The White House
The Library
I have sought sanctuary in the library.
Willie is dead.
He was thirteen, handsome, intelligent, gentle, fond of each of us. For two weeks he battled for survival, his doctors helping little or not at all. When his doctor left him, when I was alone with him, I felt his cold face and held his cold hands. I thought, he’s not really dead. It must be an error. He isn’t dead because I feel his presence in the room, hear his voice.
Typhoid killed him.
Mary, hysterical, suffered grave headaches at his death. She is unable to comfort Tad. She is unable to speak coherently. She sometimes fancies that he is not dead: she wants to go into the bedroom and speak to him. She says she hopes to communicate with him through a séance. Only I have a chance at comforting Tad. Sitting on my lap, his head against my shoulder, he sleeps. Certainly he knows the sleeve of care, the worn sleeve.
Today we buried our Willie. Mary and Robert and Tad and I stood side by side at the grave.