Proud Flesh by William Humphrey

character peculiar to him, or to the extravagance which, Clifford only excepted, was their common failing, Amy stoutly maintained, in between lapses, that her brothers were all perfect, each possessed of some one outstanding virtue (to which her husband Ira found his own faults frequently contrasted), all models of the greatest virtue of all: filial devotion, family loyalty. She was perhaps a trifle more allergic to shortcomings in her sisters; but she would permit none of them to criticize another in her hearing, would defend even Hazel, would smile and shake her head in mild admonishment and lay her finger on her lips whenever they launched into a comparison of her own generosity with Hazel’s penuriousness. Tribute, even thanks, for her help, Amy steadfastly refused. She rather enjoyed suspecting them of ingratitude, or at least of very short-lived memories. To feel that they took her somewhat for granted only strengthened Amy’s sense of dedication.
    A show of contrition for having done a thing which, if she should know about it, would break Ma’s poor heart: this was all Amy asked of them in return for her help. This of course they would have made without any prompting from Amy—though perhaps they would have let themselves off lighter than Amy let them off. Amy made them feel so miserable, it was a question whether Ma herself would have made them feel that bad if they had gone and confessed themselves directly to her. Indeed, some of the things which they agreed with Amy would have broken Ma’s heart to know—well, Ma had a stronger heart than that. And more of a sense of humor. Some details of the scrapes they had gotten themselves into, and to which Amy listened so gravely, would probably have broken Ma up in laughter. But in the end it was no laughing matter—they would not have been there seeking help if it were; and by going to Amy with it, although they came away feeling criminal, they had the comfort of knowing that Ma had been spared pain and disappointment, and that was the main thing.
    When they came to her for help and Amy had heard their confession, had shriven them and had written them a check and sent them away to sin no more until the next time, she shed tears. Their misdeeds and their indiscretions saddened Amy as a priest is saddened by what he hears in the confessional: not for any betrayal of him, but for the disappointment to their Holy Mother.
    Amy’s patriotism, her politics, her religion, all resembled her piety toward her mother and her allegiance to her clan. A fundamentalist, she believed in a hot hell, a chilly heaven. A royalist with a worship of authority, she voted always for the incumbent. George Washington’s decision not to seek a third term as President, Calvin Coolidge’s choice not to run again had always confounded her, as did Truman’s in her own time. Had she been of voting age she would have voted for Hoover in 1932 because he was President, then would have voted for Roosevelt for a fifth, a sixth, a seventh term because he was. The only time she had ever sided against time-honored institutions was in the abdication of King Edward VIII (the British royal family came just after her own in Amy’s affections); however, she was very young then. A tireless slacker-baiter—there was probably not another woman in greater Waxahachie who had accosted so many ablebodied-looking young men on streetcars and street-corners and demanded to know why they were not in uniform as Amy Renshaw Parker.
    In Amy’s pantheon even Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth II were mere idols in the side chapels leading up to her mother’s high altar. The others, her brothers and sisters, all acknowledged Amy as the most devoted child of them all. Her reward for her devotion was to be the child her mother loved the least—the one whom she did not love at all.
    Introspective and self-critical, Amy knew she