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sure I’ll be all right.” Another sip of herb tea, a tablespoon of Pepto-Bismol. But Jeremy (if he was even at the table, and not off pasting things together and having lunch sent up on a tray) only ate on with his eyes lowered and never appeared to notice. He was so used to being the sickly one himself. I am sure he never changed. Mother could have trailed a line of digitalis tablets clear across to his place mat and he would only have asked for more custard.
    Laura came to the dining room doorway and said, “I’ve laid a little supper on. Will you have some?”
    “I’m sorry, I just don’t believe I can,” I said.
    “Oh, Amanda. Try, dear. We have to keep our strength up.”
    So I came, but while Laura and Jeremy were settling themselves I went out and made myself a cup of hot milk. It was all I felt up to. I stood at the stove, surrounded by dirty dishes and objects out of their proper places, while in the dining room I heard the steady clinking of china.
They
could eat through anything. When I came out I saw their plates just heaped with food, omelets and rolls and several kinds of cake. I said, “Well, don’t come to me with your indigestion, that’s all I have to say.” Which stopped them for a moment; they wiped their mouths and looked up at me with identical foolish expressions. But then they returned to their plates and paid me no more mind. Spreading butter on one roll after another, spinning the lazy Susan to find some new kind of jelly. “Try the gooseberry, Jeremy. I know you’ve no appetite, but—” Jeremy, who has a sweet tooth, ate half a pineapple upside-down cake. I saw him. And just the bought, gluey kind; Mother never bestirred herself to bake. Laura served it to him sliver by sliver, the politest little portions youever saw, and he watched each piece arrive as if it had nothing to do with him but when he was finished half the cake was gone. Laura ate most of the other half. Yet she was so dainty about it! She took such tiny bites and set her fork down on her plate betweentimes. Jeremy chewed in a halfhearted way, the same as he does everything. Rolling the food around in his mouth. And then to top it off Laura said, “When this is over I’m going to have to go back on my diet.” As if Mother’s passing were a picnic! A vacation! Some kind of eating spree! But before I could point it out to her in walked Howard, who has the south front bedroom. “Oh, excuse me,” he said, and stood teetering over us. He is a beakish young man with glasses, a medical student. For as long as I can remember his room has been inhabited by medical students. They pass it down from one to another along with a shelf of fifth-hand textbooks and the number of the nurses’ dorm scrawled on the wallpaper beside the hall telephone. It is convenient, of course, to know that that particular room will always have an occupant, but the students are generally noisy and untidy and their hours are not at all regular. I would have dispensed with them long ago. And their manners! This Howard, for example, never even troubled himself to offer his condolences. All he said was, “I see you people got here okay.”
    “Howard,” I said, “I wonder if you might have any idea where our suitcases are.”
    “Me? No, ma’am.”
    “Well, there went our one last hope,” I told the others.
    Laura said, “Won’t you join us for supper, Howard?”
    “Oh, I have a little something in the kitchen,” he said. He scratched his head a moment and then left, and I could hear him out clattering around in the silverware drawer. No wonder the kitchen was in such a state. What do you expect,letting people wander in and out like that? I have been trying for years to make Mother lay down a few ground rules. “This is not a genuine
boarding
house,” I told her. “You never contracted for them to eat here, they’re supposed to take their meals in restaurants.”
    “Oh, well,” she said, “I know you’re right, Amanda.” Yet she