All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred twenty-eight)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Five

Collecting Debts

(part one hundred twenty-eight)

ii.

A date after all

“Say, Fannie. Nettie didn’t actually die in this room, did she?”

Uncle George’s first wife had needed her shutters and heavy drapes; as Élucide remembered of her (to the age of ten, when Mother’s, “Mrs. Rutherford is in Heaven”, gave her the giggles and cost a dessert), Nettie had required a number of things to adjust, or order adjusted.

The habit was Romanesque…

That would be to say, Unversaghtian, but Gremotish too. Reasonable to conclude, the way of the invalid altogether. Nildie these days took the lap blanket, the medicines, the bell to ring, the schedule for being checked on—or, if in the room, the hushedness, and strange religion of pretending you hadn’t bought anything new, or had fun.

The shutters were white now, the drapes chintz, but the light could be as decently snuffed as when Nettie had harried her Irish maid, wrestling layers open, closed.

(“No, now, I can’t see a thing. Shut that, Ellen, and pull the drapes. Edith, bring that child over where I can get a look. Open the one behind. No, scatterbrain! Where am I sitting? The one behind…)

“At the springs. I was the one to escort Nettie up, me in particular, because she was matchmaking, if you can believe it. George says she wanted to know who he’d marry when she was gone, so she could carp while she had time. I’d just seen to her settling in with her footbath, her back leg…there, why am I quoting George again? You never mind I said it. Her leg was dragging up the stairs, she was just about falling over Ellen. I’d gone down for the pitcher of ice water. Really…I’m a little guilty…to let Dr. Wheelwright know our Nettie was being extra peevish. He stopped up to welcome her, after that space of time for us to have our little talk, and there was poor Ellen fanning away at Nettie in her chair, saying ‘never be dead’. Well. She had Bright’s, did you know? I wouldn’t say it to George, but I think jostling down on the train’s what got the fluids shifted up to her heart.”

Élucide counted pamphlets, leafing through each, as guests did not always carry them home, but did sometimes scribble in the margins. She was at odds with Fannie, vaguely; it had come as a muted frost, because on arriving she’d said:

“I have to tell you something that happened the day Papa gave his speech. I talked to Mr. Yeager…”

“Oh, I know. You shouldn’t, Luce.” Fannie laid a fingertip under an eye.

“I was telling him he ought to come to our group, and then somehow…other things happened and I didn’t get a straight answer. For all I know, he’ll show up.”

Only a turning away to be busy, but plain enough.

137

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred twenty-nine)

(2024, Stephanie Foster)