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Fiction Short Story

Rhoda Twombly

Happy Families

The room had turned silent and still, totally devoid of sound or motion. Months of hearing her father-in-law's labored breaths, coughs and sputters had turned the sounds of a dying man into a subtle concerto she was barely aware of. But Josephine noticed them now they were gone. That cold stillness of a death room crept out the door towards her and she didn't have to look at the bed to know what she would find.

Stepping into the room, Josephine tripped as her foot caught the edge of the rough carpet that the boys had never gotten around to tacking properly. It was a small room, and the gray light of near dawn made it seem even smaller, the walls crowding in on the sides of the double bed shoved into the far corner. Undecorated, other than an ancient holy picture of the Sacred Heart, the walls lent no warmth to the room, seeming to act only as supports for the cobwebs lacing all the corners. Even the chest of drawers stood lonely, giving little away about the secrets of its owner, except, perhaps, the old paraffin lamp, rosary beads and an old Stetson hat resting on its top.

Josephine leaned against the door, her hand grasping the cold, battered brass knob. Gazing at her father-in-law, she did not see him as he was, a shrunken corpse in a dingy, functional room. A film that was playing in slow motion in her sleep-deprived imagination showed them all together. Mr. Thompson, or Pops as everyone called him, tall and lean in his work gear, romping with his wife and children in the orchard next to the house. She saw Peter, the son she would marry some years later, pushing her on the old swing that hung from the gnarled apple tree. And she saw John, the eldest and by far best-looking of the four boys, racing his horse against the sun, his silhouette black against the sunset. He was waving his hat in the air, his contagious laughter urging them all to join in his amusement. The boys would have to be told, Josephine thought as she gazed at the figure in the bed before her. Once they had been inseparable, closer than most brothers. Resting herself on the deep windowsill, feeling the pale warmth of the dawn on her back, Josephine's mind wandered, peeling back the years.

So much had happened, since those early days when she had first met the gaggle of Thompson brothers and sisters in school. She had made herself at home in the old farmhouse that nestled into a knoll at the edge of the pasture land the Thompson family had owned for generations. It was a small house, a bit threadbare, but it was steeped in family history and love, not to mention the constant smell of Ma Thompson's cooking. Yeast bread, fruit cakes, soups and stews produced a cloak of aroma that never failed to wrap her in a feeling of belonging and well-being. Compared to her own house, the Thompson's was a palace of comfort and warmth.

Pops had seen the way Josephine looked at John when she thought no one could see. He had always known it was John she really wanted. It was clear that John didn't care for her in that way, but as a brother would care for a sister. It was the younger brother, Peter, who fell in love with Josephine and, rather than lose the family she had adopted as her own, she accepted his proposal of marriage. Unseen to everyone bar her father-in-law, Josephine had always held a torch for John. Only in her dreams had she ever done anything about these feelings, but the love she felt for John kept her a bit apart from her husband and created a pain, an incompleteness in her soul. Josephine had felt her father-in-law looking at her once as she gazed at John and, although he had cast his eyes away when she turned to face him, she could feel that he knew. Just knowing that Pops understood made her life a bit less lonely and she drew comfort through his unspoken sympathy.

The sound of their old sheep dog, Speedo, barking in the front garden broke the spell that death had cast over the room. Josephine looked out the window and saw her husband and his brother Tom just coming in the gate on the old John Deere. After waiting so many months for their father to die, none of them thought it would be today. Life and work went on as always.

She edged herself slowly off the sill and moved to the side of the bed, sitting on the worn quilt made eons ago by Ma Thompson and her quilting bee. There was still a faint smell of tobacco in the room, even though Pops had given up smoking ages ago. A new tang had taken over the room: a cold, dank smell that sent a shiver down Josephine's spine. Pops was so small in the bed, as though death had taken not only his soul, but his stature. She stroked the grizzled cheek, still warm but oh, so still. The hollows under the cheek bones no longer puffing in and out but concave and quiescent. She sat, stroking his cheek and smoothing his ruffled hair, thinking about his adventures and the stories of the rodeo he had told her. In his dotage, his mind becoming gradually more corrupted and confused, he had drawn Josephine closer to him, imagining that only she could care for him. Somewhere in his dementia he imagined she was the only one that really cared. And so, during the waning of his life, they became closer than he was to his own sons and daughters. Her face was wet with tears--tears that sprang from her loneliness, not his death. After all, his death was a release, her loneliness a lifetime sentence.

Josephine stood and bent over her father-in-law. He had been her unspoken confidant, her one small stopgap against a world of loneliness. If she had known what she would have to trade to belong to a happy, secure family, would she do it again? Josephine kissed Father Thompson on his death-smoothed forehead and knew in her heart that she would.

She gathered herself up, smoothed her skirt and wiped her face. It was time to tell the boys.