Very Old Bones Read Online Free PDF Page A

the baseball results (the Red Sox and the Albany Senators had both lost) in the morning Times-Union , his right leg stretched kitchenward,
its plaster ankle cast covered by the leg of his navy-blue Palm Beach trousers, the toes of his shoeless foot covered by half a white sock, his hickory cane standing in the corner of the nook next
to a paper bag containing his right shoe.
    Agnes Dempsey, practical nurse and Billy’s special friend, who’d been a now-and-then overnight guest for years, and who became a full-time live-in member of the household a year ago
April, when Annie’s feebleness and vagueness were becoming a family problem, Agnes Dempsey at forty stood at the counter by the sink, breaking soft-boiled eggs into coffee cups with broken
handles.
    Peg, dressed perfectly, as usual, in high heels and blue flowered dress, stood at the gas stove pouring a cup of coffee, the only breakfast she would allow herself, except for one bite of
Billy’s toast, she in such a high-energized condition that we must intuit some private frenzy in her yet to be revealed.
    Agnes brought Annie her breakfast before serving anyone else, stirred up the eggs with a teaspoon, topped them off with a touch of butter, salt, and pepper, then set them in front of Annie along
with two pieces of toast. Annie looked at the eggs.
    “They got bugs,” she said.
    “What’s got bugs?”
    “Those things. Get the bugs off.”
    “That’s not bugs, Annie. That’s pepper.”
    Annie tried to shove the pepper to one side with a spoon.
    “I don’t eat bugs,” she said.
    “That’s a new one,” Agnes said when she set Billy’s eggs in front of him on the oilcloth-covered table. “She thinks pepper is bugs.”
    “Then don’t give her any pepper,” Billy said.
    “Well, naturally,” said Agnes, and Peg saw a pout in Agnes’s lips and knew it had more than pepper in it. They all ate in silence until Agnes said, “I’ve got to get
a room someplace.”
    “You don’t have to go noplace,” Billy said.
    “Well, I do, and you know I do.”
    “Let’s not create a crisis,” Peg said.
    “I’m not creating a crisis,” Agnes said. “I’m saying I’ve got to get out of here. Father McDevitt said it, not me. But I’ve been thinking the same
thing.”
    “Then why didn’t you ever say anything?” said Billy.
    “Because I didn’t know how to say it.”
    “Well, you’ve said it now,” said Peg. “Do you mean it, or is this just a little low-level blackmail?”
    “What’s that mean, blackmail?”
    “Agnes,” said Peg, “go on with your tale of woe.”
    “I’m saying only what the Father said. That we can’t go on living this way, because it doesn’t look moral.”
    “Very little in this life looks moral to me,” Peg said. “When are you leaving?”
    “She’s not leaving,” Billy said. “Who’ll take care of Ma?”
    “We can’t let Ma interfere with Agnes’s new moral look,” Peg said.
    “You heard the Father,” Agnes said. “ ‘How long have you been here, my dear?’ A little over a year, Father.’ I felt like I was in confession. ‘You did
that? How many times did you do it, dear?’ They always want the arithmetic.”
    “I’m surprised the Vatican hasn’t sent in a team of investigators to get to the bottom of this,” Peg said.
    “Whataya talkin’ about, this ?” Billy said. “There’s nothin’ goin’ on.”
    “Then you don’t have anything to worry about,” said Peg.
    “Worry? Why should I worry?”
    “You shouldn’t,” Peg said. “You’re clean.”
    “Look, I know what you’re gertin’ at,” Billy said, “and I’m not gertin’ married, so change the subject.”
    “Changed. When do you move out, Ag?”
    “ ‘We don’t want to give scandal,’ the priest says. What does he think we do here?”
    “He imagines what you do,” said Peg. “It probably keeps him peppy. What else did he say?”
    “He says we have to create the sacrament.”
    “What sacrament?” Billy