They walked downstairs and into the living-room. Alice was in the room and Mr. and Mrs. Price were both there seated near a window. It was like a holiday—Christmas or Easter—to see the family together in the early morning in the artificial illumination.
Laurence covered his face. Alice went over to him and patted his shoulder.
"You must eat some breakfast, Laurie."
The kindness in her voice hurt him. He wanted to go away. But she took his hand and he was too sick to rebel against her, so he let her lead him forward through the portières into the next room where the table was set.
May and Bobby had been dressed early and seated at table, for they were going for the day to a neighbor's house. Over her brown serge dress that was becoming too short and tight, May wore a fancy clean white apron. The bow on her hair was of her best red ribbon, but it was already half untied and dangled in a huge loop above one of her ears. Bobby, too, was in a new blue woolen blouse. He was bibless and the porridge he was eating trickled, in gluey gray-white drops of milk and half-dissolved sugar, over his chin and down his dickey.
He could not get it out of his head that this was a celebration, and several times he had asked Aunt Alice where the presents were.
May was discreet enough to attend to her food, but she ate slowly and methodically, and was in no hurry to leave. When she saw her father led in by Aunt Alice as if he were a blind man, it seemed a part of the general strangeness and excitement.
May understood that there was something wrong with her mother. Yet her information was too meager to project anything but vague images in her mind. At one moment the unexpectedness of it all elated her. Her eyes shone. She shuddered with happiness, and her drawers were wet. But the exaltation, produced by the sense of mystery, was followed by depression. Tears gathered among her lashes and rolled down her cheeks as she realized that her father was crying too.
After the children had been sent away, the embalmer arrived and went upstairs, and when the wreath was hung on the door it seemed almost as if Winnie had died again.
The house now stood out from other houses. What the family had wanted to conceal like a shame was revealed to the world. Their grief no longer belonged to themselves. When they went to a window and looked out their differentness separated them infinitely from the people in the street. They were crushed by their consciousness of separateness.