66
PARTISAN REVIEW
before at Sunday school and saw us regularly every week there.
This was the more odd because Mother, for some strange reason,
had given up going to church after Rachel died, and never went
again. I thought it was maybe because seeing Mr. Brittain up in
the pulpit reminded her too much of the funeral and Rachel; and
I thought so all the more when one afternoon, some months later,
Mr. Brittain called at our house and Mother asked me to answer
the door and tell him she wasn't home. She didn't want to see him
again, and as far as I know she never did. At least she didn't go to
church anymore and after a couple more trys he never called on
Mother again.
All this is so long ago that it seems something I have heard
about rather than lived through. When I go home now it is hard to
tell whether I really remember these things or whether I just know
about them from Mother. It is still the same town in many ways,
and in others it is different; but when I go home I am only con·
scious of the town as it used to be when I lived there, and of the
things that happened then. Mr. Brittain isn't there anymore but
Mrs. Kirtle is-still living up the street, still as busy as ever: a
little old white-haired lady running around the neighborhood doing
things for people, managing the affairs of sick ones, and taking
charge generally as she always did. And down below Asylum
Hill
is the cemetery where Rachel lies buried: a lovely spot, grown up
now with rose bushes and shrubbery, quite different from the time
when we first bought the lot in what was then called the "new part"
of the cemetery and Mother used to mind it so much, because the
"new part" was all barren and unplanted and very forsaken-look·
.
d
h"ld "
mg compare to t e o part.
The last time I was home I was going through an old desk
drawer, looking at papers and photographs I had long since for·
gotten, when I came upon something that made me laugh with
delight. It was a note, on ruled paper, written in a childish hut
plain hand-a note my sister had written to someone in school and
which had been passed back to her, with an answer. What delighted
me was the postscript that Rachel had added. It read: "Have you
heard that Kathleen McMahon is in a fix.
You know what I mean."
My mother was sitting near me, sewing, and when I laughed
she said, "What have you found now?"
