Miller replied, “I’m going in, I’ve been wondering if I could find a record of Albert treating Alvin Rodgers leg.”
“You have a key to get in?”
“I have a key to get in.” She went ahead of him up the walk the office was empty, with the quiet of total abandonment.
Alone in his room at Allendale he had often wondered about such quiet. Quiet was a positive thing; not a negative quality. It was always present real and solid, even when buried by the everyday brash waves of sound. It was present even in a clap of thunder, as stars were present unseen in sunlight.
“Have you ever listened to the noise that silence makes?” He asked.
She smiled, tenuously. “It’s like the tone of a bell or like a steam radiator makes some time, listen It’s like the sound you hear when you hold a seashell to your ear.”
“I’ve heard it, I’ve thought of it many times, when I’ve been alone.” He turned from her and walked toward the rear of the office, past the desk at which Albert had sat. Patients had come in to Albert; it was more than that unseen silence now. It came low, like a November sky touching the earth, was it from the dark core of his brain he heard music? Albert’s music? The presence of Albert himself that Albert’s life had fastened to the room?
The door to the x-ray room, to the left of the desk was open. Miller walked past the nameless indistinct mass of the machine in the windowless cell, went on to the smaller lighter room beyond. Labels tagged the draws of olive drab filing cases. He opened the drawer, his fingers running they stopped; they went slowly ahead, they stopped again, they back tracked. Miller reached into a folder, drew out a foot square sheet of x-ray film, he held it briefly to the thin light of the window. He turned with the film to a view box, inserted it he snapped on a switch, light illuminated the film.
Miller bent over it, his fingers moved without touching along the spectral line of a bone, his silent eyes focused, unmoving on the shadow line that crossed the bone.
Sally was at his shoulder watching him. He turned his head to see her, but she was beyond the range of the light and his eyes went back to the film.
“I couldn’t realize you were really a doctor,” she said, “you told me, but it didn’t seem real.”
He snapped off the view box light, the darkness closed in, narrowing the room. What did you find?”
He turned toward her, holding the film in a hand cold as winter rock. “Nothing, nothing I thought Rodgers might be faking, but his leg’s really broken.”
She was close to him, they were alone their minds had touched; suddenly he wanted to feel the intimacy of her. His hand looped about her waist, he was here to find Albert’s murder, but he was also searching for his own life. He was tired of thought, of conflict, of search; he was tired of memory and sterile emotion.
Her body small, graceful stiffened his mouth found her mouth, and then it melted empty suddenly of all hostile tension. She held to him and he knew power, strength his body tingled, trembled with awakening aliveness. He was coming out of coldness to warmth; this was a part of life of which he’d been cheated, robbed he’d never let it escape him now.
Later when they returned to Allen’s Miller heard the sound of a piano in the sitting room where all the Allen heirs had first assembled. Angelia Parker sat on the bench, her streaked hennaed head bobbing as she slapped the keyboard in fast pulsating jazz.
Paul Davis cross legged on the floor had an unstopped bottle and a tumbler half filled with whiskey beside him. Then Miller saw the other person in the room, impersonally, numbly he watched her come toward him.
“Julie!” he cried.
She was wearing a leopard revered coat that had not been bought with one week’s salary or by cashing the bottles under the sink. She seemed just to have stepped out of Harpers bazaar. Her hands touched his shoulders, her head crimped sideways and her lip quivered.
“John, I didn’t know what happened to you.” Her eyes were rigid scrutiny on his face. “Are you all right?”
Her face was dead white, without rouge her lips were glistening scarlet, what could he say to her?”
“Yes, I’m all right, Julie.” She was acting a role, the role of the neglected wife, the woman he had abused. Her part was studied; she was acting because living meant acting to her. She knew no other reality that was tolerable to her.
At the proper moment she turned her eyes toward Sally. “Miss Daniels,” Miller said, “my wife Julie.”
He saw the pain in Sally’s face, Julie was cool, remote.
“I was held up here, Julie.” Miller said, “Albert is dead and there have been other things.” He had four dollars left in his wallet, reprimanding him, reminding him of the pill factory, of obligations, emotional and marital.
“John, I’d like to speak to you.” She took his arm; he was her possession. She said to Sally, “I hope you’ll excuse us?”
“Certainly.” Sally replied.
Julie led him into the reception foyer, he took her to the library and closed the double door in the book lined paneled room where Paul Allen had died.
“John,” she threw away her poise with an intense and sudden anger, “you didn’t let me know where you were!”
“Julie, will you listen please.”
“I called the police, they’d called me before checking on when you’d left New York, so I called them back, they mentioned this place, I wasn’t even sure I’d find you.”
“Well, now that you’ve found I’m here and that I’m all right.”
“I can’t John,” she threw her arms about his neck. I won’t go! I came here for you!” She was an actress who could enjoy anguish who could revel in a great tragic scene.
He looked down at her beautiful face, her scarlet mouth drawn tight. She was two women, one the strong, self assured beautiful creature which her appearance made her; the other a fierce, weak, frightened little women, clinging to him because she didn’t know where else to turn, he reached back and took away her hands, “all right kid.”
“Where are you leading me?”
He looked at his wrist watch, “you came to take me back to New York didn’t you? Well, all right Julie you’re doing just that, I’m going with you.”
The easy triumph disturbed her, it should disturb her, Miller knew. He wasn’t doing it for her benefit, there was a murder whose security he wanted to shake, whose hand he wanted to force by fear into revelation.
Sally Daniels was standing in the entrance foyer as they passed. “Good bye Sally.” Miller said. “I’m going to New York.” He couldn’t say anymore than that.
He couldn’t answer the hurt of her thoughts, if there was hurt there, if doubt of his return made her suffer, she would have to suffer. Miller knew Julie watched him covertly as he walked with her toward the railroad station.
“There’s something wrong,” she said, “I don’t like it.”
“You wanted me to go to New York with you, didn’t you? We’ve just time enough to make a train.”
“But you’re not doing it for me; you’re going because I don’t know why you’re going!”
He couldn’t tell her, anymore than he could have told Sally, perhaps he should have told Sally some lie, perhaps he could tell her a lie now.”
“I have business in New York.”
She drew away from him. “If you’re not doing it for me, I don’t want it.” She suddenly paused. “John, you’re strange! What are you thinking? What kind of business?”
He liked the way she was disturbed, he hoped in Millersburg, the one who was responsible for Albert’s death, or Allen’s and Mendez deaths, had been knowing similar disquieting doubt over his activities, what he might know, what he might do. A train was growing out of the distance; they hurried to the station and across the overhead footbridge and made the train just as it was pulling out. Miller sat silently beside his wife, from the blurred fringe of his vision he watched her face, her hands he sensed that she had turned toward him.
“John,” Decision was i
n Julie’s eyes. “You’ve made me feel ashamed of myself! I’ve been so wrong, so utterly wrong! You’ve been right in everything you’ve done to me!” She looked down at her soft hands, the dark blood color of her nails.
“Remember the first time you tool me out, John, the night after that crazy way we met? We’d both have probably gone on working forever in that same stupid place without so much as speaking to one another if it hadn’t been for your bumbling into my tray in the staff cafeteria and spilling coffee all over me.” Julie replied. A small introspective laugh as she continued, “and that next night when you took me to that little Chinese restaurant in the village? Afterwards we went to a movie and then the next night, that automobile ride? You told me all about yourself, and I fibbed to you about who I was and how important my family was and you know I was fibbing all the time.”
Yes he remembered how little she changed in five years, shallow, insincere.
“Then I started fixing up that little house, so that when we were married we lived away from the asylum. We didn’t have much money, but we were happy and then after your trouble, we came to New York and started fresh, oh John, how can you think that all that doesn’t mean anything? How can we crash like this?”
He watched the trees through the window. The telegraph wires along the track were aquamarine as the train sped by; they undulated with the rise and fall of the land.
“You’ll see,” Julie said where were all her traits of manners now?
“You’ll be a doctor again and you’ll have lots of money and fame and all these other things will belong to the past. When we remember it and talk about it we’ll laugh at how dumb we were…and do you remember those Friday night drives along the river? Miller felt her hand on his. “We can do things like that again and even better things. I promise I won’t even be bitchy again, be cross and disagreeable the way I have been, John, and let me make up for everything.”
He turned away knowing she was watching him foxily, wanting him to be impressed.
“Oh John, never until this weekend have I realized how much you really mean to me. Perhaps this was the right kind of medicine you’ve given me, but John let it be only medicine and not the end of everything.”
She had done her part well, he patted her hand. “It’s all right, Julie.”
“You forgive me then?” Lord her tenacity! “It’s not a matter of forgiving, I’ve acted just as badly as you have.”
“I won’t ever give you reason to act that way again.” there was no escaping her and he had to escape her. He understood how men could kill in order to be free.
“You’re wrong in wanting me Julie.”
“Let me be the judge of that, you do forgive me then?”
“All right,” but he would be rid of her.
“Say it.”
“Say what?”
“Say, I forgive you.”
“I do forgive you.” She had her ‘I do forgive you’ but they were four words, nothing more. Her silence told him she realized the nakedness of his gift.
At grand Central he said to her “I’m leaving you now. I have things to do; I’ll be back in a day or two.”
“A day or two! But your job John.”
“Oh, to hell with the damn job I don’t care.”
His vehemence startled her, but the next moment she put her arms about him. He knew she should want to know what he meant by that exclamation. She was playing for reconciliation for all she was worth or she’d certainly not pass it off so quickly.
She kissed him, “Good bye, dear.” but he knew her thought was, “I’ll never let you go.”
He left her standing there, watching him as he went. On Forty Second Street he walked west, he had time to kill now, “kill” coming into his thoughts again. He looked behind him, was she following him? Was anyone following him?
He went into the library that was a good place as any to pass time. He looked through the file of recent medical journals, how quickly developments piled up in what had once been his work. He was behind, falling behind with each day. His life needed a fresh reordering; a person could never live intelligently, properly until the basic adjustment of his life was right. He should face that there were some things he could change.
From a booth he called police headquarters and several insurance companies, after that there was only one more thing he had to do.
Julie would be home by now. He hated the necessity of facing her again, but it was unavoidable. He entered the apartment building on west 79th Street, went up to their door and let himself in. The shades were drawn; the familiar outlines of the furniture. The coat with the leopard reverse was thrown over a chair, Julie lay face down on a pillow on the couch. She was asleep, had she cried herself to exhaustion? She could cry she could be hurt in her own strange way. It was better that she was asleep.
Miller tip toed into the bedroom, the gun was what he wanted, and Albert had given it to him. It was Albert’s and Albert had not wanted it. He had given it to Miller as reassurance. A gun made small men tall and weak, men powerful with sudden strength.
He opened the bottom drawer of the chest and fumbled through books, bundles letters and dirty socks, under the socks was the gun, an ugly thing could he use it? It would be molten metal in his hands an unpredictable quantity.
He turned from the drawer his fingers gripped the gun, felt its ugliness, you become used to ugliness. Ugliness could do things accomplish dire ends. The scream surprised him. Julie stood in the bedroom doorway.
“John! No!”
“Wha-a”
“Don’t kill me!” She fled hysterically.
He stared blankly at the door arch she had been thinking that all along. She had thought the train ride was all part of a murder plan.
“Julie, it didn’t enter my mind!” That was why she hadn’t crossed anything he’d said and had pleaded so far forgiveness. He plodded to the door.
She cowered against the wall near the living room couch, why hadn’t she fled the apartment.
“You’re crazy!” she gasped.
He looked down at the gun then at her. Julie had always avoided speaking of his breakdown. She had never questioned him about his role in the deaths at the hospital. She thrust such things from her thoughts, buried them with other fears within herself.
He put the gun into the slash pocket of his coat. “I’m sorry, Julie I didn’t mean to frighten you.” He talked to her as if she were a stranger not his wife. She was a stranger, Sally Daniels was closer. “I won’t hurt you.”
She said no word, she disbelieved him. She plainly regarded him now as a man whose mind had cracked. She wanted him to get out of there, to get rid of him for good.
He found a sudden wild pleasure in crossing her. He understood how a cat could toy with a mouse, a dogs delight in baiting a bull. He put his hand back in his pocket; on the gun the meaning of that move tortured her. But she was to blame; she had put the thought into his head. He was a murder, had been one. She reminded him of it. Kill her now, kill her enrich your own life; shutoff her frustration, despair, her candy nibbling life. His staccato thoughts slowed, he felt the cold, calm grip of resolution. They had told him back at Allendale, he killed because of a subconscious, merciful urge to end pain.
“John.”
The thought of murder was in his eyes, to that all her terror tensed body testified. He saw the intensity of her fear, studied it sobering delay calmed him. “I thought I might need this gun!” he said.
He turned and left the room, but he stopped outside the door his very sanity was insane he knew. He was a murder, yet he had not lived to that label. He was not yet convinced of the truth. He put his hand on the door knob. He opened the door; he saw the terror of her face. She straightened from the wall against which she still lay, sobbing now.
The light fell at a dusty slant through the windows. The blare of horns, the rumble of traffic wheels, and the sneeze of bus brakes on the avenue was a cold impersonal backdrop for murder about to be done; he took a
step toward Julie. She fell stumbling toward him, grappling for his arm, this was it! He must kill! A fierce backhand blow of his arm struck her forehead, knocked her against the wall.
He followed after her and dragged her up with a brutal jerk of his left and dragged her up sober with his right, cutting off the scream he dared not hear. He had to be wild, insane now! He was a murder! His mind was disordered only certainly of knowing he was a murder would cure the massive curdled doubt that was his disease. He shook her as a terrier would a rat and the dress ripped from her shoulder.
He slapped his hand across her mouth to stifle her new attempts at screaming. She had to know she was going to die. He could not kill her too quickly. She stumbled and fell moaning too weak to rise. Shoot her as she lies there! She’s helpless against the wall, helpless, helpless. But his hand never took the gun from his pocket.
Chapter Fourteen
Outside Miller was dizzy from the extremity of emotion to which he’d driven himself. He had never struck a woman in his life. It had been a fantastic idea to try and get rid of his doubt as to his real nature by trying to kill Julie. The stored up bitterness and hate he felt for her had swelled past his limit of repression.
At grand central he swallowed tasteless food standing at a milk bar while waiting for the next train to Millersburg. Though he had not been able to kill, he was not sure that fact made any difference as to whether he had or hadn’t been a murder in the past. Darkness shrouded Millersburg when he arrived, but La Querencia beamed with light. He knocked ineffectively on the iron grillwork protecting the curtained panes of the double doors. Then in spite of the dark he found the bell, after a moment Davis came.
“Hello, Miller I’m the doorman now, the only able bodied man around now! “Where’s marks?”
“Jimmy Marks? That young boys no fool, he’s packed and gone.” Davis walked back toward the sitting room. He walked deliberately, steadily lest the full brim of liquor slop over.
Miller followed, there were three others in the room, and Angelia Parker worrying her nails as he so often worried his. Captain Joseph Daniels sitting as a convalescent sits, waiting for strength, the short gasps of breath through his flabby lipped mouth accentuating his feebleness. Sally Daniels reading a book was wearing a simple brown plaid dress. Her yellow bright hair went well with brown. It was the first time Miller had seen her wearing glasses.
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