A Death In The Family (7 page)

Lord, open my heart that I may be worthy in realization of this sorrowful thing, if it must happen, and worthy and of use and comfort to others in their sorrow. Lord God, Lord Jesus, melt away my coldness and apathy of heart, descend and fill my emptiness of heart. And Lord, if it be Thy will, preserve him yet a while, and let me learn to bear my burden more lightly, or to know this burden is a blessing. And if he must be taken, if he is already with Thee now (she crossed herself), may he rest in Thy peace (again she crossed herself).

And Lord, if it be Thy will, that this sorrow must come upon my husband, then I most humbly beseech Thee in Thy mercy that through this tribulation Thou openest my husband’s heart, and awake his dear soul, that he may find comfort in Thee that the world cannot give, and see Thee more clearly, and come to Thee. For there, Lord, as Thou knowest, and not in his poor father or my unworthy feelings, is the true, widening gulf between us.

Lord, in Thy mercy, Who can do all things, close this gulf. Make us one in Thee as we are one in earthly wedlock. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.

She lay somewhat comforted, but more profoundly disturbed than comforted. For she had never before so clearly put into words, into visible recognition, their religious difference, or the importance of the difference to her. And how important is it to him, she wondered. And haven’t I terribly exaggerated my feeling of it? A “gulf”? And “widening”? Was it really? Certainly he never said anything that justified her in such a feeling; nor did she feel anything of that largeness. It really was only that both of them said so very little, as if both took care to say very little. But that was just it. That a thing which meant so much to her, so much more, all the time, should be a thing that they could not share, or could not be open about. Where her only close, true intimate was Aunt Hannah, and her chief love and hope had to rest in the children. That was it. That was the way it seemed bound to widen (she folded her hands, and shook her head, frowning): it was the children. She felt sure that he felt none of Andrew’s anger and contempt, and none of her father’s irony, but it was very clear by his special quietness, when instances of it came up, that he was very far away from it and from her, that he did not like it. He kept his distance, that was it. His distance, and some kind of dignity, which she respected in him, much as it hurt her, by this silence and withdrawal. And it would widen, oh, inevitably, because quiet and gentle as she would certainly try to be about it, they were going to be brought up as she knew she must bring them up, as Christian, Catholic children. And this was bound to come into the home, quite as much as in church. It was bound in some ways, unless he changed; it was bound in some important ways, try as hard and be as good about it as she was sure they both would, to set his children apart from him, to set his own wife apart from him. And not by any action or wish of his, but by her own deliberate will. Lord God, she prayed, in anguish. Am I wrong? Show me if I am wrong, I beseech Thee. Show me what I am to do.

But God showed her only what she knew already: that come what might she must, as a Christian woman, as a Catholic, bring up her children thoroughly and devoutly in the Faith, and that it was also her task, more than her husband’s, that the family remain one, that the gulf be closed.

But if I do this, nothing else that I can do will close it, she reflected. Nothing, nothing will avail.

But I must.

I must just: trust in God, she said, almost aloud. Just: do His will, and put all my trust in Him.

A streetcar passed; Catherine cried.

Chapter 5

“Daddy had to go up to see Grandfather Follet,” their mother explained. “He says to kiss both of you for him and he’ll probably see you before you’re asleep tonight.”

“When?” Rufus asked.

“Way, early this morning, before it was light.”

“Why?”

“Grampa Follet is very sick. Uncle Ralph phoned up very late last night, when all of us were asleep. Grampa has had one of his attacks.”

“What’s attack?”

“Eat your cereal, Catherine. Rufus, eat yours. His heart. Like the one he had that time last fall. Only worse, Uncle Ralph says. He wanted very much to see Daddy, just as quick as Daddy could come.”

“Why?”

“Because he loves Daddy and if ...
Eat
, wicker, or it’ll all be nasty and cold, and
then
you know how you hate to eat it. Because if Daddy didn’t see him soon, Grampa might not get to see Daddy again.”

“Why not?”

“Because Grampa is getting old, and when you get old, you can be sick and not get well again. And if you can’t get well again, then God lets you go to sleep and you can’t see people any more.”

“Don’t you ever wake up again?”

“You wake up right away, in heaven, but people on earth can’t see you any more, and you can’t see them.”

“Oh.”

“
Eat
,” their mother whispered, making a big, nodding mouth and chewing vigorously on air. They ate.

“Mama,” Rufus said, “when Oliver went to sleep did he wake up in heaven too?”

“I don’t know. I imagine he woke up in a part of heaven God keeps specially for cats.”

“Did the rabbits wake up?”

“I’m sure they did if Oliver did.”

“All bloody like they were?”

“No, Rufus, that was only their poor little bodies. God wouldn’t let them wake up all hurt and bloody, poor things.”

“Why did God let the dogs get in?”

“We don’t know, Rufus, but it must be a part of His plan we will understand someday.”

“What good would it do
Him
?”

“Children, don’t dawdle. It’s almost school time.”

“What good would it do
Him
, Mama, to let the dogs in?”

“I don’t know, but someday we’ll understand, Rufus, if we’re very patient. We mustn’t trouble ourselves with these things we can’t understand. We just have to be sure that God knows best.”

“I bet they sneaked in when He wasn’t looking,” Rufus said eagerly. “Cause He sure wouldn’t have let them if He’d been there. Didn’t they, Mama? Didn’t they?”

Their mother hesitated, and then said carefully, “No, Rufus, we believe that God is everywhere and knows everything and nothing can happen without His knowing. But the Devil is everywhere too—everywhere except heaven, that is—and he is always tempting us. When we do what he tempts us to do, then God lets us do it.”

“What’s tempt?”

“Tempt is, well, the Devil tempts us when there is something we want to do, but we know it is bad.”

“Why does God let us do bad things?”

“Because He wants us to make up our own minds.”

“Even to do bad things, right under His nose?”

“He doesn’t
want
us to do bad things, but to know good from bad and be good of our own free choice.”

“Why?”

“Because He loves us and wants us to love Him, but if He just
made
us be good, we couldn’t really love Him enough. You can’t love to do what you are
made
to do, and you couldn’t love God if He
made
you.”

“But if God can do
anything
, why can’t He do that?”

“Because He doesn’t
want
to,” their mother said, rather impatiently.

“Why
doesn’t
He want to?” Rufus said. “It would be so much easier for Him.”

“
God
—
doesn’t
—
believe
—in—the—
easy
—
way
,” she said, with a certain triumph, spacing the words and giving them full emphasis. “Not for us, not for anything or anybody, not even for Himself. God wants us to
come
to Him, to
find
Him, the best we can.”

“Like hide-and-go-seek,” said Catherine.

“What was that?” their mother asked rather anxiously.

“Like hide ...”

“Aw, it isn’t a
bit
like hide-and-seek,
is
it, Mama?” Rufus cut in. “Hidenseek’s just a
game
, just a
game
. God doesn’t fool around playing
games
,
does
He, Mama!
Does
He!
Does
He!”

“
Shame on
you, Rufus,” his mother said warmly, and not without relief. “Why,
shame on
you!” For Catherine’s face had swollen and her mouth had bunched tight, and she glared from her brother to her mother and back again with scalding hot eyes.

“Well He
does
n’t,” Rufus insisted, angry and bewildered at the turn the discussion had taken.

“That’s
enough
, Rufus,” his mother whipped out sternly, and leaned across and patted Catherine’s hand, which made Catherine’s chin tremble and her tears overflow. “That’s
all right
, little wicker! That’s
all right
! He doesn’t play games. Rufus is right about that, but it
is
, someways it
is
like hide-and-seek. You’re ab-so-lootly
right
!”

But with this, Catherine was dissolved, and Rufus sat aghast, less at her crying, which made him angry and jealous, than at his sudden solitude. But her crying was so miserable that, angry and jealous as he was, he became ashamed, then sorry for her, and was trying, helplessly, to find a way of showing that he was sorry when his mother glanced up at him fiercely and said, “
Now you march
and get ready for school. I ought to tell Daddy, you’re a
bad boy
!”

At the door, a few minutes later, when she leaned to kiss him good-bye and saw his face, she mistook the cause of it and said, more gently but very earnestly: “Rufus, I can see you’re sorry, but you mustn’t be mean to Catherine. She’s just a little
girl
, your
little sister
, and you mustn’t ever be unkind to her and hurt her feelings. Do you understand?
Do
you, Rufus?”

He nodded, and felt terribly sorry for his sister and for himself because of the gentleness in his mother’s voice.

“Now you come back and tell her how sorry you are, and
hurry
, or you’ll be late for school.”

He came in shyly with his mother and came up to Catherine; her face was swollen and red and she looked at him bleakly.

“Rufus wants to tell you how sorry he is, Catherine, he hurt your feelings,” their mother said.

Catherine looked at him, brutally and doubtfully.

“I
am
sorry, Catherine,” he said. “Honest to goodness I am. Because you’re a little,
little girl
, and ...”

But with this Catherine exploded into a roar of angry tears, and brought both fists down into her plate, and Rufus, dumfounded, was hustled brusquely off to school.

Chapter 6

When Jay found how things were at the farm, he was angry at having been so grieved and alarmed; before long, he felt it had all happened very much as he had suspected. Ralph had just lost his head, as usual. Now he was very much ashamed of himself, though still very defensive, and everyone, including Jay, tried to assure him that he had done the right thing. Jay could imagine how much Ralph had needed to feel useful, to take charge. He couldn’t think very well of him, but he was sorry for him. He felt he understood very well how it had happened.

Actually, he understood only a little about it, and Ralph understood very little more.

Late in the evening before, their father had suffered a much more severe and painful attack than any up to then. After no more than a few minutes, his wife had realized its terrible gravity, and had woken Thomas Oaks. Thomas had hurried across the hill and roused up Jessie and George Bailey and, without waiting for them, had hurried back, saddled the horse, and whipped it as fast as it would go, into LaFollette. The doctor was out on a call; he left a message, and hurried on to Ralph’s. Ralph was in a virtual panic of aroused responsibility the instant he heard the news. He asked if the doctor was there yet. Thomas told him; Ralph realized that his mother had told Thomas to rush out the doctor even before he called her son to her side. He put it aside as an ungenerous and mean-spirited thought, yet it stayed, hurting him like a burr. He felt it was no time for resentments, though; not only he, but Sally as well, must come to their help, must be there (Sally’d never forgive me if she wasn’t) if Paw was to die (she’d be the only wife there, of the only son; his mother would never forget that). He rushed back and told her what was happening as he hurried into his clothes, hurried two doors away, banged loudly on the Felts’s door, and apologized for the banging by explaining (his voice was already damp) that his Paw was at death’s door if not already passed on, and he wouldn’t have roused them only he knew they would be only too willing to help out so Sally could go too. They were very kind to him; Mrs. Felts arrived before Sally had finished fixing her hair. While she was doing so, Ralph sped across the street to his office, unlocked his desk, and took two choking swallows of whiskey in the dark. He rammed the bottle into his pocket and hurried down to start his car. They had been so quick that they overtook Thomas on his horse when he had scarcely passed the edge of town, going, as Ralph said to himself, his eyes low and cold above the steering wheel, “like sixty,” or anyhow as fast as it was safe to travel on these awful roads, perhaps a little faster, thinking of Barney Oldfield, in the Chalmers he had chosen because it was a better class of auto and a more expensive one than his brother’s, a machine people made no smart jokes about. His first impulse, when he saw the horse and rider ahead, was to honk, both in self-advertisement, warning and greeting, but he remembered in time the seriousness of the occasion and did not do so, reflecting, after it was too late, that Thomas might feel he was snubbed, as if he had passed him in the street without speaking, and he was angry with Thomas for possibly having any such feeling about such petty matters, at such a time.

There were nearly two hours of helpless anguish and fright before the doctor arrived. During that time it is possible that Ralph suffered more acutely than anyone else. For besides suffering, or believing that he suffered, all the pains that his father must be experiencing, and all of his mother’s grief and anxiety, and all of the smaller emotions of all the smaller people who were present, he suffered deep humiliation. When he rushed in and swept his mother into his arms he felt that his voice and his whole manner were all that they ought to be; that he showed himself to be a man who, despite his own boundless grief, was capable also of boundless strength to sustain others in their grief, and to take complete charge of all that needed to be done. But even in that first embrace he could see that his mother was only by an effort concealing her desire to draw away from him. He came near her over and over again, hugging her, sobbing over her, fondling her, telling her that she must be brave, telling her she must not try to be brave, to lean on him, and cry her heart out, for naturally at such a time she would want to feel her sons close around her; but every time, he felt that same patient stiffening and her voice perplexed him. Everyone in the room, even Ralph in the long run, knew that he was only making things harder for her; only his mother realized that he was beseeching comfort rather than bringing it. She was not in the least angry with him; she was sorry for him and wished that she could be of more help to him, but her mind was not on him, her heart was not with him, and his sobs and the stench of his breath made her a little sick at her stomach. What perplexed him in her voice was its remoteness. He began to realize that he was bringing her no comfort, that she was not leaning on him, that just as he had always feared, she did not really love him. He redoubled his efforts to soothe her and to be strong for her. The harder he tried, the more remote her voice became. At the end of a half hour her face was no less desperate than it had been when he first saw her. And he began to feel that everyone else was watching him, and knew he was no use, and that his mother did not love him. The women watched him one way, the men watched him another. He felt that his wife was thinking ill of him, that she was not even sorry for him; he felt slobbering and fat, the way she looked at him and suddenly with terrible hatred was sure that she would prefer to sleep with flat-bellied men—what man?
Any
man, so long as his belly don’t get in the way. As for Jessie, he knew she had always hated him, as much as he hated her. And George Bailey just sitting there looking serious and barrel-chested and always being careful to look away when their eyes met: George thought he was twice the man that Ralph was and twice as good right at this time, better with his in-laws than Ralph could be with his own flesh and blood; and they all knew that George was twice the man and were just trying not to say it or think it even, or let Ralph know they thought it. And even Thomas Oaks, an ignorant hand, who couldn’t even read or write, just setting there with his ropy hands hung between his knees, staring down at a knot in the floor with those washed-out blue eyes, even Tom was more of a man and more good use too. When Tom got up and said if there wasn’t nothing he could do he reckoned he would get on up to the loft, but if there was anything, they would just let him know, Ralph understood it. He knew Tom might be ignorant but he wasn’t so ignorant but he knew when it was best to leave a family to itself; and when Ralph’s mother said, “All right, Tom,” Ralph heard more life and kindness, and more gratefulness in her voice, than in every word she’d said to him, the whole night; and as he watched Tom climb the ladder, heavily and quietly, rung by rung, he thought: there goes more of a man than I am, he knows how to take himself out of the way, and he thought: he’s doing a power more good by going than I can by staying, and he thought: every soul in this room wishes it was me that was going, instead of him, and he called, in a voice which sounded unfriendly, though he had meant to make it sound friendly to everyone except Tom, “That’s right, Tom, get ye some sleep”; and Tom pulled his head back through the ceiling and looked down at him with those empty blue eyes and said, “That’s all right, Mr. Ralph,” and suddenly Ralph realized that he had no intention of sleeping and would be there alone, not sleeping a wink, just ready in case he was needed; and that Tom had seen his malice, his desire to belittle him, and had belittled him instead, before his mother and his wife and his dying father. “That’s all right, Mr. Ralph.” What’s all right? What’s all right? He wanted to yell it at him, “What’s all right, you poor-white-trash son-of-a-bitch?” but he restrained himself.