An Air That Kills (16 page)

“Damned if I wouldn't if I could find them,” Turee said, rather pleased by her fit of temper. It meant that she wasn't too submerged in her grief to react to ordinary stimuli.

She held Harry's shirt to her mouth again, and if Turee hadn't known better he might have taken it for a gesture of affection. “What was in the letter he wrote to—to Esther?”

“I don't know.”

“You haven't seen it?”

“No.”

“Then she could be lying, deliberately lying, pretending there's such a letter to make me feel bad.”

“That's not very reasonable, is it?”

“You don't know Esther.”

“Only for ten years.”

“Nobody knows what goes on inside somebody else.”

“There's the circumstantial evidence of their actions and words. When you see a man obviously enjoying his dinner you can assume he feels hungry and thinks the food is good.”

“Assuming and knowing—there's an appalling gap between them. And I fell into it.” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks and she jabbed at her eyes viciously as if they were traitors betraying her. “The night—Saturday night—when I told Ron about the baby I could see he was surprised, shocked even, but I thought he was pleased too, pleased because he loved me, and the baby was the bond of our love, and we would all be together in the future. That's what I
assumed.
What I know now is that he didn't want any future with me in it, he'd rather die. He'd rather
die.
”

“Don't blame yourself so much, Thelma.”

“There's no one else to blame.” Her lower lip was begin­ning to puff and her eyes had swollen and reddened. “How could he have done it, deserted me, left me to face every­thing alone?”

“Thelma . . .”

“I thought he was a man, not a nasty little coward. No, no, what in God's name am I saying—he wasn't a coward! He—I don't know. I don't know! Oh Ron. Oh
Ron!”
She seemed to be clinging wildly to a pendulum that swung between the extremes of love and hate, grief and fury. “I can't stand it. I can't go on living without him.”

“You must.”

“I can't, I can't do it.”

“You have to think of your child.”

She folded her arms across her abdomen as if she suddenly had a notion that the fetus was already aware and must be protected from the sight and sound of strangers who might be hostile. “What will happen to us, Ralph, to him and me?”

“I don't know.”

“I had such high hopes, such wonderful plans.”

This was Thelma stripped down to essentials, like a hot rod with its top removed, its fenders missing, its engine exposed and unmuffled and its twin pipes roaring,
I
and
me.
All of Thelma's high hopes had been built on deceit and her wonderful plans made entirely at the expense of other people.

Something struck the front window and landed on the porch with a plop. Thelma jumped, as if the little sound had been loud as a cannon, aimed at her.

“Probably the evening paper,” Turee said. “I'll bring it in if you like.”

“I don't like. I—will it be in, about Ron?”

“Perhaps.”

“And me?”

“I'm not sure who knows about you, except for Harry and Esther and myself.” A few minutes later he was forced to add, silently,
and the entire police department.

The account of Ron's death was headlined on the front page of the paper, PROMINENT TORONTONIAN FOUND DEAD IN GEORGIAN BAY. Esther had apparently refused to provide a recent photograph of Ron, so some newspaperman had scrounged around in the file room and came up with a picture taken several years previously at a New Year's Eve party at the Granite Club. Ron was grinning self-consciously into the camera, serpentine entwining his neck and bits of confetti clinging to his hair and his dinner jacket. Both the picture and the caption, GALLOWAY IN A GAYER MOOD, were in incredibly bad taste. Turee had a futile hope that Esther wouldn't see it. That Thelma should see it was inevitable, but somehow this seemed more fitting to Turee, since all of Thelma's recent actions indicated her lack of the sense of propriety that was so strong in Esther.

Although Thelma hadn't wanted him to bring in the news­paper in the first place, she was now watching him with nervous impatience, twisting and untwisting her small plump hands. “Well, what does it
say?”

“Read it for yourself.”

“No. I can't. My eyes hurt.”

“All right. First, there's a factual account of how and where he was found. I see no point in reading that aloud, it will only upset you.”

“Go on from there, then.”

“ ‘An autopsy has been ordered. Authorities are still investi­gating the possibility of accidental death, although the present evidence points to suicide. A letter received this morning by his wife, the former Esther Ann Billings, allegedly indicated Galloway's intention of killing himself. This letter is now in the hands of the police, who, because of its delicate and personal nature, refused to release its contents to the press.' ”

“She gave the letter to the
police?
” Thelma's tone was in­credulous, and Turee's would have matched it if he'd spoken. It seemed incongruous to him that Esther should have handed such a personal letter over to the police. The locker rooms of a police department could spring as many leaks as locker rooms anywhere else, and Esther was sophisticated enough to know this. Perhaps she'd had no choice and the police had demanded the letter as evidence of intent to commit suicide. Or perhaps Esther had meant, without think­ing of the consequences to herself or her children, to involve Thelma, immediately and publicly.

Thelma said, “I'm in the letter, I suppose?”

“Yes.

“By
name?”

“I think so.”

“So it's only a matter of time until everybody in town knows. My God, how can I face it?”

“You have friends.”

“Ron's friends, and Harry's. None of my own, not one.”

“There's still a solution,” Turee said. “If you'll accept it, if you'll be reasonable.”

But she turned away, closing off the face of reason as if by a stone door. “I won't.”

“You haven't even . . .”

“Hide behind Harry, that's your solution?”

“Harry's willing, I told you that. Don't underestimate him. He's a fine man, a generous man.”

“Oh, I know. Good old Harry, always willing to give his last shirt to a friend—or lose it to him in a poker game. Harry's such a good loser, is that why everyone likes him so much? He loses so gently and gracefully. But he loses. He always misses the boat. Why?”

“Maybe he doesn't want to go any place.”

“Well, I do. And I will. Anything will be better than going on living with Harry, in this house, in this town.”

Her tone was final, and as if for emphasis she picked up her needle again. In and out of the holes of a button her hand moved, quick, precise, without a tremor. Either the pendulum had stopped swinging, or Thelma had let go of it.

Turee rose and crossed the room, awkwardly and painfully. His legs had gone numb and his feet felt as if they were being pierced by a thousand needles, all sharper than the one Thelma was wielding. She looked up and met his questioning gaze. “Stop worrying about me,” she said bluntly. “I'll be all right as long as I keep busy, keep doing things. Tomorrow I'll start on the baby's layette. Everything will be sewn by hand . . . You're not leaving, Ralph?”

“It's getting rather late.”

“I was hoping you'd stay until Harry comes for his clothes. He's probably seen the papers and he'll be very upset. He's terribly emotional about things—friends, home, mother, lost dogs.”

“Aren't you?”

“Me? I haven't any friends, and I never had either a home or a mother or owned a dog. Does that answer your ques­tion?”

“Not very satisfactorily.”

“How you love to analyze people, Ralph, but please don't try it on me.”

Turee remembered Harry's saying similar words early Sun­day morning while they were driving from Wiarton back to the lodge:
Just don't start analyzing Thelma. I love her the way she is. Let her have her dreams.

Well, she had them, Turee thought dryly. What a blind fool Harry had been. Not like a husband, but like a too-­permissive parent, overly ready to cover up a child's errors, and eager to accept the most comfortable explanations.

“I'll make you some tea, Ralph. Perhaps you'd like a sand­wich, too?”

“No thanks to both. I'll wait for Harry, though.”

“That's good of you.” She picked up the pile of clothes from the chesterfield and rose, a little clumsily, as if she were not yet used to the new proportion of weight in her body. “If you'll excuse me, I'll finish Harry's packing.”'

“Where is he going to stay?”

“He told me he's taking a room at a hotel. I don't know which one. I didn't ask.”

“Will he keep on with his job here?”

“I didn't ask that either.” She paused in the doorway. “I keep telling you, but you still don't seem to understand. Harry and I are through. He is part of the past. We must both start right now forgetting each other. I've made my decision—it wouldn't be fair to Harry if I kept in touch with him, if I fostered any hope in him that we would get together again. I don't want to know where he's living or what he's doing. I wish him good luck, that's all. And hap­piness too.”

“How magnanimous.”

She missed the irony. “I bear no grudge against Harry. Why should I? He did his best.”

After she'd left the room, Turee picked up a magazine, but it was impossible for him to read. He found himself listening to Thelma's step, on the stairs and along the hall, heavy and uncertain as if she were dragging something behind her. He could hear her moving around in the bedroom directly over­head, opening drawers, closing them, mumbling to herself now and then, muted sounds that disintegrated before they could reach Turee as words.

She's frightened silly, he thought. If Harry could force himself to take a really firm stand with her, she might be willing to give in, to lean on him. Thelma's repeated protesta­tions of independence seemed to be covering up a real need to lean. Perhaps the reason she couldn't yet do it was her fear that Harry might not be able to bear her weight. It was now up to Harry to prove his strength.

The telephone began to ring in the next room and Thelma came downstairs to answer it, quite slowly, as if she knew in advance that the call couldn't be important, all the important things had already happened to her.

“Hello . . . Yes, this is Mrs. Bream . . . Is he hurt? . . . Oh, I see . . . No, I can't come myself, it's impossible. I'll see if I can get somebody else . . . Thank you for telling me. Good-bye.”

Turee met her at the door of the living room. “Harry's been injured?”

“Not badly. He jammed the back of a street car on College Avenue and he has a few head cuts. He's in the emergency ward at Toronto General. They're going to keep him there overnight.”

“Why, if it's nothing serious?”

“Why?” The corners of her mouth twisted in bitterness. “Because he's too drunk to go anywhere.”

FIFTEEN

The curtained cubicle was so small that Turee barely had room to stand beside the bed. Harry lay on his back, his eyes closed, his entire head bandaged very tightly, so that the skin of his forehead had contracted into a petulant frown.

“Harry . . .”

“He's out,” the nurse said. She was a type Turee recog­nized, stout, middle-aged, efficient, with a false front of maternality that wouldn't deceive a child but had fooled many an adult. She added, “He talks a blue streak, then passes out, and a minute later he's talking again.”

“I thought he was only slightly hurt. All those band­ages . . .”

“They don't mean anything. Head cuts bleed a lot so the doctor usually applies a pressure bandage for a day or two in case of hemorrhage. Actually he's only got eleven stitches. He'll suffer more from the hangover. And other things.”

“Such as?”

“As soon as he's released from here they'll take him down and book him for drunk driving. He'll get a stiff fine. Too bad, him with no job and his wife pregnant. Maybe that's why he did it.”

“Did what?”

“Drank so much. Some men get all emotional over their first baby. I guess it strains their sense of responsibility. Do you want to stay here with him for a while?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I have things to do. If he gets rambunctious, just give me a buzz.”

“All right.”

“I'm Miss Hutchins.”

Turee stood in silence at the foot of the bed, observing the differences that lack of consciousness emphasized. Harry's affability seemed to be unmasked as weakness, his urge to please as anxiety. And this is what Thelma sees, he thought, Harry with his guards down. This is what she based her decision on. She can't afford to lean on a straw.

“Harry.”

Harry shook his head back and forth on the pillow as if he was trying to shake off the sound of his own name nagging him back into a world he wanted to forget.

“It's Ralph, Harry. You don't have to talk. I just want you to know I'm here.”

“Thelma?”

“She's all right. She's at home. The next door neighbor is staying with her, a Mrs. Mal—somebody.”

“My head hurts. Wanna sit
up.
”

“I'm not sure you . . .”

“Wanna sit up.”

“All right.” Turee cranked the bed up halfway. “That better?”

“Nothing's better. Nothing's better in the whole world.” His slurred speech and glassy, unfocused eyes made it clear that either Harry was still drunk or under the influence of a sedative. “
Nothing.
See?”

“I see. Sure.”

“You're a good head, Ralph. There's no better head than you, nowhere. See?”

“Sure, sure. Now take it easy.”

Harry closed his eyes and lapsed into incoherence for a time. Only the odd word was distinguishable, but his angry, guttural tone and his bellicose expression indicated strongly that Harry was telling somebody off.

Turee moved up to the head of the bed and put his hand lightly and firmly on Harry's shoulder “Harry, can you hear me?”

“Can't hear you. Go away.”

“What's bothering you?”

“I bumped into a street car. Damn thing wouldn't move. I was in a hurry.”

“Where were you going?”

“No place. No place to go.”

“Before you hit the street car, Harry, what happened?”

“I had a little drink.”

“I know that.”

“One little drink. 'S what I told the policeman. 'S what I'm telling you.”

“I thought you were at work. You don't usually drink between office calls.”

“No office calls. No more office calls.”

“What do you mean?”

“ ‘Take your goddam pills,' I said, ‘I quit.' I said, ‘The whole bloody bunch of you can go jump in the lake.' Lake.” He repeated the word, wincing, as if it had pierced his consciousness like a needle. “Lake. I was in a bar. I heard them talking about a lake. Ron. That's what Ron did. Jumped in the lake. Isn't that funny, hah? Isn't that funny?” Tears were streaming down his face, and he had begun to hiccough. “Wanted to jump in the lake too. Couldn't find it. Couldn't find the bloody lake.”

“You can find it some other time,” Turee said dryly. “Right now you're supposed to take it easy.”

“Street car in my way. Wouldn't move. ‘Giddyap,' I said, ‘giddyap,' and I stepped on the gas. Didn't mean to hit it, just wanted to push it along, get it started. I was in a hurry. I was—where was I going? Can't remember.”

“It doesn't matter.”

Harry wiped his face on a corner of the bed sheet, then held it against his mouth to stem the flow of hiccoughs. “My head hurts. I broke something. Did I—broke something?”

“No.” He wishes he had, Turee thought. It would be easier on him if he could misdirect his misery at something physical. But all Harry's breaks are in places no doctor could reach to use a splint or apply a cast. “You've got a hangover,” Turee added bluntly. “How much did you have to drink?”

“Just one little . . .”

“Come off it. I'm not a policeman. How much?”

“Don't, don't, don't. I can't remember.”

“All right.”

“I needed a drink. I quit my job.”

“Why? You've always liked your job.”

“No wife any more, no home, might as well have no job, start from scratch.”

“That's pretty childish logic. How do you expect to live?”

“I don't know. I don't care.”

“Do you think the company will take you back? You've been with them for years.”

“I'm not going back.”

“You could apply for a transfer to another city.”

“No wife, no home, no job.”

“Also no friends, if you want to play it that way.”

“Friends.” Harry spit the word across the room as if it had a foul taste. Then he turned and buried his face in the pillow and started to curse. He kept it up for a long time.

“You're beginning,” Turee said finally, “to repeat your­self.”

“Shut your goddam . . .”

“All right, all right, all right.”

“How the hell did you get here anyway? Who asked you to come?”

“Thelma. I was with her when the hospital phoned.”

“Doing what? Or is that too personal?”

Turee, white with anger, explained in very elementary lan­guage what he was not doing with Thelma. “Now is that clear enough for you or shall I draw pictures?”

“Goddam you, shut up! Shut up, shut up!”

As if on cue, Miss Hutchins, the nurse, reappeared. She wore the professional smile which she picked up outside the door like a surgical gown and left there when she departed. “Just what is going on in here? Do you want to wake the whole hospital? How does your head feel?”

Without waiting for any answers, she began adjusting the tray holder on Harry's bed. “Here we are. Some nice Cream of Wheat. And a cup of chocolate with a marshmallow—one of the new dietitians is bugs on marshmallows, puts them in
everything. And two little pills to help with the jitters.”

Harry glanced briefly at the pills. “Chlorpromazine.”

“Now how did you know that?”

“Never mind. I won't take them anyway. I want my clothes.”

“What for?”

“I've got to get out of here. Where are my clothes?”

“Where I put them. So let's not have a hassle, Mr. Bream. In a hospital when the doctors says you stay, you stay. Might as well pretend you're a guest and be polite about it.”

“I have to talk to my wife. It's urgent.”

“Look, Mr. Bream, even if you managed to get out of here, you wouldn't be allowed to go home. You were driving while drunk and involved in an accident. You'll have to be taken down to the jail and booked. There's a policeman at the desk now waiting to question you about the accident. This isn't the Royal York Hotel but it's better than a cell in the local pokey.”

“Bail. I could get bail. Ralph, how much money have you got?”

“Here?” Turee said. “About a dollar and thirty-five cents. In the bank, a little more.”

“Well, there's Bill Winslow or Joe Hepburn. Or Esther. No, we couldn't bother Esther. But Bill would . . .”

“Bill won't,” Miss Hutchins said bluntly. “Not tonight, anyway. Now if you behave yourself, you can stay here. You're warm, comfy, well looked after. But if you start throwing fits they'll haul you up to the psycho ward. Some of the beds there have cages around them. Now do you want to spend the night locked up like a monkey in a zoo, or are you going to be a good boy, eat your Cream of Wheat, take your pills and stop arguing?”

Harry peered at her resentfully from under his bandages. “You're very
rude.
”

“Am I now?” Miss Hutchins' smile for the first time was one of genuine amusement. “Well, I've been handling drunks for thirty years. I guess it's not the best way in the world to learn manners. Think you can feed yourself?”

“Of course I can feed myself.”

“Try.”

Harry tried. He picked up the spoon and dipped it in the dish of cereal, but his hand was shaking so badly he didn't attempt to raise the spoon to his mouth. He lay back and closed his eyes. “I'm not hungry.”

“None of you are,” Miss Hutchins said dryly. “But some protein helps with the shakes. The pills ought to help, too. Are you going to take them?”

“I—guess so.”

Miss Hutchins gave him the pills in a tiny paper cup and Harry swallowed them like an expert, without any water.

“There now,” Miss Hutchins said. “I'll take your tray away and we'll try eating again later after you've had a little rest.”

“Chlorpromazine never affects me. I've had it dozens of times.”

“Is that a fact?”

She removed the tray and cranked down the bed. Within a few minutes Harry was asleep again, snoring heavily through his open mouth.

Turee followed Miss Hutchins into the corridor. “Should I stay around?”

“Oh, there's no reason to. He'll be fine. It's nearly eight o'clock, he may sleep clear through the night.”

“I hope so,” Turee said, wishing he could do the same, sleep through the night right up until noon the next day. By noon some things would be settled. Harry would be free, and Esther would have weathered the first day of widowhood. Perhaps, too, the autopsy would be completed and any un­certainty about Ron's death dispelled. Turee wondered, and felt a little shocked at himself for wondering, if Ron had made a will, and if he, or any of the rest of Ron's friends, were mentioned in it.
I can't help it. I have a dollar thirty­-five in my pocket.

“. . . a funny thing about Mr. Bream,” Miss Hutchins was saying. “Before I took in his tray, I checked the result of the blood alcohol test they ran on him. It was only one-tenth of one percent. In a normal person that's not even intoxication level, yet Mr. Bream was almost dead drunk when they brought him in. I guess he's the kind who can't hold his liquor.”

“I guess he is.”

“Or else he's under some severe emotional strain which aggravated the effect of the alcohol. It's odd his wife didn't come to see him.” Miss Hutchins' tone was casual, there wasn't the faintest emphasis on the word
wife.
But her eyes gave her away. They were honed sharp as a fortune teller's on the lookout for some slight reaction that would indicate she was on the right road to her client's secrets. “When I talked to her on the telephone she sounded quite cool and collected, just the kind of person you'd think would rise to an emergency.”

Noon. Noon tomorrow,
Turee said to himself as a child says Christmas
. By noon some things will be settled and Miss Hutchins will have faded into the past and good riddance.

He had no reason to suspect that a long time later Miss Hutchins would reappear in his mind, her features distinct, her voice persistent, her outlines as precise as they were now while he was watching her bustle off down the corridor to the nurses' station.

Turee began walking in the opposite direction toward the exit door. The policeman Miss Hutchins had referred to was waiting at the registration desk, talking to a young man wearing a crew cut and a trench coat.

As Turee was about to pass, the young man turned and his face brightened with recognition. “Why, hello, Professor.”

“Good evening.”

“I guess you don't remember me. I'm Rod Blake. I was in a poli sci course of yours a couple of years ago.”