Stoner

And Edith was pleased. "You see?" she said in absent triumph, as if more than three years had not passed since her frenzied attack upon the problem of Grace's "popularity." "You see? I was right. All she needed was a little push. And Willy didn't approve. Oh, I could tell. Willy never approves."

For a number of years, Stoner had, every month, put aside a few dollars so that Grace could, when the time came, go away from Columbia to a college, perhaps an eastern one, some distance away. Edith had known of these plans, and she had seemed to approve; but when the time came, she would not hear of it.

"Oh, no!" she said. "I couldn't bear it! My baby! And she has done so well here this last year. So popular, and so happy. She would have to adjust, and--baby, Gracie, baby"--she turned to her daughter--"Gracie doesn't really want to go away from her mommy. Does she? Leave her all alone?"

Grace looked at her mother silently for a moment. She turned very briefly to her father and shook her head. She said to her mother, "If you want me to stay, of course I will."

"Grace," Stoner said. "Listen to me. If you want to go-- please, if you really want to go--"

She would not look at him again. "It doesn't matter," she said.

Before Stoner could say anything else, Edith began talking about how they could spend the money her father had saved on a new wardrobe, a really nice one, perhaps even a little car so that she and her friends could . . . And Grace smiled her slow small smile and nodded and every now and then said a word, as if it were expected of her.

It was settled; and Stoner never knew what Grace felt, whether she stayed because she wanted to, or because her mother wanted her to, or out of a vast indifference to her own fate. She would enter the University of Missouri as a freshman that fall, go there for at least two years, after which, if she wanted, she would be allowed to go away, out of the state, to finish her college work. Stoner told himself that it was better this way, better for Grace to endure the prison she hardly knew she was in for two more years, than to be torn again upon the rack of Edith's helpless will.

So nothing changed. Grace got her wardrobe, refused her mother's offer of a little car, and entered the University of Missouri as a freshman student. The telephone continued to ring, the same faces (or ones much like them) continued to appear laughing and shouting at the front door, and the same automobiles roared away in the dusk. Grace was away from home even more frequently than she had been in high school, and Edith was pleased at what she thought to be her daughter's growing popularity. "She's like her mother," she said. "Before she was married she was very popular. All the boys . . . Papa used to get so mad at them, but he was secretly very proud, I could tell."

"Yes, Edith," Stoner said gently, and he felt his heart contract.

It was a difficult semester for Stoner; it had come his turn to administer the university-wide junior English examination, and he was at the same time engaged in directing two particularly difficult doctoral dissertations, both of which required a great deal of extra reading on his part. So he was away from home more frequently than had been his habit for the last few years.

One evening, near the end of November, he came home even later than usual. The lights were off in the living room, and the house was quiet; he supposed that Grace and Edith were in bed. He took some papers he had brought with him to his little back room, intending to read a few of them after he got into bed. He went into the kitchen to get a sandwich and a glass of milk; he had sliced the bread and opened the refrigerator door when suddenly he heard, sharp and clean as a knife, a prolonged scream from somewhere downstairs. He ran into the living room; the scream came again, now short and somehow angry in its intensity, from Edith's studio. Swiftly he went across the room and opened the door.

Edith was sitting sprawled on the floor, as if she had fallen there; her eyes were wild, and her mouth was open, ready to emit another scream. Grace sat across the room from her on an upholstered chair, her knees crossed, and looked almost calmly at her mother. A single desk lamp, on Edith's work table, was burning, so that the room was filled with harsh brightness and deep shadows.

"What is it?" Stoner asked. "What's happened?"

Edith's head swung around to face him as if it were on a loose pivot; her eyes were vacant. She said with a curious petulance, "Oh, Willy. Oh, Willy." She continued to look at him, her head shaking weakly.

He turned to Grace, whose look of calm did not change.

She said conversationally, "I'm pregnant, Father."