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Show 70 presence nor succeed in saying goodbye. Afterwards, they would shake hands with the doctor, board their planes back home, and tell the children: "Grandma died." "Oh," the children would say. She thinks of their faces now, the giggling children, but she thinks of the older faces too, these expectant, responsible, adult faces, who so much want her to consent, and see the problem safely solved. She sits on the rock where she has so often sat, drains a little sand through her fingers. Can she do this to them, tell them no, she won't go, she will do as she's planned in concluding her life, farewell? Dying would hurt Rod's pride, of that she is sure, but she thinks it would hurt nothing more; Evan, dear sweet silent Evan, is independent now, and he would understand. Of the children, her dying would injure only Luel, needly, unresolved Luel, but Luel herself is dead now, and cannot cry. Annis picks herseulf up from the rock, begins to walk slowly back up the beach. Gulls waddle just in front of her along the sand, leaving prints of their three-pronged feet. Small bubbles appear on the surface of the wet sand as new waves slide back; they are made by sand crabs, concealed just below the surface. But what of John? It is here that her trouble is hardest; the children have their own independent lives, but John is tied to her, more so, it seems, every day. Can she simply leave him, and abandon him to the age she herself refuses to endure? But it was John who had originally brought her to this idea, who had first given her a sense of the simplicity and naturalness of life, of death, who with his broad biologist's view had resisted all that talk of mystery, sanctity. |