The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty Read Free Book Online Page B

mantelpiece, had been quilted from top to bottom in peach satin; peach satin ruffles were thrown back over the foot of the bed; peach satin smothered the windows all around. Fay slept in the middle of the bed, deep under the cover, both hands curled into slack fists above her head. Laurel could not see her face but only the back of her neck, the most vulnerable part of anybody, and she thought: Is there any sleeping person you can be entirely sure you have not misjudged? Then she saw the new green shoes placed like ornaments on top of the mantel shelf.
    “Fay!” she cried.
    Fay gave no sign.
    “Fay, it’s morning.”
    “You go back to sleep.”
    “This is Laurel. It’s a few minutes before ten o’clock. There’ll be callers downstairs, asking for you.”
    Fay pushed herself up on her arms and cried over her shoulder, “I’m the widow! They can all wait till I get there.”
    “A good breakfast do you a lot of good,” said Missouri, bringing it in, letting Laurel out.
    Laurel bathed, dressed. A low thunder travelled through the hall downstairs and shook in her hand as she tried to put the pins in her hair. One voice dominated the rest: Miss Tennyson Bullock was taking charge.
    “So this time it’s Clint’s turn to bring you home,” said an old lady’s voice to her as she came down the stairs. All Laurel could remember of her, the first moment, was that a child’s ball thrown over her fence was never to be recovered.
    “Yes, daughters need to stay put, where they can keep a better eye on us old folks,” said Miss Tennyson Bullock, meeting Laurel at the foot of the stairs with a robust hug. “Honey, he’s come.”
    Miss Tennyson led the way into the parlor. Everything was dim. All over the downstairs, the high old windows had had their draperies drawn. In the parlor, lamps were burning by day and Laurel felt as she entered the room that the furniture was out of place. A number of peoplerose to their feet and stood still, making a path for her.
    The folding doors between the parlor and the library behind it had been rolled all the way back, and the casket was installed across this space. It had been raised on a sort of platform that stood draped with a curtain, a worn old velvet curtain, only halfway hiding the wheels. A screen of florist’s ferns was being built up before her eyes behind the coffin. Then a man stepped out from behind the green and presented a full, square face with its small features pulled to the center—what Laurel’s mother had called “a Baptist face.”
    “Miss Laurel, I’m Mr. Pitts again. I recall your dear mother so clearly,” he said. “And I believe you’re going to be just as pleased now, with your father.” He put out his hand and raised the lid.
    Judge McKelva lay inside in his winter suit. All around him was draped the bright satin of a jeweler’s box, and its color was the same warm, foolish pink that had smothered the windows and spilled over the bed upstairs. His large face reflected the pink, so that his long, heavy cheek had the cast of a seashell, or a pearl. The dark patches underneath his eyes had been erased like traces of human error. Only the black flare of the nostrils and the creases around the mouth had been left him of his old saturnine look. The lid had been raised only by half-section, to show him propped on the pillow; below the waist he lay cut off from any eyes. He was still not to be mistaken for any other man.
    “You must close it,” said Laurel quietly to Mr. Pitts.
    “You’re not pleased?” But he had never displeased anyone, his face said.
    “Oh, look,” said Miss Tennyson, arriving at Laurel’s side. “Oh, look.”
    “I don’t want it open, please,” said Laurel to Mr. Pitts. She touched Miss Tennyson’s hand. “But Father would never allow—when Mother died, he protected her from—”
    “Your mother was different,” said Miss Tennyson firmly.
    “He was respecting her wishes,” Laurel said. “Not to make her lie here in