Bradbury, Ray - SSC 11 (18 page)

 
          
 
"I have waited, most of my life. But I
know what will happen."

 
          
 
"Anna!" He blurted it out as if it
had come to him suddenly. "What if—what if she died this summer?"

 
          
 
"She won't."

 
          
 
"But if she did, if she took a turn for
the worse, I mean, in the next two months—" He searched my face. He
shortened it. "The next month, Anna, two weeks, listen, if she died in two
short weeks, would you wait that long, would you marry me then?!"

 
          
 
I began to cry. "Oh, Roger, we've never
even kissed. This is ridiculous."

 
          
 
"Answer me, if she died one week, seven
days from now ..." He grabbed my arms.

 
          
 
"But how can you be sure?"

 
          
 
"I'll make myself sure! I swear shell be
dead a week from now, or I'll never bother you again with this!"

 
          
 
And he flung the screen doors wide, hurrying
off into th^ day that was suddenly too bright.

 
          
 
"Roger, don't—" I cried.

           
 
But my mind thought, Roger do, do something,
anything, to start it all or end it all.

 
          
 
That night in bed I thought, what ways are
there for murder that no one could know? Is Roger, a hundred yards away this
moment, thinking the same? Will he search the woods tomorrow for toadstools
resembling mushrooms, or drive the car too fast and fling her door wide on a
curve? I saw the wax dummy witch fly through the air in a lovely soaring arc,
to break like ridiculous peanut brittle on an oak, an elm, a maple. I sat up in
bed. I laughed until I wept. I wept until I laughed again. No, no, I thought,
he'll find a better way. A night burglar will shock her heart into her throat.
Once in her throat, he will not let it go down again, she'll choke on her own
panic.

 
          
 
And then the oldest, the darkest, most
childish thought of all. There's only one way to finish a woman whose mouth is
the color of blood. Being what she is, no relative, not an aunt or a great
grandmother, surprise her with a stake driven through her heart I

 
          
 
I heard her scream. It was so loud, all the
night birds jumped from the trees to cover the stars.

 
          
 
I lay back down. Dear Christian Anna Marie, I
thought, what's this? Do you want to kill? Yes, for why not kill a killer, a
woman who strangled her child in his crib and has not loosened the throttling
cord since? He is so pale, poor man, because he has not breathed free air, all
of his life.

 
          
 
And then, unbidden, the lines of an old poem
stood up in my head. Where I had read them or who had put them down, or if I
had written them myself, within my head over the years, I could not say. But
the lines were there and I read them in the dark:

 
          
 
Some live like Lazarus

 
          
 
In a tomb of life

 
          
 
And come forth curious late to twilight
hospitals

 
          
 
And mortuary rooms.

 
          
 
The lines vanished. For a while I could recall
no more, and then, unable to fend it off, for it came of itself, a last
fragment appeared in the dark:

 
          
 
Better cold skies seen bitter to the North
Than stillborn stay, all blind and gone to ghost.

           
 
Rio is lost, well, love the Arctic Coast! O
ancient Lazarus Come ye forth.

 
          
 
There the poem stopped and let me be. At last
I slept, restless, hoping for dawn, and good and final news.

 
          
 
The next day I saw him pushing her along the
pier and thought, Yes, that's it! She'll vanish and be found a week from now,
on the shore, like a sea monster floating, all face and no body.

 
          
 
That day passed. Well, surely, I thought,
tomorrow . . .

 
          
 
The second day of the week, the third, the
fourth and then the fifth and sixth passed, and on the seventh day one of the
maids came running up the path, shrieking.

 
          
 
"Oh, it's terrible, terrible!"

 
          
 
"Mrs. Harrison?" I cried. I felt a
terrible and quite uncontrollable smile on my face.

 
          
 
"No, no, her son! He's hung
himself!"

 
          
 
"Hung himself?" I said ridiculously,
and found myself, stunned, explaining to her. "Oh, no, it wasn't him was
going to die, it was—" I babbled. I stopped, for the maid was clutching,
pulling my arm.

 
          
 
"We cut him down, oh, God, he's still
alive, quick!"

 
          
 
Still alive? He still breathed, yes, and
walked around through the other years, yes, but alive? No.

 
          
 
It was she who gained strength and lived
through his attempt to escape her. She never forgave his trying to run off.

 
          
 
"What do you mean by that, what do you
mean?" I remember her screaming at him as he lay feeling his throat, in
the cottage, his eyes shut, wilted, and I hurried in the door. "What do
you mean doing that, what, what?"

 
          
 
And looking at him there I knew he had tried
to run away from both of us, we were both impossible to him. I did not forgive
him that either, for a while. But I did feel my old hatred of him become
something else, a kind of dull pain, as I turned and went back for a doctor.

 
          
 
"What do you mean, you silly boy?"
she cried.

 
          
 
I married Paul that autunm.

           
 
After that, the years poured through the glass
swiftly. Once each year, Roger led himself into the pavilion to sit eating mint
ice with his limp empty-gloved hands, but he never called me by my name again,
nor did he mention the old promise.

 
          
 
Here and there in the hundreds of months that
passed I thought, for his own sake now, for no one else, sometime, somehow he
must simply up and destroy the dragon with the hideous bellows face and the
rust-scaled hands. For Roger and only for Roger, Roger must do it.

 
          
 
Surely this year, I thought, when he was
fifty, fifty-one, fifty-two. Between seasons I caught myself examining
occasional Chicago papers, hoping to find a picture of her lying slit like a
monstrous yellow chicken.
But no, but no, but no....

 
          
 
I'd almost forgotten them when they returned
this morning. He's very old now, more like a doddering husband than a son.
Baked gray clay he is, with milky blue eyes, a toothless mouth, and manicured
fingernails which seem stronger because the flesh has baked away.

 
          
 
At noon today, after a moment of standing out,
a lone gray wingless hawk staring at a sky in which he had never soared or
flown, he came inside and spoke to me, his voice rising.

 
          
 
"Why didn't you tell me?"

 
          
 
"Tell you what?" I said, scooping
out his ice cream before he asked for it.

 
          
 
"One of the maids just mentioned, your
husband died five years ago! You should have told me!"

 
          
 
"Well, now you know," I said.

 
          
 
He sat down slowly. "Lord," he said,
tasting the ice cream and savoring it, eyes shut, "this is bitter."
Then, a long time later, he said, "Anna, I never asked. Were there ever
any children?"

 
          
 
"No," I said. "And I don't know
why. I guess I'll never know why."

 
          
 
I left him sitting there and went to wash the
dishes.

 
          
 
At nine tonight I heard someone laughing by
the lake. I hadn't heard Roger laugh since he was a child, so I didn't think it
was him until the doors burst wide and he entered, flinging his arms about,
unable to control his almost weeping hilarity.

 
          
 
"Roger?" I asked. "What's
wrong?"

           
 
"Nothing! Oh, nothing!" he cried.
"Everything's lovely! A root beer, Anna! Take one yourself! Drink with
me!"

 
          
 
We drank together, he laughed, winked, then
got immensely calm. Still smiling, though, he looked suddenly, beautifully
young.

 
          
 
"Anna," he whispered intensely,
leaning forward, "guess what? I'm flying to China tomorrow! Then India!
Then London, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Mexico Cityl"

 
          
 
“You are, Roger?"

 
          
 
“I am," he said. "I, I, I, not we,
we, we, but I, Roger Bidwell Harrison!"

 
          
 
I stared at him and he gazed quietly back at
me, and I must have gasped. For then I knew what he had finally done tonight,
this hour, within the last few minutes.

 
          
 
"Oh, no," my lips must have
murmured.

 
          
 
Oh, but yes, yes, his eyes upon me replied,
incredible miracle of miracles, after all these waiting years. Tonight at last
Tonight.

 
          
 
I let him talk. After Rome it was Vienna and
Stockholm, he'd saved thousands of schedules, flight charts and hotel bulletins
for forty years; he knew the moons and tides, the goings and comings of
everything on the sea and in the sky.

 
          
 
"But best of all," he said at last,
"Anna, Anna, will you come along with me? I've lots of money put away, don't
let me run on! Anna, tell me, will you?"

 
          
 
I came around the counter slowly and saw
myself in the mirror, a woman in her seventieth year going to a party half a
century late.

 
          
 
I sat down beside him and shook my head.

 
          
 
"Oh, but, Anna, why not, there's no
reason why!"

 
          
 
“There is a reason," I said.
"You."

 
          
 
"Me, but I don't count!"

 
          
 
"That's just it, Roger, you do."

 
          
 
"Anna, we could have a wonderful
time—"

 
          
 
"I daresay. But, Roger, you've been
married for seventy years. Now, for the first time, you're not married. You
don't want to turn around and get married again right off, do you?"

 
          
 
"Don't I?" he asked, blinking.

 
          
 
“You don't, you really don't You deserve a
little while, at least, off by yourself, to see the world, to know who Roger
Harrison is. A little while away from women. Then, when you've gone around the
world and come back, is time to think of other things."

           
 
"If you say so—"

 
          
 
"No. It mustn't be anything I say or know
or tell you to do. Right now it must be you telling yourself what to know and
see and do. Go have a grand time. If you can, be happy."

 
          
 
"Will you be here waiting for me when I
come back?"