Still, she’d thought that, possibly, mental derangement might not be such a risk….
He’d reacted almost violently: No.
No pregnancy. Must terminate. We can’t. Can’t take the chance. What if. No.
But—
No. I’ve told you.
Can’t risk.
Even if the child is—is not—abnormal. Even then—
Our own lives. Must come first.
What we mean to each other.
She’d done as he had instructed. Or rather, as he’d demanded.
Thinking—It is what I want, too. Of course.
Emotionally, the husband was the center of her life. Her professional career was not very challenging to her: she had no wish to compete strenuously, and to excel; she was highly competent, reliable and well liked. At her small suburban college it was not difficult to be promoted to the highest professorial rank and to decline (when, more than once, it was offered to her) advancement into administration. Her salary was not high but it supplemented her husband’s salary to a degree that made them financially secure.
We can afford a child. Children.
She did not say. Did not risk.
(Perhaps) (she was thinking) it was a mistake to have moved into a place not far from the old house when her husband died. She’d had to sell the house—of course. Soon after his death which had been an unexpected death after a brief, virulent illness. In a state of grief and exhaustion she’d looked at a number of possible places in which to live nearer the college yet somehow she’d found nothing quite right, and decided to rent a condominium hardly a mile from the old house on Linden Road.
And so, approaching her former house as she’d approached it for so many years, sometimes alone in her car, sometimes beside her husband in the driver’s seat—(for always Jed drove when she was with him in the car: he would never have allowed anyone else to drive)—she could not overcome a sense of apprehension though she knew, of course she knew, that the house belonged to strangers, and that (probably!) these strangers were not standing vigilant at their front windows waiting for the widow to pass by. Yet still, her heartbeat quickened as she approached: in her mind’s eye she parked her car as usual in front of the garage, and made her way from the car into the small flagstone courtyard, and opened the front door which was painted a deep ruby-red, and stepped inside—Hello? I’m home….
The husband had not liked it if, as she’d done sometimes, she entered the house without announcing her arrival. Hoping for a few minutes to herself, private time, to catch her breath (she might’ve said), put a few groceries away in the kitchen which she’d picked up on the way home, before calling to her husband—Hello, Jed. It’s me.
Sometimes, if Jed was home, and he’d heard her, he would come to greet her; more often, she would seek him out in his office, which was a large, comfortable room at the rear of the house on the second floor.
Once, when a late-afternoon meeting was canceled and she’d returned to the house earlier than Jed expected her, the door had been locked against her. The doors.
She’d tried the front door—locked. Thinking it was just an accident, she tried another. Locked.
And another—also locked.
Of course, she should have had a house key. What was the reason she hadn’t had a house key?
He was nearly always home. His car was in the driveway now. She’d lost the habit of taking a house key with her and so, after a moment’s hesitation, she knocked on the door, not loudly, not rudely, for she did not want to disturb the husband if he was in deep concentration at his work, but still there was no answer and (so far as she could see) no movement inside the house.
She walked around the house, peering in windows. “Jed? Jed?”
Had to be upstairs. Maybe playing music, wearing earphones.
(Why was she so agitated? Her underarms stung with perspiration, a rivulet of sweat ran down the side of her face like an errant tear.)
(But he was alone, she was sure. He had never brought anyone to the house in her absence. She was sure.)
“Jed? It’s me….”
Each of the doors was locked. Pride prevented her from checking the windows.
The solution came to her—I will go away as if this has not happened. No one will know.
It was an era before cell phones. But if she’d called, she had the idea that her husband would not have answered the phone.
She went away. She returned hours later, at the expected time. All the doors were unlocked. Interior lamps had been lit. When she entered the house he was awaiting her with a little bouquet of Shasta daisies, carnations, and red rose buds.
“For you, dear. Missed you.”
She was touched. She was relieved. She smiled happily, as a young bride might smile, sweetly naïve, trusting. She kissed his cheek and asked, as it would have been natural for a young bride to ask, “But why? Today is not a special day, is it?”
“No day with you is not a special day, darling.”
He had shaved, his lean jaws were smooth and smelled of lotion. His white cotton shirt was fresh. The sleeves were rolled to the elbows as he rarely, perhaps never wore them.
Later, when the husband was elsewhere and would not discover her, she’d examined his office. His closet in their bedroom. Their bed.
Cautiously lifted the bedclothes to stare at the lower sheet that (so far as she could judge) was smoothed flat as it had been when, that morning, she’d briskly made up the bed.
What on earth am I looking for?—she was ashamed, she had no idea.
What has he made me into, how has this happened. How is this person—me?
In marriage, one plus one is more than the sum of two. But sometimes in a marriage, one plus one is less than the sum of two.
He was correct: it would not have been worth the risk.
She’d come to agree. Their very special feeling for each other, their unique love, would have been irrevocably altered by the intrusion of another.
Seven years! The time has passed quickly; or, the time has passed very slowly.
There have been few changes to the house, that she can see from the road. But there had been changes.
When she drives past the house she finds herself slowing the car, to stare. Her heart quickens in anticipation of seeing something that will upset her.
She hates it, seeing changes in her former house that upset her!—thinking how these changes would upset her husband, too.
For some reason the new owners removed the redwood fence which the husband had had erected at the front of the property, for privacy. (Why on earth? Had the fence become rotted? She didn’t think so.)
Then, they’d had the house repainted: a dull beige with brown shutters so much less striking than the original cream with dark red shutters.
Once, seeing that the new owners had had a large oak tree removed from the front lawn, she’d felt weak with indignation. She’d happened to drive past at the time of the tree’s demise, chain saw rending the air into unbearable shards of sound. Screaming.
He had not screamed at his fate. Rather, he’d been medicated, unable to protest. He had not even known (she’d wanted to think) what was happening in his body. That sequence of small, inexorable surrenders.
In fact, yes: he had screamed at his fate. He’d screamed at her.
Not that he’d known who she was, then. Not that he’d hated her.
Slowly she drove in the tense delirium of approach. For it seemed to her—Of course, I am going home. It’s an ordinary evening.
(But why then was she so frightened? The ordinary does not provoke fear.)
He hadn’t been comfortable with the ordinary, in fact. His work had been a highly refined mathematics applied to the manufacture of digital equipment which she hadn’t understood even when he’d tried to explain to her in the plainest speech.
He hadn’t been comfortable with resting. He hadn’t taken a vacation in the more than twenty years she’d known him. At one time he’d worked
as many as one hundred hours a week as a consultant for (rival) companies. She felt a thrill of horror that, now that he’d died, he could not ever do anything meaningful again. That would have hurt him, stung his pride.
How surprised he’d have been to see a stranger so comfortable in his house. At his worktable, a long white table, wonderfully practical, useful. What is this? What has happened? In his bed.
How like science fiction our lives are, she thinks. The alternate universe in which, innocently, ignorantly, we continue to exist as we’d been, unaware that, in another universe, we have ceased to be.
Without knowing what she has done, the widow has parked the car on Linden Road in front of the house.
Oh but why! She’d meant to drive past.
She thinks—But I am safe now. I can’t be hurt now. I am alive now. I am not sick now.
After her husband died she’d been sick for some time. An actual sickness, shingles. A sickness of the heart, heartsickness, that had almost killed her.
Where are you, I am waiting for you. God damn you—have you betrayed me.
She had not! She had not betrayed him.
Dreams of wading into a river. Swimming a river, her arms and legs like lead. Dreaminess of surrender to the leaden river, that drew her down, to dreamless sleep.
It’s about time. Seven years! Rats are more faithful than you.
“Hello—?”
She hears a voice, unfamiliar, yet friendly-seeming, as she stands in the roadway, uncertainly. It is strange—she doesn’t remember having left her car….
In the asphalt driveway of the former house a woman is standing, waving to her. This must be Mrs. Edrick, whom she’d met seven years before when she’d sold the house through a broker.
How embarrassing! And there is another person, a man, the husband probably, in the background.
They have sighted her. She must acknowledge them now. The friendly-seeming woman is coming to speak to her.
Please. You make us uneasy.
You are always driving past our house. You are always watching us. We hate it, you are a ghost haunting our lives.
How stricken she would be, if the Edricks spoke to her in this way! She is feeling breathless as if under attack.
But Mrs. Edrick does not utter these hostile words. Mrs. Edrick is smiling pleasantly at her. The woman is just slightly younger than she, and stands with her arms folded across her chest as if cold. At a little distance, Mr. Edrick is standing hesitantly as if uncertain whether to come forward, or retreat back into the house as husbands sometimes do in such circumstances.
“Hello! Is it—Brenda?”
“Brianna.”
“‘Bri-anna.’ Yes. It’s been a while since we’ve spoken. How are you?”
The question seems bold, even aggressive. How is she?—she is a widow.
“I—I’m well. I’m sorry if I …”
“Oh no, not at all! We would have called but we’d misplaced your number. We see you sometimes driving past our house—that is, your former house—and thought we’d have an opportunity to tell you: there seem to be things of yours still in the house, of which you’re probably not aware.”
Of which you’re probably not aware. The formality of the woman’s speech suggests that it has been planned, rehearsed. The widow sees now that there is something steely and resolute in the woman’s smiling face.
Things of yours still in the house. This is the crucial statement. She feels a jolt of apprehension, and yet hope.
“At least we think it must belong to you, Brianna, or to your late husband. Several boxes …”
Mrs. Edrick explains that a furnace repairman had recently come to the house and discovered, in the crawl space, several boxes taped shut with black duct tape that seemed to have been there for some time.
Crawl space. A sinister term, she’d thought it. Her husband had stored things in the basement, in the “crawl space,” which he hadn’t wanted to discard but didn’t think he needed to access any longer: boxes of old receipts, checks, IRS records, expired warranties and miscellaneous documents. All she’d ever seen of the “crawl space” was its opening, at a height of about four feet, in one of the dank basement walls; her husband had managed to crawl inside, to leave boxes there, but she’d never felt any curiosity about exploring it.
What was the purpose of a crawl space in a house, she’d asked her husband, and he’d said he supposed it was for extra storage, and for the use of workmen who needed to access parts of the basement otherwise out of reach: electricians, for instance.
Pleasantly smiling Mrs. Edrick leads Brianna into the kitchen. (Quickly Brianna sees that the kitchen, her former kitchen, is both familiar and utterly strange: have the new owners repainted the walls? Is the ceiling no longer white, but an oppressive beige? The tile floor, richly dark-russet-red when she’d lived here, is now a busy and unattractive swirl of pinpoint colors. A wall of cupboards seems to have disappeared.) “Here you are!”—Mrs. Edrick is handing her a soiled-looking shoe box taped shut with black duct tape. “The repairman brought this box upstairs, it’s the smallest. He says there are two or three larger boxes still there. We’d been meaning to contact you—we hope the boxes don’t contain anything too important.”
Was this rude? Brianna wonders.
But no, obviously not. Not intentionally rude.
Quickly she says, “Yes—I mean no, I’m sure the boxes don’t contain anything—important.” She is speaking hesitantly, staring at the box, which exudes an air of subtle, indefinable menace.
(What could Jed have stored in a box this size? Nothing out of the ordinary, surely. Financial records, check stubs? Letters?)
(But what sort of letters, hidden away in a crawl space in a taped-over shoe box?)
How excessively intricate, the taping! Brianna recalls how carefully, over-carefully, her husband had taped packages for the mail. Taking his time, as if he’d enjoyed the simple methodical process, taping shut.
Her eyelids flutter. A sudden vision, as in a surreal film, of a human face, small, possibly a child’s face, black tape covering mouth, eyes.
What is best. Don’t question.
On the box is a badly faded label, hand-printed in the husband’s distinctive hand: 12 Feb. 2009. No other identification. She recalls the stately old Parker fountain pen he’d had. An artifact from another era, a father’s or a grandfather’s pen, that required liquid ink.
After the husband’s death, the pen had disappeared.
“Oh, dear!—I hope the box wasn’t waterlogged. We had a little flood in our basement from all the rain, last spring….”
“Oh yes. We did, too.”
(But why does the widow say we? She lives alone in the rental property a mile away, there is no longer any we.)
In a confiding-neighbor voice Mrs. Edrick says: “We keep all sorts of things, too. In the garage mostly. It’s terrible, how things accumulate in our lives as if they had a life of their own….”
The widow murmurs agreement. She has no idea what Mrs. Edrick is chattering about. Her eyes well with tears, Mrs. Edrick is politely not acknowledging.
Weighing the soiled shoe box in her hand. Yes, probably papers.
Letters. (Love letters?)
(But there were no love letters exchanged between the widow and her husband who’d never spent any time apart after they’d met.)
Her breath is coming short. Every particle of her being is crying out in astonishment—How is this possible, is this something my husband has left for me? Or is it something my husband did not ever intend for me?
She feels a moment’s vertigo. Paralysis. She has taken the shoe box from Mrs. Edrick but it is very heavy—she has had to set it down on a table.
Feeling the other woman’s eyes on her. The husband has approached silently, behind her; the Edricks have exchanged an indecipherable look.
Almost palpable, their pleas tinged with impatience, anger.
Please go away. Leave this house. Do not haunt us—no more
!
But again Mrs. Edrick appears to be very friendly. Seeing the expression in the widow’s face of something like pain, and yet yearning, she says, “Brenda—I mean Brianna—if you’d like, you can examine the crawl space yourself. You have our permission! The furnace repairman said there were at least two more boxes. He might have dragged them out if I’d asked him, but I didn’t think to ask, at the time. And neither of us”—(Mrs. Edrick is referring now to her husband, whose face Brianna has not seen)—”is especially eager to crawl into such a space.”
The widow is feeling disoriented. She recognizes the sensation—heightened excitement, apprehension—a curious mixture of fear and hope—an intensification of the way she invariably feels when she drives by the former house. And now, so suddenly, with no preparation she is standing in the former house.
What has brought her here? Has it been—him?
Certainly, she does not want to descend into the basement! Not into the crawl space!—which she remembers as grungy, filthy with cobwebs, a strong rank smell of damp earth.
Yet she hears herself say in an earnest voice: “I—I think I will, thank you. Yes. I’d like to see what’s in the boxes, that my husband left for me.”
The Edricks have led her downstairs into the basement—as if she who’d lived in this house for twenty years needs anyone to show her the way. Here too, the widow feels both disoriented and comforted, for there are mismatched chairs and a plush dark-orange sofa facing an ugly TV screen that she has never seen before, yet the ceiling of loosely fitted squares is exactly as she remembers, and the olive-green floor tile is only slightly more worn.
Jed had detested TV. Their screen had been much smaller than this screen. She’d watched TV infrequently, always with a sense of guilt.
Your mind. Your brain. Beware of rot.
Mr. Edrick has dragged over a chair, that the widow might step on it to crawl through the waist-high opening in the cement wall.
“Don’t forget these! You will need both.”
Almost gaily Mrs. Edrick presses a flashlight and a pair of shears into the widow’s hand.
Dis Mem Ber and Other Stories of Mystery and Suspense Page 5