Blackwater III: The House by Michael McDowell

Author:Michael McDowell
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 37 Upstairs

Grace was silent on the journey back down the Perdido. As they were carried along by the current of the ever-widening river, Frances sat rigidly in the front of the boat, facing away from her cousin. “Frances, are you all right?” Grace asked anxiously more than once. Frances nodded weakly, but did not turn around. After Grace had tied the boat to the tree near the end of the levee she discovered “that Frances was unable to walk. Grace had to carry her all the way back to the house. Elinor still had not returned, but Zaddie took one look at the child in Grace’s arms, and said, with ominous significance, “That’s the arthritis again.” Frances was. taken upstairs and put into bed. Grace sat at her side until Elinor returned, a half hour later. , Grace was nearly in tears. “Elinor, it’s my fault!” “Don’t be silly,” said Elinor sternly. “Dr. Benquith said it could come back at any time.” The child lay” in a feverish doze. When she woke late that night, the palsy in her legs had got no better. In her last days in Perdido, Grace Caskey was convinced that the excursion to the source of the Perdido was solely responsible for the recurrence of Frances’s crippling ailment. Elinor, Oscar, James, and Frances herself did what they could to assure Grace that it was not so. Grace left for Spartanburg, and when she returned at Christmas, Frances still. had not got up from her bed. Dr. Benquith had wanted to send the child to Sacred Heart in Pensacola, or even to one of the big hospitals in Cincinnati,but Elinor would not hear of this. “I’m going to continue to nurse my child until she’s better.” Nothing seemed to ease Frances’s pain but warm baths. For two hours every morning, two hours every afternoon, and for an hour in the evening after supper, Elinor sat at the side of the bathtub, sponging water over Frances’s helpless limbs. The child seemed always weary. Sometimes her eyelids twitched with some pain that had registered in her brain, but she never complained. Elinor gave up playing bridge; she no longer went to church. She didn’t like to leave her daughter. There was never the air of the martyr about her, never the sense that she was sacrificing anything for Frances. On her good days, the girl‘ was carried out onto the screened porch and laid in a little cot-bed. ‘ But Frances’s good days were infrequent. At times she appeared to have no mind whatsoever. She lay uncomplaining in her bed, twitching violently when overtaken by the palsy, perfectly still at all other times. Looking at her clenched hands, Oscar was certain that Frances was tense and bitter. Elinor‘ said that contraction of her fingers into uncontrolled claws was only the arthritis, as were her in-turning, twisted feet. Occasionally the girl made an effort to reply when she was spoken to directly, but more often she did not. Nothing held her interest.

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