She looks for her slippers, finds them under the bed and slides her feet into them. She isn’t sure what to do next, caught in the desire to crawl back into bed and refuse ever to get up again, not even for Barney’s funeral. Instead, she goes to the door, puts her hand on the doorknob that’s so cold it feels like fire on her palm, and opens the door silently.
The house is without sound, yet there’s something in the air that reminds her it’s full of people; she can feel them, their sticky bodies, their mingled breaths, their sighs and coughs and their tumbling dreams. Barney’s sister Fay and her teenagers, Iris’s nieces and nephews,are asleep in the guest rooms and in the basement. This house full of people feels strange, oppressive, when for so long now there’s been nobody in it but Barney and herself and then not even Barney.
Now that she’s out in the hall she realizes she needs to use the bathroom and would go back, but hesitates because she’s afraid flushing the toilet would wake everyone, and the thought of them rising, moving up or down the stairs into the kitchen, making toast, pouring cups of coffee, staring at her with measuring eyes is unbearable. She feels dizzy and has to put a hand out to support herself against the wall. It’s probably all the pills they’ve been feeding her. Tranquillizers, she supposes. She’s vague about this, as she is about everything, including where she’s going at this time of the morning on the day of Barney’s funeral.
Somebody is snoring. The door to Lannie’s room is open and she peeks carefully in to see who it is. It’s Fay lying sprawled across the single bed, her blonde hair tangled across the pillow, her long nightgown hitched up to reveal her wide, pale, vein-etched legs. The smell of cigarette smoke and some other unpleasant odour reaches Iris now that she’s closer. It’s that spent alcohol smell; Iris supposes Fay went to bed drunk. She sighs for Mary Ann’s sake, for Fay’s children’s sake, for Barney’s sake, but her ruefulness is mixed with pity. She hasn’t forgotten Fay’s wedding all those years ago, Fay beginning to show with Quinn, Barry sneaking out during the wedding dance for a couple of drinks with his buddies in somebody’s half-ton. Iris backs away softly.
She can’t recall much of the evening before, although there’d been visitors. The women had made her go to bed early, she remembers that. She must have been acting funny. Placing her feet carefully on the stairs, one by one, till she reached the top, Fay on one side of her who kept stumbling slightly, then catching herself, and Ramona on the other. As if I couldn’t walk upstairs myself, she thinks, and decides that she’s not going to swallow any more pills. She hates this fuzziness, this sense of drifting.
She wishes Ramona were here right now; Ramona would know what to say to her. She doesn’t know herself what it is she needs to hear that might fill this hollow in her chest, that might bring theunreality of this day out of the realm of madness and error and back to some kind of normalcy.
She moves quietly down the hall to the top of the stairs and starts carefully down, intending to use the bathroom by the kitchen door. At the halfway point the sickening scent of flowers flows up the stairs to meet her: lilies, roses, irises because it’s spring, God knows what all else. Now, as she reaches the kitchen, the fragrance of squares and cakes brought by neighbours and left on the counter because the deep freeze and fridge are stuffed overwhelms her.
An intense heat has begun to spread itself through her, it has started deep in her centre and radiates outward inexorably, rapidly, building till it reaches her skin and a thin film of sweat breaks out on her forehead, the back of her neck, between her breasts, down her back, even the backs of her knees are slick with it. How can she be so hot when this morning the house is so cold? She crosses the kitchen with quick
The house is without sound, yet there’s something in the air that reminds her it’s full of people; she can feel them, their sticky bodies, their mingled breaths, their sighs and coughs and their tumbling dreams. Barney’s sister Fay and her teenagers, Iris’s nieces and nephews,are asleep in the guest rooms and in the basement. This house full of people feels strange, oppressive, when for so long now there’s been nobody in it but Barney and herself and then not even Barney.
Now that she’s out in the hall she realizes she needs to use the bathroom and would go back, but hesitates because she’s afraid flushing the toilet would wake everyone, and the thought of them rising, moving up or down the stairs into the kitchen, making toast, pouring cups of coffee, staring at her with measuring eyes is unbearable. She feels dizzy and has to put a hand out to support herself against the wall. It’s probably all the pills they’ve been feeding her. Tranquillizers, she supposes. She’s vague about this, as she is about everything, including where she’s going at this time of the morning on the day of Barney’s funeral.
Somebody is snoring. The door to Lannie’s room is open and she peeks carefully in to see who it is. It’s Fay lying sprawled across the single bed, her blonde hair tangled across the pillow, her long nightgown hitched up to reveal her wide, pale, vein-etched legs. The smell of cigarette smoke and some other unpleasant odour reaches Iris now that she’s closer. It’s that spent alcohol smell; Iris supposes Fay went to bed drunk. She sighs for Mary Ann’s sake, for Fay’s children’s sake, for Barney’s sake, but her ruefulness is mixed with pity. She hasn’t forgotten Fay’s wedding all those years ago, Fay beginning to show with Quinn, Barry sneaking out during the wedding dance for a couple of drinks with his buddies in somebody’s half-ton. Iris backs away softly.
She can’t recall much of the evening before, although there’d been visitors. The women had made her go to bed early, she remembers that. She must have been acting funny. Placing her feet carefully on the stairs, one by one, till she reached the top, Fay on one side of her who kept stumbling slightly, then catching herself, and Ramona on the other. As if I couldn’t walk upstairs myself, she thinks, and decides that she’s not going to swallow any more pills. She hates this fuzziness, this sense of drifting.
She wishes Ramona were here right now; Ramona would know what to say to her. She doesn’t know herself what it is she needs to hear that might fill this hollow in her chest, that might bring theunreality of this day out of the realm of madness and error and back to some kind of normalcy.
She moves quietly down the hall to the top of the stairs and starts carefully down, intending to use the bathroom by the kitchen door. At the halfway point the sickening scent of flowers flows up the stairs to meet her: lilies, roses, irises because it’s spring, God knows what all else. Now, as she reaches the kitchen, the fragrance of squares and cakes brought by neighbours and left on the counter because the deep freeze and fridge are stuffed overwhelms her.
An intense heat has begun to spread itself through her, it has started deep in her centre and radiates outward inexorably, rapidly, building till it reaches her skin and a thin film of sweat breaks out on her forehead, the back of her neck, between her breasts, down her back, even the backs of her knees are slick with it. How can she be so hot when this morning the house is so cold? She crosses the kitchen with quick
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