“We have to do something. Perhaps I’d better call a doctor.”
“No, don’t. It will all be over by the time anyone could get here.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s happened before.”
“When?”
“Last week. Twice.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know.” She had a reason, but she couldn’t remember it. “I feel so — hot.”
He pressed his right hand gently against her forehead. It was cold and moist. “I don’t think you have a temperature,” he said anxiously. “You sound all right. And you’ve still got that good healthy color.”
He didn’t recognize the color of terror.
Daisy leaned forward in her chair. The lines of communication between the two parts of her body, the frozen half and the feverish half, were gradually re-forming themselves. By an effort of will she was able to pick up the glass from the table and drink the water. The water tasted peculiar, and Jim’s face, staring down at her, was out of focus, so that he looked not like Jim, but like some kind stranger who’d dropped in to help her.
Help.
How had this kind stranger gotten in? Had she called out to him as he was passing, had she cried, “Help!”?
“Daisy? Are you all right now?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God. You had me scared for a minute there.”
Scared.
“You should take regular daily exercise,” Jim said. “It would be good for your nerves. I also think you haven’t been getting enough sleep.”
Sleep. Scared. Help. The words kept sweeping around and around in her mind like horses on a carousel. If there were only some way of stopping it or even slowing it down — hey, operator; you at the controls, kind stranger, slow down, stop, stop, stop.
“It might be a good idea to start taking vitamins every day.”
“Stop,” she said. “Stop.”
Jim stopped, and so did the horses, but only for a second, long enough to jump right off the carousel and start galloping in the opposite direction, sleep and scared and help all running riderless together in a cloud of dust. She blinked.
“All right, dear. I was only trying to do the right thing.” He smiled at her timidly, like a nervous parent at a fretful, ailing child who must, but can’t, be pleased. “Listen, why don’t you sit there quietly for a minute, and I’ll go and make you some hot tea?”
“There’s coffee in the percolator.”
“Tea might be better for you when you’re upset like this.”
I’m not upset, stranger. I’m cold and calm.
Cold.
She began to shiver, as if the mere thinking of the word had conjured up a tangible thing, like a block of ice.
She could hear Jim bumbling around in the kitchen, opening drawers and cupboards, trying to find the tea bags and the kettle. The gold sunburst clock over the mantel said 8:30. In another half hour the maid Stella would be arriving, and shortly after that Daisy’s mother would be coming over from her cottage, brisk and cheerful, as usual in the mornings, and inclined to be critical of anyone who wasn’t, especially Daisy.
Half an hour to become brisk and cheerful. So little time, so much to do, so many things to figure out. What happened to me? Why did it happen? I was just sitting here, doing nothing, thinking nothing, only listening to Jim and to the sounds from across the canyon, the children playing, the dogs barking, the saw whirring, the baby crying. I felt quite happy, in a sleepy kind of way. And then suddenly something woke me, and it began, the terror, the panic. What started it, which of those sounds?
Perhaps it was the dog, she thought. One of the new families across the canyon had an Airedale that howled at passing planes. A howling dog, when she was a child, meant death. She was nearly thirty now, and she knew some dogs howled, particular breeds, and others didn’t, and it had nothing to do with death.
Death. As soon as the word entered her mind, she knew that it was the real one; the others going around on the carousel had been merely substitutes for it.
“Jim.”
“Be with you in a minute. I’m waiting for the kettle to boil.”
“Don’t bother making any tea.”
“How about some milk, then? It’d be good for you. You’re going to have to take better care of yourself.”
No, it’s too late for that, she thought. All the milk and vitamins and exercise and fresh air and sleep in the world don’t make an antidote for death.
Jim came back, carrying a glass of milk. “Here you are. Drink up.”
She shook her head.
“Come on, Daisy.”
“No. No, it’s too late.”
“What do you mean it’s too late? Too late for what?” He put the glass down on the table so hard that some of the milk splashed on the cloth. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t swear at me.”
“I have to swear at you. You’re so damned exasperating.”
“You’d better go to your office.”
“And leave you here like this, in this condition?”
“I’m all right.”
“O.K., O.K., you’re all right. But I’m sticking around anyway.” He sat down, stubbornly, opposite her. “Now, what’s this all about, Daisy?”
“I can’t — tell you.”
“Can’t, or don’t want to? Which?”
She covered her eyes with her hands. She was not aware that she was crying until she felt the tears drip down between her fingers.
“What’s the matter, Daisy? Have you done something you don’t want to tell me about — wrecked your car, overdrawn your bank account?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“I’m frightened.”
“Frightened?” The word displeased him. He didn’t like his loved ones to be frightened or sick; it seemed to cast a reflection on him and his ability to look after them properly. “Frightened of what?”
She didn’t answer.
“You can’t be frightened without having something to be frightened about. So what is it?”
“You’ll laugh.”
“Believe me, I never felt less like laughing in my life. Come on, try me.”
She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her robe. “I had a dream.”
He didn’t laugh, but he looked amused. “And you’re crying because of a dream? Come, come, you’re a big girl now, Daisy.”
She was staring at him across the table, mute and melancholy, and he knew he had said the wrong thing, but he couldn’t think of any right thing. How did you treat a wife, a grown woman, who cried because she had a dream?
“I’m sorry, Daisy. I didn’t meant to...”
“No apology is necessary,” she said stiffly. “You have a perfect right to be amused. Now we’ll drop the subject if you don’t mind.”
“I do mind. I want to hear about it.”
“No. I wouldn’t like to send you into hysterics; it gets a lot funnier.”
He looked at her soberly. “Does it?”
“Oh yes. It’s quite a scream. There’s nothing funnier than death, really, especially if you have an advanced sense of humor.” She wiped her eyes again, though there were no fresh tears. The heat of anger had dried them at their source. “You’d better go to your office.”
“What the hell are you so mad about?”
“Stop swearing at—”
“I’ll stop swearing if you’ll stop acting childish.” He reached for her hand, smiling. “Bargain?”
“I guess so.”
“Then tell me about the dream.”
“There’s not very much to tell.” She lapsed into silence, her hand moving uneasily beneath his, like a little animal wanting to escape but too timid to make any bold attempt. “I dreamed I was dead.”