Into the Night

Mrs. Bartlett came back again. You could not tell she had been crying.

“Let me get you something,” she said. “I’m forgetting myself. Would you like some coffee?”

“Nothing, please,” Madeline begged her with utmost sincerity. Almost with abhorrence. “I just came here to talk to you, really I did.”

“You wouldn’t refuse Starr’s mother, now would you?” the other woman said winningly. “It won’t take a minute. Then we can sit and talk.” She went into a narrow little opening, almost like a crevice, over at the far side of the front door, and Madeline could hear water running, first resoundingly into the drumlike hollow of a porcelain sink, then smotheredly into tin or aluminum. Then she heard the pillow-soft fluff that ignited gas gives.

Mrs. Bartlett came back again. For the first time since she’d admitted her, she sat down with Madeline.

“You look tired,” Madeline remarked compassionately.

“I don’t sleep much anymore since she’s gone,” she said. ‘‘At nights, I mean. That’s why I have to sleep when I can. I was napping when you rang, that’s why it took me so long to open the door.”

“I’m sorry,” Madeline said contritely. “I would have come some other time.”

“I’m glad you came when you did.” She patted Madeline’s arm and gave a little snuggle within her chair that was pure anticipation. “You haven’t told me a word about her yet.”

“I don’t know where to begin,” Madeline said. And it was true.

“Was she happy?”

“That,” Madeline said with infinite slowness, “I don’t know. Don’t you?”

“She didn’t tell me,” Mrs. Bartlett said simply.

“Was she happy when she was here with you?”

“She was at first. Later on — I’m not so sure.”

Madeline thought, There could be something there. But how to get it out?

“Did she have any particular — ambitions, that she ever spoke of to you?”

“All girls are ambitious. All young things are. Not to be ambitious is not to be young at all.” She said it sadly.

“But any particular?” Madeline persisted.

“Yes,” Mrs. Bartlett said. And then again, “Yes.” And then she stopped as if mulling it over.

Madeline waited, breath held back.

“Wait a minute,” cautioned Mrs. Bartlett, getting up. “I hear the coffee bumping.” She went out to get it.

Madeline softly let her breath out, like a slow tire leak. Oh, damn this coffee break, she thought. Just when we seemed to be getting somewhere.

Mrs. Bartlett bustled with cups and saucers and spoons, and a glass holding little lumps of sugar (she kept them in a water tumbler in lieu of a bowl), and it was impossible to continue consecutively. Whatever ground had been on the point of being gained, which was the most she could say for it, was lost again for the time being.

Mrs. Bartlett sat there and sipped, and the black eyes watched Madeline over the rim of the tipped cup, but in a friendly, trusting manner.

I can’t eat her bread, Madeline thought. Meaning the beverage. Her gorge rose. I’m a murderess. I can’t sit here taking food and drink with her. I killed her daughter. It’s inconceivable, abominable, to do this.

“Don’t you like it?” Mrs. Bartlett asked ruefully.

Madeline forced some into her mouth. And that was all she could do.

“I think I understand,” said Mrs. Bartlett softly, after a great while. For the first time since they’d met, she dropped her eyes, lowered them away from Madeline’s face.

Madeline removed the saucer from below its cup, and let the mouthful of coffee she had already absorbed run back on it again. This wasn’t just a gesture of sentimental delicacy. Her throat had closed up; she would have strangled on just one swallow of the blood-warm liquid. She set the cup and saucer aside.

Mrs. Bartlett moved, very tactfully, very inconspicuously now, and suddenly the cups were gone from sight.

When she came back, Madeline had moved to another chair and was briefly sheltering her eyes with the edge of her hand.

“You are a real friend,” Mrs. Bartlett said in gentle admiration. “You are.” And she said it a third time. “You are.”

“Yes,” Madeline said with bitter mockery. “Yes. Oh, yes.”

They were silent for a short while. Then abruptly Madeline turned around toward her — one shoulder had been turned away until now — and said. “You know how it happened, I suppose?”

The older woman seemed to shrink lower in her chair. Settle, like something deflating. “Yes, I know,” she said. “They told me.” And then she whispered, “A shot — on the street.” Whispered it so low that Madeline couldn’t hear the words at all. But she knew what they were, because those were the words that belonged in that place. And the lip movements imaged them, fitted them.

After a while Madeline started to ask her, “Did you—?” Then didn’t know how to say it.

“Did I what?” prompted Mrs. Bartlett, eyes on the floor.

“Did you — go there, did you go in to the city, when they notified you? Did you — bring her back with you? Is she resting out here?”