Even hurt, depressed, confused, she wouldn’t have wanted Todd to suffer, would she?
impossible to say for sure. Let it alone.
Yet even now, lying here in Polly’s bed with Polly sleeping beside him, he found it hard advice to take. His mind went back to work on it, like a puppy worrying an old and ragged strip of rawhide with its sharp little teeth.
An image had always come to him at this point, a nightmarish image which had finally driven him to Polly Chalmers, because Polly was the woman Annie had been closest to in town-and, considering the Beaumont business and the psychic toll it had taken on Alan, Polly had probably been there for Annie more than he had during the last few months of her life.
The image was of Annie unbuckling her own seatbelt, jamming the gas pedal to the floor, and taking her hands off the wheel. Taking them off the wheel because she had another job for them in those last few seconds.
Taking them off so she could unbuckle Todd’s belt, as well.
That was the image: the Scout roaring down the road at seventy, veering to the right, veering toward the trees under a white March sky that promised rain, while Annie struggled to unbuckle Todd’s belt and Todd, screaming and afraid, struggled to beat her hands away. He saw Annie’s well-loved face transformed into the hagiike mask of a witch, saw Todd’s drawn long with terror. Sometimes he woke in the middle of the night, his body dressed in a clammy jacket of sweat, with Todd’s voice ringing in his ears: The trees, Mommy! Look out for the TR EEEES!
So he had gone to see Polly one day at closing time, and asked her if she would come up to the house for a drink, or, if she felt uncomfortable about doing that, if he could come over to her house.
Seated in his kitchen (the right kitchen, the interior voice asserted) with a mug of tea for her and coffee for him, he had begun to speak, slowly and stumblingly, of his nightmare.
“I need to know, if I can, if she was going through periods of depression or irrationality that I either didn’t know about or didn’t notice,” he said. “I need to know if…” He stopped, momentarily helpless. He knew what words he needed to say, but it was becoming harder and harder to bring them out. It was as if the channel of communication between his unhappy, confused mind and his mouth was growing smaller and shallower, and would soon be entirely closed to shipping.
He made a great effort and went on.
“I need to know if she was suicidal. Because, you see, it wasn’t just Annie who died. Todd died with her, and if there were sighs… signs, I mean, signs… that I didn’t notice, then I am responsible for his death, too. And that’s something I feel I have to know.”
He had stopped there, his heart pounding dully in his chest.
He wiped a hand over his forehead and was mildly surprised when it came away wet with sweat.
“Alan,” she said, and put a hand on his wrist. Her light-blue eyes looked steadily into his. “If I had seen such signs and hadn’t told anyone, I would be as guilty as you seem to want to be.”
He had gaped at her, he remembered that. Polly might have seen something in Annie’s behavior which he had missed; he had gotten that far in his reasoning. The idea that noticing strange behavior conveyed a responsibility to do something about it had never occurred to him until now.
You didn’t?” he asked at last.
“No. I’ve gone over it and over it in my mind. I don’t mean to belittle your grief and loss, but you’re not the only one who feels those things, and you’re not the only one who has done a fair amount of soul-searching since Annie’s accident. I went over those last few weeks until I was dizzy, replaying scenes and conversations in light of what the autopsy showed. I’m doing it again now, in light of what nd do you know what I you’ve told me about that aspirin bottle. A find?”
“What?” basis which was oddly “Zilch.” She said it with a lack of emphasis convincing. “Nothing at all. There were times when I thought she looked a little pale. I can remember a couple of occasions when I heard her talking to herself while she was hemming skirts or unpacking fabric. That’s the most eccentric behavior I can recall, and I’ve been guilty of it myself many times. How about YOu?”
Alan nodded.
“Mostly she was the way she was ever since I first met her: cheerful, friendly, helpful… a good friend.”
“But-” Her hand was still on his wrist; it tightened a little.
“No, Alan.
No buts. Ray Van Allen is doing it, too, you know-Monday morning quarterbacking, I believe it’s called. Do you blame him?
Do you feel Ray’s to blame for missing the tumor?”
“No, but-”
“What about me? I worked with her every day, side by side most of the time; we drank coffee together at ten, ate lunch together at noon, and drank coffee again at three. We talked very frankly as time went on and we got to know and like each other, Alan.
I know you pleased her, both as a friend and as a lover, and I know she loved the boys. But if she was drifting toward suicide as the result of her illness… that I didn’t know. So tell me-do you blame me?”
And her clear blue eyes had looked frankly and curiously into his own.
“No, but-” The hand squeezed again, light but commanding.
“I want to ask you something. it’s important, so think carefully.”
He nodded.
“Ray was her doctor, and if it was there, he didn’t see it. I was her friend, and if it was there, I didn’t see it. You were her husband, and if it was there, you didn’t see it, either. And you think that’s all, that’s the end of the line, but it’s not.”
“I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”
“Someone else was close to her,” Polly had said. “Someone closer than either of us, I imagine.”
“Who are you talking ah-”
“Alan, what did Todd say?”
He could only gaze at her, not understanding. He felt as if she had spoken a word in a foreign tongue.
“Todd,” she said, sounding impatient. “Todd, your son. The one who keeps you awake nights. It is him, isn’t it? Not her, but him.”
“Yes,” he said. “Him.” His voice came out high and unsteady, something starting to shift not like his own voice at all, and he felt inside him, something large and fundamental. Now, lying here in Polly’s bed, he could remember that moment at his kitchen table with almost supernatural clarity: her hand on his wrist in a slanting bar of late-afternoon sun, the hairs a fine spun gold; her light eyes; her gentle relentlessness.
“Did she force Todd into the car, Alan? Was he kicking?
Screaming? Fighting her?”
“No, of course not, but she was his m-”
“Whose idea was it for Todd to go with her to the market that day? Hers or his? Can you remember?”
He started to say no, but suddenly he did. Their voices, floating in from the living room, as he sat at his desk, going through county warrant-orders: Gotta run down to the market, Todd-you want to come?
Can I look at the new video-tapes?
I guess so. Ask your father if he wants anything.
“It was her idea,” he told Polly.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. But she asked him. She didn’t tell him.”
That thing inside, that fundamental thing, was still movlonugt. oltf the ground when it did, for its roots were planted b t was going to fall, he thought, and it would rip almighoythhedelep and wide.
“Was he scared of her?”
Now she was almost cross-examining him, the way he had crossexamined Ray Van Allen, but he seemed helpless to make her stop.