Brad Watson - Miss Jane

He drank headlong into and out the other side of melancholy, laid himself down beside the glowing warmth of the fire’s coals to rest and try to empty his mind, the soft glow of firelight on the leaves above.

It was nearing noon the next day when Jane came home from a walk to the grocery and saw the doctor’s pickup at the curb in front of the house. At first her heart lifted, but then she felt something cold and viscous flood into it.

When she stepped into the parlor, she saw the doctor and Grace sitting in the two chairs by the bay window, partially drunk cups of coffee on saucers on the table between them, seeming to have quietly awaited her arrival into the world from some long, childish dream. The doctor stood, his hat in his hands. She set her sack of groceries down on the floor.

“It’s Papa,” Grace said. “He passed.”

“What happened?”

“Went quietly,” the doctor said. “In his sleep.”

Dr. Thompson offered to drive them both up home, but Grace said she would drive her own car so she could come into town to check on things if she needed to.

“You know he came to see me yesterday, after leaving here,” she said. When neither replied to that she said, “He wanted me to quit my job.”

After an awkward silence, Jane said, “Was he still angry, Grace?”

Grace looked at her, an unfamiliar emotion in her face.

“He seemed more sad than angry, I thought,” she said. “I hate my last words to him were so harsh.”

No one said anything and it was quiet in the room. Death was in the room and they were quiet in its presence. Then Grace gathered her bag and keys and left.

Jane and Dr. Thompson were quiet during the drive up, the doctor taking it slow. At first they drove in the wake of billowing dust and slung gravel from Grace’s Plymouth until she pulled well ahead, out of sight. And only then, as if Grace could have heard them before, Jane said, “What happened?”

The doctor, who’d been seeming to chew on something, a habit with his mouth he’d taken up in his age, was quiet a long moment. Then he said, “No mystery. I guess he finally drank himself to death.”

“He’s been doing that a long time,” Jane said.

“Well. That’s pretty much how it’s done.”

They drove a good mile without speaking. The hem of her light fabric dress fluttered against the layered slips she’d taken to wearing and she pressed it down against them, to keep it still. She noticed the doctor glance over discreetly.

“I don’t really read it as liver failure,” he said. “Most likely his heart. Heavy drink will do that. Plus his heavy smoking.”

Jane watched the road ahead.

“I guess it was a worse binge than the usual,” the doctor said. “Or one too many.”

“How is Mama taking it?” Jane said.

“She’s quiet.”

After a while, Jane said, “Was he in the house?”

“She found him down at his shed. He’d been down there all night. She woke up and he wasn’t at the house, and she made coffee and breakfast, all but the eggs. When he still hadn’t showed she went down and found him there. Lying on the ground next to the little fire pit. It was just smoldering a bit. There was a nearly empty jug. Doesn’t mean he drank it all last night, though. He was lying like he’d lain down to go to sleep. Not like he’d fallen. Gets chilly at night, this time of year. Alcohol lowers the body temperature, actually. Could have been exposure involved, too. His little fire seemed long cold, time I got there.”

After a while, Jane said, “I wonder what she’s going to do now. She always seemed like she just wanted people to leave her alone, but being alone like this, with nobody. I’ll be around of course. I was going to move back, anyway. I can’t live with Grace. Not anymore.”

With that she gave just a glance at the doctor, who seemed to have taken on a momentary rictus himself.

He slowed and turned off the main road onto the dirt road that her father had taken so often on his trips to and from town, crossed the old bridge, and at the top of the rise turned left onto the drive to the home where Jane had grown up.

Grace was in the kitchen with her mother. A single bare bulb burned in its outlet in the ceiling there. They’d had a power line strung to the house the year before. And a phone line, too — the new crank telephone on the wall. Her mother’s face was set in some kind of slackened flatness, her hair combed straight back on her head. She looked up at Jane and the doctor, her face set and pale in the glaring light. Jane reached up and pulled the string to turn it off.

Her father was in the bedroom, in his clothes and shoes, on top of the made-up counterpane, arms crossed over one another on his chest. She was surprised, almost alarmed, to see that a bright copper penny rested on top of each of his closed eyes. She almost reached over to remove them but heard something and her mother came in.

“Well,” her mother said. “There he is.”

She took in a heavy, tired-sounding breath, and let it out.

Dr. Thompson said he would arrange for the grave to be dug, and that the notice would be in the next afternoon’s papers for the service and burial on Sunday.

“I’ll send telegraphs to your brothers, if you like,” he said.

“Thank you,” Jane said.

“He’ll be fine in there if you keep it cool, closed off from the heated rooms, with the shades down. Mr. Finicker will come by with a casket for when you have him cleaned up and dressed. I doubt you’ll need ice beneath him unless we have to wait for burial, but if you think differently, just give me a telephone call and I’ll have some delivered.”

No one said anything in response and the kitchen was quiet but for the ticking of the stove from the dying noon-meal fire in there.

AFTER DR. THOMPSON left, Grace said she was going back into town to take care of business and arrange time off. Then she left, too.

Later that afternoon, Uncle Virgil came by. He accepted a cup of coffee, apologized for his wife Bea not coming along, but said she would come by tomorrow with the children unless they’d rather them not come along. And then after a few sad pleasantries he cleared his throat and withdrew from his jacket’s inside pocket an envelope.

“That’s a check from my company, money from the insurance policy your father took out on himself when he took them out on his tenants, if you recall. I had to pull some strings, lord knows they can drag their feet these days.” He placed the envelope on the table. Jane’s mother sat looking at it a long moment, then got up and left the room. They heard her rocker start up on the porch.

Virgil and Jane sat for a while in silence. Then Virgil got up, thanked Jane for the coffee.

“Do you know who the beneficiary is, Jane?” he said.

She just looked at him.

“The primary beneficiary is you,” Virgil said.

“Me.”

“Yes.”

“Why isn’t it my mother? Or Grace or one of my brothers, for that matter?”

“He didn’t say,” Virgil said, placing his hat on his head. “I don’t know. I guess he figured you’d be the one to end up taking care of your mother.”

Jane opened the envelope and looked at the figure on the check.

Virgil said, “I guess he didn’t think your mother would know what to do with it. She never handled money. I know he thought highly of your good sense, knew you’re a smart one. Responsible with things.”

“Or maybe he was angry with Grace.”

Virgil ducked his head. “Could be.”

“He didn’t think I was acting very levelheaded when he sent me to live with her.”

Virgil looked away, as if knowing this wasn’t his territory. Jane studied the check.