John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

“We used to have visitors,” Miss Octave said. “But the new Baptist minister doesn’t make calls, you know. Isn’t it criminal?” She dabbed at the side of her mouth with a Kleenex.

“What’s this country coming to?” Clumly said.

“That’s just what I tell Editha,” she said. “Poor old Mrs. Maxwell has arthritis so bad she can never leave her bed. Mine’s only in my fingers, you know, though it’s torment enough.” She held out her hands to him. The index fingers were like knotty pieces of wood, and the hands shook. She pressed on, though the hoarse croaking was such an effort it made her eyes bulge. “Well someone said to the minister he ought to go see her, and he went over and she said, ‘Pastor, I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.’ ‘Well don’t expect to see me again,’ he says, ‘I don’t make calls.’ Now what do you think of that! He’s on the City Planning Commission or whatever they call it. That’s all he cares about, don’t you know. He’s got them to put up one of those highrise apartments — horrible! — and all that urban renewal, tearing down beautiful old buildings like the Jefferson Hotel, where President Cleveland stayed, and making everything into parking lots and I don’t know what. Now he’s got the congregation to agree to tearing down half of that beautiful old church of ours, going to put up an education building with a cloistered walk leading out from the church — we saw the pictures, didn’t we Editha? — flimsy little thing, it makes you sick at heart! Three hundred and seventy thousand dollars it will cost, a thousand dollars from every member of the congregation! Well they won’t be getting any thousand dollars from the Woodworths, we told them — I’ve got cataracts, don’t you know, and I don’t need to tell you how expensive that is.”

“It’s criminal,” Clumly said.

“Worse than that,” she said. She leaned toward him. “It’s heretic!” She spoke the word with such feeling that one saw, all at once, the Baptist minister in his coat and vest and spectacles, being burnt alive at the stake. “All to get new members, that’s all they care about.” She dabbed at her mouth again. “That beautiful old church means nothing to them, just new members, new members. The minister says, ‘We need a new plant if we’re going to appeal to new members.’ A plant. Imagine! I said, ‘A plant! Why, Sylvania’s got a plant, if that’s what we need. Why don’t we just go borrow theirs, and we can pay the people a dollar an hour to come worship.’” Her eyes shone like needles. “Imagine,” she said. “But there are all those younger people, don’t you know; church architecture hasn’t any meaning for them. Too dark and gloomy, they say, and smells like a wellhouse. Well we don’t feel that way, do we Editha. I always try to keep Editha involved in things, don’t you know. But of course she doesn’t listen. Sometimes she’ll just sit that way for days and I think she’s dead.”

“Stupid babbler,” Editha said. Then, calling upstairs, it seemed: “Agnes!”

They listened a moment, but the dead Agnes said nothing.

“She’ll bury us all,” Octave said. “She has a strong constitution, like all the Woodworths. Good stock.” She sighed, a sound like sandpaper. “Well, the younger ones don’t care. They want those tiny little houses with their tiny fat chairs and those tiny little cars. I just don’t want any part of it, Mr. Cooper. I like houses with stories, places people have lived in. That settee there, the one Mr. What’s-his-name is sitting on, it came down in the family from our Uncle Ferris and Aunt Margaret. They had nine children, and five of them died in one week of diphtheria.”

He missed whatever it was she said next. Three fire engines went by, some blocks away, the last two hard on the tail of the first, from the sound of it, and their sirens howled along the twilight like the cranes he’d heard once crossing the sky in single file directly over the ship. When he could listen again she was saying, suddenly animated, “Wasn’t it a terrible winter?”

Clumly pursed his lips. “Terrible,” he ventured.

“We thought we’d die, didn’t we Editha? I get the hives so bad, don’t you know. We were shut up here one time for four days, right here in the city, telephone lines down and everything. I’d just get choking, don’t you know, in the middle of the night, and I just gave myself up for gone. We finally got out a message to the doctor by some children that were playing in the drifts out in front, and he came over here on foot. It was T. Murray Steele. Such a good man, and very famous in the medical circle, or so we hear. Not our circle, you know—” she rasped out a laugh “—though he’s rich, we understand. Very active in politics too, one of us, where that’s concerned. He said he just couldn’t understand why I wasn’t dead. ‘Well, I’ve got a good constitution,’ I says. It’s so rare to find a good doctor, these days, what with socialized medicine and the Catholics and the rest. You wonder what this country’s coming to. Poor Editha came down with pneumonia one time — three years ago February, wasn’t it Editha? It came over her late at night, I remember. She’d had a cold, poor thing, and my colitis was so bad I could scarcely get around to wait on her — it’s so hard when you’re sickly, don’t you know — I suppose that was partly what made it worse. I’d just wound this clock — I remember as if it was yesterday — and I heard poor Editha gagging in the second parlor. Not a doctor that would come at that hour of the night. Except T. Murray Steele. He’s known far and wide for his medical skill, and yet out he comes in the middle of the night, just as regular as the post office. We had poor Editha in an oxygen tent — God’s will be done! — and he cured my bursitis the same night, as well as possible. I can’t tell you how grateful it made us. What’s wrong with these young doctors? I hear they put people in ten different rooms, not counting the room with the magazines, and they just make them wait. I heard of a doctor in Leroy who went away on vacation and left two poor ladies sitting in his office for days and days. Imagine! They might have starved! I haven’t been to one of those places myself. I can’t get out much, don’t you know, with these fallen arches. It’s just like walking with glass inside your shoes.”

Clumly shook his head.

She fiddled with the Kleenex, looking for a place still unused. “Have you ever seen Editha’s poetry books?” Miss Octave asked them. “There’s boxes and boxes of them up in the attic. They’ve never sold well, but they’re lovely, you know. She used to read her poetry all over New York State, years ago. She’s written some lovely children’s pieces and of course volumes of beautiful religious verse. She doesn’t do it any more, naturally.”

She sat silent a moment, looking at the canes in her lap. At last, with an effort, she wrapped her stiff knuckles around the handles and got the canes in position to help her up. “You’ll want to see where the burglar came in,” she said.

“Yes, good,” Clumly said. The sky was gray now, the room almost dark, but Octave Woodworth seemed no more aware of the darkness than Clumly’s wife would have been. Slowly, she led them through the dining room to the kitchen and out to the back porch.

“He must have found the hammer out there in the garage,” she said. “This is where he knocked out the pane of glass and reached in to unlock the door.” There was plywood where the pane had been. The door was nailed shut. “We have a man who comes by to mow lawn for us. We had him nail the door, just to be on the safe side.”

“Good idea,” Clumly said politely.

“He’s a queer,” she said. Clumly glanced at her, startled, and could not tell whether or not she meant what he supposed. She said, “But he’s a good worker. We’re glad to have him.”