One afternoon when she was very drunk she threw her arms around the milkman. He pushed her away roughly. “Jesus, lady,” he said, “what kind of a man do you think I am?” In a blackmailing humor he stuffed the icebox with eggs, milk, orange juice, cottage cheese, vegetable salad and eggnog. She took a bottle of whisky up to her bedroom. At four o’clock the oil burner went out of order. She was back on the telephone again. No one could come for three or four days. It was very cold outside and she watched the winter night approach the house with the horror of an aboriginal. She could feel the cold overtake the rooms. When it got dark she went into the garage and took her life.
They held a little funeral for her in the undertaking parlor in Parthenia. The room where her monumental coffin stood was softly lighted and furnished like a cocktail lounge and the music from the electric organ was virtually what you would have heard in a hotel bar in someplace like Cleveland. She had, it turned out, no friends in Proxmire Manor. The only company her husband was able to muster was a handful of near strangers they had met on various cruise ships. They had taken a two-week Caribbean cruise each winter and the ceremony was attended by the Robinsons from the S.S.
Gertrude Bender, with whom Melissa sat, had silver-gilt hair skinned back in a chignon with such preciseness and skill that Melissa wondered how it had been accomplished. She had matching silver-gilt furs, and rattled six gold bracelets. She was a pretty, shallow woman who wielded the inarguable powers of great wealth and whose voice was shrill. She talked about her daughter Betty. “She’s worried about her schoolwork but I tell her, ‘Betty,’ I tell her, ‘don’t you worry about your schoolwork. Do you think what I learned in school got me where I am today? Develop a good figure and learn the forks. That’s all that matters.’”
In the seat in front of Melissa there was an old lady whose head was bowed under the weight of a hat covered with cloth roses. A family occupied the facing seats across the aisle—a mother and three children. They were poor. Their clothing was cheap and threadbare, and the woman’s face was worn. One of her children was sick and lay across her lap, sucking his thumb. He was two or three years old, but it was hard to guess his age, he was so pale and thin. There were sores on his forehead and sores on his thin legs. The lines around his mouth were as deep as those on the face of a man. He seemed sick and miserable, but stubborn and obdurate at the same time, as if he held in his fist a promise to something bewildering and festive that he would not relinquish in spite of his sickness and the strangeness of the train. He sucked his thumb noisily and would not move from his position in the midst of life. His mother bent over him as she must have done when she nursed him, and sang him a lullaby as they passed Parthenia, Gatesbridge, Tuxon Valley and Tokinsville.
Gertrude said, “I don’t understand people who lose their looks when they don’t have to. I mean what’s the point of going through life looking like an old laundry bag? Now take Molly Singleton. She goes up to the Club on Saturday nights wearing those thick eyeglasses and an ugly dress and wonders why she doesn’t have a good time. There’s no point in going to parties if you’re going to depress everyone. I’m no girl and I know it, but I still have all the partners I want and I like to give the boys a thrill. I like to see them perk up. It’s amazing what you can do. Why, one of the grocery boys wrote me a love letter. I wouldn’t tell Charlie—I wouldn’t tell anyone, because the poor kid might lose his job—but what’s the sense of living if you don’t generate a little excitement once in a while?”
