Elinor worked, and quite well. It was pleasant to have a tea date to look forward to. Soon, she thought, she’d ask Jane and her husband for drinks. She didn’t want people to think she was a melancholy widow. It had been three months since Cliff’s death. Elinor thought she’d got over the worst of her grief in those first two weeks, the weeks of shock. Had she really? For the past six weeks she’d been able to work. That was something. Cliff’s insurance plus his pension made her financially comfortable, but she needed to work to be happy.
When she glanced at her watch it was ten to four. “Chris!” Elinor called to her half-open door. “Changed your jeans?”
She pushed open Chris’s door across the hall. He was not in his room, and there were more toys and books on the floor than usual, indicating that Chris had been trying to select something to give to Bill. Elinor went downstairs where the TV was still murmuring, but Chris wasn’t in the living room. Nor was he in the kitchen. She saw that the back door was still bolted. Chris wasn’t on the front lawn either. Of course he could have gone to the garden by the front door. Elinor unbolted the kitchen door and went out.
“Chris?” She glanced everywhere, then focused on the pond. She had seen a light-colored patch in its center. “Chris!” She ran.
He was face down, feet out of sight, his blond head nearly submerged. Elinor plunged in, up to her knees, her thighs, seized Chris’s legs and pulled him out, slipped, sat down in the water, and got soaked as high as her breasts. She struggled to her feet, holding Chris by the waist. Shouldn’t she try to let the water run out of his mouth? Elinor was panting.
She turned Chris onto his stomach, gently lifted his small body by the waist, hoping water would run from his nose and mouth, but she was too frantic to look. He was limp, soft in a way that frightened her. She pressed his rib cage, released it, raised him a little again. One had to do artificial respiration methodically, counting, she remembered. She did this... fifteen... sixteen... Someone should be telephoning for a doctor. She couldn’t do two things at once.
“Help!” she yelled. “Help me, please!” Could the people next door hear? The house was twenty yards away, and was anybody home?
She turned Chris over and pressed her mouth to his cool lips. She blew in, then released his ribs, trying to catch a gasp from him, a cough that would mean life. He remained limp. She turned him on his stomach and resumed the artificial respiration. It was now or never, she knew. Senseless to waste time carrying him into the house for warmth. He could’ve been lying in the pond for an hour — in which case, she knew it was hopeless.
Elinor picked her son up and carried him toward the house. She went into the kitchen. There was a sagging sofa against the wall, and she put him there.
Then she telephoned Jane Caldwell, whose number was on the card by the telephone where Elinor had left it days ago. Since Elinor didn’t know a doctor in the vicinity, it made as much sense to call Jane as to search for a doctor’s name.
“Hello, Jane!” Elinor said, her voice rising wildly. “I think Chris has drowned! — Yes! Yes! Can you get a doctor? Right away?” Suddenly the line was dead.
Elinor hung up and went at once to Chris, started the rib pressing again, Chris now prone on the floor with his face turned to one side. The activity soothed her a little.
The doorbell rang and at the same time Elinor heard the latch of the door being opened. Then Jane called, “Elinor?”
“In the kitchen!”
The doctor had dark hair and spectacles. He lifted Chris a little, felt for a pulse. “How long — how long was he—”
“I don’t know. I was working upstairs. It was the pond in the garden.”
The rest was confused to Elinor. She barely realized when the needle went into her own arm, though this was the most definite sensation she had for several minutes. Jane made tea. Elinor had a cup in front of her. When she looked at the floor, Chris was not there.
“Where is he?” Elinor asked.
Jane gripped Elinor’s hand. She sat opposite Elinor. “The doctor took Chris to the hospital. Chris is in good hands, you can be sure of that. This doctor delivered Bill. He’s our family doctor.”
But from Jane’s tone Elinor knew it was all useless, and that Jane knew this too. Elinor’s eyes drifted from Jane’s face. She noticed a book lying on the cane bottom of the chair beside her. Chris had chosen his dotted-numbers book to give to Bill, a book that Chris rather liked. He wasn’t half through doing the drawings. Chris could count and he was doing quite well at reading too. I wasn’t doing so well at his age, Cliff had said not long ago.
Elinor began to weep.
“That’s good. That’s good for you,” Jane said. “I’ll stay here with you. Pretty soon we’ll hear from the hospital. Maybe you want to lie down, Elinor? — I’ve got to make a phone call.”
The sedative was taking effect. Elinor sat in a daze on the sofa, her head back against a pillow. The telephone rang and Jane took it. The hospital, Elinor supposed. She watched Jane’s face, and knew. Elinor nodded her head, trying to spare Jane any words, but Jane said, “They tried. I’m sure they did everything possible.”
Jane said she would stay the night. She said she had arranged for Ed to pick up Bill at a house where she’d left him.
In the morning Weed-Killer came, and Jane asked Elinor if she still wanted the job done.
“I thought you might’ve decided to move,” Jane said.
Had she said that? Possibly. “But I do want it done.”
The two Weed-Killer men got to work.
Jane made another telephone call, then told Elinor that a friend of hers named Millie was coming over at noon. When Millie arrived, Jane prepared a lunch of bacon and eggs for the three of them. Millie had blond curly hair, blue eyes, and was very cheerful and sympathetic.
“I went by the doctor’s.” Millie said, “and his nurse gave me these pills. They’re a sedative. He thinks they’d be good for you. Two a day, one before lunch, one before bedtime. So have one now.”
They hadn’t started lunch. Elinor took one. The workmen were just departing, and one man stuck his head in the door to say with a smile, “All finished, ma’am. You shouldn’t have any trouble any more.”
During lunch Elinor said, “I’ve got to see about the funeral.”
“We’ll help you. Don’t think about it now,” Jane said. “Try to eat a little.”
Elinor ate a little, then slept on the sofa in the kitchen. She hadn’t wanted to go up to her own bed. When she woke up, Millie was sitting in the wicker armchair, reading a book.
“Feeling better? Want some tea?”
“In a minute. You’re awfully kind. I do thank you very much.” She stood up. “I want to see the pond.” She saw Millie’s look of uneasiness. “They killed those vines today. I’d like to see what it looks like.”
Millie went out with her. Elinor looked down at the pond and had the satisfaction of seeing that no vines lay on the surface, that some pieces of them had sunk like drowned things. Around the edge of the pond were stubs of vines already turning yellow and brownish, wilting. Before her eyes one cropped tentacle curled sideways and down, as if in the throes of death. A primitive joy went through her, a sense of vengeance, of a wrong righted.
“It’s a nasty pond,” Elinor said to Millie. “It killed a carp. Can you imagine? I’ve never heard of a carp being—”
“I know. They must’ve been growing like blazes. But they’re certainly finished now.” Millie held out her hand for Elinor to take. “Don’t think about it.”
Millie wanted to go back to the house. Elinor did not take her hand, but she came with Millie. “I’m feeling better. You mustn’t give up all your time to me. It’s very nice of you, since you don’t even know me. But I’ve got to face my problems alone.”