Conrad Aiken: The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“No!… I can’t help it.…”

Marie began thinking of one Sunday in the Mount Auburn Street house, seventeen or eighteen years before. They were having an apple pie for dinner: a warm sunny day, she remembered the pear tree in blossom. “Your grandfather, whom you don’t remember, always used to say, ‘Well, there’s nothing I like so much as plain apple pie .’ How furious it made me! He said it because he knew it infuriated me.” Grandmother snorted, in a rage. “‘Plain apple pie!’ I said to him, ‘there’s nothing plain about it! What do you know about cooking? You think a plain apple pie can be just thrown together by anybody. I’d like to see how many women could make a pie like this!’… But,” she added, “he went right on gabbling about plain apple pie, plain apple pie.” Marie had laughed, and Grandmother, relenting, or shaking off the past, had suddenly laughed also.… On Sundays, Grandmother always played on the little parlor organ, the seven or eight hymn-tunes she knew, singing in a thin distressing voice. The organ had been sold when Grandmother was moved to the hospital.… Other things had been sold, too—Grandmother’s possessions had become very few—three or four chairs, the horsehair sofa, a whatnot, laden with family photographs, a framed lithochrome of the Rialto brought from Venice, a scrollwork clock made by her favorite son, who had died young. Presently these too would be sold.

“She’s lost her memory, during this last month or so,” said Miss Thomas, smoothing the fold of sheet over the quilt edge. “And her interest, too. But she’s wonderfully brave.” Then, shouting, “ Aren’t you, Grandmother!”

Mrs. Vedder lay apathetic, her small withered face turned on one side, a hand under her cheek. Distance was in her eyes. She paid no attention, or had not heard. She looked at Marie and the nurse as if they had no meaning, or reality. What was she thinking, Marie wondered. A cornflower blue, her eyes were, and still so extraordinarily young and innocent. There was a long silence, during which the squirrel in the maple tree began scolding—Marie, looking down through the screened window under the lowered curtain, saw a black cat cross the lawn, pretending to be indifferent. He sat down, put back first one ear, then the other, looked up into the tree, blinking affectionate green eyes, then trudged away, disillusioned and weary.… She ought to have brought something for Grandmother. But then, she had hardly had time. In the subway, it was true, at that little shop—but just then the Watertown car had come grinding round the turn; she would have had to wait fifteen minutes for another. Besides, Grandmother always had more flowers than she could use—and what, except hothouse grapes, could she eat?…

“I meant to bring you some grapes, Granny, but I didn’t have time,” she said. Mrs. Vedder seemed to go on listening after the remark was finished, as if she still had it somewhere and was giving it, slowly and with difficulty, all her attention.

“Mr. Sill gave me those roses,” she brought out at last. She did not turn toward them (they stood on the desk) but simply assumed that Marie must have seen them. “He was here yesterday.…”

“What’s he doing now that he’s left the church?”

“What?… I don’t know.… Teaching, I think.… How’s Paul?” It always annoyed Marie when Grandmother inquired about her husband.

“Oh, he’s all right.”

“That’s good.” Grandmother sighed, and looked away at the viney wallpaper.

“I went to New York last week, Granny!”

“New York? Went to New York?”

“Yes—to see Alice. And a queer thing happened to me.” There was no response in the blue eyes. “Do you hear me?”

“No.”

“I say a queer thing happened to me in New York.… While I was staying with Alice I got a letter from Sarah Allbright—you remember Sarah Allbright? That little girl I used to play with in Chicago. I hadn’t seen or heard from her since I was there—the last time I ever saw her was the day we played ‘hookey’ from school and ran off and got lost somewhere out by Winnetka. We got home about eleven o’clock at night. Well, in her letter she said she was in New York, for a visit, and wondered if I could come down from Fall River to see her! So I went to see her! Wasn’t it exciting! She’s huge—very fat. I think I’d have known her, though. She’s married to a lawyer, and has three children, and paints pictures. It was interesting to hear all about all the Chicago people I knew.”

Grandmother stared, immobile.

“Who did you say looked after little Kate?” she quavered.

“Paul’s mother.” Marie felt herself flushing. Did Grandmother intend …? But the old face was merely tired and expressionless.

“What was the queer thing that happened to you in New York?”

Marie’s heart contracted. She moistened her lips and repeated the story, conscious of Miss Thomas’s attention. But Grandmother, she saw, did not listen, after the first word or two, did not understand, merely rested the faded blue eyes on Marie’s, as if it was not the story she was so darkly struggling to understand, but Marie herself. What was it she wanted so? What was it she was trying to see? Life? Her own life, embodied now in Marie and little Kate? Was she trying, dimly, to touch something which eluded her grasp, to feel something which she could not see?… She made no comment. But presently her eyes again, slowly, filled with tears, became intolerably bright, and suddenly she cried out, weeping:

“I can’t die! I can’t die!… I want to die and I can’t!”

She cried almost soundlessly, the tears running down the wrinkles of her cheeks. Miss Thomas held up one finger, sternly.

“Grandmother, shame on you! You promised me not to cry. And now look at you—crying like this for nothing at all!”

“She’s greatly changed,” Marie murmured to the nurse. “It seems to me that she’s seriously worse. Don’t you think—”

Miss Thomas shook her head.

“Oh, no! She’s very strong still. I don’t see why she shouldn’t live through the winter.”

A little later, Marie, looking at her watch, said that she must run to catch her train. She would barely have time. She kissed the sunken mouth once more, patted the cool hand. Out of the brimmed eyes death looked up consciously and clearly, but Grandmother said only, “Goodbye, Marie!”

III.

Tom was walking up and down in the little alley that led to the theater, looking into shop windows. When he saw her, he came toward her, grinning in his one-sided freckled way. She felt that she had never liked him so much.

“On that corner—a rose, if you like,” he said, without preliminaries, “or on this, a cup of coffee.”

“Coffee! I’ve had an awful time.”

“Awful? Was it? Why on earth do you go?”

“Partly because it gives me such a good alibi—everybody thinks I’m spending the whole afternoon in Watertown.”

Tom smiled at her gratefully. They went into the lunchroom.

“But it’s horrible, somehow,” Marie went on, after a moment, stirring the cup of coffee which had been brought to the mahogany counter. “She’s dying. Really dying. She said a most dreadful thing!… And I lied cheerfully about the train, and came gayly away to meet— you —of whom not one of my family or friends ever heard!… Don’t you think it’s horrible?”

Tom stared at his coffee.

“It’s the way things are,” he said slowly.

Presently they walked down the sloping dark aisle of the vaudeville theater, looking for seats. “Here are two,” said Tom. A blackface singer, on the stage, was singing coarsely. The blinding disc of spotlight, with its chromatic red edge, illuminated his bluish makeup, made his tongue an unnatural pink, sparkled the gold fillings in his wide teeth. “ Hot lips ,” he intoned, grinning, “ that are pips … and no more conscience than a snake has hips .”… Tom took her gloved hand, inserted his finger in the opening, and stroked her palm. A delicious feeling of weakness, dissolution, came over her. Life suddenly seemed to her extraordinarily complex, beautiful, and miserable. “By the waters of Watertown we sat down and wept, yea, we wept when we remembered Boston.”