The Man Who Loved His Wife (20 page)

“What others?” Don persisted.

“The prescription. I kept the bottle hidden and only gave him two a night. Didn't I tell you?”

“No, dear, you didn't. Probably forgot to mention it.” Don threw her an indulgent smile. “Bit complicated, isn't it? Two hidden stores of pills. Did you remember to tell that to the detectives?”

“She did,” Ralph said, “and we discussed it with them. It's not extraordinary. A potential suicide always complicates things. With all the vacillations—he's apt to change from hour to hour—and in the end, the act is triggered by an impulse.”

“Impulse.” The word hung in the air while Elaine's hand, bearing a fork, remained at the level of her chin.

“Don't you believe it was impulse? After all that storm and temperament last night,” Don said. “An impulse of that kind would be very natural. On anybody's part.” He turned to Ralph. “It's not good form to speak ill of the dead, but we have to be honest about it. He was beastly to her.”

“He was so miserable,” Elaine flared out. “You don't know. None of us will ever know how miserable. Desperate!” Her hand tightened on her jaw as though she cherished the hurt Fletcher had given her.

In a sudden fury she gathered up plates and coffee cups. “Are we finished?” Whether they were or not, she whisked their dishes off to the kitchen. They went after her, offered help, but
proved a hindrance. She was nervous, declared they got in her way, that they would put things in the wrong places, clog the garbage disposal, let good food go to waste. “Please, may I do that?” and “Do let me pass,” or, with a shriek, “No, no, not there!” Ralph retreated to the edge of the kitchen and Don kept saying, “Sorry . . . so sorry, dear,” like a penitent schoolboy.

“You must think I'm an awful bitch,” she said to Ralph when Don had gone off to his bedroom and she was finishing at the sink.

“I think you've had enough. You've behaved admirably, but you're worn out. I'm putting you to bed.”

“And leaving?”

“I'll sit with you until you've relaxed.”

“Not in there.” She led him along the hall past the door of her bedroom. Even as a doctor he was not to be allowed that privilege. She did not want him to remember that he had entered the room as her lover.

He arranged pillows so that she could stretch comfortably upon the living room couch. They agreed not to talk about Fletcher's death and could find nothing else to talk about. Neither lovers nor friends now, they looked at each other like strangers, and at the room as though they had no right to be there. When he had come to this house as an adopted child, Ralph had been drawn irresistibly to the formal parlor with its silk drapes, waxed woods, glistening porcelains, its pretty little objects of ivory and silver. The room had been declared out of bounds to a clumsy boy. It was cozier now, less formal, yet with all of Elaine's books and lamps and pictures, he still felt himself an intruder.

Death had come between the lovers. In the silence Elaine grew restless. She was worn out but not sleepy after her long, drugged nap. She recalled those conversations she had planned but never held, confessions of her fears, and she wondered, looking at Ralph's somber, bony face, if his knowing could have prevented the final act. “I meant to tell you,” she began. Her lips twitched and a nerve jumped on the left side below the eye. She wanted her face concealed from his pale and searching
eyes. Once more at the window with her back to him, “I was afraid, I guess. It was on my mind all the time,” she confessed.

“I knew.”

“Then why didn't you say something?”

“I didn't want you to be frightened.”

“I was. Terribly. All the time.” Passionate hands were clasped before her breast as in prayer. “I used to go to his room nights”—she breathed in spasms between the phrases—“to listen and know that he was alive.”

“If you'd gone to him last night, you might have been in time to save him.”

She had no answer. Beyond the window there was no world. The sky had no color, the stars were hidden. Fog shut out the ocean and the lighted streets below the hill. Elaine did not know that she was crying. There were no sobs. Tears jetted out of her eyes and ran down her cheeks. They brought no relief.

THERE IS AN acute moment between sleep and thought when every sense becomes aware and the mind, free of daytime clutter, finds reality in illusion. Elaine heard Fletcher at her door again. She knew he was dead, yet felt the living presence. Waiting as she had waited last night (and on so many nights when he had come to her bed for consolation), her ear tuned itself for the whine of hinges, the weight of footsteps, the rhythm of his breathing. Every nerve and cell anticipated the touch of his flesh, her heart raced, temperature rose, and all the excitable muscles of loins and pelvis became clamorously alive. For an instant, only the slightest sliver of a second, she let the past return, the good past, the times that had been crazy with love and consummation. “Hi, lovable!” Through all of this she knew and accepted reality. “You're dead.”

Time became infinity as she lay in passionate silence waiting for the nightmare, if it had been nightmare, to come to its crisis. “Oh Fletch, Fletch,” she moaned, “why did it have to be like this?” She heard the answer as clearly as if he were in the room, heard the voice, mechanical, irate, the crippled ringmaster crying out his bitter commands to the mocking, stubborn
animals. Over and over, like a faulty phonograph record, those sickening belches and cackles. She turned on the light, rejecting sleep. Sleep had become the enemy, admitting terror, distorting memory, revealing truth.

In the light he was there, too, inescapable in every object she looked at, touched, and felt against her body. All of her trinkets, her jewelry, many of her garments, had been chosen by him. “I like you in those colors, lovable.” The robe she wrapped about her on chilly nights was one he had enjoyed. She could feel the big hand on the soft fabric.

She forced herself to enter his room. Scents of intimacy remained. She smelled toilet water, sniffed his shirts, touched his hairbrushes. Last night he had left his things upon the dresser—wallet, fountain pen, key ring, a scattering of small change. Jacket and trousers had been hung neatly upon the silent valet, socks and shirts and shorts placed upon the bench below the window. Everything as usual, except the man who had died in that bed. His head had left a hollow in the pillow, the sheets were wrinkled, the covers thrown back. She stood a few feet from the bed, frowning at the emptiness as though she sought some answer there. Vigorously then, she jerked off the sheets. The ease with which she handled the dead man's linens was astonishing.

“What are you doing at this hour?”

She whirled about, faced Don, and said, “I thought I'd clean up a bit. It's all such a mess.” She jerked off the bedclothes and automatically, like a good housewife, folded them.

“It's quarter to three.”

“What difference does it make? I couldn't sleep. It's better to keep busy.” She went on with the tasks. A passion for tidiness had seized her. “If people come here, we'll want it to look nice.” With the same energy she gave to the folding of sheets, she offered excuses. “Cindy expects people to call. You and she have made so many friends.”

“Plenty of time tomorrow. No one knows about it yet.”

“I suppose I do look silly in the middle of the night.” She swept out of the room, carrying the linens to the hamper.

Don hurried ahead to switch on the lights. In the narrow corridor he turned and faced her. When she had got rid of the sheets and pillowcases, she laid her hand upon his shoulder. “I'm glad you're here, Don.”

He had not seen her alone since he had read the entire diary. “Let me help you through this. Ask anything of me, tell me anything you want, trust me, beauty.”

She was glad he was there because she had to keep busy, to move around, use her hands, occupy herself with small tasks. She made a pot of cocoa. Fletcher had always taken cocoa on sleepless nights. He said it soothed him.

“I hope you don't think I'm nosy asking you this, but how are you fixed for money?”

The milk in the pan required full attention. She had to watch carefully so that she could snatch it off the flame when it started to bubble. “That's one thing I don't have to worry about.”

“At the moment, I mean. Cash on hand. The estate will be tied up. In probate for quite a while.”

The milk began to boil. Elaine slid the pot off the burner. “We haven't a lot, Cindy and I, but if you need anything right away, just ask me. I'll be happy to do what I can.” The offer was reckless. Don had little more than two hundred dollars of borrowed money in his bank account, and was at the end of his resources. But he felt the risk worthwhile if Elaine had confidence in him.

“You're sweet, Don. Will you hand me two cups? The big yellow ones. I don't need money, thank you. I've got two accounts, a checking and a savings, in my own name, Elaine Guardino Strode. In case anything ever happened to him, he said.” She stirred the cocoa with the wooden spoon. “He probably planned this for a long time.” She went on and on about Fletcher's desperate unhappiness and the suicide impulse, repeating everything she had told Don that afternoon in the pavilion.

Don listened attentively. No matter what tomorrow should bring, today's assets depended upon Elaine's goodwill. His offer of a loan had primed the pump. “And remember, if you
need advice, I'm a lawyer. I want you to come to me with all your problems.”

She thanked him absently. There were other things on her mind, “Do you feel any twinges of guilt?”

“Me?”

Elaine sat moodily over the steaming cocoa, her head bent above the cup like a gypsy brooding over tea leaves. A shadow had fallen across her face. “We tormented him.”

“That's nonsense, ridiculous, an exaggeration. No one tortured him, he was the one who caused all the trouble.”

“He thought we were lovers.”

“He thought. Suspicion haunts the guilty mind.” This was a direct quotation. Fletcher had used the old saw as though it had been an original, striking thought. Don had made notes on several items before he locked the book back into the desk. “It was his jealousy. Not only of me, of every man. You told me so yourself.”

As Elaine raised her head the mysterious shadow vanished. She held her cup in both hands like a child. “It'll be strange without him. There's a kind of emptiness already. These past few years, every day, every hour, has been with him and for him, trying to keep him interested in living. Not that I was very successful.”

“You're free now. It's all over, your life's your own, you can do what you like.”

Fletcher had known that she dreamed of freedom; there had been mention of it in the diary.

“What do I want?” She set down the cup and held out both hands for freedom to be delivered into them. “Perhaps later I'll know. It's funny, I used to think about it, when I was bored sometimes and lonely for New York, I'd imagine . . .” She stopped, hugging her body, lowering her shoulders under the weight of freedom too suddenly achieved. “Sometimes I thought he knew. Once he heard me on the phone, I was talking to an old friend who'd just got a divorce. I said to her that she was free, her life was her own. He thought I was speaking of him and me and ever since I've felt so . . . so . . .” She raised
dark lids, letting Don look into her eyes, letting him know she was not afraid of a word, “guilty.”

“You take things too hard, you're too sensitive.” It was to show his faith in her that Don spoke this way.

“It was wicked of me, with him so sick and unhappy and dependent. But I suppose one oughtn't to feel too responsible for every foolish and meaningless word. Or daydream. Perhaps I am too sensitive.” This was accompanied by a flutter of self-conscious laughter. “Daydreams can be dangerous, can't they?”

“Not if they stay just dreams.”

“I suppose.”

“But dreams are the source of action.” Don remembered some professor—of law, psychology, logic?—who had advised students to seek criminal motives in man's reveries. With every word Elaine made herself more vulnerable and more helpful to Don Hustings. He added quickly, “You need someone to look after you. I'm the man of the family now. Leave your problems to me, dear.”

“You are a help, Don. I'm so glad you're here.”

“I'm glad, too.” Sympathy shone out of his dark eyes. A family pet could have shown no greater devotion.

“Perhaps it's better this way. For Fletcher. He was too proud, he couldn't ever be resigned. There was no real compensation for him, ever. Not one of your cheerful cripples.” She wore a delicate, faraway expression that her husband might have called devious.

Such a woman, mused Don, unaware that expedience shaped his thinking, might well be judged as her husband had foreseen. She had changed in Don's eyes; her flesh had a different color. She had become dark, brooding, tragic, Italian, with black hair falling about her shoulders like a shawl. The electric clock ticked, the refrigerator rumbled, and below the hill, fire sirens shrieked. The very air seemed nervous.