it to herself. She slept again and dreamed the house was on fire. Her skin dried out from the heat and her hair seemed to sizzle in her ears. Jenny rushed upstairs to save her costume jewelry and her footsteps died away all at once, as if she’d fallen into space. “Stop!” Pearl shouted. She opened her eyes. Someone was sitting next to her, in that leather armchair that creaked. “Jenny?” she said.
“It’s Ezra, Mother.”
Poor Ezra, he must be exhausted. Wasn’t it supposed to be the daughter who came and nursed you? She knew she should send him away but she couldn’t make herself do it. “I guess you want to get back to that restaurant,” she told him.
“No, no.”
“You’re like a mother hen about that place,” she said. She sniffed. Then she said, “Ezra, do you smell smoke?”
“Why do you ask?” he said (cautious as ever).
“I dreamed the house burned down.”
“It didn’t really.”
“Ah.”
She waited, holding herself in. Her muscles were so tense, she ached all over. Finally she said, “Ezra?”
“Yes, Mother?”
“Maybe you could just check.”
“Check what?”
“The house, of course. Check if it’s on fire.”
She could tell he didn’t want to.
“For my sake,” she told him.
“Well, all right.”
She heard him rise and shamble out. He must be in his stocking feet; she recognized that shushing sound. He was gone so long that she began to fear the worst. She strained for the roar of the flames but heard only the horns of passing cars, the clock radio’s electric murmur, a bicycle bell tinkling beneath the window. Then here he came, heavy and slow on the stairs. Evidently there was no emergency. He settled into his chair again. “Everything’s fine,” he told her.
“Thank you, Ezra,” she said humbly.
“You’re welcome.”
She heard him pick up his magazine.
“Ezra,” she said, “I’ve had a thought. Did you happen to check the basement?”
“Yes.”
“You went clear to the bottom of the steps.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“I don’t much care for how that furnace sounds.”
“It’s fine,” he told her.
It was fine. She resolved to believe him. She soothed herself by wandering, mentally, from one end of the house to the other, cataloguing how well she’d managed. The fireplace flue was shut against the cold. The drains were clear and the faucets were tight and she’d bled the radiators herself — sightless, turning her key back sharply the instant she heard the hiss of water. The gutters were swept and the roof did not leak and the refrigerator hummed in the kitchen. Everything was proceeding according to instructions.
“Ezra,” she said.
“Yes, Mother.”
“You know that address book in my desk.”
“What address book?”
“Pay attention, Ezra. I only have the one. Not the little red book for telephone numbers but the black one, in my stationery drawer.”
“Oh, yes.”
“I want everybody in it invited to my funeral.”
There was a thrumming silence, as if she had said a bad word. Then Ezra said, “
“No, of course not,” she assured him. “But someday,” she said craftily. “Just in the eventuality, you see …”
“Let’s not talk about it,” he said.
She paused, assembling patience. What did he expect — that she’d go on forever? It was so tiring. But that was Ezra for you. “All I’m saying,” she said, “is I’d like those people invited. Are you listening? The people in my address book.”
Ezra didn’t answer.
“The address book in my stationery drawer.”
“Stationery drawer,” Ezra echoed.
Good; he’d got it. He flicked a magazine page, said nothing further, but she knew he’d got it.
She thought of how that address book must have aged by now — smelling mousy, turning brittle. It dated back to long before her sight had started dimming. Emmaline was in it, and Emmaline had been dead for twenty years or more. So was Mrs. Simmons dead, down in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Uncle Seward’s widow and perhaps his daughter too. Why, everybody in that book was six feet under, she supposed, except for Beck.
She remembered that he took a whole page — one town after another crossed out. She’d kept it up to date because she’d imagined needing to call him in an emergency. What emergency had she had in mind? She couldn’t think of any that would be eased in the slightest by his presence. She’d like to see his face when he received an invitation to her funeral. An “invite,” he would call it. “Imagine that!” he would say, shocked. “She left me first, after all. Here’s this invite to her funeral.” She could hear him now.
She laughed.
The doctor came, stamping his feet. “Is it snowing out?” she asked him.
“Snowing? No.”
“You were stamping your feet.”
“No,” he said, “it’s just cold.” He settled on the edge of her bed. “Feels like my toes are falling off,” he told her. “My knee bones say we’re going to have a frost tonight.”
She waved away the small talk. “Listen here,” she said. “Ezra called you over by mistake.”
“Is that so.”
“I’m really feeling fine. Maybe earlier I was under the weather, but now I’m much improved.”
“I see,” he said. He took her wrist in his icy, wrinkled fingers. (He was nearly as old as she was, and had all but given up his practice.) He held it for what seemed to be several minutes. Then he said, “How long has
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Where’s the phone?” he asked Ezra.
“Wait! Dr. Vincent! Wait!” Pearl cried.
He had laid down her wrist, but now he set his hand on hers and she felt him leaning over her, breathing pipe tobacco. “Yes?” he said.
“I’m not going to any hospital.”
“Of course you’re going.”
She spoke clearly, maybe a little too loudly, directing her voice toward the ceiling. “Now, I’ve thought this through,” she told him. “I don’t want those crank-up beds and professional smells. It would kill me.”
“Dear lady—”
“And you know they wouldn’t be able to give me penicillin.”
“Penicillin, no …”
“That’s what I took in forty-three.”
“Don’t tire yourself,” the doctor said. “I remember all about it.”
Or maybe it was ’44. But Beck had not yet left. He’d been away on a business trip, and brought back an
