Maeve Brennan - The Visitor

“But, more than anything else in the world, I want to wear it in my coffin. It’s all I want now. It’s all I ask of anybody, to be let wear his ring. So will you put it on my hand then, and say a prayer for the two of us when you put in on, and hide it over with the rosary? Will you promise to do this, Anastasia?”

“I promise.”

“My hand will be very cold, but you mustn’t be frightened. God bless you, you are a dear child.”

From beneath the sheet she took a tiny package wrapped in tissue paper. Anastasia understood, and received it in her open palm. Miss Kilbride settled back, satisfied, and fixed her eyes directly on Anastasia.

“Well, I’ve talked your head off.”

She laughed in embarrassment.

“Will you have another cigarette?”

“No thanks. I’ll go along now. I think you should rest.”

“Maybe you’re right. I’m very tired. Will you come again soon?”

“I will come soon. I’ll come very soon.”

“Will you help me off with this shawl? I want to sleep a little.”

Anastasia took the soft shawl and put it on a chair by the bed. Miss Kilbride looked at her with wistful, loving eyes.

“I wonder what the others thought of him, the ones I knew. It doesn’t matter, but I often thought they might have laughed at him and his weekly visit. And then after, I had an illness and began to lose my hair. I’m a fright now, but they say in heaven we’re all thirty-three, no matter what age we live to here on earth. Do you believe that?”

“Yes, I’m sure of it.”

Miss Kilbride began to smile, and fell asleep instead.

Anastasia picked up her purse. She slipped the tiny package into it, and went softly downstairs. She paused at the door of the sitting room and looked in. There was the hard little settee, an improbable place for romance. There were the two china dogs, guarding the fireplace with curly gaze. And over the fireplace the mother’s portrait, the wide blue eyes, the long closed mouth.

She walked out along the shallow path. At the gate she turned to look up at Miss Kilbride’s window. It was blind and closed, like a person sleeping. Like Miss Kilbride, lying on her back in difficult slumber. And later, waking to dream of a doubtful deadily union with her long-lost young hero, with whom she had once struggled in valiant, well-dressed immodesty on a small settee, for love’s sake.

Anastasia questioned her grandmother about it at suppertime.

She said, “I was over visiting Miss Kilbride today.”

“God help her, I’m afraid she’s not getting much better. Ah, she won’t be with us very much longer, I think.”

Anastasia took a piece of bread and placed it on her plate.

“She was telling me about a young man she was in love with one time. Did you ever know him?”

The grandmother looked at her in malicious amusement.

“Is she on to him again? No, I never knew him. It was a great affair, but some of us wondered if there was as much to it as she thought. What did she tell you about him?”

“Oh, nothing much. She said he was drowned.”

“I believe he was. She took it very hard.”

She stared at the eggs on her plate and poked at them.

“Eggs are plentiful this year, Katharine tells me. The laburnum will be good this year. It has been mild enough so far. We won’t be needing the fire much longer at this rate.”

Katharine marched in with the jam.

She said, “There are a few snowdrops in the back garden. I’ll pick them in time for you to take with you tomorrow.”

They all knew what she meant. Mrs King visited her son’s grave every afternoon.

She said now in a pensive voice, “I ordered my name put on his stone. On John’s stone. I want it the way I want it. I want no mistake about the way it is.”

Katharine did not go away. She began to cut bread, slice after slice, very slowly. She sliced away noiselessly, and her fingers held the pulpy bread in a delicate grasp.

Anastasia said, “We’d better order my mother’s name put on it too. I wanted her brought home. I know the way she wanted it. She wrote it out for me one time. I have it in my missal.”

Her voice was surprised and breathless, as though she had hardly meant to speak. She began to smile, to make things natural and conversational, but her lips were dry.

The grandmother said pleasantly, “Surely you’re not thinking of that, Anastasia. It’s out of the question, all the way from Paris. What put that in your head?” She took a finger of bread and dipped it into the egg on her plate.

Anastasia said, faltering, “She was counting on it. I promised it to her, when it would be possible. I don’t know why I didn’t mention it before this. It wouldn’t cost too much. She wanted to be with my father.”

“Then, dear child, why did she not stay here?”

“She wanted just to get away for a little while. And then she was afraid to come back. All the time we were away she kept saying, Maybe we’ll go back next year. She did want to come.”

“Anastasia, I do not mean to speak ill of the dead, least of all your mother, but she was never able to make up her mind. It’s childish to think of bringing her all the way back, and it’s silly. A body is only a body after all, and she has a Catholic grave, I trust.”

Anastasia found with astonishment that she was still sitting at the table in the place where she had been. Katharine had finished cutting up the loaf and now she was patting it with both hands, trying to put it back together. She stared at Anastasia with terrified, tear-laden eyes. Anastasia looked away from her and looked at her grandmother, who was pretending to eat. She saw the miserable gate of her defeat already open ahead. There only remained for her to come up to it and pass through it and be done with it. Be done with it, she thought, be done with it. She advanced toward her grandmother’s passionless gaze with frightened thin-voiced pleading and no fight in her at all.

“Ah, Grandma, don’t you remember her? Don’t you remember her at all? Don’t say that. Don’t you remember the way she used to be here with us? Katharine, you say—”

She choked and the tears ran down her face. She ran around the table and took her grandmother’s hand.

“Be kind, Grandma, don’t leave her there alone. It wouldn’t cost much. Please, she isn’t just a body.”

She sobbed out loud, to her distress. She saw that Katharine looked piteously at her. Her hand felt clammy and she took it away from her grandmother. She thought, How unpleasant it must feel, for her to touch.

“You’re a little hysterical, Anastasia, and you’re upsetting me. I’m sorry if you’re disappointed, but it’s out of the question. There’s no question, and never has been, of moving your mother’s body. It’s not a matter of money, as you know full well. I doubt very much if your father would have wanted it. Now please sit down and finish your supper.”

Anastasia leaned against a chair and spoke to her grandmother.

“You never liked her at all, and you made her feel it. You’re trying to make her feel it still. But you can’t any more. I’ll bring her home on my own.”

“This is ridiculous, this quarrel over a grave.” She cast a nervous look at Katharine. “I am his mother, and my place is with him. His place is with me. God knows I loved him more than anyone else ever loved him, my only child. He should never have married, and he knew it himself, to his grief.”

Katharine blessed herself.

“God forgive you,” cried Anastasia. “How can you say the like of that? I’ll bring her home and bury her here, no matter what you say.”

The grandmother gave her a cold compassionate look.

“You’re all worked up, child. It’s bad for you. There’s room for only one more in the grave, and my name will be on the headstone. Why don’t you stop all this nonsense? Katharine, take her upstairs and give her some hot milk.”