The old lady was almost helpless. She had never been large, and her once-red hair had faded to dingy gray. Behind thick glasses, necessary since the surgery for cataracts, her eyes were as colorless as a dead oyster. She had always had a redhead's white skin that freckled first, then burned at the least touch of the sun. Now the duller brown spots of age speckled her knotted hands.
It was going to be easy. Jeannie had a blood-claim-the only claim, she reminded herself. Her mother had been the old lady's niece; the old lady had never had children. So it was simple, and no court could deny it. Besides, she was going to spend a while convincing everyone that she had the old lady's best interests at heart. Of course she did. They knew that already. She had come to take care of dear old Great-aunt Clara, left her job in the city-a pretty good job, too, she had explained to everyone who asked. But blood being thicker than water, and her the old lady's last blood relative, well, of course she had come to help out.
"Did I ever tell you about Snowball?" The soft, insistent voice from the bed broke into her fierce reverie. Yes, the old lady had told her about Snowball… every white cat in creation was probably called Snowball, at least by senile old ladies like Great-aunt Clara. Jeannie controlled herself; there would be time enough later.
"I think so, Aunt Clara." Just a little dig, that implication of careful patience.
"He was so sweet." A vague sound meant to be a chuckle, Jeannie was sure, then…"Did I tell you about the time he clawed Mrs. Minister Jenkins on the ankle, when she scolded me about wearing my skirts too short?"
Oh, god. Jeannie had heard that story on every visit-every reluctant, restless visit-since childhood. It was disgusting, that someone of Great-aunt Clara's age remembered the juicy side of youth, remembered rolling her stockings and flirting with a skirt just a bit short… that she could still enjoy the memory of a minister's wife's clawed ankle, that she still thought a stupid cat had defended her. But there were visitors in the house, Clara's friends, people Jeannie had not yet won over completely. Clara's lawyer, Sam Benson, stocky and grave and not quite old enough to fall for any tricks. Clara's old friend Pearl, still up and walking around-though Jeannie thought it was disgusting for anyone her age to wear sleeveless knit shirts and short skirts which left knobby tanned knees all too visible.
Jeannie let out a consciously indulgent laugh. "Was that when you were courting Ben, Aunt Clara?"
Again that feeble attempt at a chuckle. "I wasn't courting him, dear; we weren't like you girls today. He was courting me. Very dashing, Ben was. All the girls thought so, too." Clara's eyes shifted to her friend Pearl, and the two of them exchanged fatuous grins. Jeannie could feel the smile stiffening on her own face. Dashing. And did this mean Pearl had been one of the girls who thought so, too? Had they been rivals?
"I didn't," said Pearl, in the deep voice Jeannie found so strange. Little old ladies had thin, wispy voices, or high querulous voices, or cross rough voices… not this combination of bassoon and cello, like a cat's purr. "I thought he was a lot more than dashing, but you, you minx, you wanted him to play off against Larry."
"Ah… Larry." Clara's head shifted on the pillow. "I hadn't thought of him in…"
"Five minutes?" Pearl conveyed amusement without malice.
"He was so…" Clara's voice trailed off, and a tear slipped down her cheek. Jeannie was quick to blot it away. "The War…" said Clara faintly. Pearl nodded. The War they meant was the first of the great wars, the one to end wars, and Jeannie was not entirely sure which century it had been in. History was a bore. Everything before her own birth merged into a confused hash of dates and names she could never untangle, and why bother? The lawyer cleared his throat.
"Clara, I hate to rush you, but…"
The old lady stared at him as if she couldn't remember his name or business; Jeannie was just about to remind her when she brightened. "Oh-yes, Sam, of course. The power of attorney. Now what I thought was, since Jeannie's come to stay, and take care of me, that she will need to write checks and things. You know how the bank is these days… and the people at the power company and so on don't seem to remember me as well…" What she meant was lost bills, checks she never wrote, and a lifetime's honesty ignored by strangers and their computers. But it had never been her habit to accuse anyone of unfairness. "Jeannie can take care of all that," she said finally.
In the face of the lawyer's obvious doubts, Jeannie's attempt at an expression that would convey absolute honesty, searing self-sacrifice for her nearest relative, and steadfast devotion to duty slipped awry; she could feel her lower lip beginning to pout, and the tension in the muscles of her jaw. Silence held the room for a long moment. Then Pearl, carefully not looking at Jeannie, said, "But Sam's been doing all that, hasn't he, Clara?"
"Well… yes…" Clara's voice now was the trembling that meant a lapse into confusion, into dismay and fear, as the edges of her known world crumbled. "I mean… I know… but he is a lawyer, and lawyers do have to make a living… and anyway, Jeannie's family… ." In that rush of broken phrases, in that soft old voice, the arguments Jeannie had tried to teach her aunt to say sounded as silly and implausible as they might printed on a paper. Jeannie knew-as Clara would remember in a moment, if she calmed down-that Sam had not charged her a penny for managing her money since he'd taken it over. Jeannie thought it was stupid; Clara claimed to know the reason, but would never explain.
The lawyer's face stiffened at the mention of money, and Jeannie wished she had not put those words in her aunt's mouth. Yet that seemed to do what she had wished of the whole conversation; his warm voice chilled, and he said "If that's how you feel, Clara-Mrs. Timmons-then of course there's no question of not doing exactly as you wish. I brought the papers, as you asked." Jeannie left the room on a pretext of making iced tea for everyone, while Clara signed and Pearl witnessed; she was not surprised, when she returned, to find them on the point of leaving. The lawyer's glance raked her up and down like an edged blade, but his voice, in deference to Clara, was gentle.
"I'm quite sure you'll take excellent care of your aunt, Mrs. Becker. She's one of our town's favorites, you know-if you need help, you have only to ask."
"Thank you," said Jeannie softly, in her best manner. Great-aunt Clara must have told him she'd been married. She herself liked the modern fashion of "Ms." which left her marital status handily obscured. Keith had been a mistake, and the divorce had been messy, what with the battle over the kids. He had custody, on account of her drinking-not that she was really an alcoholic, it was just that one time and unlucky for her that the roads were wet. But she could trust Great-aunt Clara not to have told anyone about that; she had too much family pride.
Pearl shook hands with her firmly. "I'll be dropping by every day, you know," she said, with her big old teeth showing in a fierce grin. "If you need a few minutes to go downtown, that kind of thing."
The old lady. Clara. She had a heart condition, for which she was supposed to take two of these little pills (morning and evening) and three of those (with each meal.) There were pills for the chest pain that came on unexpectedly, and pills for the bloating. She could just get out of bed, with help, to use the toilet and sit for a few minutes while Jeannie changed her bed. Jeannie was very careful and very conscientious, those first weeks. She kept the rasping whine out of her voice, the note Keith had told the judge was his first sign that something was really wrong.
And in return, Great-aunt Clara talked. She had had no full-time companion for years, not since her last sister died, and she had a life's stored memories to share. Jeannie gritted her teeth through the interminable tales of Clara's childhood: the pony her brother had had, the rides in the buggy, the first automobile, the first electric light in the town. And endlessly repetitive, the stories of Clara's favorite cat, Snowball.
"He looked just like that," Clara would say, waving feebly at the cheap print of a sentimental painting on the wall, the picture of a huge fluffy white cat with a blue bow around its neck, sitting beside a pot of improbable flowers on a stone wall. It was a hideous picture, and Jeannie was sure Snowball must have been a hideous cat. The picture was not the only reminder of Snowball. Clara had an old, yellowing photograph of the animal himself (he looked nothing like the cat in the painting… merely a white blur beneath a chair), several white china cats of various sizes, and a cat-shaped pillow covered with rabbit fur. At least Jeannie hoped it was rabbit-fur, and not the cat himself, stuffed.
She did not care enough to ask. She was sick and tired of Snowball stories, from the time he caught the mouse in the kitchen ("And carried it outside without making any mess on the floor at all…") to the time he hid in the car and startled Clara's father by leaping on his shoulder as they were driving to church, and the car swerved, and everyone thought her father had been… indulging, you know… until the cat leapt out. The town had laughed for days. Jeannie felt she had been trying to laugh for days, a stiff grin stretched across a dry mouth.
She wanted a drink. She needed a drink. But she would not drink yet, not while Pearl came by once a day or more, and the lawyer stopped her on the street to see how things were coming. First they must see what good care she took of Clara; first they must believe she was what she appeared.
Day after dull day passed by. Summer in a small town, to one used to a large city, is largely a matter of endurance. Jeannie didn't know any of the faces that fit the names in Clara's stories. She tried harder to follow them when Pearl was there, but the women had been close for over seventy years, and their talk came in quick, shorthand bursts that meant little to an outsider. Pearl, quick to notice Jeannie's confusion, tried to explain once or twice, but gave it up when Clara insisted "Of course she knows who we mean-she's family." The two women giggled, chattered briefly, giggled, shed tears, and to Jeannie it was all both boring and slightly disgusting. All that had happened years ago-before she herself was born-and what did it matter if some long-dead husband had thought his wife was in love with a Chinese druggist two towns away? Why cry over the death of someone else's child in a fire forty years ago? They should have more dignity, she thought, coming in with the tray of iced tea and cookies to find them giggling again.
Grimly, with a smile pasted to her face, she cooked the old-fashioned food Clara liked, washed the old plates and silver (real silver: she didn't mind that), and dusted the innumerable figurines on the shelves that seemed to crawl all over the walls. Not just white china cats, but shepherds and shepherdesses, barking dogs, fat-bellied ponies in lavender and cream, unbearably coy children being bashful with each other in costumes that reminded Jeannie of the more sickening children's books of her past. Blown-glass birds and ships and fish, decorative tiles with flowers hand-painted, Clara explained carefully, by the girls of her senior class. Pearl 's tile had a wicked-looking yellow rose, thorns very sharp, on pale green. Jeannie thought it was typical of her… sallow and sharp, that's what she was. She dusted the old photographs Clara had on every wall surface not covered by shelves of knickknacks: hand-colored mezzotints of a slender girl in a high-necked blouse with leg-o-mutton sleeves…"your great-grandmother, dear"… and a class portrait from Clara's high school days. Ben and Larry, the boys Clara and Pearl had loved (or whatever it was) were two stiff, sober-faced lads with slicked-down hair in the upper right and upper left-hand corners. Jeannie tried to imagine them in ordinary clothes and hair, and failed. All the faces were sober, even frightened; it had been the class of '17.
In August, Jeannie first began to notice the smell. No one had ever said Jeannie was slovenly; the one thing she truly prided herself on was cleanliness. She hated the feel of Clara's flesh when she bathed her-that white, loose skin over obscene softness-but she would keep her great-aunt clean until her dying day. The smell of age she found unpleasant, but not as bad as in a nursing home. No, the smell she noticed was another smell, a sharper, acrid smell, which her great-aunt tried to tell her was from the bachelor's buttons under the window.
Jeannie did not argue. If she argued, if someone heard her arguing with her great-aunt, it would be hard to present herself as the angel of mercy she knew she was. She did say she thought bachelor's buttons had no smell, but with a wistful questioning intonation that let her aunt explain that those bachelor's buttons smelled like that every summer, and she liked the smell because it reminded her of Snowball.
Of course, Jeannie thought, it's a cat. A tomcat smell, the smell of marked territory. Odd that it came through a closed window, in spite of air-conditioning, but smells would do things like that. Since Clara said she liked it, Jeannie tried to endure it, but it was stronger in her bedroom, as if the miserable cat had marked the bed itself. She looked, finding no evidence, and vacuumed vigorously.
Outside, on the white clapboard skirting of the old house, she found the marks she sought. Hot sun baked the bachelor's buttons, the cracked soil around them (she had not watered for more than a week), and the streaked places on the skirting that gave off that memorable smell. On the pretext of watering the flowers (they did need watering, and she picked some to arrange inside) she hosed down the offending streaks. And a few days later, dragging the hose around to water another of the flowerbeds (when she had this house, she would forget the flowerbeds), she saw a white blurred shape up near the house, and splashed water at it. A furious streak sped away, yowling. Gotcha, thought Jeannie, that'll teach you, and forgot about it.
Clara had another small stroke in September, that left her with one drooping eyelid and halting speech, now as ragged as soft. Jeannie had driven her (in Clara's old car) to the hospital in the county seat, and Jeannie drove her home, with a list of instructions for diet and care. In between those two trips, in the hours when the hospital discouraged visitors, she explored Clara's little town. The square with its bandstand had been paved, parking for the stores around it. She remembered, with an unexpected pang of nostalgia, climbing into the empty bandstand and pretending to be, a singer. A hardware store had vanished, replaced by a supermarket which had already swallowed a small grocery store the last time she'd visited. The farm supply and implement company had moved out of town, as had the lumberyard; a used car dealer had one lot, and the other was covered with rows of tiny boxlike rental storage units. A few people recognized her; she hurried past the door that opened onto a narrow stair-upstairs was the lawyer's office, with its view over the town square and out back across a vacant lot to the rest of town.
It was stiflingly hot. Jeannie got back in Clara's car and drove out of town toward the county seat and its hospital, well aware of watching eyes. But the county seat had more than a hospital, and it was larger, and she was less known, Clara's car less noticeable. She parked in the big courthouse lot, walked a block to a sign she'd noticed, and glanced around. Midafternoon: the lawyer would be in his office, or in court.
She came out two hours later. Not drunk at all-no one could say she was drunk. A lady, worried to death about her old great-aunt, needing a cool place to spend a few hours before the hospital would let her back in… that's all. She knew her limits well, and she knew exactly what she wanted. She had the name and number she had expected to find, and would not need to visit the Blue Suite again.
That night, alone in the house (Clara would be in the hospital another two days, the doctor had said), she lounged in the parlor as she never did when Clara was there. She had remembered to call Pearl, had said she didn't need any help with anything, and now she relaxed, safe, wearing the short lacy nightshirt she'd bought in the county seat, enjoying the first cold beer she'd ever had in this house. She smirked up at the shelves of figurines. Clara's monthly allowance wouldn't exactly cover what she wanted, but she knew there were places to sell some of this trash, and if Clara were bedfast she'd never know.
Clara came home more fragile than before. She never left the bedroom now, and rarely managed to sit up in the armchair; Jeannie had to learn to make the bed with her in it. She had to learn other, more intimate services when Clara could not get out of bed at all. But she persisted, through the rest of September and October, until even thorny Pearl admitted (to the supermarket clerk, from whom Jeannie heard it) that she seemed to be genuinely fond of Clara, and taking excellent care of her. When the first November storm slashed the town with cold rain and wind, Pearl called to apologize for not visiting that day. Jeannie answered the phone in the hall.
"It's all right," she told Pearl. "Do you want me to wake her, so you can talk?"
"Not if she's sleeping," said Pearl. "Just tell her."
"She sleeps a lot more now," said Jeannie, in a voice that she hoped conveyed delicate sadness.
Clara was not asleep, but her voice no longer had the resonance to carry from room to room… and certainly not enough to be overheard on the phone. "Who was it, dear?" she asked when Jeannie came back to her.
"Nothing," said Jeannie. She knew Clara's hearing was going. "Some salesman about aluminum siding." She felt a rising excitement; it had taken months, but here was her chance. A day or so without Pearl, another inevitable stroke-it would work. It would be easy. "Do you think Pearl will try to come out in this storm?"
Clara moved her head a little on the pillow. "I hope not… but she'll call. Tell me if she calls, dear, won't you?"
"Of course."
Two days later, it was possible to tell Pearl that Clara had forgotten being told-of course she had told her about the calls, but since this latest stroke, and with the new medications… Jeannie delivered this information in a low voice, just inside the front door. Pearl herself looked sick, her wisps of white hair standing out in disarray, her deep voice more hoarse than musical. If Jeannie had been capable of it, she would have felt pity for Pearl then-she knew she ought to, an old woman whose oldest friend was fading into senility-but what she felt was coarse triumphant glee. Old cow, she thought, I should try you next. Pearl was nodding, showing no suspicion; perhaps she was too tired. '.
She left them alone, and went to fix them tea; she could just hear Pearl 's deep voice, and a wisp of plaintive trembling treble that must be Clara. When she came in with the tray, Clara's hands were shaking so that she could not hold the cup.
"Are you sure you told me, dear?" she asked Jeannie. "You couldn't have forgotten?"
"I'm sure, Aunt Clara. I'm sorry-maybe you were still sleepy, or maybe the medicine…" She held the cup to Clara's lips, waited for her to slurp a little-no longer so ladylike in her sips-and set it down.
Pearl, leaning back in her chair, suddenly sniffed. Jeannie stiffened; she had bathed Clara carefully (that duty she would always perform) and instantly suspected Pearl of trying to make her feel inferior. But Pearl merely looked puzzled.
"Do you have a cat again, Clara?" she asked. Jeannie relaxed, relieved. She answer for her aunt.
"No, but there's a stray, and he… uh… he… you know."
"He sprays the house? It must be, to smell that strong on a chilly day. I thought perhaps indoors-"
"Did I ever tell you about the time Snowball clawed the minister's wife?" asked Clara brightly. Jeannie glanced at Pearl, and met a wistful and knowing glance. She accepted that silent offer of alliance as silently, and told her aunt no.
After that it was as easy as she'd hoped. November continued cold and damp; Clara's friends came rarely, and readily believed Jeannie's excuses on the telephone. Once or twice she let a call go through, when Clara was drowsy with medicine and not making much sense. Soon the calls dwindled, except on sunny bright days when they asked if they could come see her. This Jeannie always encouraged so eagerly that everyone knew how hard it was on her, poor dear, all alone with dying Clara.
When they came, Clara would be exquisitely clean and neat, arrayed in her best bedjacket; Jeannie, in something somber and workmanlike. They never smelled alcohol on her breath; they never saw bottles or cans in the house. They never came without calling, because, as Jeannie had explained, "Sometimes I'm up most of the night with her, you know, and I do nap in the day sometimes…" That was only fair; no one could fault her for that, or wanted to bring her out, sleepy and rumpled, to answer the doorbell.
It was true that Clara's monthly allowance from the trust would not buy Jeannie what she wanted. She began in the cedar chests which were full of a long lifetime's accumulation: old handpainted china tea sets, antique dolls and doll clothes, handmade quilts and crocheted afghans. She would not risk the county seat, but it was less than fifty miles to the big city, where no one knew anyone else, and handcrafted items brought a good price.
Gradually, week by week, she pilfered more: an old microscope that had belonged to Clara's dead husband, a set of ruby glass that they never used, a pair of silver candlesticks she found in the bottom cupboard in the dining room. Clara had jewellery that had been her mother's and her older sisters', jumbled together in a collection of old jewellery boxes, white and red and green padded leather, hidden in bureau drawers all over the house, under linens and stationery and faded nightgowns from Clara's youth and brief marriage. With one eye on the bed, where Clara lay dozing, Jeannie plucked first one then another of the saleable items: a ruby ring, a gold brooch, a platinum ring with diamond chips, a pair of delicate gold filigree earrings.
Autumn passed into winter, a gray, nasty December followed by a bleak and bitter January. Jeannie felt the cold less, with her secret cache of favorite beverages and pills. Pearl came once a week or so, on good days, but Jeannie always had plenty of warning… and Clara now knew better than to complain. Jeannie had used no force (she had read about it), but threats of the nursing home sufficed. And it was not like real cruelty. As she'd told Clara, "What if it does take me a little while sometimes… at least you got a nurse to yourself, on call day and night, and that's more than you'd get there. They let people like you lie in a wet bed… they don't come running. You ought to be glad you've got me to take care of you-because you don't have no place else." She felt good about that, really, even using bad grammar on purpose. The world was not the bright, shiny gold ring Clara had told her about when she was a child; using good grammar didn't get you anywhere she wanted to go.
She intended it to be over before spring. She could not possibly stand another summer in this dump. But picking a time, and a precise method-that was harder. Clara slept most of the day now, helped by liberal doses of medicine; the doctor was understanding when Jeannie explained that she needed her own sleep, and couldn't be up and down all the time when her aunt was agitated. Jeannie watched her, half-hoping she'd quit breathing on her own. But the old lady kept breathing, kept opening her eyes every morning and several times a day, kept wanting to talk, in that breathy and staggering voice, about the old days.
And especially, to Jeannie's disgust, about cats. Snowball, of course, first and always. But she sent Jeannie out to find and bring into the bedroom the other cats, the china ones and glass ones and the elegant woodcarving of a Siamese that Jeannie had not noticed in a corner cabinet until Clara told her which shelf. Clara not only talked about cats, she seemed to talk to them: to the picture ("Snowball, you beauty, you dear…") and the china cats ("You're so sleek, so darling…") It made Jeannie gag. So did the tang of tomcat, which remained even in cold weather. Had the cat hit a hot-water pipe, Jeannie wondered? Was it living under the house, in the crawl space?
In the middle of January, Pearl came one day without calling first. Jeannie wakened suddenly in midmorning, aware of the doorbell's dying twang. Her mouth was furry and tasted horrible; she knew her eyes were bleary. She popped two breath mints, put on her hooded robe, and peered out the spyhole. Pearl, muffled in layers of brilliant knitting, stood hunched over a walker on the front porch, holding a folded newspaper in her hand. Jeannie opened the door, backing quickly away from the gust of cold air. "Sorry," she said vaguely. "I've had a sort of cold, and I was up last night…"
"That's all right, dear, and I won't disturb Clara-" Pearl handed her the paper. "I just thought you should know, to break it gently-our other classmate, May, died yesterday in the nursing home."
"Oh, how terrible." She knew what to say, but felt the morning after lassitude dragging at her mind. "Sit down?"
"No." Pearl glanced at Clara's shut bedroom door. "I don't think I-I mean, I might cry… I would cry… and she'd be more upset. Pick your time, dear." And shaking her head to Jeannie's offers of a cup of tea or a few minutes of rest, she edged her way back out and down the walk in careful steps behind the walker. Jeannie watched through the window, then glanced at the paper. "May Ellen Freeman, graduated high school in '17, one of the last few…" The newspaper writer had let herself go, wallowing in sentimentality.
It was, in fact, the perfect excuse. Everyone knew that old people were more fragile, could fall apart when their friends died. Pearl was using a walker- Pearl, who two weeks ago had climbed the front steps on her own. So if she told Clara, and Clara's heart stopped, who would question it? And she would choose her time carefully.
Clara, of course, was awake, and had heard the doorbell. Another mistake, Jeannie told her. She hurried Clara though the morning routine-after all, they were late-rushing her through the bedpan part, bathing her as quickly as she could, changing the bed with quick, jerking tugs at the sheets. She even apologized, with the vague feeling that she ought to be polite to someone she was going to kill in a few minutes, for being late. She'd felt a cold coming on, she'd had a headache last night, she'd taken more aspirin than she should. Clara said nothing; her tiny face had crumpled even further.
"I'll get your breakfast," said Jeannie, carrying away the used bed linens. Her head was beginning to pound with the effort of thought. She glanced at the clock as she pushed the sheets into the washer. After ten already! Suppose they did an autopsy… Clara would have nothing in her stomach, and she should have had breakfast. Could Jeannie say she had refused her breakfast? Sometimes she did. A snack now? The thought of cooking turned Jeannie's stomach, but she put a kettle on the stove and turned on the back burner. Tea, perhaps, and something warmed in the microwave. She went to her room and brushed her hair vigorously, slapped her face to get the color in it. In her mind she was explaining to the doctor how Clara had seemed weaker that morning, hadn't eaten, and she'd taken her a roll, wondering whether to tell her yet, and Clara had… had what? Should Clara eat the roll first, and then be told, or… the kettle whistled to her.
Rolls, cups of tea, the pretty enameled tray she might sell at the flea market for a few dollars. She carried it into Clara's bedroom with a bright smile, and said, "Here you are, dear."
"Wish I could have eggs." Clara fumbled for one of the rolls, and Jeannie helped her. It was stupid, the doctor saying she couldn't have eggs, when she was over ninety and couldn't live long anyway, but it saved Jeannie from having to smell them cooking when she had a hangover. She sipped tea from her own cup, meditatively, wondering just when to do it. She felt someone staring at her, that unmistakable feeling, and turned around to see nothing at the window at all. No one could see through the blinds and curtains anyway. Her neck itched. She glared at the picture on the wall, the fake fluffy cat Clara called Snowball. Two glowing golden eyes stared back at her, brighter than she remembered. Hangover, she told herself firmly; comes from mixing pills and booze. So did the stench of tomcat.
What it really did was remind her of the perfect method. She cleared away the tray, gently wiped Clara's streaked chin and brushed away the crumbs, then carried the tray to the kitchen. She was a little hungry now, and fixed herself a bowl of Clara's cereal. The right bowl would be in the sink, later, if anyone looked. They would look; it was that kind of town.
Then she carried in the morning paper, and the white cat-shaped pillow, fixing her face in its fake smile for the last time. She would have a fake sad look later, but this was the last fake smile, and that thought almost made it real.
"I'm sorry, Aunt Clara," she said, as sorrowfully as she could. "I've got bad news-"
"Pearl?" Clara's face went white; she was staring at the paper. Jeannie almost wished she'd thought of that he. It would have done the trick. But in her own way she was honest. She shook her head.
"No," she said gently. "May Ellen." Clara's face flushed pink again.
"Law! You scared me!" Her breath came fast and shallow. "May's been loony this five years-I expected her-" But her chin had started to tremble, and her voice shook even more than usual.
"I thought you'd be upset," said Jeannie, holding out the cat pillow, as if for comfort. " Pearl said-"
Clara's good eye looked remarkably alive this morning, a clear unclouded gray. "I thought I heard you two whispering out there. She here?"
"No, Aunt Clara. She didn't want to disturb you, and she said she'd start crying-"
"S'pose she would. May was her maid of honor, after all." Jeannie had not realized that Pearl had ever been married. Clara's voice faded again. "It was a long time ago…" Now she was crying, grabbing for the cat-shaped pillow as Jeannie had hoped she would, burying her face in that white fur, her swollen knuckles locked onto it. Weak sobs shook her body, as disorganized as her speech.
"There, there," Jeannie said, as soothingly as if she expected it to go on tape. "There, there." She slipped an arm under Clara's head, cradling her, and pushed the pillow more firmly onto her face. It didn't take long, and the bony hands clung to the pillow, as if to help.
Jeannie "discovered" her an hour later. By then she had bathed, dressed, downed two cups of strong coffee, and made her own bed. She checked her appearance in the mirror. Slightly reddened eyes and nose could be grief; she left off her usual makeup. When she called the doctor, he was unsurprised, and quickly agreed to sign the certificate. She let her own voice tremble when she admitted she'd told Clara of May's death. He soothed her, insisted it was not her fault. "But it's so awful!" she heard herself say. "She started crying, into that old fur pillow… she wanted to be left alone, she said, so I went to take my bath, and she's… it's like she's holding it to her-" Sounding a little bored, the doctor asked if she wanted him to come by and see… she could tell he thought it was silly: old ladies do not commit suicide by smothering themselves with fur pillows. "I guess not," she said, hoping he hadn't overdone it.
"You're all right yourself?" he asked, more briskly.
"Yes… I'll be fine."
"Call if you want a sedative later," he said.
Jeannie removed the pillow from Clara's face, unclenching the dead fingers, surprised to feel nothing much at all when she touched that cooling flesh. Clara's face looked normal, as normal as a dead face could look. Jeannie called the funeral home Clara had always said she wanted ("give the condemned their choice"), and then, nervous as she was, called Pearl. It was a replay of the doctor's reaction. Jeannie lashed herself with guilt, admitted she had chosen the time badly, explained at length why it had seemed safe, and let Pearl comfort her. The irony of it almost made her lose character and laugh-that Pearl, now twice bereft, and sole survivor, would comfort the murderer-but she managed to choke instead. Pearl wanted to come, right away, and Jeannie agreed-even asked her to call Mr. Benson, the lawyer. "I feel so guilty," she finished, and Pearl replied, wearily enough, "You mustn't."
Everything went according to plan. Pearl arrived just before the funeral home men; she had her moment alone with Clara, and came out saying how peaceful Clara looked. She herself looked exhausted and sick, and Jeannie insisted on giving her a cup of tea and a roll. The funeral home men were swift and efficient, swathing Clara's body in dark blue velvet, and removing it discreetly by the back door, rather than wheeling the gurney past Pearl in the living room. "So thoughtful," Jeannie murmured, signing the forms they handed her, and they murmured soothing phrases in return. She wondered if they would be so soothing to someone who felt real grief. The lawyer arrived; she sensed a renewed alertness in his glance around the living room, but she had been careful. None of the conspicuous ornaments was missing. He murmured about the will filed in his office; Jeannie tried to look exhausted and confused.
"Will? I don't suppose she has much, does she? I thought-if I can just stay here a week or so, I'll go back to my job in the city-" In point of fact, Clara had to have been rich; she'd been married to a rich man-or so Jeannie had always been told-and he'd left her everything. And Mr. Benson had always spoken of her monthly income as allowance from a trust; trusts were for rich people. Jeannie had not come to a small town to work herself to the bone for nothing. But she knew she must not say so. The lawyer relaxed slightly.
"Of course you're free to stay here as long as you need; we all know you've put a lot into nursing Clara. The funeral, now-?"
"I thought Tuesday," said Jeannie,.
"Excellent. We'll talk about the will afterward."
A steady stream of visitors came by that afternoon; Jeannie had no time for the relaxing drink she desperately wanted. Someone middle-aged stripped the bed, made it from linens taken from a bureau drawer. The woman seemed to know Jeannie, and where everything was, which made Jeannie very nervous, but the woman said nothing. She slipped away after restoring Clara's bedroom to perfect order. Several people brought food: a ham, a bean casserole, two cakes, and a pie. Two of the women walked into the kitchen as if they owned it, and put the food away in the refrigerator without asking Jeannie anything. But she survived it all, and at last they left. She was alone, and safe, and about to be richer than she'd ever been in her life.
She was also deadly tired. She thought of pouring herself a drink, but it seemed like too much trouble. Her own bed beckoned, a bed from which she need not rise until she felt like it. No more answering Clara's bell (in her memory, already blurring, she had always answered Clara's bell.) No more getting up each morning to help an old lady use a bedpan and give her a bath. No more cooking tasteless food for a sick old fool. She stretched, feeling the ease of a house empty of anyone else's needs, with plenty to satisfy her own, and settled into her bed with a tired grunt. Beside her, the bedside table held what she needed if she woke suddenly: the pills, the flat-sided bottle that would send her straight back to lovely oblivion. She turned out the light, and yawned, and fell heavily asleep in the midst of it.
She woke with stabbing pains in her legs: literally stabbing as if someone had stuck hatpins into her. Before her eyes were open, she was aware of the rank smell of tomcat somewhere nearby. She kicked out, finding nothing, and reached down under the bedclothes to feel her legs. Something clinked, across the room, in the darkness. It sounded like beercans. The rattle came again, followed by the unmistakable sound of someone rummaging through tightly packed bottles.
Something was in the room with her, and had found her cache, her secret store of liquor hidden in the back of her closet. Furious, she reached for the bedside table lamp. Something raked her arm, painfully. Claws she thought, as her hand found the switch and light sprang out, blinding her. A waifish ginger kitten crouched on the bedside table, one paw extended. Its wistful eyes were pale gray, an unusual color she had never seen on any cat. A dull clank came from the closet, and the smell of whiskey joined the smell of tomcat. A yowl, and another clank and the tinkle of broken glass. Something white streaked across the floor; Jeannie shivered. It slowed, stopped, turned to look at her. A small, sleek, white cat, hardly larger than the china cats on the shelf in Clara's bedroom. Her stomach roiled. Another small white cat joined the first, just enough larger to look like one of a set.
She wanted to scream, to say that this was impossible, but no sound came when she tried. She stared at the open door, where an impossibly fluffy white tail showed now, as an enormous white cat, a blue satin bow tied around its neck, backed out of the closet with something in its mouth. A beer can, one of the silver ones. Her mind chattered crazily, reminding her that cats are not dogs; they do not fetch things that way. The cat turned, gave her a long yellow stare, and dropped the beer can, which rolled across the floor. The two small white cats batted it with their paws as it went by.
Her voice returned enough for her to ask "Snowball…?"
The white cat grinned at her, showing many sharp teeth, and ran its claws out and in. It was as big as the cat-shaped pillow, as big as the cat in the painting. She felt something land on the bed, and looked to see the ginger kitten bound across to jump off the far side and go to the big white cat. They touched noses, rubbed cheeks, and then sat down facing her.
Her mind went blank for a few minutes. It could not be what it looked like, yet she had seen pictures of young Clara, a slight ginger-haired girl with wide, waifish gray eyes. And in the huge white-tomcat, it must be-she saw the protective stance of the acknowledged mate. Cats aren't like that, she told herself, as both of them jumped onto the bed, as the sleek smaller cats jumped onto the bed, as she batted helplessly at mouths full of sharp teeth and paws edged with sharp claws, as the massive white fur body of the tomcat settled over her face, and the light went out. Snowball she could hear Clara saying in a meditative tone was not just an ordinary cat. Jeannie had time to worry about what the broken whiskey bottles, the rolling beer cans, the unmarked packet of pills, would say to those who found her, before she realized that she didn't have to worry about that after all.