Free Duet for Three by Joan Barfoot

minute I’d be there, dead as a doornail, and the next minute you’d be free to do whatever it is you think you want to do. Think of it as a kind of climax: not a moment you’d want to miss, surely.”
    How can she make jokes about death, or even speak of it so lightly?
    â€œBe serious, Mother. We have to do something. I think,” and here is inspiration, “even Frances would agree with me there.”
    It seems to work. For once, Aggie is short of words, a little shrunken. Had she not thought of that, of Frances finding out? Had she not considered her admiring granddaughter knowing she has accidents in her bed at night?
    â€œThat’s good, June,” she nods finally. “That wasn’t nice, but you’re definitely improving.”
    â€œWell, you know, at least we should go look at the place.”
    June’s error; Aggie is alert and upright again. “What place?”
    â€œYou know.”
    â€œBut say the words. How do you think you can get me there, if you can’t even say the words?”
    It is extraordinarily, surprisingly difficult. Even in her own mind, June’s hardly used them. She can see the place, so why say it? How difficult do things have to be? “I think, Mother,” she says carefully, “that we ought to both go and have a look at the nursing home.” There.
    â€œI see.” Aggie pauses. “Well, you may. It might be good for you to see what you’re talking about, but I never like going into places I might not get out of. Who knows, you might not bring me home. They might not let me out. Anyway, I don’t have time to waste.”
    â€œAn hour, Mother. What’s an hour?”
    â€œAt my age, maybe all the time there is.”
    Well, why doesn’t she have the grace to die, then? Soon June herself will be old, and when exactly is she supposed to have a life? Time never seemed so precious until the last few days, when she could begin to see it as her own. And it’s slipping away, just — slipping. Her whole life seems to have seeped away, without her noticing particularly.
    â€œYou do realize,” Aggie says, “that if I weren’t here, you’d miss me.” What on earth is she talking about? Miss all this? Miss a whole lifetime of memories, the past that Aggie is, just sitting there? It’s like being a perpetual child, living with your mother, it’s like always being dragged back, a quicksand of the past. Where’s the future in it?
    This greedy old woman eats up a life the same way she consumes a pie.
    â€œWhat would you do with all those hours you spend just being mad at me, if I weren’t around?” Aggie asks.
    â€œOh, I’d find something.” Intending to sound airy, June hears that the words have come out grim. In the first year or so of Aggie’s absence, she might just sleep. She might wake up to find, like Sleeping Beauty, that everything was changed.
    They sit in silence for a few moments. Then, “Tell me,” Aggie says in the bland voice that warns of a trick question, “what do you think death is, anyway? Do you ever wonder what it’s like?”
    Well, that’s one of the benefits of faith: that one knows. Death is a passing, painful or peaceful, to a different world, where one is either punished or rewarded, with eternal pain or eternal bliss. That’s what one knows, with faith, although what either eternal pain or eternal bliss may feel like remains a divine mystery.
    â€œI think,” Aggie continues, “that you just die. Then eventually you turn back into soil. Remember when Frances came home from summer camp, that song she’d picked up? ‘The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout,’ remember that? Maybe after all the most important thing is eating right, so you turn into good soil. Do you think?”
    â€œI think you shouldn’t make jokes. Also, it would be a lot