This Sweet Sickness (14 page)

“I don't know.” And she seemed suddenly anxious, reaching for the door handle.

“Well, think. Monday? Tuesday? Tomorrow? Tomorrow's Sunday.”

“I'm going to La Jolla.”

“When? For how long?”

“I don't know. I was planning to leave Tuesday.” She opened the door and got out.

He got out too, and stood on the sidewalk facing her. “You'll write, won't you? To let me know how long?” If it was for a couple of months, he thought, he would go out there too.

“Of course I will, Dave.” Then she thanked him for the lunch, words that he hated to hear and to which he made no reply save a smile.

“I'll call you tomorrow,” he said. “You didn't tell me when I can see you again.”

“There isn't much time, Dave, if I leave Tuesday. I might even be leaving Monday.”

“Say we can have dinner tomorrow.”

“I really can't, Dave. There're too many odds and ends to do here. Bye, bye, Dave!”

He watched her run up the short front walk, thought of the package in his pocket—wrapped again and with a new card—but it would take too long, she wouldn't have time even to accept it, even just to poke it in her pocket and run upstairs. But David walked back to his car whistling, feeling rich, not yet beginning to relive and explore the three hours and fifteen minutes he had spent with her. Parting from her always left him stunned, and yet for several minutes it was as if she were not really gone from his side. Then finally he would have to speak to someone, or think about some practical thing, and the sense of her presence would slowly fade.

David telephoned her on Sunday. She was leaving for La Jolla Monday for an indefinite length of time, and a friend of hers was going to see about subletting the apartment. She sounded hurried, and he did not want to add to her distractions at that moment by telling her that he might come out to La Jolla too, as soon as his three-week period at Cheswick was over. David had to show the incoming manager how the factory worked. The man was bright but ordinary, had a wife and three children, and his objective was the salary. The job was made for him, David thought.

On Monday he had an answer from Dickson-Rand. They were interested, and in five days he was to go up for an interview.

19

N
ine days later David received a letter from his Aunt Edie saying that Annabelle was not in La Jolla and that her parents knew nothing about any idea of hers to come. David sank down with the letter on his bed, and for a few seconds his thoughts drew a protective veil of incredulity over the wound: Annabelle's mother or one of her lousy brothers could have said she wasn't there just out of malice. He stood up, still feeling sickish, as if he had been hit in the pit of the stomach. He thought of all the days he could have spoken to her, even seen her, if she had been in Hartford, when he believed she was three thousand miles away. A sudden idea of calling her in Hartford made him feel weak. If she were in Hartford, it meant that she had been trying to avoid him. He thought of the three letters he had written to her and sent to La Jolla, wondered if someone in her family had opened them, or if they had been decent enough to send them on to Hartford?

David put on his coat and went downstairs. Mrs. McCartney, crossing the hall toward the dining room, nodded to him with a twitch of a smile. Mr. Muldaven, unlocking his room door on the right of the hall, hunched over his key and did not speak. To hell with them all, David thought. Nine more days and he would be gone. Two days ago the Beck's Brook police had dropped a small bombshell in the house: they had telephoned Mrs. McCartney to ask if David Kelsey was still living there and, not satisfied with the fact that he was, they had quite a chat with her. They had told her that David Kelsey's mother had been dead for fourteen years, and that they had had this information from an old friend of David's from his hometown in California, but the name of the friend was not mentioned. Mrs. McCartney, while eating this up, regurgitating and chewing it like a cud, professed to David to believe it a ridiculous lie. She had told them that he did have a mother and had spent every weekend with her for the past two years he had been living under her roof, but they had not believed her. David had listened to her in the downstairs hall, pretended to be as puzzled by what the officer had said as she, and had escaped as soon as he could to his room, where he tried to get a grip on himself. After all, Mrs. McCartney hadn't said the police would call back or that they wanted to see him. He would face it out in the house, he thought, and stick to his story that he had an invalid mother. Then just as he had been about to go down to the dining room that evening, he had heard Mrs. McCartney's light, rapid knock on his door, and he thought, she's coming to tell me that, by the way, the police want to see me, and his nerve left him.

“They said if you had a mother, where was she, and I couldn't tell them, because I didn't think you'd ever told me,” Mrs. McCartney said, her avid eyes fixed on David's eyes. “Because she wasn't in the nursing home in Newburgh. Or if she was under another name there, nobody at the place knew you.”

At that instant David felt he couldn't have kept the lie up if his life had depended on it. The vision of a nursing home didn't come to him, he couldn't think what she was ill with, and he admitted—he had foreseen it in a split second as a casual admission, but in two seconds he had begun to perspire and twitch like a criminal—that his mother really was dead, and that he went to New York on weekends just to get away from Froudsburg and to be alone for a couple of days a week. He said he had made up the story about his mother as the simplest way to avoid social obligations on his weekends, and that as time went on he had not known how to get out of it and had had to embroider it. And he had said he was sorry. Mrs. McCartney had nodded and smiled understandingly and with her head higher than usual had turned away, a proud ship sailing out of his room with her cargo of possible dirty linen.

Then David gathered his nerve, walked out of the house, and telephoned the Beck's Brook police station from the pharmacy. Soberly and calmly he told them the same story he had just told Mrs. McCartney, his words coming in a steady flow, and he apologized for the discrepancy in his story, but said he had not thought it of any importance. He said that in New York he stayed sometimes with friends and sometimes at a hotel, and that sometimes he went just for a day. His only purpose in going to the city was to get away from Froudsburg, a town he did not care for. It was Sergeant Terry to whom he spoke, and the sergeant seemed to be even amused by the made-up story of the invalid mother.

“As long as you're not doing this for the purpose of bigamy, Mr. Kelsey,” said Sergeant Terry.

“Never been married even once.”

“You were in New York the Sunday Delaney was killed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Staying where?”

“I didn't spend the night. I went to a museum and a movie and then drove back to Froudsburg.”

“Were you with anybody? See anybody you knew in New York?”

“No, I didn't. I was alone.”

“Um-m. See, we told Mrs. Delaney you said you were with your mother, and she told us your mother was dead.”

“Yes.” David knew how it had been. He frowned, gripping the telephone, waiting for the sergeant to add that Mrs. Delaney told them he spent his weekends in his own house.

“Ever see Mrs. Delaney in New York on any of those weekends?”

“No, I did not.”

“Ever try to? Ever ask her to meet you in New York?”

“No,” David replied so calmly, it sounded false. “What're you getting at, sergeant?”

“Were you ever in love with Mrs. Delaney?”

“What's that got to do with anything?”

“Mr. Kelsey,” with a chuckle, “it's the only thing that makes any sense. Are you in love with her now?”

David hesitated, protecting not himself but the privacy of his love.

“All right, Mr. Kelsey, is this the reason why Mr. Delaney came to talk to you with a gun?”

“It could be.”

“It must be. Had you ever made any threatening remarks to him, Mr. Kelsey?”

“I certainly did not.”

“You're sure?”

“You can verify me by asking his wife. The one time I ever spoke to Delaney, she was with us.”

“I see. Well—a darned good thing he didn't find you that Sunday.”

“That's what I think too.”

“All right, Mr. Kelsey. Maybe we will verify a few things with Mrs. Delaney.”

“I hope you do, sir,” David said firmly.

When he had stepped from the booth, one of his legs had almost given way under him. That had been Monday. He had thought: Annabelle was in La Jolla, and the police probably wouldn't take the trouble to telephone her out there in order to check his story. He might have a reprieve of weeks before the ax fell.

But now as he walked the darkening streets of Froudsburg with his aunt's letter in his pocket, he felt that his life depended on whether Annabelle were in Hartford or not, and it had nothing to do with his conversation with Sergeant Terry. What he had to find out was whether Annabelle had been lying to him in order to avoid seeing him. And after walking the streets for half an hour, he still couldn't summon the courage to call and find out. The dreary phrases of his aunt's letter depressed and angered him:
Why don't you give the girl up, Davy? . . . Her parents say she's just like her grandmother so-and-so who never did marry again though she was only twenty-two when her husband died. The family isn't good enough for you, Davy
. . . . He walked the gloomy streets, taking the darkest ones, as if their heavy shadows might steady him and let him go to that grimy pharmacy and telephone.

He saw the face of a clock in a dimly lighted hand laundry. Seven-ten. Four-ten in California. Which was it? Why did she avoid him? Was
she
playing a game, and would one day she rush into his arms and laugh and cry and say she loved him and had always loved him? He blew on his cold hands, turned up his coat collar, and pushed his hands back in his pockets. Every man he saw was carrying a bag of groceries, on his way home to his wife. David wondered if he would be able to find a house he liked within driving distance of Dickson-Rand. This time he would live in it seven days a week, no more split life and schizophrenia, no more hiding from half the world. And maybe in three months or in six Annabelle would want to come and live with him. It was unreasonable of him to expect that she would marry him less than a month after her husband died. David felt suddenly so calm and reasonable himself, the prospect of calling her in Hartford and of her answering the telephone began to lose its horror.

A block away a Bell telephone sign projected from the front of Michael's Tavern. The telephone booth was at the back, directly under a television screen that had not existed the last time David had been here, and which was now crackling with Western gunfire and horses' hooves. He hesitated a few steps inside the door, replied with a nod to Adolf's greeting, then went on toward the booth with a determination to make more noise, show a little more life than the television screen. What was ever ideal and perfect anyway? Annabelle would not be in a pink or blue nightgown, as he liked to think of her. Most likely she would have a drooling baby on her lap.

“Dave!” a surprised voice said. “Well, how do you do?” It was Wes, sitting in a booth opposite a woman with brown-streaked blond hair. “Sit down, Dave. This is Helen.”

David's first thought, not an intelligent one, he immediately realized, was that the woman was Laura, and he had been ready to run. Still flustered, he stammered, “How do you do, Helen?” and did not know how to extricate himself from Wes's grip on his left wrist.

“Helen, this is my most distinguished colleague, a man who will one day win the Nobel Prize, Mr. David Kelsey, chief engineer of Cheswick Fabrics, but leaving us for better things and greater glory. Sit down, Davy boy.”

Helen chuckled, the red-caked lips parting, and her hand slid forward on the table, ready to take Wes's again.

“I'm going to make a telephone call,” David said.

“You make it and I'll order you a drink. Break down, fellow.” He yanked David's wrist.

Smiling, David twisted his arm, but Wes held on with drunken obduracy. “Nope. Just that call,” David said.

“Isn't he good looking?” said Helen, as drunk as Wes.

“Calling that girl?” Wes asked with a wink.

David yanked his wrist free and Wes spilled out on the floor. Instantly David had him up again and back on the bench, and Wes's surprise struggled with anger for a moment, then his lips smiled uncertainly.

“Good grief!” Helen said, edging away from David.

“Davy, old boy, your nerves're getting you. I said sit down and have a drink. Well, you
are
calling that girl, aren't you? Is she going to marry you, Dave? I certainly hope so.”

David could neither speak nor leave, nor did he have a clear idea of what he wanted to say to them. Perhaps nothing. He turned away and went on to the telephone booth.

Just as he dialed the operator, the booth door was pulled open.

“Don't do it, Dave. You're making a mistake,” Wes said. “Seriously, I've been talking with Effie and she says—”

“Let me alone, Wes.” David tugged at the door to close it, but Wes had the door handle and the door barely moved. David sprang up from the seat, got out of the booth, repressed his impulse to lash out with his fists and walked with Wes, who was still talking, back to the booth. Helen smiled at them with unseeing eyes. As soon as Wes had sat down again, David went back to the telephone booth.

The operator was saying, “Hello . . . your call, please . . .” and David told her the number.

Buzz. Click. Jingle-jingle-jingle-jingle, and then he sat staring at the remaining quarter and dime on the little shelf, stiff as a piece of iron, awaiting the voice that would stop the ringing in Hartford. It rang eleven times, which he did not want to count but did, then a voice said, “Hello?”

“Annabelle, this is Dave. You're really there?”

“Yes, Dave. I—well, my plans about La Jolla—”

“Never mind. I'm glad you're so close! How've you been? I wrote you three letters to La Jolla. Did you get them?”

“I got them. I'm a little out of breath. I just ran up the stairs—You won't be much longer in Froudsburg, will you?”

“Nine more days. Annabelle, I'm spending next weekend around Troy. I'm going to look for a house, and I was hoping you could come with me. At least Saturday. I could bring you back Saturday night, if you'd prefer that.”

There was a pause, and he said, “I want you to see the lab, Annabelle. The grounds are beautiful. I went up for an interview a few days ago. They've accepted me. I told you that in my letters.”

“Dave, I don't see how I can.”

“Then let me drive by and see you on the way up?”

She made excuses. He interrupted her, pleading. Perhaps on the way back, when he could tell her if he'd found a house. Fifteen minutes even, if he could just come by. He had a little present for her, he said, though he didn't tell her what it was, and as soon as he mentioned a present he was sorry, lest Annabelle think he felt he had to lure her. Finally he abandoned hope for the weekend and asked when he might see her at any time, any evening.

“I don't
know
.”

And though it seemed strange she didn't
know
when, he was even more disturbed by the anguish in her voice. “Is there someone there with you?”

“Yes, there is someone.”

Silence. And he didn't quite believe there was someone with her, because she had said she had run up the steps.

“Dave, I hope you find the kind of house you're looking for. I'll be thinking of you. I really ought to go now, because I hear the baby crying.”

He squeezed the telephone, searching frantically for words. “Don't just go like this. Can I call you tomorrow?”

“All right, Dave. Only I don't know when I'm going to be in. I have to do some marketing—and I'm out tomorrow evening.”