Conrad Aiken: The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

Watertown was changing extraordinarily. Her sense of its sharp difference, its newness, was a kind of reproach; for it seemed to hint that Grandmother had been neglected. If she had come oftener—seen the new houses being built, new cellars being dug, new streets being surveyed—she would not, she felt sure, be now so struck by its complete alteration. How horribly suburban it was, with all its rows of cheap two-family houses! Loathsome—shoddy little stucco garages, forlorn little barberry hedges, rows of one-storied little shops, built of garish brick—all this evidence of pullulating vulgarity where, in her childhood, had been green fields, hill pastures with tumbled stone walls, wild cherries, and, in autumn, thickets starred with the candid blue stars of chicory. She remembered a walk with Uncle Tom from Harvard Square to Grandmother’s, when she was twelve. What an adventure in the wilderness! The hills between Belmont and Watertown were covered with juniper and birch trees. Skirting Palfrey Hill, they had come into Watertown past the old graveyard. It had seemed like coming down from a morning’s walk on the Himalayas. And what were all these changes for?… What did it lead to?… It seemed as if men were determined to trample and vulgarize every inch of the world. She remembered that seventeenth—or was it eighteenth-century, song in an old song book—“By the waters of Watertown we sat down and wept, yea, we wept when we remembered Boston.”… Poor Grandmother! It was as well, perhaps, that she had so long been a prisoner to her stuffy little antimacassared room, with its albums of daguerreotypes—she would have hated this change. Ah, but would she—would she! It was not so certain. Grandmother was a born provincial, a village democrat—perhaps she would have liked this show of energy, in which there was no pretense, and nowhere any distinction. It would perhaps have pleased her to see that Watertown, so palpably, was growing.… The churches would thrive. The markets would improve.…

Marie got off at Palfrey Street, and began climbing the hill. The mysterious brook, which used to flow under the street, full of old rusted pots and lidless tin cans, was gone. She climbed slowly—ah, not so rapidly as when she used to run up Palfrey Hill before breakfast to look for wild flowers! Silver-rod used to grow on Palfrey Hill—the only place she had ever seen it. That was before Grandmother had moved away from the house on Mount Auburn Street, with the cherry tree and the pear tree, and the “owners” (with whom Grandmother perpetually quarreled and bickered) living in the other half of the house, “playing the piano till all hours, and carrying on something awful.” Marie wondered what they had been like. Probably they were very nice cheerful people. One of the daughters was a Christian Science Healer; the son worked in a music store. To Marie there had always been something romantic about them, and she had never passed their door in the hall without wanting to knock and go in. Once, she had gone in; all that she remembered was a plaster bust of a god or goddess who seemed, on top of the piano, to be meditating. There had also been a dog, which Grandmother detested and always shook her apron at. “Phoo! get out, you dirty beast!” she would cry, an expression of extraordinary hatred in her face.… Marie laughed, thinking of this.… She passed the weeping birch—its leaves were touched with yellow.… Slightly out of breath she climbed the wooden steps and rang the bell.

II.

“Oh, it’s you, Mrs. Schley! How do you do! You’re quite a stranger!… I think Mrs. Vedder’s asleep. But I’ll go and see. I’m sure she’ll be delighted to see you!”

Mrs. Ling was detestable; that she was fearfully overworked, managing this private hospital, and that she was herself slowly dying (having lost, in her last operation, “all her insides,” as Grandmother put it) did not make her more likable. A sly white face, with sly black eyes; a meager soul. Marie, standing in the suburban little hall, looked at the pious engravings, the cheap rugs. Above the mantel, Christ was leaning down, much haloed, into the valley of the shadow of death, reaching an incredibly long arm to rescue a lost lamb; over the dark valley hung a dove with bright wings. A pot of ferns stood on a small high bamboo table near the piano; the piano was a florid affair of pale oak. Marie looked at the music—the “Holy City,” “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “Cuddle Up a Little Closer,” “The Rosary.” Here, at any rate, the piano would not be played till all hours!

“No—your Grandmother’s awake. Will you go up?”

“How is Grandmother?”

“Well—about the same. She’s very plucky!”

In the sick-room, with its gloom of lowered blinds, Marie at first found it difficult to see. The nurse hovered by the front window, smiling. Grandmother, in the great bed, turned the small shrunken face on the pillow, turned the pathetic blue eyes of a child. The forlorn little braid of streaked hair! Marie stooped and kissed the sunken weak mouth.

“Hello, Grandmother!” she shouted, remembering that the old woman was deaf. “Are you glad to see me?”

Grandmother looked up in a bewildered, slightly frightened way, as if, oddly, she were peering up out of a depth.

“What did you say?” The voice was slow and faint.

“I said, are you glad to see me?”

“Oh yes, always glad to see you. I’m always glad to see you.”

“How are you feeling?”

Grandmother very slowly and gently focused her blue eyes—her pupils were very wide—on Marie’s face. She seemed to be trying to see. She moved her lips, and then said weakly:

“Very bad. I can’t eat.”

“You can’t eat? Why’s that?”

Marie drew the chair closer to the bedside, determined to be cheerful. Mrs. Vedder fumbled with her thin trembling hand at the patchwork quilt, fumbled aimlessly, her eyes resting exploringly on Marie’s face. It was as if she were struggling, for speech, with a profound dark indifference.

“How’s little Kate?” she quavered.

“Oh, Kate’s fine! She gets all over the house, now, holding on to chairs and things.… When we take her to the beach in her little bathing suit she crawls right into the water as if it were her native element. You never saw such courage and energy!”

“I wish I could see her.… She ought to be walking, oughtn’t she?”

“Oh, no—she’s not backward at all!”

“No—I suppose not. I wish I could see her. Is her hair the same color? Her hair was such a beautiful color—something like yours when you were little, only not so red.… I suppose you can’t bring her up to town.”

“No, it’s not very easy, you see.”

Marie, looking through the side window, by the bed, watched a gray squirrel running along the maple bough.

“It’s my teeth—I can’t use my teeth—that’s why I talk so badly. The dentist was here last week. He said my jaw had shrunk, and this set of teeth wouldn’t fit any more.”

“Oh! What a shame, Granny! But can’t you have them altered?”

“I can’t afford it.… They charge me so much here.… It’s wicked what they charge here!”

Miss Thomas, the nurse, approached, holding a spoon and a medicine glass.

“Time for my little girl to take her medicine!” she said, dipping the teaspoon.

“What good does medicine do me?”

“Now you take it like a good girl—there!… That’s right!”

Mrs. Vedder sank back exhausted, the blue-veined hands lying inert. After a moment her eyes filled with tears.

“Little Kate!” she wailed—“How I wish—” She began crying, weakly and uncontrollably. Miss Thomas wiped her cheeks for her, Marie drawing back.

“She cries a good deal,” said Miss Thomas in a low voice. “She gets an idea, you know, and just thinks and thinks about it, and cries and cries. Especially little Kate! She’s always wanting to see your little Kate.… Now, Grandmother! Stop crying! You don’t want to spoil your granddaughter’s visit, the first time she’s been here in so long! Do you?”