This Sweet Sickness

  Oh, Christ, how much there was to be done over!

  17

  Jan. 27, 1959

  My darling Annabelle,

  A new day is coming up as I write this. I have been walking around the town for hours. How I wish I were a poet to be able to tell you what this day symbolizes to me. It is a new beginning. If you could only see our life together like that, if you could simply believe how much I love you. To speak of myself now, I realize, is selfish. I love you for your devotion to Gerald, I respect your grief, but only because it is yours. I pray to whatever powers there are that your devotion and your love may one day be transferred to me. How can I measure my love for you? It fills me to overflowing. It is strangely tangible and yet intangible. It is like a weight inside me. I could not love you more than I do. It is unbelievable to me that a human being could feel as I do and be utterly without hope of his love being returned. Annabelle, I am quite sure one day you will understand, you will smile again at me as you once did.

  As for the present—to return to last night, I reproach myself bitterly for having lost my temper, for having shouted. It is unforgivable. I wanted only to brush away your own tears, comfort you. I want only to make you happy. If you understood that completely, I would be the happiest man alive.

  My job here is no pleasure and never was. My plans are, within a few weeks or months, however long it takes, to find a place in a research laboratory. I want you with me. I want to buy a house of your choosing. Have you thought of going back to La Jolla for a while? It might be very good for you to get your bearings and all that. If you go, believe me that you are in my thoughts day and night and always. I will love you as long as I live.

  Dave

  He went out quietly and dropped the letter into a box two streets away. It was 7 A.M. and though when he had walked to the mailbox the town had been colorless as a photograph, on his way back the bricks of a wall across the street had become dark red, and he could see the green in the scraggly hedges. He felt unusually alert, and strangely happy. His letter might erase all the negative atmosphere of last night, might lift her spirits, might suddenly show her everything in a new light. Some letter would do it, he knew. It might take a hundred, two hundred letters, but it would not be their weight or their cumulative power, it would be a certain phrase, perhaps one that he did not consider even very important, that would make Annabelle see.

  He was whistling as he came up the front walk. On Thursday, he thought, the day after Annabelle received his letter, he would call her from the factory and propose lunch on Saturday. He would take her to some restaurant in the country. Annabelle should see trees, grass, space! The countryside wouldn’t be as beautiful, perhaps, as in spring or summer, but compared to that sordid street she lived in, any glimpse of country would be beautiful.

  Mrs. McCartney was in the front hall when he walked in. “I just knocked on your door, David. Effie Brennan called you a minute ago. Wants you to call her back. She says it’s important.”

  “All right. Thank you,” David said.

  “You have her number, haven’t you?”

  “No.”

  “It’s in the little blue book hanging by the telephone,” Mrs. McCartney told him, again with the smile and the avidly curious eyes.

  David did not want to call her from the house. He waited until Mrs. McCartney had gone into the dining room, then went out of the house again. If Effie had told the Beck’s Brook police that she had seen David Kelsey in the Neumeister house, then so be it, he thought. It was awkward and embarrassing, but nothing more. If he had to admit that it was David Kelsey who had talked with Gerald Delaney and finally knocked him down, in a fall that happened to be fatal, what then? Did that make him a murderer? If he had tried up to now to conceal his identity because of the Situation, wasn’t that understandable?

  Wasn’t it even possible, David thought as he dialed Effie’s number, to make a clean breast of the whole thing and come out in a better position than he was now with Annabelle? Up to this moment, he had been afraid to contemplate making a clean breast of it. This morning anything seemed possible.

  “Hello, Effie. This is David Kelsey.”

  “Dave—hello,” she said breathlessly. “I’m sorry I called you so early. Are you all right?”

  “I’m all right. Why?”

  “I was worried,” she said quickly.

  “About what?”

  “Everything. Where were you just now?”

  “Out mailing a letter.” He had an impulse to tell her he owed her an apology, to apologize for his outburst last Saturday. But now both the incident and whether Effie Brennan was an enemy or not seemed unimportant.

  “Dave, I shouldn’t have come by Saturday. Once again, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” he said, puzzled by her shaky voice.

  “I want you to know, Dave, whatever happens, I’m with you. I’m on your side. At least—”

  “At least what?”

  “I’m confused about so many things. I wish I’d never told Gerald Delaney anything. I want you to know, Dave, that the things you’ve told me are the things I’ll tell too. And even believe. Is that what you want me to do?”

  “Tell who? Listen, Effie, I don’t care who or what you tell. I’m not trying to hide anything.”

  “You’re not? I think you’d better, Dave.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just that I have funny feelings. Anticipating. You know?”

  At that moment he had no patience for funny feelings.

  “I still have your portrait, but I’ve put it away, out of sight. Dave, are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I call you this evening? Please. I want to, Dave.”

  “Why?”

  “Just tell me I can. Can I call you at six?”

  “All right, Effie,” he said to get it over with.

  “Thanks. Good-bye, Dave.”

  He hung up, and after a moment thought no more about Effie Brennan, or of what might be worrying her. But in the factory that day, he found himself wondering a few times if Effie had told Wes that she had gone to the house in Ballard Saturday and seen him there. David did not see Wes that day until after four, and then only for a few seconds, when Wes was coming out of a men’s room, and David could tell from Wes’s smile and the lift of his hand as he greeted him that nothing had changed.

  Punctually at six the telephone rang in Mrs. McCartney’s hall. Effie wanted to see him. She did not want to talk to him on the telephone. David tried to postpone it until tomorrow evening, postpone it forever, not that he was afraid of her, but that anybody breathless, any woman on the brink of tears, made him want to run in another direction.

  “It’s important, Dave. Please. This once.”

  So he gave in and told her he would come over at eight o’clock. But she did not want him to come to her apartment. She proposed a drugstore on Main Street.

  “It has booths,” Effie said.

  David was a little late. Effie sat in a back booth behind a pink plastic table, a cup of black coffee in front of her. She smiled nervously when she saw him. After he had sat down, she still looked rigid and shy, as if she had to guard against his striking her, or against his resentment.

  “Effie, I’m sorry I shouted at you Saturday.”

  She nodded, as if in a trance, as if she were unaware of nodding. “That’s all right. I’ll forget it. I’ll forget I ever went there, Dave. That’s what you want me to do, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose.”

  A waitress came, and he ordered coffee.

  “I saw Annabelle today,” Effie said.

  “You what?” He looked at her, nodding again, and he could not believe it. “She came here? To Froudsburg?”

  “No. I went to Beck’s Brook. The police there called
me at seven this morning, and they drove me up during my lunch hour. They asked me again if I knew Newmester or knew where he was, and I think they were even wondering if I knew Annabelle, but they saw I didn’t. Annabelle wanted to talk to Newmester. It was the second time she’d come to see him. But he couldn’t be found.” She paused, looking at him with the wary, troubled eyes. “They described him.”

  David folded his arms over his guilty heart. “Very well. They described him.”

  “They said he was about five ten, medium build, thirty years old, with black hair. Your hair’s brown, but—he’s you, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” David said quietly. “And so what?”

  Her frilly pink blouse rose and fell as she breathed. “So what is that Annabelle would like to talk to him. The police want to find him too, or the man who used that alias, because they can’t find anything—anything about a Newmester who’s a freelance journalist. I stuck to my story, Dave, that I’d just made up the house in Ballard and it happened to belong to a man named Newmester. So your name wasn’t even mentioned by the police. Or by Annabelle to them. I wanted you to know that, Dave,” she said earnestly, and David frowned down at the table. Effie lit another cigarette. “Annabelle talked about you later. I asked her to have a sandwich with me.”

  David squirmed. Annabelle having a sandwich with Effie.

  “And what did you tell her?” David asked.

  “Nothing. I swear nothing, Dave. She knows I know you, of course—and I told her I was in love with you. Which I am, Dave. And she told me she’s the girl you’ve been in love with all this time. I think I suspected it when I first saw her. So I asked her and she admitted it.” Effie’s voice had dropped so David had to strain to hear, but he had heard.

  “That’s no business of anybody’s but mine.”

  “Isn’t it? I’m glad to know,” she said shakily. “She looks like a wonderful girl, Dave—and now she’s free.”

  “I’m not interested in discussing her with you,” he said quickly.

  “Why’re you so angry? Well, I know why. You’re never going to get her, Dave,” she said, shaking her head. “Never.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing—except that I love you.”

  It exasperated him. “Why did you say that, that I’ll never get her?”

  She leaned toward him, wide-eyed. “A woman doesn’t suddenly decide to marry a man she thinks killed her husband, does she? A man she never was in love with in the first place?”

  There it was, ugly, crude, coming out of that shopgirl-secretary face. “That’s not true.”

  “She said if it hadn’t been for your letters, her husband never would’ve died. She said that, Dave. I don’t mean she thinks it was you who pushed him. Did you just push him, Dave, or did you really mean to—?”

  “I hit him with my fist and I knocked him down,” David said, feeling his strength leave him. He rested his head on his hand.

  “What’re you going to do, Dave?” she asked tearfully.

  He lifted his head. “Shut up.” He spoke softly, but he leaned toward her and hit the table top gently with his fist. “Just shut up about Annabelle.”

  “You don’t want to hear the truth. I understand that. But you can’t keep it up, Dave.”

  “Oh, can’t I,” he replied, taking her words as some kind of challenge to his perseverance, his character in general.

  “No. You’re going to drive yourself crazy.”

  “I’ve heard enough lately about insanity. I don’t want to hear anything about it from you.”

  “All right, you’ve heard enough. There’s just no talking to you. But what’re you going to do when the police tell Annabelle there really isn’t anybody named William Newmester? Don’t you think they’ll come to that conclusion sooner or later? And by way of clearing it up, they might want to see David Kelsey.”

  “Why?” David asked more softly. “Just how long do you think they can go on over an accident?”

  “Was it an accident?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Annabelle wants to see the man who pushed her husband. She’s going to find it out sooner or later. Not through me but some other way.” Now her eyes were glassy with tears.

  David’s fist was still clenched on the table. “Naturally, you could drop a few hints, and it wouldn’t be coming from you at all, would it?”

  “Dave, don’t be bitter. I’d never, never do that!”

  “Go ahead. I can stand it. Annabelle could stand it, too. Annabelle and I could stand it. Try it, if you think we can’t. And suppose I beat them to it anyway? Maybe I’ll tell them myself. I’ll give them a blow-by-blow description of what happened that day. Matter of fact, I already have. They know damned well it was an accident. But I can also tell them it was David Kelsey who hit him.”

  “Suppose they don’t believe it was an accident? They’ll say you had a motive to kill him.”

  “Gerald had a gun pointed at me.”

  “They’ll still say you had a motive.”

  He disdained to answer, and stared at her with a blind hate. She was trying to trap him, trying to blackmail him, to get her grip on him by scaring him, and promising to keep his secrets.

  She looked at him with wide-open eyes, as if picking and choosing among a thousand words for the strongest. “You say you love Annabelle. She loved Gerald. It seems to me you—you not only want to forget that, you don’t even give her any sympathy now when she needs it. Not that she’d accept any from you, Dave.”

  “Just stop talking about it, will you?” David said softly and quickly, sitting on the edge of the booth seat now, ready to leave.

  “That’s all you can say. It’s—just like that house of yours where you lived hidden away under another name. You’re trying all the time to shut out reality.”

  “That’s a lot of pseudoscientific jargon.” David put a quarter down, bumped his cup as he stood up, and coffee spilled into the saucer.

  “Where’re you going?”

  “I’m going to the Beck’s Brook police,” he said. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  “David!”

  He did not look back. He walked quickly in the direction of Mrs. McCartney’s, where his car was. But he had not walked a block before he realized that he could never bring himself to tell those police officers that William Neumeister was David Kelsey. Not that he could not have borne their questions, or that Annabelle might not understand finally that it had been an accident, but that he did not want to betray William Neumeister, the better half of himself who had never failed, who had lived with Annabelle in the pretty house in Ballard, that Neumeister whose existence had made the Monday-to-Friday existence of David Kelsey tolerable for nearly two years. A lucky accident that he had been wearing a hat that afternoon, so they couldn’t see that his hair was brown. And they were three inches or so off in his height. Had fear made him stoop?

  The police wouldn’t get Neumeister tonight, and maybe not any other night. It was very difficult to get hold of somebody who didn’t exist, and thinking of this, David began to laugh to himself.

  Abruptly he turned and walked back to the drugstore. Effie was just coming out the door.

  “I’m not going to talk to the police,” David said.

  “I didn’t think you would. What are you going to do, Dave?”

  “I’ll just take my chances.”

  On Thursday morning he called Annabelle. She was not in. Nobody answered the telephone until four forty-five, and then it was not Annabelle but a strange female voice. David suspected it was the old witch who had plucked so insanely at his sleeve, and he declined to give his name, only asked if Annabelle would be in at six, at seven, at eight? The woman thought she would be in at six.

  David called at six from the squalid pharmacy between Mrs. McC
artney’s and Main Street.

  “Yes,” Annabelle’s calm voice said. “I’d like very much to see you Saturday, Dave.”

  “I’ll be there by noon. Or would you like me to come earlier?”

  “Noon is fine.”

  Noon is fine. Noon is bliss! Noon is when time starts again! He ran into the inward leaning tree on the way back, though it was not even very dark, the tree he had so often dodged and barely missed on his nocturnal walks. He bruised his forehead quite painfully, but this seemed a good omen, a sign of a great change, simply because he had hit the tree after missing it for two years.

  He talked to Mr. Harris and Mr. Muldaven at the dinner table that evening, and even dug up two jokes to tell them, of recent Wes Carmichael vintage.

  18

  There was an adolescent girl in the apartment on Saturday, who Annabelle said was going to baby-sit. The baby was in a large pen affair in the living room, propped up against a pillow, sucking the nipple of a bottle which he constantly dropped, and which Annabelle patiently put back into his mouth. She moved in her smooth, unhurried way, and David stood with his overcoat in his arms in the middle of the floor, following her with his eyes wherever she went.

  “Dave,” she said, stopping at the door to the bedroom, “maybe you’d like a drink before we go? There’s some bourbon.”

  “No, thanks,” he said, smiling.

  She seemed in a good mood, almost the way he remembered her in the best days of La Jolla. She even wore a dress with little ribbons at the bottoms of the short sleeves, like the dress he had first seen her in. He felt optimistic about the afternoon.

  “You don’t want to sit down, Dave? I’ve still got one or two things to do,” she said. “I’m sorry to hold us up, but you were so ear-ly.” She drawled the last word, as she had drawled certain words in La Jolla when she was happy.

  She disappeared, reappeared, bent over the pen, tickled the baby’s chest, and as she picked her green cloth coat up from the armchair, David sprang to hold it for her, dropping his own coat accidentally on the floor, leaving it there until Annabelle had her coat on.