upside down. There was nobody else who could swear that this truckdriver actually slept with Clover—nobody but the children, who would probably not be asked in chambers, unless the judge could find a way of doing it delicately, by indirection. And Clover had undoubtedly warned them not to tell what they knew. “Oh, it’s all so ugly,” sighed Dolly. She half-agreed with the man who said it would be better to hand all the children of divorced people over to the town. “Human nature,” said Barney, munching on a hamburger.
The trouble was, he continued, that you could never get the natives up here to come into court and tell what they’d seen. Clover never drew a shade, but her neighbors down by the bay acted as though they were blind if you tried to get an affidavit out of them. The ones who were willing to talk always turned out to have a screw loose, like Mrs. Viera, or like the milkman, who was stage-struck and saving up to go off to drama school. The kid loved to testify, but he would only describe the state of the kitchen when he brought in the milk in the mornings. He swore that he’d never looked in the bedroom window, though he walked right past it every morning. “ ‘I mind my own business,’ he says, with a flounce of his tail.” “I don’t see why you have to bring sex into it,” Dolly said suddenly. “I don’t think Sandy ought to do that when he believes in sexual freedom himself. You’ve got plenty of evidence to show that she’s a bad mother. Why worry about proving ‘immorality’?” “Because that’s what the court likes to hear about, Miss Lamb,” retorted Barney, reaching for the ketchup. “Besides—let’s be frank—the S.P.C.C. has a record on Sandy. All right”—he raised a hand to forestall Sandy—“I’ll agree. That was different. That was a health fad. You kept the kids barefoot to develop their feet. And you didn’t toilet-train them, to develop their character. And you fed them on peanut butter because of something you read in a book. But the court looks at the record, damn it.” “You know what happened,” said Sandy, in a low voice, to Dolly. “The boy went to school barefoot, and the other kids threw knives at his feet. The teacher had the S.P.C.C. after me. There’s an irony for you. It was those ruffians and their parents that ought to have been investigated.” Dolly gave a gasp of pain. “But you went right on sending him,” protested Barney. “After the teacher told you to get shoes.” “How did I know?” cried Sandy. “The teacher sent a note. ‘Please put shoes on Michael.’ Nobody gave me the reason. I’d taught Michael to be brave and he wouldn’t squeal to me on his little classmates. I was damned if I’d put shoes on him, just to appease the local bourgeois.” He banged his knife down on his plate.
“Easy, boy,” said the lawyer. “We don’t want you making speeches to the judge. You used to be a Red, remember?” “Clover can’t use that,” declared Sandy. “She was in the Party herself. I broke long before she did. Miles got me out of it during my analysis. He showed me I was really an anarchist.” Barney laughed. “Oh, balls,” he said. “You’re a property-owner and a registered voter. But don’t forget: there’s a lot of hostility to you artistic folk up here still. You could see that in old Viera’s testimony. She was getting her own back, after all the stinking messes she’s cleaned up for you geniuses. Now, Miss Lamb,” he said, picking up his bill and a toothpick, “when I call you to the stand, speak up. We want the judge to hear you. And don’t be afraid of stressing what you’ve got to tell. Let it ring out. We want to make the court realize that Sandy’s turned over a new leaf. Describe what you’ve seen yourself—the things a woman notices. Is the house clean? Can Sandy cook? Does he wash the dishes? Is he neat, methodical? Does he drink? Does he have women around?”
Dolly nodded. It was not as simple as he thought, she said to herself anxiously as she took the stand. If she were to answer those questions truthfully, she could not give a Yes or a No. He was neat, for a man, but not as neat as John Sinnott or some of the painters she had studied with. The house was fairly clean. He could cook: yes. But most of the time she had been cooking for him. He washed dishes, she supposed, when he was alone. And he was methodical, in his way. He drank, but not as much as many people. In the course of an evening, starting before dinner, he would drink about half a bottle, she had noticed. But lots of the men up here started drinking at ten in the morning. And she had never seen him as tight, for instance, as Martha and Miles Murphy had been, the night of the play-reading. As for women, he had her around.
Everything was relative, she reminded herself, as the questioning began. It was like what the anthropologists told you: Sandy had to be measured by the mores of the culture he was in.
She cleared her throat. She had known the plaintiff, Mr. Gray, about one month; she had rented the house next to him and saw him frequently, in a neighborly way. “Would you say that you knew his habits?” As far as one could, in a month. “Speak louder, please,” said the judge. Did he have women around? Not so far as she knew. “How do you know, Miss Lamb?” the judge interrupted. “Because I was with him,” Dolly replied. The courtroom laughed. The judge rapped with his gavel. “At night, Miss Lamb?” said Barney. “Yes, at night,” said Dolly. “Explain the circumstances.” “We both were living alone; we have a good deal in common.” “You are a painter, Miss Lamb? And Mr. Gray is an art critic?” “He used to be,” said Dolly. “He knows a great deal about painting.” “And he was interested in your work?” “He doesn’t like my work,” admitted Dolly, in a meek voice. Another laugh rang out. “But you saw him just the same?” the lawyer proceeded, with a smile. Dolly nodded. “Speak up,” said the judge. “Yes. We often had dinner together.” “And who did the cooking?” “Sometimes I did. Sometimes he did.” “Would you say he was a good cook?” “Oh yes.” “What did he give you to eat?” Dolly searched her memory. “Spaghetti with clams. Rice and Portuguese sausage. Oysters. And salad,” she added quickly, though in fact it was she who had brought the salad, the two times she had let him cook for her. “Sounds good,” said Barney. “Did he open a can or did he cook these dishes himself?” “Oh, himself,” said Dolly.
“Does he drink?” Dolly hesitated. “He drinks socially,” she said at length. “What is ‘socially,’ Miss Lamb?” the judge wanted to know. Dolly turned stricken eyes on him. “When he’s with other people.” “He doesn’t drink alone, you mean,” said the judge crisply, provoking a laugh. Dolly said nothing. “And when he’s with you, Miss Lamb?” encouraged Barney. “He drinks a little,” said Dolly. “What is ‘a little’?” exclaimed the judge. “Be specific. One drink, two drinks, five drinks?” “One or two,” quavered Dolly. She was not really lying, she thought; she was only interpreting Sandy’s daily consumption in the judge’s terms; what would be five drinks to the judge would be one or two to Sandy. And wine did not count. “Sometimes a nightcap,” she added. “And that’s all?” said Barney. Dolly nodded. “Speak up,” said the judge. “Yes.” She looked up and saw Clover’s little blue eyes staring harshly at her from across the room. A faint feeling came over her; she swayed and steadied herself on the stand. “Go on about his habits, Miss Lamb,” she heard Barney say. All she could think of was that she had just perjured herself and that Clover and her lawyer knew it. The judge was looking at her curiously, waiting for her to say something, but she had forgotten where she was in her testimony: had they asked her yet about his housekeeping? “Is Mr. Gray’s house clean?” prompted Barney. “Oh yes,” she said, swallowing. “Very.” “Dishes washed? All that?” “Oh yes,” said Dolly. He seemed to be expecting her to say something more. “He does his laundry,” she volunteered. “You’ve seen him?” “Yes,” she said. “In the pond.” Again there was laughter, and she could tell from the lawyer’s expression that she had said the wrong thing. “In the pond? What pond?” said the judge. “The pond we live on,” said Dolly. “The water is very soft, which makes it good, Mr. Gray says, for washing.”
In the courtroom, the philistines roared. She could feel their hatred of Sandy, of anything simple and different from themselves, spill out of their braying throats. And she could feel him crouched in his seat behind her, powerless to defend himself, with his white shaven face, a shorn, piteous Samson. The blood rushed to her cheeks; she flamed with temper. “Make them stop laughing,” she said, obdurately, to the judge. “I won’t testify any more unless you give Mr. Gray a fair hearing.” She set her chin. “Order!” cried the sheriff, standing up. “Go on, Miss Lamb,” the judge said gravely. The courtroom was absolutely still. “Mr. Gray,” said Dolly, “is not an ordinary person. You all think he’s strange because he tries to live naturally. He knows all about animals and birds and trees. But he doesn’t go out bird-watching, with a book, like me. He just does it naturally, the way he sleeps and eats. He hates any kind of dishonesty or compromise; that’s why he doesn’t like my painting. He knows the woods the way Thoreau did or the scouts in Fenimore Cooper. He can set traps and shoot and whittle and make bows and arrows. That’s why he’d be a good father; he could teach the children a lot of things that children don’t learn any more. Fishing and hunting and making things. He taught me how to open oysters, with just an ordinary knife. And how to scale fish and clean them. But he’s not a crank, either. He doesn’t want to turn the clock back, artificially. He reads comic books and listens to radio serials; he thinks they’re much more real than modern novels and poems. He’s not afraid of violence, though he’s very gentle himself. He’d teach the children not to be afraid of life. That’s what he’s taught me, and I’m grateful for it.” “Can he sew?” said the judge, drawing another laugh, deliberately, from the courtroom. “Yes, he can,” said Dolly, defiantly. “Why shouldn’t a man be able to sew? He can knit too; he learned in the Merchant Marine, when he was a boy. Is that something to be ashamed of? Don’t you want a man to be self-sufficient? Isn’t that the American ideal?”
“That was great, great,” said Sandy, when she came back to her place. The other witnesses nodded. Clover’s lawyer had not even tried to cross-examine her seriously. He had only one question: “Are you in love with Mr. Gray?” The judge said she did not have to answer that, but she had said no, in all honesty, and left the stand in a blaze of glory. “You’ve won the case,” Sandy told her, and Barney made a little pantomime of clapping, when the judge was looking the other way.
Dolly was so flushed with these tributes and with her own extraordinary temerity that she could hardly listen to Sandy, who followed her on the stand. She sat with her own voice echoing in her ears, in a trance of wonder and pride. Vaguely, she heard Sandy testifying to his concern for the children, and how he was fixing up the house for them. He hoped, he said, to marry again, to give the children a mother, but in the meantime he was going to employ a woman to take care of them, after school, in the afternoons, while he was working. He made a good impression—Dolly felt, on the whole—simple and straightforward. But her mind kept drifting off, back to her own testimony, and contrasting it with his. Hers was better, she felt certain. He was a little too apologetic, and his voice was monotonous. People coughed while he was talking; when she was on the stand, you could have heard a pin drop. She was the best; she almost wished Martha could have heard her and seen the lawyer applaud. Even if John and Martha disapproved, they would have to admire her performance. She almost wished that she could be called back on the stand; a second time she would be more sure of herself, from the outset—she had stumbled badly at first, until she found the right note. “How was I?” said Sandy, coming down from the stand and interrupting her reverie. “Marvelous,” said Dolly, mechanically, her conscience smiting her for the vanity and self-absorption that had kept her from paying attention to him. “Marvelous,” she repeated, more enthusiastically. But her mind was still on herself, and all she could hear was the iambs of Sandy’s voice pounding in her inner ear: “You’ve won the case,” “You’ve won the case.”
Compunction pricked her when Clover took the stand. She was pitiable, pitiable, Dolly said to herself, appalled by the life-history that unfolded. Poor Clover had been a baby-sitter since she was eleven years old, and she had worked with retarded children before she married Sandy, at the age of nineteen. She was wonderful with children, all her witnesses had averred, and her lawyer had affidavits from the summer people who had sent their children to a little play group she had run for the past three summers. She was a poor housekeeper and manager, she conceded, under questioning, but she could not keep the house tidy when it was full of dogs and cats and youngsters. Nearly every night, her children had one of their friends staying with them. They were doing well in school, and last year they had got more Valentines than any other children in the middle grades. She went to the P.T.A. and made costumes for the school plays and played the guitar at school entertainments. Her lawyer presented affidavits from the children’s teachers. And she had a big heart, as Mrs. Viera had said: she had taken in an orphan, a spastic child, whose mother had died of tuberculosis. The child was now in an institution, but Clover went to see him almost every week. She went to see her father, too, who was in the state hospital, and brought him magazines and candies, though he used to beat her horribly, according to her ex-stepmother. “She always slips him a bottle,” the man in the white suit contributed in an undertone.
Barney was brutal in cross-examination. Was it true, he wanted to know, that there had been complaints and some parents had removed their children from her play group because she let the boys and girls go naked? It was true, Clover admitted, but the children were small, under school age. “That’s a lie,” whispered Sandy. “Some of them were sprouting breasts.” Then Barney began to ask her about what he called “a little episode” at a beach picnic two summers ago. Hadn’t she tried to drown herself after a few drinks? No, said Clover, in a low voice; she had just wanted to be alone and swum out to sea. The others had got frightened and gone after her.
When he got to the truckdriver, finally, Clover insisted that he was paying board, but she burst into tears when Barney wondered whether she had ever listed his rent as income on her tax return. Naturally, she hadn’t, and she lost her head altogether during the next questions, when Barney was pressing her about where the truckdriver slept and whether the little room she claimed he slept in had a clothes closet. She whirled around and called Sandy a moocher and announced that the real trouble between them was that he had fallen behind on the maintenance payments and would not settle with her when she needed the money. That, she cried, was when he had decided to get righteous about the truckdriver. He was all paid up now because his lawyer had made him do it, before coming into court. “Ask him, ask him, if it isn’t true,” she begged the judge, pointing her stubby finger at Barney. But the judge told her that a lawyer could not be a witness to what passed between him and his client.
To satisfy her, however, he called Sandy back on the stand. “Is it true that you ceased to make payments until the time this action was begun?” “No, it is not true,” said Sandy, wearily. “Mrs. Gray is a pathological liar. I was short of money during the summer, when Mrs. Gray was getting paid by her play group. By mutual agreement, we decided that I could wait until fall to catch up with the maintenance.” Clover was put back on the stand. “Is this true?” said the judge. “If you mean he told me he couldn’t pay and I said yes, let it go for the time being—yes,” said Clover. “You shouldn’t have done that,” said the judge sharply. “The court awarded you that maintenance. You should have made him pay it; that was your duty under the law.” “But if he didn’t have the money . . . ?” “It makes no difference,” said the judge. “It is not for you and your former husband to decide whether he shall support his children. That is the court’s privilege. When you divorced your husband here, you put those children under the court’s protection. They’re wards in chancery, actually.” The two lawyers wagged their heads respectfully, in acknowledgment of this legal point. The judge turned back to Clover. “You should have brought him down here, into court,” he said severely, “the first payment he missed. When was that?” “In June, I guess.” “And how long did this hiatus continue?” “Till the end of October.” “And when did this boarder come to live with you?” “Last spring. Around Decoration Day.”
“Don’t you see what you’ve done?” said the judge, his voice rising. “No,” said Clover. “By letting the maintenance lapse, you’ve practically entered a confession of guilt with this court. You suggest to my mind and to the mind of any reasonable person that you let your ex-husband off paying for your support because you got a new fellow.” “That wasn’t the reason. Honestly,” said Clover. “Look, Your Honor, he had no money. I was making some. I have feelings. I was sorry for him.” She had been wiping her tears with a Kleenex; her makeup had come off, and as a result she looked much prettier. “Then,” she said, “when I needed the money, for some winter clothes for the kids, he told me that he wouldn’t pay me and that furthermore he was going to sue to get them back if I kept pestering him.” “There were no witnesses to this discussion?” “No.” “Well,” said the judge, “in my opinion, you’ve brought this action on yourself. You gave your ex-husband a right to think that he was no longer bound to support you. Regardless of your motive. You didn’t use good judgment. Let me give you a little maxim for general use, quite apart from this case. Never let a fellow drop behind in his payments. Keep after him. Ask the stores. Ask the financing companies. Chances are, Mrs. Gray, if you let him get behind, he’ll work up a grievance against you, because the longer you don’t make him pay, the more he owes you. Pretty soon, it’s got so darn big he can’t pay it.” He slapped his hand on the long table. “Keep after ’em,” he repeated, addressing the courtroom at large. “That’s right, your honor,” agreed the two lawyers, grinning. “Where are those children?” he demanded. “Waiting for you, in chambers,” said Clover’s lawyer, deferentially. The judge got up and went out.
Waiting for him to come back, the courtroom grew very restless. Some of the witnesses wandered out to smoke and fraternized with the enemy on the courthouse steps. The consensus, as reported by the man in the white suit, was that Sandy was going to win. Dolly’s testimony, it was agreed, had done him a lot of good, and Clover had queered her own pitch: her tears and accusations gave the truth away. And yet no one seemed satisfied. The thought of the children, closeted in there with the judge, who was going to decide their fate, seemed to weigh on the witnesses’ spirits. Faces darkened, moodily; conversation flagged; watches were consulted, repeatedly. A sense that this was a serious matter had somehow permeated the atmosphere. The man in the white suit kept grimacing, as if he had eaten something indigestible. Dolly was sick at heart. If Clover lost the children, it would be her fault: she had “won the case,” they all thought. But now that she had heard Clover, she began to pray that Sandy would lose. She did not want to be answerable for all the little lies she had told on the stand. She gritted her small teeth and tried to send thought-messages to the judge, begging him to ignore her testimony. Clover was not an ideal mother—anyone could see that—but Sandy was not an ideal father, either, despite the picture Dolly had sketched of him. Uncomfortable memories stirred in her: she remembered how cross he had been when she woke him up, one day, at ten o’clock in the morning. He liked to sleep late and he was often brusque and short-tempered. And he was hardly ever on time. It was a little unfair of him, moreover, not to have told her that Clover had “a hand” with children. But she herself was at fault in this: she should never have agreed to testify without hearing Clover’s side. At the very least, she could have asked about her from Martha or the Coes.
She wondered whether she could retract her testimony. But what would they do to her if she got up and confessed that she had lied a little under oath? And what would Sandy say if she betrayed him after he had been lauding her for her “courage”? “The court favors the mother,” she repeated to herself, under her breath. The way the judge had scolded Clover, about the money—wasn’t that a sign that he really favored her and blamed her for endangering her case?
The judge mounted the bench. His face was very stern, and he summoned the social worker, who talked to him in whispers, glancing back at Sandy and Clover. Dolly’s stomach turned over; she did not dare look at Sandy. Then the judge announced his decision. Clover was to keep the children! Jubilate! Saved! She could feel the man next to her exhale, as though in relief. He winked. On her other side, Sandy stiffened; his elbows pressed into his body and his shoulders hunched. Dolly stole a look into his shaved face. He was crying. Guilt smote her. She could not bear the thought that she was selfishly glad while he was suffering. He pulled off his white evening scarf and buried his face in it.
The judge was giving Clover a very stiff lecture. He was going to put her on probation, he said, and have the social worker make reports on her. He was not at all satisfied with the conditions in her home as described by Mrs. Viera and the milkman. But no actual evidence of immorality had been presented in court. In his view, she would do well to get rid of her boarder; the maintenance allowance should be sufficient for the household if she planned her budget carefully and did not waste money on drink. Under normal circumstances, he declared, he would have taken the children away from her, but the record of the father moved him to leniency. He believed, despite much of the evidence, that she genuinely loved her children; they had expressed a strong wish to stay with her. If there had been a respectable person represented in the proceedings, a grandmother or an aunt, he would not have hesitated to remove the children from both parents. But he had found, on inquiry, that there was no such person in the offing.
The father would have the right of visitation. He had come into court as the plaintiff, asserting that he had changed his ways, and brought a witness to attest this. But the brevity of her acquaintance with him made it impossible to give any legal weight to her impressions. The courts in this district had known the plaintiff over a period of years. The bench ventured to suggest that the plaintiff might have a motive for pulling the wool (laughter) over Miss Lamb’s eyes.
In any case—the judge’s voice sharpened—here was a man who had been four times married, deserted by one wife and divorced by two on charges of extreme cruelty. One of these wives now appeared before the court to testify to his character as a father—a very contradictory course of conduct, to put it mildly. The practice of bringing character-witnesses was being abused by counsel. The court was capable of forming its own impression of the character of the litigants. It had its own records and the records of the S.P.C.C. to assist it. To bring in a witness who had known one of the parties “about one month” was an insult to the court’s intelligence and would not be condoned if it were ever repeated. The judge glared at Barney.
“Yes, Your Honor,” said Barney, but he seemed quite unperturbed. He even grinned at Dolly, as the judge continued, in a more and more sarcastic vein. At the same time, observed the judge, disagreeably, he understood counsel’s desire to introduce as a witness a young woman of irreproachable character and fine antecedents, who did not, so far as the court knew, possess a police record. To Dolly’s astonishment, both sets of witnesses began to chuckle appreciatively. Yes, the judge went on: so far as the court knew, Dorothea Lamb had never had her license suspended—his gray eye raked the witness—or been arrested for brawling or check-kiting or draft-evasion or assault and battery or drunk and disorderly or vagrancy. “He’s kidding,” the man in the white suit reassured Dolly. “He’s a great bottle- and trencherman himself. Makes allowances for artists and writers. Used to sit in superior court, where these cases come up. Great sense of humor.”
Since all the New Leedsians were giggling delightedly, Dolly forced a wan smile, which she slowly let die when she saw that Sandy was unmoved by the judge’s sallies. He had stopped crying, but his deep-set eyes were fixed in a cold stare and his long thin body was rigid. Dolly touched his arm, and he began to tremble, all over, like a person in a high fever. As soon as the judge stopped talking, Sandy got up and raced out of the courtroom, without a word to anyone. Dolly followed, alarmed, but she lost him in the press of people. Nobody seemed to care what had happened to him; opinion, even among his own witnesses, had turned against him. He ought to have thought twice, she heard them agree, before washing all that dirty linen in public. That was what had turned the judge against him: a case like that got in the papers and gave the community a bad name with outsiders, which in turn affected rentals and real-estate values. All the judges up here liked to see the lawyers make a stipulation and hear abbreviated testimony. Moral indignation echoed through the corridors. “He’s fouled his own nest,” cried the old woman in slacks, as she limped up to congratulate Clover.
They were so changeable, Dolly thought distractedly. The courthouse emptied, and nobody would help her look for Sandy. They were closing the building before Barney came to her assistance and found him for her, finally, in the men’s toilet, where he had been throwing up. He was in a dreadful state. All the way back in the jeep, she had to keep stopping, for him to vomit by the roadside. In Digby, he had her get out and buy him a pint in the liquor store, which he drank from in silence as they jogged along.
This grief terrified Dolly. She was afraid to speak to him, because any word from her would seem false under the circumstances, for she was not really sorry that he had lost the children, but only sorry for him—more awed than sorry, if the truth were told. She felt very remote from him and small, like a fly speck, because she could not share whatever it was he was feeling. This sense of distance was increased when he came into her cottage and set the pint down on the table, two-thirds empty. He took her face between his hands and began to kiss her, wearily, as if he did not want to. An awful smell came from him, of vomit and raw whiskey; his tongue was sour in her mouth. Slowly, he took her clothes off and told her to lie down on the studio couch. But then, when he was naked, nothing happened; he could not get up an interest, though she did as he directed. All night, he kept retching in her bathroom and coming back to lie with his damp head in her bosom. She was terribly hungry, but he would not let her make tea and toast, to settle his stomach. “Stay here,” he said, whenever she endeavored to move. “We’ll try again in a minute.” “It doesn’t matter,” Dolly would answer, gently, stroking his sweating head. But he could not get the idea of an obligation to her out of his mind. He fell asleep, still fitfully muttering of “having another try.” Just before dawn, Dolly faced the facts, covered him with a blanket and a comforter, and crept into her own bed.