AH? WHAT SAY? OH!
‘Just a moment while I put on my glasses. There!’
The clock chimed three again. Shame, old clock! Have to have it fixed.
The young man in the dark suit stood near the door. Aunt Tildy nodded her head.
‘You leavin’ so soon, young man? Good thing! Emily’s comin’ home and she’d fix you. Had to give up, didn’t you? Couldn’t convince me, could you? I’m mule-stubborn. You couldn’t get me out of this house, nosirree. Well, young man, you needn’t bother comin’ back to try again.’
The young man bowed with slow dignity.
He had no intention of coming again. Ever.
‘Fine,’ declared Aunt Tildy. ‘I always told Papa I’d win out. Why, I’m going to knit in this window the next thousand years. They’ll have to chew the boards down around me to get me out.’
The dark young man twinkled his eyes.
‘Quit lookin’ like the cat that ate the bird,’ cried Aunt Tildy. ‘Get out! And tote that old fool wicker box with you!’
The four men treaded heavily out the front door. Tildy studied the way they handled the wicker. It wasn’t heavy, yet they staggered with its weight.
‘Here, now!’ She rose in tremulous indignation. ‘Did you steal some of my antiques? My books?’ She glanced about concernedly. ‘No. The clocks? No. What you got in that wicker?’
The dark young man whistled jauntily, turning his back to her and walking along behind the four staggering men. At the door he pointed to the wicker, offered its lid to Aunt Tildy. In pantomime he wondered if she would like to open it and gaze inside.
‘Curious? Me? Shaw, no! Get out! Get it outa here!’ cried Tildy.
The dark young man tapped a hat on to his head, saluted her crisply good-bye.
‘Good-bye!’ said Tildy. ‘Go away!’
The door slammed. That was better. Gone. Darned fool men with their maggoty ideas. No never minds about the wicker. If they stole something, she didn’t care, long as they let her alone.
‘Look,’ said Aunt Tildy, pleased. ‘Here comes Emily, home from college. About time. Lovely girl. See how she walks. But, Land, she looks pale and funny today. Walking so slow. I wonder why. Looks worried, she does. Poor girl. Tired, maybe. I’ll just hustle her up a coffee pot and a tray of cakes.’
Emily tapped up the front steps. Aunt Tildy, rustling around, could hear the slow, deliberate steps. What ailed the girl? Didn’t sound like she had no more spunk than a flue-lizard. The front door swung wide. Emily stood in the hall, holding to the brass door-knob. Why didn’t she come in? Funny girl.
‘Emily?’ called Aunt Tildy.
Emily shuffled into the parlour, head down.
‘Emily! I been waiting for you! There was the darndest fool men just here with a wicker. Tryin’ to sell me something I didn’t want. Glad you’re home. Makes it right cosy — ‘
Aunt Tildy realized that for a full minute Emily had been staring.
‘Emily, what’s wrong? Stop starin’. Here, I’ll bring you a cup of coffee. There.
‘Emily, why you backin’ away from me?
‘Emily, stop screamin’, child! Don’t scream, Emily! Don’t! You keep screamin’ that way, you go crazy. Emily, get up off the floor, get away from that wall. Emily! Stop cringin’, child. I won’t hurt you!
‘Land, if it ain’t one thing it’s another.
‘Emily, what’s wrong, child. . .?’
Emily groaned through her hands over her face.
‘Child, child,’ pleaded Tildy. ‘Here, sip this water. Sip it, Emily. Ah, That’s it.’
Emily widened her eyes, saw something, then shut them, quivering, pulling into herself. ‘Aunt Tildy, Aunt Tildy, Aunt Tildy, Aunt — ‘
‘Stop that!’ Tildy slapped her. ‘What ails you?’
Emily forced herself to look up again.
She thrust her fingers out. They vanished inside Aunt Tildy.
‘What fool notion!’ cried Tildy. ‘Take your hand away! Take it, I say!’
Emily dropped aside, jerked her head, the golden hair shaking into shiny temblors. ‘You’re not here, Aunt Tildy. You’re gone. I’m dreaming.’
‘You’re not dreamin’.’
‘You’re dead!’
‘Hush, baby.’
‘You can’t be here.’
‘Lands of Goshen, Emily — ‘
She took Emily’s hand. It passed clean through her. Instantly, Aunt Tildy raged straight up, stomping her foot.
‘Why — why,’ she muttered angrily. ‘That — fibber! That liar! That sneak-thief!’ Her thin hands knotted to wiry hard pale fists. ‘That dark, dark fiend! He stole it, he stole it! He toted it away, he did, oh he did, he did! Why, I — ‘ She found no words. Wrath steamed in her. Her pale blue eyes were fire. She sputtered into an indignant silence. Then she turned to Emily. ‘Child, get up! I need you. Get up, now!’
Emily lay, shivering.
‘Part of me’s here!’ declared Aunt Tildy. ‘By the Lord Harry, what’s left will have to do. Momentarily. Fetch my bonnet!’
Emily confessed. ‘I’m — scared.’
Tildy planted fists on hips. ‘Of me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why? I’m no booger! You known me most your life! Now’s no time to snivel-sopp. You fetch up on your heels or I’ll slap you flat across your nose!’
Emily rose in sobs, stood like something cornered, trying to decide which direction to bolt in.
‘Where’s your car, Emily?’
‘Down at the garage — ma’am.’
‘Good.’ Aunt Tildy hustled her through the front door. ‘Now — ‘ Her sharp stare poked up and down the streets. ‘Which way’s the mortuary?’
Emily held to the step rail, fumbling down. ‘What’re you going to do, Aunt Tildy?’
‘Do?’ cried Tildy, tottering after her, jowls shaking in a thin, pale fury. ‘Why, get my body back, of course! Get my body back! Go on!’
The car roared, Emily clenched to the steering-wheel, staring straight ahead at the curved, rain-wet streets. Aunt Tildy shook her parasol.
‘Hurry, child, hurry! Hurry before they squirt juices in my body and dice and cube it the way them pernickety morticians have a habit of doin’. They cut and sew it so it ain’t no good to no one!’
‘Oh, Auntie, Auntie, let me go, don’t make me drive! It won’t do any good, no good at all,’ sighed the girl.
‘Humph!’ was all the old woman would say. ‘Humph!’
‘Here we are, Auntie.’ Emily said, pulling to the curb. She collapsed over the wheel, but Aunt Tildy was already popped from the car and trotting with mincing skirt up the mortuary drive, around behind to where the shiny black hearse was unloading a wicker basket.
‘You!’ she directed her attack at one of the four men with the wicker. ‘Put down that basket!’
The four men paid little attention.
One said, ‘Step aside, lady. We’re doing our job. Let us do it, please.’
‘That’s my body tucked in there!’ She brandished the parasol.
‘That I wouldn’t know anything about,’ said a second man. ‘Please don’t block traffic, madame. This thing is heavy.’
‘Sir,’ she cried, wounded. ‘I’ll have you know I weigh only one hundred and ten pounds!’
He looked at her casually. ‘I’m not interested in your hip measure, lady. I just wanna go home to supper. My wife’ll kill me if I’m late.’
The four of them forged ahead, Aunt Tildy in pursuit, down a hall, into a preparations room.
A white-smocked man awaited the wicker’s arrival with a rather pleased smile on his long eager-looking face. Aunt Tildy didn’t care for the avidity of that face, or the entire personality of the man. The basket was deposited, the four men retreated.
The man in the white smock, evidently a mortician, glanced at Auntie and said:
‘Madame, this is no fit place for a gentlewoman.’
‘Well,’ said Auntie, gratified. ‘Glad you feel that way. Them is my sentiments, neat, but I can’t convince those fellows. That’s exactly what I tried to tell that dark-clothed young man!’
The mortician puzzled. ‘What dark-clothed young man is that?’
‘The one who came puddlin’ around my house, that’s who.’
‘No one of that description works for us.’
‘No matter. As you just so intelligently stated, this is no place for a gentle lady. I don’t want me here. I want me home. I want me cookin’ ham for Sunday visitors, it’s near Easter. I got Emily to feed, sweaters to knit, clocks to wind — ‘
‘You are quite philosophical, and philanthropical, no doubt of it, madame, but I have work. A body has arrived.’ This last, he said with apparent relish, and a winnowing of his knives, tubes, jars and instruments.
Tildy bristled. ‘You lay so much as a cuticle on that body, I’ll thrash you!’ Again, the parasol.
He laid her aside like a little old moth. ‘George,’ he called with a suave gentleness. ‘Escort this little lady out, please.’
Aunt Tildy glared at the approaching George.
‘Show me your backside, goin’ the other way!’
George took her wrists. ‘This way, please.’
Tildy extricated herself. Easily. Her flesh sort of — slipped. It even amazed Tildy. Such an unexpected talent to develop at this late day.
‘See?’ she said, pleased with her ability. ‘You can’t budge me. I want my body back!’
The mortician opened the wicker lid casually. Then, in a recurrent series of scrutinies he realized that the body inside was. . . it seemed. . . could it be?. . . maybe. . . yes. . . no. . . well, uh. . . it just couldn’t be, but. . . ‘Ah,’ he exhaled, abruptly. He turned. His eyes were saucer-wide.
‘Madame,’ he said, cautiously. ‘Eh — this lady here. She is — a — relative — of yours?’
‘A very dear relation. Be careful of her.’
‘A twin sister, perhaps?’ He grasped at a straw of dwindling logic, hopefully.
‘No, you fool. Me, do you hear? Me!’
The mortician considered the idea. He shook his head. ‘No,’ he decided. ‘No. Things like this don’t happen.’ He went on fumbling with his tools. ‘Show her away, George. Get help from the others. I can’t work with a crank present.’
The
