This Sweet Sickness

by Patricia Highsmith

  Wes smiled gratefully. “Around nine? A little earlier?”

  “Okay. Earlier. I’ll lend you that book, if you want to read it.”

  David had two letters that evening, one from his aunt, whose handwriting he recognized, and the other typewritten. He turned it over and read:

  G. J. Delaney

  48 Talbert St.

  Hartford, Conn.

  He opened it in his room, panic-stricken at the thought that something had happened to Annabelle, that she was in a hospital dying, or had already died.

  Dear Mr. Kelsey:

  I have two words for you: get out. I want no more of your letters and neither does my wife. I could sue you for libel on what you have written already. They have laws for people like you who deliberately attempt to destroy somebody else’s marriage. Your insults against me make me sick and are no better than a delinquent might produce, not a man who thinks he is a big shot scientist.

  I have seen both your insulting letters to my wife in which you suggest she is going to meet you at such and such a place. Nothing is more off the beam, Mr. Kelsey. If my wife even wanted to meet you, don’t you think she could have done it by now? She shares my opinions that you are about one step away from a mental institution and that you had better cut your connections here—or else. We do not want to hear from you again. If you do choose to keep it up I’ll take steps myself and I mean that.

  Yours,

  Gerald J. Delaney

  David started to put the letter on his table, and instead dropped it on the floor. By the time he had hung up his overcoat and removed his rubbers, which he had stomped as dry as he could on the doormat downstairs, he had made up his mind not to answer the little pig. Lumping Annabelle in with his “opinions” indeed! “Libel.” David wondered if Annabelle had read the letter and had been unable to keep him from sending it? He would write to Annabelle tonight, he thought, right after dinner and before Wes arrived. And again he was tempted to tell her that he owned a house, a good-sized comfortable one, where she could go at any time and never be found by Gerald. Then he decided once more to wait.

  But he began the letter before he went down to dinner, and in the course of it, he told Annabelle that he had a house that he had furnished for two, specifically for himself and her, and that she was not only welcome to come there at any time, but that her being there would give him the greatest happiness. He was not telling her its location, as he did not want Gerald to know it. He was calm but eloquent, and said he was done with letters, with insults on paper, with questions that could never be answered because of the meddling bore, the eunuchoid moron (he could not completely control his choice of words) she lived with. “. . . If I come to Hartford, it will be to take you away with me. I should have done so the last time . . .”

  Wes Carmichael came that evening bearing beer and a bottle of Hennessy brandy. He sat on the edge of David’s maroon armchair with a beer can in one hand and a glass with two inches or so of scotch in the other, and he told David that he no longer had a cocktail with Laura before dinner, so these were the first drinks he had had. The words gushed out of him like so much dross he had to get rid of before they could talk of anything else. Last Sunday he had had to shave himself at the kitchen sink, because the bathroom basin was full of combs and brushes soaking in ammonia, and the toilet was soaking in something else, and the tub was full of clothes. And the cleaning mops and scouring powders, the spot removers, the variously colored sponges, each for a specific purpose, the disposable toilet mops, the steel wool, the stove cleaners, the glass wax and the floor wax and the furniture wax, the Clorox and the ammonia and the silver polish that came tumbling out of the cabinet below the sink or the one in the bathroom every time he opened them. “I swear if I ever get away from her and start living in the ordinary world, I’ll succumb to the first germ that hits me.”

  David did not listen attentively, heard only phrases here and there, and a few times he laughed, because Wes liked him to laugh. Then Wes himself joined in with loud claps of laughter, like a purge.

  “Stay a bachelor,” Wes said, pouring himself more scotch. “Are you really going on this expedition if they take you at that lab?”

  “That depends on something else. Another job I’m considering.”

  “Where? I’ll go with you!”

  “I can’t talk about it yet. As soon as I can—” David rubbed his palms on the edge of his chair seat. He had suddenly thought that Annabelle might not get his letter tomorrow, since he had dropped it in a box only at eight-fifteen tonight. She probably would not get it until Saturday morning. That meant, if she telephoned him or sent him a telegram, he would not be here on the weekend to receive it. He decided that he would call Mrs. McCartney Saturday evening at eight or nine to see if any messages had come for him.

  Then Wes began to talk of the topography of the ocean bottom as he looked at the pictures in the book, and David with relief passed into an objective and logical world. They talked until after midnight, and David walked down with Wes to his car to say good-bye. He felt well again, lucky, and blessed: he was only twenty-eight, Annabelle twenty-four, and the best years of their life lay before them.

  The next morning there were three inches of snow on the ground, fluffy and soft as a fallen cloud. David loved the snow, better the light snows than the heavy. They transformed the scenes that he knew, hiding their dirt, blurring the angles that evoked old thoughts, disappointments, and the drearinesses of his daily routine. The snow freshened his own hopes, and it was one of those Friday afternoons when he felt sure a letter from Annabelle would be lying on the wicker table when he went back to the boardinghouse at five-thirty. But there were only three letters on the table, and none was for him. And there couldn’t have been an answer, anyway, to his letter of last evening.

  In his room he packed some books in his duffel bag and a bottle of ink, which he had remembered the house needed. He whistled softly to himself, anticipating the weekend which would be quieter than usual with the new fall of snow expected tonight, quiet except for his music and the sounds that he made himself. He would think over everything this weekend, and it just might be that this was the weekend on which he would go, on Sunday, to Hartford, for the all-important next meeting with Annabelle. By Sunday night, he thought, all might be arranged, Annabelle might be in the house, hanging up her clothes, getting acquainted with the house, flinging her arms around his neck and kissing him. And perhaps she wouldn’t want to share the bedroom with him until they were married, he thought, whistling more loudly until a smile made whistling impossible.

  On an impulse he ran up and knocked on Mrs. Beecham’s door. She was knitting something brown—David didn’t ask what this time—and let the knitting lie in her lap while she talked to him. Now David was fluent and at ease when she inquired about his mother, and they talked about the snow, and Mr. Harris who had sprained his ankle somehow and wouldn’t be able to stomp out his charley horses for a while, and David felt happy and blessed in the warmth of her voice and her smile and her good wishes for his weekend.

  Hardly had he started downstairs when Mrs. McCartney called to him. He was wanted on the telephone.

  David picked it up quickly, thinking it was Wes. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Dave? This is Annabelle.”

  “Darling! Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right. But Gerald saw your letter. He happened to come home for something at four o’clock and the mail arrived and I couldn’t help it, Dave. He took it from the mailman himself and opened it.”

  “Well—a scurvy thing to do, but I couldn’t care less.”

  “Maybe you couldn’t. Dave, don’t you understand the situation? He’s my husband.”

  “The situation—of course I understand it, better than you, I think, Annabelle. Did you see my letter at all?”

  “Yes. I read it.”

 
“Well?” he blurted, hopefully, cupping his hand around the mouthpiece so that his voice would not carry through the hall.

  “Dave, this business about your house—that’s why I’m calling. You don’t seem to understand when I write to you. I can’t ever come to your house, Dave, not the way you want me to come.”

  “Naturally, I was thinking—you’d finally get a divorce.”

  “Dave, I don’t want a divorce. Can’t you understand that?”

  He wet his lips. “Is he there with you? Now?”

  “No.”

  “No? Listen, Annabelle, would you like me to come to Hartford? Right now?”

  “No, Dave, that’s why I’m calling. How can I say it? You’ve got to stop writing me, Dave. It’s just causing more and more trouble. Gerald’s fit to be tied and I do mean that.”

  “I don’t give a damn about Gerald!”

  “But I do. I’ve got to. Just because you can’t understand—”

  He stood open-eyed, open-mouthed, his mind at a loss for a single word, as if he confronted a problem too big and cumbersome even to be taken in.

  “Dave, forgive me for saying it like this.”

  “It’ll be all right,” he mumbled. “Don’t worry.”

  “What?”

  He had mumbled, and he couldn’t repeat it. “Good-bye, Annabelle.”

  “Good-bye, Dave.”

  Walking away, he tripped over his duffel bag, picked it up, and went on. He got into his car and automatically started for the town of Ballard and his house, took the same abbreviated route he always took, but he did not stop at the delicatessen in Ballard as he usually did, because he could not bear to provide for himself for tomorrow. Once in the house, he frowned even harder as he went about the simple business of unpacking the duffel bag and changing his clothes, because it seemed that here, in this happier half of his existence, there would surely be the answer, the explanation, the direction he must take. Finally he played music, and sat on his sofa, staring into space across his folded arms, no closer to coming to grips with the matter than he had been just after her telephone call.

  Only after his second absentminded shower that night, after midnight, did something that might be called a thought form in his mind: Annabelle might think she meant what she said. Otherwise how account for the sincerity and the seriousness in her voice? Annabelle didn’t lie. In which case, the situation called for more persuasion on his part, a power to convince her, and he had not lost an iota of his faith that letters could.

  But that night he felt as spent as if he had walked to Hartford and back, or as if he had been pummeled until he hadn’t the strength to stand up, and his desire to write her another letter at once was also feeble, like the thought that had occurred to him, which after all might not be correct. Tomorrow, perhaps, he could think more clearly.

  In the dead of night, more snow began to fall, like billions of white, silent tears.

  11

  Saturday he did not write another letter to Annabelle, because he was still considering going up to Hartford on Sunday and bringing her back with him. Letters had their time and place, they influenced, but they were not action, after all.

  He was up early Sunday, shoveled the snow from his steps, and then set himself to finish the sanding and shellacking of a piece of wood that he chose to call a figurehead, actually a section of hand-carved molding that must have graced half of some late-nineteenth-century doorway. It was something over three feet long, and had two floral designs among its sweeping scrolls, no human face, and it was strangely incomplete looking, but he still called it his figurehead, and when he had bought it from the puzzled junk dealer for fifty cents, he had imagined it beige or brown or whatever color the real wood was. He had thought at once that Annabelle would like it, perhaps as a lamp base, perhaps simply lying on the long table in the living room, purposeless and beautiful. He worked briskly but without haste, and he was putting on the first coat of shellac when he heard the shift of a car’s gears. A shift to a lower gear. He climbed the stairs to the living room. He had jumped at the first sound from the silent, snowy outdoors, and now his heart pounded crazily. A maroon car, an old one, was coming up his driveway, taking the curve so that it faced him now. David made out the color of a Connecticut license plate. He tried to see through the windshield. The car was only fifteen feet away, on the straight stretch to his door, when he saw that it was a man driving and that no one was with him. David’s disappointment barely registered as such. He was as tense as if he were prepared for a physical fight, and his reaction might have been just as hostile if a stranger had driven up to ask him a direction. But in this case he could see the driver was Gerald.

  Gerald got out of the car, scowling suspiciously at the house, and leaving the car door open, he came to the door and so moved out of David’s line of vision. Gerald knocked. David stepped near the front door, so that he could not be seen through the windows. He was not going to answer. Let Gerald think he had come to the wrong house. David clenched his fists until they burned with unreleased strength, furious that Gerald had found his house, invaded his doorstep. Gerald’s knock came again, more angrily.

  “Kelsey? Open up!” Gerald said threateningly in his rather high voice. Then immediately the steps crunched away in the snow in the direction of the garage.

  David moved to a side window. Snow had obliterated the tracks of his car wheels, but Gerald stood on tiptoe and looked through the glass in the top of the door. As if this didn’t satisfy him, he yanked at the door, piling up snow as he opened it wide enough to go in. And there sat his car with the keys in the ignition, his initials on the alligator key case that Annabelle had given him. David imagined Gerald’s filthy, prying hands on it.

  David flung his front door open and yelled, “Get out of there!”

  Gerald came out of the garage. “Oh, there you are. What’s the matter? Scared to open the door?” His voice was high and hoarse.

  “Just get out,” David said, his feet planted in the snow, his fists clenched again.

  “Not before I have a talk with you. Let’s go inside.” He fairly snorted with petulant anger, his stocky figure advancing so confidently that David thought he might have had a few drinks. “Come on, you’re going to get cold,” Gerald said in a superior tone, reaching out for David’s arm.

  David recoiled, but also slashed at the arm with his fist, and Gerald staggered and nearly fell.

  “Good God,” Gerald said, doubled over with pain, clutching his elbow. “Listen, Kelsey, I’ve got a gun on me. I don’t want to use it, it’s just for my own protection, but—”

  David’s laugh drowned him out.

  With a scared expression, Gerald looked at the open door of the house, as if he were afraid to go in now. “You’re nuts, Kelsey. You’re out of your head.” He still held his elbow.

  “I said get out. Leave.” David walked to his door to close it, not wanting Gerald even to see the inside of his house. He tripped the latch so he could get back in again and closed the door.

  Gerald looked up at him, his fat mouth turned down at the corners. “I said I wanted to talk to you. I know where you live now—on your weekends. I suppose this is where you intended to bring my wife. Well, I’m here to tell you I’ve had enough of you and Annabelle’s had more than enough.”

  “Why don’t you use your gun, Gerald?” David said recklessly, his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his blue jeans, his whole body exposed to Gerald’s silly gun. He was rigid and shaking with cold.

  Gerald put his right hand in the pocket of his overcoat and started toward David, who at the proper moment came down a step, lifted a foot and pushed Gerald in the chest.

  The gun went off as Gerald struck the ground, as if it were a sound of his own impact. And it was the noise and the disorder more than anything else that inspired David to yank Gerald to his feet and sho
ve him toward his car, but Gerald fell again, yelling with panic or pain.

  “Don’t touch me!” Gerald said shrilly, and an instant later David saw his round cheeks shake like blubber when the underside of David’s fist struck him in the side of the head. Now Gerald held his ear like a small boy about to cry, and like a small, angry boy he scowled at David, pulled the gun from his pocket, and said through his teeth, “Get back, David.”

  But David could not stop his pleasure, and he launched what seemed to him a very slow blow at Gerald’s soft chin, saw Gerald’s face with its hypnotically fixed expression rise a little in the air and turn backward, and now there was a crack as he landed, but not the crack of a gunshot. Gerald’s head had hit the steps in front of the house, and there he lay.

  David picked up the gun that had slid away in the snow, stuffed it back in a pocket of Gerald’s overcoat, and pulled Gerald to a sitting position. Gerald was out cold. With one hand, still strong with his wrath, David dragged Gerald to his car, stuck him behind the wheel, shoved one leg in, then the other, and slammed the car door. He started toward his house, then got a thought that struck him as absurdly considerate an instant later, that Gerald might well freeze there before he came to, thought of turning on his car motor to warm him—but there might be a danger of carbon monoxide poisoning. With a bitter smile and a curse in his head, David opened the door again, grabbed a handful of snow, and smeared it all over Gerald’s repulsive face.

  “Wake up, you slob,” David said. “Wake up and get out of here.”

  He was bleeding from the left ear, David saw. Then he realized the blood was coming from the back of his head. David thought of feeling the wound to see how bad it was, but couldn’t bring himself to touch that round, idiotlike skull. Gerald’s hairless hands lolled foolishly in his lap. Gingerly David took one wrist and felt for a pulse. There was not only no pulse, but the wrist felt doughy and unnatural. Suddenly David thought he might be dead. David straightened up and folded his arms, staring at the gross annoyance that refused to revive.