Mrs. Lacey died

Mrs. Lacey’s death is both an intimate farewell and a turning point in Lizzy Enders’s obligations: in her final conversation, Mrs. Lacey looks ahead to her own death, imagines Lizzy’s future, and presses her to write to her father. The scene’s concrete gestures—a hand held, an asafetida bag gripped, a hand finally released—are joined to Lizzy’s image of wind rising in a spiral, carrying Mrs. Lacey toward the heaven she believed awaited her.

The Final Visit

Ramona wakes Lizzy Enders during the night with the news that Mrs. Lacey has asked for her. Lizzy follows Ramona’s candle downstairs, past plaster saints set into the walls, and finds Mrs. Lacey awake, frailer than before but waiting anxiously. Once Lizzy kneels beside the bed, Mrs. Lacey waves the nuns out. The door closes, leaving the two of them alone; Mrs. Lacey takes Lizzy’s hand and thanks her, calling her a friend while holding the asafetida bag in her other hand.

The conversation turns quickly from gratitude to the chapel staircase. Mrs. Lacey tells Lizzy that she is dying and asks whether the work is progressing. Lizzy says that it is and promises that it will be finished by Christmas, although the assurance is a lie. Mrs. Lacey answers with her own expectation of what Christmas will mean: by then, she believes, she will be in heaven with Robert Lacey, in a Methodist heaven. She promises to keep a place for Lizzy, but imagines that Lizzy will have a long life before joining her.

A Dream and a Last Request

Mrs. Lacey’s account of her dream gives the farewell a forward-looking counterweight. She sees Lizzy as a señora living behind a gateway in the courtyard of a rambling adobe house, with much land, a hospitable fireside, and children around her. The place is not New Mexico, she says, but another vast and enchanting country like it. The vision does not alter the immediate fact of her own approaching death; instead, it places Lizzy’s future beyond the convent and beyond the landscape they share.

As her voice weakens, Mrs. Lacey asks whether Saint Joseph ever came. Lizzy says no. Mrs. Lacey jokes that the schoolgirls would not recognize Saint Joseph if he appeared, then laughs, coughs, and drinks a few sips of water from the cup Lizzy gives her. Her last words return not to the dream or the staircase but to Lizzy’s unfinished letter: she urges Lizzy to post it to her father. The request makes their private farewell lead directly into an action Lizzy can still take after Mrs. Lacey is gone.

Death and Its Aftermath

Mrs. Lacey looks directly into Lizzy’s eyes; then her grip loosens. Lizzy leans over her, but cannot cry. She understands her inability to weep through the exhaustion of grief for her mother: those tears have already been spent, and none have returned. The narration marks the loss through this bodily detail rather than through an extended description of the deathbed. The hand that had held Lizzy’s is released, and the friend who had named their bond is gone.

The scene then passes from physical stillness into an image shaped by Lizzy’s perception. A clock chimes in the distance, and wind rattles the windows. Lizzy notes that there had been no wind before, and describes it rising around the house, garden, walls, trees, and street in an upward spiral, as if taking Mrs. Lacey to her Methodist heaven. The account holds material circumstance and imaginative meaning together: the windows really rattle in the scene, while the wind’s spiral becomes the form through which Lizzy apprehends her friend’s departure.

Later that day, Lizzy asks Mother Magdalena for special permission to go into town. She appears spent, and the wind is still wreaking havoc outdoors; Mother Magdalena grants permission because Lizzy explains what she wants to do. The permission is narrow: Lizzy must return within the hour and make only one stop, to post the letter. Thus Mrs. Lacey’s final request survives her as a practical obligation, carried forward by Lizzy rather than left in the room with the dead.

Burial and Narrative Significance

The wind continues for much of the day and into the night. Santa Fe’s law requires Mrs. Lacey to be buried within twenty-four hours, placing her death within a strict civic timetable as well as the intimate time of the farewell. The narrative gives both forces their due: Lizzy’s memory fixes on a friend’s loosening hand and a strange rising wind, while the rule governing the burial sets a deadline that cannot be suspended by grief.

Mrs. Lacey’s last conversation also gathers several threads of her relationship with Lizzy into one scene. She names Lizzy as her friend, takes an interest in the staircase, offers a dream of the life she believes lies ahead for her, and insists on the letter to Lizzy’s father. The staircase remains unfinished in their exchange, but the letter has a next step. In that contrast, the farewell turns loss into a limited form of action: Lizzy cannot keep Mrs. Lacey beside her, yet she can carry out the final request before returning to the convent.