PARTISAN REVIEW
281
"And then of course there's this room and that crib," Annie
said, and pausing, her glance flew to a cabinet set between two
windows on which the nativity scene was set out. "Well, nobody
lives with bare whitewashed walls and nobody expects to come
across a crib right in the middle of the month of August," she said,
and her glance, straying back again to the crib, went over the
little figures carved in wood and brightly painted: Jesus in his straw–
lined crib, Mary, Joseph, the Ox, the Ass, the Wise Men, the
Shepherds, and the Angel. And behind them larger angels holding
up crowns of red candles and with flowers in their yellow hair.
"Not that I've anything against bare walls or a crib in August,"
Annie said. "It's just that it's unexpected. It's just that I don't
know anyone else who lives without a picture of some sort on the
waH, and I've certainly never known anybody who left a crib out
from one year's end to the other. Tucker's mother doesn't," she
said; and under her bitter black brows, Ellen Simms's caverned
brown eyes glittered smoky. "I'm not criticizing," Annie said, "it's
just that it's unexpected, and somehow I never allow for the un–
expected or take it into account."
She paused and leaned both elbows on the table, and I waited
for Ellen Simms to tell her to remove them the way she sometimes
did; but she didn't. Instead she pushed away her plate and, easing
back on her chair, reached into the pocket of the blue cotton
apron she wore indoors and took out a clay pipe, a box of matches,
and a brown tobacco pouch, and set them out on the table in
front of her. In her fifties, Ellen Simms was still youthful looking,
with her slim hard body and her general appearance still handsome.
Her hair, drawn back into a low thick bun on the nape of her
neck, was still jet black and her well-molded lips set in a firm skin,
brownish white. Never beautiful, she nevertheless gave an impression
of beauty. A hard dark violent beauty, opaque as stone and almost
as inhuman. Like a dead tree on a ionely road she was, I was
thinking, when Annie, looking at me, said suddenly: "Unexpected,
isn't it?"
"What is?" I asked.
"Seeing a crib in August."
I nodded agreement and thought about my mother, who like
Ellen Simms also took care of things, but who instead of leaving
