“Poor kid,” I murmured and going over to her I took her in my arms. She turned her back to me so that it was impossible to see her face, but the gelatin in the dish she was holding trembled and almost bounced to the floor. “Darling, I didn't know. It must've been awful.”
“Much you care!” she said, bursting into tears. I held her as close as I could and straining myself, I managed to kiss the side of her mouth.
“Now, now. You know I care!”
“I... I thought you... loved me!” she whimpered.
“But what an idea! Of course I love you! Have I ever said that I didn't? Come now, Anita. What is it? Have I been nasty to you?”
“You... you don't care how I feel! You won't do the one thing in the world I want you to do! You know I'm rotting here! You know everyone in town hates me!”
I tried to laugh her out of the idea although I suddenly realized how few friends Anita really had. None of the other young married women ever came to call on her. I had taken note of this once before and, after much thought, had put it down as rank jealousy. Anita was far too beautiful. But it was unnatural that she should not have at least one friend among her own sex.
“And I hate them, too!” she continued in that little choking voice. She had moved over to the table and, disregarding the dishes, some of which were dangerously close to the edge, buried her face in her arms. Her position reminded me of that night—;July 2, 1917—;when she had shed alcoholic tears in almost the same spot.
How long she continued to sob there and how long I stared blankly at her quivering breasts and at the delicate tendrils of blonde hair that curled at the nape of her neck, I do not know. For it was then that I began to weaken a little in my resolution. As this was happening to me, I became conscious of the fact that I was speaking, backing up my gradually dying decision not to sell with forceful words of refusal. Just exactly what I said and precisely what she replied to me, I am unable to remember. It may be that a touch of my old shell-shock malady came back and seized my memory for a little, twisting it out of focus.
Because the next thing I can vividly recollect is Anita standing on her two feet, pale and furious, with mother's discolored steel carving-knife in her hand. On the floor around the legs of the table were several chipped and broken dishes which her sudden leap must have knocked down.
“You're killing me!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. The shrill quality of her voice sent a shuddering response through me. My heart constricted, leaving me as cold as ice and dead certain that something awful was about to happen, I could feel the hairs rise on me. “Don't you know that you're killing me, you fool? Every day, every minute I have to stay here!...Oh, I can't stand it any longer!”
Risking a nasty cut, I went toward her, hoping to get the knife away from her; but she moved off a few paces as I approached. “Don't be childish, Anita,” I pleaded. “And stop that screaming. Do you want the neighbors to hear?”
It may seem silly that at a trying moment like that I should be concerned about anyone other than the two of us; nevertheless, such was the case. I have always secretly dreaded that my personal affairs someday might be aired in public. This fear was born of a life spent in a small town. I have seen too many people broken and unable to hold their heads up after the malicious work of gossipers and scandal-mongers.
I continued to try to quiet her but she would not be hushed. “Why are you doing this to me? You hate me, don't you? Oh, don't deny it! I know you hate me! Well... I hate you, too!”
“Anita!” I gasped.
“Yes, I do! I hate you! I can't stand the sight of you! You bore me, see? You didn't know that, did you? Well, now you do!”
The tears were drying on her face and in her eyes, leaving them rimmed and reddened. The rouge on her cheeks stood out against her dead white skin in round, uneven splotches. With her hair in disarray, she looked almost mad and, I must confess, horribly ugly. Seeing her this way after once having witnessed her beautiful, frightened me. It also hastened me in my decision to do what she wished.
I managed to get my hand on the hilt of the knife and I began to twist it from her grasp. Struggling to retain it, Anita commenced to shout again with still more rage. “Let me alone! Let me alone, do you hear? I'll kill you if you take that away! Oh... you're hurting me! God damn you! I'll... I'll...” And here her words ran into one another, becoming unintelligible expostulations of hatred.
I suppose I did hurt her a bit; but it was absolutely necessary. In the mood she was in, I was afraid either that she might attack herself with the knife or use it against me. In any case, her being in possession of the thing was a decided menace.
To anyone outside who might have heard Anita's words, it would undoubtedly seem that she really and truly despised me; I myself put no stock in them. I was sure that her fit of temper was but a phase of her physical condition and that she didn't mean any of the mean things she said about me. You must know then that Anita was menstruating that night and do not forget that earlier that very day she had had two teeth extracted. What she had gone through was enough to make any woman fly off the handle.
I thought that if I could get the knife away from her and put her to bed, in the morning everything would be peaceful again. She was still screaming and clawing at my chest like some enraged lioness when I finally managed to remove the dangerously sharp knife from her fingers.
Then, to my dismay, the doorbell rang.
Anita stopped her noise at once. Together we looked stupidly at one another. Then she nodded that I should go and see who was outside. The ringing of the bell evidently calmed her hysteria for, as though thoroughly done in, she sank into a chair as I moved reluctantly toward the front door, absent-mindedly dangling the captured knife from one hand.
Well, young Tom Murphy saw that carving-knife and he could not have helped hearing all the screaming as he came up the walk. He gave me a searching look as he handed me the package containing the sleeping draught.
“Here you are, Mr. Thatcher,” he said. “This ought to do the trick.”
I accepted the package with the hand that held the knife, thanked him in a hollow voice, and he hurried away as though he was anxious to get out of the vicinity.
When I got back to the kitchen, Anita was opening a large bottle of beer which we were accustomed to drink after dinner during the hot weather. She poured out two glasses recklessly, the foam spilling onto the tablecloth.
“It's a sleeping powder, Anita,” I said, opening the packet and placing the little fold of paper near her hand. “Your tooth may ache. Good idea to drop it in your beer.”
She gave no sign that she heard me. Although she had stopped crying, there was a wet shine to her eyes that I didn't like. In her silence I could feel repressed a stony hatred for me and it absolutely took away what few regrets I had regarding the store I was now so firmly resolved to sell. Why I didn't tell her of my change of heart, I do not know. Maybe if I had, things would have turned out differently. However, I thought that if I waited until morning, Anita would be in a more receptive mood. At the moment she was in a very unbalanced state and the subject was one which would have to be handled delicately. If I came right out and admitted defeat she might think that her weeping and wailing had affected me. I did not want her to know that; she might employ those tactics to wheedle me in the future.
I made my way into the living-room in search of the evening paper. Somehow it had found its way under one of the sofa pillows so that it was almost five minutes before I returned with it to the kitchen. Anita was no longer in the room. One of the beer glasses was empty and the sleeping powder paper was crumbled into a tiny ball beside it.
“Ah, she has taken it,” I thought to myself, glad that the remainder of the evening would be unspoiled by such scenes as had taken place at dinner.
Through the back window I could see Anita sitting woodenly on a camp-chair, facing the lake. It looked so very peaceful out of doors with the soft hand of twilight caressing the great trees, the ra
gged lawn and the lake itself. It reminded me of the war, strangely enough. After a heavy bombardment, when the firing ceased an unearthly stillness seemed to shriek in one's ears and the relief of it all was enough to drive one mad with happiness. And as I stared out of the window, I was happy. The storm had blown over and, if I had anything to do with causing it, it would never come again.
With my glass of beer and my paper, I retired to the living-room. I would have liked to sit outside with Anita but I did not wish to risk any repetition of the quarrel. I was sure that she wanted to be alone and I knew how unpleasant it was to have one's solitude trespassed upon. So I made up my mind to let her alone. In the morning I would tell her of my surrender, trying to make it sound as if it were my own wish and not her's, and everything would be forgotten. We would dispose of the store, the house, and all of the furniture which was sadly out of date anyway. In New York we would start our lives all over again.
Curiously, I began to anticipate making this fresh start with pleasure. After all, Ithaca had not been very kind to us. True, we had made a good living there, but we had had our scraps as well; and since our marriage the war had forced its way between the two of us, brandishing its most cruel weapon: estrangement.
And the business I had built up out of nothing and struggled to keep; what had it brought me? Trying to hold on to it in the face of Anita's objections was a pyrrhic victory, a triumph as empty as the war. My most precious possession, I told myself, was Anita's love. The rest was only just so much baggage.
These thoughts ran through my mind, bringing with them a conviction that I had been a fool. When I took Anita as my wife I promised myself that I would make her happy.
Before I finished my beer or as much as read two columns of the newspaper, I dropped into a deep sleep.
Now I come to the part of the story that is difficult to relate. During the following hours I was still drowsy and feeling quite ill; then again, it all happened so suddenly that before I actually became aware of what was taking place, I found myself cooling my heels in the Ithaca jail.
I suppose I even looked guilty. Real emotions hardly ever seem real. Stage performances have taken the edge off of them and stylized both physical and mental reactions to such a degree that if a faint is not executed in a certain way it looks bogus. My shocked expression, throughout these proceedings I here set down, no doubt impressed the police as being a very amateur affectation, attempted by me to conceal my obvious guilt. I even heard one of the cell attendants informing someone that I was “going to play nuts.”
If the following account of the morning I woke up sounds like a falsehood, remember that it has since been proved the truth.
It seemed to me that I had merely drifted off for a few minutes but when I finally opened my eyes a bright morning sun was shining. So brilliant was it that I was momentarily blinded and confused. I started to rise from the chair but succeeded only in stumbling to the floor. My legs were numb and my head felt inflated, like some child's balloon. Before I could pick myself up from where I had fallen, I became conscious that the doorbell was ringing. It was an insistent ring, as though someone was belaboring the button in short, angry jabs.
Still half asleep, I staggered to the door and opened it. I rubbed my eyes, squinting up into the ruddy face of one of the town's constables. It was Richter.
“Sorry to get you up, Thatcher,” he greeted me with apologetic gruffness. “Say! You must have had one too many last night, eh?”
“Hello, Captain. My God, what time is it?”
“Almost ten. Young Murphy's going crazy down there at the store. Business is certainly good this morning.” He paused and fumbled in his cap for a paper. “Say, Thatcher, I've got some bad news for you. I'm afraid I'll have to bring you around to the station.”
This opened my eyes. Please believe that up until that time I had never had any encounters with the police, having always been careful not to violate any of the ordinances with the possible exception of Prohibition. “What have I done, Captain? Murdered someone?” I asked.
He laughed good-humoredly. “No. But you should have, while you were at it. It's that Mackintosh kid. His old man swore out a warrant for your arrest on a charge of assaulting his brat. I don't know if it's true or not, but by God I'd like to assault him myself sometimes.”
“But look here, Captain,” I protested. “I only...”
“I know it's a damned nuisance. But orders, you know. The judge is a pretty decent sort and he'll probably give you a medal. Better get your hat.”
I shrugged my shoulders helplessly and told the constable to make himself comfortable on the porch while I got myself ready. Since I was so late for work anyhow, a little longer would make no difference. I was positive, that when I made it clear to whomever was going to hear the case exactly why I spanked Jackie, everything would be all right.
As I turned to go inside, I felt Richter touch my sleeve. “Good Lord, Thatcher! What did you do? Cut yourself?”
“Why no,” I answered, puzzled. “What makes you say that?”
He pointed a finger at my trousers and, looking down at them, I saw that they were stained with red! I stood there dumbfounded with my mouth hanging open.
“That's blood all right,” I heard the policeman mutter. “Yes, sir. That's blood. But where in hell did it come from?”
Instantly I thought of the night just past. My mind was quick to grasp the situation and it evoked a vivid picture of Anita, standing with the carving-knife in her hand and threatening....
“Anita!” I shouted hoarsely and with my heart in my mouth I ran into the house. I could hear Richter behind me, his ponderous weight making the old floor-boards vibrate under my feet.
I saw then that the living-room was a shambles. A table was overturned, two lamps lay shattered on the carpet and everywhere were reddish smears that looked suspiciously like bloodstains. In the kitchen we found still more blood and a bloody apron of Anita's lying on the table, still set with the dirty dinner dishes. On the apron we found the carving-knife... its blade a mess of crusted blood!
In the face of all this horror, it is a wonder I didn't faint. However, even so, it is impossible for me to describe my feelings of that morning. Of course I was certain at once that Anita had committed suicide, had severed her veins or something equally terrible. But on racing through the rooms of the house, we could find no trace of her. Only some clothes and the two teeth she had tossed onto the table during dinner the night before spoke of her ever having been there.
My frantic fear for Anita temporarily dulled my wits so that it was not until the constable and I had picked about in the dark cellar for some time that I remembered seeing Anita last sitting in the garden. I seized the policeman's arm and all but pulled him up the stairs, through the back hall and outside.
But Anita was nowhere to be found. We searched the grounds thoroughly. The camp-chair, where last I had seen her, was empty, the canvas back of it still sagging from the weight of her shoulders. But, to our horror, from the back porch to the very edge of the lake ran a dark, repulsive trail of what was undoubtedly blood! In places there were merely a few drops on the taller tufts of grass, hardly visible to the eye; but mostly the awful trail ran wide....
“She's thrown herself in!” I gasped. “My God, Captain! What can we do?”
I burst into tears, something I hadn't done for many, many years. The constable waited in silence for me to control myself. He didn't try to comfort me.
“Oh, Anita!” I cried. “Why did you do it? Oh, why did you do it?”
Richter spit into the lake. “That's what I'd like to know, Thatcher,” he said curtly. He was looking at me closely, his brows knit into a frown.
“Why, what do you mean, Richter?” I asked.
“Oh, cut out that innocent stuff!” he growled disgustedly. “You know damned well what I mean.”
I assured him that I did not. He surely wasn't insinuating that I... Why the idea was absurd! Nevertheless, absurd or not, I saw t
he constable's face stubbornly set.
“You don't believe that she committed suicide?” I asked in confusion. “Is it possible that she's still alive?” I stepped toward him and seized the front of his uniform blouse. “Tell me what you're thinking!” I demanded hysterically.
“Alive hell!” was his comment and I suddenly felt my wrist encircled by a steel cuff which clicked shut and pinched my skin. “I don't know where you've hidden her, Thatcher, but she didn't commit no suicide!”
“No?”
“No. You better get yourself an alibi. How did you get that blood on your pants?”
“I don't know!”
“Well for your own good you'd better find out.”
“But Anita....”
“Oh, we'll fish her out all right. But not now.” Richter tugged at the bracelets. “I ain't got my water-wings with me. Come on,” he added out of the corner of his mouth as he led me away from the lake shore.
I went along with him dazedly. There was nothing else I could do.
My trial was held in the Tompkins County Court house in Ithaca. The State was represented by an obnoxious little Assistant District Attorney who, nevertheless, I am forced to admit, handled his side of the case magnificently. Point by point he scored tellingly until he had almost convinced even me that I had done away with Anita.
For the terrible part of it all was that I couldn't be quite sure whether I had or not. As Assistant District Attorney Blackman pointed out, I could very easily have committed the crime during one of my unfortunate lapses of memory. True, this souvenir of the war had not recurred since I was discharged from the hospital months before, but there was no evidence to prove that it couldn't recur.
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