“What’s the matter now?” said Jim.
“Don’t you hear it?"
“Hear what?”
“The grocery cart.” It was coming nearer, crickety, crickety.
Jim took her arm. “What are you talking about, for God’s sake?”
“It’s his grocery cart.” A tall, sour-smelling man was coming toward them down the corridor; the sound trailed behind him, ghostly, echoing. The man turned and went down a side corridor, and the sound went with him. Emily started to follow, but Jim was holding her arm.
“Whose grocery cart?”
“Danny’s. He’s here, he wants to tell us something.”
“Oh, Christ,” said Jim. He looked as if he were about to cry.
McNulty walked into the room where his patient was waiting, introduced himself, shook hands and sat down with his elbows on the desk. “You say it’s about your wife, Mr. Woodruff?”
Woodruff was in his mid-sixties, red-faced and white-haired; he looked like a man who had been prosperous most of his life, but there was something wrong with the look in his eyes. McNulty had seen that look before, in the eyes of people who had gone through some shattering loss; it was a wounded look, hard to describe—the scleras a little darkened, maybe, a pinched expression in the eyelids.
“She’s hearing things,” Woodruff said. He was holding onto one hand with the other, hard enough to make the fingers turn red and yellow.
“What kind of things does she hear?”
Woodruff swallowed. “A grocery cart. She hears a grocery cart coming down the hall behind some guy, and then she wants to follow him.”
“How many times has this happened?”
“Twice. The first time was yesterday. Then she heard it again this morning when we were on our way to breakfast, and she followed this same guy into the restaurant. Then we ordered, and halfway through breakfast, this guy fell over out of his chair.”
McNulty perked up. “Where was this?”
“In the Madison Restaurant, where we always eat.”
“About nine-thirty, was it?”
“Yeah, about that.”
McNulty doodled a big check mark on his pad. “That’s interesting. Then what?”
“Then she heard the noise again when somebody else got up from another table. A woman. And she got up too and followed her out. I had to talk her out of getting in the elevator. I took her back to the room and made her take a pill.”
“What kind of medication is she on?”
“Valium, and some other stuff for sleeping pills, I forget what it is.”
McNulty made another doodle, a spiral this time. “Has she ever had any mental disturbance before?”
“Yeah,” said Woodruff, and looked down at his hands. “She had a nervous breakdown after our boy died in seventy-three. She was in the hospital for five months.”
“What kind of treatment did she get there, do you know?”
“Insulin.”
“Insulin shock?”
“Yes.”
“Surprised to hear that,” McNulty said, and looked at his doodles. “What about afterwards—did she ever hear things until now?”
“No. She’s always been nervous. She’s a nervous woman.”
“Now,” McNulty said, “what about the grocery cart? That seems like a funny thing to hear. Does it mean anything to you?”
Woodruff did not answer for a moment. When McNulty looked at him, tears were spilling over his eyelids. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely. “Yeah. It was Danny.”
Danny was their youngest, born when Emily was thirty-five. When the boy was about two years old, Jim found an abandoned grocery cart in a weedy lot down the street. There was nothing on it to show where it belonged, so he brought it home just to keep it from being an eyesore. He thought he might give it to the handyman, or something, but when Danny saw it, he claimed it for his own. It was his favorite toy. There was something wrong with the wheels; they made a cricking sound when he pushed it, around and around through the house. “At least you always know where he is,” Jim had said.
That summer of 1973 Jim had bought a big new motor home, and it was all packed for their vacation. A neighbor, Walt Singleton, was standing at the end of the driveway to help Jim when he backed the motor home out of the garage. Emily had gone into the house to get some last-minute thing, and he had tired of waiting for her. He remembered the new-leather smell of the upholstery, the brightness of the sunlight through the blue-tinted windshield. He remembered starting the engine and listening to its confident purr.. Watching Walt in the rearview mirror, he put the gearshift into reverse and drifted slowly backward. Then he felt a bump, and heard Walt scream.
“Doc, that was twenty-five years ago,” he said. “What the hell, can’t we ever—” His voice broke.
25
Two weeks after the horror began, panic was growing in Sea Venture. Instead of going to restaurants for their meals, many people made forays on the kitchens, grabbed whatever food they could, and carried it back to their rooms. Sometimes other passengers took it away from them in the corridors. The reckless few who spent their time in public places were becoming more violent and unpredictable. The casino had to shut down after a series of free-for-alls; nearly all the shops and most of the restaurants were closed. Vandalism was becoming a problem; deck chairs and equipment were hurled about on the Sports Deck; light fixtures in the ceilings were broken.
At one of the staff meetings, now being held daily, they talked about the food problem.
“Let’s set up food-distribution stations in the lobbies,” suggested Arline Truman. “Just a line of tables—let people take what they want. Maybe it’ll be more orderly if they know we think it’s all right to take the food.”
“They’ll hoard it,” said Armand Schaffer.
“Well, perhaps, but then they won’t have to come back every day.”
“That means a lot of wastage. What if we do it this way—make up cartons of staple food, either cans or the kind of thing that will keep in refrigerators. Try to get some kind of nutritional balance. Buffet food. Ham, cold chicken, roast beef. They can survive on that awhile. Then you don’t have them grabbing for this and that. I agree that would be a mess.”
“What about deliveries to people who can’t get out so easily?”
“We can handle that,” Skolnik said. “I’m a little more worried about sanitation. Those rooms must be getting filthy— the maids can’t get in. We’re trying to keep up deliveries of clean sheets and towels and so on, but we’re shorthanded even for that. What if we get another outbreak of disease here? That would really put the capper on it.”
Luis Padilla wheeled his cart up to the door of 18 and knocked. “Just a minute,” came a slurred voice.
The door opened and Mrs. Emerton stood there, swaying a little. “Oh, it’s Luis,” she said. Her eyes did not quite focus. “Luis is back, isn’t that nice, David? Come in, Luis. Look, David, it’s Luis.”
She stumbled as she walked ahead of him. She was wearing a negligee, a blue one through which he could see the gleam of her enormous buttocks. Mr. Emerton, with a glassy smile, was sprawled on the divan with his necktie hanging. Mrs. Emerton made an elephantine turn, tipped and sat down heavily beside him. “Put there,” she mumbled. “Luis.”
Padilla moved the highball glasses aside and unloaded his cart: caviar, of course, crackers, a split of champagne. Mr. Emerton’s eyes were closed; he had slipped a little farther down the sofa. Mrs. Emerton mumbled something else; then her eyes closed and her mouth fell open. Mr. Emerton was snoring.
Beyond her, on the dressing table, he could see the open jewel box with necklaces scattered beside it.