The Doctor's Wife (60 page)

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Authors: Elizabeth Brundage

BOOK: The Doctor's Wife
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It occurs to her that they’re trapped. There is no way out of the cellar, not even through the hatch, which is padlocked from the outside. “We’re stuck in here.”
 
 
“Hide,” Michael says. “Keep quiet.”
 
 
“Lydia?” Reverend Tim sings out in a voice one might use to call an animal. “I just want to talk. I know you’re here. There’s no need to hide, beauty. I understand how you feel. Come on out and we’ll have a good, long talk.”
 
 
Lydia’s heart spins like a top. She wishes they
could
talk. She wishes he could help her out of this, the way he used to help her, but now that’s not possible. The worst part is how much she loved him once. Yes, it
was
love. The best kind of love, pure and clean. And now he has come to kill her, and even though she deserves to die for all she’s done, she feels betrayed.
 
 
There is the sudden sound of a scuffling and then a sharp outcry of pain. Lydia wonders if he has stumbled over something. Something heavy falls to the floor.
 
 
“What was that?” she whispers to Michael. But he doesn’t answer her. She feels cold, terribly cold. Sweat drips down her face as they wait for what will come next. For several minutes it is silent, but then his footsteps resume across the squeaky kitchen floor. At the cellar door he hesitates, kicking the scraps of wood aside. Her head pounds. She can feel her feet pressing into the cold floor, but she does not think she will be able to move. Stuck, she realizes.
Paralyzed with fear.
 
 
“Lydia?” his voice booms, “Lydia!”
 
 
The cellar is dark now, the inky moonless night a sign from Jesus that He is here with her, watching over her. Protecting her. Holding out His soft white hand for her.
It won’t be long now,
she thinks.
 
 
Michael stirs behind her, his breathing hard and jagged like an agitated dog. Her eyes return to the top of the stairs where the minister’s monstrous shape fills the doorway. She cannot make out his face but can hear him groping for the light switch, flipping it on and off again in vain. Cutting the wires had been a wise precaution and her heart flutters with pride. He begins his descent and she forces herself to move a little, stepping back an inch or two to prove she can do it. Sweat burns in her eyes, blurs her vision. She blinks. She remembers to breathe. A whining sound curls up out of her ear and she wonders if an insect has crawled down into it and gotten stuck. She wonders if an insect has set up housekeeping inside her ear. An insect or perhaps even a worm.
A bloodsucker.
Shuddering, she looks back up the stairs and watches him slowly sink down into this awful place, this tomb of despair. Clutching the wobbly banister, his hand squeals against the wood.
He’s insane,
she thinks.
He will stop at nothing.
 
 
“Please don’t,” she begs, but it is only a whisper and she doubts he has heard it.
 
 
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he says, his voice garbled and slippery.
I’m going to have to kill you is all.
 
 
Her eyes burn and tear, and sweat sprouts from her body like fresh clover, and soon she is a whole wet field of it and it is running out of her, it is running down her back, down her legs to her feet. Everything seems to be moving at once and it is very loud inside her head. It is the volume turned up to maximum on a television game show. It is the sound of her dead mother screaming.
 
 
Her hand aches and she remembers that she is holding the gun. Her hand has gone brittle and stiff around the pistol, and it is heavy, impossibly heavy. He has reached the bottom of the staircase and he is moving toward her and she knows that he is going to grab her, he is going to grab her and it is going to hurt and then he is going to kill her.
Please, don’t! Please stop!
 
 
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, but his voice is strange and distant and she does not believe him.
Daddy? Is it you?
 
 
“She has a gun,” Michael shouts.
 
 
“You
tricked
me,” she says.
 
 
“I just want to talk.”
 
 
“You lied to me. You
tricked
me.”
 
 
“She has a fucking gun!”
 
 
The gun is heavier now and her muscles strain to hold it up. “Shut
up!”
she screams. “Don’t come any closer!
Don’t!
”
 
 
“Put down the gun, Lydia.”
 
 
“You
lied
to me. You . . . you took . . . you took
advantage of me.
I was just . . . I was just a stupid girl. I was stupid . . . I didn’t know any better . . . and you put a spell on me. . . . I
trusted
you. . . . I
believed in
you.” Her head throbs and the little slippery worms begin to dance. He comes upon her, his swarming bulk. “Don’t come any closer,” she warns. “I’ve asked you nicely.
Please.
” But he refuses to listen to her even now, in the moment of his death, and it insults her profoundly, and she cannot forgive him. “You’re not
listening!
” she shouts. “You’ve never listened to me.”
 
 
Wait!
 
 
No more waiting!
 
 
The blast of the gunshot is deafening. The cellar fills with smoke and a hazy, stifling heat. He makes a sound—
pop
—and the air runs out of him. He falls down on the floor.
 
 
Everything finally stops. The world stops. The gun simmers in her hand. Pulling the trigger had felt good, and now the gun is clean and hollow, like her heart. Death crowds the room with ghosts and a strange cold glow spreads like mist across the floor. There is her father with his five o’clock stubble. And there. There is Mama.
She shall have music wherever she goes.
 
 
“I think you killed him,” Michael says.
 
 
“He tricked me,” she explains.
 
 
“You’d better put on the lamp.”
 
 
She gropes her way to the oil lamp and lights it, waiting for her eyes to adjust. She looks down at the body on the floor. It quivers a little. An odor rises up to her nostrils. Urine, she thinks, wondering distantly if she has wet her pants. His blood makes a stream across the floor. It collects in a puddle and wets the soles of her boots.
 
 
“I think he’s dead, Lydia,” the doctor informs her.
 
 
“My feet,” she says softly. “My feet are all wet.”
 
 
“Michael?” a voice shouts down the stairs. It’s a woman. “Michael, are you all right?”
 
 
“Annie? Down here!”
 
 
Annie Knowles stumbles down the stairs. How she has gotten herself free escapes Lydia. She is holding up Lydia’s daddy’s ax, the one he always kept on the back porch, and it looks as though she is more than prepared to use it. “Thank God you’re all right,” she says to her husband, but then she comes upon the puddle of blood, the body on the ground, and lets out a whimper, like she’s been hit from behind.
 
 
“Check his pulse,” Michael says. “I think she killed him.”
 
 
Lydia blinks and blinks, unable to comprehend how Annie has gotten free. It’s a conspiracy, she realizes. Another trick. They’ve been tricking her all along.
 
 
“Look what you’ve done,” Annie says to her, cradling the rusty ax in her arms like a baby.
 
 
“What?” Lydia gasps, confused, suddenly terrified.
 
 
Annie drops to her knees by the body and sobs, a foul groan curling out of her mouth. “You killed him. You killed your husband!”
 
 
Perplexed, Lydia reels unsteadily. “What? I can’t hear. . . . I have worms . . . my ears.”
 
 
“Oh my God! He’s
dead!”
Annie whines, doubling over as if she were in pain. “Oh my
God!
Simon!
Simon!
”
 
 
Lydia looks down at the dead man. “Simon?” she says, bewildered. “What are you doing down there?”
 
 
But he has fallen asleep, and she sees no point in waiting around for him to wake up.
 
 
84
 
 
“HURRY UP and give me that ax,” Michael tells Annie.
 
 
“Oh, Michael!” She hands him the ax. “Hurry. She’s got a can of gasoline up there.”
 
 
“Move away.” He swings the ax, smacking the chain with its blade. With each strike, the floor vibrates up through his legs. The briny smell of battered cement fills his lungs. After several tries, he feels the chain snap and release. He is free.
 
 
Gasoline drips through the floorboards. Michael takes Annie’s hand and they climb the stairs. “Lydia!” He searches the first floor and finds the minister out cold on the living room floor. “Lydia!”
 
 
The box of matches drops. He finds her in the kitchen on her hands and knees, trying to scoop them up.
 
 
“It’s over now,” he coaxes. “Put the matches down.”
 
 
“I don’t want to go.” Lydia shakes her head, an adamant child. “I don’t like it there.”
 
 
Sirens scream up the driveway. There is the sound of feet trampling across the lawn.
 
 
“Lydia. Put the matches down.”
 
 
“Nobody understands me.” She picks up a single match. “I’m all alone now,” she says.
 
 
Just as she is about to strike the match, the room floods with cops. One of them grabs her from behind, but she bites his arm and runs out the door. The cop goes after her. From the window, Michael watches the cops surround her from all directions. He does not want to watch it. He doesn’t want to see her being caught. For some reason, he cannot bear it.
 
 
“You folks all right?”
 
 
“Detective Bascombe,” Annie says, tears coming up her throat. “She shot Simon Haas. He’s in the cellar. He’s dead.”
 
 
85
 
 
SIMON HAAS IS BURIED in the Union Cemetery on Shaker Road. Annie attends the funeral on her own. Lydia Haas is there, handcuffed to Detective Bascombe. She is wearing a black suit and a veil, but Annie can still see her face, her eyes, which are drained of color and dart cautiously about, as though she is in the presence of her enemies.
 
 
After the service, people float toward their cars. Annie watches Bascombe lead the widow away. He is exceedingly gentle with her, Annie observes, removing the handcuff from his own wrist and replacing it on hers. Noticing that she is crying, he pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and offers it to her, and she nods and takes it and dabs at her eyes. The gesture seems to comfort her, and Annie finds herself wondering if it is the same handkerchief Bascombe had offered to her, and if he had ever washed it. The idea of their tears mingling on that square of cloth fills her with a strange remorse. Bascombe helps Lydia into the back of his car, then gets in behind the wheel. Annie continues across the grass, but her eyes remain on Lydia in the backseat. She knows that neither of them will fully recover from Simon’s death. Lydia takes off her veil, and then as if sensing Annie’s gaze, meets her eyes. For a long moment, neither of them moves. Bascombe starts the car and slowly pulls out as Lydia’s hand rises up like a flag of surrender and touches the glass.
 
 
 
In the afternoon, Annie and some of the people from the college drive over to Simon’s house to take care of the dogs. Over tea in his kitchen, they have a discussion about what to do with them. Annie volunteers to take one, a female named Grace. The remaining Danes will go to other willing faculty members. Outside, the wind comes in gusts. The chimes jangle and spin. The dishes in the cupboard tremble slightly. The door opens suddenly, as if someone has entered. It commands their attention, allows them each a brief and contemplative glimpse of the lake. The door slams shut with finality, and Annie knows—perhaps they all know—that it is Simon’s way of saying good-bye.

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