"Don't call me Lollie!"
"Don't suffer so, dear."
"I'm not suffering. I'm not suffering at all."
"Will you bring up Laurel's suitcase, Stephen?" asked Helen. "Come, Laurel." She slipped a steadying arm through Laurel's. "You must go to bed now."
5
They mounted together to the lavender-tinted room, which Helen had told Stella last summer would be Laurel's. ("She'll be sleeping in that, I suppose," Stella had remarked, from the threshold of the room, as she had gazed upon the bed, fresh and crisp with muslin valance and canopy. "I'll be thinking of her in that," and she had wiped her eyes.) Helen recalled the scene, the voice, the tears, as now she set about preparing with her own hands the waiting bed for that absent woman's child.
Behind her Laurel was standing, here, as downstairs, impassive and indifferent, just where Helen had left her when she withdrew her arm that had guided her hither.
"Come. We'll undress now."
"Mother has married a man I hate." Laurel took up the interrupted motif again. "She's married a man she knew I hated. She has chosen him instead of me. She has married Ed Munn. He's awful. He's horrible. An animal is clean beside him. And she likes him. My mother! She's fond of him. She's been waiting for years to marry him."
"Oh, no, Laurel."
