The Sunlight Dialogues by John Gardner

They want those tiny little houses with their tiny fat chairs and those tiny little cars. I just don’t want any part of it, Mr. Cooper. I like houses with stories, places people have lived in. That settee there, the one Mr. What’s-his-name is sitting on, it came down in the family from our Uncle Ferris and Aunt Margaret. They had nine children, and five of them died in one week of diphtheria.”
    He missed whatever it was she said next. Three fire engines went by, some blocks away, the last two hard on the tail of the first, from the sound of it, and their sirens howled along the twilight like the cranes he’d heard once crossing the sky in single file directly over the ship. When he could listen again she was saying, suddenly animated, “Wasn’t it a terrible winter?”
    Clumly pursed his lips. “Terrible,” he ventured.
    “We thought we’d die, didn’t we Editha? I get the hives so bad, don’t you know. We were shut up here one time for four days, right here in the city, telephone lines down and everything. I’d just get choking, don’t you know, in the middle of the night, and I just gave myself up for gone. We finally got out a message to the doctor by some children that were playing in the drifts out in front, and he came over here on foot. It was T. Murray Steele. Such a good man, and very famous in the medical circle, or so we hear. Not our circle, you know—” she rasped out a laugh “—though he’s rich, we understand. Very active in politics too, one of us, where that’s concerned. He said he just couldn’t understand why I wasn’t dead. ‘Well, I’ve got a good constitution,’ I says. It’s so rare to find a good doctor, these days, what with socialized medicine and the Catholics and the rest. You wonder what this country’s coming to. Poor Editha came down with pneumonia one time—three years ago February, wasn’t it Editha? It came over her late at night, I remember. She’d had a cold, poor thing, and my colitis was so bad I could scarcely get around to wait on her—it’s so hard when you’re sickly, don’t you know—I suppose that was partly what made it worse. I’d just wound this clock—I remember as if it was yesterday—and I heard poor Editha gagging in the second parlor. Not a doctor that would come at that hour of the night. Except T. Murray Steele. He’s known far and wide for his medical skill, and yet out he comes in the middle of the night, just as regular as the post office. We had poor Editha in an oxygen tent—God’s will be done!—and he cured my bursitis the same night, as well as possible. I can’t tell you how grateful it made us. What’s wrong with these young doctors? I hear they put people in ten different rooms, not counting the room with the magazines, and they just make them wait. I heard of a doctor in Leroy who went away on vacation and left two poor ladies sitting in his office for days and days. Imagine! They might have starved! I haven’t been to one of those places myself. I can’t get out much, don’t you know, with these fallen arches. It’s just like walking with glass inside your shoes.”
    Clumly shook his head.
    She fiddled with the Kleenex, looking for a place still unused. “Have you ever seen Editha’s poetry books?” Miss Octave asked them. “There’s boxes and boxes of them up in the attic. They’ve never sold well, but they’re lovely, you know. She used to read her poetry all over New York State, years ago. She’s written some lovely children’s pieces and of course volumes of beautiful religious verse. She doesn’t do it any more, naturally.”
    She sat silent a moment, looking at the canes in her lap. At last, with an effort, she wrapped her stiff knuckles around the handles and got the canes in position to help her up. “You’ll want to see where the burglar came in,” she said.
    “Yes, good,” Clumly said. The sky was gray now, the room almost dark, but Octave Woodworth seemed no more aware of the