"Mrs. Phelps was crying.
The others in the middle of the desert watched her crying grow very loud as her face squeezed itself out of shape. They sat, not touching her, bewildered with her display. She sobbed uncontrollably...
Doors slammed and the house was empty."
...
Mrs. Phelps stormed down the sidewalk, entered her house. What are these tears? Crying was for the small incompetent children, not for a grown woman like herself. She did not understand the "poetry" that Guy had read aloud, but it was completely unacceptable behavior for her to storm out the way she did.
"I was just confused," Mrs. Phelps mumbled to herself. "Confused... Yes, confused." But no matter how many times she would try to convince herself of that, she knew, deep down, that was not the case. Mrs. Phelps could not understand her own thoughts. It was as if they were trying to find something more, something that she was incapable of.
Mrs. Phelps decided that the best thing for her at the moment was sleeping pills, if her mind was running so wild then she just had to assist it in calming down. She did not know how many pills she popped in her mouth, nor did she have time to make it to her bed, for the pills worked so fast that she fell unconscious right in the middle of her kitchen floor.
----
The screaming voice of the front door alerting Mrs. Phelps that she had a visitor was what woke her up from her deep slumber. Mrs. Phelps quickly scrambled up from her position on the floor and attempted to pat down her hair and undo any rumples in her clothing before going to answer the door.
The man standing at the door was not a man she had ever seen before. "Hello, sir, to what do I owe the pleasure?" Se greeted kindly.
Instead of answering Mrs. Phelps, the mysterious man shoved and envelope into her hand and walked away so quickly that she barely even had time to blink before he was around the corner.
In her dumb-founded state, Mrs. Phelps forgot to close the door or even walk back into the privacy of her home before ripping open the envelope. There was only one short sentence in the middle of the sheet of paper that was inside of it:
Your husband Pete Phelps has been killed in the war, we offer our sincere condolences.
Mrs. Phelps knew she should not care, she knew her, now late, husband, would not have cared if he was the one who passed, he would just move on to find his 4th wife. So why did she not feel the same way? Why did Mrs. Phelps find herself screaming and crying and her own doorstep, where everybody could see how crazy she semed? She would not have cared a day ago, but what changed?
Montag. Montag changed.
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