Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

been able to help.
    On the plane she had thought that she would make tea biscuits. As if that would be possible, in June’s kitchen.
    The news that their father was dead, in the War, had come for some reason in a phone call, at ten or eleven o’clock at night. Their mother had made tea biscuits and tea, and got Eileen up to share them. Not June, she was too little. They had jam. Eileen was greedy but apprehensive. Their mother who was most of the time a dangerous person, full of mysterious hurts, unnameable grievances, seemed to have abandoned her usual position, to have turned neutral, undemanding, and, of all things, shy . She did not tell her news. (She would wake them in the morning with a long white face, an unwelcome kiss, a prepared voice. Daddy is dead .) Years later Eileen had tried to talk to June about this vigil with the biscuits, the revelation of their mother as someone frail and still; almost, almost—the thing they most hoped for then—an ordinary woman. June said she had worked through all that.
    “Years ago, and in Gestalt too. I really did it in Gestalt. I worked it all out and finished with it.”
    I have not worked through anything , Eileen thought. And further: I do not believe things are there to be worked through .
    People die; they suffer, they die. Their mother had died of ordinary pneumonia, after all that craziness. Illness and accidents. They ought to be respected, not explained. Words are all shameful. They ought to crumble in shame.
    The words from The Prophet , read at the Memorial Service that afternoon, had offended Eileen. Such fraud, she thought, such insolence. Unintentional—offered in fact with the modern equivalent of piety—but that was no excuse. Now in drunk reflection she saw that no words would have been any better. Now in sure and certain hope.… No fraud in the words but what fraud now in saying them. Silence the only possible thing.
    At one time she and June had been worth more consideration than they were now. At one time they had been less offensive. Was that not so? Ewart too, the neighbors too, the Unitarians too. At one time we could all be trusted to know what we meant, but not now, although we all mean well. June has been in Growth Groups, she has learned Yoga, she has looked into Transcendental Meditation; she has been naked, with others, in a warm pool on an expensive island. As for Eileen, she has read a great deal, and knows how to be offended by all kinds of cheapness. You would think they would be better off than their mother was. But something is wrong just the same. The only thing that we can hope for is that we lapse now and then into reality, thinks Eileen, and falls asleep for a few seconds, to wake up scared, fingers tightening on the glass.
    Almost spilled it. The rug, the spread. She drank all that was left and set the glass on the bedside table and almost at once fell asleep.
    She woke still drunk, not knowing the time. The house was quiet. She got up, thought she must change into nightclothes. First she went to the bathroom, wearing her dark blue caftan, and then into the kitchen to look at the electric clock. The kitchen light was on. It was only a quarter past eleven.
    She drank a full glass of cold water, which she knew from experience would reduce, or if she was lucky entirely eliminate, her morning headache. She went out the side door to the garage, thinking that she would stand there out of the rain and breathe fresh air. The door was up. Wavering, she felt her way along the wall past coiled garden hose and tools hung on nails. She heard someone coming but was not worried. She was too drunk. She did not care who it was or what they thought of her, finding her here.
    It was Ewart. He had the watering can.
    “June?” he said. “June? Eileen. I didn’t see how it could be June. She took two sleeping pills.”
    “What are you doing,” said Eileen. Her voice was drunk, challenging but not really quarrelsome.
    “Watering.”
    “It’s raining. Ewart you are a fool.”
    “It’s not raining any more.”
    “It was earlier. I noticed when we were in the living room.”
    “I had to water the new shrubs. They take an incredible amount of water at first. You can’t depend on the rain being enough. Even for the first day.”
    He was putting the can away. He came round the cars to her.
    “Eileen. You better go in. You had a lot to drink. June looked in on you earlier. She said you were dead to the world.”
    He was drunk too. She