Katherine Ann Porter

When Katherine Anne Porter left her home state of Texas for New York, she brought with her the hard edge of a Western pioneer. Passionate and intelligent, it was this edge more than anything that made her name as a writer. Despite her self-imposed exile from her home and Southern background, Porter used this distance as a means of coming to terms with the memories she sought to escape.
Born in India Creek, Texas in 1890, Katherine Anne Porter lost her mother at the age of two. Raised primarily by her paternal grandmother, Porter became strong and self-reliant at an early age. Both the loss of her mother and her father’s subsequent neglect had a lasting effect on Porter—making her incredibly attentive to the harsh realities of the human endeavor.
At age fifteen she married John Henry Koontz, the first of four husbands. Throughout her entire life she would continue to have passionate affairs marked by dramatic and vicious break-ups. She spent her early twenties moving from Texas to Chicago and back, working as an actress, a singer, and, later, a secretary. In 1917, after a battle with tuberculosis, Porter took a job as a society columnist for the Fort Worth CRITIC. Two years later she moved to Greenwich Village, where she began to work seriously as a fiction writer.
Supporting herself with journalism and "hack" writing, Porter published her first story in CENTURY magazine. Though CENTURY provided her with a good sum for the story, Porter was rarely to return to popular magazine publishing, choosing instead the freedom of little magazines. A perfectionist concerned with controlling every word of her stories, Porter gained a name for her flawless prose. Often concerned with the themes of justice, betrayal, and the unforgiving nature of the human race, Porter’s writings occupied the space where the personal and political meet.
In 1930 her first book, FLOWERING JUDAS, was published by Harcourt Brace. Though a masterly collection of short stories, it met with only modest sales. It was not until almost ten years later that she published her second book, a collection of three short novels, PALE HORSE, PALE RIDER. She followed this in 1944 with THE LEANING TOWER AND OTHER STORIES. Concerning herself overtly with the rise of Nazism, Porter was able to further investigate the dark side of the average person. It was not, however, until nearly twenty years later that she was able to address the topic in greater depth.
SHIP OF FOOLS (1962), was Porter’s first and only novel. Dealing with the lives of a group of various and international travelers, the book became an instant success. Based partially on a trip to Germany thirty years earlier, SHIP OF FOOLS, attacked the weakness of a society that could allow for the Second World War. After 1962, Porter did very little writing, though she won a Pulitzer Prize for her COLLECTED STORIES four years later.
In 1977, fifty years after her protest of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, Porter wrote an account of the event entitled THE NEVER-ENDING WRONG. Three years later she died at the age of ninety. Outliving most of her contemporaries, the strong-willed Porter left behind a thin but insightful body of work. Her flawless pen and harsh criticism of not only her times, but of human society, made Porter a major voice in twentieth century American literature.

Study Guide to
Katherine Anne Porter's "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall"
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Note: If you are going to print this off in one of the KSU public computer labs, you will first need to go into the File menu at the top of your browser, choose Page Setup and click on Black Type, to ensure that colored fonts in this document print out.
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For a photograph of the author, check out the links for the course. There is also an essay by Porter on piece of American history citizens today should know about, which will give you an idea of part of the framework of values from which Porter approached life.
You should work through this study guide before attempting to do the writing assignment on this story.
Plan to devote at least three full readings to the story.
• Remember: the goal here is not just to enjoy the story -- something that presupposes a sophisticated competence in the "game" of performing stories in one's head. It is rather to develop that practiced competence. And this presupposes rehearsal, something we are trying to make more efficient by carrying it out under coaching, which is what this Study Guide has been designed to do.
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Your first reading. Try to arrange a time for your initial reading that will enable you to finish the story in a single sitting, without interrruption. Your goal here should be simply to get acquainted with some of the most immediate puzzlements the author has concocted for the reader. Make a marginal note (e.g., "Q" or "?") where you run into something that stumps you or sets you to wondering.
Before reading further, jot down some of the points that you feel you'd need to get clear about before you would have a clear grasp of what the whole situation is (past and present) that we are asked to imagine in this story.
Do not read further in this study guide until you have completed these steps.
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Your second reading. Begin by comparing your list of curiosities with the one that follows. If you've thought of some additional ones, add them to the list. If some appear here that didn't occur to you, is that because you already have a clear answer in mind, or because you were a little too passive in your initial reading?
(1) Who is John? That is, what is the history here?
How does Granny Weatherall feel about him? If she wants to feel certain ways rather than others, what are the motives that lead her to want to feel the way she wishes to? Does she feel the way she wants to feel: that is, are her true feelings the same as the ones that she wants to have? Are some of her feelings more fundamental than others? For example, does she have to convince herself that she feels certain ways? Do we find her denying (unconvincingly) that she feels certain ways? (Do we detect repression at work? If so, what questions does that fact raise?)
How do we feel about her on the basis of what we take to be the facts here?
(2) Who is George? What's the history?
How does Granny Weatherall feel about him?
Are her feelings all of a piece, or are they contradictory in certain ways? (Getting specific about this means getting serious about the facts of the story we are being invited to imagine.)
Is she aware of all of her feelings, or has she managed to deceive herself about some of them?
How do we feel about her on the basis of what we take to be the facts here?
(3) Who is Hapsy? What's the history?
What are Granny Weatherall's feelings about this history?
How do we feel about her on the basis of what we take to be the facts here?
(4) Who is Cornelia?
How does Granny feel towards her? (Today? In respect of her standing relationship with her?) How does Granny feel about how she feels towards Cornelia? Is she clear on this? How does she manage to be clear (or not to be clear, as the case may be)? What do you think living with Granny Weatherall has been like for Cornelia? Does Granny herself appreciate this?
How do we feel about Granny Weatherall on the basis of what we take to be the facts here?
(5) What in the story suggests that Granny Weatherall is well prepared for death? In how many respects is she not adequately prepared for it?
How do we feel about her on the basis of what we take to be the facts here?
(6) Does Granny Weatherall have a sound religious understanding of her spiritual condition?
What details in the story implicitly raise this question? What questions do we need to get answers to in order to answer it? What facts in the story might provide materials for an answer?
How do we feel about her on the basis of what we take to be the facts here concerning her spiritual condition?
In your second reading, be looking for clues that would serve as materials for arriving at answers to these questions.
Do not read further in this study guide until you have completed your second reading.
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Your third reading. Let's devote this to paying special attention to some motifs built into the story. This is a standard attention we should be bringing to bear in any story, but in this case we have an additional reason for doing so.
Since the story is built around the combination of limited omniscient narration and interior monologue, the reader is boxed into a special "corner" of the total situation within which the story-as-a-whole takes place, namely, into the consciousness of the protagonist -- and a protagonist, moreover, who is in a very particular state of mind: as a dying person, Granny Weatherall is both losing her powers of deliberate control over events (including the events that constitute her conscious experience, which she has evidently learned to master along with the various disappointments that life has dealt her) but is also subject to a number of intense anxieties. So part of the challenge this sort of story offers the reader is to "fight our way out of that box" -- by constructing the full situation only hinted at by the clues that are available to us insofar as we start within it. "The box," in this case, is the flow of memory, dream, and inchoate perception that constitutes Granny Weatherall's experience on this occasion of crisis.
But this stream of thoughts and feelings is governed not by the methodical unfolding of a logical progression of deliberation but by associations driven by hopes and fears, an important clue to what is going on in the larger situations within which Granny Weatherall's consciousness is situated -- the world of contemporary social events around her and the world of unconscious needs and worries within. And this means that recurrent notions (motifs) and the things with which they are associated -- the attendant thoughts and feelings to which they arrive and into which they lead -- are important clues, for us, in constructing the fuller picture of what is going on.
What, then, are some of the ideas we should be attending to? And what should we be doing with them once we notice them, if we are going to exploit them in this spirit?
(1) First there's the idea of "jilting." Make a point of noting in the margin (say, with "J") the places where this comes up. But now notice something else.
What comes up just before Granny's memories of the events associated with her jilting by George?
And what do we find her doing when these memories arise?
(2) Where do we see the idea of "I'm in control" or (alternative) "I managed to get on top of that"?
In what situations do these come to the fore?
What comes out of this idea, on different occasions?
(3) In how many places does the concept of "waste" come in?
What larger ideas is Granny inclined to make with it?
The motifs mentioned so far are all conveyed we might say by mention: they are "said" or stated. They are either declared by Granny herself or told, in so many words, by the narrator. But another kind of pattern it is important to keep an eye out for consists of a pattern of repeated action.
Of course these actions are often accomplished "in and through" words. A person can whine, for instance, in the way in which he talks about the weather, his boss, the price of gas, the way his kids treat him, etc. A person can brag, or conciliate, or wheedle, or try to intimidate, or be tactful, and so on, and (just as in "real life") when these things go on, it's a sign of astuteness on our part if we pick up on them.
(4) Here's one to tune into in the case of Granny Weatherall: how does the opening of the story (down, say, through the beginning of the paragraph when she drops her hand and notices that Doctor Harry and Cornelia are discussing her case) present Granny Weatherall as repeatedly "in denial"?
Since such a pattern of repeated action is after all action, the question arises: what's the motivation? (I say "motivation" rather than "the motive" because I want to encourage you to look for more than one or even two motives: motivation can be complex, even conflicted, inconsistent, contradictory.)
(5) Finally, let's note that the issue continnually arises of what Granny thinks she deserves out of life, given how she has conducted and is conducting it.
• What details of her conduct (as she remembers it and as we can construct it) are relevant here?
• What are the proper standards for assessing this pattern of conduct -- in her view? in ours?
(These need not be at odds, of course, but we have to take responsibility for saying that they are or are not.)

The Jilting Of Granny Weatherall
She flicked her wrist neatly out of Doctor Harry’s pudgy careful fingers and pulled the sheet up to her chin. The brat ought to be in knee breeches. Doctoring around the country with spectacles on his nose! “Get along now, take your schoolbooks and go. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

Doctor Harry spread a warm paw like a cushion on her forehead where the forked green vein danced and made her eyelids twitch. “Now, now, be a good girl, and we’ll have you up in no time.”

“That’s no way to speak to a woman nearly eighty years old just because she’s down. I’d have you respect your elders, young man.”

“Well, Missy, excuse me.” Doctor Harry patted her cheek. “But I’ve got to warn you, haven’t I? You’re a marvel, but you must be careful or you’re going to be good and sorry.”

“Don’t tell me what I’m going to be. I’m on my feet now, morally speaking. It’s Cornelia. I had to go to bed to get rid of her.”

Her bones felt loose, and floated around in her skin, and Doctor Harry floated like a balloon around the foot of the bed. He floated and pulled down his waistcoat and swung his glasses on a cord. “Well, stay where you are, it certainly can’t hurt you.”

“Get along and doctor your sick,” said Granny Weatherall. “Leave a well woman alone. I’ll call for you when I want you…. Where were you forty years ago when I pulled through milk-leg and double pneumonia? You weren’t even born. Don’t let Cornelia lead you on,” she shouted, because Doctor Harry appeared to float up to the ceiling and out. “I pay my own bills, and I don’t throw my money away on nonsense!”

She meant to wave goodby, but it was too much trouble. Her eyes closed of themselves,, it was like a dark curtain drawn around the bed. The pillow rose and floated under her, pleasant as a hammock in a light wind. She listened to the leaves rustling outside the window. No, somebody was swishing newspapers: no, Cornelia and Doctor Harry were whispering together. She leaped broad awake, thinking they whispered in her ear.

“She was never like this, never like this!” “Well, what can we expect?” “Yes, eighty years old…”

Well, and what if she was? She still had ears. It was like Cornelia to whisper around doors. She always kept things secret in such a public way. She was always being tactful and kind. Cornelia was dutiful; that was the trouble with her. Dutiful and good: “So good and dutiful,” said Granny, “and I’d like to spank her.” She saw herself spanking Cornelia and making a fine job of it.

“What’d did you say, Mother?”

Granny felt her face tying up in hard knots.

“Can’t a body think, I’d like to know?”

“I thought you might want something.”

I do. I want a lot of things. First off, go away and don’t whisper.”

She lay and drowsed, hoping in her sleep that the children would keep out and let her rest a minute. It had been a long day. Not that she was tired. It was always pleasant to snatch a minute now and then. There was always so much to be done, let me see: tomorrow.

Tomorrow was far away and there was nothing to trouble about. Things were finished somehow when the time came; thank God there was always a little margin over for peace; then a person could spread out the plan of life and tuck in the edges orderly. It was good to have everything clean and folded away, with the hair brushes and tonic bottles sitting straight on the white embroidered linen: the day started without fuss and the pantry shelves laid out with rows of jelly glasses and brown jugs and white stone-china jars with blue whirligigs and words painted on them: coffee, tea, sugar, ginger, cinnamon, allspice: and the bronze clock with the lion on top nicely dusted off. The dust that lion could collect in twenty-four hours! The box in the attic with all those letters tied up, well, she’d have to go through that tomorrow. All those letters—George’s letters and John’s letters and her letters to them both—lying around for the children to find afterwards made her uneasy. Yes, that would be tomorrow’s business. No use to let them know how silly she had been once.

While she was rummaging around she found death in her mind and it felt clammy and unfamiliar. She had spent so much time preparing for death there was no need for bringing it up again. Let it take care of itself now. When she was sixty she had felt very old, finished, and went around making farewell trips to see her children and grandchildren, with a secret in her mind: This is the very last of your mother, children! Then she made her will and came down with a long fever. That was all just a notion like a lot of other things, but it was lucky too, for she had once for all got over the idea of dying for a long time. Now she couldn’t be worried. She hoped she had better sense now. Her father had lived to be one hundred and two years old and had drunk a noggin of strong hot toddy on his last birthday. He told the reporters it was his daily habit, and he owed his long life to that. He had made quite a scandal and was very pleased about it. She believed she’d just plague Cornelia a little.

“Cornelia! Cornelia!” No footsteps, but a sudden hand on her cheek. “Bless you, where have you been?”

“Here, Mother.”

“Well, Cornelia, I want a noggin of hot toddy.”

“Are you cold, darling?”

“I’m chilly, Cornelia. Lying in bed stops the circulation. I must have told you that a thousand times.”

Well, she could just hear Cornelia telling her husband that Mother was getting a little childish and they’d have to humor her. The thing that most annoyed her was that Cornelia thought she was deaf, dumb, and blind. Little hasty glances and tiny gestures tossed around her and over her head saying, “Don’t cross her, let her have her way, she’s eighty years old,” and she sitting there as if she lived in a thin glass cage. Sometimes Granny almost made up her mind to pack up and move back to her own house where nobody could remind her every minute that she was old. Wait, wait, Cornelia, till your own children whisper behind you back!

In her day she had kept a better house and had got more work done. She wasn’t too old yet for Lydia to be driving eighty miles for advice when one of the children jumped the track, and Jimmy still dropped in to talk things over: “Now, Mammy, you’ve a good business head, I want to know what you think of this? …” Old. Cornelia couldn’t change the furniture around without asking. Little things, little things! They had been so sweet when they were little. Granny wished the old days were back again with the children young and everything to be done over. It had been a hard pull, but not too much for her. When she thought of all the food she had cooked, and all the clothes she had cut and sewed, and all the gardens she had made—well, the children showed it. There they were, made out of her, and they couldn’t get away from that. Sometimes she wanted to see John again and point to them and say, Well, I didn’t do so badly, did I? But that would have to wait. That was for tomorrow. She used to think of him as a man, but now all the children were older than their father, and he would be a child beside her if she saw him now. It seemed strange and there was something wrong in the idea. Why, he couldn’t possibly recognize her. She had fenced in a hundred acres once, digging the postholes herself and clamping the wires with just a negro boy to help. That changed a woman. John would be looking for a young woman with the peaked Spanish comb in her hair and the painted fan. Digging post holes changed a woman. Riding country roads in the winter when women had their babies was another thing: sitting up nights with sick horses and sick negroes and sick children and hardly ever losing one. John, I hardly ever lost one of them! John would see that in a minute, that would be something he could understand, she wouldn’t have to explain anything!

It made her fell like rolling up her sleeves and putting the whole place to rights again. No matter if Cornelia was determined to be everywhere at once, there were a great many things left undone on this place. She would start tomorrow and do them. It was good to be strong enough for everything, even if all you made melted and changed and slipped under your hands, so that by the time you finished you almost forgot what you were working for. What was it I set out to do? she asked herself intently, but she could not remember. A fog rose over the valley, she saw it marching across the creek swallowing the trees and moving up the hill like an army of ghosts. Soon it would be at the near edge of the orchard, and then it was time to go in and light the lamps. Come in, children, don’t stay out in the night air.

Lighting the lamps had been beautiful. The children huddled up to her and breathed like little calves waiting at the bars in the twilight. Their eyes followed the match and watched the flame rise and settle in a blue curve, then they moved away from her. The lamp was lit, they did not have to be scared and hang on to mother anymore. Never, never, never more. God, for all my life I thank Thee. Without thee, my God, I could never have done it. Hail, Mary, full of grace.

I want you to pick all the fruit this year and see that nothing is wasted. There’s always someone who can use it. Don’t let good things rot for want of using. You waste life when you waste good food. Don’t let things get lost. It’s bitter to lose things. Now, don’t let me get to thinking, not when I am tired and taking a little nap before supper….

The pillow rose about her shoulders and pressed against her heart and the memory is being squeezed out of it: oh, push down the pillow, somebody: it would smother her if she tried to hold it. Such a fresh breeze blowing and such a green day with not threats in it. But he had not come, just the same. What does a woman do when she has put on the white veil and set out the white cake for a man and he doesn’t come? She tried to remember. No, I swear he never harmed me but in that… and what if he did? There was the day, the day, but a whirl of dark smoke rose and covered it up, crept up and over into the bright field where everything was planted so carefully in orderly rows. That was hell, she knew hell when she saw it. For sixty years she had prayed against remembering him and against losing her soul in the deep pit of hell, and now the two things were mingled in one and the thought of him was a smoky cloud from hell that moved and crept in her head when she had just got rid of Doctor Harry and was trying to rest a minute. Wounded vanity, Ellen, said a sharp voice in the top of her mind. Don’t let your wounded vanity get the upper hand of you. Plenty of girls get jilted. You were jilted, weren’t you? Then stand up to it. Her eyelids watered and let in streamers of blue-gray light like tissue paper over her eyes. She must get up and pull the shades down or she’d never sleep. She was in bed again and the shades were not down. How could that happen? Better turn over, hide from the light, sleeping in the light gave you nightmares. Mother, how do you feel now?” and a stinging wetness on her forehead. But I don’t like having my face washed in cold water!

Hapsy? George? Lydia? Jimmy? No, Cornelia and her features were swollen and full of little puddles. “They’re coming, darling, they’ll all be here soon.” Go wash your face, child, you look funny.

Instead of obeying, Cornelia knelt down and put her head on the pillow. She seemed to be talking but there was no sound. “Well, are you tongue-tied? Whose birthday is it? Are you going to give a party?”

Cornelia’s mouth moved urgently in strange shapes. “Don’t do that, you bother me, daughter.”

“Oh, no, Mother. Oh, no….”

Nonsense. It was strange about children. They disputed your every word. “No what, Cornelia?”

“Here’s Doctor Harry.”

“I won’t see that boy again. He just left five minutes ago.”

“That was this morning, Mother. It’s night now. Here’s the nurse.”

“This is Doctor Harry, Mrs. Weatherall. I never saw you so young and happy!”

“Ah, I’ll never be young again—but I’d be happy if they’d let me lie in peace and get rested.”

She thought she spoke up loudly, but no one answered. A warm weight on her forehead, a warm bracelet on her wrist, and a breeze went on whispering, trying to tell her something. A shuffle of leaves in the everlasting hand of God. He blew on them and they danced and rattled. “Mother, don’t mind, we’re going to give you a little hypodermic.” “Look here, daughter, how do ants get in this bed? I saw sugar ants yesterday.” Did you send for Hapsy too?

It was Hapsy she really wanted. She had to go a long way back through a great many rooms to find Hapsy standing with a baby on her arm. She seemed to herself to be Hapsy also, and the baby on Hapsy’s arm was Hapsy and himself and herself, all at once, and there was no surprise in the meeting. Then Hapsy melted from within and turned flimsy as gray gauze and the baby was a gauzy shadow, and Hapsy came up close and said, “I thought you’d never come,” and looked at her very searchingly and said, “You haven’t changed a bit!” They leaned forward to kiss, when Cornelia began whispering from a long way off, “Oh, is there anything you want to tell me? Is there anything I can do for you?”

Yes, she had changed her mind after sixty years and she would like to see George. I want you to find George. Find him and be sure to tell him I forgot him. I want him to know I had my husband just the same and my children and my house like any other woman. A good house too and a good husband that I loved and fine children out of him. Better than I hoped for even. Tell him I was given back everything he took away and more. Oh, no, oh, God, no, there something else beside the house and the man and the children.. Oh, surely they were not all? What was it? Something not given back…. Her breath crowded down under her ribs and grew into a monstrous frightening shape with cutting edges; it bored up into her head, and the agony was unbelievable: Yes, John, get the doctor now, no more talk, my time has come.

When this one was born it should be the last. The last. It should have been born first, for it was the one she truly wanted. Everything came in good time. Nothing left out, left over. She was strong, in three days she would be as well as ever. Better. A woman needed milk in her to have her full health.

“Mother, do you hear me?”

“I’ve been telling you—“

“Mother, Father Connolly’s here.”

“I went to Holy Communion only last week. Tell him I’m not so sinful as all that.”

“Father just wants to speak to you.”

He could speak as much as he pleased. It was like him to drop and inquire about her soul as if it were a teething baby, and then stay on for a cup of tea and a round of cards and gossip. He always had a funny story of some sort, usually about an Irishman who made his little mistakes and confessed them, and the point lay in some absurd thing he would blurt out in the confessional showing his struggles between naïve piety and original sin. Granny felt easy about her soul. Cornelia, where are your manners? Give Father Connolly a chair. She had her secret comfortable understanding with a few favorite saint who cleared straight road to God for her. All as surely signed and sealed as the papers for the new Forty Acres. Forever… heirs and assigns forever. Since the day the wedding cake was not cut, but thrown out and wasted. The whole bottom dropped out of the world, and there she was blind and sweating with nothing under her feet and the walls falling away. His hand had caught her under the breast, she had not fallen, there was the freshly polished floor with the green rug on it, just as before. He had cursed like a sailor’s parrot and said, “I’ll kill him for you.” Don’t lay a hand on him, for my sake leave something to God. “Now, Ellen, you must believe what I tell you….”

So there was nothing, nothing to worry about any more, except sometimes in the night one of the children screamed in a nightmare, and they both hustled out shaking and hunting for the matches and calling, “There, wait a minute, here we are!” John, get the doctor now, Hapsy’s time has come. But there was Hapsy standing by the bed in a white cap. “Cornelia, tell Hapsy to take off her cap. I can’t see her plain.”

Her eyes opened very wide and the room stood out like a picture she had seen somewhere. Dark colors with the shadows rising towards the ceiling in long angles. The tall black dresser gleamed with nothing on it but John’s picture, enlarged from a little one, when John’s eyes very black when they should have been blue. You never saw him, so how do you know how he looked? But the man insisted the copy was perfect, it was very rich and handsome. For a picture, yes, but it’s not my husband. The table by the bed had a linen cover and a candle and a crucifix. The light was blue form Cornelia’s silk lampshades. No sort of light at all, just frippery. You had to live forty years with kerosene lamps to appreciate honest electricity. She felt very strong and she saw Doctor Harry with a rosy nimbus around him.

“You look like a saint, Doctor Harry, and I vow that’s as near as you’ll ever come to it.”

“She’s saying something.”

“I heard you, Cornelia. What’s all this carrying on?”

“Father Connolly’s saying—“

Cornelia’s voice staggered and bumped like a cart in a bad road. It rounded corners and turned back again and arrived nowhere. Granny stepped up in the cart very lightly and reached for the reins, but a man sat beside her and she knew him by his hands, driving the cart. She did not look in his face, for she knew without seeing, but looked instead down the road where the trees leaned over and bowed to each other and a thousand birds were singing a Mass. She felt like singing too, but she put her hand in the bosom of her dress and pulled out a rosary, and Father Connolly murmured Latin in a very solemn voice and tickled her feet. My God, will you stop that nonsense? I’m a married woman. What if he did run away and leave me to face the priest by myself? I found another a whole world better. I wouldn’t have exchanged my husband for anybody except St. Michael himself, and you may tell him that for me with a thank you in the bargain.

Light flashed on her closed eyelids, and a deep roaring shook her. Cornelia, is that lightning? I hear thunder. There’s going to be a storm. Close all the windows. Call the children in…. “Mother, here we are, all of us.” “Is that you, Hapsy?” “Oh, no, I’m Lydia. We drove as fast as we could.” Their faces drifted above her, drifted away. The rosary fell out of her hands and Lydia put it back. Jimmy tried to help, their hands fumbled together, and Granny closed two fingers around Jimmy’s thumb. Beads wouldn’t do, it must be something alive. She was so amazed her thoughts ran round and round. So, my dear Lord, this is my death and I was not even thinking about it. My children have come to see me die. But I can’t, it’s not time. Oh, I always hated surprises. I wanted to give Cornelia the amethyst set—Cornelia, you are to have the amethyst set, but Hapsy’s to wear it when she wants, and, Doctor Harry, do shut up. Nobody sent for you. Oh, my dear Lord, do wait a minute. I meant to do something about the Forty Acres, Jimmy doesn’t need it and Lydia will later on, with that worthless husband of hers. I meant to finish the altar cloth and send six bottles of wine to Sister Borgia for her dyspepsia. I want to send six bottles of wine to Sister Borgia, Father Connolly, now don’t let me forget.

Cornelia’s voice made short turns and tilted over and crashed. “Oh, Mother, oh, Mother, oh, Mother….”

“I’m not going Cornelia. I’m taken by surprise. I can’t go.”

You’ll see Hapsy again. What about her? “I thought you’d never come.” Granny made a long journey outward, looking for Hapsy. What if I don’t find her? What then? Her heart sank down and down, there was no bottom to death, she couldn’t come to the end of it. The blue light from Cornelia’s lampshade drew into a tiny point into the center of her brain, it flickered and winked like an eye, quietly it fluttered and dwindled. Granny lay curled down within herself, amazed and watchful, staring at the point of light that was herself; her body was now only a deeper mass of shadow in an endless darkness and this darkness would curl around the light and swallow it up. God give a sign!

For the second time there was no sign. Again no bridegroom and the priest in the house. She could not remember any other sorrow because this grief wiped them all away. Oh, no, there’s nothing more cruel than this—I’ll never forgive it. She stretched herself with a deep breath and blew out the light.