“I was only trying to prove . . .”
“What you were trying to prove and what you proved are a couple of light-years apart. You threaten a woman and she gets frightened. But after the fright goes away, what’s left? Revenge.”
“Not Thelma.”
“Exactly Thelma. Get it through your thick skull that she wants you to get lost, or else. All these damnfool antics of yours, I don’t blame her. Now let’s hurry up and shove out of here. I need a drink.”
“Well, gee whiz,” Harry said plaintively. “What’s everybody so sore about?”
“Who’s sore?”
“You are.”
“The hell I am.”
“Quiet, both of you,” Turee said. “Come on, Harry. Bill has his car, he’ll drive us over to my house.”
“Where’s my car?”
“Thelma said she’d leave it at the house for you. Nancy’s expecting us, let’s get going.”
“I don’t want to go. I’m not a child. I can’t be ordered around.”
“You are and you can.”
“I thought you were my friends!”
“If we weren’t your friends, we’d both be home having a nice quiet dinner. Now let’s go.”
“All right, all right.”
Harry got up and went out the door, muttering to himself. He paused at the bottom of the veranda steps and glanced back at the door as if he had an irrational hope that Thelma was going to appear and ask him not to leave.
Mrs. Malverson was out on her front lawn watering a bed of daffodils. She spotted Harry and waved the hose playfully by way of greeting.
“Hello there, Mr. Bream.”
“Hello, Mrs. Malverson.”
“Beautiful weather for daffodils, isn’t it?”
“I guess so.” He hung back while the other two men approached the car parked at the curb. “Mrs. Malverson, I’m—well, I won’t be around for a while. Business, you know how it is. I was wondering perhaps if you could drop in on Thelma now and then, cheer her up a bit. She hasn’t been well lately.”
“I know. I told her that myself only last Sunday. Child, I said, you look as if you’ve been up all night, and crying too. I’m sure it was Sunday. Yes, it was, because I remember now I asked her to go to church with me for the reading of the flowers. She dropped a bottle of milk, she was that nervous. And all this week she’s been avoiding me. Me, her friend. Of course that’s what you can expect from a woman at certain times.”
“Certain times?”
“Oh, come now, Mr. Bream. Surely you’ve suspected that a little stranger is coming into your life?”
“Stranger? Yes. Yes, that’s the right word.” He turned so abruptly that he almost lost his balance, and walked toward the waiting car.
Mrs. Malverson stared after him, her mouth open in surprise. Now what does that mean? Maybe I shouldn’t have blurted it out like that, but my goodness, these are modern times. People don’t hide things like a baby, they go around shouting it from the housetops as soon as they’re sure. Unless . . .
“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” she said aloud, with a violent tug on the hose. “Never have I seen a more devoted wife than Thelma Bream. Keeps the house spotless, airs the mattresses every second Thursday. And never a cross word between the two of them. She’s always quoting Harry, Harry this, Harry that, as if he was some kind of god instead of an ordinary little man that sells pills, and some of them no darn good either. And every morning when he leaves for work out she traipses to the car to kiss him good-bye. A real womanly woman, if I ever saw one.”
Unless . . .
“Absolutely ridiculous,” Mrs. Malverson repeated weakly. “I ought to be downright ashamed of myself.”
When they reached Turee’s old three-story house on Woodlawn, Nancy came to the door to greet them. Though she looked red-eyed and worn, she spoke cheerfully: “Hello Harry—Ralph . . . Where’s Billy? Isn’t he coming in for a drink?”
“Not tonight,” Turee said. “His wife has a cold and he wants to go home and catch it, so he’ll have an excuse to cry.”
“What a time to try to be funny.”
“I’m quite serious.”
“Well shush, anyway. Harry, where’s your suitcase?”
“In my car. Wherever that is.”
“Thelma left it for you in the driveway. Here are the keys. Now go get your suitcase.”
“I can’t stay here. I’ve been enough bother . . .”
“Nonsense. You’re perfectly welcome to sleep on the sun porch. This is practically the only time of year it’s usable. You won’t freeze and you won’t stifle. Now how’s that for an offer?”
“Well . . .”
“Of course you’ll stay. It’ll be just like old times, before you were marrie—”
Nancy’s tactlessness was sometimes as overwhelming as her hospitality, and Harry stood silent and embarrassed in the face of both, looking down at the carpet which was muddy with the tracks of children and worn in places right through to the padding.
Nancy touched his arm in gentle apology. “I’m always saying the wrong thing. Without meaning to. Come on, I’ve got dinner ready for you. Ralph will get your suitcase later.”
The children had already been fed and sent upstairs with instructions to amuse themselves, no holds barred, and the two men were left alone at the round oak table in the big old-fashioned kitchen. They were both preoccupied and hungry and the meal was disturbed only by the sounds from upstairs, sometimes loud, sometimes muffled, running feet, squeals and giggles, stifled screams, an occasional howl.
There was a hectic quality in the children’s playing, as if they knew something secret and strange and terrifying had happened and they were combating the knowledge with hysterical denial. “Uncle Ron is dead,” Nancy had told them calmly. “Now if you have any questions I’ll answer them as best I can.” It was like asking a roomful of grade-schoolers if they had any questions about the mechanism of a hydrogen bomb. No questions were asked, out loud.
Death. A sacred word, yet an evil one, a beginning and a finality, heaven and hell, streets of gold and pits of fire, angels and demons, bliss and brimstone. If you have any questions . . .
The din from the second floor grew louder and more frantic. Nancy’s voice plunged into it, sharp as a scalpel. “What are you four doing up there? Avis? Sandra? You hear me?”
Sudden and complete silence, as if all four, simultaneously, had been anesthetized.
“I want an answer. What are you doing?”
A girl’s voice, brassy with defiance, “Nothing.”
“It doesn’t sound like nothing.”
“It’s nothing.”
“Well, please do it more quietly.”
Whispers. A gasp. A frightened giggle. Then the muted chant of children:
“Galloway was laid to rest
In his Sunday pants and vest.
Galloway was laid to rest . . .”
The sounds floated down into the kitchen and Harry shivered and turned white. “I missed it.”
“Missed what?”
“Ron’s funeral.”
“That doesn’t matter. Barbaric custom, anyway.”
“Thelma, she was there?”
“Yes.”
“There wasn’t any scene, any trouble? I mean, with Esther?”
“The ladies,” Turee said with some irony, “are ladies, and don’t make scenes at funerals.”
“I was just wondering.”
“You wonder too much.”
“Yes.”
“You’ve got to stop it.”
“I know.”
“Start thinking on the positive side. You’re young, healthy, competent, you’ve got a future.”
“I can’t see it.”
“Not with your eyes closed and pictures
of Thelma pasted inside the lids. Start looking around. The sky hasn’t fallen. The city is still here. The blood is still bouncing around in your veins. Here, have some of this port. An uncle of mine sent me a dozen bottles. He had to choose between his wine cellar and his ulcer.”
Harry eyed the glass of port with suspicion, then shook his head gravely. “No thanks. I haven’t had a drink since Monday.”
“Why not?”
“I was afraid it might interfere with my thinking.”
“Something should have.” Turee sipped at his port and made a wry face. “No wonder the old boy developed ulcers. This stuff’s god-awful. Try it.”
Harry tried it. “It’s not so bad.”
Nancy came into the kitchen to ask Turee to go upstairs immediately and discipline the children.
Turee seemed unperturbed at the request, as if it was a very familiar one. “What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know. Something, anyway.”
“Be more explicit.”
“I can’t. All I know is, if I’m expected to do all the disciplining in the family, the children will grow up thinking I’m an ogre. They’ll have complexes.”
“Ogress. And they’ll have complexes anyway.”
“Sandra’s the instigator of this whole thing. I feel like spanking the daylights out of her.”
“Go ahead and do it, then.”
“You’re no help at all!”
Turee rose, kissed her on the left cheek, and pushed her gently toward the doorway.
The wine, the warmth of the kitchen, the playing-out of the little domestic scene, all combined to cast a flush across Harry’s face. He fidgeted with his empty glass, rolling the stem back and forth between his palms, and a glint of moisture shone in his eyes. “I can’t stay here, Ralph. I wish I could. But seeing you and Nancy—and the kids—well, I guess I couldn’t stand it. You understand.”
Turee was grave. “Make your own decision. I was only trying to help.”
“No one can help me. I’ve got to go it alone.”
It was the same sentiment Turee had heard Thelma express, and he wondered how deeply either of them meant it and how far either of them would go alone. Together, leaning on each other, entwined in marriage, they’d been able to remain upright, as cornstalks in a field can withstand a high wind.
“What you suggested on Monday,” Harry continued, “about leaving town, applying for a transfer, it’s beginning to make sense to me now.”
“Good.”
“I’m sure they’ll give me a transfer. I’m a good salesman and there’s nothing in the record against me, except that business on Monday. Maybe if I go away for a while Thelma will actually miss me, eh?”
“Maybe.”
“She might even change her mind. I could always send for her then, her and the baby, couldn’t I? I mean, it’s not impossible, is it?”
“Not at all.”
“She’s always wanted to leave this town anyway.”
Not with you, Turee thought, refilling Harry’s glass. “I realize that.”
“Say, you know something, Ralph? For the first time in days I’m beginning to feel that things are making sense again. Don’t you feel that, Ralph? Things will work out?”
“Certainly.”
“I guess I was practically going off my rocker for a while there, staying up all night, thinking, trying to figure things out, not eating, not seeing anybody. I feel quite different now. Almost hopeful, you know?” He paused to sip at his wine and wipe the beads of moisture from his face with the back of his hand. “Now why did I say almost? I don’t mean it. I mean very. Very hopeful. You were right, Ralph. I’ve got a future. I’ve really got a future, haven’t I?”
“Of course.” Turee saw Harry’s bright new smile, and the bright new confident look in his eye, and anxiety began to gnaw at his mind with the teeth of rodents. Harry was on his way up again, the long erratic journey up, like a crazed bird, or a misguided missile darting wildly in and out of the orbits of meteorites. “Harry. Listen. Don’t get too high.”
“Now that’s a funny remark. A few minutes ago you were trying to cheer me up and now that I’m cheered up, what are you trying to do? Puncture me? Well, you can’t, old boy. I feel wonderful, see, I feel . . .”
“Harry, before you leave town, I think you should hire a lawyer.”
Harry’s jaw dropped in astonishment. “Lawyer? What for?”
“For Thelma.”
“So she can divorce me? Is that what you mean?”
“No, no,” Turee said impatiently. “She’s going to need someone to protect her interests, that’s all.”
“Why? I’m going to protect her interests. I’ll send her every cent I can spare.”
“I know that. But suppose something happens to you—you become sick and can’t work, you get hurt in an accident—what then? Thelma would be left alone with a child to support.”
“I don’t see how a lawyer would help that.”
“You’re not thinking straight, Harry. The child is Ron’s—he’s admitted paternity—therefore his estate should be made responsible financially for the child’s upbringing.”
“Thelma would never take a cent from Esther. She’s too proud.”
“Pride be damned. There should be nothing personal in this situation. Thelma may be proud, Esther may be reluctant, you may be all churned up, but the fact remains that the child has a legal right to support. That’s where the lawyer comes in. He’ll act in the child’s best interests. His own, too. I understand in cases like this where a considerable amount of money is involved, they work on a percentage basis.”
“What exactly do you mean, a considerable amount of money?”
“I didn’t mean anything exact. All I’m saying is that Thelma should have a lawyer.”
“But then there’d be a lawsuit. Everything would come out in the newspapers.”
“If Esther’s lawyers advise her to fight the case, there’d be a lawsuit, yes, but I don’t think they will. And if they did, I don’t think she’d accept their advice. At the moment Esther’s pretty bitter about Thelma, but she’s not really a vindictive woman. She’ll simmer down between now and the time the child is born.”
“What it boils down to, then, is begging Esther for money. Well, I won’t do it. To hell with it. I can support Thelma and the child, and no begging necessary.”
“Oh, be reasonable, Harry. Why deprive the kid of its legal right? I know how willing you are to support it, but it’s going to grow up, to need things, housing, clothing, education. Ask me, I’m an expert. I’ve been broke for fourteen years and no doubt will continue that way for another fourteen. Kids are expensive. They don’t always stay in the cradle, wearing diapers and living on milk. They need shoes, dolls, new suits, bicycles, baseball mitts, piano lessons, there are doctors’ bills, dentists’ bills . . .”
“All right,” Harry said listlessly. “Don’t go on. You’re telling me I can’t afford all those things.”
“No. I’m telling you you don’t have to. Thelma and the child are entitled to be kept in comfort and there’s no sensible reason why they shouldn’t be, except your pride and Thelma’s, if pride is the right word.”
“I don’t need charity.”
“Keep yourself out of it, Harry. Because you’re not really in it. You’ll have to face that squarely.” Turee paused, pressing his fingertips against his temples as if to press his thoughts into the right phrases. “You’re not really in it,” he repeated. “I think you’ve been daydreaming this past week, Harry. I think you’ve half convinced yourself that nothing took place between Ron and Thelma, that the child is actually your own. Don’t keep on like this, Harry, it’s dangerous.”
“But suppose . . .”
“There’s no supposing about it. The child is Ron’s. Now accept the fac
t and go on from there. If you keep setting up delusions to stumble over, you’ll get nowhere. Why can’t you face the truth?”
“I guess—I’ll have to.” The long erratic journey up had ended for Harry. The crazed bird had grown weary, the misguided missile had struck a meteorite and was falling through space. “I couldn’t give her the child she wanted. I tried. God knows I tried. I’ve been going to a doctor for over a year without telling her. I covered up for myself by pretending that I didn’t want her to have a child because of her health, her age.”
“Why didn’t you tell her the truth, Harry?”
“I wasn’t sure, at first. Then when I was sure, I was afraid to tell her. After that, when I began taking treatments and pills—well, I kept hoping things would change. They changed all right,” he added grimly. “In a way I never thought possible. My best friend, and my wife.”
“It’s happened before.”
“Yes, but didn’t they ever stop to think of Esther, of me?”
“There are times,” Turee said, “when people don’t stop to think of anything.”
NINETEEN
As far as the newspapers were concerned, the Galloway story died on the obit page, but rumors were flying wildly around town like kites without tails. One of them got entangled in Esther’s telephone wire: an anonymous caller accused her of murder and demanded five thousand dollars as the price of his silence.
After this episode, Esther refused to take any calls or to see anyone except the lawyers concerned with the probate of Ron’s will. It was a curiously simple will for a wealthy man to make. No trust funds or other safeguards had been set up for the children; except for a few minor bequests, everything was left outright to Esther, as if Ron had had greater faith in her good judgment and common sense than he had in his own. The lawyers came with papers for her to sign, and went away again, and came back with more papers. These visits were, for a time, Esther’s only contact with the outside world.
She stayed indoors, wandering from room to room of the huge house, trying to find things to do, straightening pictures that weren’t crooked, dusting ash trays that hadn’t been used, moving chairs that had been moved only a few hours before, reading aloud to the two boys in a new gentle faraway voice which had a strangely quieting effect on them. The extremes of unexpressed grief and rage, which characterized the early period of her mourning, began gradually to moderate with the passing of the days, leaving behind a kind of acceptance, and a broader perspective. She came to realize that she was not the only injured and bereaved person, that it was Thelma, perhaps, who would ultimately suffer more than anyone else. She had a growing urge to call Thelma, partly out of pity, partly out of curiosity, but she was a little timid about doing it directly, since she couldn’t be sure how Thelma would interpret such a call.
An Air That Kills Page 18
