be any consolation because Ma thinks since I don't want to teach that I could at least clerk at Cheever's bookstore or even Burkhardt's grocery so as to be at home."
"Mothers are all the same, they want to feel you are settled," Lucy sympathized. "But it does seem a shame for someone to feel all alone because a dog dies."
"I know, and I tell myself it's my fault for not turning out as she had hoped, but what can I do? I know I can't be any consolation for Tina unless I give in completely and that seems to me a one-sided demand."
"What I was thinking had nothing to do with you. It was about your mother being left alone without what she wanted most in the world, and whether one can die of a broken heart."
At three in the morning Vida awakened and, restless, turned the pages of one of Mae's magazines. An ad for fried chicken recalled that in Congress she had been unable to eat it, haunted by the vision of the headless body flopping around the yard. Lucy, she thought, must be having a good time after all to be so late.
At three thirty the door opened and closed quietly and, wordlessly, Lucy staggered through the bedroom into the bathroom. The raindrop beads of her dress clung to the vase of her body and from her throat escaped a sound of splintering icicles, and the dreadful phrase "death rattle" froze Vida.
Hearing the retching sounds from the bathroom she concluded Lucy had had too much to drink and went to make coffee. When she returned with it she heard a deep moan and, frightened, knocked on the door.
"Are you all right?"
"I'll be out in a minute," Lucy said in a hollow voice, and there was the sound of water gurgling out the tub.
She came out, her hair wet and uncurled, her face waxy as a church candle, and shivering in her vaporous blue woolen robe crawled into bed.
"A fine thing, catching cold! Drink this coffee," Vida scolded.
Lucy's hand shook, rattling the cup on the saucer. She burned her tongue, thawing her silence. "I met a friend of yours tonight," she said tonelessly.
"Who?"
"Rad Welford. Wanted to know where to reach you, but I said I
