The Blunderer Page 6

  Walter skipped lunch and sat at his desk, trying to make sense out of Dick’s notes on the Parsons and Sullivan interviews. Walter read one passage over and over, without being able to decide whether a piece was missing or whether his own mind could no longer attach a meaning to the words. Suddenly he reached for the telephone and dialed Jon’s number. Walter asked if he could see him right away, in Jon’s office.

  “Is it about Clara?” Jon asked.

  “Yes.” Walter hadn’t known his voice would betray him, but only Clara could put him in such a state, and Jon knew it.

  Jon had whiskey in his office and offered Walter some, but Walter declined it.

  “Clara’s in the hospital in a coma. She may die,” Walter said. “She took sleeping pills last night. Every pill in the house. She must have had about thirty.” Walter told Jon about their talk of a divorce, her threatening to kill herself, and his leaving the house.

  “This was the first time you talked about a divorce, was it?” Jon asked.

  “No.” Walter had told Jon months ago that he was considering a divorce, but he hadn’t told Jon that he had talked to Clara. “She threatened to kill herself the first time I asked her for a divorce. That’s why I didn’t believe her yesterday.”

  “And that’s why you patched it up the first time, because she threatened?”

  “I suppose so,” Walter said. “One of the reasons.”

  “I know.” Jon stood up and looked out of the window. “And you reach a point finally, don’t you—as you did yesterday?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You reach a point where you say, ‘All right, I’ll damn well let her kill herself. I’ve had enough.’”

  Walter stared at the large brass penholder on Jon’s desk that he had given to Jon on the first anniversary of his magazine. “Yes. That’s it.” Walter put his hands over his face. “That’s a kind of murder, isn’t it?”

  “No one would say it’s murder who knows the facts. You don’t have to tell anyone about it, anyone who doesn’t know the facts. Stop turning it over and over in your mind, the fact that you walked out.”

  “All right,” Walter said.

  “She’ll probably pull through. She’s got a tough constitution, Walt.”

  Walter looked at his friend. Jon was smiling, and Walter gave a little smile in return. He felt suddenly better.

  “The real problem is, what happens when she wakes up? Do you still want your divorce?”

  Walter had to force himself to imagine Clara well again. His mind was obsessed with remorse, with pity for her. “Yes,” he said.

  “Then get it. There are ways. Even if you have to go to Reno. Don’t let yourself be paralyzed by a pint-sized Medusa any more.”

  Walter felt a rise of resentment, and then he thought of Jon, paralyzed by his love for his wife when she was having the affair with the man called Brinton. Walter had sat with Jon almost every night for two months, but finally Jon had got over it, and got his divorce. “All right,” Walter said.

  Walter drove by the hospital on the way home that evening. Now her fingernails were bluish. Her face looked puffier. But the doctor said she was holding her own. Walter didn’t believe it. He felt she was going to die.

  He went home, intending to take a hot bath and shave and try to eat something. He fell asleep in the bath-tub, which he had never done before in his life. He only awakened when Claudia called him to tell him his dinner was nearly ready.

  “You’d better get some rest, Mr. Stackhouse, or you’ll be good and sick again yourself,” Claudia said to him.

  Walter had told her that Clara was in the hospital with a bad case of flu.

  The telephone rang while he was eating, and Walter ran for it, thinking it was the hospital.

  “Hello, Mr. Stackhouse. This is Ellie Briess. Are you all over the flu?”

  “Oh yes—thanks.”

  “Does your wife like bulbs?”

  “Bulbs?”

  “Tulip bulbs. I’ve got two dozen of them. I just had dinner with a supervisor over at Harridge, and she insisted that I take them, but I’ve no place to plant them. They’re very special bulbs. I thought you might be able to use them.”

  “Oh—thanks for thinking of us.”

  “I can drop them by now, if you’re going to be home for the next twenty minutes.”

  “All right. Do that,” Walter said clumsily.

  He felt very strange as he turned from the telephone. He remembered Clara’s accusations. He imagined her numbed lips moving as she said it again. Like a prophecy from the dying.

  A few minutes later, Ellie Briess was at the door. She had a cardboard carton in her hands. “Here they are. If you’re busy, I won’t come in.”

  “I’m not busy. Do come in.” He held the door for her. “Would you care for some coffee?”

  “Yes. Thank you.” She took a folded paper from her handbag and laid it on the coffee table. “Here’s the instructions for the bulbs.”

  Walter looked at her. She looked older and more sophisticated, and he realized suddenly she was wearing a chic black dress and high-heeled black suede pumps that made her taller and slimmer. “Do you get the Harridge job?” he asked.

  “Yes. Today: That’s who I was having dinner with—my future boss.”

  “I hope he’s nice.”

  “It’s a woman. She’s nice. She was insistent about those bulbs.”

  “My congratulations on the job,” Walter said.

  “Thanks.” She smiled her broad smile at him. “I think I’ll be happy there.”

  She looked happy. It shone from her face. He wanted to look at her, but he looked at the floor.

  Claudia came in with the tray of coffee and the orange cake she had baked especially for him.

  “You know Miss Briess from the party, don’t you Claudia? Ellie, this is Claudia.”

  They exchanged greetings and Walter noticed Claudia’s pleasure in being introduced. He didn’t always introduce Claudia to people. Clara didn’t like it.

  “Isn’t your wife here?” Ellie asked.

  “No, she isn’t.” Walter poured the coffee carefully. It was a rich black, stronger than Claudia would have made it if Clara had been here.

  He got the brandy bottle and two inhalers. Then he sat down and was conscious for an uncomfortable minute that he had nothing to say to the girl. And he was conscious of a sexual attraction for her that shamed him. Or was it sexual? He wanted to lay his head in her lap, on the thighs that curved a little under the black dress.

  “Your wife works very hard, doesn’t she?” Ellie asked.

  “Yes. She loves to work hard or not at all.” Walter glanced at Ellie’s eyes. The beautiful outgoing warmth in her eyes was still there, had not changed as her hair and her clothes had changed tonight. Walter hesitated, then said, “Just now she’s sick with a touch of the flu. Well, more than a touch. She’s in the hospital.”

  “Oh, I’m very sorry,” Ellie said.

  Walter felt very near a cracking point, but he did not know what he would do if he cracked—faint, seize Ellie in his arms, or run out of the house forever. “Would you like some music?” he asked.

  “No, thanks. You wouldn’t.” Ellie was sitting on the edge of the sofa. “I’ll finish my brandy and go.”

  Walter watched helplessly as she got her bag and gloves, took a last pull on her cigarette and put it out. He followed her to the door.

  “Thanks for the delicious coffee,” she said.

  “I hope you come back again. Where do you live?” He wanted to know where to reach her.

  “I live in New York,” she replied.

  Walters heart jumped as if she had given him her telephone number and asked him to call. And he already knew that she lived in New York, anyway. “You’ll be commuting every day?”

  “Yes. I suppose so.” She smiled, suddenly looking shy. “Give my good wishes to your wife. Good night.”

  “Good night.” He stood in the open doorway until the sound o
f her car had faded nearly away.

  Walter went to the hospital and stayed there all night, alternately reading and dozing on a bench in the corridor.

  On Tuesday afternoon, Walter got a call in his office from the hospital. The nurse’s familiar mechanical voice had a happy note in it: “Mrs. Stackhouse came out of the coma about fifteen minutes ago.”

  “She’ll be all right?”

  “Oh, yes, she’ll be all right.”

  Walter hung up without asking any more questions. He wanted to leap up to the ceiling, wanted to go running in and shout the news to Dick, but he had only told Dick that Clara had the flu. One didn’t get so excited about a recovery from flu. Walter forced himself to finish up the piece of work on his desk. He did it humbly and patiently, as a grateful sinner just saved from hell would do a small chore for a redeemer.

  Clara was sleeping, the nurse told Walter when he arrived, but he was allowed to go in and see her. Now her lips rested quietly together. She would be very groggy for a couple of weeks, the doctor said, but she would be able to go home in a day or so.

  “I’d like to talk to you for a moment,” the doctor said. “Will you come in my office?”

  Walter followed him. He knew what the doctor was going to say.

  “Your wife’s going to need psychiatric care for a while. To take an overdose indicates a kind of insanity, you know. Besides, suicide is a crime in this state. If she hadn’t had the luck to get into a private hospital, she’d have had a lot more trouble with the law than she’s had.”

  “What do you mean, than she’s had?”

  “We had to report this, of course. Since I’m her private doctor, I’m responsible to a certain extent. I’d like to know that she gets psychiatric care once she leaves the hospital.”

  “It’s going to take some persuading. She doesn’t like psychiatrists.”

  “I don’t care whether she likes them or not.”

  “I understand,” Walter said.

  That was the end of the interview. Walter called Jon to tell him the news.

  Some time after ten o’clock that evening, Walter saw Clara stir. He had been sitting by her bedside. Walter bent over her. He expected her to show resentment because he had left her that night, and when she didn’t, when she only smiled weakly at him, he thought that perhaps she was too groggy to recognize him.

  “Walter.” Her hand slid towards him on the sheet.

  Walter touched her tenderly with both hands, sat down on the edge of the bed, and put his face down on the sheets that covered her breast. He could feel her body, warm and alive. He felt he had never loved her so much.

  “Walter, don’t ever leave me, don’t ever leave me,” she said in a quick, feathery whisper. “Don’t ever leave me, ever.”

  “No, darling.” He meant it.

  Clara came home Thursday morning. Walter carried her from the car to the house, because she had grown too sleepy during the ride in the car to walk.

  “It’s like carrying a bride over the threshold, isn’t it?” Clara said softly as they went through the front door.

  “Yes.” Walter had never carried her over a threshold before. Clara would have thought it too sentimental when they were first married.

  Claudia had filled the bedroom with flowers from the garden and Walter had added more. Jeff was freshly washed, and greeted Clara with licks and barks, but not as enthusiastically as Walter had expected.

  “How have you been getting on with Jeff?” Clara asked.

  “Jeff” and I have been fine. Do you want to sit up a while or go straight to bed?”

  “Both,” she said, laughing a little.

  He got her dressing-gown from the closet, removed her shoes from her brown stockingless feet, and hung up the dress she had pulled off. Then he propped the pillows behind her. She wanted lemonade, she said, with a lot of sugar in it. Walter went down to make it, because Claudia was busy making vichyssoise, which Clara loved, and the recipe was complicated.

  “Who did you tell about this?” Clara asked when he came back.

  “Only Jon. Nobody else.”

  “What did you tell my office?”

  Walter barely remembered when they had called. “I said you had flu. Don’t worry, darling. Nobody has to know.”

  “Claudia told me Ellie Briess was here.”

  “She dropped in Monday night. Oh, she brought you some tulip bulbs, too. You’ll have to look at them tomorrow. Very special ones, she said.”

  “Evidently you weren’t bored while I was in hospital.”

  “Oh, Clara, please—” He handed her the glass of lemonade again. “You have to drink a lot of liquids, the doctor said.”

  “I was right about Ellie, wasn’t I?”

  He shouldn’t get angry, he thought. Mentally, she was still groggy, not normal yet. Then he remembered she hadn’t been normal before she took the pills, either. She had just come back to life again, and she was taking up where she had left off. “Clara, let’s talk tomorrow. You’re very tired.”

  “Why don’t you admit that you’re in love with her?”

  “But I’m not.” Leaning forward, he had embraced her. It was ironic that he had never loved her, never desired her so much as now, and that she had never mistrusted him so much. “I did tell her you were sick. She called up last night to ask how you were. I told her you were fine.”

  “That must have pleased her.”

  “I’m sleeping in my study tonight, honey.” Walter pressed her arm affectionately and stood up. “I think you’ll rest better if you sleep alone,” he added, in case she misunderstood his reason.

  But from her affronted, staring eyes, he knew she had attached another meaning to it, anyway.

  8

  For about a week, Clara spent most of her time in bed, taking naps every couple of hours. Walter took her for short rides in the car in the evenings, and bought her chocolate sodas at the curb-service drugstore in Benedict. Betty Ireton came to visit her twice. Everybody seemed to believe the story that Walter had given out, that Clara had had a bad case of influenza. Finally, Clara was able to go to the movies one evening, and the next day she announced that she was going back to work on Monday. It was less than two weeks since she had come from the hospital. On the same evening, Friday, Clara’s mother called from Harrisburg.

  Walter heard Clara’s cool, unsurprised greeting to her mother, then a long pause while her mother, he supposed, pleaded with Clara to come and pay a visit.

  “Well, if you’re not feeling so bad, why should I?” Clara asked. “I’ve a job here, you know. I can’t just come at anybody’s whim.”

  Walter got up restlessly and turned the radio off. Her mother was not well, Walter knew. She had had two strokes. How could Clara be so merciless with somebody else’s weakness, he wondered, when she had been so near death herself twelve days ago?

  “Mother, I’ll write to you. You’re going to run up a big bill talking all this time….Yes, Mother, tonight, I promise you.”

  Walter suddenly thought of Ellie’s tulip bulbs.

  Clara turned around, sighing. “She’s the end, the bitter end.”

  “I gather you’re not going.”

  “I certainly am not.”

  “You know, I think a month out there would do you good. Provided you relaxed and didn’t—”

  “You know I can’t stand to be around my mother.”

  Walter let it go. He was trying to avoid subjects that irritated her, and this was certainly one of them. “Say, whatever happened to those tulip bulbs? Didn’t Claudia show them to you? I told her to.”

  “I threw them out,” Clara said, reseating herself on the sofa, taking up her book again. She looked up at Walter challengingly.

  “Was that necessary?” Walter asked. “You don’t have to take it out on a dozen innocent tulip bulbs.”

  “I didn’t want her flowers gracing our garden.”

  His anger leapt suddenly. “Clara, that was a stupid, petty thing to do!”

 
“If we want tulips, we can buy our own bulbs,” Clara said. “That’s why you want me to go to Harrisburg, isn’t it? You’d like to have me out of the way for a while.”

  Walter came nearer slapping her face than he ever had before. “It’s disgusting, what you’re saying. It’s degrading.”

  “Go off with her. Call her up tonight and see her. You must miss her after all this time.”

  Walter took a step towards her and seized her wrist. “Stop it, will you? You’re hysterical!”

  “Let go of me!”

  He let her go, and she rubbed her wrist. “I’m sorry,” he said. “There’re times when I think a good slap in the face might bring you back to sanity.”

  “Shock treatment,” she said scornfully. “I’m in my right mind and you know it. Why don’t you tell the truth, Walter? You slept with that girl while I was in the hospital, didn’t you?”

  Walter started to say something, then gave it up and went out of the room. He went into the kitchen, unbuttoning his shirt. In the half-light that came from the living-room, he took off his clothes and began to put on the old clothes that hung in the kitchen closet back of the brooms and the dust-rags. He put on old manila trousers and the old shirt and sweater he wore when he worked around the house. Under the dust-mop he found his pair of tennis shoes. Then he went out of the house and got into his car.

  He drove towards Benedict. He was trembling, and most of it was exhaustion, he knew. Ever since the Sunday night she did it, he had been tense as a board, and now that she was on her feet again, it was no better. What an idiot he had been to think they could make a fresh start!

  He shied away from the Three Brothers Tavern. He wanted to go to a bar where he had never been before. He saw a place on the roadside before he got to Huntington.

  Walter went up to the bar and ordered a double Scotch and water. He glanced around at the people at the bar: a couple of men who looked like truck drivers, a dowdy woman reading a magazine with a repellent-looking crème de menthe in front of her, a very ordinary, middle-aged couple who were a little drunk and arguing with each other. Walter squeezed his eyes shut and listened to the inane words of the song that was playing on the juke box. He wanted to forget who he was, forget everything he had been thinking tonight. He looked down at the manila trousers as he sat at the bar, noticed there was a button unbuttoned, fastened it casually, and stood up from the stool and leaned on the bar. The quarreling voices of the man and the woman grew louder, intruding on the juke box.