He sat opposite her in the booth at dinner and, animated by the drinks, talked expansively. She had poured hers down the sink, not quite knowing why.
She looked across at him and she saw that his face was dear and familiar, the gray eyes really startling against the lean weathered texture of his skin, and she knew that she could speak to him of the file she had found and all the things he had written down.
Something showed in her face, because he stopped in the middle of a sentence and said, “What’s the matter with you, anyway? Ever since I came home you’ve acted sort of pushed down. Where’s the usual bounce, my love?”
It was time to ask him. She said slowly and carefully, not wanting to mix up the words that might come too fast, “Jamie, do you think I’m...” She hunted through her mind for the word. Crazy was too abrupt. Unstable didn’t seem quite right.
As she looked at him she saw the sudden guarded look and the brilliant gray eyes seemed to cease reflecting light. His hand held his fork in mid-air and she saw that the fork did not waver at all, that it seemed to be held in a sort of vise. The thick hair on his left wrist curled over the mesh of his watch strap, and the thick wrist and hand seemed suddenly alien, strange, brutal.
Her laughter was too loud and too shrill, and she wrinkled her nose in what she feared was an inane manner as she leaned across the table and rephrased her question. “Jamie,” she said, “do you think I’m too thin?”
She saw the tension and the wariness go out of him, dropping steadily.
“Positively scrawny,” he said grinning at her, and once more the gray of his eyes began to reflect the light.
And then it turned out that it had been a poor way to change the subject since it made it necessary to eat what was on her plate, as a woman who was worried about thinness would do. The food made a gritty lump in the middle of her.
After he left the kitchen, she did the — dishes very rapidly, not calling to him to dry them as she usually did. He came to the kitchen door as she finished the last one, and as she went to go by him, he held her again. Once again her ear was against his chest, but his heart was a drum that slowly made somber sounds, sounds that rhymed with doom, though that was entirely too melodramatic a word, she realized.
In the living room he turned on the radio. His sport shirt was open at the neck and hung loose over his trousers. He wore moccasins and no socks. She took refuge behind a big shining magazine, slouching so that she could, by lifting her head just a trifle, see him over the top edge of it.
From time to time, he fiddled with the radio dial and then he put on some records. When the records were over he wanted to play canasta, which she didn’t care for because of the two packs that had to be shuffled. But she played two games on the rug and then they went to bed. She kept thinking that to anyone who might have wished to hide in the shrubbery and look through the windows this would have appeared a quiet and normal evening in a perfectly normal home — which somehow made it more frightening, as though it underlined the words “instability” and “institution.”
He was first in the big bed, for she spent a long, long time in the bathroom, merely standing and looking at herself in the mirror over the sink. It was odd to her that Jamie had retained all of his dear and familiar look and her face had been the one to become to her the face of a stranger.
When she went into the bedroom he was asleep on his back, one husky forearm across his flat stomach, his mouth open a little, the bed lamp making shadows where his cheeks were hollowed. She crept into bed by inches and took a long time turning out the light; she did not want to disturb him. She did not want to know how much had been lost.
When she went out the next day, she carried the big grass purse she had got in Mexico. It was the only one which would take the folder without bending it.
When the nurse opened the door, she went in, making herself walk slowly, making herself sit down at the indicated chair with proper adult dignity, with no trembling of lips, nothing to indicate the tightness of throat.
The door shut behind her and she stopped thinking of her manner long enough to look at the doctor’s face. It seemed a good sort of face, rather ordinary, very patient and oddly wise for one quite young.
“It’s psychiatric, I guess,” she said. “The reason why I’m here, I mean. It’s all mixed up and like looking at myself in a new way. I don’t know exactly...”
He held up his hand and the calm motion stopped her in mid-flight. He smiled and said, “Lean back in that chair and take a deep breath, Mrs. Lowndes. Start from the beginning. But let me warn you that I’m not a psychiatrist, not in the accepted three-after-noons-a-week-for-two-years sense.”
When the question was clear in her mind, she said it too quickly. “How does a person get put into an institution here?”
“That obviously isn’t the beginning, but I’ll answer it to get it out of the way. The patient commits an overt act and someone gets in touch with the police authorities who come around with the health officer and commitment is made. I happen to be the health officer also. Who is going to be committed?”
“Me. I mean, it looks that way. I mean, I don’t know if maybe I should arrange it.”
He gave her a startled look and then he smiled. His voice was mildly patronizing. “What are your symptoms, Mrs. Lowndes. Hear voices? Have bad dreams?”
“Nothing like that. Yesterday afternoon I was fine. Right up until I had to have the number to put on the check because the insurance people want it, you know. And I looked in the box after I picked the lock and there it was.”
Dr. Wiss frowned. “There was what, Mrs. Lowndes?”
“This report on me. This report on the things I do and all that.” She snapped open the bag, took out the file and put it in front of him.
As he opened it she said, “Jamie, my husband — it’s a record he’s been keeping. I didn’t know about it and I shouldn’t have looked at it, but after I did...”
Her voice trailed off. Dr. Wiss carefully read the first page and the second. He pushed a button on his desk. The nurse came in. He asked her who was waiting, and after she told him he said that she should send both of them away, making any sort of excuse she could dream up. An emergency situation had come up.
The nurse gave Fan an odd look and went out, shutting the door with emphasis.
Fan dug for cigarettes in her purse, and the match flame shook as she lit one. Dr. Wiss read slowly and carefully.
He spent a great deal of time over the last sheet. When he was quite through he closed the folder, aligned it neatly with the edge of his desk, folded his hands and stared at her.
He said, “Tell me about yourself. And about Jamie. Everything.” There was no hint of amusement in his voice.
He asked many questions, and as she grew used to his quiet manner she was able to talk more coherently.
The questions stopped. “Am... am I dangerous?” she asked weakly.
“You need help, Mrs. Lowndes.”
“I want to know if I should tell Jamie that I found the folder.”
He shook his head firmly. “Under no circumstances, Mrs. Lowndes, will you mention this folder.”
“If I were... well, if I went to one of those places for a sort of rest, perhaps Jamie would think that I was all right afterward and—”
“You love him very much, don’t you?”
“It’s a funny question to ask me. Yes, I do, but he has things so wrong about me. Yet perhaps no one looks at himself the way he actually is. I do a lot of dumb things and I don’t think about them, but I’ve always heard that the people in those places keep saying that they’re sane and maybe I’m just...”