An American Dream (9 page)

“Well, then, if you don’t mind, had you been intimate with your wife this evening?”

“No.”

“Though there had been some drinking?”

“Quite a bit.”

“Was she drunk?”

“She must have had a lot of liquor in her system. However, she wasn’t drunk. Deborah could hold her liquor very well.”

“But you had a quarrel, perhaps?”

“Not exactly.”

“Please explain.”

“She was fearfully depressed. She said some ugly things.”

“You didn’t get angry?”

“I was used to it.”

“Would you care to say what she said?”

“What does a wife ever accuse a husband of? She tells him one way or another that he’s not man enough for her.”

“Some wives,” said Roberts, “complain that their husband is running around too much.”

“I had my private life. Deborah had hers. People who come from Deborah’s background don’t feel at ease until their marriage has congealed into a marriage of convenience.”

“This sounds sort of peaceful,” said Roberts.

“Obviously, it wasn’t. Deborah suffered from profound depressions. But she kept them to herself. She was a proud woman. I doubt if even her closest friends were aware of the extent of these depressions. When she felt bad, she would go to bed and stay in bed for a day or two at a time. She would keep to herself. I haven’t seen a great deal of her this last year, but you can certainly check with the maid.”

“We got a couple of men talking to her right now,” said the older detective with a wide happy smile, as if his only desire in the world was to assist me.

“How about the coffee?” I asked.

“Coming up,” said Roberts. He went to the door, called down, and came back. “What did she have to be depressed about?” he asked easily.

“She was religious. A very religious Catholic. And I’m not Catholic. I think she felt that to be married to me kept her in mortal sin.”

“So as a very religious Catholic,” said Roberts, “she decided to save her immortal soul by committing suicide?”

There was just the hint of a pause between us. “Deborah had an unusual mind,” I said. “She talked often of suicide to me, particularly when she was in one of her depressions. Particularly in the last few years. She had a miscarriage, you see, and couldn’t have any more children.” But I had done myself a damage. Not with them; rather with some connection I had to an instinct within me. That instinct sickened suddenly with disgust; the miscarriage, after all, had been my loss as well.

There was of course nothing to do but go on. “I don’t think it was the miscarriage so much. Deborah had a sense of something bad inside herself. She felt haunted by demons. Does that mean anything to you?”

“No,” said Roberts, “I don’t know how to put demons on a police report.”

The older detective winked at me again with great joviality.

“Roberts, you don’t strike me as the type to commit suicide,” I said.

“It’s true. I’m not the type.”

“Well, then, don’t you think a little charity might be in order when you try to understand a suicidal mind?”

“You’re not on television, Mr. Rojack,” Roberts said.

“Look, I know where I am. I’m doing my best to try to explain something to you. Would you be happier if I were under sedation?”

“I might be more convinced,” said Roberts.

“Does that remark indicate suspicion?”

“I didn’t hear you.”

“Does that remark indicate suspicion?”

“Now, wait a minute, Mr. Rojack, let’s get squared away. There must be newspapermen downstairs already. There’ll be a mob at the morgue and another mob at the precinct. It can’t come as any surprise to you that this will hit the newspapers tomorrow. It may be front page. You can be hurt if there’s a hint of irregularity in what is written tomorrow: you can be ruined forever if the coroner’s report has any qualifications in it. My duty as a police officer is to find out the facts and communicate them to the proper places.”

“Including the press?”

“I work with them every day of the year. I work with you just tonight and maybe tomorrow, and let’s hope not any more than that. I want to clear this up. I want to be able to go down and say to those reporters, ‘I think she jumped—go easy on that poor bastard in there.’ You read me? I don’t want to have to say, ‘This character’s a creep—he may have given her a shove.’ ”

“All right,” I said, “fair enough.”

“If you wish,” he said, “you can answer no questions and just ask for a lawyer.”

“I’ve no desire to ask for a lawyer.”

“Oh, you can have one,” said Roberts.

“I don’t want one. I don’t see why I need one.”

“Then let’s keep talking.”

“If you want,” I said, “to understand Deborah’s suicide—so far as I understand it—you’ll have to go along with my comprehension of it.”

“You were speaking of demons,” Roberts said.

“Yes. Deborah believed they possessed her. She saw herself as evil.”

“She was afraid of Hell?”

“Yes.”

“We come back to this. A devout Catholic believes she’s going to Hell, so she decides to save herself by committing suicide.”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Absolutely,” said Roberts. “You wouldn’t mind repeating this to a priest, would you now?”

“It would be as hard to explain to him as it is to you.”

“Better take your chances with me.”

“It’s not easy to go on,” I said. “Could I have that coffee now?”

The big elderly detective got up and left the room. While he was gone, Roberts was silent. Sometimes he would look at me, and sometimes he would look at a photograph of Deborah which stood in a silver frame on the bureau. I lit a cigarette and offered him the pack. “I never smoke,” he said.

The other detective was back with the coffee. “You don’t mind if I took a sip of it,” he said. “The maid put some Irish in.” Then he gave his large smile. A sort of fat sweet corruption emanated from him. I gagged on the first swallow of the coffee. “Oh, God, she’s dead,” I said.

“That’s right,” said Roberts, “she jumped out the window.”

I put out the cigarette and blew my nose, discovering to my misery that a sour stem of vomit had worked its way high up my throat into the base of my nose and had now been flushed through my nostril onto the handkerchief. My nose burned. I took another swallow of coffee and the Irish whiskey sent out a first creamy spill of warmth.

“I don’t know if I can explain it to you,” I said. “Deborah believed there was special mercy for suicides. She thought it was a
frightful thing to do, but that God might forgive you if your soul was in danger of being extinguished.”

“Extinguished,” Roberts repeated.

“Yes, not lost, but extinguished. Deborah believed that if you went to Hell, you could still resist the Devil there. You see she thought there’s something worse than Hell.”

“And that is?”

“When the soul dies before the body. If the soul is extinguished in life, nothing passes on into Eternity when you die.”

“What does the Church have to say about this?”

“Deborah thought this didn’t apply for an ordinary Catholic. But she saw herself as a fallen Catholic. She believed her soul was dying. I think that’s why she wanted to commit suicide.”

“That’s the only explanation you can offer?”

Now I waited for a minute. “I don’t know if there’s any basis to this, but Deborah believed she was riddled with cancer.”

“What do you think?”

“It may have been true.”

“Did she go to doctors?”

“Not to my knowledge. She distrusted doctors.”

“She didn’t take pills,” Roberts asked, “just liquor?”

“No pills.”

“How about marijuana?”

“Hated it. She’d walk out of a room if she thought somebody was smoking it. She said once that marijuana was the Devil’s grace.”

“You ever take it?”

“No.” I coughed. “Oh, once or twice I might have taken a social puff, but I hardly remember.”

“All right,” he said, “let’s get into this cancer. Why do you believe she had it?”

“She talked about it all the time. She felt that as your soul died, cancer began. She would always say it was a death which was not like other deaths.”

The fat detective farted. Abrupt as that. “What is
your
name?” I asked.

“O’Brien.” He shifted in his seat, half at his ease, and lit a cigar. The smoke blended easily into the odor of the other fumes. Roberts looked disgusted. I had the feeling I was beginning to convince him for the first time. “My father died of cancer,” he said.

“I’m sorry to hear that. I can only say I wasn’t very happy to listen to Deborah’s theories because my mother passed away from leukemia.”

He nodded. “Look, Rojack, I might as well tell you. There’ll be an autopsy on your wife. It may or may not show what you’re talking about.”

“It may show nothing. Deborah could have been in a precancerous stage.”

“Sure. But it might be better all around if the cancer shows. Cause there is a correlation between cancer and suicide. I’ll grant you that.” Then he looked at his watch. “Some practical questions. Did your wife have a lot of money?”

“I don’t know. We never talked about her money.”

“Her old man’s pretty rich if she’s the woman I’m thinking of.”

“He may have disowned her when we married. I often said to friends that she was ready to give up her share of two hundred million dollars when she married me, but she wasn’t ready to cook my breakfast.”

“So far as you know, you’re not in her will?”

“If she has any money, I don’t believe she would have left it to me. It would go to her daughter.”

“Well, that’s simple enough to find out.”

“Yes.”

“All right, Mr. Rojack, let’s get into tonight. You came to visit her after two weeks. Why?”

“I missed her suddenly. That still happens after you’re separated.”

“What time did you get here?”

“Several hours ago. Maybe nine o’clock.”

“She let you in?”

“The maid did.”

“Did you ever give the maid a bang?” asked O’Brien.

“Never.”

“Ever want to?”

“The idea might have crossed my mind.”

“Why didn’t you?” O’Brien went on.

“It would have been disagreeable if Deborah found out.”

“That makes sense,” said O’Brien.

“All right,” said Roberts, “you came into this room, and then what?”

“We talked for hours. We drank and we talked.”

“Less than half the bottle is gone. That’s not much for two heavy drinkers over three hours.”

“Deborah had her share. I only took nips.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Everything. We discussed the possibility of getting together again. We agreed it was impossible. Then she cried, which is very rare for Deborah. She told me that she had spent an hour standing by the open window before I came, and that she had been tempted to jump. She felt as if God were asking her. She said she felt a woe afterward as if she’d refused Him. And then she said, ‘I didn’t have cancer before. But in that hour I stood by the window, it began in me. I didn’t jump and so my cells jumped. I know that.’ Those were her words. Then she fell asleep for a while.”

“What did you do?”

“I just sat in this chair by her bed. I felt pretty low, I can tell you. Then she woke up. She asked me to open the window. When she started to talk, she told me … do I really have to go into this?”

“Better if you would.”

“She told me my mother had had cancer and I had had it too,
and that I gave it to her. She said all the years we were lying in bed as husband and wife I was giving it to her.”

“What did you say?”

“Something equally ugly.”

“Please go into it,” said Roberts.

“I said that was just as well, because she was a parasite and I had work to do. I even said: if her soul were dying, it deserved to, it was vicious.”

“What did she do then?”

“She got out of bed and went over to the window, and said, ‘If you don’t retract that, I’ll jump.’ I was confident she didn’t mean it. Her very use of a word like ‘retract.’ I simply told her, ‘Well, then jump. Rid the world of your poison.’ I thought I was doing the right thing, that I might be breaking into her madness, into that tyrannical will which had wrecked our marriage. I thought I might win something decisive with her. Instead, she took a step on the ledge, and out she went. And I felt as if something blew back from her as she fell and brushed against my face.” I began to shudder; the picture I had given was real to me. “Then I don’t know what happened. I think I was half ready to follow her. Obviously I didn’t. Instead I called the police, and called down to the maid, and then I must have passed out for a moment because I came to lying on the floor, and thought, ‘You’re guilty of her death.’ So go slow for a while, will you, Roberts. This has not been easy.”

“Yeah,” said Roberts. “I think I believe you.”

“Excuse me,” said O’Brien. He got up just a bit heavily and went out.

“There’s a few formalities,” said Roberts. “If you can take it, I’d like you to come down to Four Hundred East Twenty-ninth for the identification, and then we’ll go over to the precinct and check out a few forms.”

“I hope I don’t have to tell this story too many times.”

“Just once more to a police stenographer. You can skip all the
details. No hell, heaven, cancer, nothing like that. None of the dialogue. Just that you saw her go.”

O’Brien came back with another detective who was introduced as Lieutenant Leznicki. He was Polish. He was about Roberts’ height, even thinner than Roberts, and looked to have an angry ulcer, for he moved with short irritable gestures. His eyes were a dull yellow-gray in color, and about the tint of a stale clam. His hair was an iron-gray and his skin was gray. He must have been fifty years old. Just as we were introduced, he sniffed the air with a boxer’s quick snort. Then he smiled irritably.

“Why’d you kill her, Rojack?” he asked.

“What’s up?” said Roberts.

“Her hyoid bone is broken.” Leznicki looked at me. “Why didn’t you say you strangled her before you threw her out?”

“I didn’t.”

“The doctor’s evidence shows you strangled her.”

“I don’t believe it. My wife fell ten stories and then was struck by a car.”