“Susan, I don’t know what this is all about, I swear to God.”
“Don’t swear to God, Matthew. He’ll send down a lightning bolt.”
“I’m glad you find this comical. A man calls in the middle of the night—”
“Oh yes, very comical.”
“Well, I’m certainly glad—”
“Hilarious, in fact. I even asked Mr. Hemmings if this was some kind of joke. That’s because I found it so sidesplitting, Matthew. Mr. Hemmings didn’t think it was funny, though. He kept crying all the while he talked to me. There were times I couldn’t understand what he was saying, Matthew. But I got the gist of it. I managed to get the gist of it. Would you like to hear the gist of it, Matthew?”
“No, I’d like to go to sleep. We’ll talk about this in—”
“We’ll talk about it now, you son of a bitch!”
“There’s nothing to talk about, Susan.”
“That’s right, Matthew. After tonight, there’s nothing to talk about ever again. But there’s this to talk about now.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“You’ll hear it, or I’ll wake Joanna and tell her about it. Would you like your daughter to hear it, Matthew?”
“What do you want, Susan? If you’re so sure that whoever called was telling the truth—”
“He was telling the truth.”
“Fine, then. You believe it, okay? I’m going to—”
“She tried to kill herself, Matthew.”
“What?”
“She swallowed half a bottle of sleeping pills.”
“Who... did he tell you that?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Call her. Ask her.”
“Why should... I don’t know her, I don’t even remember meeting—”
“Matthew, she tried to kill herself! Now, for Christ’s sake, are you going to keep—”
“All right,” I said.
“Ah.”
“When did he call?”
“About ten minutes ago.”
“Is she... is she all right?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
“Look, Susan—”
“Don’t ‘look’ me, you bastard!”
“What happened? Are you going to tell me what happened or—”
“He’d been watching television. He went upstairs at eleven and found her unconscious.”
“Did he call a doctor?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He could see what she’d done, there were pills all over the floor. He forced her to vomit, he put her under a cold shower, and then he marched her up and down the bedroom. That’s when she told him everything, Matthew. While they were walking back and forth, back and forth.” She made her voice mincingly precious on the repeated words “back and forth,” walking the index and middle fingers of her right hand across the top of the desk, across a sheaf of papers, over a pair of scissors, and then back toward the telephone again. “Back and forth, back and forth.” I watched her fingers and visualized Aggie clinging limply to her husband as he tried to walk off the effect of the pills. Her hair would have been wet from the shower, her face ghostly white, the pale gray eyes drained of whatever pigment they ordinarily possessed. And she would be talking. She would be telling.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay?” Susan stopped the walking fingers, clenched her right hand into a fist, and put it abruptly in her lap. “What does that mean, Matthew, ‘okay’?”
“It means okay, now I know what happened.”
“But you don’t know why it happened. You don’t know why she took all those pills, do you?”
“Why did she take them, Susan?”
“Because she was convinced you wouldn’t ask me for a divorce,” Susan said, and burst out laughing. Her laughter was frightening, I had the sudden premonition that another nightmare was about to start, that perhaps it had started the moment I entered the house and saw the study lights burning. Or before that, perhaps — the shrill ringing of the telephone, Susan coming down the hall naked to answer it in the study, I’m sorry, Mr. Hemmings, he’s not here just now, and the nightmare was suddenly full-blown upon her, upon us.
I came around the desk swiftly, wanting to stop her manic laughter before it woke up Joanna just down the hall. I put my hand on her shoulder, and she recoiled from it as though a lizard had crawled up her arm. The laughter stopped abruptly, but suddenly there was more to be afraid of than hysterical laughter. Without warning her hand reached out. She picked up the scissors. Her arm swung around in an arc, she came up out of the black leather swivel chair in the same instant, so that the motions were linked and seemed like one, sideward and upward.
The thumb-and finger-loops of the scissors were clutched in her fist like the haft of a dagger. She came at me without hesitation, propelled by fury, mindlessly. The twin pointed tips of the blades were an inch from my belly when I caught her wrist and deflected the forward thrust. She pulled her arm free, lunged again, and this time succeeded in ripping the sleeve of my jacket. Her breathing was harsh and ragged, I was not sure she even remembered the cause of her anger anymore. But still she lashed out with the scissors, coming at me again and again, forcing me back against the bookcase wall, causing me to sidle along it like a crab. I could not catch her wrist, her hand moved too swiftly, the tips of the scissors flicking the air and retreating, flicking again, catching the lapel of my jacket, clinging there an instant till she ripped them free with a twist and came at me again. I brought up my left hand, and a gash suddenly opened from my knuckles to my wrist. I felt suddenly faint and fell against the desk for support, knocking the telephone to the floor. She was on me again, I recalled abruptly Jamie’s description of the bedroom on Jacaranda, the blood-smeared walls, Maureen fluttering to—
There was a scream.
For a moment, I thought I was the one screaming. My bleeding hand was stretched toward Susan, my mouth was indeed open — it was possible that I was the one screaming. But the scream was coming from behind me. I spun to my left, partially to avoid the thrusting scissors, partially to locate the source of the scream. My daughter Joanna was standing in the open doorway. She was wearing a long granny nightgown, her eyes were wide, her mouth was open, the scream that came from her throat could have raised the dead. It was a scream of horror and disbelief, it hung on the air interminably, it filled the small room and suffocated murderous intent. The scissors stopped. Susan looked down at her own right hand in disbelief. It was shaking violently, the scissors jerking erratically in her fist. She dropped them to the floor.
“Get out,” she said. “Get out, you bastard.” Inexplicably, Joanna rushed to her and threw herself into her arms.
Sunlight streamed through the partially opened blinds. I cracked open my eyes and blinked at the morning. I was on the couch in my office. The wall clock read 8:15 A.M. The nightmare was over.
I looked at my bandaged left hand. The blood had soaked through and crusted the cotton gauze. I sat up. For a moment, I did not want to get off that couch; there seemed no place to go. I thought of my daughter in Susan’s arms. The image persisted. I shook my head as though to clear it, got to my feet, and looked at the clock again. My clothes were rumpled, I had slept in them. I was barefooted. My shoes were resting side by side before the desk, the socks bunched inside them. I hated the thought of showering and then putting on again the same clothes I’d worn through last night’s horror. But I’d left the house with only what was on my back. Turned, walked out of the study, through the hallway to the front door, the door whispering shut behind me, the small click of the snap lock in the strike plate. Click. My daughter in Susan’s arms. Her mother’s arms, not mine.