Misery (15 page)

  'I think you know what I've been doing,' he said. 'I've been suffering.'

   From the pocket of her skirt she took a Kleenex and wiped his brow. The Kleenex came away wet. She smiled at him with that terrible bogus maternity.

  'Has it been very bad?'

  'Yes. Yes, it has. Now can I — '

  'I
told
you about making me mad. Live and learn, isn't that what they say? Well, if you live, I guess you'll learn.'

  'Can I have my pills now?'

  'In a minute,' she said. Her eyes never left his sweaty face, its waxy pallor and red rashlike blotches. 'First I want to make sure there's nothing
else
you want. Nothing else stupid old Annie Wilkes forgot because she doesn't know how a Mister Smart Guy goes about writing a book. I want to make sure you don't want me to go back to town and get you a tape recorder, or maybe a special pair of writing slippers, or something like that. Because if you want me to, I'll go. Your wish is my command. I won't even wait to give you your pills. I'll hop right into Old Bessie again and go. So what do you say, Mister Smart Guy? You all set?'

  'I'm all set,' he said. 'Annie, please — '

  'And you won't make me mad anymore?'

  'No. I won't make you mad anymore.'

    'Because when I get mad I'm not really myself.' Her eyes dropped. She was looking down to where his hands were cupped tightly together over the sample boxes of Novril. She looked for a very long time.

  'Paul?' she asked softly. 'Paul, why are you holding your hands like that?'

  He began to cry. It was guilt he cried from, and he hated that most of all: in addition to everything else that this monstrous woman had done to him, she had made him feel guilty as well. So he cried from guilt . . . but also from simple childish weariness.

  He looked up at her, tears flowing down his cheeks, and played the absolute last card in his hand.

   'I want my pills,' he said, 'and I want the urinal. I held it all the time you were gone, Annie, but I can't hold it much longer, and I don't want to wet myself again.'

  She smiled softly, radiantly, and pushed his tumbled hair off his brow. 'You poor dear. Annie has put you through a lot, hasn't she? Too much! Mean old Annie! I'll get it right away.'

He wouldn't have dared put the pills under the rug even if he thought he had time to do so before she came back — the packages were small, but the bulges would still be all too obvious. As he heard her go into the downstairs bathroom, he took them, reached painfully around his body, and stuffed them into the back of his underpants. Sharp cardboard corners poked into the cleft of his buttocks.

  She came back with the urinal, an old-fashioned tin device that looked absurdly like a blowdryer, in one hand. She had two Novril capsules and a glass of water in the other.

  
Two more of those on top of the ones you took half an hour ago may drop you into a coma and
then kill you,
he thought, and a second voice answered at once:
Fine with me.

  He took the pills and swallowed them with water.

  She held out the urinal. 'Do you need help?'

  'I can do it,' he said.

  She turned considerately away while he fumbled his penis into the cold tube and urinated. He happened to he looking at her when the hollow splashing sounds commenced, and he saw that she was smiling.

  'All done?' she asked a few moments later.

   'Yes.' He actually had needed to urinate quite badly — in all the excitement he hadn't had time to think of such things.

    She took the urinal away from him and set it carefully on the floor. 'Now let's get you back in bed,' she said. 'You must be exhausted . . . and your legs must be singing grand opera.'

   He nodded, although the truth was that he could not feel
anything —
this medication on top of what he'd already given himself was rolling him toward unconsciousness at an alarming rate, and he was beginning to see the room through gauzy layers of gray. He held onto one thought — she was going to lift him into bed, and when she did that she would have to be blind as well as numb not to notice that the back of his underwear happened to be stuffed with little boxes.

  She got him over to the side of the bed.

  'Just a minute longer, Paul, and you can take a snooze.'

  'Annie, could you wait five minutes?' he managed. She looked at him, gaze narrowing slightly. 'I thought you were in a lot of pain, buster.'

   'I am,' he said. 'It hurts . . . too much. My knee, mostly. Where you . . . uh, where you lost your temper. I'm not ready to be picked up. Could I have five minutes to . . . to . . . '

   He knew what he wanted to say but it was drifting away from him. Drifting away and into the gray. He looked at her helplessly, knowing he was going to be caught after all.

  'To let the medication work?' she asked, and he nodded gratefully.

  'Of course. I'll just put a few things away and come right back.'

    As soon as she was out of the room he was reaching behind him, bringing out the boxes and stuffing them under the mattress one by one. The layers of gauze kept thickening, moving steadily from gray toward black.

  
Get them as far under as you can,
he thought blindly.
Make sure you do that so if she changes
the bed she won't pull them out with the ground sheet. Get them as far under as you . . . you . . .

   He shoved the last under the mattress, then leaned back and looked up at the ceiling, where the W's danced drunkenly across the plaster.

  
Africa,
he thought.

  
Now I must rinse,
he thought.

  
Oh, I am in so much trouble here,
he thought.
Tracks,
he thought.
Did I leave tracks? Did I
—

Paul Sheldon fell unconscious. When he woke up, fourteen hours had gone by and outside it wa snowing again.

Writing does not
cause
misery, it is born of misery.

Although Ia
n
Carmichael would
n
ot have moved from Little Du
n
thorpe for all the jewels i
n
the Quee
n
's treasury, he had to admit to himself that whe
n
it rai
n
ed i
n
Cor
n
wall it rai
n
ed harder tha
n
a
n
ywhere else i
n
E
n
gla
n
d.

     There was a
n
old strip of towelli
n
g hu
n
g from a hook i
n
the e
n
tryway, a
n
d after ha
n
gi
n
g up his drippi
n
g coat a
n
d removi
n
g his boots, he used it to towel his dark-blo
n
de hair dry.

     Dista
n
tly, from the parlor, he could hear the rippli
n
g strai
n
s of Chopi
n
, a
n
d he paused with the strip of towel still i
n
his left ha
n
d, liste
n
i
n
g.

     The moisture ru
nn
i
n
g dow
n
his cheeks
n
ow was
n
ot rai
n
water but tears.

He remembered Geoffrey sayi
n
g You must
n
ot cry i
n
fro
n
t of her, old ma
n
-- that is the o
n
e thi
n
g you must
n
ever do!

     Geoffrey was right, of course -- dear old Geoffrey was rarely wro
n
g -- but sometimes whe
n
he was alo
n
e, the Gearless of Misery's escape from the Grim Reaper came forcibly home to him, a
n
d it was
n
early impossible to hold the

tears back. He loved her so much; without her he would die. Without Misery, there would simply be
n
o life left for him, or i
n
him.

     Her labor had bee
n
lo
n
g a
n
d hard, but
n
o lo
n
ger a
n
d
n
o harder tha
n
that of ma
n
y other you
n
g ladies she had see
n
, the midwife declared. It was o
n
ly after mid
n
ight, a
n
hour after Geoffrey had ridde
n
i
n
to the gatheri
n
g storm to try a
n
d fetch the doctor, that the midwife had grow
n
alarmed. That was whe
n
the bleedi
n
g had started.

      "Dear old Geoffrey!" He spoke it aloud this time as he stepped i
n
to the huge a
n
d stuporously warm West Cou
n
try kitche
n
.

     "Did ye speak, you
n
g sair?" Mrs. Ramage, the Carmichaels' crotchety but lovable old housekeeper, asked him as she came i
n
from the pa
n
try. As usual, her mobcap was askew a
n
d she smelled of the s
n
uff she still firmly believed,

after all these years, to be a secret vice.

     "
N
ot o
n
purpose, Mrs. Ramage," Ia
n
said.

     "By the sou
n
d o' ye coat a-drippi
n
' out there i
n
the e
n
try, ye
n
airly drow
n
ed betwee
n
the sheds a
n
d the hoose!"

"Aye, so I
n
early did," Ia
n
said, a
n
d thought: If Geoffrey had retur
n
ed with the doctor eve
n
te
n
mi
n
utes later, I believe she would have died. This was a thought he tried co
n
sciously to discourage -- it was both useless a
n
d gruesome --

but the thought of life without Misery was so terrible that it s ometimes crept up o
n
him a
n
d surprised him.