An Air That Kills

by Margaret Millar

  Harry raised his voice to bridge the distance. “We’re not a couple of kids any more, Thelma. We’re married. We’ve shared a great many things. Whatever’s bothering you, we’ve got to share that too.”

  “We can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have to share it with—with somebody else.”

  “Marian?”

  “Marian.” She began to laugh, and almost instantly she could feel the sting of tears inside her eyelids.

  He looked away, giving her time to compose herself. “All right, not Marian. Who, then?”

  “I begged you not to come here, not to force me to talk before I was ready, before I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “What’s happened to Ron. I can’t—I can’t talk to you until I know where Ron is.”

  “Ron, he’s part of your trouble?”

  Her face disintegrated like paper crushed in a fist. “Oh God, I begged you, I asked you not to . . . Why did you come? Why can’t you let me alone? Why didn’t Ralph tell you?”

  “Tell me what?” Harry said, but she just kept moaning, “My God, my God,” and swaying back and forth with her hands covering her face.

  He waited, watching her quietly, noticing for the first time the slight thickening of her abdomen, and thinking, this is it. She doesn’t have to tell me. I know.

  The things Ralph had said and Esther had suspected and Dorothy had subtly implied—they all added up to the little bulge at Thelma’s waistline.

  “There’s a child,” he said finally. “Ron’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “How—how far along are you?”

  “Three and a half months.”

  “And Ron knows?”

  “I told him. Last night.”

  He leaned heavily against the door frame, staring down at the roses of Marian’s rug. They had pink, fretful faces like babies. “What does Ron intend to do about it?”

  “The right thing, of course.”

  “After having done quite a number of wrong things, do you think it’s going to be easy for him to do the right one?”

  “There’s no use getting sarcastic. It won’t accomplish any­thing. I’ve thought the whole thing out. It’s not going to be easy, but Ron and I, each of us will have to get a divorce and then we’ll be married.”

  “By that time your child will be born a bastard.”

  The name staggered her like a blow and she might have fallen except that there wasn’t room to fall. She was jammed between the wall and the mohair sofa.

  “Thelma!”

  He started across the room to help her but she waved him away. “No. I’m—all right.”

  “Let me . . .”

  “No.” She clung to the back of the sofa for a moment and then she straightened up, looking strangely dignified. “Don’t use that word. Don’t use that word about my son.”

  And Harry, watching her, thought, she’s got it all planned, two divorces, a marriage, even the child’s sex. “A lot of words are going to be used which you won’t like, Thelma. You’d better start thinking of them now so you won’t be surprised when they come up.”

  “I don’t care what anyone says about me.”

  “Yes, you do. Try and face reality.”

  “I am. This is reality.” She pressed her hand to her ab­domen. “This child, this is my reality. I’ve wanted a baby ever since I can remember, and now I have one right here growing inside me.”

  “Reality isn’t a single fact like that. It’s a combination of thousands, millions . . .”

  “You denied me a baby, Harry. You made excuses, you said I was too old to have a first child now, you were afraid something would happen to me and you’d lose me. Well, you have lost me.”

  He shook his head helplessly, unable to speak.

  “It’s your fault, Harry. That’s why I’m not even apolo­gizing to you, because I think it’s your fault, not mine. I wanted this one thing more than anything in the world, and I could see the years slipping by and I was getting older, with nothing to show for it. I felt dead inside, dead and use­less. Don’t talk to me about reality, Harry. No matter what happens, I’m not sorry. I won’t be sorry. I have my son to keep me alive.”

  It sounded almost like a speech she had prepared and practiced in front of a mirror, day after day, so that she would be ready for this moment.

  “You had the whole thing planned,” Harry said, “in advance?”

  “That’s not true.”

  “To put it coarsely, you hooked him.”

  She looked at him with a kind of contempt. “Believe what­ever you want. It’s too late to change anything.”

  “But why? Why Ron? Why my best friend with a wife and family of his own? For God’s sake, couldn’t you have stopped to think? Couldn’t you at least have talked it over with me, told me how you felt?”

  “I tried. You never listened. You only heard what you wanted to hear. To you everything was idyllic, you had a house and a wife to look after it, your meals were on time, your clothes laundered . . .”

  “I was satisfied just having you,” Harry said. “I didn’t re­quire anything or anyone else because I loved you. I still do. Oh God, Thelma, couldn’t we forget this nightmare and go back?”

  “I don’t want to go back. Even if I could. I may be in trouble but at least I feel alive, I’ve got a future and a child to share it with. And Ron.” Her voice shook a little over the name in noticeable contrast to the confident way she spoke of the child. “Ron, too, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh, I know what you’re thinking about—that silly notion I had that he was dead. It’s not true. Mrs. Malverson got me all upset with her talk about spiritual messages. What non­sense. I know he’s not dead. I know where he is.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, not specifically. I just know he’s hiding somewhere for a while because he’s frightened. Of Esther, probably. Of course she’ll be impossible about the whole thing but he’ll simply have to face up to her. She’ll make trouble, I expect that, she’s the type.”

  “Name a type who wouldn’t, under the circumstances.”

  “Esther’s special, she’s so determined. Well, I’m deter­mined too. Let her make trouble. Ron and I won’t be living here anyway. When everything is over we’ll move to the States, California perhaps. I’ve never been there, but they say that children brought up in California are bigger and healthier than any other children in the world.

  The change in her tone indicated that she was off on another dream, an express train whizzing across the border and through the states toward California. Nothing stood in the way of this train. If it did, it was demolished. Harry knew this from experience. He had stood on the tracks once too often.

  “. . . and because they play outdoors all the time even in winter. They eat outdoors, too. Everyone cooks over a bar­becue pit or they go down to the beach and build a bonfire.”

  Harry stepped in front of the train with the fearlessness of one who had nothing to lose. “Stop. Stop it, Thelma.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Don’t start living a year from now when you have to get through tonight, tomorrow, next week.”

  “I’ll get through. Don’t worry about me. Harry. Get angry, call me names, anything, but don’t worry about me.”

  “I can’t afford to get angry. I might—hurt you.”

  From the kitchen came a sudden sharp crash like a plate breaking.

  “Marian,” Thelma said. “Dear heaven, I forgot about Marian.”

  As if she’d been waiting for her cue, Marian thrust herself through the swinging door, head down, like a charging ram.

  She didn’t look at Harry or give any indication of his presence. She shouted at Thelma, “You slut. You nasty little slut. Pack up your things and get ou
t of here.”

  Thelma appeared pale but composed, as if her dream of California had blunted the sharp corners of the present. “Do you always eavesdrop on your guests, Marian?”

  “Eavesdropping is one thing, cuckolding is another. And I want none of your insolence, do you hear me?”

  “I hear you. You sound just like Aunt May.”

  “You leave her name out of it. We’re a respectable family and you’ve disgraced us all. I want no part of you. You can go on the streets for all I care.”

  “I might do that. And if business gets too heavy I’ll send some customers on to you. The experience might improve you.”

  “Why, you dirty—you cheap . . .”

  “Shut up!” Harry ordered. “Shut up, both of you! Thelma, go and pack your stuff. You, Marian, sit down.”

  Thelma disappeared hastily into the bedroom, but Marian stood pat, her hands on her enormous hips. “I don’t take orders from any man. I will not sit down.”

  “All right, you can stand on your head as far as I’m concerned. Just stop shrieking like a fishwife. You have neighbors, neighbors have ears.”

  “She insulted me. You heard her, she insulted me.”

  “You insulted her first.”

  “But she deserved it, she asked for it. After what she’s done to you, how can you stand there and take her part?”

  “She’s my wife.”

  “Wife. A fine word, but that’s all it is, a word. She’s used you, deceived you, made a fool of you. And she intended to do the same thing to me. To think I was taken in by that sweet smile of hers and that soft ‘Sit down and have a cup of tea, Marian, it will do you good.’ As if she cared. Lies, lies. The soft-talkers, they’re the worst. I’ve been taken in by them before. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson.”

  Her voice broke and spots of color blotched her face and her neck. In a moment of perception Harry realized that she was not so much angry as disappointed. She had been looking forward to having Thelma around for a while to alleviate her loneliness and lend her life a little excitement. Thelma’s visit would have meant a transfusion of vitality; now the transfusion had been stopped almost before it began. Marian had closed the valve herself: she could not accept the blood of a slut, she would prefer to die.

  “The girls at the office,” Marian said, “maybe they’re silly, yes, even malicious, but there’s not one of them bad like her. Not one of them’s ever gotten into that kind of trouble.”

  Harry found himself saying, without conviction, “Thelma’s not bad. She made a mistake.”

  “When people make a mistake they’re sorry. They’re not proud of it like her. They don’t go around bragging about a trip to California. I want to go to California too, I’ve dreamed of it for years, but you can bet I’ll choose a more respectable way of getting there.”

  “I’m sure you will.” The dry irony of his tone added, I’m sure you’ll have to.

  “This man she called Ron. Who is he?”

  “I’m afraid,” Harry said, “that it’s none of your business.”

  “News like that gets around. I’ll find out.”

  “I’m sure of that, too.” Not only would Marian find out. Once Ron’s disappearance hit the newsstands, the whole city, the whole country would find out, and Thelma would have to get used to stronger words than bastard and slut. Harry wondered, with weary detachment, if anyone dared print the word cuckold.

  Thelma came out of the bedroom wearing the navy blue coat and hat she’d bought for Easter and carrying a rawhide suitcase which had been a wedding present from Ralph and Nancy Turee. She ignored Marian, who was standing tense, braced for the next round, and said to Harry, “I’m ready. We can go now.”

  “And good riddance,” Marian said.

  “The same to you.”

  Harry interrupted quickly, “Come on, Thelma. I’ll take you home.”

  “I’m not going home. You can drop me at a hotel.”

  “The house is yours. You need it more than I do. I won’t bother you.”

  “I wish you’d stop being noble. I can’t stand it!”

  “I’m not being noble. It’s just that I’d feel better if I knew you were looking after yourself properly. Me, I can stay anywhere, with Ralph, or Billy Winslow or Joe Hepburn. I’m used to bumming around. You’re not. You have to take care of yourself, now more than ever.”

  She bit her lip in indecision, weighing her pride against her common sense and her concern for the baby.

  “I won’t bother you,” he repeated. “I’ll just take you home and pack up some of the things I’ll need.”

  “All right.” Her voice was tight and squeaky. “Thank you, Harry.”

  Harry took her suitcase and opened the door, and she walked out into the hall with quick, impatient steps. Harry hesitated, as if he wanted to say something pleasant to Marian before he left, but Marian had turned her back, and it was like the closing of a steel safe to which he didn’t know the combination. No one did.

  Outside a spring rain had begun to fall, lightly and steadily. Neither of them seemed to notice. They walked in silence for a time, unaware of any weather but their own, inside.

  “Harry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where will you stay? In case anything happens and I have to get in touch with you . . .”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet. With Ralph and Nancy, perhaps.”

  “But they have four children.”

  “Yes, I know,” Harry said quietly. “I like children.”

  TWELVE

  The private day school which the two Galloway boys attended had been closed for two weeks because of an epidemic of measles. One of the ways Esther had devised to keep them busy, and presumably out of mischief, was to give them certain duties and responsibilities previously assigned only to adults. The particular duty the boys enjoyed most, since it involved a rare freedom, was that of collecting the mail. They were allowed to walk all the way down to the end of the driveway, unescorted except by the little dachshund, Petey, and wait at the gate for the postman.

  When the postman handed them the day’s mail, they assumed it was a gift, and so they usually took him a gift in return, a cookie coaxed out of the housekeeper, Mrs. Browning, or a new drawing by Marvin or the prize from a box of cereal. On Monday they had a special gift for him, the first angleworm of the season, a scrawny specimen elon­gated by considerable handling and rather dried out after a time spent in Greg’s shirt pocket.

  The boys arrived early and the postman was late, so they had plenty of opportunity to indulge in the usual arguments and fights about who was to present the gift, who was to carry the mail into the house and who was to occupy the place of honor at the top of the iron gate. But on this particular morning neither of the boys seemed inclined to fight. Their energies were directed not against each other but against the mysterious tensions which now seemed to domi­nate the household. The boys had not been told, or allowed to overhear, anything about their father’s absence. They had no means of understanding their mother’s strange preoccupa­tion, Mrs. Browning’s snappishness, Annie’s sudden lapses into silence, or the unusual permissiveness of old Rudolph, the gardener who lived over the garage. Rudolph, the most continuous male contact the boys had, loomed large in their lives. When the holes Petey, the dachshund, had dug in the rose bed on Sunday afternoon were filled quietly and without comment, both of the boys realized that something was the matter.

  Their reaction was instinctive. Instead of remaining brothers, each jockeying for position in the household, they became friends, joined together against the world of adults. They climbed to the top of the iron gate and stuck out their tongues in the direction of the house and chanted derisive insults.

  “I’m the king of the castle,” Greg sang, and named in­dividually the people who were dirty rascals: Annie, Mother, old Rudolph, Mrs. B
rowning. Marvin was all for including Daddy, but Greg reminded him sharply that Daddy had promised to bring them a new dog when he came home, and shouldn’t be listed among the dirty rascals.

  “What if he forgets?” Marv said. “He’ll be a dirty rascal, then can we sing him in it too?”

  “He won’t forget. He’ll bring something. He always does.”

  “A cat maybe, huh? I wouldn’t say no to a cat.”

  “Petey would. Petey hates cats. Petey’s a real cat-killer.”

  Petey, who had never seen a cat, responded to his new, unearned distinction with a happy yelp. This settled the matter as far as the boys were concerned. They couldn’t possibly keep a cat, and if Ron brought one home by mistake they would simply hand it over to old Rudolph to trade in on a dog. Until the previous day they’d been willing to settle for any kind of dog, but now, sensing that a very large one would be more annoying to the adults, they decided on a Saint Bernard.

  “We can teach it to bite Annie,” Greg said. “When she makes us go to bed we’ll say sic ’em, and then boiiing, Annie gets bit.”

  Marv laughed so hard at this delightful picture that he nearly fell off the gate. “Boiiing, Annie gets bit. Boiiing, boiiing, Mrs. Browning gets bit. Boiiing, boiiing, everybody gets bit.”

  “ ’Cepting us.”

  “ ’Cepting us.”

  They screamed with laughter and the gate shook and Petey broke into excited yelps. By the time the postman ar­rived, the boys’ faces were red as tomatoes and Marv had started to hiccough as he always did after a laughing fit.

  “Mr. Postman! Hi, Mr. Postman!”

  “Hello boys.” The postman was long and lean, with a weather-cracked smile. “How come you’re not in school this morning?”

  “Measles.”

  “You shouldn’t be out here if you got measles.”

  “We don’t got measles,” Marv explained. “The other kids got them.”

  “Well, I declare. I was never that lucky when I was a boy. The whole town could be dying of plague but they never closed the school, no sir.” He put down the heavy mail ­sack, propped it against the fence, and stretched his arms high in the air. “That’s how I got an education. Force. I didn’t want one.”