Thelma spoke finally, her voice muffled by the folds of her skirt. “The car.”
“What about the car?”
“He had an accident?”
“There is reason to believe,” Turee said cautiously, “that the act was intentional.”
“What reason?”
“He posted a letter to Esther before he died.”
“To Esther.” Her head snapped up like a puppet’s jerked by a string. “Not to me. Why not to me? Why not to me? I’m the one who loved him. I gave up everything for him, my home, my husband, my good name, and I’d have given up anything more I had. Why not to me? Why not... Oh God, I can’t stand it. Ron, Ron, Ron. Oh God, come back, Ron, come back. Don’t leave me alone. I’m scared. I’m scared.”
“Thelma. Please.”
“Ron, Ron, Ron darling. Oh, my God!”
She kept on moaning, her teeth pressed into her lower lip until the blood began to run, as if she were consciously inflicting mutilation on herself as punishment. Presently the metallic taste of the blood made her cough, and the moans turned into a fit of coughing. She held one of Harry’s shirts against her mouth to stifle the sound. When she put it down again it was stained with blood and tears, and Turee thought what a sharp piece of irony it was that Harry, who had done nothing against anyone, should have to sop up the tears and wipe off the blood.
“Let me fix you a drink, Thelma.”
“No!”
“Well, perhaps Harry has some pills lying around that will help calm you down a little.”
“Pills!” She spat the word into the center of the room as if she were aiming at an invisible cuspidor. “Harry has a million pills lying around. Go take them all as far as I’m concerned.”
“Damned if I wouldn’t if I could find them,” Turee said, rather pleased by her fit of temper. It meant that she wasn’t too submerged in her grief to react to ordinary stimuli.
She held Harry’s shirt to her mouth again, and if Turee hadn’t known better he might have taken it for a gesture of affection. “What was in the letter he wrote to — to Esther?”
“I don’t know.”
“You haven’t seen it?”
“No.”
“Then she could be lying, deliberately lying, pretending there’s such a letter to make me feel bad.”
“That’s not very reasonable, is it?”
“You don’t know Esther.”
“Only for ten years.”
“Nobody knows what goes on inside somebody else.”
“There’s the circumstantial evidence of their actions and words. When you see a man obviously enjoying his dinner you can assume he feels hungry and thinks the food is good.”
“Assuming and knowing — there’s an appalling gap between them. And I fell into it.” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks and she jabbed at her eyes viciously as if they were traitors betraying her. “The night — Saturday night — when I told Ron about the baby I could see he was surprised, shocked even, but I thought he was pleased too, pleased because he loved me, and the baby was the bond of our love, and we would all be together in the future. That’s what I assumed. What I know now is that he didn’t want any future with me in it, he’d rather die. He’d rather die.”
“Don’t blame yourself so much, Thelma.”
“There’s no one else to blame.” Her lower lip was beginning to puff and her eyes had swollen and reddened. “How could he have done it, deserted me, left me to face everything alone?”
“Thelma...”
“I thought he was a man, not a nasty little coward. No, no, what in God’s name am I saying — he wasn’t a coward! He — I don’t know. I don’t know! Oh Ron. Oh Ron!” She seemed to be clinging wildly to a pendulum that swung between the extremes of love and hate, grief and fury. “I can’t stand it. I can’t go on living without him.”
“You must.”
“I can’t, I can’t do it.”
“You have to think of your child.”
She folded her arms across her abdomen as if she suddenly had a notion that the fetus was already aware and must be protected from the sight and sound of strangers who might be hostile. “What will happen to us, Ralph, to him and me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I had such high hopes, such wonderful plans.”
This was Thelma stripped down to essentials, like a hot rod with its top removed, its fenders missing, its engine exposed and unmuffled and its twin pipes roaring, I and me. All of Thelma’s high hopes had been built on deceit and her wonderful plans made entirely at the expense of other people.
Something struck the front window and landed on the porch with a plop. Thelma jumped, as if the little sound had been loud as a cannon, aimed at her.
“Probably the evening paper,” Turee said. “I’ll bring it in if you like.”
“I don’t like. I — will it be in, about Ron?”
“Perhaps.”
“And me?”
“I’m not sure who knows about you, except for Harry and Esther and myself.” A few minutes later he was forced to add, silently, and the entire police department.
The account of Ron’s death was headlined on the front page of the paper, PROMINENT TORONTONIAN FOUND DEAD IN GEORGIAN BAY. Esther had apparently refused to provide a recent photograph of Ron, so some newspaperman had scrounged around in the file room and came up with a picture taken several years previously at a New Year’s Eve party at the Granite Club. Ron was grinning self-consciously into the camera, serpentine entwining his neck and bits of confetti clinging to his hair and his dinner jacket. Both the picture and the caption, GALLOWAY IN A GAYER MOOD, were in incredibly bad taste. Turee had a futile hope that Esther wouldn’t see it. That Thelma should see it was inevitable, but somehow this seemed more fitting to Turee, since all of Thelma’s recent actions indicated her lack of the sense of propriety that was so strong in Esther.
Although Thelma hadn’t wanted him to bring in the newspaper in the first place, she was now watching him with nervous impatience, twisting and untwisting her small plump hands. “Well, what does it say?”
“Read it for yourself.”
“No. I can’t. My eyes hurt.”
“All right. First, there’s a factual account of how and where he was found. I see no point in reading that aloud, it will only upset you.”
“Go on from there, then.”
“ ‘An autopsy has been ordered. Authorities are still investigating the possibility of accidental death, although the present evidence points to suicide. A letter received this morning by his wife, the former Esther Ann Billings, allegedly indicated Galloway’s intention of killing himself. This letter is now in the hands of the police, who, because of its delicate and personal nature, refused to release its contents to the press.’ ”
“She gave the letter to the police?” Thelma’s tone was incredulous, and Turee’s would have matched it if he’d spoken. It seemed incongruous to him that Esther should have handed such a personal letter over to the police. The locker rooms of a police department could spring as many leaks as locker rooms anywhere else, and Esther was sophisticated enough to know this. Perhaps she’d had no choice and the police had demanded the letter as evidence of intent to commit suicide. Or perhaps Esther had meant, without thinking of the consequences to herself or her children, to involve Thelma, immediately and publicly.
Thelma said, “I’m in the letter, I suppose?”