An Air That Kills (7 page)

“Come here a minute.” Turee took his handkerchief and rubbed some of the steam off one of the windows. Outside, the younger policeman, Newbridge, was examining the tire tracks on the driveway. “Look out there.”

Esther looked. “Well?”

“The police know what they're doing.”

“Do they?” She turned from the window. “They
can examine all the tire tracks to hell and back, but they're not going to find Ron that way.”

“All right, be cynical,” Turee said. “At least you had sense enough to call them in.”

“That was sense?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe you're right. But it wasn't mine.”

“What do you mean?”

“I didn't call the police,” Esther said. “I didn't call any­one.”

SEVEN

The instant she put down the phone she knew she'd done something foolish. Not the call itself, that was necessary, but claiming to be Mrs. Galloway—that was the mistake. And yet, while she was talking, it had seemed so natural to pretend to be Ron's wife. “This is Mrs. Ronald Galloway”—­the sound of it was exactly right.

After the phone call she went back upstairs to bed and to sleep, but in less than an hour she was awakened again by a bad dream. She could not remember the details of the dream, only that they had all been caught in a great flood, she and Ron and the baby and Harry, and they were being swept, screaming, out to sea. She awoke with the scream on her lips.

Her first thought was not of Ron or of Harry, but of the baby growing inside her. She pressed one hand gently to her stomach to calm the child in case it had been disturbed by the dream. Staring wide-eyed up at the ceiling she tried to imagine through her fingertips the child's contours, the tiny head, the curved neck, the curled-up little body. Thelma had worked in a doctor's office before she married Harry, and she knew quite well that the fetus at this early stage was quite hideous and bore almost no resemblance to a human baby. But when she pictured her own baby in her mind, it was beautiful, and perfectly formed and proportioned, like a tiny doll.

She kept her hand pressed to her stomach until she was satisfied that she'd felt a very faint movement, then she swung her feet over the side of the bed and stood up. Almost immediately a wave of nausea flooded over her. She opened her mouth and breathed deeply, watching herself in the bureau mirror and thinking how funny she looked and how glad she was that Harry wasn't there to see her, or to ask questions or give advice.

Throughout most of her life Thelma had suffered from a nagging self-consciousness about her appearance. She knew she was not pretty, and now that she was beginning to gain weight she looked almost dumpy. But Harry's unlimited devotion had given her both self-confidence and a sense of herself as a woman, so that the over-all impression she presented was one of graciousness and femininity. Her friends spoke of her as “attractive,” a term intended to obscure some of nature's mistakes. What justified the term in Thelma's case was the quality of her expression, which was warm and friendly and humorous. Children passing on the street smiled at her spontaneously, clerks in stores usually gave her special attention, and strangers she met at bus stops confided in her the most intimate details of their lives, mainly because Thelma looked at them as if she were really interested. Occasionally she was. But most of the time her expression was automatic and had nothing to do with how or what she was feeling. Turee called it “Thelma's wan smile,” Harry called it her “sweet look,” Ron had never noticed it.

When the nausea had passed, Thelma put on her Sunday housecoat and combed her long hair carefully and tied it back with a ribbon to match the housecoat. Her eyes were still swollen from last night's weeping, and the lids were transparent and tinged with purple like the skin of an onion. She bathed them in cold water and applied witch-hazel pads before going out to the back veranda to pick up the milk and the Sunday paper.

It was a beautiful spring day, alive with promises. Her neighbor, a widow named Mrs. Malverson, was already out in the garden cultivating her daffodils which had just come into bloom.

“Hi there, Thelma.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Malverson.”

“This is a day, isn't it? Isn't this a day, though?”

“It's lovely, yes.”

“You don't look so good, dear.”

“I'm fine.” A minute ago it had been true, but now the stab of the sharp sunlight hurt her eyes and its warmth made her feel feverish. She hugged the cold milk bottle to her breast.

“I bet you're tired this morning. I saw your lights on till all hours last night.”

That snoop, Thelma thought, that nasty old snoop. But she couldn't have seen Ron here—she always goes to the movies on Saturday night. “I couldn't sleep.”

“Couldn't sleep, my land, you should have asked your husband for some pills. The ones he gave me last month for my neuralgia, they were a real blessing.”

“My husband went up north, fishing.”

“Did he now. Well, he couldn't have picked nicer weather. I suppose you've noticed my early daffodils?”

“You showed them to me yesterday.”

“Mulching, that's the secret. You and your husband should start a compost heap. How long's he going to be away?”

“I'm not sure.”

Mrs. Malverson pushed back her straw gardening hat and wiped the perspiration off her forehead with her canvas glove. The gesture left a streak of dirt. “I'll tell you what. Let's go to church.”

“No, thank you just the same. I don't feel . . .”

“You should come and get better acquainted at our little church. Today we're having a very special service. Our leader is going to read the flowers.”

“Read the
flowers?”

Mrs. Malverson threw back her head and laughed. “Spoken like a true unbeliever, curl of the lip and all. Well, I don't mind. I was an unbeliever once myself. I said those very words exactly the way you just said them. Reads the
flowers,
I said, just like that. Nevertheless, that's what our leader does. He reads the flowers that we bring, and in every flower there is a message from someone dear to us who is far away.”

Thelma stood nervous and indecisive, still clutching the Sunday paper and the milk bottle, which was beginning to weigh a ton. Yet she could not seem to drag herself away. Mrs. Malverson's tongue and eye held her as securely as a lepidopterist's pin holds a moth.

“Thelma,” Mrs. Malverson said softly, “you've changed. What's happened to you?”

“Nothing.”

“I see such sorrow in you lately. Have you lost touch with someone dear to you?”

Thelma stared at her, pale and silent.

“Ah, that's it. You've lost touch with someone dear to you and now you want a message, don't you? Yes, I can see you badly want a message. Well, that's easy. Come to church with me and bring a flower to be read.”

“No, I really . . .”

“Fresh, the flower must be fresh, and if you bring its root too, smelling of God's earth, so much the better. Often the messages are stronger when the root is attached. This person you want a message from, is it a woman?”

“No.”

“A man, then. A man you have lost touch with. No, Thelma, I'm not prying. I only need to find out one other detail, for the color of the flower you bring will depend on it.”

“Color?”

“The color's important. If he is alive, you will take a red flower, bright as blood. If he is what you call dead—we hate to use that term, it's so misleading—but if he is dead, you will take a white flower.”

Thelma closed her eyes and began to sway. She could feel the milk bottle slipping out of her hands, she could hear the crash of glass and Mrs. Malverson's cry of dismay, but she was powerless to respond.
If he is what you call dead—we hate to use that term—dead . . .

“My goodness, I hope I didn't say anything to upset you.” Mrs. Malverson lifted her skirt, stepped over the tiny box­wood hedge that divided the two properties, crossed the driveway, and started up the steps of Thelma's back veranda. “Here, let me help you clean up that mess.”

“No!”

“Well, it's the least I can do, seeing I . . .”

“Go away. Just go away.”

“Well, my goodness, you fly off the handle at anything these days. A body might think you were pregnant.”

“Shut up and leave me alone!”

“Well. Well,” Mrs. Malverson said and retreated to her own yard, her straw hat bouncing angrily as she moved. This was the thanks you got for trying to bring a little joy into someone's life.

Ignoring the mess on the veranda, Thelma went back into the house and sat down at the kitchen table. A pair of curious houseflies chased each other in and out of the open window and Thelma watched them, thinking, Harry must put on the screens this week . . .

She had been doing this quite often lately, considering the future as if it were going to be a repetition of the present, thinking of little things that should be done around the house or yard, making tentative plans for the Decoration Day weekend. She knew better. She knew that Harry and she weren't going to live in this house any longer; whoever put the screens on for the summer, it would not
be Harry. She knew, too, that there were other, greater changes waiting for her around the next corner of time. She could not avoid this corner, every tick of the clock brought her inexorably closer to it, no matter how tenaciously a part of her mind tried to stay on
a secure day-to-day basis.

Harry will . . .

No, Harry will not, she thought. I must get used to the idea we won't be here. Some stranger will be putting on the screens, at the request of his wife, also a stranger. They will live in our house, these two strangers, and pretty soon it will be theirs entirely. Well, I mustn't get sentimental about it. I've never liked the place much. It's the same as thousands of other houses in Ontario, a square red-brick box. I want to live in a house without stairs, a climate without winter.

The telephone began to ring in the dining room. She was sure it was Harry calling but she was not sure enough to keep from answering it.

“Hello?”

“Thelma, is that you, honey?”

“Yes.”

“Are you feeling all right again?”

“Yes.”

“Listen, dear, I'm phoning from Wiarton. Ron hasn't shown up yet. I don't suppose you've had any news at that end?”

“No.”

“Well, don't worry, everything will turn out right.”

“Will it,” Thelma said, and hung up.

A minute later the phone began ringing again. Thelma turned her back on it. As she walked toward the kitchen she counted each ring deliberately, like a defiant child counting the number of times she is called to supper: “Thelma. Thelma? Thelma! Thelma . . .”

Long after the final ring, the sharp shrill sound kept echo­ing in her ears, stirring up memories.

“Thelma? You hear me, Thelma?”

Oh yes, Aunt May, I hear you. Everyone in the city can hear you.

“You come in this house right away and finish up these dishes.”

No, Aunt May.

“Hiding again, aren't you, pretending you don't hear me, well, you don't fool me. Thelma!”

I can fool you any time.

“Sneaky, that's what you are, a born sneak. If you don't march right in this house, I'm gonna write your ma and tell her I can't look after you. The Lord knows you're eating me out of house and home, and not a penny does she send for your keep. We'll all end up in the poorhouse, how would you like that, Miss Royalty too good to do dishes?”

If you end up in the poorhouse I'll come and visit you dressed in mink and diamonds.

“Thelma Schaefer, where are you hiding?”

Under the porch. You could reach out and touch me. Do. I'll bite.

“That no-good sister of mine, what else would you expect from her but a no-good child. You answer me, you hear?”

Aunt May had been dead for years, but every shrill sound reminded Thelma of her, an alarm clock, a telephone, a door­bell. Each was the voice of authority, the call to duty: Come in and do the dishes. Get up and go to work. Answer the phone and talk to Harry.

The child hiding under the porch was imprisoned forever within Thelma. Aunt May's voice still soured the sweetest melody, and the bile green of her nature had colored the universe.

Thelma began to make breakfast, moving around the kitchen with a kind of grim efficiency, as if she had in some way been challenged to prove her worth.

Aunt May was wrong, she thought. I won't end up in the poorhouse. There's Ron's money, a lot of money. My baby will have security and love. There'll be no Aunt May for him, no poverty, no fear. He'll have a house without stairs, a climate without winter, no running nose for him from fall to spring like the kids around here. He'll have the best care, the best clothes, the best schools . . .

She ate her breakfast as if in a dream, not enjoying it, not even tasting it, eating for the sake of the baby which needed nourishment. After she had finished, she took her coffee into the parlor at the front of the house.

The room was cool and dark, the shades still drawn from the previous night when she had waited there listening for the sound of Ron's car on the driveway. It was spring now, but the parlor still smelled of winter, of the long weeks of unopened windows and artificial heat, a close dusty smell which, even into autumn, never quite disappeared.

Thelma pulled up the shades and opened two of the windows. Summer sounds drifted in, the children from down the street fighting over a bicycle, the whirr of roller skates, the pounding of a hammer. The young married man who lived across the road was busy removing his storm windows while his wife watched him with great pride as if he were perform­ing some unusual feat. The sun had drawn everyone out of doors like a magnet, but because the spring was new and people were still a little self-conscious about being outside, idle, and bare-armed and bareheaded, they had to find excuses to stay out. Cars were being washed, screens painted, babies walked, lawns rolled, gossip exchanged.