“I didn’t mean to imply anything,” said the doctor. “I just wanted to be sure. The coroner will ask things like that. I don’t see how we can avoid a verdict of suicide, but I’ll try. I’ll see what I can do.” He had the sound of a politician who doesn’t want to admit that he can’t get a new post office.
“Why should you want to? Of course he killed himself,” said Caroline.
“Caroline, dear!” said her mother. “You ought not to say that till you’re sure. That’s a terrible thing to say.”
“Why is it? Why the hell is it? Who said so? God damn all of you! If he wanted to kill himself whose business is it but his own?”
“She’s hysterical,” said her mother. “Darling—”
“Ah, go away. You did it. You, you don’t like him. You did, too, you pompous old man.”
“Oh, Caroline, how can you say things like that?”
“Where is he? Come on, where is he? Where’d you take him. Do you know he’s dead? How do you know? I don’t think you even know when a man is dead.”
“He’s my son, Caroline. Remember that please. My only son.”
“Yaah. Your only son. Well, he never liked you. I guess you know that, don’t you? So high and mighty and nasty to him when we went to your house for Christmas. Don’t think he didn’t notice it. You made him do it, not me.”
“I think I’ll go, Ella. If you want me you can get me at home.”
“All right, Will,” said Mrs. Walker.
“Why did you call Mother first? Why didn’t you tell me first?”
“Now, dear. Good night, Will. I won’t go to the door.”
“Aren’t you going to take me to him? What’s the matter? Is he burnt up or mangled or what?”
“Oh, please, darling,” said Mrs. Walker. “Will, do you think—for a minute?”
“Yes, I guess so. I just thought it’d be bad for her while the news is fresh.”
“Well, then, if you really want to see him tonight, dear,” said Mrs. Walker.
“Oh, God. I just remembered. I can’t. I promised him I wouldn’t,” said Caroline.
“You promised him! What is this? What are you talking about? You knew he was going to kill himself!” Now the doctor was angry.
“No, no, no. Don’t get excited. Keep your shirt on, you old—” In her mouth was one of Julian’s favorite words, but she had shocked her mother enough. She turned to her mother. “We both made a promise when we were married, we promised each other we’d never look if one of us died before the other. If he died first I—oh, you know.” She began to weep. “Go away, Doctor. I don’t want to see you. Mother.”
They stayed there a long time, Caroline and her mother. “It’s all right, it’s all right,” Mrs. Walker kept saying, and she kept herself from weeping by thinking of the sounds that Caroline made. It was strange and almost new to hear Caroline crying—the same shudders and catches of breath, but in a firmer voice. That made it new, the firmer voice, the woman part. The little girl in woman’s clothes, who never could put on girl’s clothes again. What was it Pope said? Was it Pope? This dear, fine girl. A thing like this to happen to her. It was as though Julian had not existed. Only Caroline existed now, in pain and anguish. Poor girl. Her feet must be cold. They went upstairs together after a while, the mother prepared for a long vigil; but she was not used to vigils any more, and sleep won.
All night Caroline did not sleep, until long after daylight she lay awake, hearing the heartless sounds of people going to work and going on with their lives regardless. The funny thing was, it was a nice day. Quite a nice day. That was what made her tired, and in the morning she did sleep, until near noon. She got awake and had a bath and some tea and toast and a cigarette. She felt a little better before she remembered that there was a day ahead of her—no matter how much of it had been slept through. She wanted to go to Julian, but that was just it. Julian was more in this room, more in the street where he had walked so angrily from her car yesterday, much much more in the room downstairs where once upon a time she had become his girl—than what was lying wherever he was lying was Julian. She looked out the window, down at the street, not one bit expecting to see that he had left footprints in the street. But if the footprints had been there she would not have been surprised. The street sounded as though it would send up the sound of his heels. He always had little metal v’s put in his heels, and she never would hear that sound again, that collegiate sound, without—well, she would hear it without crying, but she would always want to cry. For the rest of her life, which seemed a long time no matter if she died in an hour, she would always be ready to cry for Julian. Not for him. He was all right now; but because of him, because he had left her, and she would not hear the sound of the little metal v’s on a hardwood floor again, nor smell him, the smell of clean white shirts and cigarettes and sometimes whiskey. They would say he was drunk, but he wasn’t drunk. Yes he was. He was drunk, but he was Julian, drunk or not, and that was more than anyone else was. That was what everyone else was not. He was like someone who had died in the war, some young officer in an overseas cap and a Sam Browne belt and one of those tunics that button up to the neck but you can’t see the buttons, and an aviator’s wings on the breast where the pocket ought to be, and polished high lace boots with a little mud on the soles, and a cigarette in one hand and his arm around an American in a French uniform. For her Julian had that gallantry that had nothing to do with fighting but was attitude and manner; a gesture with a cigarette in his hand, his whistling, his humming while he played solitaire or swung a golf club back and forth and back and forth; slapping her behind a little too hard and saying, “Why, Mrs. English, it is you,” but all the same knowing he had hit too hard and a little afraid she would be angry. Oh, that was it. She never could be angry with him again. That took it out of her, that made him dead. Already she had begun the habit of reasoning with him: “But why did you do it? Why did you leave me? Everything would have been all right if you’d waited. I’d have come back this afternoon.” But this time she knew she would not have come back this afternoon, and he had known it, and God help us all but he was right. It was time for him to die. There was nothing for him to do today, there was nothing for him to do today…. There, that was settled. Now let the whole thing begin again.
“Kitty Hofman’s downstairs,” said her mother. “Do you want to see her?”
“No, but I will,” said Caroline.
It was the news room of the Gibbsville Standard. “Don’t forget, everybody, it’s Saturday. We have early closing. First edition goes over at one-ten, so don’t go to lunch.” Sam Dougherty, the city editor of the Standard, had been saying that every Saturday for more than twenty years. It was as much a part of him as his eye-shade and his corncob pipe and his hemorrhoids. As city editor he also had to read copy and write the Page One headlines. “Say, Alice,” he said, putting down his pencil and interrupting his reading of a story.
“What?” she said.
“What do you hear on this English suicide? Any of your people have anything to say on it?”
“No,” she said.
“Did you ask anybody about it?” he said.
“No,” she said. Then: “I heard the boss tell you to play down the story.”
He shook his head. “See?” he said. “That’s your trouble, Alice. A good reporter knows ten times as much as he ever prints. That’s the kind of stuff you ought to know. Off the record stuff. The angles, girl. The angles. You oughta always get the angles of every big story, even when you can’t print it. You never know when it’s going to come in handy, see what I mean?”