Free Age by Hortense Calisher Page B

putting pillows behind it. The mouth was open but no longer producing foam. The chest seemed to be breathing by itself.
    ‘… Gertrude dear …’
    ‘… We are here, Gertrude …’
    The Sisters were speaking in unison now, in the way one enunciates a creed many times said. The words came in such a rush and in so dual a rhythm that I couldn’t catch them, and perhaps not even Gertrude was meant to hear anything except that the Sisters were at hand.
    Then one said to me, Hold her hand, and the one on Gertrude’s other side said the same to Gemma, but even looking at them I could not have said which was which, their service had so exalted them.
    Then one bent over the body to say, We made a very good tea, Gertrude; the one on the body’s other side said as clearly, Thank you, dear, and both smiled at us, their hands free.
    I am left holding Gertrude’s right hand, Gemma the left.
    Next to me, a soft voice says in my ear: Say something to her now. The other Sister is at Gemma’s ear.
    Gemma did say something, bless her. I couldn’t hear what.
    I bend to Gertrude. I see no resemblance, even to the woman who an hour ago had said to me—Is it you? Down at the core of this semblance, though, there must be a consciousness that resembles everything the body was in life. And the hand holds on.
    I say what I know she wanted me to. ‘Yes—it’s you.’

A FTERWARD, SISTERS MCCLELLAN AND Bond were most sweet to Rupert and me. No, we two must rest a moment before we went; it was always a shock, no matter who. And talking a bit afterward always helped, no matter to whom.
    I saw that Rupert really was somewhat in shock; we had better stay on a bit. Besides, I was interested, though fearful of being drawn in—the way one is when one accepts a ‘free consultation.’
    ‘And no matter how the patient dies?’ I said.
    In the most modest way, they declined to accept my hostility. They had met such before.
    ‘We think we make a difference.’
    McClellan was not as hard as she looked, I decided.
    ‘There are many like us.’
    And Sister Bond was not that soft.
    In the next room, the morticians were already present. The hotel would have a routine, of course.
    ‘I don’t know how it is with your nurses over here.’ Bond’s expression suggested she thought she did know. ‘I rather suspect they’re trained to do a job. A very good job, I’m sure. But with us—nursing is a vocation!
    ‘No matter the specialty,’ McClellan said.
    From the next room, someone knocked.
    ‘They’ll be ready with her now—’ one said, and the other: ‘We always see them out. Our people.’ There was a moment when I thought they might be going to ask Rupert and me to join them. Then they said, in their almost chorus: ‘Would you care to use the facilities?’
    As I said to Rupert later, for a minute I wasn’t sure which facility they meant, until they indicated that this second sitting room we were in also had a bathroom.
    Rupert used it first, then I. As I was peeing, I heard Gertrude being escorted out. I could think of myself as the surviving wife if I wanted to, and in a way I did, washing my hands carefully at the tap.
    ‘I suppose we must wait for them,’ Rupert said when I came out. ‘Only polite.’
    I wanted to walk to the window to see the view from up here. These days I seldom find myself on such a high floor, and the bird’s-eye relationship of buildings is worth study. But it somehow wasn’t part of today’s deal.
    Rupert, too, is immobilized. ‘Lucky they have a suite.’
    ‘Oh, we had to … Oh, we banked on it…’ we hear from behind us.
    How noiselessly they have come back, how unchanged. How reassuring it must be, to their patients, their ‘people,’ that those headdresses never slip. Their uniforms, too, stay so unmussed that day after day, watching from bed or chair, one might be forgiven for hoping that the starch they use is mixed with immortality. Which those soft gestures of theirs will one day