Margaret Millar
A Stranger in My Grave
This book is dedicated,
with affection and admiration,
to Louise Doty Colt
The Graveyard
1
My beloved Daisy: It has been so many years since I have seen you...
The times of terror began, not in the middle of the night when the quiet and the darkness made terror seem a natural thing, but on a bright and noisy morning during the first week of February. The acacia trees, in such full bloom that they looked leafless, were shaking the night fog off their blossoms like shaggy dogs shaking off rain, and the eucalyptus fluttered and played coquette with hundreds of tiny gray birds, no bigger than thumbs, whose name Daisy did not know.
She had tried to find out what species they belonged to by consulting the bird book Jim had given her when they’d first moved into the new house. But the little thumb-sized birds refused to stay still long enough to be identified, and Daisy dropped the subject. She didn’t like birds anyway. The contrast between their blithe freedom in flight and their terrible vulnerability when grounded reminded her too strongly of herself.
Across the wooded canyon she could see parts of the new housing development. Less than a year ago, there had been nothing but scrub oak and castor beans pushing out through the stubborn adobe soil. Now the hills were sprouting with brick chimneys and television aerials, and the landscape was growing green with newly rooted ice plant and ivy. Noises floated across the canyon to Daisy’s house, undiminished by distance on a windless day: the barking of dogs, the shrieks of children at play, snatches of music, the crying of a baby, the shout of an angry mother, the intermittent whirring of an electric saw.
Daisy enjoyed these morning sounds, sounds of life, of living. She sat at the breakfast table listening to them, a pretty dark-haired young woman wearing a bright blue robe that matched her eyes, and the faintest trace of a smile. The smile meant nothing. It was one of habit. She put it on in the morning along with her lipstick and removed it at night when she washed her face. Jim liked this smile of Daisy’s. To him it indicated that she was a happy woman and that he, as her husband, deserved a major portion of the praise for making and keeping her that way. And so the smile, which intended no purpose, served one anyway: it convinced Jim that he was doing what at various times in the past he’d believed to be impossible — making Daisy happy.
He was reading the paper, some of it to himself, some of it aloud, when he came upon any item that he thought might interest her.
“There’s a new storm front off the Oregon coast. Maybe it will get down this far. I hope to God it does. Did you know this has been the driest year since ’48?”
“Mmm.” It was not an answer or a comment, merely an encouragement for him to tell her more so she wouldn’t have to talk. Usually she felt quite talkative at breakfast, recounting the day past, planning the day to come. But this morning she felt quiet, as if some part of her lay still asleep and dreaming.
“Only five and a half inches of rain since last July. That’s eight months. It’s amazing how all our trees have managed to survive, isn’t it?”
“Mmm.”
“Still, I suppose the bigger ones have their roots down to the creek bed by this time. The fire hazard’s pretty bad, though. I hope you’re careful with your cigarettes, Daisy. Our fire insurance wouldn’t cover the replacement cost of the house. Are you?”
“What?”
“Careful with your cigarettes and matches?”
“Certainly. Very.”
“Actually, it’s your mother I’m concerned about.” By looking over Daisy’s left shoulder out through the picture window of the dinette, he could see the used-brick chimney of the mother-in-law cottage he’d built for Mrs. Fielding. It was some 200 yards away. Sometimes it seemed closer, sometimes he forgot about it entirely. “I know she’s fussy about such things, but accidents can happen. Suppose she’s sitting there smoking one night and has another stroke? I wonder if I ought to talk to her about it.”
It was nine years ago, before Jim and Daisy had even met, that Mrs. Fielding had suffered a slight stroke, sold her dress shop in Denver, and retired to San Félice on the California coast. But Jim still worried about it, as if the stroke had just taken place yesterday and might recur tomorrow. He himself had always had a very active and healthy life, and the idea of illness appalled him. Since he had become successful as a land speculator, he’d met a great many doctors socially, but their presence made him uncomfortable. They were intruders, Cassandras, like morticians at a wedding or policemen at a child’s party.
“I hope you won’t mind, Daisy.”
“What?”
“If I speak to your mother about it.”
“Oh no.”
He returned, satisfied, to his paper. The bacon and eggs Daisy had cooked for him because the day maid didn’t arrive until nine o’clock lay untouched on his plate. Food meant little to Jim at breakfast time. It was the paper he devoured, paragraph by paragraph, eating up the facts and figures as if he could never get enough of them. He’d quit school at sixteen to join a construction crew.
“Now here’s something interesting. Researchers have now proved that whales have a sonar system for avoiding collisions, something like bats.”
“Mmm.” Some part of her still slept and dreamed: she could think of nothing to say. So she sat gazing out the window, listening to Jim and the other morning sounds. Then, without warning, without apparent reason, the terror seized her.
The placid, steady beating of her heart turned into a fast, arrhythmic pounding. She began to breathe heavily and quickly, like a person engaged in some tremendous physical feat, and the blood swept up into her face as if driven before a wind. Her forehead and cheeks and the tips of her ears burned with sudden fever, and sweat poured into the palms of her hands from some secret well.
The sleeper had awakened.
“Jim.”
“Yes?” He glanced at her over the top of the paper and thought how well Daisy was looking this morning, with a fine high color, like a young girl’s. She seemed excited, as if she’d just planned some new big project, and he wondered, indulgently, what it would be this time. The years were crammed with Daisy’s projects, packed away and half forgotten, like old toys in a trunk, some of them broken, some barely used: ceramics, astrology, tuberous begonias, Spanish conversation, upholstering, Vedanta, mental hygiene, mosaics, Russian literature — all the toys Daisy had played with and discarded. “Do you want something, dear?”
“Some water.”
“Sure thing.” He brought a glass of water from the kitchen. “Here you are.”
She reached for the glass, but she couldn’t pick it up. The lower part of her body was frozen, the upper part burned with fever, and there seemed to be no connection between the two parts. She wanted the water to cool her parched mouth, but the hand on the glass would not respond, as if the lines of communication had been broken between desire and will.
“Daisy? What’s the matter?”
“I feel — I think I’m — sick.”
“Sick?” He looked surprised and hurt, like a boxer caught by a sudden low blow. “You don’t look sick. I was thinking just a minute ago what a marvelous color you have this morning — oh God, Daisy, don’t be sick.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Here. Drink this. Let me carry you over to the davenport. Then I’ll go and get your mother.”
“No,” she said sharply. “I don’t want her to...”