An American Dream

by Norman Mailer

  “Are you the husband?” a voice asked in my ear. Without turning around, I had an idea of the man who spoke. He was a detective, and he must be at least six feet tall, big through the shoulder and with the beginning of a gut. It was an Irish voice oiled with a sense of its authority, and in control of a thousand irritations. “Yes,” I said, and looked up to meet a man who did not correspond to his voice. He was about five-eight in height, almost slim, with a hard, clean face and the sort of cold blue eyes which live for a contest. So it was like the small shock of meeting somebody after talking on the telephone.

  “Your name?”

  I told him.

  “Mr. Rojack, there’s a series of directly unpleasant details to get through.”

  “All right.” I said dumbly, more than careful not to meet his eye.

  “My name is Roberts. We have to take your wife to Four Hundred East Twenty-ninth, and we may have to call you down there to identify her again, but for the minute now—if you’d just wait for us.”

  I was debating whether to say, “My God, right in front of my eyes, she jumped like that!” but that was one duck which would never lift from the lake. I had an uneasy sense of Roberts which was not unlike the uneasy sense I used to have of Deborah.

  I wandered down the line of banged-up cars, and discovered that the unpleasant elderly man with the pink-tinted glasses was still moaning. There was a young couple with him, a tall dark good-looking Italian who might have been the man’s nephew—he showed a family resemblance. He had a sulky face, a perfect pompadour of black straight hair, and was wearing a dark suit, a white silk shirt, a silver-white silk tie. He was a type I never liked on sight, and I liked him less because of the blonde girl he had with him. I caught no more than a glimpse of her, but she had one of those perfect American faces, a small-town girl’s face with the sort of perfect clean features which find their way onto every advertisement and every billboard in the land. Yet there was something better about this girl, she had the subtle touch of a most expensive show girl, there was a silvery cunning in her features. And a quiet remote little air. Her nose was a classic. It turned up with just the tough tilt of a speedboat planing through the water.

  She must have felt me staring at her, for she turned around—she had been ministering with a certain boredom to the weak gutty sounds of the man in the pink-tinted glasses—and her eyes which were an astonishing green-golden-yellow in color (the eyes of an ocelot) now looked at me with an open small-town concern. “You poor man, your face is covered with blood,” she said. It was a warm, strong, confident, almost masculine voice, a trace of a Southern accent to it, and she took out her handkerchief and dabbed at my cheek.

  “It must have been awful,” she said. A subtle hard-headed ever-so-guarded maternity lay under the pressure with which she scrubbed the handkerchief at my face.

  “Hey, Cherry,” said her friend, “go up front, and talk to those cops, and see if we can get Uncle out of here.” Studiously, he was avoiding me.

  “Let it be, Tony,” she said. “Don’t look to draw attention.”

  And the uncle groaned again, as if to begrudge me my attention.

  “Thank you,” I said to her, “you’re very kind.”

  “I know you,” she said, looking carefully at my face. “You’re on television.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have a good program.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Mr. Rojack.” The detective was calling me.

  “What is your name?” I asked her.

  “Don’t even think about it, Mr. Rojack,” she said with a smile, and turned back to Tony.

  And now I realized the detective had seen me chatting with nothing less than a blonde.

  “Let’s go upstairs and talk,” he said.

  We stepped into a squad car, the siren was opened, and we drove up the Drive to an exit, and then turned back to the apartment. We didn’t say a word on the way. That was just as well. Sitting next to me Roberts gave off the physical communion one usually receives from a woman. He had an awareness of me; it was as if some instinct in him reached into me and I was all too aware of him.

  By the time we arrived, there were two more squad cars in the street. Our silence continued as we rode up in the elevator, and when we got to the apartment, a few more detectives and a few more police were standing about. There was a joyless odor in the air now somewhat reminiscent of liquid soap. Two of the police were talking to Ruta. She had not combed out her hair. Instead she had done her best to restore it, and she looked too attractive. The skirt and blouse had been changed for a pink-orange silk wrapper.

  But she made up for it by her greeting. “Mr. Rojack, you poor poor man,” she said. “Can I make you some coffee?”

  I nodded. I wanted a drink as well. Perhaps she would have the sense to put something in the cup.

  “All right,” said Roberts, “I’d like to go to the room where this happened.” He gave a nod to one of the other detectives, a big Irishman with white hair, and the two of them followed me. The second detective was very friendly. He gave a wink of commiseration as we sat down.

  “All right, to begin with,” said Roberts, “how long have you and your wife been living here?”

  “She’s been here for six or eight weeks.”

  “But you haven’t?”

  “No, we’ve been separated for a year.”

  “How many years were you married?”

  “Almost nine.”

  “And since you separated, you’ve been seeing her often?”

  “Perhaps once or twice a week. Tonight was the first time I’d been over in two weeks.”

  “Now, on the phone you said this was an accident.”

  “Yes, I think I said it was a frightful accident. I think those were my words.”

  “An accident in fact?”

  “No, Detective. I may as well tell you that it was suicide.”

  “Why did you say it was an accident?”

  “I had some dim hope of protecting my wife’s reputation.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t try to go ahead with that story.”

  “It wasn’t until I hung up that I realized I had in effect told the next thing to a lie. I think that took me out of my shock a little. When I called down to the maid, I decided to tell her the truth.”

  “All right then.” He nodded. “It was a suicide. Your wife jumped through the window.” He was doing his best to make the word inoffensive. “Now, let me get it clear. Your wife got up from bed. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Went to the window and opened it?”

  “No, I’d opened it a few minutes before. She’d been complaining about the heat and asked me to open the window as wide as I could.” I shivered now, for the window was still open, and the room was cold.

  “Forgive me for prying,” said Roberts, “but suicides are nasty unless they’re cleared up quickly. I have some difficult questions to ask you.”

  “Ask what you wish. I don’t think any of this has hit me yet.”

  “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 l
ife. 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.”