This Sweet Sickness (24 page)

“Of course not,” Effie said quickly. “The police wanted to ask him some more questions. I think Mrs. Delaney wanted to talk to him too.” She hiccuped.

“Annabelle,” Wes said, and David felt Wes's eyes on him. “She wanted to talk to him?”

“Yes. They said Newmester went to see her in Hartford.”

“Hartford, that's the town,” Wes mumbled. “Well, what happened?”

“Nothing. I guess he just told her how it was. An accident.”

“An accident,” Wes repeated. “Hm-m. Well, I don't get it, I don't get it.” He began to dance more vigorously, squeezing Effie in his arm.

“Stop it, Wes! Let me go!”

“I didn't mean it!” Wes tried to hold her, but Effie pushed him violently away.

Effie staggered back herself, toward the fireplace. “It's you I love,” she said to David. “You!—Well, why shouldn't I say it?” she yelled to Wes. “You know it anyway, and what do you do about it? Nothing!”

“What do you expect me to do about it?” Wes asked.

“David! David Kelsey!” Effie cried, bending her knees slightly, extending her arms to him.

David got up from the chair, afraid she would fling herself on top of him. “I'd better start the steak.”

“Davy!” Effie caught his arm. “Can't you listen to me for one minute?”

David took her wrist and, as gently as he could, forced her fingers to break their hold on his arm. “Time I started the steak,” he said.

“Maybe I have had too much to drink, but
in vino veritas
, isn't that it, Dave? Listen, this may be the last time I'll ever—I'll ever see you—”

“Dave hopes so!” Wes said, laughing.

David wanted to laugh, and at the same time the staggering disorder of the two disturbed him.

“I don't see why,” Effie said, addressing herself to Wes, “my few private words have to be mocked by you, Wes Carmichael.”

“I'm not mocking. Shall I go in another room?”

David was walking slowly toward the kitchen. Hearing Effie behind him, he turned and sidestepped to avoid her, and she caught herself on the doorjamb.

“I know I'm a disgrace—now,” she said, “but that doesn't change the way I feel about you and what I
know
—to be true. You're wasting your life on that girl, Dave. Take some other girl. Maybe not me,” she quavered.

David made a move to walk away, but Effie held him. There was an angry disgust on Wes's face now as he lit a cigarette and hurled the match into an ashtray.

“Let Davy lead his own life,” Wes said. “He's going to anyway, whatever you say.” He started for the kitchen with his empty glass, and bumped past David with no apology.

David flung Effie's arms down from his neck, a movement that brought her face against his chest. He stepped back from her, trying to extricate his wrists from her hold, and jerked one arm frantically, suddenly breathing hard with panic. He heard Wes sounding off again in the kitchen, snarling and bitter. But Effie was worse, mewling and whining, clinging like a snail. David retreated half across the kitchen, on the brink of striking her.

“Do' want anything to eat,” Wes was saying, walking off with his full glass.

“Then why don't you both leave!” David said.

Effie clung to the sink edge, looking down at the sink, weeping.

Wes turned pugnaciously, and David walked toward him. Then Wes thumped his glass down on something. “Awright, I will leave! I'll leave my gracious host!”

“And take Effie!” David said.

“Or maybe I won't leave,” Wes said. “I don't know why we should do so much to oblige you, Mr Kelsey.”

“Call me Bill,” David said.

“What?”

“Dave, watch out,” Effie said, wobbling around from the sink. “Don't talk, Dave.”

“Who's Bill, Eff?”

“Nobody,” Effie said.

Nobody. David yanked the back door open and went out, slamming the door behind him. The wind blew refreshingly cold on his entire body. He walked past the yellow-red coals of the charcoal fire and went on to the edge of the woods, where he stood with his face turned up to the lopsided three-quarter moon. There was no sound but that of his breathing. He was gasping, his eyes blurred with tears, but he felt quite sober now, absolutely sober. The heavy moon floated through bluish clouds at a steady, easy rate. Once Annabelle had said to him, “I love you too, David,” and there had been a moon that night, the same moon he was looking at. Where had the words gone to? Weren't they still in the air, somewhere? Couldn't they be found and collected, grabbed with the hands out of the air? Somewhere. Somewhere they were preserved. Things didn't vanish. Truth did not become a lie. Annabelle knew those words still existed. That was what troubled her. There would come a day when she would return to him. There was time yet, much time, only the time was so hard to get through. But one day she would be in this house, or some house with him.

“
Yes
, William Neumeister,” he murmured.

Then he heard a car door slam, a motor start. He listened as it backed, turned, and moved off down the dirt road. Thank God, he thought, and the pressure eased in his chest. He looked up at the moon and felt alone and happy and confident again. He breathed deeply a couple of times, then turned and walked back toward the house, opened the kitchen door and went in, not minding the mess he saw, because there was plenty of time for him to clean it up, alone. Time! Lots of it. He was free to stay up all night, if he chose, to read, to play his music, to write to Annabelle, to lie and dream of her, to dream of her one day in his bed. David seized a gin bottle, in which an inch of gin remained, and poured it into a glass, lifted it with an airy gesture and drank it off. He had a memory of finishing some other bottle once, on a dare, and bringing it off very well. Where had that been? When he set the glass down, he saw his old wristwatch a few inches away on the table. David shrugged.

He whistled as he crossed the living room. There was something like a pleasant, huge cloud in his brain, a weightless blue-gray cloud, the color of Annabelle's eyes. No troubles, no worries could get in. It was William Neumeister's cloud. Deep inside it he was a very clever, lucky fellow, William Neumeister. David climbed the stairs. He wanted to undress, shower the afternoon off himself, and put on his blue jeans again.

He stopped at the threshold of his room. “Annabelle—”

Her arms were around his pillow, her brown hair on his pillow, and she was sound asleep.

He raced to her and took her shoulders, started to turn her gently, and then with revulsion took his hands away and in the same movement struck out at the face that was lifting itself from the pillow.

“
Davy
!”

He caught her with both hands, tugged her from the bed, and flung her from him. Up she came from the arm of the big chair, wailing at him, and this time David set his teeth and took her by the shoulders.

“Just shut up, shut up!” he muttered, and thrust her from him. He turned to the bed and absently brushed it with the flat of his hand and smoothed its blanket, which had only been lain upon, not under, but he grabbed the pillow from under the bedcover and threw it behind him against the wall.

Effie did not get up. He supposed she was waiting for him to pick her up and comfort her, and he smiled a grim smile and went into the bathroom to wash his hands. He filled his hands with water and washed his face and scrubbed it with a towel. He was through with the house. Effie had ruined it. There was nothing in it that he wanted any longer. Except the pictures of Annabelle in his desk that he had removed from the mantel this morning before Wes and Effie arrived, and perhaps he should also take a few papers from his desk. And he would never come back. Never.

David went into the sitting room, took his checkbook and the cache of extra money he kept in a cubbyhole of his desk, took his billfold and a packet of papers with a rubber band around them that were the only important papers he possessed. He thought of taking some clothes with him, but the task of choosing them and packing them in a suitcase seemed too tedious. He ran downstairs, hesitated for a moment when he realized there were so many lights on, then yanked a trenchcoat out of the front closet.

He propped the garage doors open and backed his car out. Just as he was turning the car to go down the dirt lane, he saw a pair of headlights on the road. David drove quickly down the lane. The car had stopped just before the turn into the lane, and now David saw it was Wes's car.

“Hey! Dave!” Wes called. “Wait a minute!”

But David drove around him, past him, heading for the highway.

27

H
e drove just a little faster than the speed limit, and he didn't know or care where the dark highway went to. A sense of futility and of sordidness sat blackly on his brain. He realized that he would have to go back to his house at some time, but he could not bear to think of that now. At least they would be gone when he got back, because he was not going back tonight and maybe not tomorrow. He still seethed with anger and shame at the memory of Wes staggering about the kitchen, Wes telling him he ought to see a psychiatrist! Had Wes ever taken a look at himself, drinking himself to death? The dragging monotony of Wes's marriage depressed David nearly as much as the Situation with Annabelle. Annabelle was married again, true, and that was tragic enough, but at least, David reminded himself, his own attitude was a positive one. He still knew that one day—Could anything that positive be said about Wes Carmichael?

Feeling suddenly tired, he let the car slow down. He drove at thirty miles an hour, his hands relaxed on the bottom of the steering wheel. No, he wouldn't go back to the house tonight, even though he was pretty sure they would be gone. He would stop at some motel and register as William Neumeister, just in case Wes got it into his drunken head to call the police to look for him. He didn't think Wes would call the police. Wes would have another drink, curse some more about David's rudeness, pile Effie in the car with him and drive off. Tomorrow Wes might call and apologize. Effie was a different matter. David was sorry he had struck her.
Had
he struck her? He had thrown her off his bed. The memory of her lying on the floor returned to reproach him. No apology would make up for that. He realized he had gone too far, that he must have had a moment of total aberration to think she was Annabelle lying on his bed, just because Effie's hair was nearly the color of Annabelle's! And he remembered now that he had even told Wes to call him Bill. It was very disturbing. But maybe Wes wouldn't remember, or if he did remember, wouldn't connect Bill with Neumeister. David remembered Effie saying, in an alarmed tone, “Dave, watch out.” He pressed the accelerator pedal down, and his only comforting thought was that he was putting more and more distance between himself and them.

He saw a signpost with a number of towns and their distances on it, and his eyes immediately found Froudsburg 23. He took the road. It would be late when he got there, and there was nothing he wanted to do there, but he felt drawn to it. Perhaps something would happen, driving those dark and ugly streets again. And perhaps he could see Mrs. Beecham.

When he reached Froudsburg, he drove directly toward the house, and at the corner where he turned into Ash Lane he slowed to ease the car over a fat wrinkle of tar that he could not see but knew was there. It was like putting on an old comfortable shoe, going up the driveway, parking his car far to the left against the scraggly hedge where he had always put it. There was a light in the house, but it was in Mr. Muldaven's room—unless someone else was there now. David turned the rattly metal door ringer. There was no light in the hall. Mr. Muldaven's door did not open, but David heard footsteps, and, to his surprise, Sarah opened the door for him.

“Good evening, Sarah.”

“Mr. Kelsey!”

“Is anybody up? Sorry to be calling so late.” He went in.

“Did you want to see Mrs. Mac? She's gone to bed,” Sarah told him, her face already fallen back to its habitual apathetic expression.

“Well, I mainly wanted to see Mrs. Beecham,” David said quietly, strangely excited and depressed at once by the familiar smell of the place, a smell of old carpets and of indefinable foods. “It's pretty important,” David added. “Could you find her for me, Sarah?”

As Sarah hesitated, Mr. Muldaven's door opened. He stood there in a nightshirt, barefoot.

“Why, David Kelsey!” he said, too shy to come into the hall in his nightshirt, but he extended his hand as David approached him.

“How're you, Mr. Muldaven?” David asked, touched by the old man's friendliness and by his firm handshake. “How's everything?”

“Pretty good. Can't complain. We miss you around here, David.”

It was as if all the trouble had never been. Suddenly the house seemed full of old friends instead of cranks and gossips.

“I miss all of you, too,” David said quietly and released the man's hand.

Sarah turned on the stairs. “You really want me to call her, Mr. Kelsey?”

“Yes, please,” David said. “Tell her it's David Kelsey.” He felt confident that she would be glad to see him.

“Come back and see us some time, Davy,” said Mr. Muldaven. “Come for Sunday dinner.”

“I will,” David said.

“Good night and good luck to you, Davy.”

“Good night, sir. Same to you.”

David thought that Mr. Muldaven had never called him Davy before, and he felt sure that he had never called the old fellow sir. David looked up the stairwell, which seemed hallowed by time now, by the better, more serious and dedicated life he had led when he had lived here. He felt that his relationship with Annabelle had been better here, and that thought, that
fact
, was agonizing to realize. And after all, why was he here? He was here because he realized that, and had realized it in the car. He touched the papers in his trenchcoat pocket and, as silently as he could, climbed the stairs.

Sarah was just coming down from the third floor. “She says you can go in, Mr. Kelsey.”

“Thank you. Is anybody else up?” He continued awkwardly, “Because I'll need a couple of signatures. Maybe yours and Mr. Muldaven's.”

“Signatures?” Sarah said as if she had never heard the word before.

“I'll tell you in a couple of minutes,” David said, and stood aside for her to pass him.

Mrs. Beecham's door was a little ajar. He knocked.

“Just come on in, David!” said Mrs. Beecham in a high, happy, welcoming voice.

David went in, smiling uncontrollably with gratitude and with relief. She was propped up in bed in a white nightcap, a white nightgown with long sleeves and ruffles at the wrists. A small light under a pink half-shade burned on her night table. “I hope you'll pardon the hour,” he said.

“Why, of course I will. What's night or day to an old woman like me? Just hand me my glasses, if you will, David, I want to see you. They're over there by my sewing things. Just to one side, the right side, I think. In the morning when I get up, I don't need them, just to get up and dress, you know, because I know where everything is.”

He handed them to her.

“Now let's see what you're looking like.”

Her right eye, which he saw clearly by the light of the lamp, looked at him through its cloud of cataract, large and curious and kind. David picked up her ruffled wrist and shook it a little, with awkward affection.

“You're looking thinner, that's how,” she remarked. “What's your trouble, David? Anything?”

“Oh, no, no trouble. I came to—”

“Sit down, David. Pull up the armchair.”

“I came to bring you a little present. In a way, I
hope
it'll be a present.” He felt tortured by his embarrassment, the embarrassment of self-revelation, but he was determined to go through with it. “Just a little matter about my life insurance,” he said, concentrating on his packet of papers. “I want you to be my beneficiary. It's just a matter of changing one line. And I'll write the company tomorrow too, of course.”

“What? Beneficiary? Why me, David?”

“Because I want you to have it.”

“Life insurance. Why, you'll outlive me.”

“You never know,” David said quickly, and drew his pen through Annabelle Stanton Kelsey, which was printed, and printed Mrs. Molly Beecham above it. He added the address of the boardinghouse. Mrs. Beecham protested all the while, but he paid no attention. He handed her the paper and the pen. “Now I want you to sign this, please. Here where it says beneficiary. Don't argue with me about it,” he pleaded.

She had picked up her mounted reading glass from the bedtable, and she was looking through it at the enlarged fine print. “Annabelle,” she said, and looked up at him. “Wasn't that the girl, David?”

Where had she heard? Where had she heard definitely? Or had she, with the wisdom of old age, been able to guess it? Where she had heard didn't matter now. Only that it was the truth and she knew it. “Yes,” David said with a slight gasp. “She was the girl. But she wouldn't take it, I know. That's why somebody else's name has to be there, you see.”

“What's happened, David?”

“Nothing's happened! I just decided—I happen to know she wouldn't take the money anyway, so there's no use having her name there.”

“And what about Effie, David?” Mrs. Beecham asked sadly, and there was a small note of reproach in it.

David shrugged. “I haven't seen her—until this weekend. She and my friend Wes came up. They're there now.” David stood up. “I just had to get away for a while. I'll go back now. I don't know what was the matter with me tonight. I've got to be going now, Mrs. Beecham. Please sign that, will you?”

“All right, David. If you want me to.” As if she were indulging a child, she began to write in the large, patient scrawl that David knew well.

He walked restlessly to the door and turned back, came to her and carefully took the paper from her. “I'll get some signatures downstairs. Witnesses, in case I need them. I don't even know if I need them.” He was suddenly dry in the throat, and the room seemed airless. “Forgive me, Mrs. Beecham.”

“For what, David? Now you get some rest tonight. You shouldn't drive all that way back to Troy. I think there's a room on the second floor that's free. Not your old room,” she said, smiling. “A new fellow's got that. Sarah's sleeping in now and she's always up till all hours. She'll show you—”

“No, I'll go, Mrs. Beecham. Thank you. Thank you,” he said, opening the door. “Good night.”

“Bless you, David. And come back to see me.”

Downstairs, David hesitated, then rapped firmly on Mr. Muldaven's door, where now no light showed.

David had his pen ready. Mr. Muldaven seemed surprised and asked some questions, but David avoided answering them. He only thanked Mr. Muldaven and apologized for waking him. And then he approached Sarah, who as it happened was just coming out of the back room left, which was the room Wes had had when he stayed here. She was dressed in a ruffly party dress of some kind, and she seemed embarrassed to have run into him.

“I was just going out on a date,” she said. “Meeting my date at the dance.”

They stood under the ugly hall light and Sarah signed it, resting it on the wicker table where so many letters from Annabelle had lain. How many? Only five or six. David closed his eyes.

He drove Sarah to the place where she wanted to go, a dance hall on the second floor of an office building on Main Street. David had not known the dance hall existed.

Then he was free and alone again, and he felt extremely tired. He drove for half an hour or so, and stopped at a mediocre motel. He wrote
Wm. Neumeister, N.Y.C
. on the registration card, and paid his five dollars in advance to a sleepy, gray-haired man behind the desk.

“Want to be waked up any special time?” the man asked.

“No, thanks. I'll wake up,” David replied.

He took a shower and went to bed naked between the clean sheets, dog-tired and relaxed, too tired to be disturbed by his hunger, and he fell asleep at once.

When he awakened, it was precisely eight by his watch, and the sun was pouring through the venetian blinds. He lay for a few moments thinking, wondering if he should call his house before he went back. Apologize. Or make sure they had gone. Did he owe them an apology, or did they owe him one? He couldn't come to a conclusion about that, and he couldn't have cared less. All he was sure of was that he did not want to come face to face with them. He got up and dressed. He would drive to some quiet place, take a walk in the woods if he could find any woods, and return to his house in midafternoon. He needed a shave, but that could wait until he got home.

At the instant David opened the door to go out, there was a knock on it, and the skinny, gray-haired man stepped back, surprised.

“Just going to waken you,” he said. “There's a—”

“Didn't need it, thanks,” David said.

“I had a call from the police,” the man said with excitement. “They gave me a license number and it's yours.”

“What?”

“They're looking for somebody called Kelsey. That isn't you, is it?”

“No,” David said. He looked past the man, toward the highway where the office was. There were no police cars.

“Maybe it's a mistake—maybe,” the man said. “They called me just ten minutes ago, y'see, and I looked over the cards. You didn't write your license number down last night, and I thought, well, there's nobody here named Kelsey. Then as I was walking by—just going to wake up number eight—I seen your license plate. You don't even know a David Kelsey?”

“No, I don't,” David said, walking toward his car. He opened the door.

“You own that car?”

“Yes,” David said.

The old man stood on the low step in front of the door, staring at David's license plate. Then he looked at a card in his hand, checking the number again.

The man might yet call the police and tell them about it, David thought. And the police would make a note of the name Neumeister. David heard his own voice, strangely remote, saying, “I'd better stop in your office and fill out my license number anyway. I'm sure there's a mistake somewhere.”

“Okay,” the man said, and with an absent gesture toward his office, he walked off.

David stopped his car outside the office, facing the highway, and left the engine running. He waited patiently while the old man looked among a dozen cards, and tremblingly produced one.