The Treasures of Mrs. Bowers

The late Mrs. Bowers was strangely fetching in her coffin. The amateur hands of her loving daughters had made of the eccentric character with which I was familiar a seemingly alien person. I had no doubt which of the Bowers sisters had taken up which task. Her hair, which I had only ever known as a grey explosion, had been shepherded into a gentle river flowing over her shoulders with little red islands of ribbons, ribbons which Matilda had been fond of wearing. The clothes had to be Linda’s work; only her art might have marshaled that dumpy frame into the fine figure lying there. The face was the strangest change, the obvious work of both Beatrice and Zelda. Beatrice was the eldest of the sisters and made a small living by cosmetics; Zelda, dear Zelda, the baby, the artists, was strangely gifted with paints, much like her mother. As I looked from the face below to the photo of Mr. and Mrs. Bowers, her in that white dress and him standing so lordly beside her, the old photo taken of them in front of the chapel they had been married in, I understood. I had only known Mrs. Bowers as the old woman. In death, her daughters had turned the clock back and made her face her face once more. I felt as if I was seeing Mrs. Bowers, in some sense, for the first time, not harried and hustled, not the striving widow, but a great lady, someone who would give all she had to the ones she loved. Her grateful daughters did all they could to return that love.