Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories of Shirley Jackson (49 page)

Jane claims she doesn’t think I really said it, but all the others were there and can testify I did—all but Mrs. Acton, who never had a good word to say for anybody.

Anyway, right then we found out they had given the little boy something, trying to buy his affection, because Mrs. Acton pried it out of his hand, and he was crying all the time. When she held it out, it was hard to believe, but of course with them there’s nothing too low. It was a little gold-colored apple, all shiny and bright, and Mrs. Acton threw it right at the porch floor, as hard as she could, and that little toy shattered into dust. “We don’t want anything from you,” Mrs. Acton said, and as I told Jane afterward, it was terrible to see the look on Mrs. West’s face. For a minute she just stood there looking at us. Then she turned and went back inside and shut the door.

Someone wanted to throw rocks through the windows, but, as I told them, destroying private property is a crime and we might better leave violence to the menfolk, so Mrs. Acton took her little boy home, and I went in and called Jane. Poor Jane; the whole thing had gone off so fast, she hadn’t had time to get her corset on.

I hadn’t any more than gotten Jane on the phone, when I saw through the hall window that a moving van was right there next door, and the men were starting to carry out that fancy furniture. Jane wasn’t surprised when I told her over the phone. “Nobody can get moving that fast,” she said. “They were probably planning to slip out with that little boy.”

“Or maybe the maid did it with magic,” I said, and Jane laughed.

“Listen,” she said, “go and see what else is going on—I’ll hang on the phone.”

There wasn’t anything to see, even from my front porch, except the moving van and the furniture coming out; not a sign of Mrs. West or the maid.

“He hasn’t come home from the city yet,” Jane said. “I can see the street from here. They’ll have news for him tonight.”

That was how they left. I take a lot of the credit for myself, even though Jane tries to make me mad by saying Mrs. Acton did her share. By that night they were gone, bag and baggage, and Jane and I went over the house with a flashlight to see what damage they had left behind. There wasn’t a thing left in that house—not a chicken bone, not an acorn—except for one blue jay’s wing upstairs, and that wasn’t worth taking home. Jane put it in the incinerator when we came downstairs.

One more thing. My cat, Samantha, had kittens. That may not surprise you, but it sure as judgment surprised me and Samantha, her being over eleven years old and well past her kitten days, the old fool. But you would have laughed to see her dancing around like a young lady cat, just as light-footed and as pleased as if she thought she was doing something no cat ever did before; and those kittens troubled me.

Folks don’t dare come right out and say anything to me about my kittens, of course, but they do keep on with that silly talk about fairies and leprechauns. And there’s no denying that the kittens are bright yellow, with orange eyes, and much bigger than normal kittens have a right to be. Sometimes I see them all watching me when I go around the kitchen, and it gives me a cold finger down my back. Half the children in town are begging for those kittens—“fairy kittens,” they’re calling them—but there isn’t a grown-up in town would take one.

Jane says there’s something downright uncanny about those kittens, but then, I may never speak to her again in all my life. Jane would even gossip about cats, and gossip is one thing I simply cannot endure.

A G
REAT
V
OICE
S
TILLED

Playboy,
March 1960

T
HE HOSPITAL WAITING ROOM
was an island of inefficiency in the long echoing and white-painted and silenced stretches of the hospital. In the waiting room there were ashtrays and crackling wicker furniture and uneven brown wooden benches and clearly unswept corners; the business of the hospital did not go on with the intruders waiting restlessly, and with every bed in every wing of the hospital filled, it was perfectly all right with the hospital administration to see the wicker chairs and wooden benches in the waiting room empty and wasting space. Katherine Ashton, who had not wanted to come anywhere near the hospital, who had wanted to stay at home in the apartment on this dark Sunday afternoon, who had wanted to cry a little in private and then dine later in some small unobtrusive restaurant—perhaps the one where they did sweetbreads so nicely—and linger over a melancholy brandy; Katherine Ashton came into the waiting room behind her husband, saying, “I wish we hadn’t come. I tell you I hate hospitals and death scenes and anyway how does anyone know he’s going to die today?”

“You’d always be sorry if you hadn’t come,” Martin said. When he saw that the waiting room was empty, he turned back and looked hopefully up and down the hospital hall. “You think we could go upstairs right now?”

“They won’t
possibly
let us upstairs. Not
possibly
.”

“We got here first,” Martin said reasonably. “As soon as they let anyone go upstairs, it ought to be us, because we certainly got here ahead of the rest.”

“I’m going to feel like a fool,” Katherine said. “Suppose he doesn’t die? Suppose no one else comes?”

“Look.” Martin stopped walking back and forth from the window to the door and came to stand in front of her, as though he were lecturing to one of his classes. “He’s
got
to die. Here Angelí is flying down from Boston. And practically the whole staff of
Dormant Review
up all night working on obituaries and remembrances, and his American publisher already getting together a
Festschrift
, and the wife flying in from Majorca if they weren’t able to stop her. And Weasel calling every major literary critic from here to California to get them here in time. You think the man would have the
gall
to live after that?”

“But when I tried to call the doctor—”

“In my business,” Martin said, “you’ve got to be in the right places at the right times. Like a salesman or something. Just by being here I get a chance to meet Angelí, for instance—how long could I go, otherwise, trying to get to meet Angelí? And if I swing it right
Dormant
could even—”

“Here’s Joan,” Katherine said. “She’s still crying.”

Martin moved swiftly to the doorway. “Joan, dear,” he said. “How
is
he?”

“Not… very well,” Joan said. “Hello, Katherine.”

“Hello, Joan,” Katherine said.

“I finally got hold of the doctor,” Joan said. “I called and called and finally
made
him talk to me. It sounds pretty… black.” She put her hand across her mouth as though she wanted to stop her lips from trembling.

“A matter of hours,” she said.

“My God,” Martin said.

“How awful,” Katherine said.

“Angell’s flying down from Boston, did you hear?” Joan sat tentatively on the edge of a bench. “Anybody upstairs with him?”

“They won’t let anyone go up,” Katherine said.

“Maybe they’re giving him a bath, or something. Or do they bother, if it’s only a matter of…”

“I don’t know,” Katherine said, and Joan sobbed.

“But it’s pretty certain to be today?” Martin asked with a kind of reluctant delicacy.

“You know how doctors talk.” Joan sobbed again. “They had to take me home this morning and give me a sedative, I was crying so. I haven’t had any sleep or anything to eat since yesterday, I was right here all the time until they took me home this morning and gave me a sedative.”

“Very touching,” said Martin. “Katherine and I thought it would look better if there weren’t so many people around, so we haven’t come until today.”

“John Weasel said he’d bring in some sandwiches and stuff later. I plan to stay right here, now, until the end.”

“So do we,” Martin said firmly.

“The Andersons are coming over, and probably those people he was visiting last weekend, they’re probably coming down from Connecticut. And—we all thought it was so sweet—the bar, you know, the one where he had the attack, well, they’re sending over flowers. We all thought it was so sweet.”

“It was nice of them,” Katherine said.

“I only hope Angelí gets here in time. Weasel’s got the Smiths and their car at the airport and he even called the police station to ask for a police escort, but of course you can’t ever make
them
understand. I’m still crying so I can’t stop. I haven’t stopped since yesterday.”

“Someone’s coming,” Martin said, and Joan sobbed. “Weasel,” Martin said. “Weasel, dear old fellow. Any news?”

“I called the doctor. Katherine, hello. Joan, my dear, you shouldn’t be here, you really
shouldn’t
, you promised me you’d try and get some rest. Now I
am
cross with you.”

“I’m sorry.” Joan looked up tearfully. “I couldn’t bear it, not being near him.”

“What a
day
I’ve had.” Weasel sighed and sat down on a bench and let his hands fall wearily. “The
police
, honestly! I told them and
told
them the light of the literary world was going
out
right here, and so could we
please
just get some kind of an escort to bring the country’s foremost literary critic over from the airport to hear his last words and close his eyes and whatnot, but I swear, darling, it’s exactly like talking to a pack of
prairie
dogs. Calling me ‘sir’ and asking me who I was, and”—he sat up and slapped his forehead violently—“the
wife
, great Bacchus, don’t
ask
me about the wife! Cables to Majorca all day yesterday and phone calls to Washington and clearance on the plane and all those cousins of hers pulling strings just simply
everywhere
and she’s arriving with absolutely
no
baggage!”

“You mean his wife
is
coming?” Joan stared, openmouthed.

“Darling, she’ll be here practically any
minute;
I kept
pleading
with the woman, I swear I did, positively
entreating
her—no place to put her up, no one free to take care of her, we’re
perfectly
capable of making all arrangements this end, and she literally would not listen to a word I said, I swear that that woman would not listen to a blessed word I said. I
knew
you’d be
furious
,” he said to Joan.

Joan wailed. “Naturally we’d send her the
body.”

Martin was pacing back and forth again, from the door to the window. “When will they let us go upstairs?” he demanded irritably.

Joan looked at him, surprised. “You think
you’re
going upstairs?”

“We were here first,” Martin said.

“But you didn’t even
know
him.”

“Katherine knew him exactly as well as you did,” Martin said flatly. “Besides, he had dinner with us Tuesday night.”

“Katherine certainly did
not
know him as well as I did,” Joan said.

“He did
not
have dinner with you,” Weasel said. “Not
Tuesday
. Tuesday he—”

“I certainly did,” Katherine said. “If you care for a public comparison—”

Joan opened her mouth to interrupt, then sobbed and turned as more people came into the waiting room. “That’s Philips, from
Dormant,’”
Martin said in Katherine’s ear. “The woman is Martha something-or-other; she writes those nasty reviews. I don’t know the other man.” He went forward, so that Weasel would have to introduce him, but more people came in, and he was suddenly involved in a group, talking in lowered voices, asking one another how long it would probably take, telling one another the names of people in the room. Through and around the quiet conversations went the soft half-moan that was Joan’s crying.

Katherine, unable to leave the bench where she was sitting, turned and said to a strange man sitting next to her, “Someone told me once how you could train yourself to endure physical torture without yielding.”

“Could it have been Neilson?” the man asked. “He did a nice piece on torture.”

“You pretend it’s happening to someone else,” Katherine said. “You withdraw your own mind and you just leave your body behind.”

“Did you know
him?”
the man asked, gesturing. “Upstairs?”

“Yes,” Katherine said. “I knew him very well.”

Somebody seemed to have brought a paper milk carton full of vodka, and somebody else went into the hospital hall and came back with a stack of paper cups. Martin pushed through the crowd to bring Katherine a paper cup with vodka in it, and said, “Angell’s here. He did make it. No one knows anything about the wife. The man in the blue suit by the door is Arthur B. Arthur, and the dark-haired girl next to him is that little kid he married.”

Near Katherine, Weasel was explaining to someone, “—stopped off in the chapel to pray. He’s thinking of being converted,
anyway
, you know.”

The man next to Katherine leaned over and asked her, “Who’s doing the Memorial Fund?”

“Weasel, probably,” she said.

“Don’t
ask
me,” Weasel said beside her. “Simply don’t ask
me
. Any more dealings with that shrew of a wife, and I will positively be ready to die
myself
. I will simply
have
to get back to Bronxville for a long rest after all this; it’s been perfectly
frightful
ever since Friday morning; I haven’t been home since he had the attack, I came right down from Bronxville and I’ve had to stay in the Andersons’ place over on the West Side and it’s been just
awful”

From the little group by the door, there was a little rustle of quick, hushed laughter.

“I want Angell to do the Memorial Fund, anyway,” Weasel said. “His name always looks so much
better
on a thing like that.”

Joan was crying loudly now, struggling in the arms of the tall man in the blue suit. “I want to go to him,” she was shouting. Vodka from her paper cup spilled onto the floor of the hospital hall.

“There’s a nurse,” someone said. “They’re not trying to offer her a
drink?
” someone else said. “Be
quiet
, everybody,” Weasel said, struggling to get through to the doorway.

“Is he dead?” the man next to Katherine asked her, “Did the nurse say he was dead?”

“About three minutes ago,” someone else said. “About three minutes ago. He died.”

“We missed
every
thing?” Weasel’s voice rose despairingly. “Because this just
finishes
it, that’s all. They promised to
call
us,” he said wildly to the nurse. “That’s just about the lowest
I’ve
ever seen.”

“You wouldn’t let me go to him,” Joan said to the nurse; her voice was heartbroken. “You wouldn’t let me go to him.”

“We weren’t even
there
,” Weasel said. “This poor child…” He put an arm tenderly around Joan.

“Mrs. Jones was with him,” the nurse said.

“What?”
Weasel fell back dramatically. “They sneaked her in? No one let me know? She got here?”

“Can we go up now, anyway?” Martin asked.

“Mrs. Jones is with him,” the nurse said. “Mrs. Jones will no doubt want to thank all of you at another time. Now…” she gestured, slightly but unmistakably; she was indicating the hall that led to the outside doors of the hospital.

“Well.” Weasel tightened his lips. “How about the service?” he said. “I suppose Mrs. Jones wants to run
that
, too? She’s never read a
word
of his work,
naturally
. I was planning to read the passage on death from his
Evil Man,”
he explained to Angelí, “you remember: it begins with that marvelous description of the flies? He used to recite it when he was drunk. Mrs. Jones will simply
have
to come down here,” he said to the nurse. “How can we make any
arrangements?
”

“Mrs. Jones will no doubt be in touch with you,” the nurse said. She stood back a little, and this time her gesture was a shade more emphatic.

There was a minute of silent hesitation, and then Angell said, “Within the twilight chamber spreads apace the shadow of white Death, and at the door invisible Corruption waits.”

“A great voice has been stilled,” Weasel said reverently.