The Second Coming

Allison’s parents we are also her guardians, right? I mean especially since Allison is hardly competent to manage her own affairs.
    Well—
    Would you believe, Doc, that in this state under a new law there is a difference between a person being mentally incompetent and legally incompetent? That even a person committed to a mental institution can inherit property?
    Would I believe, you ask. Yes, I think I—
    Would you believe this, Doc?—and this is the bottom line, folks—that even in such a case the parents do not automatically qualify as guardians?
    Well yes, as a matter of fact—
    I mean, what the hell is happening to the American family? Her father’s voice swept around the room like a searchlight. You know what I would do with people like Earl Warren?
    You don’t have to. Earl Warren’s dead, said her mother wearily. Why don’t you get to the point, Tiger?
    Would you believe, Doc, that in order for us to be Allison’s legal guardians, we have to petition the court and that it is up to the judge, any damn local redneck judge, to decide?
    Well—
    (What’s up, Doc? Your ears are standing straight up, aren’t they?)
    That’s where you come in, Alistair, said her mother crisply, clinking and gathering herself. I’m quite sure you know the new laws better than we do. Namely, that a legal procedure is involved and that your testimony as to Allison’s legal competence will be crucial. I mean, my stars (now her eyes would be going up to the ceiling), you could testify in good conscience to my legal competence.
    Of course. Quite. Dr. Duk’s voice was going down. No doubt he was rolling his unlit Marlboro cigarette. The little Dead Sea scroll was still undecipherable, but there was something here!
    The only thing I don’t quite see, can’t find the handle of, said Dr. Duk carefully, is why all of a sudden the issue becomes important at this point in time.
    (This point in time. Oh, Docky, now we’re Nixon. The question is, who are you, Docky, and what are you doing here at this point in time?)
    She stopped listening and let her weight slump her hard against the trunk. She closed her eyes and ears to the words. The voices rose and fell, mounted against each other, glanced off, went away, came back, joined. It was like being a child and listening from the top of the stairs. Voices can be understood without words. Her father’s voice now had the same ragging importunate tone she heard from the landing when he was winning at poker. Dr. Duk’s was tentative, premonitory—like a prospector whose Geiger counter begins to click: hold on, what’s this? what have we here? Her mother’s voice was foot-wagging, eyes going around, exclamatory, impatient: oh, for heaven’s sake, let’s get this over with!
    She started listening again when after a silence her father’s voice changed, fell into a quiet storytelling cadence. Such-and-such happened. So-and-so did it. Everyone listens when someone tells the news of a happening. Something had happened, and he was telling it as much to himself as to them, as if only in the telling, the saying out loud, could he believe it.
    She pricked up her ears. They were talking about her.
    â€”and would you believe, Doc, that the old lady, Aunt Sally, was not even her aunt? She was her real aunt’s friend, Aunt Grace. The two of them had lived together for thirty years, fought like cats and dogs most of the time. They used to come over every Sunday for dinner, so Allie naturally called Miss Sally Aunt Sally. Sure, we knew Miss Sally was fond of Allie ever since Allie was a little girl—for one thing Allie was the only one who would listen to her because the old lady could talk the ears off a jackass and frankly I couldn’t stand it more than a few minutes—
    (That was because I thought I was supposed to and did not know how not to listen or what would happen to a person if one got up and went away.)
    â€”and it was a good two weeks after she died that Ludean, the old nigger maid the two of them had had for twenty years, brought it over to me, this old metal Crailo candy box with a piece of ruled paper inside and about three lines in Miss Sally’s handwriting—the paper wrinkled from having been balled up once just before being thrown away, because Ludean was cleaning up Miss Sally’s room and you know how niggers like those old candy boxes to keep things