by Ellery Queen
That was two nights ago. Yesterday I arose the same as ever—what else could I do?—and I went to the store as usual and I behaved normally in every way. What else could I do? But I noticed again Mr. Miller’s muted attitude toward me, and now I understood it was the result of his guilty knowledge. Of course Delia had told him about me—she’d described all that to me during her confession, relating how Mr. Miller had laughed and been scornful to hear that “Ronald the sap” had never been to bed with her. “Doesn’t know what he’s missing, does he?” she quoted him as saying, with a laugh.
At lunchtime I drove past the motel she’d named, and a squalid place it was, peeling stucco painted a garish blue. Not far beyond it was a gunsmith’s; on the spur of the moment I stopped, talked to the salesman about “plinking” and “varmints,” and bought a snub-nosed Iver Johnson Trailsman revolver. The salesman inserted the .32 bullets into the chambers, and I put the box containing the gun into the glove compartment of my car. Last evening I carried the gun unobserved into the house and hid it in my room, in a dresser drawer, beneath my sweaters.
And last night, as usual, I dreamed. But in the dream I was not with Delia. In the dream I was alone, in my bedroom, sitting on the edge of the bed with the gun in my hand, listening to the small noises of my mother and sister as they prepared for sleep, waiting for the house to be quiet.
In last night’s dream I had the gun and I planned to use it. In last night’s dream I had not left my Plymouth in the driveway as usual but half a block away, parked at the curb. In last night’s dream I was waiting only for my mother and sister to be safely asleep, when I intended to creep silently from the house, hurry down the sidewalk to my Plymouth, drive to that motel, and enter Room 7—it’s always Room 7, Delia told me, always the same room—where it was my intention to shoot Mr. Miller dead.
In last night’s dream I heard my mother and sister moving about, at first in the kitchen and then in the bathroom and then in their bedrooms. In last night’s dream the house slowly, gradually, finally became quiet, and I got to my feet, putting the gun in my pocket, preparing to leave the room. And at that point the dream stopped.
I have been very confused today. I have wanted to talk to Mr. Miller, but I’ve been afraid to. I have been unsure what to do next, or in which life to do it. If I kill Mr. Miller in the, dream tonight, will he still be in the store tomorrow, with his guilt and his scorn? If I kill Mr. Miller in the dream tonight, and if he is still in the store tomorrow, will I go mad? If I fail to kill Mr. Miller, somewhere, somehow, how can I go on living with myself?
When I came home from work this evening, I didn’t park the Plymouth in the driveway as usual, but left it at the curb, half a block from here. My mind was in turmoil all evening, but I behaved normally, and after the eleven o’clock news I came up here to my bedroom.
But I was afraid to sleep, afraid to dream. I took the gun from the drawer, and I have been sitting here, listening to the small sounds of my mother and my sister as they prepare for bed.
Can things ever again be as they were between Delia and me? Can the memory of what has happened ever be erased? I turn the gun and look into its black barrel and I ask myself all these questions. “Perchance to dream.” If I arranged it that I would never awake again, would I go on dreaming? But would the dream become worse instead of better?
Is it possible—as some faint doubting corner of my mind suggests—even remotely possible, that Delia is not what she seems, that she was never true, that she is a succubus who has come to destroy me through my dream?
The house is silent. The hour is late. If I stay awake, if I creep from the house and drive to the motel, what will I find in Room 7?
And whom shall I kill?
Joyce Harrington
A Place of Her Own
“She looked like a great big bundle of old clothes” crouched down in her little sheltered corner next to the bank. And there but for the grace of God. . .Another of Joyce Harrington’s penetrating insights into the hearts of people and into the heart of society, a story full of sharply observed details, each true to life, each on target. Look around, as Joyce Harrington does, and see how some people live—if you can call it living. . .
If you asked me when she first showed up on the corner, I couldn’t tell you. One day she just started being a regular part of the scenery, like Carvel’s and Waldbaum’s, and then she was always there. Summer and winter, rain or shine, she was there sitting on the sidewalk like patience on a monument. In the good weather she’d sometimes go across the street to the opposite corner where there was a tree and a mailbox and sit between them. But most of the time she would be scrunched down in a little covered-over space, like a shallow cave, right between Carvel’s and the bank. That was her place.
I was surprised that the bank let her stay there where everybody going in or coming out could see her. Not good for business, if you know what I mean. I thought about saying something to the manager, but it wasn’t my bank.
Once in a while she’d be gone. The first time I went by and she wasn’t there I said to myself, “Oh, boy! A good thing. Somebody picked her up. The police or the loony squad. Either way, a good thing. She’s not making a disgrace of the neighborhood.”
But the next day she was back, crouching in her cave, drinking coffee from a paper container and staring around with her crazy eyes. I can tell you, it gave me a shock to have those eyes staring at me when I wasn’t expecting it, but I just walked on as if nothing had happened. I never missed a day of work in my life, and the only times I was ever late was when the subway got itself messed up. By the time I got to the station my heart had stopped pounding and all I could think about was squeezing onto the train.
After that I was always ready for her. I could see from a block away if she was there, and I could walk fast and keep my eyes looking the other way. Or I could walk on the other side of the street. But ready or not, something always made me look at her. Not right in the face, but at some part of her clothes or her feet or the top of her head. I couldn’t go by without one quick look.
She always wore a coat, summer and winter. Sometimes she had it all buttoned up, other times slung over her shoulders like a model in a magazine. Underneath the coat she wore sweaters. Even on summer days when the temperature got in the nineties and everybody else was dying from the heat, sweaters. And baggy dirty slacks. I got the impression she wore a couple pairs of slacks at once. She looked like a great big bundle of old clothes. If you didn’t look at her face, you could just walk by like she was some pile of garbage waiting to be picked up.
I took my vacation in August and went to Ohio to visit my married daughter, Ellen. I have to go to her. She won’t come to visit me. When she got married, she said to me, “Momma, I hope you won’t be hurt, but I’m getting out of this crummy town and I’m never coming back.”
Well, I’m not hurt. Why should I be? It’s pretty where she lives. Grass and trees around the house. Everything clean. She has a nice new car to drive around in. The kids, God bless them, almost grown up and never sick a day in their lives. Only they hardly remember me from one visit to the next. Their other grandmother lives nearby. She’s a nice lady, I guess. The kids show me all the presents she gives them—ten-speed bicycles, a record player for Kathy, Timmy’s racing-car setup in the basement. Those are nice things to give your grandchildren. I brought them presents, too—small things I could carry on the plane. Nothing special.
This time Ellen said to me, “Momma, you’ve been working over thirty years in that store. You could retire anytime you want. Wouldn’t you like to stop working and come and live with us?”
She doesn’t understand. It’s not just a store. After her father died, rest his soul, I was lucky to get a job there. Ellen was only five years old. What does she remember about that time? But I remember how frightened I was the day I walked into the Personnel Office. Artie was a good man, but he didn’t leave any insurance or anything else.
He never expected to be taken o
ff so young. So I had to get a job, quick, and I’d never worked a day in my life.
I was so nervous that day when they showed me how to work the cash register. Artie used to give me just enough money to buy food with and everything else he took care of himself. So it scared me to have all that money that wasn’t mine passing through my hands every day. But I got used to it after a while, and I got used to having money of my own, too. So much for the rent, so much to live on, so much to save. And it’s a good thing I saved because when Ellen got grown up, she wanted to go to college and that’s where she met her husband. So it all worked out. If it wasn’t for the store, Ellen wouldn’t be living in her pretty house, with a dentist for a husband and two fine kids, and she ought to understand that.
Sometimes I think she’s a little ashamed of me. Once, when I was there visiting, she had some of her neighbors over for coffee in the afternoon, and when she introduced me, she said, “This is my mother. She’s a buyer for a big New York department store.” Well, it was only a little lie, but I felt my face getting red. I couldn’t correct her. That would only have made things worse. So I just smiled and hoped nobody would be interested enough to ask me any questions about my job. They weren’t. Fact of the matter is, I am a saleswoman in the Ladies Foundations Department and that’s where I’ve been for over 30 years. I’m not ashamed of it even if Ellen is.
When my vacation was over and she was driving me to the airport, she brought it up again. “You’re too old to keep on working, Momma,” she said. “Peter and I talked it over and we’d be happy to give you a home with us. I worry about you all alone in that awful little apartment. There’s so much violence these days. You’d be safe out here with us.”
Well, I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying what I wanted to say. The “awful little apartment” had been my home for more years than I had worked in Ladies Foundations. It was the home that Artie and I made together when we were young and I wasn’t about to leave it now that I’m old. It had been Ellen’s home, too, although she didn’t seem to want to remember that she’d had some happy times there and there was always good nourishing food on the table.
What I said was, “I still have your bedroom suite. Good as new. Maybe Kathy would like to have it for her room. I could ship it out.”
She laughed. “My God, Momma! Get rid of it. Give it to the Salvation Army. All pink ruffles and flounces, wasn’t it? I can’t believe I used to pretend I was some kind of movie star in that room. No, thanks. But whenever you’re ready, you just get rid of all that junky old furniture and we’ll set you up with a room of your own, a television, everything you need. Peter says we might be able to put in a swimming pool next year.”
I thought about those things on the plane, and I thought about what I would really want to do with myself when the time came that I wouldn’t be getting on the subway every morning and going to the store. It wasn’t yet, but it would be soon. Three more years? It would be nice being right there to watch Kathy and Timmy grow up and get married. But the fact of the matter is that outside of Ellen herself, I’ve never been around teen-aged kids very much. They seem kind of large and noisy. And I have a television. Small, but perfectly good. I got it on sale at the store, which, with my discount, made it a very good buy. And what would an old lady like me want with a swimming pool? I haven’t been in swimming since Ellen was 15 and we went for a week to the Jersey shore, and even then I only got my feet wet up to my knees.
I took a cab from the airport. Expensive, but I was tired and the next day was already Monday and the end of my vacation. I’d have to go back to work. It was a heavy evening, humid and overcast, and the whole world was a dirty gray color. By the time we got off the expressway, it had begun to rain and the cab driver, like everyone else trying to squeeze through the weekend traffic, was scowling and muttering curses. For a moment I thought maybe Ellen was right and I ought to pack up and leave all this behind.
But then we swung onto a familiar street and home was only a few blocks away. I leaned forward to give the driver directions and through the rain-streaked windshield I saw her. She was crouched down in that little sheltered corner by the bank, a sheet of plastic tucked in around her knees. All around her she had boxes and shopping bags tied with string, and parked at one side she had a Waldbaum’s shopping cart piled high with God knows what kind of rubbish. And right in the middle of all this she squatted, staring out into the rain. She stared right into the cab as we drove by and I felt sure she recognized me. It seemed as if she shouted something, but I couldn’t hear her.
The driver said, “Which way, lady?”
So I told him where to turn, and in less than a minute I was paying him off with a good tip because he helped me carry my luggage up to the door. Before he left, he said, “How do I get out of this crummy neighborhood?” So I told him that and then I dragged my luggage indoors.
Home. I looked around the lobby and it was just the same as it always was. But for some reason I began to remember that years ago there used to be a red-leather settee and a couple of armchairs over against the wall. There was nothing there now. I couldn’t remember when they’d been taken away. Then I remembered that on the wall, over the settee, there used to be a picture. Horses, I think. Or sailboats. Something outdoorsy. Now, if you looked very closely you could just about make out where it had hung, but the wall was so dirty everything had blended into the same shade of grimy green. The floor was dirty, too, and not just because it was raining and people had been tracking it up with wet feet. Whatever happened to the rubber mat the super used to put down when it rained? I guess a lot of things had changed over the years, and I’d just never noticed.
I pushed the button for the elevator, and while I was waiting I glanced over at the mailboxes. My neighbor across the hall, Mrs. Finney, had been picking up my mail while I was away, so there was no reason for me to check my mailbox. Still, I noticed that some of the little metal doors were bent and hanging loose. Not mine, but some of the others. How long had they been like that? And why didn’t the super get them fixed?
Next to the mailboxes a sign had been taped to the wall. From where I stood I could read the big print at the top. It said: ATTENTION ALL TENANTS, and there was a lot of small print underneath. I was about to go and look at it, but the elevator door opened, so I dragged my luggage on and pushed the button for the sixth floor.
I don’t know if it was because I was so tired, or because of the change coming from Ellen’s pretty house with the trees and grass around it, or because I was finally seeing things the way they really were, but when I got inside my apartment and turned on the lights I could have cried. Nothing had changed in my apartment. Everything was just as I had left it. It wasn’t even dusty or bad-smelling because Mrs. Finney, when she brought in the mail, would always open the windows and give the place a quick once-over, which I would do the same for her when she was away. No, it was something else, something inside me that turned on like a searchlight and made everything look shabby and old. Worn out. Like Ellen said, junk.
The living-room suite, that Artie and I bought with the money his folks gave us for a wedding present, was covered with summer slipcovers just like every summer. The slipcovers weren’t as old as the furniture. I got new ones every few years or so from the store. How long ago did I get these? Whatever, there were holes in them and the brown plush underneath was showing through. That made me think of the places on the couch cushions and the arms where the brown plush was worn down to the shiny material. Old, right? Junk.
Same thing with the rug, the coffee table, the bookcase with Ellen’s old books in it, even the draperies at the windows. Everything was old, shabby, faded, chipped, ready for the junk collector. Even the television was an old black-and-white set that I’d bought back in the days of Uncle Miltie and Howdy Doody. For Ellen.
I went into Ellen’s room. I don’t know what made me keep her room just the way she’d left it. Maybe I always thought she’d come back for a visit, in spite of what she sai
d. The bedroom suite was a present I got for her when she started high school, so she’d feel like a young lady, no longer a baby, and have girl friends over to visit. I remember how proud she had been of her room.
This time I didn’t turn on the overhead light. Maybe that’s what made the living room look so awful. I walked into the room to where there were two little pink-shaded lamps sitting on the vanity table. I turned on one of those instead. The room was small, I have to admit that—smaller than the room I’d stayed in at Ellen’s house. And most of it was taken up with the bed. I’ll never forget the look on her face the day the delivery truck from the store came and the men carried that furniture upstairs and even helped put the bed together. When she saw them put the canopy on top, I thought she would never stop smiling and dancing around and squealing. “Oh, Momma! It’s beautiful! I love it!” Those were her exact words. I guess people change.
Now, in the rosy glow from the vanity lamp, I could see that the canopy was sagging and the pink quilted bedspread and dust ruffle had turned the color of old underwear. The pink net skirt on the vanity table, which I’d made myself, was droopy and frayed at the bottom, and the white paint on the bedposts and on the chifforobe was dingy and gray. Maybe if I scrubbed it down. . .
The door buzzer sounded. I got my face ready with a smile because right now it would be very good to have some company and forget all this gloom that was making me feel like a worn-out piece of junk myself. But before I got to the door I took the smile away just in case it was some creep going through the building looking for old ladies to molest. Don’t laugh. It happened in the next block. Thank God the landlord put peepholes in all our doors. I looked through and it was Mrs. Finney from across the hall.
Right away when she came in she said, “Did you eat yet, Lillian? I brought some Danish.”
