They Call Me Patrice

No one else was saying a word. Father Hazzard was following every word closely. Mother Hazzard was in an easy chair, a basket on her lap, darning something. And Bill, strangely present, sat with one leg dangling over the arm of his chair, his head tilted back.

She tried to get by the door without being seen, but Mother Hazzard looked up at just the wrong time and caught her. “There she is now,” she said, “Patrice, come in here a moment, dear. We want you.”

She turned and went in, with a sudden constriction in her throat.

“Patrice, do you know Ty Winthrop?”

“I don’t believe I do,” she said. The nervousness shook her voice. She forced herself to go and shake hands with him. She kept her eyes carefully away from the table. It wasn’t easy.

“Ty is Father’s lawyer,” Mother Hazzard said.

Bill had risen and drawn up a chair beside the table for her. “Sit down, Patrice, and join the party,” he invited.

“Yes, we want you to hear this, Patrice,” Father Hazzard urged as she hesitated. “It concerns you.”

Her hand tried to stray betrayingly toward her throat. She kept it down by sheer will-power.

The lawyer cleared his throat. “Well, I think that about takes care of it, Donald. The rest of it remains as it was before, from there on.”

Father Hazzard hitched his chair nearer. “All right. Ready for me to sign now?”

Mother Hazzard bit off a thread with her teeth, having come to the end of her darning. She began to put things away in her basket. “You’d better tell Patrice what it is first, dear. Don’t you want her to know?”

“I’ll tell her for you,” Winthrop offered. “I can put it in fewer words perhaps.” He turned toward Patrice and gazed over the tops of his reading glasses, “Donald’s changing the provisions of his will, by adding a codicil. You see, in the original, after Julia here was provided for, there was an equal division of the residue made between Bill and Hugh. Now we’re altering that to make it one-quarter of the residue to Bill and the remainder to you.”

She could feel her face beginning to flame, as though a burning crimson light were focused on it. She felt agonizing sensations of wanting to push away from the table and make her escape.

She tried to speak quietly, “I don’t want you to do that. I don’t want to be included.”

“Don’t look that way about it,” Bill laughed. “You’re not doing anybody out of anything. I have Dad’s business—”

“It was Bill’s own suggestion,” Mother Hazzard let her know.

“As you know, I gave both the boys a cash sum to start them off, the day they each reached their twenty-first—”

Patrice was on her feet now, facing them, almost panic-stricken. “No, please! Don’t put my name down at all! I don’t want my name to go in the will!”

“It’s on account of Hugh, dear,” Mother Hazzard said in a tactful aside to her husband. “Can’t you understand?”

“Well, I know; we all mourn for Hugh. But she has to go on living Just the same. She has a child to think of. And these things shouldn’t be postponed on account of sentiment.”

She turned and fled from the room. They made no attempt to follow her.

She closed the door of her room after her. She stormed back and forth berating herself with bitter words. “Swindler!” She burst out. “Thief! It’s just like someone climbing in through a window and—”

A low knock came at the door about half an hour later. She went over and opened it, and Bill was standing there.

“Hello,” he said diffidently.

It was as though they hadn’t seen one another for two or three days past, instead of just half an hour before.

“He signed the will,” he said, “After you went up, Winthrop took it back with him, Witnessed and all. It’s done now, whether you wanted it or not.”

She didn’t answer. The battle had been lost in the room downstairs. This was no more than a final communique.

He was looking at her in a way she couldn’t identify. It seemed to have equal parts of shrewd appraisal and blank incomprehension in it, with just a dash of admiration added.

“You know,” he said, “I don’t know why you acted like that about it. And I don’t agree with you. I think you were wrong.” He lowered his voice a little in confidence. “But somehow or other I’m glad you did. I like you better for acting like that about it.” He shoved his hand out to her suddenly. “Want to shake good night?”

Chapter Five

In the light of the full moon the flower-garden at the back of the house was as bright as noon. The sanded paths gleamed like snow, and her shadow glided along them azure against their whiteness.

Eleven struck melodiously from the Reformed Church over on Beechwood Drive. The echo lingered in the still air, filling her with a sense of peace and well-being.

Bill’s quiet voice, seeming to come from just over her shoulder, said: “Hello. I thought that was you down there, Patrice.”

She turned, startled, and could not locate him for a minute. Then she saw him perched on the sill of the open window of his room.

“Mind if I come down and join you?”

“I’m going in now,” she said hastily, but he’d already disappeared.