And no doubt someone would. The house had long ago been bequeathed to her church, and the minister who conducted her funeral service would probably take it over as a rectory; it was a better and more spacious house than he presently occupied. And his wife was a responsible gardener.
Should she have left the house to Linda? She had not even considered it, but now she found herself wondering. It would surely have complicated things for Henry Biedemeyer, but that was not what decided her against it. No, you could not force another person into your own life. The shop, yes, but not the house as well.
She went inside, wandered through the rooms of the large old house. She locked the outside doors. George Perlmutter would call her in the morning. When she did not answer he would grow apprehensive and come over to make sure she was all right. She had left a key under the mat for him.
He hadn’t liked that. No, he hadn’t liked that at all, but that was just too bad. No law said he had to like it. No law said she had to care what he liked or didn’t like.
She sat for an hour or so in the living room, thinking some thoughts in silence and saying others aloud. People who lived alone generally talked to themselves, she knew. Well, she would never be an old lady who talked to herself. Nor was she talking to herself now.
She said, “Well, I guess it’s time, darling. Do you know something? I always hoped you would be the first of us to go. Always. Of the two of us I thought I would be better at getting on. But I’m not so damned great at it, after all, am I?”
She climbed the stairs. She said, “Strange to be doing things for the last time. The last look at the garden, the last trip up the stairs. What’s strange is the knowledge. Do you remember the last time we made love? I can’t remember it. Every time merges into one. We made love once, and it lasted all our lives.”
In their bedroom she undressed and hung up her clothes. She put on a nightgown and went to the bathroom and filled a glass with water and swallowed thirty-six Seconal capsules. After she had swallowed first handful she stopped and studied herself in the mirror. If she was going to change her mind, now was the time. If she felt the slightest hesitation, now was the time to realize it.
“Not for a minute,” she said aloud. “Not for an instant.”
She carried the empty glass back into the bedroom. A half-finished bottle of whiskey was on his bedside table. She poured herself a strong drink and sniffed it.
“I never could abide the smell,” she said. “I always wondered how you managed to like it. All due success to temperance.”
She drank the glass down. She felt a rush of warmth in her middle but nothing else.
“Nope,” she said, “I can’t see I missed anything all these years. Never knew what you saw in it, but then I never knew what you saw in me, either.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed. “George Perlmutter says I’m young and attractive and healthy and rich. Somehow I wasn’t moved. Oh, darling, it’s no good when it’s no fun anymore. It was always so damned fascinating to watch how things turned out. And to laugh at all the fools. I don’t know how to laugh, Clem. I can’t do it anymore.”
She looked at the blank canvas hung over the bed. It was the only picture remaining in the house.
“Now there’s an example,” she said. “That’s going to be hanging on that wall after I’m gone, and no one alive will have the slightest idea why it’s there, and sooner or later some damn fool will take it out of here and some other damn fool will think it’s a blank canvas and paint some damn fool picture on it. Now that’s as funny a thing as I’ve thought of in I don’t know how long, Clem, and I ought to be laughing. But I’m not. I’m not laughing at all.”
The pills were starting to work. She could feel her tongue thickening in her mouth, could sense the beginnings of fuzziness in her mind. She pulled back the covers and got into bed. She lay on her side of the bed and turned toward his side.
“Now isn’t that better? Oh, of course it is. Do you remember, Clem? Oh, I wanted you to be the first but I wish you were with me now. How I wish you were with me now. Hold my hand, Clem. Hold my hand. Yes, that’s right. Oh, that’s right. I’m all right now, Clem. I’m all right.”
IV
The Trouble with Eden
And so it was over. A man had died, and living men had opened the earth for him and closed it over him. A life which had begun at one specific point in time had ended now at another specific point in time. Lives, like books, have beginnings and endings, first chapters and last chapters.
But the endings of human lives lack the precision of the endings of books. If death is a last chapter, there is still an epilogue to come.
Epilogue
THE END