Part 12 (1/2)

CHAPTER 40.

The Wreath

The Caskeys had a wonderful time in Chicago, St. Louis, and New Orleans. The adults were as full of wonder and enjoyed themselves as much as the children. Only Miriam seemed out of sorts. She missed her grandmother sorely, or rather she missed her grandmother's never-yielding champions.h.i.+p of her superiority to other children. Without Mary-Love, Miriam was just another little girl, with no special privileges above those accorded to Frances and Queenie's children.

Every day, James telephoned Oscar to ask how Mary-Love was getting along. Every day, Oscar said that she was improving, though still unable to write, still unwilling to get out of bed and come to the telephone. He did not say that there was a stack of postcards from Chicago, St. Louis, and New Orleans sitting on the hall table downstairs, unadmired and unread. He did not say that since James had left, Mary-Love Caskey had not spoken a single intelli- 143.

gible word to him, or evinced the slightest interest or curiosity about anything whatsoever, and that the front room, which had first smelled of sickness, had now begun to smell of something stronger.

James Caskey may have heard some of this in Oscar's tone and in Oscar's evasions. But no one else in the party suspected anything except that Mary-Love would be dreadfully angry with them all when they got home. On the last leg of the journey, the five-hour ride from New Orleans to Atmore, they all sat quietly in their compartments. Most of the talk was of facing Mary-Love on their return. The consensus was that Mary-Love would never forgive them for leaving her at home and going off and having a good time on their own.

”Lord,” sighed James, ”I know she's gone come down hard. That's why we haven't heard a single word from her. She's saving up.”

”She's gone say,” said Sister, '”I got well in two days flat, but y'all wouldn't wait, y'all just went on without me.'”

”She's gone say,” said Queenie, '”I paid for this trip, and I want y'all to know that I didn't get one moment's pleasure out of it. Don't anybody ever ask me again, ”Miss Mary-Love, can we go somewhere?” 'cause I'm not paying for anybody to go anywhere ever again!'”

They laughed at the predictability of her reaction at the same time that they dreaded her displeasure.

A few miles before the termination of the journey, the weary party began to gather in the train's narrow corridor. They would have very little time to get off the train, and the group was loaded down with what they had taken with them as well as what they had picked up along the way. All the Caskeys stood in a long line with Ivey foremost, and James and Sister in the rear. Queenie and the children were in the middle. Everyone stared out the window, watching 144.

for the first exciting glimpse of a familiar landmark or person.

As the train began to slow, the children grew restive until Danjo pointed and cried out, ”I see Bray!”

”There's Miz Benquith!” cried Lucille.

”Daddy!” whispered Frances.

At the very end of the line, Sister peered through the open door of the compartment and out the window on the opposite side of the car. In the parking lot of the station she saw Oscar's automobile, Florida Benquith's car, and the Packard. Wired to the grille of the Packard was a black wreath.

As the train pulled into the station the children covered their ears at the shrill whistle.

But it wasn't a whistle, it was Sister's high-pitched wail of anguish, rising behind them, pus.h.i.+ng them all out of the corridor, down the metal steps, and into the burning Alabama sun. As they stood bewildered on the platform before the station with Sister still wailing behind them, Bray and Oscar stepped forward with bands of mourning c.r.a.pe around their arms.

A black wreath had been hung on the door of each of the Caskey houses and over the gate of the Caskey mill. Mary-Love lay in a great white wicker casket, which resembled nothing so much as a oversized ba.s.sinet lined with a cus.h.i.+on of deep purple satin.

After Elinor had discovered the body the previous morning, Mary-Love had been taken away by the undertaker and brought back in only a few hours, clad in the dress she had worn the previous Easter. The furniture had been moved around in Elinor's front parlor and the casket placed beneath the stained-gla.s.s windows. In the colored light, the undertaker explained, the unavoidable alterations in skin color would be less noticeable. Mounds of lilies and heavily scented gardenias in tubs covered with gold foil surrounded the casket. They masked the 145.

disagreeable odor of corruption, which came quickly to the dead in an Alabama July.

When Bray and Oscar and Florida Benquith had gone off to fetch the unsuspecting Caskeys from the Atmore station, the casual Perdido mourners were quietly ushered out of the house by Elinor, and the wreath was temporarily removed from the door to discourage others. Elinor sat in the parlor, quietly leafing through magazines, just as she had done when Mary-Love had lain, dying, in the room directly above this; Zaddie and Roxie were in the kitchen preparing food. A great deal of food had been brought by the townspeople, for nothing-everyone knew-makes one hungrier than grief.

At last Elinor heard the approach of the three automobiles. She went out onto the porch and stood silently.

Frances jumped out of the first car, and, weeping bitterly, ran toward her mother.

All the others emerged more slowly. They struggled with luggage and packages, talked in low voices, and wouldn't look at the house. No one seemed to know what to do first.

”Leave your things there,” said Elinor in a low voice heard by everyone. ”And come inside.”

The family trooped silently onto the porch. Florida Benquith, having done her part, drove slowly away, as quietly as possible.

”Where'd you put her, Elinor?” asked James.

”In the front parlor.”

Zaddie stood just inside the screen door. She pulled it open and stood back, nodding to everyone who came in. She spoke in a low voice. ”How you, Miss Queenie? Hey, Danjo, you have a good time at Chicken-in-the-car-and-the-car-won't-go-Chicago?”

At last, only Elinor and her estranged daughter Miriam were left on the porch. The sixteen-year-old looked up at her mother, and said, ”Why is Grand-mama over here?”

146.

”Because we couldn't leave her next door. There was no one to sit up with her. There was no one to receive visitors. And because she died in this house.”

”She hated it over here,” remarked Miriam as she went inside to survey the remains of her dead grandmother.

”She never looked prettier,” was the general comment, but the actual thought was that Mary-Love had never looked worse. Her face was wasted, drawn tight over the bones in some places, slack in others. Her folded hands seemed twisted in frustration. She looked anything but sleeping, anything but natural.

”Can she hear us?” Danjo whispered. James shook his head.

Miriam stood at the end of the coffin and peered into it for half a minute or so. Her eyes were dry. ”Where are her rings?” she asked at last.

That night, Sister sat up with the body, joined in the first part of the night by James, then later by Oscar. In that room, under those circ.u.mstances, the Caskeys seemed all at once to have grown old. It had been a long time since any important member of the family had died. James and Mary-Love had been of an exact age, and James's sixty-six years now made him appear an old man-to his family as well as to himself. Oscar was forty-one, and in the presence of his mother's corpse, he looked every year of it. Sister was three years older, and that difference now appeared even greater. In the darkest hours, the brother and sister sat on the couch that faced the casket and talked about everything in the world but their mother. At last, as dawn approached and the first light glowed in through the panes of the colored gla.s.s over the casket, Sister said, ”She wasn't old. Sixty-six isn't old.”

”She was very sick. Sister, you didn't see her in that room up there.”

”What was wrong with her?”

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”We don't know. After Bray and I brought her back here from Atmore, she didn't speak a single word to anybody. And she wasn't left alone for a minute.”

”She must have been,” Sister pointed out. ”n.o.body was with her when she died.”

”Elinor went downstairs for two seconds, and when she came back, Mama was gone.”

”As long as there wasn't any pain...”

”Sister, I wish I could say for sure that there wasn't, but I don't know. Maybe I'm just not used to being around the mortally ill, but I never saw anything like it.”

”Like what?”

”Like what happened in that front room up there.”

”What do you mean? What happened?”

”Nothing happened. That's what I mean. She was in that room all the while you were gone. She didn't move, she didn't speak, she didn't close her eyes. Either Elinor or Zaddie was with her all the time. Elinor slept on a rollaway at the foot of the bed. I just don't know whether Mama was in pain or not. All I know is that Elinor took care of her like she was her own mama, and had loved her every day of her life. If Mama had lived, I suppose they would gone back to their old ways, but while Mama was sick, Elinor was always there. That must have made Mama feel good, if she knew it...”