“Stomach virus,” the doctor said later. “Comes on all of a sudden, just like that. Going around. Let her rest a few days. She’s plumb cleaned out inside.”
“I told you I felt awful,” Sue Ellen murmured from her bed.
A few of the cousins also felt poorly. Too poorly to drive home, in fact, and Ellsworth spent the night in his study, trying to lock out the noises of people being sick all over the house.
He could not believe that of all the world, he alone was a failure at murder. He went upstairs and stared at Sue Ellen. She managed a faint wave of greeting.
“I’m so ashamed,” she said. “Getting sick in front of everybody like that. Ruining the party. I could just die!”
Fat chance, he thought as he watched her drift back to sleep.
Finally, Sue Ellen regained her strength and began to visit her cousins again. They had a new source of conversation besides each other and chewing gum these days. Now they could review the Day the Chatworths Got the Stomach Flu. They also had a new project. While in residence, several of the cousins had noticed that the house could use some modernization and loving care. Sue Ellen had also become aware of needed work while she was on the mend. “Falling apart,” she would now say.
“Not at all! It’s a fortress! They built strong and sturdy places back then,” Ellsworth insisted. The sort of remodeling she had in mind would cost a fortune—his fortune. Even talking about prospective expenses felt like being robbed, or having a favorite part of his body amputated.
Nonetheless, Ellsworth did not have any more of a vote in the future of his dwelling or his inheritance than he did in the chewing gum empire, which is to say he had none. The house was going to be thoroughly redone. Sue Ellen had developed a yen to “do it right” to use her unoriginal phrase. She wanted someday to be featured in Architectural Digest. The prospective tab was astronomical. Ellsworth suffered each planned purchase as a physical pain to his heart, and eventually he refused to listen.
“Let me tell you about what we’re going to do up in the—” Sue Ellen would say.
“Not now. I don’t understand house things, anyway. Besides, I’m busy,” he’d answer.
And he was. He was constantly, frantically, obsessively busy with plans for shortening both the span of his wife’s life and the duration of her spending spree. He had failed with the car, with the shower and with the poison. His mother always said that bad things came in threes. Perhaps that included bungled murder attempts.
People were dying all over the world. Was it asking too much for Sue Ellen to join them? But their town had no subway for her to fall under. Their house had no large windows for her to crash through. Sue Ellen seldom drank or took even prescription drugs, and when she did, she was careful. A faked suicide was ridiculous, since she was so unrelentingly cheerful—aside from a bit of temper tantrum now and then, of course.
He thought he would go crazy formulating a new plan. He read accounts of perfect crimes, but couldn’t find one that didn’t hinge on intricate coincidences or isolation or strange habits of the deceased that had earned them a slew of enemies, all of whom could be suspects.
One evening over dessert, Sue Ellen and Cousin Tina chattered away as Ellsworth mulled over murder and watched the women with disgust.
Sue Ellen lit a cigarette.
“You ought to stop smoking,” Tina said. “It’ll kill you.”
“But not for years.” Ellsworth had not meant to say it out loud.
Cousin Tina’s spoon stopped midway to her mouth and she looked intently at Ellsworth.
“Sweet Ellsy,” Sue Ellen said, “trying to keep me from worrying about my dreadful habit. But Tina’s right. I should stop.”
Ellsworth watched his wife’s plain little face disappear behind a smoke screen and he suddenly smiled. The next day, Ellsworth carefully disconnected the positive battery contact in the upstairs smoke alarm. The change was nearly invisible. Nobody, not even a fire marshal, would notice—and if he did, it would be chalked up to mischance. Ellsworth lit a match, held it up to the alarm, and smiled as nothing whatsoever happened. And then he waited until the time was right.
The time was perfect three nights later, when Sue Ellen stood in the living room in her stocking feet, contemplating her brandy snifter. They had just come back from an early dinner with Cousin Peter and his wife. They dined out frequently these days as half the house, including the kitchen, was pulled apart and chaotic. Besides, it was the housekeeper’s evening off, and neither Sue Ellen nor Ellsworth was much good at figuring out what to do in a servantless pinch.
“I’m exhausted,” Sue Ellen said. “Between the office and the remodeling, I feel like I’m spinning. Can’t wait till we get past these practical things and to the fun stuff, like new furniture and wallpaper and things. I just hate even talking about the plumbing and the wiring and the replastering and—”
“Then don’t,” Ellsworth said. “Why don’t you toddle up to bed instead, and get yourself some well-deserved rest?”
“You mean you’re just as bored as I am about all that retrofitting and rewiring stuff?” Sue Ellen asked with a yawn. “I thought men liked that kind of hardware store thing. Why just today—”
“Tell me tomorrow,” he said. “You must be completely exhausted.”
Thirty minutes later, he tiptoed upstairs. Sue Ellen lay, snoring softly, in the pink and repulsively ruffled chamber she insisted on calling the master bedroom, although it made the theoretical master ill. It was symbolic of the many ways in which he was ignored and undervalued. Sue Ellen’s pet husband. He looked down at his sleeping wife and felt not a single pang at what he was about to do. Her brandy snifter sat, drained, on her bedside table, next to an ashtray with one stubbed-out cigarette.
Ellsworth took a fresh cigarette from her pack and lit it, then placed it carefully on the pillow next to her. Then he tiptoed out, leaving the door open, the better to let the currents of air flow up the staircase and fan the fire.
He stretched out on his study’s sofa and waited. When the smoke reached all the way to him, he would rush to save his bride but, tragically, it would be too late.
Just as everybody had told her—even her own relatives—smoking would be the death of her.
Ellsworth grinned to himself. “Goodbye, Sue Ellen,” he said, and closed his eyes.
The howl hurled down the stairwell, directly in to his skull. How had she awakened? Smoke wasn’t supposed to do that to people—in fact, it was supposed to do just the opposite. The sounds from upstairs were loud and harsh and he closed his eyes again. In five minutes he’d go up far enough to burn his jacket. Then he’d call the fire department.
“Ellsworth! Ellsworth! Wake up!” The voice reached him from outside the study, but then, there she was. Without so much as a singed hair and in her nightgown.
The scream continued from upstairs.
“The house is on fire!” she said. “Upstairs. I already called the fire department.” She helped him up. “You look so confused,” she said. “You must have been sleeping very soundly.” Then together they went and stood outside on the lawn.
“Sue Ellen,” he said slowly, “somebody is still up there.”
She shook her head. “There’s only the two of us home tonight.”
“But I heard screaming. In fact, I can still hear it.”
“Screaming?” She looked puzzled for a moment, then she chuckled. “I tried to tell you! The contractor said our old alarm was unsafe. He made me light up directly under it and puff into it and he was right, Ellsworth. It didn’t even make a peep. That’s incredibly dangerous! So he put in these new electronic ones and now we have them all over the place.” She looked back at the flaming roof. “Had,” she said. “We had electronic ones.” They both sighed. But then Sue Ellen brightened. “We should look at the bright side, though. Maybe we lost some of the house and a lot of time and hard work, but we have our lives. Isn’t it lucky that the contractor was so sharp? And what a miracle—he put the new
ones in today and they saved our lives tonight! It really makes you think, doesn’t it?”
Ellsworth nodded dully. The thoughts it made him think were unbearable and endless, and only the whine of approaching fire engines finally distracted him.
“Oh, Ellsworth,” Sue Ellen shrieked. “I’m a mess! The whole fire department will see me in my nightgown. I could just die!”
“Stop saying that!”
He began to smoke himself shortly thereafter, needing to do something beside pace the floor through the long nights. He searched wildly for a solution to his problem. He considered hazardous sports, but they made him nervous and Sue Ellen was, by her own admission, rather a klutz.
He pondered whether a fish bone could be wedged down somebody else’s throat.
He considered disguising himself as a robber and shooting Sue Ellen dead as he entered the house. But he couldn’t figure out how to arrange a good alibi for the time since the only people he knew in town were her doting relatives.
He wept a great deal, lost weight, and bit at his bottom lip until he had a series of small sores there. Then one fine Sunday, sixty-four days after Ellsworth had first decided that Sue Ellen must go, Sue Ellen herself provided him with the answer. “Oh,” she gasped with excitement as she peered out of his study’s window. They had been sleeping in the small room, living in much too close surrounds while the upstairs was repaired. “Look,” she said. “We have a perfect day for it.”
“For what?” he asked, although he had long since lost all interest in his wife’s babble.
“For the board meeting!”
“What does the weather have to do with anything?” He asked. “Besides, it’s Sunday.”
“You don’t come to meetings anymore, honey, so you don’t know. We decided to have this one on the river. Picnic lunch and all. Kind of combining business with pleasure.”
“Well, then,” he grumbled, “since I am finished with your kind of business, in that case, I’ll see you tonight.” The fact that it was time for yet another monthly meeting was incredibly depressing. Tempus fugit, but Sue Ellen didn’t. Two months gone and nothing had changed. Nothing whatsoever. He was still Ellsworth Hummer, possessor of nothing except a meaningless title, and the status quo might last forever.
“Nonsense!” Sue Ellen said. “We need you there. We missed you last time. Oh, I know you had your little snit, but you are still the company president. Don’t ruin everything. Besides, it’ll be fun.” She pursed her mouth and burst into an ancient and boring song. “‘Cruising down the river…on a Sunday afternoon—’ I can’t remember any more of the words,” she said.
Wait a second, he thought. Rivers were good things. People drowned in them. And with a little help, so would Sue Ellen, this very day. “Goodie,” he said. “A company picnic. What a treat.”
He whistled as he drove. The river, he knew, turned and curved romantically between banks laden with trees. If he could get a head start and place their canoe beyond a curve, away from the relatives, he could push Sue Ellen into the water and hold her there long enough to finally do the job. A few minutes were all that were required—probably even less. A person could only hold her breath for so long. Then he’d release her, flounder around, and call for help. Her whole family would witness his desperate attempts to save her.
After a hearty lunch, Peter asked whether they wanted to hold the business meeting now or later.
“Later,” Ellsworth said. “Always later and later.”
“Ah,” Peter said. “Are we then to take it you haven’t had a change of heart toward chewing gum concerns or board matters? Is that how it still is?”
“I have the same heart I always had. Why change it?” Ellsworth said with a mean smile.
The seven board members headed for the river and climbed into canoes. Agatha said she’d rather paddle by herself, and the rest, including Ellsworth and Sue Ellen, divided up into pairs.
Ellsworth was younger and stronger than his fellow board members, so it was easy to get himself a wide lead and to station his canoe in the arc of a blind curve. He could hear the cousins laugh and call to one another just beyond the trees. This was good, because he’d be able to summon them quickly.
“Isn’t this nice?” Sue Ellen said dreamily. “Wasn’t this a great idea?”
He nodded and grinned.
“I’m so glad we had today together this way,” she said. “For once you don’t seem angry about the business or how we’re running it.”
“Well…” Ellsworth said, positioning himself. “Things change. People learn. Finally, I think I really understand what can be and what can’t be and what must be. So goodbye, Sue Ellen.”
Her Chatworth eyes opened wide. “Why, Ellsworth—” she began.
Quickly, he stood up in the canoe, but Sue Ellen instantly followed his lead, and her motions overturned the boat, throwing them both into the water. The dive into the river was unplanned, but it didn’t discourage Ellsworth. However, the hard clap on his head from Sue Ellen’s oar definitely did.
As he sank, he heard her shouting. For help, he hoped. But then, he could hear nothing more as the pressure on his head grew heavier and heavier. Was little Sue Ellen really that strong?
Then that and other concerns left him forever.
Sue Ellen shivered as she climbed into Cousin Aggie’s canoe.
Cousins Peter and Jeremy smiled at her from their boats and then Jeremy finally released his oar from Ellsworth’s submerged head. “Went well, don’t you think?” Jeremy said as he righted the overturned canoe and, with help from Henry, pulled the inert form into it.
“Exactly as planned,” Peter said. “Ellsworth was wrong, you know.”
“Dead wrong,” Aggie said with a chuckle. “He should have come to that last meeting, don’t you think?”
“He should have given chewing gum another chance,” Henry said.
“He blew it,” Aggie said. Her voice took on a chillingly Ellsworth-like quality as she mimicked him. “I have the same heart I always had. Why change it?” She shook her head. “No turning back after that.”
“We have a good board and we work well together. Look how smoothly this decision was implemented,” Peter said. “Quite a pity he never learned to appreciate our strengths or how the system works.”
“Your daddy was right, Sue Ellen,” Oliver of Product Control said. “The family can handle everything itself, just like he always said.”
“We’d best get back to report the unfortunate accident,” Jeremy said.
“Yes,” Sue Ellen agreed. “But first, I have to tell you one thing I surely can’t tell the police. I’m positive that Ellsworth knew just what we were going to do and that he approved. He knew that he didn’t fit in. He didn’t belong. But in the end, he understood. The last few weeks, he’s been so kind to me, so concerned, so serene, you know? Why it’s almost like he knew the plan and accepted it. Especially today. Because just before I toppled us into the water, you know what he said, real sweetly? He said that he understood what must be—honest and truly, just like that, he said it. And then he said, ‘Goodbye, Sue Ellen.’ Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
And with contented strokes, she and her cousins and uncles and aunt paddled back to shore. Once she looked over at her late husband, nestled in his canoe.
“Goodbye,” Sue Ellen whispered.
Heart Break
“Emma,” Vivian Carter said, “I was thinking…” She lapsed off into dreamy silence, but through the years, Emma had come to expect these pauses. Vivian’s thoughts meandered through private byways. Eventually, and at her own pace, she’d get back to whatever was on her mind.
Emma Howe was in no hurry. She was enjoying both her beer and the quiet. She’d tolerated Vivian’s unfinished sentences for over two dozen years, amazing herself, because she wasn’t excessively tolerant of anything, she’d been informed more than once, and Vivian’s brain too often seemed covered with bubble wrap.
But this was a day for savoring
Vivian-provided time lags, for remembering the point of living in California. After the endless battering of an El Niño winter, the air was scrubbed to a high polish as its light ricocheted off the bay onto every clearly etched object. She sat in the warm midst of the equivalent of an ice storm, only here, light coated each leaf and blade, their colors from a child’s crayon box, and it extended across the bay to where San Francisco glittered, each building edged and highlighted with light.
On the north side of the bay, Emma sat at a table in an outdoor restaurant backed up to a hillside filled with long-stemmed matilija poppies. They looked blatantly false with their oversized white crinkled petals and bright yellow centers.
A knotted portion of her innards relaxed. Vivian’s invitation had come at just the right time. That morning, George, generally the most agreeable of men, had pushed her as close to a declaration of war as an unmarried, uncohabiting middle-aged woman felt willing to endure before calling it quits.
It had been ridiculous. All she’d done was be annoyed—with good cause—at her daughter, the oldest infant in the universe. “She’s a whiner, nothing more and nothing less,” she’d said. “Won’t make up her mind or take responsibility and do something. It lets her get away with murder.”
And blam, like that, George was on her case, accusing her, the most realistic of women, of seeing everything in black and white. “No grays!” he’d said, like an angry teacher flunking her for bad behavior. “You refuse to admit there’s even such a color!”
That was crazy. Emma was a private investigator. Her entire profession dealt with grays and the need to clarify and see through them. She knew gray. She just didn’t like it. Didn’t approve of it. Avoided it at all costs. Gray was dirt and fog and weariness. Gray was to get rid of.
Who could say what had set George off? Maybe he had hormonal problems. Male menopause or something as yet undiscovered. Besides, when you got down to it, there were such things as right and wrong, and whining vacillation was on the column in Emma’s ledger headed “wrong.” Why should Emma change her views? They made sense. They organized the world, provided guidance.
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