Time Is Noon by Pearl S. Buck Page B

at such times he did not speak to her. Because of him she stopped now to tie her own kimono securely about her waist and to find her slippers. But she stayed no longer. She hurried fearfully down the hall. Something was about to happen. In the early morning she felt life impending, large, looming, unknown. At her mother’s door she hesitated, dreading not so much to go in as to begin upon something that was about to change. “I’ve got to go on,” she said half-aloud, and opened the door, dreading.
    Instantly her dread sharpened and focused upon her mother’s face. The room was empty except for her mother’s face, lying upon the pillow, turned to the door, waiting for it to open. The blankets were drawn tightly about her shoulders, tightly about her neck. Her body lay small and scarcely mounded under the covers. But the face was vivid. Withered, and strangely yellow in the hard morning light, it was vivid because of the great dark despairing eyes.
    “I’ve got to give up, Joan,” she said. “It’s my legs. They won’t hold me. I got up to take my bath and they gave under me like old rotten sticks.”
    She stared down at her mother’s face, horrified at the change. Surely it had not looked like this yesterday—this was the whiteness of the pillow and the counterpane, this was the bleakness of the gray hair drawn back from the forehead. She was afraid again. “What shall I do?”
    “Go downstairs for me when you are dressed.” Now it was her mother deciding, and somehow she was immediately comforted. “See that everything is right for the breakfast. Let me see—It’s Monday. Tell Hannah not to buy much meat—not a big roast or anything. There’s enough left from yesterday—maybe have baked beans for dinner tomorrow and that hash tonight. Frank likes beans. See that your father gets his two cups of coffee—like as not he’ll forget to ask. And I’d started to write to Rose. You’ll find the letter in my desk. Just put a little note in saying I don’t feel so well but I’ll be up tomorrow and mail it so she’ll get it tomorrow. Now hurry, dear—”
    “Yes, Mother,” she answered. She felt lighter. Listening to her mother’s commands, hearing her mother’s voice strong, the room was natural to her again. Her mother turned over and closed her eyes. Now she looked more herself and as she might look sleeping. Closing those great shadowy eyes made her face her own again.
    “Don’t you want anything to eat?” Joan asked.
    “No,” her mother answered drowsily. “I want only to rest. I’ll be up again tomorrow. I’ll just rest a little today. Such a help to have you—”
    Her voice dropped off into a whisper and Joan went away. But at the door her mother’s voice caught her and held her back. It came strongly and clearly, so clearly that she turned instantly and saw her mother’s eyes open again. “If Hannah has boiled eggs for breakfast, and she will if you don’t tell her not to, you crack Frank’s for him. He minds hot things—his skin’s so tender.” The eyes stayed open until she answered. “Yes, I will, Mother.”
    In her mother’s place at the table she felt strange to herself. Everything was strange because the mother was not there. It was she who bound them into one and when she was not in her own place they were each separate and desultory and critical of each other. “You have made my coffee too sweet,” her father said in mild surprised rebuke.
    “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, in equal surprise. He did not then, as he seemed to do, eat whatever was before him. It was that her mother always set before him what he liked. The eggs came in boiled and she cracked two in a cup for Francis, a quick irritation hot in her breast when they burned her fingers. Why should his fingers not be burned? He was late to his breakfast as usual. She should have called him. Now she remembered that each day their mother called him several times and she had forgotten this morning to call him at