Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

Rose was standing at the head of the stairs, her hands full of her things, looking at Joan two steps behind. She smiled a little at the idea of Frank, her small cool smile. Then she pulled the moment before them.

“Now tell me,” she said.

“Come into my room first,” said Joan.

Rose was strange. Rose was different from what Joan had thought. Rose did not need to be shielded, for all her soft looks and small gentle voice and mild slow ways. She looked steadily at Joan, listening. It was Joan who broke, not Rose. Joan flung her head into the pillows of her bed where they sat and Joan cried as she had not yet cried, even to herself. “She’s going to die — she has to die — I’ve told her again and again that I won’t let her die, but I’ve got to — we can’t do a thing!” She felt Rose’s smooth, very soft hand stroking her quietly. There was quiet in the touch but not warmth. So any kind stranger might touch her if she wept. She sat up abruptly and pushed back her rumpled hair. “I’m tired, I suppose—”

“Yes, of course you are,” said Rose. “Now I’ll help.” Her face was serious and kind, but there were no tears in her eyes. “Shall we go in?” she asked.

So they went into the mother’s room and Rose went straight to the bed. Joan had dressed her mother freshly and put on a new bed-jacket of shell-pink. Her mother had many pretty bedjackets now, for Joan had said boldly to Mrs. Winters, to Miss Kinney, to Mrs. Parsons, when they asked, “If you really want to give her something, give her a pretty bed-jacket. She loves pretty things.” So they made her pretty, extravagant things of lace and silk and Joan held them before her mother’s half-blinded eyes and they made a variety of it for the days.

“The new pink one for Rose to see,” her mother had clamored childishly. She had kept off the sleep a while, a long while, nearly fifteen minutes, when she was dressed, and Joan had plucked a pink geranium bloom from a pot in the window and put it in the snowy coil of her hair and had held a mirror for her to see it. She held the mirror high to show the lovely hair, the flower, the brow, the eyes; she held it high to hide the wasted cheeks, the withered lips.

“I look right nice,” her mother said with content, her eyelids dropping.

“You look lovely,” said Joan fervently.

But sleep had clutched her while she waited. She lay deeply asleep, the flower in her hair, and the two daughters stood looking at her, and Joan watching Rose. But Rose said nothing. She looked quietly at the face and said nothing, she breathed the faint vile odor and said nothing. Suddenly her mother’s eyes opened and recognition came up like a light breaking through dark deep water. “It’s Rose—”

“Yes, Mother dear.” Rose stooped and kissed her forehead.

“I’m all dressed up,” her mother began brightly. “New clothes — Joan put a flower in my hair—” She drowsed again and they stood silently while she slept.

“She’s sleeping her life away,” Joan whispered. “But if it were not this it would be pain, Dr. Crabbe says — better sleep than pain. Only it seems to take her so far away — already.”

Rose nodded and said nothing. Joan could not endure the silence. Would Rose never speak, never cry out “Oh, Joan — Joan — Joan—,” never weep? But Rose did not cry out nor weep.

“You’ll want to go and unpack,” said Joan at last, and Rose went docilely away.

Thus alone again Joan sat down in the old rocking chair and rocked softly to and fro while her mother slept. She looked out into the late winter’s afternoon. She could see only the stark black branches of trees against a pale orange sky, a sky orange with a band of apple-green above. The sun had already set and it was the sunset’s afterglow.

So after all, they were still alone together, Joan and her mother. Rose, careful, helpful, gentle Rose, could not join them. She came and went and fetched what was wanted and saved Joan in many ways, but in the end Joan must sleep by her mother and Joan must be near.

For now through the sleep came the deep waves of awaking pain and her mother cried for Joan. “Joan — Joan — where’s Joan? — pain, Joan—”

She forgot all her children except Joan, and she forgot that Joan was her child. Joan was her nurse, her mother, her one to lean upon. She forgot even Francis now. Sometimes when he came in she fixed her eyes upon him, her eyes small and shrunken in her face puffed with the poison in her. She said in her hoarse loud voice, “When Frank was little I made him red suits.”

“Sure, Mom,” shouted Frank. “I remember them — red with an anchor on the sleeves and stars on the collars.”

But she did not hear him. “Where’s Joan — Joan—”

“Here, dear.” She must always be there, there until the end. Dr. Crabbe said, “Got to have a trained nurse now, my dear. No reflection on you two girls, but there’ve got to be different hypodermics and things—”

So they had a trained nurse, but still Joan must be near, near to her mother and near to them all while they waited. Now her mother scarcely woke at all except when the father came in. However deeply she slept, she woke when he came in and cried out uneasily in her hoarse dry loud voice, “Who is it? Go away—”

“It’s Paul, Mary,” he said timidly. All of them could look at her and bear it, but he could not. He looked at this swollen misshapen creature and sweat stood on his white forehead. Once he forced himself and took her swollen hand in his. She cried aloud, and he dropped it. “Go away, Paul,” she muttered, opening her eyes suddenly. He went away, bewildered. Why did she hate him? He had been a good husband. He was a good husband now. He went away and poured out his soul to God, forgiving her.

“Lord!” said the trained nurse, smirking at Joan as she tucked in a hot-water bottle. “It’s plain there wasn’t much love lost between those two!”

But Joan would not answer.

No one of them could say the word death. Death was in the house; already death must be planned for, considered, but the word could not be spoken.

“What’ll you bury her in, Miss Joan?” Hannah began, moaning. She paused in her sweeping to stare mournfully at Joan. “Her lavender or—”

“Don’t!” said Joan sharply. “She’s still here.”

She went on her way upstairs. Cruel and wicked death, not to come swift and clean! Death should come clean by lightning, clean and sudden by sword, or swift by sea or by accident, not this long slow planned dying. The body should be consumed by immediate death, broken to atoms, burned to ashes, utterly destroyed. “I’ve got to get out,” cried Francis desperately. He stopped her in the hall, his face pale. “I’ve got to go away. I can’t stand this — this waiting. If it’s got to come why doesn’t it come? I hate waiting—”

She seized him by the arm and shook him. “You’ll stand what we all have to stand!” she shouted furiously. “I’m so tired I can’t sit down without falling asleep. But I must go on, and so must you—”

He rushed past her, out of the house and slammed the door. He was away somewhere all the time now. She strode still furious to her mother’s room. She was not anxious about him. He would fling himself off somewhere for the day, but at night he would be back.

She was so tired she was cross with Rose, willing earnest Rose, whose soft white pretty hands were so strangely clumsy, who dropped a hypodermic needle she was given to hold and grieved so much that she could not be scolded. But sometimes Joan was so tired she did scold. “Rose, how can you be so stupid!” But there was no satisfaction in it. The shallow gentle hazel eyes widened a little, and Rose said nothing. But soon she slipped away to her own room to pray. Joan knew. Once, contrite, she had followed Rose and opened the door. Rose was on her knees by the bed, her face in the curve of her arm, her eyes closed, her lips moving a little. Joan closed the door abruptly. Rose did not need her contrition. Rose had her comfort. Soon she came back, her eyes placid, her lips curved in tranquillity. “Shall I fill the hot-water bottle now, Joan?” Joan, wanting to cry out at her, “Why do you ask me — why don’t you feel it and find out?” said gently, “Yes, please, Rose.”