This Sweet Sickness

by Patricia Highsmith

  “Hello?” she said, and at her voice he relaxed like a bow unstrung.

  “Hello, darling, it’s David. I’m in Hartford and—well, I want to see you.”

  “Today?”

  “Yes. Now. Can I come up? I’m very nearby.”

  “I’m on my way to church, Dave.”

  “Church?” he said with surprise.

  “Yes, but I suppose I—I was just going with a friend.”

  “Well, break it, Annabelle, would you? Annabelle?” But she was already off the telephone, talking perhaps to the friend.

  “Hello, Dave. Can I meet you somewhere?”

  “I’d rather see you at home. I’d like to speak to Gerald, too,” he said with determination.

  And again she went away, and he heard unintelligible hums, the deeper hum of a man’s voice, and then the telephone was hung noisily up.

  David banged his own telephone back on the hook, and wrenched the booth door open. Immediately he checked his anger, so that even before he was out of the drugstore he felt cool and collected once more. Let Gerald be the only angry one in this scene, the ass. David drove to Talbert Street and parked his car almost in front of the house. He rang the Delaney bell, one of four in the two-story red brick building. He looked at the sprinkling of yellowed grass on the tiny lawn, at the foot-high hedge full of gaps where people had trodden through, despite the wire someone had strung. Thinking he had waited long enough, David rang again. A prim, freckle-faced little girl in Sunday best opened the door and walked by him, staring at him. David heard a woman’s high heels on the stairs. The door opened and there she was.

  “Dave, why did you?” she asked, smiling. “Sunday of all days. Ouch! That’s my hand.”

  “Annabelle—” Her hair was shorter, and she looked a little tired under her eyes, but the color of her eyes, that dusty gray-blue, and her wonderful mouth were still the same. He looked at the swell of her breast under the brown tweed dress, at her still slender waist.

  “What’re you staring at?” she asked with a shy laugh that made his own heart dissolve in tears. “How’d you get your hair so wet?”

  He said something that came out simply gibberish. Then he was leaning against the doorjamb, tiredly, though he held her tightly in his arms, his lips against her skin just below the ear. He could have spent the rest of his life there.

  “Listen, I came down to avoid a scene—with Gerald,” she said, pushing back from him. “You shouldn’t have told him your name.”

  “I want to see him. Or do you want to come out and talk to me first? My car’s outside.”

  She shook her head. “Gerald’ll be down in a minute, if I’m not back. I don’t know if I can see you at all today, Dave. Except now.”

  “What are you, a prisoner?”

  “When it comes to you—”

  “Annabelle?” from upstairs.

  She looked at him, beseechingly, and he was reminded of her yes in La Jolla, when she had come back from her honeymoon.

  “Fine. Let’s go up,” David said, taking her arm.

  “Annabelle? You coming up?”

  “Please, Dave—”

  But he pulled her firmly toward the stairs. “Yes!” David shouted up.

  Gerald retreated a step toward the open door as David, still holding Annabelle’s arm, arrived at the second floor. He was short, round-shouldered in his shirtsleeves, and baby-faced, and David suddenly realized what was so strange about him: he looked like one of those glandular cases whose name David had forgotten, whose voices never really change, who are practically beardless, wide in the hips, high-waisted—and Gerald was all of that, except that his voice did sound a trifle more like a man’s than a woman’s. “Mr. Kelsey?” Gerald said.

  “Yes,” David replied pleasantly. “Pardon the intrusion. I was just passing through.”

  “Dave wants to come in for a few minutes,” Annabelle said to Gerald, who was standing sideways in the door now as if he would block it.

  David made Annabelle precede him into the apartment. He had expected clutter and the dreary appurtenances of an existence such as theirs, but the sight, the tangibleness of it all now made it far more horrible to him. There was the picture of a hideous, gray-haired relative on the television set beside the aerial, a pair of mole-colored house slippers in front of the armchair in whose seat lay the gaudy comic section of the Sunday newspaper. Glancing at Gerald’s shoes—small, unshined—he noticed that the laces were not tied and deduced that he had interrupted Gerald in his reading.

  “The place is a little untidy,” Annabelle said. “Sit down, Dave.” She gestured to a green sofa that looked more worn than their year and a half here would seem to have warranted.

  “Thank you.” David pulled off his damp raincoat and tossed it over one arm.

  “Well, you don’t have to stand there scowling at each other,” Annabelle said. “Would you like some coffee, Dave?”

  “No, thanks, Annabelle.” He looked at Gerald, who was standing with folded arms, regarding David with a frank impatience for him to be gone. “To come to the point quickly, Mr. Delaney, I love Annabelle, and I intend to make her my wife.”

  “What?” Gerald said with a slow smile of amusement, dropping his arms now and resting his hands on his hips that looked more capable of childbirth than Annabelle’s.

  “Oh, Lord, Dave,” Annabelle moaned.

  “Listen, Mr. Kelsey,” Gerald said slowly, and, as if to back him up, or as if Gerald had meant to listen to it, a squeaky wail came from another room, and Annabelle made a start toward it and stopped. “As far as I’m concerned, you’ve been rude, vulgar—”

  “Just a minute,” David interrupted.

  “—all the time Annabelle and I’ve been married. I don’t like your letters and I don’t want any more of them!”

  “I didn’t know I’d sent any to you.”

  “You’ve sent them to my wife and—”

  “I suppose you read them. You look like the type. It’s usually a woman’s vice.”

  “David!”

  Gerald’s cheeks were becoming as pink as his rubbery underlip. “In a way—in a way, I’m glad you came up here today, because I can see you’re just what I thought. You’re a nut, a real nut.”

  David gave a little laugh. That eunuch! For him to have married Annabelle was a piece of grotesquery—like a hunchback in a fairy tale capturing a princess. “You’re the picture of health, I must say.”

  Then there was a burst from Gerald, answered by David, both were shouting at once, close together, and Annabelle, trying to separate them, got struck in the hip by the back of David’s hand.

  “Get out!” Gerald said, pointing to the door. “Get out now or I’ll call the police!”

  “Annabelle will put me out and nobody else,” David said, picking his raincoat up from the floor, wishing he had buried his fist up to his elbow in that inviting pudginess below Gerald’s belt. It would have laid him groveling on the floor, might even have killed him. Boldly, David kept his back to Gerald while he straightened his raincoat, turned it inside out, and laid it over his left arm. Then he looked around for Annabelle, remembering from his own smarting hand that he had struck her.

  She was coming into the room with a cup of coffee for him, held out like an offering, and for some reason David found it very amusing and grinned broadly at her as he took it. “It’s not very strong,” she said apologetically. “Gerald doesn’t like it very strong.”

  “And you?” he asked. It was indeed abominable coffee, so transparent he could see the circle of the cup’s base through it. He thought of his espresso machine at his house, and he looked once again at Gerald, who was spraddle-legged, his absurd fists still clenched. “Mark my word, Gerald. Annabelle and I loved each other before she ever met you, and those things don’t change,” David
said.

  “For Chrissake!” Gerald slapped his bulbous forehead. “Ask her! Ask her!”

  “You can remember, can’t you, Annabelle?” When he turned to her, he felt his thirst in body and soul. All his anger subsided, and the coffee cup nearly slipped off its saucer. She was looking at him, wanting to say, “Yes.”

  “I remember, but it was a long time ago, Dave.”

  “Less than two years. You told me that you didn’t love Gerald.”

  “How could I have?”

  “In La Jolla,” David said.

  “He’s insane. If you’re not out of here in one minute, Mr. Kelsey—”

  “I guess there’re different kinds of love, Dave. When you’re married, it’s different.” Her voice shook.

  “Different from what? People fall in love and they get married—” He stared at her, at a loss to express himself by only the one word “love.” He plunged on. “Doesn’t it mean caring, providing, being thoughtful—sacrificing?”

  “Yes. Oh, Dave, we can’t stand here all day arguing.”

  “But I do all that for you,” he stammered. “More than this—” Again there was no word for that lump of flesh with the unfortunate ability to reproduce itself. “I want to speak to you alone, Annabelle.” Setting his cup down, he took her hand to lead her toward the door, but her hand stiffened and drew back, and then Gerald’s face was near his, and David drew his fist back.

  “Dave, please!” Annabelle hung onto his raised arm with both hands.

  David relaxed. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” He would have been ashamed to hit the absurd little man, was ashamed that he had almost hit him. “I mean what I say,” he said quietly to Annabelle, looking into her warm eyes that were now full of tears. Then he kissed her suddenly and briefly on the lips, before Gerald could bustle up, and the kiss was over when David’s hand flattened against Gerald’s chest and shoved.

  Gerald recovered his balance before the back of his legs struck the sofa. He uttered a filthy curse, which David ignored.

  “Obviously Sunday isn’t the day to call,” David said. “I love you, Annabelle, and I’ll write to you.” He pressed her hand, then walked to the door and went out, hearing Gerald’s bluster—in a tone of pretended incredulity—as he descended the stairs.

  Though he kept walking toward his car, David debated turning back and demanding to talk to Annabelle alone, taking her out by force if he had to. Certainly he could handle Gerald with one hand. He felt he hadn’t been definite or strong enough. But he reflected that his exit had not been bad, and that a return might spoil it. He would write to her, and persuade her—really persuade her—to meet him somewhere, even if it was only in Hartford. He thought of Gerald’s physical appearance—unredeemed evidently by any brains, grace, or sensitivity—and David felt quite secure again. He had not driven half a mile, when he pulled against the curb in a quiet street, turned off his motor, and sank with fatigue over the steering wheel, his mind reverting to Annabelle as it always did before he fell asleep, not tackling now the problems, the Situation—only Annabelle’s clear and innocent face, her body that he had so recently half embraced. He knew, like a quiet, still fact that she would one day be his.

  8

  He wrote her that evening, before the horror of what he had seen that morning had a chance to dim.

  Dec. 21, 1958

  My darling Annabelle,

  I’m tempted only for your sake to apologize for my behavior this morning, but being bitterly sorry I wasn’t more forceful, I can’t apologize. I am depressed—and yet this whole day is different and enchanted because I have seen you at all. I had a glimpse of your piano in the next room, just the end of an upright that I can’t believe does your playing justice. I wanted to ask about your book on Mozart and Schubert and wanted to ask and say so many things and couldn’t. All I achieved, I suppose and I truly hope, is convincing Gerald that I mean what I say. I hope he is thoroughly upset, because he should be.

  If at all possible, would you wire me at home (collect so it won’t appear on your phone bill) what morning or afternoon you can meet me in Hartford next Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday? I’ll manage somehow to get off from the factory. Seeing you is more important than my job—which I took only because of the money, which was because of you. I do not mean to reproach you. I’ve enjoyed the money and put it to good use, and I’d like to tell you how, but I’d rather tell you when I see you.

  I can’t end this letter without saying frankly how depressed and surprised I was to find Gerald the person he is. I had gone along with the letters from the folks back home that he was “okay” and that sort of thing. I find him [here he crossed out the phrase “a little monster”] so far unworthy of you, I cannot put my reaction and opinion into words. If he has any endearing qualities, tell me—when I see you—as I’m quite willing to listen, just so I can think about them for the remaining time you’ll have to spend with him.

  Yours forever and ever,

  Dave

  P.S. Forgive me, but I could not take any interest in the child, even though it is half yours.

  The postscript set him off on a disturbing line of thought: would he have to take the demi-monster when he and Annabelle married? Without pondering it for long, he thought that he could persuade her to present Gerald with the child—wouldn’t she realize that it would inherit its father’s physique?—because he and Annabelle would have a child or children of their own. He went out to mail the letter, drove the mile or so to the little town of Ballard, where there was a big green mailbox on the main highway. Then he realized the letter would have a Ballard postmark, if he mailed it here, and he did not yet want Annabelle, or Gerald, to know that he ever went near Ballard. There was nothing else to do but drive to Froudsburg. He wanted it in the mail as soon as possible.

  9

  David’s sleep grew worse. It was not that it took him long to fall asleep, as a rule, but that after an hour he awakened, and with that bit of refreshment could not get back to sleep until dawn. The noises in Mrs. McCartney’s house were like repeated sound effects in a repeated unpleasant dream. There was the faint but no less annoying, weatherstrip-muffled thump—thump—thump of some window upstairs as the wind stirred it in its jambs. Mrs. Starkie, second floor back, in Effie’s old room, snored. Mr. Harris not only went to the bathroom every night around 3 A.M., but was now and then awakened with a charley horse and stomped insanely on the floor with his bare heel until it went away. Once a month he presented an apology about this to the dining room. Most of the sounds were just mysterious creaks, as if someone else who could not sleep were walking his room and treading on squeaky spots in the floor. David was often cold, and had to add his overcoat to the thin blankets that covered him. Forcing himself to lie still in order to get as much rest as possible, it was easy to imagine that he lay in a waking coma or state of paralysis.

  There was still no telegram by Tuesday evening, and David made himself late to work Wednesday morning, waiting for the ten o’clock mail. He stood anxiously in the front hall, watching for the mailman through the glass of the front door. Mrs. McCartney, having been told in answer to her question that he was waiting for the mail, asked if it was about his mother, was she worse, and David said it wasn’t his mother, she was about the same.

  “You’ll be spending Christmas with her, I suppose,” she said with a small Christmas smile.

  “That’s right. I certainly will.” Then he saw the mailman coming through the light rain, and opened the door to meet him.

  “Merry Christmas!” said the mailman, and handed David all the mail for the house, two dozen square envelopes that were mostly Christmas cards, some gaudy with wreaths in their corners, a few with the scrawly, uneven writing of the aged. And one was Annabelle’s. David dropped the other letters on the wicker table and tore open hers.

  She said she could not see him. He only glanced o
ver the letter, breathing hard with anger, like a nervous child about to burst into tears, his lips open over his set teeth. She thanked him for the diamond clip—bought by mail, sight unseen, from an Olga Tritt advertisement he had seen in a New York newspaper two weeks ago—but said she could not think of accepting it, as it was much too expensive a present.

  David rushed out the door and turned his face up to the rain as he strode to his car in the alley.

  At Cheswick there was only a pretense of work that day. The pockets of white coats bulged with pint bottles. Everyone seemed to be laughing—David thought once or twice at him. Mechanically, with very little effort, he kept a pleasant look on his face, returned “Merry Christmas” merrily, and he had not forgotten the present of perfume for Helen, his secretary. David patiently double-checked every matter that he had to attend to that day, aware that he was completely unable to concentrate. Though it was Annabelle and her letter that kept him from concentrating, he was unable to think clearly even about that. In the quiet of the lunch hour, standing by the window in his office, he reread it. What pained him was her attempt to be gentle, to be kind, perhaps because she had known he would get it on Christmas Eve. You must realize it’s Xmas and I have so much to do, but not so much that I don’t think of you. Don’t let this spoil your Xmas in any way. As if he could even have any kind of Christmas without her! The letter was a combination of haste and tortured thought: Your visit—though I naturally enjoyed seeing you—did not help matters with Gerald, as you can probably imagine. Naturally enjoyed? Why naturally under those circumstances?

  He stood in Wes’s department that afternoon, hoisting beakers filled to the 500 cc. level with seventeen-year-old scotch contributed by Mr. Lewissohn. The bonuses had been generous this year, David’s had been $1,000, and everyone felt pleased with himself, with Christmas, with his work, with his boss. David looked at Mr. Lewissohn’s ruddy solid, merry-with-success face, and realized he had no energy and no passion even to dislike him today. After a sip or two, David poured the rest of his scotch into Wes’s willing beaker.