by Sol Stein
“The doctor said it was a heart attack, not a belly-ache. The symptoms are sometimes the same, he said—but that’s not fair; Amanda’s just halfway through life, she’s my age. Go, go, Jack’s waiting for you. I tried to make him come here, but the relatives wouldn’t let him.”
It took a second for Rose to rise from the chair and to put the sticks of her arms around Peter, sobbing, “Peter, tell me you love me!”
Peter stared over Rose’s shoulder at the expanse of the gray carpet and Elizabeth at the other side of the room.
“Peter, you’d better get over there,” said Elizabeth, speaking for the first time.
“What is she doing here?” said Rose, her voice rising, her face a red blemish of anger.
Elizabeth, very quietly said, “Please don’t look at me that way, Mrs. Carmody.”
“What is she doing in our home?”
“You’re upset, Rose,” Peter said.
Elizabeth asked, “Can I get you anything?”
“What did she say?” Rose asked Peter.
“Can I get you anything?”
“I’m not a visitor here,” said Rose, trying to flatten the piercing sound of her voice. “I’ll get myself—Peter, where is that water?”
Peter got the glass from beside the chair. He found a Miltown in his pillbox.
“Can I help you?” repeated Elizabeth.
“Don’t let her touch me!”
“I wasn’t going to touch you. Your husband and I finished the afternoon at a client meeting, and he suggested he might show me his home.”
She turned to Peter. “You knew I wouldn’t be home.”
“Take the pill, Rose. Drink the water. It wasn’t on purpose. It happened that way.”
Rose swallowed the pill with some water.
“What was that pill?” she asked.
“A pill.”
“Tell me.”
“Arsenic,” said Peter.
“Peter, please,” said Elizabeth.
“Vitamins,” said Peter.
“Stop that,” said Rose.
“It’s a placebo,” said Peter. “It’ll help quiet you down.”
The phone rang.
As Peter turned to answer it, Rose grabbed his arm. “Don’t leave me, Peter. Let your secretary answer the phone.”
Peter stopped. “She’s not my secretary.”
The phone insisted on being answered.
“Yes, yes, I know,” said Rose. “I’m sorry. Do you want me to get the phone, Peter?”
But Elizabeth was already at the phone and answering. “Mr. or Mrs.?” she asked. “I’ll get him.”
“Who is it?” asked Peter.
“Some excitable lady.”
Peter got to the phone, listened for a minute, then said, “I see. All right.” He hung up. “One of the relatives, Jack dropped a coffee cup and got pretty hysterical and lit out of there like a lunatic about five minutes ago and drove off. They say he said something about coming here. The relatives are pretty angry.”
“Why here?” asked Rose.
“Where do you expect him to go,” snapped Peter, “the American Bar Association? You’re Amanda’s next of kin.”
“I’d better go,” said Elizabeth, pulling on her gloves.
“Please,” said Peter, “I want you to stay.”
Elizabeth looked at Rose. “Is it all right with Mrs. Carmody?”
Rose stood motionless.
“Mrs. Carmody is not the only resident in this house,” said Peter.
The doorbell buzzed, silencing them. In a second, Peter was at the door, opening it. Jack walked in, stopped in the center of the room. Peter avoided touching him, as if death were catching.
In a quiet voice, very unlike himself, Jack acknowledged their presence simply with their names. “Peter. Rose.”
“This is Miss Kilter,” said Peter.
“A business associate,” added Rose.
Peter said, “I’m sorry, Jack. Rose just told me.”
“Hope you don’t mind my busting in.”
“Oh, no, no, I was just coming over when they phoned.”
“Damn son of a bitch relatives,” said Jack quietly. “Amanda and I never see them except at funerals. What the hell did they want to come to the house for? I guess it’s my fault. Thought I had to let them know. Had to make coffee for all of them. Bastards. I can’t make coffee. Amanda makes coffee.”
“Want a drink?” asked Peter.
“No, thanks. Mind if I sit?”
“No, no, go right ahead.”
“How do you feel?” asked Rose.
“What’s that?” said Jack absentmindedly.
“Never mind,” said Rose.
“When I’m here,” said Jack at nobody in particular, “I can’t believe anything happened there, know what I mean?”
“I know,” said Peter.
“I feel dead,” said Jack.
“You’re tired.”
“I know when I’m tired. I’m not tired. I feel like nothing. Dead.”
“It’s the shock,” said Rose.
Jack scratched his temple. “With her having rheumatic trouble since she was a kid, while I was coming home from work, I sometimes used to have a feeling I’d find her dead. You know what I mean? The truth is, I always felt that way when I was mad at Amanda, and I hoped I’d find her dead. Tonight I didn’t think anything of the kind. I just wanted to eat and watch television. I wasn’t mad at all, at anybody, and I came in and there’s Rose and the doctor and a sheet. Why the hell do they put a sheet over her face?”
“I don’t know,” said Rose.
Jack turned to Peter. “Do you know?”
“No.”
Jack swung around toward Elizabeth. “Do you?”
“No,” said Elizabeth.
“Don’t think about it, Jack,” said Rose.
“You know,” said Jack, “it’s ten years, ten or eleven, since I been to church. Damn sermon-preaching minister was just a kid. I guess he’s ten or eleven years older now. Do you think Amanda’s dead, I mean, like a doornail? No heaven. No hell. I guess not. I feel stupid crying. God, I haven’t cried in a long time. Amanda! I mean, do you think I’m crying because of Amanda or because of me?”
“Can I get you something to eat?” asked Rose.
“Like what?”
“There’s some ham and cheese.”
Jack shook his head.
“Beer?” asked Rose, thinking Jack might like some beer. Peter always said Jack was a beer man by temperament, even if he liked hard liquor.
Jack declined the beer.
“I could warm up some beef stew,” suggested Rose.
“I don’t want anything. You know what I want? A grown-up son. Isn’t that crazy? I want to put my hand on a grown-up boy’s shoulder and say, ‘It’ll be all right, kid,’ and we’d both look at his mother, and the kid and me’d be a real comfort to each other.”
Rose said, “Your brother Frank’s boy is over there with him.”
Peter noticed the first sign of emotion in Jack. “That kid’s a car thief!” Jack answered in anger. “I don’t mean that. I mean a son of mine! You know something, Rose, Peter, I’m fifty-six and I’m never going to have a son! Maybe I’m never going to have a wife again. I’d like to have a wife like you, Rose.”
“Jack!” said Rose.
“I mean, if you weren’t married. Do you know what I’m saying? I don’t know what I’m saying. Why did I come here? Rose, you’re Amanda’s best friend.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“In some ways you’re like her.”
“I am?”
“Will someone shut me up?” said Jack. “What I mean is, sometimes on Sunday mornings Amanda sleeps late and you know me, restless, so I’d get up and fix breakfast, and go out for a walk and buy the Sunday paper, and if the weather is nice I’ll read the Sunday paper in the park, and when I’ve read all the goddamn stinking ads, I watch the kids playing hockey the way they do, and it’s noon before I ge
t back, and there is Amanda still asleep and when I looked at her I’d think she was dead.” Jack was weeping freely now. “When,” he asked, “is Sunday?”
Peter had to wait until the small stone of silence slid down his throat. “Day after tomorrow,” he finally said.
“What am I going to do on Sunday? I mean, can you think of your life completely different? My father was eighty-four when he died and he wasn’t sick much, but we’d all been waiting for him to go, I guess, ’cause it was about time and he bored everybody, including himself. He kept postponing it from year to year and then he died, and it was like finishing reading the newspaper—but who expected Amanda to die? You knew her, Rose. Did you expect her to die?”
“No,” said Rose.
“Did you, Pete?”
“Miss,” he said to Elizabeth, “I forgot your name.”
“Kilter,” said Elizabeth.
“Well, you didn’t know Amanda at all, but would you expect a woman not yet fifty to die without warning me?”
Elizabeth shook her head.
“I mean, you’re all sitting there like you don’t know what to say, and what I want you to say is, if Amanda weren’t dead I’d have a chance to treat her different.”
“Sure you would,” said Rose.
“That’s a fucking lie,” said Jack. “I’m a lousy husband.”
“You’re not a lousy husband,” said Rose.
“I’m a lousy widower, that’s what. Peter, I bet you didn’t think of that. Next time I’m asked, ‘Married or single?’ by some jerk with a questionnaire, I say, ‘Widower.’ That sounds like a woman, not like a man. Widower. Amanda’s still in the house. I’d better get back to the house. Those goddamn relatives will be screwing up the funeral arrangements and getting Amanda someplace in a dog cemetery or having her cremated. Remember how Amanda was afraid of fire? She used to hate lighting the damn stove. It’d be a sin to cremate her.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Peter.
“The hell you will. You got company.”
“I was just leaving,” said Elizabeth.
“Hell, no! I feel better, really I do. I’m going for a ten-minute drive, and I’ll be back at the house. Maybe all the relatives’ll have died too, wouldn’t that be a present! Where’s my hat?”
“You didn’t bring a hat,” said Rose.
“I always wear a hat. Amanda likes hats. I tell her it makes me bald, but she likes hats. Liked. Got to remember.”
At the door, Jack turned. “You know the goddamn government won’t even pay burial expenses because she didn’t have Social Security and wasn’t a veteran? I hate the goddamn government. So long, kids.”
“Take care, Jack,” said Peter.
“You take care.”
When Jack left, there was a moment in which no one said anything, and then Rose said, “Jack’s a nice man.”
“Just because Amanda’s dead doesn’t make him a nice man.”
“You’re not very diplomatic,” said Rose.
“I don’t like Jack,” said Peter.
“Well, don’t shout at me,” said Rose.
“I’m not shouting.”
“All I said was, you could be more diplomatic.”
Peter could feel the careening downhill, gears shredding, no traction, no control. “A diplomat,” he said, “is about as disconnected from reality as a man can get. You know me, Rose, don’t you? Can you imagine me stalling around for months pretending to be talking while somebody else makes up his mind about what I’m going to say? That’s what a diplomat does. Well, I think sometimes what you think and what you say ought to be closer together, like now!”
“And what do you mean by that?” Rose said, frightened.
Peter turned away. Coward, he thought. “Rose?” he said, the catch in his voice barely noticeable.
“Yes?”
“Sudden things build, and tonight’s capped it.”
Elizabeth tried to signal to him to stop. “Keep out of this,” he snapped to her. “I’m speaking to Rose. All the time Jack was talking—Rose, pay attention—all the time you weren’t thinking of Amanda dead, you were thinking of yourself dead.”
“That’s not true!”
“Well, I was thinking of myself dead, and regretting it! When death comes whoosh I don’t want to get caught where I am now. I want to be living when I die. Rose, I’m moving out of the house.”
“Peter!”
He started up the stairs, carried by the momentum of his words. “I’m going to pack a bag and leave tonight. I’m going to get a divorce as fast as I can get a divorce.”
“You’ve lost your mind,” said Rose.
“There may be a lot of things I’m going to lose, but not my mind.”
“You’re not being realistic,” said Rose to Peter, who had already disappeared from view at the head of the stairs.
She heard his reply loud and clear. “Maybe I’m being imaginative for the first time since I got into advertising.”
“Peter, what are you doing up there?”
“Putting some things in a suitcase. A shirt and underwear,” came his voice, “for tomorrow. Another tie. Want to check and see what I’m putting in?”
Rose looked at Elizabeth. “It’s the shock of Amanda’s death,” she said calmly.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth.
“He’ll get over it,” said Rose. “We’ve been married a very long time.”
“I know,” said Elizabeth.
“He’ll get over you,” said Rose.
“Perhaps,” said Elizabeth.
“Don’t you talk so casually to me. Don’t think I don’t realize what’s caused all this. I didn’t have any trouble, not any real trouble with Peter before he met you and your slimy—you heard me correctly, I said slimy—”
“I’ll wait outside,” said Elizabeth, heading for the door.
“Oh, no, you won’t!” said Rose, grabbing Elizabeth’s arm hard.
“Please,” said Elizabeth.
“No, I want to see what you threw in his face to make him want to leave me. What do you do when you come into his office and close the door? Do you grab for his pants right away?”
Elizabeth tried to struggle free. “You’re hurting my arm.”
“Do you kiss him, I mean, stick your tongue down his throat? Do you shove your tits in his mouth? Are they nice? Come on, let me see!” With a sudden fury, Rose tried to rip Elizabeth’s clothing. Elizabeth tried fending her off but couldn’t get the hand off her arm; she felt the nails and then heard the unmistakable sound of cloth tearing. Peter came bounding down the stairs.
“Rose!” he yelled.
Instantly Rose turned on him. “Does she kiss you? Show me where she kisses you. Is it all over, everywhere, is that how she got you?”
“Rose, what’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing’s gotten into me for a long time,” shrieked Rose, “because you’ve been getting into her! How is it, better than me? Is that why you’re leaving, so you can go to bed with her every night? Is that it?”
Into the silence, Peter said the irretrievable. “I love her.”
“That slut? Don’t make me laugh!”
Elizabeth couldn’t stop Peter in time. He slapped Rose’s face.
“Oh, he can’t hurt me,” shrilled Rose, “not by getting into your pants, he can’t, not if you do—” She was stopped by Peter’s second slap.
“I’m going to marry Elizabeth,” said Peter.
Rose, holding the back of her hand against her flushed cheek, said quietly, “Marry? What about me? You’re married to me.” The enormity of it must have reached her then, because she was suddenly at Peter with her fists. “I’ll kill you first!” It took all of Peter’s strength to hold her arms.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said to Elizabeth.
“No, you won’t,” said Rose, and in full voice yelled, “Jonathan! Margaret!”
“Now stop that,” said Peter.
Louder now, Rose yelled, “Jon! Maggie! Co
me down right away!”
Peter pleaded with her for silence, but this only encouraged her to tear away from his grasp and bound up the stairs, yelling, “Jonathan! Margaret!” until the children heard and were sleepily, frightened, saying, “What is it, Mommy?” and Rose was dragging them, uncomprehending, down the stairs to the living room.
“Hold your daddy!” she screamed. “He’s leaving, he says he’s leaving forever!” The children seemed completely disbelieving. “Ask him, go ahead, ask him,” shouted Rose.
The children went to Peter, who took them in his arms.
“Well, why don’t you ask him?” said Rose.
“Where are you going?” said Jonathan.
Peter wished he had time to think, to prepare. “You don’t want to see me arguing with Mommy all the time, do you?” he asked Jonathan.
But it was Margaret who seemed to understand immediately. “Daddy, don’t go!” she pleaded.
“He’s going to divorce you,” said Rose. “He said he’s going to divorce you!”
“That’s not true,” said Peter to the children. “I’ll never divorce you. I can’t. I don’t want to. I love you. I’m just going to live somewhere else.”
“You liar!” Rose shrieked.
“Rose, please,” Peter said, “what are you doing to the children?”
“Have you asked yourself that? What are you doing, you—you and that—whore!”
Peter let go of the children. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to Elizabeth.
“Please don’t go, Daddy,” said Margaret.
“He’s a monster!” shrieked Rose.
“If you don’t stop that this minute, Rose, I’m going to take the children with me, right in their nightclothes.”
“I’ll call the police.”
“Oh, no, Mommy, please don’t,” said Jonathan.
“Daddy, who is this lady?” asked Margaret.
“This is Miss Kilter,” said Peter.
“She is?” said Margaret, wide-eyed.
But Rose was now screaming, “Whore! Beast! I hate you, I hate you…” and Peter desperately tried to kiss the children, to love them and leave them at the same time, and they clutched at him and even at his suitcase, struggling to prevent him from leaving by their show of force, and they were left hopeless as Peter and Elizabeth closed the front door behind them.