🎧 361: Lorna was less . . .

LORNA WAS LESS SUCCESSFUL in cheering Ella up. She had been able to lead May to what she needed, the pleasure of society, but Ella needed Buster, and that was something no one could supply. Ella spent hours lying on her bed, her hands clasped behind her head, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. When she was up, she walked through the house in silence. She went about her business as if living had become merely a set of automatic responses. When Lorna put food in front of her, she ate it. When Lorna suggested a ride, she put a coat on, got into the car with Lorna, and rode. If Lorna asked her to wash the dishes, she put an apron on, stood at the sink, and spent a silent hour working.

     Lorna was just, well, shaken by how depressed Ella was. She had this idea that it was terribly important for Ella to stop this grieving, to get on with life. Well, isn’t that just how she felt about me? You know — I don’t mind saying this now, but I would never have admitted anything of the sort at the time, never — I was in despair myself. Garth, well, Garth was being simply awful. It was a terrible enough time, wasn’t it, without his being such a rat. There was the damned war, and none of us was getting any younger, and everyone was depressed as hell. And Lorna — oh, Lorna. Lorna was an angel, a dear. She was determined that she was going to pull you out of your depression. She was going to figure out what would cheer you up and see that you got it. But I’ll tell you what I think. I think that cheering us up was what cheered her up. By trying to make the rest of us feel not-so-miserable, she was keeping herself from feeling miserable. That’s what I think.

     Lorna went back to work at the slide rule factory. She found that she had become a celebrity there. In her absence, people had exaggerated the work she had been doing in Maryland, as the people of Chacallit had, after the First World War, exaggerated the exploits of Andrew Proctor. Rumors had spread among her co-workers that Lorna’s work was secret, mysterious, dangerous, absolutely essential to the war effort. No one expected her to talk about it when she returned, but everyone hoped she would, that at least she would accidentally drop a hint now and then. Whenever she did say anything about the calculation of artillery firing tables, her listeners would smile and nod, exchange a wink or a nudge, certain that they understood hidden meanings in whatever she said, certain that she was diminishing the importance of what she had done and hiding its true nature because in these frightening times no one knew who might be listening. Each evening, Lorna returned home flushed with the pleasure of her work and the admiration of her co-workers, and then, just inside the front door, dropped, as if she were riding a swift elevator, into Ella’s misery. Then, one evening, when she stood in the doorway of Ella’s bedroom wondering what she might say to her, she noticed through the window the light from Dudley Beaker’s living room, and she asked herself, Now, why didn’t I think of that before?

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