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“I could have done that,” he said.
“I don’t have any trouble with lightbulbs,” said Enid. “Or fuses or knocking in nails. My mother and I have done without a man around the house for a long time now.” She meant to tease a little, to be friendly, but it didn’t work.
Finally Rupert would ask about his wife, and Enid would say that her blood pressure was down slightly, or that she had eaten and kept down part of an omelette for supper, or that the ice packs seemed to ease her itchy skin and she was sleeping better. And Rupert would say that if she was sleeping he’d better not go in.
Enid said, “Nonsense.” To see her husband would do a woman more good than to have a little doze. She took the children up to bed then, to give man and wife a time of privacy. But Rupert never stayed more than a few minutes. And when Enid came back downstairs and went into the front room-now the sickroom-to ready the patient for the night, Mrs. Qui
“Doesn’t hang around here very long, does he?” Mrs. Qui
“I doubt it,” said Enid, bringing the basin and towels, the rubbing alcohol and the baby powder.
“I doubt it,” said Mrs. Qui
“Swole up like some kind of pig,” Mrs. Qui
“If I felt like that I wouldn’t be here,” said Enid.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” said Mrs. Qui
“As far as I know, he goes to his sister’s house.”
“As far as you know. But you don’t know much.”
Enid thought she knew what this meant, this spite and venom, the energy saved for ranting. Mrs. Qui
The children came into the room obediently if unenthusiastically.
Mrs. Qui
“They just want to see you,” said Enid.
“Well, now they’ve seen me,” said Mrs. Qui
This behavior didn’t seem to surprise or disappoint the children. They looked at Enid, and Enid said, “All right, now, your mother better have a rest,” and they ran out and slammed the kitchen door.
“Can’t you get them to quit doing that?” Mrs. Qui
You would think these two daughters of hers were a pair of rowdy orphans, wished on her for an indefinite visit. But that was the way some people were, before they settled down to their dying and sometimes even up to the event itself. People of a gentler nature-it would seem-than Mrs. Qui
“Now I know my sister’s never going to get her hands on that,” she said.
And often people remarked that their visitors were only coming to gloat and that the doctor was responsible for their sufferings. They detested the sight of Enid herself, for her sleepless strength and patient hands and the way the juices of life were so admirably balanced and flowing in her. Enid was used to that, and she was able to understand the trouble they were in, the trouble of dying and also the trouble of their lives that sometimes overshadowed that.
But with Mrs. Qui
It was not just that she couldn’t supply comfort here. It was that she couldn’t want to. She could not conquer her dislike of this doomed, miserable young woman. She disliked this body that she had to wash and powder and placate with ice and alcohol rubs. She understood now what people meant when they said that they hated sickness and sick bodies; she understood the women who had said to her, I don’t know how you do it, I could never be a nurse, that’s the one thing I could never be. She disliked this particular body, all the particular signs of its disease. The smell of it and the discoloration, the malignant-looking little nipples and the pathetic ferretlike teeth. She saw all this as the sign of a willed corruption. She was as bad as Mrs. Green, sniffing out rampant impurity. In spite of being a nurse who knew better, and in spite of its being her job-and surely her nature-to be compassionate. She didn’t know why this was happening. Mrs. Qui
Mrs. Qui
Worse even than the fact that Enid should feel this revulsion was the fact that Mrs. Qui