It made me mad. “What’s the matter,” I yelled at them. “You never saw anybody arrested before?”
Doc Palmer from the corner drug store came elbowing through the crowd.
“Hey, Doc,” Burgess called, relieved. “Take care of our friend here, would you? No, he ain’t hurt, and I ain’t arresting him. He just shouldn’t be walking the street by himself.”
I put my arm over Doc Palmer’s shoulder and let him help me into the drug store. “Nerves,” I explained to him. “Nerves very bad. Home situation, you know.”
“I know, Joe,” he assured me, taking me into the back where he makes up his prescriptions. He did know, too. Doc and I are old buddies. He has problems, too. His wife has a disposition like my mother-in-law’s. She’s the one who owns the store, too. Inherited it from her father. She’s older than Doc, and crazy jealous. Yes, he has his problems.
“How about some nice, hot, black coffee, Joe?” he asked me, after he sat me down on the leather sofa in his private office.
“Hot coffee? On a day like this? You must be nuts. Just let me rest a minute. Then I’ll be getting home. My little wife’s all alone. Her mother’s away for the afternoon. I don’t want Verna to get lonesome.” I gave him a big wink.
He knew what I meant, all right. That was one of the things that bugged me most, the way my mother-in-law was always around the house. A fellow who’s married to a pretty young wife like Verna, a fellow who’s his own boss, can come home for lunch and all, well, he could have an enjoyable time for himself, afternoons. Only not with that old harpy sniffing around.
But Verna would get absolutely hysterical, if I so much as hinted that her mother should move out. “You want her around to make sure I behave myself, that I don’t bother you all the time, like a husband has a right to,” I accused her once. But I knew that wasn’t so.
The old bag was Verna’s mother, so naturally Verna looked at her differently from the way other people did. My own mother was a sort of strong-willed woman, too. She made it hot for me, sometimes, like when I’d think about getting married to some girl she didn’t like. But if she were still living, she’d be making her home with us, too. It would never occur to my mother not to, and I certainly would never have told her to get out. I knew how Verna felt. My insides twisted, thinking about it. These old women... The power they have, the naked, terrible power. Just because at some moment long ago, some moment they have long since put out of mind, motherhood was imposed on them...
Doc had left me. Now he came bustling back with a glass, ice, and some soda. “If you won’t have the coffee, how about a drink?” he asked. He got a bottle of bourbon out of his desk, mixed me a stiff drink. I drank it down thirstily. He poured me another before I could say no.
“Why don’t you lie down and rest for a while?” he suggested.
I let him talk me into that. “Feels good to lie down,” I muttered, stretching out on the couch.
“You bet. I’ll just pull the blinds and leave you, old boy. You’ll feel swell, once you have a little rest.”
I closed my eyes and I lay there for a while, but I didn’t go to sleep. Everything seemed to be whirling, revolving in a sickening sort of way. The leather sofa felt slippery, insecure. I tried to hang on to keep from falling, but there was nothing to hang on to. I was clammy, sweaty, from lying on that leather.
I sat up at last, groaning. Drank the rest of the soda water. Thought about Verna, so cool, so beautiful. Marriage had done a lot for Verna. She wasn’t the shy little stenographer she’d been when I first noticed her. One of the pretty young clerks I’d hired for the office, after my mother died.
Verna was engaged to a beatnik kind of fellow, then. A young jerk who wore a beard, who wrote silly poetry, who ran a tacky expresso joint, the one and only coffee house we ever had in this town. A fellow who didn’t make enough to support a wife.
I used to make a point of driving by his tumble-down place in the Cadillac, when we’d be going to dinner at the home of one of my friends, or to spend the evening at the Country Club. Verna got the point, all right. She was crazy about the mink coat I’d bought her. She got a big bang out of buying clothes at the best shops, fixing herself up. I’d been a little nervy about introducing her to my friends, at first. But Verna caught on fast. In no time at all she looked classier than any of the debutantes from the Country Club set, girls who’d been to Eastern finishing schools.
I guess Verna was glad she’d married good old Joe Adams, all right. My wife has a position in this town. Mother’s folks had owned a lot of property around here, and my mother had not only held on to it, she’d developed it. Yes, Verna could hold her head high, being the wife of the President of the Adams Realty Company.
Thinking about Verna made me feel stronger. I struggled to my feet, went out of Doc’s office. There was nobody in the back room. I went out the rear door of the pharmacy. That way I could go down the alley, into the rear door of my apartment house, save walking in the sun all around the block. Just those few steps in the heat made me feel woozey again. I had to lean up against the wall for a while once I’d gotten inside my building, letting the air-conditioning cool me off.
I went down the hall to the lobby. Sam, the elevator man, was nowhere in sight, as usual. I leaned on the bell until he shuffled out from wherever it is that he hides. I chewed him out good. “I don’t pay you for taking siestas,” I told him. “Do you expect me to walk up two flights on a day like this?”
He gave me some excuse about helping a tenant carry in some luggage. “That’s your story,” I said. I leaned against the elevator wall. When we got to my floor, it took me a minute to straighten up. He ran that elevator very fast.
“Can I help you to your apartment?” he asked me, taking hold of my arm.
I yanked away from him. “Take your dirty hands off me!” I said.
“Yes, sir,” he muttered, slamming the door right on my heels.
It made me mad. I put my back against the wall, thinking about him in that elevator. The cables snapping, him throwing up his arms, his eyeballs rolling, screaming as he went down, down, down... I giggled. “Not the elevator, Joe, old boy,” I told myself. “Remember, you own this building.”
My door was locked. I rattled at it a few times, got out my key, scratched around a bit, finally got the door open. “Verna!” I called as I stumbled in.
I heard some movement behind me, turned around. “Oh, no!” I screamed. “No, don’t!” But something solid caught me right on the jaw. My head seemed to explode. I had a sensation of falling.
When I came to I was lying on the floor. It hurt to open my eyes. My head was aching so bad I was whimpering. When I tried to move, I seemed to be clutching something heavy in my hand. I focused on it, to see what it was. It was one of my set of bronze horses that I used for book-ends. I stared at it, trying to figure out why I had it. Moaning, I let loose of it, tried to sit up. Stirring around made me sick as a dog. I just made it into the bathroom.
After a while I dunked my head in cold water, took some aspirins. I studied the swelling on my chin, trying to fit the pieces together. Then I thought of something. Something that I’d seen as I was sitting up, just as the nausea hit me. I stood there, holding on to the washbasin, telling myself that I had to be wrong. I hadn’t really seen anything, any body lying there on the floor at my feet.
I don’t know how long it was that I stood there, how long before I finally forced myself to go back to the living room. It was true, all right. My mother-in-law was lying right there where I remembered, stretched out on her face beside the telephone stand. I went over, knelt down beside her, picked up her limp wrist, let it drop hastily. My God, she was already getting cold! Her head was turned away from me, but there was blood on the floor around it. I didn’t want to look any farther.