“Hold up your mug,” he said. He filled the cotton with liquid, turned back to her upper lip, made a hideous face, and dabbed at her cuts. “This’ll keep you from giving yourself something. Zandra!” he shouted.
Alexandra appeared from the kitchen. “What is it, Jack? Jean Louise, I thought you—”
“Never mind that. Is there any missionary vanilla in this house?”
“Jack, don’t be silly.”
“Come on, now. I know you keep it for fruitcakes. Gracious God, Sister, get me some whiskey! Go in the livingroom, Jean Louise.”
She walked in her daze to the livingroom and sat down. Her uncle came in carrying in one hand a tumbler three fingersful of whiskey, and in the other a glass of water.
“If you drink all this at once I’ll give you a dime,” he said.
Jean Louise drank and choked.
“Hold your breath, stupid. Now chase it.”
She grabbed for the water and drank rapidly. She kept her eyes closed and let the warm alcohol creep through her. When she opened them she saw her uncle sitting on the sofa contemplating her placidly.
Presently he said, “How do you feel?”
“Hot.”
“That’s the liquor. Tell me what’s in your head now.”
She said weakly: “A blank, my lord.”
“Fractious girl, don’t you quote at me! Tell me, how do you feel?”
She frowned, squeezed her eyelids together, and touched her tender mouth with her tongue. “Different, somehow. I’m sitting right here, and it’s just like I’m sitting in my apartment in New York. I don’t know—I feel funny.”
Dr. Finch rose and thrust his hands into his pockets, drew them out, and cradled his arms behind his back. “We-ll now, I think I’ll just go and have myself a drink on that. I never struck a woman before in my life. Think I’ll go strike your aunt and see what happens. You just sit there for a while and be quiet.”
Jean Louise sat there, and giggled when she heard her uncle fussing at his sister in the kitchen. “Of course I’m going to have a drink, Zandra. I deserve one. I don’t go about hittin’ women every day, and I tell you if you’re not used to it, it takes it out of you … oh, she’s all right … I fail to detect the difference between drinking it and eatin’ it … we’re all of us going to hell, it’s just a question of time … don’t be such an old pot, Sister, I’m not lyin’ on the floor yet … why don’t you have one?”
She felt that time had stopped and she was inside a not unpleasant vacuum. There was no land around, and no beings, but there was an aura of vague friendliness in this indifferent place. I’m getting high, she thought.
Her uncle bounced back into the livingroom, sipping from a tall glass filled with ice, water, and whiskey. “Look what I got out of Zandra. I’ve played hell with her fruitcakes.”Jean Louise attempted to pin him down: “Uncle Jack,” she said. “I have a definite idea that you know what happened this afternoon.”
“I do. I know every word you said to Atticus, and I almost heard you from my house when you lit into Henry.”
The old bastard, he followed me to town.
“You eavesdropped? Of all the—”
“Of course not. Do you think you can discuss it now?”
Discuss it? “Yes, I think so. That is, if you’ll talk straight to me. I don’t think I can take Bishop Colenso now.”
Dr. Finch arranged himself neatly on the sofa and leaned in toward her. He said, “I will talk straight to you, my darling. Do you know why? Because I can, now.”
“Because you can?”
“Yes. Look back, Jean Louise. Look back to yesterday, to the Coffee this morning, to this afternoon—”
“What do you know about this morning?”
“Have you never heard of the telephone? Zandra was glad to answer a few judicious questions. You telegraph your pitches all over the place, Jean Louise. This afternoon I tried to give you some help in a roundabout way to make it easier for you, to give you some insight, to soften it a little—”
“To soften what, Uncle Jack?”
“To soften your coming into this world.”
When Dr. Finch pulled at his drink, Jean Louise saw his sharp brown eyes flash above the glass. That’s what you tend to forget about him, she thought. He’s so busy fidgeting you don’t notice how closely he’s watching you. He’s crazy, all right, like every fox that was ever born. And he knows so much more than foxes. Gracious, I’m drunk.
“… look back, now,” her uncle was saying. “It’s still there, isn’t it?”
She looked. It was there, all right. Every word of it. But something was different. She sat in silence, remembering.
“Uncle Jack,” she finally said. “Everything’s still there. It happened. It was. But you know, it’s bearable somehow. It’s—it’s bearable.”
She was speaking the truth. She had not made the journey through time that makes all things bearable. Today was today, and she looked at her uncle in wonder.
“Thank God,” said Dr. Finch quietly. “Do you know why it’s bearable now, my darling?”
“No sir. I’m content with things as they are. I don’t want to question, I just want to stay this way.”
She was conscious of her uncle’s eyes upon her, and she moved her head to one side. She was far from trusting him: if he starts on Mackworth Praed and tells me I’m just like him I’ll be at Maycomb Junction before sundown.