Good-bye, Son and Other Stories. Janet Lewis
red-curtained dining room, and decorated with pink and green. The room was festooned with roses and lighted with candles, and there were pink and green baskets full of nuts at everyone’s place. There was a big white mint candy, the size of a cooky, for everyone, too, marked in pink sugar with “Eighty.” The birthday cake was in the kitchen, waiting to be lighted, but Frances and Sophia had seen it before Annie chased them out. It had eighty little pink candles around it in a ring.
The children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and the sons- and grandsons-in-law gathered in Mrs. Wilkey’s room, upstairs, and descended to the dining room in a grand march. Mrs. Wilkey headed the procession on the arm of Archibald Martin, and Frances and Roberta brought up the rear, quivering with excitement. Annie stood at the door in a fresh white apron to usher them in.
There were eighteen of them at the table. They jostled each other and talked all at once, resembling each other, if taken in the proper order, like the progressive chords in a harmony which lead from one key to another.
Annie brought in the cake with its circle of little flames, and Marianne pounded on the table and cried, “Speech, Grandma, speech.” Mrs. Wilkey stood up, the candles making funny upward shadows on her face, and everyone cheered. Sue said, “Don’t cry, Gran.” Mrs. Wilkey looked down the long table. The tears shone on her cheeks, she made her speech, and cut the cake. Frances did not eat her white candy with the pink letters, but saved it to look at.
One morning in the autumn after Gran’s eightieth birthday Mary sat with her mother in the upstairs room. The elms were turning brown. The trolley cars on Lake Street, a block away, sounded muffled and far, as if the haze in the air had enveloped sound as well as form. Both women were sewing. Mrs. Wilkey seemed to put off what she had to say as long as she could. When she had folded her work and laid it aside she made her announcement in a voice from which old age had gradually withdrawn the timbre.
“I’ve sold the house, Mary.”
“Oh, Mother.”
“I haven’t yet told Kate. The agreement allows me the use of it as long as I shall live, and the money is to be paid to the estate after my death. The Martin tribe will have to shift for itself. I am very sorry, but it had to be done.” She looked about the room with affection and some regret, and said humorously, “I don’t intend to die for some time.
“For Roberta I have set aside twenty thousand. I should like to leave you as much. If, after Roberta’s twenty thousand and twenty for you, there is anything left, it goes to the Martins. That’s all in my will. But I will not saddle you with Roberta. You will be her guardian, but she will not have to live with you. She will be happier if she doesn’t, and it will be more fair to you and Jesse.”
Mary moved her lips to form a protest but did not speak it.
“The Martins have already had their share. I have been very weak with ’em. I love them too much, but while my head’s clear I’m arranging not to be weak with ’em after my death.”
She finished up the conversation in much the same manner in which she finished and folded up her work, and Mary was not invited to discuss the subject with her.
Early that winter Mrs. Wilkey died. Kate and Mary were alone in the house with her. Kate was dazed and made stupid by the event. She sat in an armchair in her mother’s room, staring at the floor or the foot of the bed, her face dull with unrealized sorrow. Mary had to meet the girls and Roberta and tell them of the death of someone who belonged almost more to them than to herself. At least, it seemed so at that moment.
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