Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories of Shirley Jackson (14 page)

Mrs. Armstrong had moved busily into the kitchen, and was unpacking the groceries. “Didn’t get much, did you?” she asked. “Shall I put on some coffee for us? Or do you expect
him
back?”

“He won’t be back until dinnertime,” Mrs. Smith said, trying to be friendly. “Thank you, I would like some coffee. And I bought very little at the grocery because we expect to be away tomorrow; we are going to do some work in our house, which has been empty for quite a while.” There, she thought, now I have told her everything and perhaps we can sit down and drink coffee and talk about the weather until it is time for her to go.

“Going away
tomorrow?”
said Mrs. Armstrong, and her face was, alarmingly, white.
“Tomorrow?”
She sat down heavily on a kitchen chair, staring.

“Mr. Smith has a house about fifteen miles out of the city. It has been empty for several months.” Mrs. Smith came into the kitchen and sat down, wondering how much detail Mrs. Armstrong might feel her due from a new bride. “We have taken this apartment for a few weeks so that we will have a chance to fix up the house before we move in. The cellar—”

“The cellar,” Mrs. Armstrong repeated in a whisper.

“The cellar needs a new floor. While Mr. Smith puts down a new floor in the cellar I am going to wash windows, and scrub—”

“You poor poor dear,” Mrs. Armstrong said.

“I hardly think I need sympathy, Mrs. Armstrong.” Mrs. Smith made her voice a little sharper; all of this sounded like implied criticism of her husband, and Mrs. Smith had a stern view of the obligations of a wife, particularly one who had been rescued from loneliness and unhappiness at what was surely the very last moment. “Mr. Smith has been married before, certainly, but I hardly think that his former wife—”

“His former wife,” Mrs. Armstrong said. “Sure. All six of them.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Why do you think everyone around here has been wondering and talking and some of us thought we ought to go to the police but of course they always take such a dim view if you’re wrong? You think people around here are
blind?”

“I think the people around here have been very thoughtful, and I certainly appreciate—”

“It’s been in the papers,” Mrs. Armstrong said desperately, “didn’t you know it’s been in the papers?”

“I do not read newspapers, Mrs. Armstrong. Mr. Smith and I agree on that, I am thankful to say. Newspapers, radio, all forms of mass—”

“Maybe,” Mrs. Armstrong said heavily, “maybe it wouldn’t hurt you this once—wouldn’t
hurt
you, listen to me!—just to glance a little at a clipping I got here. Just look at the picture, maybe.”

Mrs. Smith, a little amused, looked down briefly at the clipping Mrs. Armstrong took from her apron pocket. Sensationalism, Mrs. Smith was thinking; how these people do thrive on it. “Very interesting,” Mrs. Smith said politely.

“How about the picture?” said Mrs. Armstrong. “That look like anyone you know?”

“Hardly, Mrs. Armstrong. I do not have acquaintances who put their pictures into the newspapers.”

“Well.” Mrs. Armstrong sat back and sighed deeply. “You know what this fellow did, this fellow in the paper?”

“I confess I did not read it.”

Mrs. Armstrong picked up the clipping and looked at it again. “Six wives,” she said. “Drowned them in the bathtub and they found them buried in the cellar. Six.”

Mrs. Smith laughed aloud. “I know this fascinates
you”
she began, but Mrs. Armstrong interrupted her.

“They got this picture because a neighbor just happened to take a snapshot of him going into the cottage.
The
cottage. Afterward, after they found… dug up the cellar… they got this snapshot and enlarged it. It’s supposed to be a
very
good likeness.”

“Mrs. Armstrong,
really
, I—”

“Now, this fellow is still loose somewhere, and they don’t know where. A wife slayer. He drowns them in the bathtub and then buries—”

The coffee boiled, and Mrs. Smith moved thankfully over to the stove, set the coffee aside, and turned to take out cups and saucers. I won’t offer her a second cup of coffee, Mrs. Smith was thinking, as soon as she finishes her first I’ll start to pick up, and if she keeps on telling me these vulgar horrors I shall positively turn her out of the house; in any case, Mrs. Smith was thinking, I shall be very cold to her when we meet next; she is not at all the kind of acquaintance Mr. Smith would like me to have—suppose she considered herself a close enough friend to come calling when we are in our new house? What, Mrs. Smith wondered, and smiled to herself, what would dear Janet think, at such a person in her house? “Sugar?” said Mrs. Smith politely.

Mrs. Armstrong had been drumming her fingers impatiently upon the table. “Look, dearie,” she said as soon as Mrs. Smith turned around. “I’m not trying to be nosy, but
please
try to look at it our way. We—and that’s all of us, all of us around this neighborhood, because we all saw the picture and we’re all just about agreed and there’s even some, as I say, wants to go to the police—we have kind of gotten to like you. You’re hard to make friends with, I must say, but even so there’s not a harsh word going around about you. And if we’re wrong, we’ll be the first to say so.”

“It’s very kind of all of you to think so well of me. I
am a
very shy person, although I try not to be.”

“Did he make you take out insurance?” Mrs. Armstrong asked bluntly.

Mrs. Smith was puzzled. “He? You mean Mr. Smith?”

“I mean Mr. Smith.”

“Why… yes. I mean, don’t most married people? It’s the least we could do for one another,” Mrs. Smith said, repeating what Mr. Smith had told her, “to make sure that if anything happened to one of us, the other would be provided for. Money, of course, could never make up for the loss of a treasured companion, but we are neither of us as young as we used—”

“I don’t want to frighten you,” Mrs. Armstrong said. “If all of us around here should turn out to be wrong, as I say, we’d be the first to come forward handsomely and say so. How did you come to meet him?”

“Really,” said Mrs. Smith, blushing deeply. “I hardly think—”

“Has he said anything funny? Anything that might make you suspicious?”

“Mr. Smith was married before,” Mrs. Smith explained patiently. “He was married to a splendid, upright woman, and he told me so himself. We have discussed the situation thoroughly, and I assure you that I have no intention of trying to take her place. Mr. Smith and I were both very lonely people, and we can hardly expect our marriage to resemble that of a pair of twenty-year-olds. I have no reason to suspect that Mr. Smith has acted suspiciously or dishonorably toward me in any fashion.”

“Have you searched his things?”

“Mrs. Armstrong!”

“The least you could do is find out whether he has a knife or a gun… but no. He doesn’t do it that way, does he?” She shivered. “I don’t know but what I’d prefer a knife,” she said. “There’s bathtubs
every
where.”

Mrs. Smith spoke as politely as she could manage. “Mrs. Armstrong,” she said, “I assure you, emphatically, that I have absolutely no interest in sordid crime. I am not, of course, attempting to criticize your pleasure in murder and sudden death, but it is simply not a subject that appeals to me. Suppose we talk about something else while we finish our coffee?”

“I don’t think I want any coffee,” Mrs. Armstrong said almost sullenly. She got up from her chair. “Well,” she said darkly, “just don’t ever say I didn’t warn you.”

Mrs. Smith laughed, privately pleased that her visitor was leaving so delightfully soon. “Living in a city sometimes makes you dwell on horrible things,” she said. “I’m glad that we’ll be out in the country soon.”

Mrs. Armstrong stopped in the doorway and held out her hands eloquently. “
Look
,” she said, “all I can say is if you need any help—
any
help,
anytime
—just open your mouth and scream, see? Because my Ed will be up as fast as he can come. All you have to do is scream, or stamp on the floor, or if you can get away, make it downstairs to our place. One of us is sure to be there. Just remember—all you have to do is scream.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Smith said. “I’ll be sure to call on you if I need anything.”

Mrs. Armstrong started to close the door behind her, and then opened it again and said in a voice which she tried to make humorous, “Just don’t take any baths,” and closed the door. Her voice trailed up from the stairs. “Thanks for the coffee,” she said.

Mrs. Smith sighed with relief, and went into the kitchen to clean up the coffee cups. After she had washed and dried the two cups and saucers she took a clean cup for herself and filled it with coffee and went to sit by the living room window. Looking out and down onto the dark and dirty street below, she fell once more into her state of quiet happiness; three weeks ago, she told herself, I was miserable and without a friend in the world. Father was gone, and there I sat, all alone and—she skipped hastily over the thought—even wondering what it would be like to walk out into the sea and just keep walking on and on, and then he sat down beside me; “I hope you won’t think me forward,” he said. Mrs. Smith gave a little secret laugh, and sipped her coffee.

She was broiling the lamb chops when the sound of her husband’s key in the door brought her out of the kitchen and into the living room. They were still a little awkward with each other, so that Mrs. Smith did not quite dare to run to the door to greet him, and was touched when he came inside and nearly across the room to kiss her gently on the forehead. “How’s my wife?” he asked.

“I missed you all day,” she said. “Did your business go well?”

“Yes,” he said. “I think I’ve settled everything.”

“I just realized,” she said, hurrying into the kitchen, “that I don’t even know whether you
like
lamb chops; I hope you do.”

“A particular favorite of mine,” he said. He came into the kitchen and sat down in the chair Mrs. Armstrong had used earlier. “Anything particular happen today?”

“No.” Mrs. Smith, concentrating deeply, regarded the little dinner table set, now, with odds and ends; when she had her house she would have matched dishes and silverware. “The woman downstairs came up for a while,” she said.

There was a minute’s silence. Then, “What did she want?” Mr. Smith asked indifferently.

Mrs. Smith carefully served the lamb chops and the peas, and put a baked potato on Mr. Smith’s plate. “Just to gossip,” she said; “we had coffee, and she chattered on and on till I thought she’d never leave.”

“About what? I mean, what could someone like that have to say to
you?”

“I didn’t listen, really; I was just wishing she would leave. She’s one of those people who loves gory details of murders, and I almost thought I would never be able to drink my coffee, the way she was talking.”

“Anything in particular?”

“The plot of some movie she’d seen, I think,” Mrs. Smith said vaguely. “Is the lamb chop all right?”

“Fine.” Mr. Smith attacked his second lamb chop. “You’re a fine cook,” he said, as though surprised. “Imagine your being a fine cook in addition to everything else.”

Mrs. Smith giggled.
“What
else, silly?” she said. “I thought you married me only to keep house for you.”

“Speaking of keeping house,” Mr. Smith said. He swallowed his mouthful of lamb chop and set down his fork. “I was thinking,” he said, “we’d be better off and save a lot of time if we went down tonight, right after dinner, instead of waiting till tomorrow.”