by D. W. Buffa
I was in here. You couldn’t expect her to stay married to a lunatic—a criminal lunatic—could you? It was only after she re-married that things fell into place. It was only then, at the very end, so to speak, that I understood what had happened, all of it, even the beginning. I’m not saying that they planned it all out,”
he added, with a quick, rueful glance. “They couldn’t have known what would happen to me. Though it would not have made any difference to them if they had.”
His head sunk down between his shoulders and his eyes focused on a spot just below my chin. “You warned me about him.
Do you remember?”
“Jeffries?”
His eyes narrowed even more. “I used to think he was evil. I was wrong. He was just indecent. People who are evil do interesting things. There wasn’t anything interesting about Jeffries.”
Slowly, without any movement of his head, his eyes climbed up my face until they met my own.
“Did you know Jeffries was dead?” I asked.
He raised his head and his eyes flared open. “Death and betrayal, the fortunate circumstances of my life.”
“The fortunate circumstances of your life?” I asked, confused.
With a quick movement of his hand, and a strange, triumphant look in his eyes, he started to wave my question away.
“I can’t really explain. All I can tell you is that sometimes the only way you can deal with what happens to you is not just to accept it, but make it your own.”
He seemed to regret that he had said as much as he had, though he had not said nearly enough to make his meaning—if there was a meaning—intelligible to me.
“I don’t have any interest in thinking of myself as a victim,”
he said. His eyes darted across to the other table. “Will you stop turning that damn magazine around!” he demanded in a high-pitched scream that set my teeth on edge. Without so much as a glance to see where the shouting had come from, the inmate stopped the constant rotation and held the magazine perfectly still, directly in front of his eyes. It was upside down.
“So Jeffries is dead!” he remarked in a civil tone, looking at me as if he had never in his life so much as thought about raising his voice.
It had all happened so quickly, and had been so isolated from what he had been like just before and then immediately after, that I was forced again to wonder whether he was himself always aware of what he was doing.
“How did he die?”
“You really don’t know? It was the front-page story in the newspapers for weeks.”
“I let my subscription lapse,” he said dryly.
He might not have access to the papers, but a television set, sitting on a plywood platform halfway up the wall, was flickering in the far corner of the day room.
“I never watch,” he said, surprised that anyone might ever think he would. “Tell me how he died,” he insisted with avid curiosity.
“He was murdered, stabbed to death, late at night, outside his office, on his way to his car.”
Nodding thoughtfully, he asked, “Have they changed the definition of homicide? The unlawful killing of a human being?”
“No, it’s always been that.”
“Then it wasn’t a homicide, it was not a murder.” He said it as if I would immediately understand and could not possibly disagree with his conclusion.
“You mean,” I suggested tentatively, “that it wasn’t unlawful because there must have been some form of justification? Self-defense, for example?”
“No, I mean it can’t have been a homicide because homicide’s the unlawful killing of a human being and whatever else Calvin Jeffries might have been, he was certainly not a human being.
No, it was not murder.”
I did not know what to say, or even, for that matter, what to think.
“Shall I tell you what they did, the late lamented Calvin Jeffries and my always blameless wife, Jean?”
He turned his head, as if he had just heard someone call out to him. “Jeffries is dead,” he said to no one. The corners of his mouth pulled back until the tendons of his neck were stretched taut. Then it started again, that insane rhythmic repetition, like the harsh clang of a rusty bell rung from the belfry of a distant church. “Jeffries is dead … wed … bed … fed.” He was staring straight ahead, his eyes as vacant as the conscious mind behind them. “Red … bled … med.” He was choking on the words, as if he had lost the instinct for taking a breath, and in the confusion of his panic had thought he was supposed to push it out instead of bring it in.
It stopped and the memory of it stopped as well. “Jeffries is dead,” he said, each syllable pronounced with glittering clarity.
“Murdered. And they say there are no happy endings. Shall I tell you what they did to me, the great judge and the loving wife?”
He glanced away, a wistful expression in his deep-set eyes, the look sometimes seen on the face of men much older than Elliott Winston, the look they get when they begin to think back, not just to their vanished youth, but to the way they saw the world when they were still that young.
“I believed in him. I believed in them both. I worshipped Jeffries. It was an honor to be in the same room with him. He knew everything. He could do anything. There was nothing about the law he did not know.” He looked at me, an eager glint in his eye. “Do you know that he wrote most of the procedural law we use?” Again he turned away. “He told me how he did that and why and he told me a lot of other things that had happened when he was a young lawyer like I was, trying to make a name for himself. We used to spend long evenings, sometimes the four of us—Jeffries, his wife, Adele, Jean, and me—but more often just the three of us. His wife was an invalid.” A strange, almost sinister smile crawled over his mouth. “An invalid! She was an addict.”
I had met Adele Jeffries only on the rare occasion when I happened to run into her husband at some social event. She was supposed to be five or six years older and she looked every bit of it.
Instead of hiding, makeup seemed to heighten the effect of the deep lines that crossed her forehead and creased the sagging skin on her cheeks. Her eyes, however, were lively and alert, the somewhat amused observer of her own sad deterioration. There had been rumors about her for years, the kind of soft-spoken, gently insinuated suggestion that became an indelible part of the way everyone thought about her. No one could actually explain what it was she was supposed to have done, but everyone knew that she was not quite right, and that besides drinking too much she required fairly constant medication.
“Poor Adele,” Elliott was saying. “I’ll bet there wasn’t a doctor in Portland who didn’t at one time or another get one of her famous phone calls. I kind of liked her,” he added as an aside,
“even though I knew she had to be crazy.” Catching the irony of what had just slipped out, his eyes darted away and then darted back, while he shrugged his shoulders and threw up his hands.
“She really was,” he insisted, growing more serious. “She’d go right down the Yellow Pages—under ‘Physicians.’ I saw her do it one day. She sat on a stool in the kitchen, moving that wrinkled finger down the list, crunching up her eyes to make the name come into focus. As soon as someone answered the phone, she’d clear her throat and with as much formality, as much solemnity as if she were introducing the president of the United States, announce that ‘Mrs. Judge Jeffries’—that’s what she called herself—
was calling for Dr. Dolittle or Dr. Whomever. They’d always put her through. And then she would do it again, announce she was Mrs. Judge Jeffries and ask if the doctor would kindly be good enough to order a refill of her prescription for Percodan or Demerol or any one of the other two dozen pain-killing, mind-numbing, nerve-deadening, brain-altering, mood-elevating, awareness-closing pharmaceuticals she was taking by the handful morning, noon, and long into the literal and proverbial night.”
Elliott was panting hard, glaring at me as if the addiction of Mrs. Judge Jeffries had been somehow my fault.
Then, suddenly, his head snapped back and he started to laugh. “There was nothing wrong with her. There never was. She had some minor ail-ment, twisted her ankle, something like that, years before. She told me once, during one of her brief interludes of sobriety. After that, every time she had a pain somewhere, just a twinge of dis-comfort, Jeffries would give her something, just for the pain. Eventually, she was hooked—couldn’t live without her pills, that and the booze. Jeffries didn’t mind. He encouraged her. Why deal with pain? It was a way of getting rid of her. She was always there, but she wasn’t there at all. He married her for her money. Now she’s in a nursing home somewhere. She probably doesn’t know where she is. Jeffries worked everything out. He had her declared incompetent while they were still married, put everything of hers in a trust, and named himself trustee. I told you he knew everything about the law.”
Elliott opened his eyes wide and took a deep breath, and then let it out, a look of disgust on his face. “You know who he had draw up the papers? You know who he asked to handle the whole thing?”
I did not want to believe it and I knew it had to be true. “You did that?”
“I didn’t want to. I really didn’t. I told him I thought she was all right, that perhaps if she saw a doctor he could get her to stop drinking, to stop taking all that pain medication. He told me every doctor he talked to told him the same thing, that it was too late, that the damage was permanent, that she needed constant round-the-clock care.
“It still didn’t seem right to me. He insisted he knew a lot more about his wife than I did and that he was surprised and, yes, disappointed—more disappointed than he could say—that I would refuse the favor he had asked. Had I forgotten all the favors he had done for me, the way he had actually broken the law when I had missed a filing deadline or needed extra time to finish something? Then he told me what he had never told me before. He told me that he had sometimes ruled on motions in my favor just because he believed I always wanted to do the right thing, and that if anyone ever found out, if he ever let slip what he had done, he’d be in a lot of trouble and so would I. We had to trust each other, he said. Surely, I didn’t believe that he could possibly want to do anything that wasn’t in the best interest of his own wife? I couldn’t possibly know how painful this was for him, and how the only way he thought he could get through it was knowing it was being taken care of by someone that both of them, he and Adele, had come to think of as a son.”
He gritted his teeth and his eyes fairly started out of their sock-ets. “At the hearing, she sat next to me, docile, unprotesting, until the very end. She leaned over, that vacant smile still on her face, and as clear as a bell said to me, ‘You helped him get rid of me, but I’m not the only one he wants to get rid of!’ And then she started to laugh, this hideous, bloodcurdling laugh that rolled on and on, louder and louder, till I had to put my hands over my ears, for fear that ghastly sound would crack my head.
Sometimes, if I’m not careful, I see her face in my sleep and I hear that voice again, that dismal warning I failed to heed. At the time, of course, all I did was watch them take her away, that awful laughter shrieking through the courthouse. The only thought I had was that Jeffries had been right after all, that there was too much damage, that there was nothing to be done but put her away in a place where she could get the constant care she needed.
“She had tried to warn me, but even then I still believed in Jeffries. How could I not?” he asked with a shrewd glance. “I had just helped him get rid of his wife. Everyone wants to believe that what they’re doing has a justification. I’m sure Jeffries thought he was justified.”
Elliott was quick, preternaturally so, and he caught immediately the slight glimmer of doubt in my eyes.
“Of course he did. At each step, over all the years he had lived with her. Think of it! She has a slight accident; she’s in pain; the medication works. She stops complaining. He would have noticed that right away. Finally! Relief from her constant, and for him, mindless talk. After that, every time she mentioned pain—
the medication. He could always get it. He knew people. He knew doctors. He knew—oh, yes, how well he knew—the doctor who ran the hospital where my dear, loving, loyal wife, Jean, was working.
“That’s how they met. That’s how it all began. Innocent at first. It usually is, isn’t it? Innocent, I mean. For all the loath-some, filthy thoughts that began to creep into their minds, like worms eating away at a corpse, or, more likely, the spiral-shaped vermin that infest the syphilitic, they were on the outside nothing but a couple of civilized, compassionate people, concerned, both of them, with the welfare of the great man’s wife. I didn’t notice it at the time,” he added confidentially, “but thinking back on it I’m almost certain there was a peculiar odor—a kind of stench—whenever I was with the two of them together.” He paused. “You think I’m making that up, that it’s just my imagination?” he asked with a stern sideways glance. “Don’t they say that when two people are attracted to each other there is a certain chemistry between them? Didn’t you ever mix chemicals together when you were a child to see what the worst smell was you could make?
“But you’re right,” he admitted, waving his hand back and forth in front of his face. “At the time, I noticed nothing.” There was a slightly astonished look on his face. “There was nothing to notice. We were always talking about the law, and she was always asking about his wife. The first time I noticed anything was one night when we were having dinner, the three of us. His wife was—well, you know—’not feeling well.’ Jean had to leave before we had coffee. She had the late shift at the hospital. After she was gone, Jeffries seemed to draw into himself, as if there was something that was bothering him. Finally, after I urged him to speak, he asked if Jean was working some kind of double shift.
When I told him she was not, that she was working nights all week, he looked distressed. He had been out at the hospital that afternoon, he explained, to visit his friend, the doctor who ran the place. He had seen Jean walking down a corridor too far away for him either to catch her eye or say hello, but he was certain it was she.
“I dismissed it as best I could. ‘She was probably called in for some kind of emergency. That happens once in a while.’ He pretended to agree, but I could see he did not believe it.”
Elliott bent his head forward and rubbed the back of his neck.
“It’s a fairly shrewd tactic, don’t you think? Suggest to someone that his wife may be up to something improper? You become the last person he’ll ever suspect as the one she’s doing it with. Jeffries was, after all, a truly brilliant man.” He hesitated before he added, “At least I thought so then.” His eyes sparkled with malice. “I was thirty-three years old when I came here, the same age as Christ when he died. Do you know the best thing ever said about Christ?” For a brief moment he was seized by a look of uncertainty. “Said about him, or did I make it up? It doesn’t matter.” His face brightened. ” ‘If Christ had lived, he would have changed his mind.’ That’s what happened to me, you see. I lived, and I changed my mind. I believed in him, I thought he could do nothing wrong. Then, when I realized what he had done, how utterly corrupt he was, I understood how my own life had been nothing but a lie.” His eyes flashed, and a smile darted across his mouth. “There are certain advantages in losing your mind.”
Eight
_______
Chester, the patient who could do anything with numbers and nothing at all with simple historical facts, was standing in front of our table, trembling from head to toe.
“Elliott,” he said, gulping a breath, “I have to go to the bathroom. What should I do?” Closing his mouth, he pulled his upper lip all the way down over the lower one.
Elliott placed his hand on Chester’s shoulder and, remarkably, the trembling stopped. “It will be all right,” he said in a calm, soothing voice. He nodded toward the orderly, now reading a tattered paperback, at the other end of the room. “Mr. Charles always takes you, remember? Just go tell h
im you have to go.”
He removed his hand from his shoulder, and the trembling started once more. Gently, he put it back, and again it stopped.
“Don’t you believe me?” he asked, peering into his eyes.
“Yes,” he insisted, “but I’m scared.”
“You’re not scared of Mr. Charles, are you?” Elliott asked evenly.
“He always takes good care of you.”
“I’m scared I’ll go in my pants,” he replied in a childlike voice.
He looked down at the floor, too embarrassed to meet Elliott’s gaze.
“Look at me,” Elliott instructed. Dutifully, Chester raised his eyes. “It’s all right. It won’t happen. I promise. Now, go tell Mr.
Charles what you have to do.” Elliott patted him on the shoulder and then took his hand away for good. The trembling did not come back.
“Thank you, Elliott,” he said as he turned to go. He had taken perhaps three steps, when he stopped and yelled at the top of his lungs: “Mr. Charles, I have to take a piss now!”
I watched the orderly look over the top of his book and then slowly get to his feet. “He seems harmless enough,” I remarked.
“Why is he here?”
“Too much history,” Elliott explained. I waited for the rest of it, but that was all he offered.
“Too much history? I don’t understand.”
“Yes, exactly. Too much history,” he mused. “He spent so much time reading about it, the past finally became his whole reality.
If he had been studying something like the history of music, he might have walked around telling everyone he was Beethoven.
He was studying the Vietnam War and he decided one day that he was in the war, and that he was surrounded by the Vietcong.
He wrapped a bandanna around his forehead, covered his face with grease, and hid on the steam pipes that ran through the underground garage of the apartment building where he lived. No one knows how long he was there, clutching the bayonet he had picked up at some army surplus store. He might have been there for days, waiting for the Vietcong to come. They came all right, wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase. Chester thought he was a scout sent ahead to get his exact location. He jumped down from the pipes above that poor fellow’s car—turned out he was an insurance salesman—slashed his throat, and left him to bleed to death while he went running through the garage looking for more. But you’re right. He’s harmless. He wouldn’t hurt a fly. Not in here, anyway.”
