Shorts - Sinister Shorts (35 page)

She did as much as she could to prepare herself for bed without his help. She wheeled herself into the accessible shower, a concession to her disability she thought Claude would never accept but which her mother had insisted upon. She brushed her teeth ferociously, but retouched her makeup, remembering nights long ago when she never went to bed without renewing it.

Putting on her easiest nightie she waited for him to help her heave herself onto the left side of the bed.

He splayed an arm there, awaiting her head.

Hell.

Do I open the conversation, or not?

Do I allow the time to pass? Because many nights, in spite of her own obligations, the nurse stayed. Claude paid her enough to stay, stay, stay.

They were not alone so often.

The salmon balled in her stomach like sludge. The salad, made of the freshest ingredients, made her think she might need the bathroom.

She resisted. This fight she could wage. She needed to control things, her digestion, her wasting limbs. Why, lately, she had enjoyed a faint reminder of her old life, when her foot would jerk or a leg would feel tired. She knew the doctor called this “phantom,” and what an apt description that was.

“Claude, are you awake?” She thought she could detect the quiet of his non-sleeping.

“Mmm,” he said.

“Have you ever thought of living without me? How it would be?” Silence. “You could be free again.” No response. She assumed he was listening by the expectant hush of his breath. “You don't have to worry. I would give you money.” This crass reduction of her complicated feelings to words made her cringe with self-disgust. After speaking lines of grandeur and wisdom all her adult life, when it came to providing her own script, she bombed. “I don't mean it that way,” she said. “That's not what I mean. I mean, we've been happy, haven't we? And now, it's time to move on. This is not about me being depressed, or you leaving some feeble woman behind. This is about us moving on, making new lives and new happinesses. Claude?”

She hated him for his silence. Rigid as a plank on the floor she awaited his reaction. Now in the pureness of a dark room, without the distraction of color and light, he could hear her clearly. He could react honestly, without defensiveness.

Nothing.

His breathing was so soft, she must have missed it, the tide rolling in and out. He was asleep.

She reached over his chest and spread a hand over it. Usually, that was enough to wake him. But nothing changed. She couldn't remember. Did he drink more than usual tonight? Yes. Well, it had been a long day.

She felt very alone. She lay in the dark with her eyes open, drowning in the bottomless well of her unhappiness. How could she put herself through another day like today, waiting to speak? Then the delicious dinner wine worked on her, and the blackness of the room deepened. She dreamed about the waterfall, the one she didn't recall in real life. She dreamed of falling.

Claude drank orange juice, unsettled. His idea of the final act had been quite different from the reality. He remembered falling asleep to a murmuring, like a bedtime story being told, words slipping over him like a refreshing breeze from the window. About four in the morning, when no one was up to hear, and nobody did anything but dream dreams bad and good, he awakened, picked up one of her pillows, placed it gently over her face, and pushed down.

How she struggled.

How she fought.

She tried to scream, and he heard cries like a mewling baby's through the feathers.

Witch.

She had never, ever, been easy.

In the morning, after he awoke on the couch in the study from the stupor that had overtaken him, he peeked in on her.

Eyes closed but without tremor.

Skin, once translucent, a blue-white opaque.

Unmoving.

The smell-actually, he had feared that the most, that there would be something putrid happening by morning. How long did it take? He thanked his lucky stars that the night was chill, and her death seemed storybook and odorless.

He could not bring himself to touch her or to get too close. He thought he sensed just the tiniest bit of deterioration. Before bed, he had noticed she smelled of the perfume, Entracte, he had had specially formulated for her as a gift years ago, an aromatic citrus-herbal mix of jasmine, cardamom, tangerine, and cedar moss. He would never again sell that perfume in his store. What a perversion that would be, to sell the smell of her death.

After the juice, he felt the need for coffee. He drank deeply.

She slept like the baby they never had, he decided. She slept peacefully, in the full knowledge of his love.

He picked up the phone. Weirdly, there was no dial tone. In fact, he heard a sound of waiting.

“Hello?” he said.

“Did you try to call me?” an amazed voice asked.

“Who is this?” he said.

“Dr. Bartholomew.”

“Clea's doctor?”

“Yes. I'm out of town and…”

“You've been trying to reach us.”

“Yes.”

“You must have called just when I picked up the phone. Strange, it didn't ring.”

“You're Clea's husband? You're Claude?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I'm glad we're in touch because…”

“I'm so sorry. I don't have time to talk to you right this second,” Claude said.

The word the doctor uttered sounded like the outcome of an unexpected punch.

“I need to make another call. It's urgent. Sorry.”

“No-” said the doctor. But Claude hung up.

Claude called the emergency number, watched the ambulance arrive, smelled antiseptics along with the soapy clean of uniforms. “Can you save her?” he asked, watching them carry her out, confident that they couldn't.

“We'll see, sir,” they said. “Now please, make way.”

Standard response to a dead body, Claude realized, stepping out of their path. Don't fry the relatives with news that will change the outcome of their lives. “She doesn't look good,” he noted for the record. “Please tell me she won't die!”

He watched the emergency technician figure out what to say next. They told him not to lose hope and advised him to follow them to the hospital in his car. He told them he couldn't come immediately, he was too shaken. He would come along later. The hospital will be in touch, they said kindly. Get someone else to drive you, okay?

Instead, he made toast and sliced a grapefruit. She would never come back. The one great love affair of his life was over. He had a good cry, saying good-bye to her, whispering last words of love. Oh, Clea.

***

He avoided making calls to relatives and family, unable to face their suffering. He didn't answer any calls until late afternoon when he felt he could muster appropriate responses. He almost didn't answer then, but Lucy had shown up, pitching a fit when he had to fire her without notice, and he wanted the distraction, so when the phone rang in the middle of her harangue, he picked up, expecting a sepulchral voice verifying Clea's death.

“Claude?”

Shock ran through him like a ragged shard of glass. “Who is this?” he asked. He waved Lucy out of the room and shut the door in her face.

The voice was weak, but undeniably hers. “It's Clea.”

Speechless, he sat down in the desk chair, feet on the ground, one hand clutching the desk for support. “Clea? But… they took you away. I thought…”

“Can you come get me, please?”

Clea hung up the phone. Claude had thought she was dead. To all appearances, she had been. The doctors said she had survived a massive asthma attack. When she stopped breathing at one point, her heart had stopped, but they had somehow miraculously managed to revive her. Now that the attack had been controlled with medication, she could go on, out of danger for now. They advised her to see her own doctor as soon as he returned from his vacation, and to keep her inhaler close by in the bedside table.

She did not remember the asthma attack. When she thought back to the moment when everything stopped for her, she saw Claude's face hovering above her, then the pressure over her face, a pillow pressing down.

A nightmare?

Had she filled that consoling, longed-for peace with this-hideous manifestation? Did she create this evil being out of her resentment of Claude's pity and kindness to her?

Tubes up her nose and a needle in her arm, she told no one about these images. Once she regained her sense of equilibrium and was breathing normally, they removed their equipment and said she could go when she felt ready. She let a couple of hours go by while she reflected. Should she revisit their past together, reinterpreting? Were his kisses obligations, his eyelid twitches, the ones she thought were his way of controlling his pity, cringes? Was the past year all lies and betrayals? Had he tried to kill her the previous night?

She was filled with disbelief, even horror, at her suspicions. Should she believe the evidence of her own senses or had her psyche become as frail as her body? She pondered telling the doctors about these dark thoughts, even imagined a conversation with the police. They might not believe her. She didn't believe herself. Should she subject herself and Claude to outside scrutiny, and perhaps misunderstanding? No.

Did Claude want her dead? The idea bounced around, bruising everything inside her. He would be happy to control the money at last. He would know the doctors would put her death down to natural causes, asthma or some other health problem.

If she had died, he would have gone on living without her. The women would flock to console him, because he would mourn her deeply. He would convince himself that he had loved her dearly, to the end, then tell himself her death was for the best. Yes, that was Claude. He saw her deteriorating. Her face, once lean, was now bloated, porcine, from the steroids. Her body, well, no need to make comparisons. They were obvious. He probably thought she hated herself as much as he must hate her.

What an eligible widower he would make, with his charm and her money.

What perfidy, these traitorous thoughts. He had been nothing but kind, and this was how she repaid him, with doubt, suspicion.

Fear assailed her, confusion.

Swallowing water, letting the cool liquid flow into her living body, hoping for cleansing, the dark moment returned.

Pillow pressing down on her face. Those eyes of his, gleaming, black as a raven's. Breath gone, agitated heart stopping… Yes. Clea's eyes squeezed shut, her mouth trembled. He would certainly try again.

Claude made quite a fuss over Clea's homecoming. Lavish flower arrangements graced every vase, and he had only the warmest, murmuring, loving things to say. He wanted a quick bite, then bed, but she nixed the idea. “I have chores.”

“Leave them to Lucy,” he said. But she wheeled into the kitchen and began wiping the counters.

Well, let her squander her last moments on trivia, Claude thought, stomping out of the kitchen. So be it. Ignoring the ringing telephone, he sat down with the newspaper, aware he would try to kill her again that very night, but not obsessing over the fact. Why drag things out? So the first attempt ended badly-so what? Clea was a ghost to him now. The decision had already been made; she was as good as dead. There in the study, considering his options, rather worn out from the ordeal of the past night and day, he waited for the phone to stop ringing and ordered take-out Thai for dinner. Clea loved sesame noodles.

“I've been a good wife to you, haven't I?” Clea spoke these words after dinner, gazing across a candle at him, decaf coffee untouched before her.

Actually, Claude felt miffed. Clea had eaten almost nothing. She had, in fact, been terribly nice all evening. She made things so difficult, with her capricious moods. He had a simple plan for the night. He would use her very own suicide stash of pills, oh, yes, he had found those long ago. He would crumble them into a hot bedtime drink, and she would go peacefully to sleep. No need to go through that awful struggle of the last attempt this time, or a reprieving vomit. He would prevent nasty surprises by using enough to slay a horse. Confronted with an overdose, he would admit to her serious depression, and he would not admit knowledge of the extra pills. Lucy would confirm Clea's previous suicide attempts.

“Clea, you're the most wonderful woman in the world. You always have been. You always will be,” Claude said, tired of saying this sort of thing, but rallying for one more try.

She nodded. She must be satisfied with the sentiment.

Lucy had left a few hours before, with a malevolent glance in the direction of Clea's room. “She's alive. What a miracle. How we should thank God.” The words held a cold affect of which he did not approve. He wondered if Lucy would regret her attitude tomorrow.

“You've had it hard, Claude,” Clea now said. “You've never liked involving yourself in the running of a household, have you? I guess you were raised that way.”

Oh, why did she have to get into this now, too late? Why not spend these final hours in calm realms beyond the irritating day-to-day? “No,” he said firmly. “Everything about us is right.” He approved of the statement, so simple, so encapsulating.

“Sure it is,” she said.

In the study, post-dinner, she offered him a brandy, insisting on getting the bottle and pouring it herself, refusing his offer of help. She poured two glasses, and took one. “You used to love brandy,” she said. “Remember how we danced the tango, and how drunk you were, and how I fell to the floor when you let go?”

He laughed obligingly, hating the reminder of himself at another time in another state of mind. He drank the brandy, mindful of these final statements. Would he spend the rest of his life going over this evening? He thought not, but you never knew.

“Tell me this, Claude,” she said, fixing steady eyes on him.

Her insatiable needs hurtled toward him once again, too fast, and he felt suddenly shot with fear. He would be glad never to see those beady eyes open on him again. “What is it, darling?”

“Have you ever sorted one load of laundry in your life?”

He had to laugh.