Free Mrs. Darcy and the Blue-Eyed Stranger by Lee Smith Page B

eyes wide open, clutching her blanket up to her chin, staring fiercely into the dark. Finally she motioned me over with her little clawlike hand. The light from the hall fell across her bed. Her lips were moving. I bent down to hear. “Dee Ann,” she said. “Oh, Dee Ann . . .” Her nails bit into my hand. “You must . . .” But I never knew what I must do, for just then a gurgling noise came up in her throat, and when I jerked back to look at her, she was dead. Dead with her eyes and her mouth wide open, teeth in the jar by the bed, cheeks sunk down in her face. I could not quit looking. Her eyes got darker and darker in death, and her mouth got bigger and bigger until I felt that she would swallow the whole world, me included. Yet I couldn’t move. I could feel myself going down, down. But just at the last minute I screamed “No,” or thought I screamed, and then I was scrambling out, phoning the doctor and the relatives, making coffee for all the folks who’d be coming over. I was just as efficient and dependable as always. Folks marveled at me.
    But inside, I was different. For now I realized that I was going to die too, something that had not occurred to me before, in spiteof being an orphan and all. Even as I was cutting my pound cake and getting out the folding chairs, I thought about it. I would have given anything to know what she was going to tell me. Anything! And what was I supposed to do? I kept wondering about this, it made me feel wild and crazy. I felt I had a destiny though I didn’t know what it was. When I finally got to bed that night, my heart was beating so fast I could hear it in my ears and feel it all through my body.
    The very next morning, Home Health called and asked me if I would stay with Mrs. Sims, and I said yes immediately. I knew it was meant to be. But she was a bitter woman, as I said. She’d always had asthma, and now she had congestive heart failure. The house was a wreck. I was cleaning out the kitchen cupboards when Billy showed up the first time. I’d been there three days. It was May, nice and warm. I had opened all the doors and thrown up all the windows. Never mind that Mrs. Sims didn’t like this one bit — it was good for her. I was working so hard, banging pots and pans around in the cabinet under the stove, I didn’t hear Billy coming — didn’t hear his truck, or his step on the squeaky board by the kitchen door, a sound that I grew to love.
    “Hey now,” he said.
    I whirled around.
    He stood just outside the screen door. His gold-red hair fell almost down to his shoulders under his TP&L hat. The sun was all in his hair. “I’m Billy, her son,” he said.
    “I know,” I said. I had to sit back on the floor, I thought I was having a heart attack.
    He stepped inside the door and squatted down beside me on the floor which I had just washed, thank goodness! “Do I know you?” he asked. Close up, his eyes were greener than ever.
    “No,” I blurted out, “but I know you.” Then I got so embarrassed I liked to have died on the spot, but Billy just grinned, rocking back and forth on his cowboy boots.
    “Wait a minute,” he said. “High school, am I right?” He snapped his fingers. “Hot dogs,” he said. “You used to sell the hot dogs at the games.”
    I nodded. I couldn’t believe he remembered me after all that time.
    Then he stood up. “Well, it’s a small world, ain’t it?” he said, stomping his feet a little bit to get the kinks out of his legs. I couldn’t of stood up if I had to. I felt weak all over.
    “Now what did you say your name was?” he said, and I told him, and then he said, “Well, me and Anne Patrick, that’s my wife, are real glad that you’re over here taking care of Mama now. She’s been needing somebody full time for a while, and we just can’t do it, we both work, and my sisters live away.”
    Of course I knew that Anne Patrick didn’t have to work, that it was just a little play job. But I nodded, acting