The Golden Goose (3 page)

“Princess, my child,” chirped Aunt Lallie, “where is your Uncle Slater?”

“Search me,” Prin said; and at Cousin Twig's evil side-glance from the piano she immediately regretted her choice of words. “I thought he'd surely be down by this time.”

“If he's in the house, child. No one's seen him since morning. He certainly didn't show up for lunch.”

“Well, I saw him come home about two o'clock and go upstairs. So he must be in his room, unless he went out again.”

“Uncle Slater this, Uncle Slater that,” said Cousin Twig from the piano. “To hell with Uncle Slater. Why can't we eat without him?”

“Because it's his food, and his house,” Prin said. “That's why. The least we can do is to pay him the courtesy of waiting for him.”

“But Princess,” Aunt Lallie said anxiously, “if he's in the house, why isn't he down here? You know how disagreeable Mrs. Dolan becomes if anyone is late to her table.”

“To hell with Mrs. Dolan, too,” said Cousin Twig. He stabbed a sad little B-flat with his claw, and it shrieked in protest. “Anyway, the old
shtunk
is probably up there sleeping off a toot.”

Prin glared at the back of Cousin Twig's tall, pale head. She did not think Twig ought to refer to Uncle Slater as a
shtunk
, not because Uncle Slater hadn't been one in his time, but because it seemed unfair for an ex-
shtunk
to be called a
shtunk
by a practicing one.

“A toot,” frowned Aunt Lallie. “Princess, would you say the condition of your Uncle Slater when he came home at two o'clock justifies Twig's charge?”

“I only saw him for a few seconds from a distance, Aunt Lallie. But he looked all right to me—maybe a little cheerful—and anyway he didn't have the least trouble getting up the stairs.”

“That's not necessarily indicative, child. I've known your Uncle Slater to carry a quart of Irish in him without showing it. You know how he is—drinks with both hands the live-long day without a sign and then, whup! down he goes.”

“Well, I'm not very bright or anything like that,” Cousin Peet said, in one of her unexpected exhibitions of intelligence, “but it seems to me that the question of whether Uncle Slater is in his room, drunk or sober, could be settled in a minute by somebody's going up to see.”

She sat up on the sofa and yawned and stretched. Brother Brady stirred in his chair and muttered something under his breath that no one could hear, which was probably just as well. Aunt Lallie looked at Peet with an expression of surprise and pride.

“Peet darling, that's
clever
of you! Prin dear, you're Slater's favorite—you'll run less risk of abuse if he wakes up in a bad humor. Please go upstairs like a good girl and see if he's in his room.”

“I'll go with you, if you want me to,” Cousin Twig said suddenly.

“No, thanks,” Prin said. “I don't want you to.”

She went upstairs to Uncle Slater's room and knocked. There was no answer. She knocked again. There was still no answer. So she tried the doorknob. It turned, and she pushed softly.

The room was on the dim side, it now being nearly seven o'clock, but Prin saw Uncle Slater immediately—at first glance he appeared to be asleep. But at second glance she noticed a couple of oddities: He was sleeping on his face instead of on his back, and on the floor instead of his bed. Considering the peculiar disposition of his arms and legs, he looked not so much like a man sleeping off a drunk as like a drunk who had had an accident.

It was disturbing, finding Uncle Slater like that, and for a moment Prin stood still in the doorway with a large hot rock in her throat. Her mind continued to function, however, and it told her coldly that Uncle Slater was (A) drunk, or (B) ill, or (C) dead. She tiptoed over to the bed and knelt beside him. It was at once evident that Uncle Slater was neither (A) drunk nor (B) ill, because he was not breathing. That meant he must be (C) dead.

Prin kept kneeling beside her uncle. Her position seemed just right for prayer, so she tried to think a little prayer, but it simply wouldn't come. Then she tried to cry, with equal lack of success. Uncle Slater was dead, and nothing was going to change that, not the saying of prayers nor the shedding of tears, nor
anything
. All she could do was go away. So Princess O'Shea left the quiet bedroom on tiptoe, leaving part of herself with Uncle Slater, who looked so all used up on the floor.

The family was still in the living room downstairs, but someone new had been added. Mrs. Dolan was standing there with her club-like forearms jutting out from her prodigious hips. Dinner was getting stony, she was saying, and if anyone thought she was going to wait around half the night to do the dishes they could find themselves another cook, and anyway cooks oughtn't to have to do dishes. The only thing that kept Mrs. Dolan going was the lure of the TV set in her basement room; everyone knew that the best programs were in the evening, so in Mrs. Dolan's view any delay was by malice aforethought.

“Well,” sniffed Mrs. Dolan at sight of Prin. “And is himself going to come down for my dinner, or ain't he?”

Prin said in a voice that she had difficulty recognizing as her own, “No, himself is definitely not coming down for your dinner, Mrs. Dolan.”

“Then the devil take him,” cried Mrs. Dolan, “and the rest of you, too. You can roust your own dinners!” and off she stamped to her own nether region and the television set.

“What did I tell you?” chuckled Cousin Twig. “He's dead to the world, eh, Prin?”

“That,” said Prin tremulously, “he is.”

“Shut up, Twig,” growled Brother Brady. “Can't you see something's wrong? She's the color of mud. What is it, Prin?”

“Uncle Slater's dead.”

There was a considerable silence. Everyone seemed to be trying to digest Prin's statement except Cousin Peet who, while her lips were moistly parted as usual, seemed unable even to swallow it. Cousin Twig swung the short legs hanging from his long shanks around to the room side of the piano bench, and he stared at Prin with a stare that for once had no slaver in it. Brother Brady was frowning preparatory to some powerful action, like striding over to the bar and perhaps drinking a toast to Uncle Slater's memory. As for little Aunt Lallie, she became so agitated that she actually stopped looking at the wall and gestured at Prin with the smoldering cigarette holder in her big hairy hand.

“Now
Prin,”
said Aunt Lallie. “It's in the worst possible taste to make a remark like that. Shame on you!”

“Yes,” snarled Cousin Twig, “there are some things that are just not funny. You know perfectly well I'm depending on Uncle Slater to live forever. So stop making with the dirty jokes.”

“I repeat,” said Prin O'Shea wearily. “Uncle Slater is lying up there dead on the floor of his bedroom, and one of us had better call his doctor to make it official.”

There was another, this time stricken, silence.

“Well,” said Cousin Peet, slithering off the sofa. “Anyone for dinner?”

3

It was Prin, in the end, who called the doctor. It was almost always Prin, in the end, who did the things that needed doing. Uncle Slater's late wife's first husband's family physician was an elderly curmudgeon named Dr. Horace Appleton, and Prin looked up his telephone number in the directory in the hall. Dr. Appleton answered the phone with a kind of yelp, like an incensed terrier, and she told him hurriedly that he must come over at once to see Uncle Slater. It was Dr. Appleton's opinion, shrilly told, that Uncle Slater could probably wait without serious consequences until tomorrow, at which time he could come to the office. Prin replied that Uncle Slater could wait, all right, but that he couldn't possibly come to the office, tonight or tomorrow or ever.

“Why can't he?”

“Because he's dead.”

“How do you know he's dead?”

“Because he's lying on the floor in his room,” Prin said, “and he isn't breathing.”

“In that case,” Dr. Appleton said, “I'll come right over.” And he did.

It took him about twenty minutes to get there. In the meantime, Prin went back to the living room and sat quietly with Aunt Lallie and Cousin Twig, who had mixed himself a large dark highball in lieu of solid nourishment and was mumbling obscenities to the memory of his uncle. Then, unexpectedly, Cousin Peet and Brother Brady came back from the dining room, having decided that eating was not something they wanted to do after all, especially since they had to serve themselves in the face of Mrs. Dolan's defection. Brother Brady headed for the bar.

“Prin,” he scowled, mixing drinks for himself and Peet, “are you absolutely sure Uncle Slater is dead?”

“I suppose an autopsy would establish it beyond question,” said Prin, “but, as a layman, I'm satisfied that he is, yes.”

“I wonder,” said Aunt Lallie to the empty air. “I mean, if the rest of us ought to rely on your judgment, child, in a matter of such importance.”

“Then don't,” said Prin. “Anyone's free to go upstairs and form his own judgment.”

“Twig?” said Aunt Lallie. “Brady?”

“Not me, thank you,” said Twig. “I've been avoiding dead people all my life. I don't like dead people.” It was rather like hearing the Giant confide in Jack that he didn't care for bread made from the bones of Englishmen, Prin thought. “You do it, Brady.”

“Well,” said Brady. Then he brightened. “Sure. I'll go. If Peet will go with me. What do you say, Peet?”

“No.”

“Oh, come on. There's nothing to be afraid of.”

“Oh, no?” said Peet. “Well, I'm not going.” And she took the drink from Brady's hand and curled up on the sofa again, the velvet of her Capri pants threatening to split. Brady studied them hopefully.

It was apparent to everyone that Uncle Slater, dead or alive, had nothing to do with Peet's declining Brady's invitation. Brady, looking sullenly dangerous again, went upstairs alone. He was back in remarkably short order, a little blue around the edges.

“Prin was right,” he said, heading for the bar. “Uncle Slater is completely dead.” He laced his highball powerfully and threw his head back and drank like Thor trying to drain the sea.

“Completely dead?” said Peet. “You mean it's possible to be incompletely dead?” In Peet's primitive state of intelligence, she sometimes exercised a disconcerting logic. “I don't believe you can be incompletely dead.”

“Atta girl, Peet,” her brother Twig sneered. “Any more than you can be slightly pregnant.”

“Please,” Peet said haughtily. “I don't like people who use risqué language.”

“Yes, Twig,” sniffled Aunt Lallie. Now that Uncle Slater's veritable decease had been established to her satisfaction, she had her dainty handkerchief in her outsize hand and was punching at her eyes with it. “And your uncle lying up there dead.”

“What am I supposed to do, sob?” snarled her nephew. “It was damn inconsiderate of him to kick off, Aunt Lallie—as if you didn't know it!”

“Well, it's true a man Slater's age ought to have taken better care of himself,” wept Aunt Lallie. “After all, he did have a responsibility to his family.”

“Look,” said Brady. “Dying was his own business. But that will he left—that's our business.” He added in gloomy afterthought, “Some business!”

“How much am I going to get?” asked Peet with a trace of anxiety.

“Enough to keep you in clothes,” growled Brady, “which, considering how little you need for that purpose, doesn't comfort me a damn bit.”

“Peet,” said Twig, “do you think you can add five—the five of us—to the seventeen outside O'Sheas? Don't bother, it's twenty-two. You heard Uncle Slater. How much of a slice can you expect from a pie cut into twenty-two pieces?”

“That was
mean
of him,” Peet said angrily.

Aunt Lallie broke off in mid-sniffle. “I just thought. Let's break the will! It isn't as if Slater were in his right mind. If he had been, he'd have left his entire estate to me. After all, I'm his sister.”

“I have news for you, Aunt Lallie,” said her nephew Twig with a certain malevolent enjoyment. “I'd rather have one twenty-second of a sane uncle's estate than nothing of a crazy one's. So I'm prepared to fight. Right, Brady? You with me?”

“I guess so,” said Brady glumly, “though it would have been a lot simpler if he'd left everything to Prin. Then we could all have stayed on here on the old basis, just as if Uncle Slater hadn't died at all.”

Prin wondered if that were true, or if she would have thrown them out to shift for themselves. But she supposed that in the end she'd have permitted them to stay, for it
was
Uncle Slater's money, and Uncle Slater had observed the family tradition that no O'Shea was expected to work seriously at anything, or to starve as a consequence of not doing so. It would have been a moral obligation. Prin sighed and stirred, ashamed of herself. What was she thinking? She was as bad as the others, speculating over the material considerations while Uncle Slater grew progressively colder and stiffer upstairs, like the dinner he hadn't been able to come down to eat.

At that moment the doorbell began to ring petulantly. It was automatic for Prin to get up to answer it, since no one else paid the least attention and Mrs. Dolan was in her room deaf to everything but the biff-bang cowboy show she was raptly watching.

The annoyed finger on the bell belonged to Dr. Appleton, who came in carrying a black bag, although what for—under the circumstances—Prin couldn't imagine. Dr. Appleton looked very much put out, as if Uncle Slater had played the worst trick of all on him. He was at least seventy, but he moved like a young man—or a gnome, Prin thought, for he was short and stocky and quick and sly and his face was full of bristly gray hair.