Sally felt the nightmare closing down on her. This was it, then. She was to drive Isabel by some roundabout route to the Eaton place, she would get out and kill her husband, and then they were to go somewhere to tea. Unconsciously she took her foot off the gas.
“Just keep going,” Isabel said, her voice not unkindly. “This has nothing to do with you, Sally. It’s between Jim and me.” She looked at her wrist watch. “You might, step on it,” she said. “It’s three o’clock. They’ll be gone by the this time.”
Sally drove on. Isabel knew the roads after all, and by a roundabout route of untraveled back lanes they finally reached the woods behind the Eaton place. There Isabel stopped her.
“I’ll get out here,” she said. “I’ve just remembered something. I won’t be long.”
She disappeared into the woods, and Sally sat still, her hands frozen on the wheel. Somewhere a squirrel was chattering, and over everything was the stillness and peace of the June countryside. So unreal was the situation that as Isabel disappeared into the woods Sally almost called to her that she had forgotten the cheese, sharp and pungent on the seat beside her.
Then she understood. The cheese, like the grocer and herself, was to be a part of Isabel’s alibi. She had bought it, but when she came home later she would still be carrying it. She would walk in, as imperturbable as the day she had found Sally standing with the gun over Terry’s body, and if the police were there—Sally never doubted that she had arranged for someone else to find Jim—she could say:
“Of course I haven’t been back since I left. Ask Mrs. Fielding. And look at this cheese. Do you think I’d have carried it all afternoon if I’d been back?”
What could she do? It was too late to call Scott, or to notify the police. It was too late to do anything. She began to feel faint. Her hands and feet were cold, and the smell of the cheese sickened her. At the end of half an hour Isabel had not returned, and she crawled out of the car and lost her lunch at the edge of the woods. She did not go back to the car. She sat on the ground, thinking that now she was responsible for two deaths, and that she could never go to church again, or face her children. Only she would tell Scott. He would have to know now. Know everything.
It was five o’clock when she got into the car again. Isabel had not returned. She was certain now that she never would. Something had gone wrong, and Jim Eaton had killed her instead. He had tried to before. Now he had done it.
She drove slowly back to town, taking the main road this time and trying to look about her, as though she were seeing it for the last time; the small neat house, the green fields, the playing children. When she got home she did not garage the car. Scott was standing on the porch waiting for her, and he called to her to leave it at the curb.
He came to meet her on the path, and his face was grave.
“I’m afraid I have rather a shock for you, darling,” he said. “Jim Eaton’s dead.”
“I know,” she said, and staggered slightly. He put his arm around her.
“I always said he’d kill himself. Now he’s done it.”
“But he didn’t,” she gasped. “I must tell you, Scott. Isabel—”
He didn’t hear her. He was intent on what he had to tell her.
“I’ve been out to see her, Sally. She’s all right, only shocked, of course. She wasn’t with him. He was drunk, and he hit a telephone pole out on the highway and crashed. I thought you might want to go out and see her. After all she’s an old friend of yours.”
She didn’t say anything. All at once she realized she was carrying that wretched piece of cheese. She held it out to him, and he took it. Then she fainted.
The Temporary Death of Mrs. Ayres
MRS. AYRES HAD NO idea of doing it when she wakened that morning. She had eaten her usual light breakfast, reading the papers as she did so. After the war news her stomach had tied itself in its usual knot. But it had been doing that ever since Pearl Harbor. Only lately she had noticed a small tight pain where the back of her neck met her skull. Nerves, she thought.
She picked up the calendar beside her bed. It was a full day: the Red Cross in the morning, a hospital meeting and a First Aid class in the afternoon, the family to dinner that night, and—good heavens, it was the last day to pay her quarterly income tax. She lay back on her pillows and tentatively moved her feet, which hurt. She must find time to buy some low-heeled shoes. After all at her age a woman had a right to care for her feet.
She thought resentfully of the income tax. She had done her bit through two wars. In the first she had almost lost Herbert. They had been married only a week when he left, to take yellow fever in Cuba and nearly die of it. And in the last war Joe—She closed her eyes. Joe in a steel helmet going to France. Singing Tipperary along bad French roads, and at last coming back, rather quiet and sheepishly showing a box containing a bit of shrapnel which had at one time been a part of his anatomy.
Yes, she had done her bit. And now here was another war, with everything going up, except her modest dividends, and sooner or later Andy—
A hot bath relaxed her somewhat and helped her feet. She creamed her face and crawled back into bed for a minute before she dressed. With her hair loose about her face she did not look her age, and Annie the cook, coming for the day’s orders, told her so.
“Like that you could pass for fifty,” she said. Annie had been with her for thirty years, and sometimes Mrs. Ayres felt that the house belonged to her. “My double boiler’s wearing out,” she would say, or “My icebox needs the repair man.” Now she stood inside the door.
“What are we eating today?” she inquired.
“Oh, Annie! Just after breakfast!”
“You have to eat,” said Annie firmly. “Anyhow it’s the family night.”
Mrs. Ayres saw that it was hopeless. Her mind ranged wildly among the food animals and took a leap to poultry.
“We might have chicken.”
“We had chicken last Thursday.”
“Well, how about steak and mushrooms?”
“Mr. Joe can’t eat mushrooms.”
Mrs. Ayres sighed.
“All right, Annie,” she said. “Steak without mushrooms and maybe a strawberry shortcake. Unless”—she added cautiously—“strawberries take too much sugar.”
They did, so they compromised on a prune soufflé. She felt guilty as Annie disappeared. Steak was expensive. But she had clung to the weekly dinners, partly because since Herbert’s death she had been lonely, and partly, she knew, because she still wanted them to look to her for the little extras of living. They were all hard up, poor children, she thought. So was she, desperately, but she had not told them. They had worries enough of their own.
Annie had carried up the mail with her breakfast, and Mrs. Ayres sat up in bed to look it over. It consisted of seven appeals for wartime charities, three others from charities she had always supported—but how could she now, with the government taking so much of her income?—two pamphlets from Washington urging her to buy War Bonds, and a rather bulky letter from her sister-in-law. The tightness at the back of her head came back when she opened it. As she had expected, it contained a number of samples.
“Dear Margaret,” Isabel wrote. “I had expected to be with you by this time for my annual visit. But Marian’s fiancé”—Marian was Isabel’s daughter—“has leave from the Navy in ten days, so the wedding is earlier than we expected. I have the reception to attend to, so you will have to do some shopping for me in a hurry. I enclose samples, all marked. Also the size of Marian’s slippers. The bridesmaids’ hats are to be of tulle, colors enclosed, and—”
Mrs. Ayres looked frantically at her calendar. It offered no comfort, however, so she got out of bed and began to dress. She was still dressing when Beulah, her daughter, called her up. Her voice was urgent.
“Look, mother,” she said. “David’s just fallen and broken a tooth. Could you take him to the dentist’s? I know it’s your Red Cross morning, but Jane’s been sick all night and I can’t l
eave her.”
Mrs. Ayres agreed, rather shiveringly. She hated taking children to the dentist’s, and she liked going to the Red Cross. It was as though, by working for other women’s sons, she had an excuse for her own. Not for Joe, of course. He was too old. But Andy. She closed her eyes when she thought of Andy.
Dressed, she went downstairs. The house lay all about her, quiet and orderly. It was a white elephant of a house nowadays, she thought. She couldn’t either rent or sell it. She didn’t even know how she was going to pay the taxes on it. She could hardly buy the coal to heat it. And she had had Annie and Sarah for thirty years. They were her age now, and she could not turn them off. Where would they go? What would they do? It had been bad enough to give up her car. She had missed Mike dreadfully. She had always felt safe with him. And he had made her laugh.
“Can you get through there, Mike?”
“Sure I can, ma’am. I’ll just fold up the fenders a bit.”
Mike was all right. He had a job in a munitions factory. But the maids would have to stay. “Even if we have to starve together,” she thought wryly.
She took a bus to Beulah’s. It was crowded, and she had to stand. Her feet gave her a warning twinge or two, but she forgot them when she saw Beulah’s face. It was young and very pretty, and practically desperate.
“Why on earth did you ever let me get married?” she demanded. “I’d like to run away and never come back.”
“Things do happen,” said Mrs. Ayres comfortingly. “It isn’t easy sometimes, especially when the children are small.”
“That’s fine, coming from you,” said Beulah. “We each have our own troubles, but you still have all of them. Mother, I’m frightened. Paul’s blood pressure is up.”
Mrs. Ayres forced a smile.
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” she said. “A good many men have it these days. Paul’s young. He’ll get over it. I suppose,” she added tentatively, “it will at least keep him out of the army.”
“He wants to go to Washington. He has the chance of some war work there. It will kill him, mother. I won’t let him go. I can’t.”
She was on the verge of tears when she went out to get David. Mrs. Ayres sat very still. The apartment was close and not too tidy, and somewhere little Jane was whimpering in her sleep. She remembered the day Paul and Beulah were married, the bride beautiful in her white satin, and carrying white orchids. The long procession of bridesmaids, the bride’s cake, the champagne—She brought herself up with a start and looked in her bag.
Yes, she had Isabel’s list.
David was recalcitrant. He refused to go to the dentist’s until she had promised him a soldier’s uniform as a reward, and Beulah laughed hysterically.
“You see?” she said. “Even the children! I think we’ve all gone crazy.”
It was a bad morning. Mrs. Ayres’s nerves were as unstrung as loose telegraph wires when she got David back home, proudly carrying his uniform. Little Jane was no better, and Beulah had sent for the doctor. She sat by the bed for a minute or two. How many times, she thought, she had sat by little beds like this. And even bigger ones. This business of birth and life and death—
Her feet were badly swollen when she got home. In the kitchen Annie surveyed her grimly.
“You look all in,” she said, with the familiarity of years of association. “What you’d better do is to crawl into bed and let me send you a poached egg on a tray.”
She agreed gladly. She would rest a while, and then do Isabel’s shopping, or part of it. The hospital would have to go. However, it did not happen that way. The doorbell rang, and she heard Joe’s deep voice.
“Mother in?”
“Just came in, Mr. Joe,” said Sarah.
“Well, tell Annie I’ll have some lunch, if she has enough. Lamb chops will do. Anything handy.”
Mrs. Ayres went forward. She was always excited when she saw her eldest son. But she felt apprehensive too. For Joe to leave his tottering business in the middle of the day and come uptown was almost unheard of. And Joe quite definitely had something on his mind. She assumed the air of cheerful briskness she always showed her family.
“Where in the world brings you here?” she asked. “Don’t tell me you’re not having dinner with me tonight?”
Joe sat down rather heavily. He looked embarrassed.
“I’m in a bit of a jam, mother,” he said. “And God! How I hate coming to you!”
“Not—Dorothy?”
“Not Dorothy. No,” said Joe heavily. “She’s working her head off. We’ve had to let the nurse go, and the children are a handful. I just wondered—” He hesitated, then took the plunge. “Could you lend me two hundred dollars until the end of the month? It’s these damned taxes. They’re due today. I’ll pay it back, of course.”
He would, she thought. He always had. She looked at him, at his tired face, his thinning hair. She would have lain down and let him trample her to death. Only now, with her own bank balance so low—
“Why, of course,” she said, still brightly. “They are dreadful, aren’t they? And what are mothers for, anyhow?”
“Thanks a lot,” he said. “We’re cutting every corner, and I’m expecting to get word any day from Washington to start work. I hate like hell coming to you.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “I’m a useless old woman. If I can’t help my children what fun I would lose!”
She made out the check, which reduced her bank balance to practically nothing, and Joe ate a hearty lunch. The household had managed the chops somehow. But he was not talkative. She suspected that he hated borrowing from her, as though it somehow impugned his manhood.
“How’s Andy?” she said. “I haven’t heard from him for a day or two.”
Andy was her baby. She could never think of him as anything else. And now Andy wanted to enlist and go into aviation. The mere mention of his name had set her hands to shaking. She hid them in her lap, so Joe would not notice them.
“He’s all right, I guess.”
“He hasn’t quarreled with Edna?”
“Not that I know of.”
But he was not communicative. Edna was more or less engaged to Andy, and just now she was going about in a uniform while Andy wasn’t. She was all for the aviation thing, but then she hadn’t borne him, or watched him cut his first teeth, or worried over him for years on end. And Edna had no imagination. She did not lie awake nights seeing him somewhere in the sky, that sky which once had meant God and his angels to her, and now meant only death, and Andy alone in it.
Joe was watching her, so she smiled and told him about Isabel’s letter. He swore softly.
“Why can’t she come on and do it herself?” he demanded.
But she shuddered at the thought. Isabel’s loud voice all over the house, her complete conviction that only her own affairs mattered, the service she demanded, the fact that the maids loathed her—She shook her head.
“I don’t think I could bear that,” she said. “I’ll manage somehow.”
He looked happier when he left. He kissed her warmly, and her heart swelled. These were the moments for which she lived, to be useful, to be needed by her children. She asked nothing more. It never occurred to her that she had drawn her circle too small or too tight.
She did some of Isabel’s shopping that afternoon. It was difficult, trying to think she was Marian, or one of the bridesmaids. The hats she tried on made her look older than God, she thought, and incredibly tired. And some of the things could not be bought at all.
“It’s the war, madam. So many priorities, and of course nothing from France.”
Always the war, she thought, as at last she limped to a bus. Why couldn’t we just go along as we were? Twelve years of depression—surely that had been enough, without all this.
She had just got home when the word came about Jane. She had slipped off her shoes and had begun to feel relaxed. Then she was called to the telephone, and it was Beulah.
“We’re at the
hospital,” she said. “They’re operating in half an hour. Appendix. You needn’t come unless you want to, mother, but I knew you’d want to know.”
Mrs. Ayres felt slightly dizzy. Her heart began to thump.
“Of course I’m coming,” she said. “It isn’t serious, you know, darling. She’s a strong child.”
Nevertheless, her heart thumped all the way to the hospital, although she was resolutely matter-of-fact when she went into the room where Paul and Beulah were waiting. Beulah had lighted a cigarette and Paul was at the window, staring out. The poor children, she thought, already confronting life and death. And this was a load she could not lift.
“I wouldn’t worry too much,” she said briskly. “It’s not much more than pulling a tooth these days.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, mother,” said Beulah, her voice tight. “Don’t try to be cheerful. She’s my baby.”
“I’ve seen you all through it, Beulah, and you’re all here.”
But they did not listen. Mrs. Ayres sat down. Her heart still felt as though it were pumping lead. Paul left the window and took to pacing the floor, and Beulah smoked endlessly. Mrs. Ayres felt rather short of breath, and then at last came the roll of rubber wheels in the hall. Little Jane had come back, and a nurse came in, smiling.
Mrs. Ayres tried to get up. It was all right, she thought. Everything was over. Then she realized that her knees would not hold her. She sat down and leaned her head against the back of the chair. She was still there when Tommy Stewart came in, in his operating clothes. He gave her a quick look and felt her pulse.
“See here,” he said, “what are you doing anyhow? Trying to faint?”
She had known him for years. His father had brought her children into the world. It seemed queer that little Tommy Stewart had grown into this quiet self-confident man who dealt with life and death, and who now held her wrist in capable fingers.
“I’m perfectly all right,” she said. “I’ve had a trying day. That’s all.”
“Well, I can save the mothers and fathers,” he said drily. “But the grandmothers—! How long since you’ve been gone over?”
Alibi for Isabel: And Other Stories Page 12
