Yes,she had changed her mind after sixty years and she would like to see George.I want you to find George.Find him and be sure to tell him I forgot him.I want him to know I had my husband just the same and my children and my house like any other woman.A good house too and a good husband that I loved and fine children out of him.Better than I hoped for even.Tell him I was given back everything he took away and more.Oh,no,oh,God,no,there was something else besides the house and the man and the children.Oh,surely they were not all?What was it?Something not given back...Her breath crowded down under her ribs and grew into a monstrous frightening shape with cutting edges;it bored up into her head,and the agony was unbelievable:Yes,John,get the doctor now,no more talk,my time has come.
When this one was born it should be the last.The last.It should have been born first,for it was the one she had truly wanted.Everything came in good time.Nothing left out,left over.She was strong,in three days she would be as well as ever.Better.A woman needed milk in her to have her full health.
"Mother,do you hear me?"
"I've been telling you—"
"Mother,Father Connolly's here."
"I went to Holy Communion only last week.Tell him I'm not so sinful as all that."
"Father just wants to speak to you."
He could speak as much as he pleased.It was like him to drop in and inquire about her soul as if it were a teething baby,and then stay on for a cup of tea and a round of cards and gossip.He always had a funny story of some sort,usually about an Irishman who made his little mistakes and confessed them,and the point lay in some absurd thing he would blurt out in the confessional showing his struggles between native piety and original sin.Granny felt easy about her soul.Cornelia,where are your manners?Give Father Connolly a chair.She had her secret comfortable understanding with a few favorite saints who cleared a straight road to God for her.All as surely signed and sealed as the papers for the new Forty Acres.Forever...heirs and assigns forever.Since the day the wedding cake was not cut,but thrown out and wasted.The whole bottom dropped out of the world,and there she was blind and sweating with nothing under her feet and the walls falling away.His hand had caught her under the breast,she had not fallen,there was the freshly polished floor with the green rug on it,just as before.He had cursed like a sailor's parrot and said,"I'll kill him for you."Don't lay a hand on him,for my sake leave something to God."Now,Ellen,you must believe what I tell you..."
So there was nothing,nothing to worry about any more,except sometimes in the night one of the children screamed in a nightmare,and they both hustled out shaking and hunting for the matches and calling,"There,wait a minute,here we are!"John,get the doctor now,Hapsy's time has come.But there was Hapsy standing by the bed in a white cap."Cornelia,tell Hapsy to take off her cap.I can't see her plain."
Her eyes opened very wide and the room stood out like a picture she had seen somewhere.Dark colors with the shadows rising towards the ceiling in long angles.The tall black dresser gleamed with nothing on it but John's picture,enlarged from a little one,with John's eyes very black when they should have been blue.You never saw him,so how do you know how he looked?But the man insisted the copy was perfect,it was very rich and handsome.For a picture,yes,but it's not my husband.The table by the bed had a linen cover and a candle and a crucifix.The light was blue from Cornelia's silk lampshades.No sort of light at all,just frippery.You had to live forty years with kerosene lamps to appreciate honest electricity.She felt very strong and she saw Doctor Harry with a rosy nimbus around him.
"You look like a saint,Doctor Harry,and I vow that's as near as you'll ever come to it."
"She's saying something."
"I heard you,Cornelia.What's all this carrying-on?"
"Father Connolly's saying—"