I Married A Dead Man (15 page)

               
"Patrice, didn't you sleep well, dear?" Mother Hazzard asked solicitously. "You look a little peaked."

               
She hadn't looked peaked out on the stairs a moment ago. She'd only been heavyhearted and troubled then.

               
She settled Hughie in his chair, and took a little longer than was necessary. Keep your eyes away from it. Don't look at it. Don't think about it. Don't try to find out what's in it, you don't want to know what's in it, let it stay there until after the meal, then tear it up un--

               
"Patrice, you're spilling it on his chin. Here, let me."

               
She had nothing to do with her own hands, from that point on. And she felt as though she had so many of them; four or five at least. She reached for the coffee-pot, and a corner of it was in the way. She reached for the sugar-bowl, and another corner of it was in the way. She drew her napkin toward her, and it sidled two or three inches nearer her, riding on that. It was all about her, it was everywhere at once!

               
She wanted to scream, and she clenched her hand tightly, down beside her chair. I mustn't do that, I mustn't. Hughie's right here next to me, and Mother's just across the table--

               
Open it, open it fast. Quick, while you still have the courage.

               
The paper made a shredding sound, her finger was so thick and maladroit.

               
One word more this time.

                                               
"Where are you from?"

               
She clenched her hand again, down low beside her chair. White dissolved into it, disappearing through the finger-crevices.

27

               
In the mornings the world was bitter to look at from the window. To wake up in a strange room, in a strange house. To pick up your baby--that was the only thing that was rightfully yours--and edge toward the window with him, creeping up slantwise and peering from the far side of it, barely lifting the curtain; not stepping forward to the middle of it and throwing the curtain widely back. That was for people in their own homes, not for you. And out there, nothing. Nothing that belonged to you or was for you. The hostile houses of a hostile town. An icy wash of sun upon a stony ground. Dark shadows like frowns under each tree and leeward of each house. The man watering the lawn didn't turn around to greet you today. He was more than a stranger now, he was a potential enemy.

               
She carried her boy with her downstairs, and every step was like a knell. She was holding her eyes closed when she first went into the dining-room. She couldn't help it; she couldn't bring herself to open them for a moment

               
"Patrice, you don't look right to me at all. You ought to see your color against that child's."

               
She opened her eyes.

               
Nothing there.

               
But it would come. It would come again. It had came once, twice; it would come again. Tomorrow maybe. The day after. Or the day after that. It would surely come again. There was nothing to do but wait. To sit there, stricken, helpless, waiting. It was like holding your head bowed under a leaky faucet, waiting for the next icy drop to detach itself and fall.

               
In the mornings the world was bitter, and in the evenings it was full of shadows creeping formlessly about her, threatening from one moment to the next to close in and engulf her.

28

               
She hadn't slept well. That was the first thing she was conscious of on awakening. The cause, the reason for it, that came right with it That was what really mattered; not the fact that she hadn't slept well, but knowing the cause, the reason for it. Only too well.

               
It wasn't new. It was occurring all the time lately, this not sleeping well. It was the rule rather than the exception.

               
The strain was beginning to tell on her. Her resistance was wearing away. Her nerves were slowly being drawn taut, a little more so each day. She was nearing a danger-point, she knew. She couldn't stand very much more of it. It wasn't when they came; it was in-between, waiting for the next one to come. The longer it took to come, the greater her tension, instead of the less. It was like that well-known simile of the second dropped shoe, prolonged ad infinitum.

               
She couldn't stand much more of it. "If there's another one," she told herself, "something will snap. Don't let there be another one. Don't."

               
She looked at herself in the glass. Not through vanity, conceit, to see whether damage had been done her looks. To confirm, objectively, the toll that was being taken. Her face was pale and worn. It was growing thinner again, losing its roundness, growing back toward that gauntness of cheek it had had in New York. Her eyes were a little too shadowed underneath, and just a little too bright. She looked tired and frightened. Not acutely so, but chronically. And that was what was being done to her by this.

               
She dressed herself, and then Hughie, and carried him down with her. It was so pleasant in the dining-room, in the early morning like this. The new-minted sun pouring in, the color of champagne; the crisp chintz curtains; the cheery colored ware on the table; the fragrant aroma of the coffee-pot; the savory odor of fresh-made toast seeping through the napkin thrown over it to keep it warm. Mother Hazzard's flowers in the center of the table, always less than an hour old, picked from her garden at the back. Mother Hazzard herself, spruce and gay in her printed morning-dress, beaming at her. Home. Peace.

               
"Leave me in peace," she pleaded inwardly. "Let me be. Let me have all this. Let me enjoy it, as it's meant to be enjoyed, as it's waiting around to be enjoyed. Don't take it from me, let me keep it."

               
She went around the table to her and kissed her, and held Hughie out to her to be kissed. Then she settled him in his highchair, between the two of them, and sat down herself.

               
Then she saw them, waiting for her.

               
The one on top was a department-store sales brochure, sealed in an envelope. She could identify it by the letterhead in the upper corner. But there was something under it, another one. Its corners stuck out a little past the top one.

               
She was afraid to bring it into fuller view, she postponed it.

               
She spooned Hughie's cereal to his mouth, took alternating sips of her own fruit juice. It was poisoning the meal, it was tightening up her nerves.

               
It mightn't be one of those, it might be something else. Her hand moved with a jerk, and the department-store folder was out of the way.

                                               
"Mrs. Patrice Hazzard."

               
It was addressed in pen and ink, a personal letter. She never got letters like that from anyone; who wrote to her, whom did she know? It must be, it was, one of those again. She felt a sick, cold feeling in her stomach. She took in everything about it, with a sort of hypnotic fascination. The three-cent purple stamp, with wavy cancellationlines running through it. Then the circular postmark itself, off to the side. It had been posted late, after twelve last night. Where? She wondered. By whom? She could see in her mind's eye an indistinct, furtive figure slinking up to a street mall-box in the dark, a hand hastily thrusting something into the chute, the clang as the slot fell closed again.

               
She wanted to get it out of here, take it upstairs with her, close the door. But if she carried it away with her unopened, wouldn't that look secretive, wouldn't that call undue attention to it? It was safe enough to open it here in the very room; they never pried in this house, they never asked questions. She knew she could even have left it lying around open after having read it herself, and it would have been safe, nobody would have put a hand to it.

               
She ran her knife through the flap, slit it.

               
Mother Hazzard had taken over Hughie's feeding, she had eyes for no one but him. Every mouthful brought forth a paean of praise.

               
She'd opened the once-folded inner sheet now. The flowers were in the way, they screened the shaking of her hand. So blank it was, so much waste space, so little writing. Just a line across the middle of the paper, where the crease ran.

                                               
"What are you doing there?"

               
She could feel her chest constricting. She tried to quell the sudden inordinate quickness of her breathing, lest it betray itself.

               
Mother Hazzard was showing Hughie his plate. "All gone. Hughie ate it all up! Where is it?"

               
She'd lowered it into her lap now. She managed to get it back into its envelope, and fold that over, singly and then doubly, until it fitted into the span of her hand.

               
"One more and something will snap." And here it was, the one more.

               
She could feel her self-control ebbing away, and didn't know what catastrophic form its loss might take. "I've got to get out of this room," she warned herself. "I've got to get away from this table-- now--quickly!"

               
She stood up suddenly, stumbling a little over her chair. She turned and left the table without a word.

               
"Patrice, aren't you going to have your coffee?"

               
"I'll be right down," she said smotheredly, from the other side of the doorway. "I forgot something."

               
She got up there, into her room, and got the door closed.

               
It was like the bursting of a dam. She hadn't known what form it would take. Tears, she'd thought, or high-pitched hysterical laughter. It was neither. It was anger, a paroxysm of rage, blinded and baffled and helpless.

               
She went over to the wall and flailed with upraised fists against it, held high over her head. And then around to the next wall and the next and the next, like somebody seeking an outlet, crying out distractedly: "Who are you yourself? Where are you sending them from? Why don't you come out? Why don't you come out in the open? Why don't you come out where I can see you? Why don't you come out and give me a chance to fight back?"

               
Until at last she'd stopped, wilted and breathing fast with spent emotion. In its wake came sudden determination. There was only one way to fight back, only one way she had to rob the attacks of their power to harm--

               
She flung the door open. She started down the stairs again. Still as tearless as she'd gone up. She was going fast, she was rippling down them in a quick-step. She was still holding it in her hand. She opened it up, back to its full size, and started smoothing it out as she went.

               
She came back into the dining-room still at the same gait she'd used on the stairs.

               
"--drank all his milk like a good boy," Mother Hazzard was crooning.

               
Patrice moved swiftly around the table toward her, stopped short beside her.

               
"I want to show you something," she said tersely. "I want you to see this."

               
She put it down on the table squarely in front of her and stood there waiting.

               
"Just a moment, dear; let me find my glasses," Mother Ha.zzard purred acquiescently. She probed here and there among the breakfast things. "I know I had them with me when Father was here at the table; we were both reading the paper." She looked over toward the buffet on the other side of her.

               
Patrice stood there waiting. She looked over at Hughie. He was still holding his spoon, entire fist folded possessively around it. He flapped it at her joyously. Home. Peace.

               
Suddenly she'd reached over to her own place at the table, picked up the department-store circular still lying there, replaced the first letter with that.

               
"Here they are, under my napkin. Right in front of me the whole time." Mother Hazzard adjusted them, turned back to her. "Now what was it, dear?" She opened the folder and looked at it.