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Show 89 Twenty-seven "We'll be leaving Monday night," they tell Annis, and they watch a smile gather, hesitate, then flood across her face. "Just like that?" she says, disbelieving. "Just like that," answers Rod. "We've been here long enough." But they do not tell her that she will be leaving too, and that one of them will take her husband away after she is gone. "It would only upset her," they say to themselves. "Let's let these last couple of days be good ones." And, indeed, the last couple of days are good ones. Annis holds her grandchildren on her knees; she unearths from one of the cartons a box of old costume jewelry, and gives it to them to play with. They devise skits, where Amy, wrapped in gauzy veils from Annis' youth, is Peter Pan, or little Johnny, enveloped head to toe in grandfather John's ancient hiking knickers, plays Peter and the Wolf. Annis sits for hours with Rod's wife Alicia, hearing all her accounts of the children's growth; but still more she sits with her two sons and her husband, recounting their early years, their disappointments, their dreams. She spends vast amounts of time in the kitchen, fixing the dishes which had always been her family's favorites, her pleasure in them heightened because she knows she is doing these things for the final time. The family will leave; she had once dreamt of summoning them all to her bedside for a last farewell, but she sees now that they could never accept it, and the real farewell is now. But it is good, she thinks, nevertheless, and when it comes to |
