Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

… She had died, after all, his mother. Now he need never tell her. There would never come that moment when he would go into the house and see her face and know she knew. For nothing of him was hidden from her long. There was something between them so hot and close that when he tried to hide a thing from her she knew it. She caught it from him by sight and smell and touch. And he knew when she knew. He was helpless with her, loving her and hating her at the same time because she was so close. She had been too close sometimes so that he was rebellious and wanted to be free of her, flinging himself away from her, flinging himself against her will. He wanted to obey her because he wanted to please her. He was driven to disobey her because she was too close and he loved her more than he wanted to love her.

Now that she was gone, he was half dead too. He wanted her back, he wanted her close again. There was no one in him really except her. As soon as this damned preacher was done talking he’d go and find Fanny.

No, he couldn’t go and find Fanny on the very day of his mother’s funeral. That was worse even than he was. It had been bad enough to go when his mother was dying. But Fanny was the only one who could make him forget. He was trembling with the need to cry. Fanny was the only person to whom he could cry and not be ashamed. When he had put his head down on her breast and cried, “Fanny, she’s going to die!” Fanny had hushed him in her arms and murmured over him richly. “Sweet boy, cry and ease yourself — cry and cry, sweet boy. It’s no shame to cry on me—” He was trembling with the need to cry again …

Joan saw his hands, wet, trembling, twisting. She slipped her hand into his arm and held him. She must take care of them all now — her father, Rose, Frank. She gathered them all to her, they were hers, hers. She would care for them and defend them, comfort them and love them, protect them against everything, even against God.

The people rose and she rose too. The organ was playing quietly, “For all the saints who from their labors rest.” It was nothing to her that Martin was playing, nothing that people were singing softly and sadly to his playing. She would carry on her mother’s life. She would never rest. She would go on doing her mother’s work, working, working, making her mother’s life go on.

“Good-bye, Joan,” the nurse whispered to her as the singing slid to an amen. “I’m catching the train for my next case. I almost didn’t have time for the funeral. But I like to stay to the funerals if I can, especially if I get fond of the patient like I did. I’m lucky today — just got a telegram this morning there was an arthritis case waiting, and, they’re apt to last. Now remember what I said and look out for a little fun for yourself. She was sure a grand case, and I’m sorry she had to go. But don’t sit and grieve.”

“I’ll be very busy,” said Joan steadfastly. She grasped the thick strong hand gratefully and clung to it a little. It was something to cling to for a moment. But almost at once it was pulled heartily away and the ruddy round friendly face disappeared among the faces gathering around her. She lost the rough touch of the hand in many gentle touches of other hands. “Dear Joan, let us do anything we can.” “We’ll all miss her, sir.” “Francis, my boy, Ned says he’ll be over first thing tomorrow — wants you to go hiking if you feel like it. I said I didn’t know if it was the thing—”

Against her cheek Joan felt Mr. Billings’ gusty breath and he whispered windily in her ear, “She was a real lady, your mother was — never niggled over anything — bought it or didn’t buy it, but no complaining like some I know. I’ll be sending the meat up just the same, as nice a side of lamb as I ever had — I said to Mollie you wouldn’t be wanting turkey this Christmas.” There were tears in his small black eyes and they glittered on the insurmountable mounds of his cheeks, and then ran down by his ears. Joan’s heart flew to him. “ Thank you — thank you for your feelings especially,” she said, and somehow for the first time was a little comforted.

Used as she was to leaping from her cot many times in a night, it was strange to lie quietly in her own bed again in her own room, so strange that for long she could not fall asleep. When at last she did sleep it was only for a little while. She woke to find herself standing in the blackness of the night, groping for her mother’s bed. “Yes, yes,” she was muttering, “here I am — here — here—”

But her hand fell on nothing and instantly in the darkness she was awake and she knew what had happened. She remembered that they had put her mother in the churchyard, there on the far side of the church, away from the house. Her mother was lying now in the utter closed darkness of the earth, forever sleeping. For an instant she, too, was in that narrow buried cell. She saw the somber intensely sleeping face. Her hands flew to her breast. Her mother would not be changed yet. Oh, somehow she must get her out and away, into the air again, into life again!

Then she heard the sound of a cough from the next room, her mother’s room. Her father was there. He had moved back again this very night. Into the same bed where he had been used to sleep he had gone, and now he lay alone. She listened. He was awake. She had heard him cough once more and felt a new pity for him. She forgot she had been angry with him. He was alone, too, and she must go to him. She opened the door softly, a small crack. He lay there in the bed, the candle lit beside him, the covers tucked beneath his arms. On his breast he held his large thin hands folded. He was staring ahead of him, but she was not sure he did not sleep. He had opened the windows wide and in the stir of the air the candle threw a moving shadow over his face.

“Father,” she said softly, tentatively. He turned and looked at her from afar off, solemnly.

“What is it?” he asked her.

“I heard you coughing — are you wanting anything?”

He hesitated. “No, nothing,” he replied quietly.

She waited, but he said no more, and she closed the door and went back to her own room, her pity in her still, but now somehow cold.

Ah, but she was cold, her body cold, her feet cold! The air had changed in the night to great cold, and she huddled into her bed, suddenly forlorn and chilled to the heart. And then the pity which was in her turned upon herself and for herself she wept and wept until sleep came at last.

But it was well to weep in the night and have it done. She woke in full dawn spent, with the quietness of one spent for a time, knowing that for a while she had wept her fill. She rose quietly, subdued, with no aching necessity for any weeping, and dressed herself and went downstairs and spoke to Hannah gently. “Good morning, Hannah.”

Hannah was late and untidy. She had not combed her hair and she was moving about slowly, sodden with weeping, ostentatious with grief.

“Let’s try and have everything as cheerful as we can this morning, Hannah,” she said quietly. “Mother would want us to.”

She found a clean tablecloth and put it on the table, and out of all the flowers in the house she found some red roses Miss Kinney had brought. “I bought them,” said Miss Kinney in a piercing whisper. She had not wiped away the tears running down her small withered face. But Mr. Blum had not been willing to use anything except white flowers.

She set the red roses on the table. The sun was careless and beautiful. It shone through the windows as it always did and poured empty cheerfulness into the room. She made everything ready and perfect for them all, postponing sorrow. Even Hannah’s trembling lips did not bring the tears again to her own eyes. She waited while Hannah dried her eyes upon her apron and listened when Hannah asked, “Do you want I should go over your mother’s things for you?”