I Married A Dead Man (14 page)

               
And then suddenly, quite simply, almost matter-of-factly, she knew. It came to her. Some indefinable something had told her. Something that no word could explain. Something too tenuous to bear the weight of any words.

               
No, it's not because he doesn't like me. It's because he does like me, does like me, that he backed away like that, doesn't want to be in the room alone with me if he can avoid it. Likes me too well. Is already beginning to fall in love with me. And--and thinks he shouldn't. Is fighting it. That hopeless, last-ditch fight that's never won.

               
Determinedly, but quite unhurriedly, she closed her book, carried it over to the gap from which she'd extracted it, pushed it in. She left the lamp on for him (since he had seemed to want to come in here), but quitted the room herself, left it to him, went out into the hall, went up the stairs and into her own room, closed the door of that for the night.

               
She undid her hair, brushed it for retiring.

               
She heard the rumble of the garage-doors, heard the padlock strike against them as he let it fall back to rest, heard him come into the house again. He went straight back toward the library, and went in, this time unhesitatingly (to accost her now, to face it, to bring it out, his decision taken during those few minutes' breathing spell?)--to find it empty. The lamp on, the reader gone.

               
Seconds later she remembered that she'd left her cigarette burning there, on the table, under the lamp, beside where she'd been sitting. Had forgotten to pick it up when she came out. It must be burning still, she'd only just lit it before she'd first heard the car drive up outside.

               
It wasn't that she was alarmed about possible damage. He'd see it at a glance, and put it out for her.

               
But it would tell him. For, just as he had intended coming in when he hadn't, it would reveal to him that she hadn't intended getting up and leaving when she had.

               
She not only knew, now, that he was beginning to love her, but, by token of that telltale cigarette, he knew that she knew.

24

               
In the light of the full-bodied moon the flower-garden at the back of the house was as bright as noon when she stepped out into it. The sanded paths that ran around it foursquare, and through it like an X, gleamed like snow, and her shadow glided along them azure against their whiteness. The little rock-pool in the center was polkadotted with silver disks, and the wafers coalesced and separated again as if in motion, though they weren't, as her point of perspective continually shifted with her rotary stroll.

               
The perfume of the rose-bushes was heavy on the June night, and sleepy little insects made a somnolent humming noise, as though they were talking in their sleep.

               
She hadn't wanted to sleep yet, and she hadn't wanted to read, it was too close in the library with the lamp on. She hadn't wanted to sit alone on the front porch any longer, once Mother and Father Hazzard had left her and gone up to their room. She'd gone up a moment and looked in at Hughie, to see if he was all right, and then she'd come out here. To the flower-garden in the back, safely secluded behind its tall surrounding hedge.

               
Eleven struck melodiously from the little Reformed church over on Beechwood Drive, and the echoes lingered in the still air, filling her with a sense of peace and well-being.

               
A quiet voice, seeming to come from just over her shoulder, said: "Hello; I thought that was you down there, Patrice."

               
She turned, startled, and couldn't locate him for a minute. He was above her, perched edgewise on the sill of his open window.

               
"Mind if I come down and join you for a cigarette?"

               
"I'm going in now," she said hastily, but he'd already disappeared.

               
He stepped down from the back porch and the moonlight sifted over his head and shoulders like talcum as he came toward her. She turned in company with him, and they walked slowly on together side by side. Once all around the outside path, and then once through a bisecting middle one.

               
She reached out and touched a flower once in passing; bent it a little toward her, then let it sway back again undamaged. A fullblown white rose; the perfume was almost like a bombshell in their faces for a moment

               
He didn't even do that much; didn't do anything. Didn't say anything. Just walked beside her. One hand slung in his pocket. Looking steadily down, as though the sight of the path fascinated him.

               
"I hate to tear myself away, it's so lovely down here," she said at last

               
"I don't give a hang about gardens," he answered almost gruffly. "Nor walking in them. Nor the flowers in them. You know why I came down here. Do I have to tell you?"

               
He flung his cigarette down violently, backhand, with the same gesture as if something had angered him.

               
Suddenly she was acutely frightened. She'd stopped short.

               
"No, wait, Bill. Bill, wait-- Don't--"

               
"Don't what? I haven't said anything yet But you know already, don't you? I'm sorry, Patrice, I've got to tell you. You've got to listen. It's got to come out."

               
She was holding out her hand protestingly toward him, as if trying to ward off something. She took a backward step away, broke their proximity.

               
" I don't like it," he said rebelliously. "It does things to me that are new. I was never bothered before. I never even had the sweetheart-crushes that they all do. I guess that was my way to be. But this is it, Patrice. This is it now, all right."

               
"No, wait-- Not now. Not yet. This isn't the time--"

               
"This is the time, and this is the night, and this is the place. There'll never be another night like this, not if we both live to be a hundred. Patrice, I love you, and I want you to ma--"

               
"Bill!" she pleaded, terrified.

               
"Now you've heard it, and now you're running away. Patrice," he asked forlornly, "what's so terrible about it?"

               
She'd gained the lower-porch step, was poised on it for a moment in arrested ifight He came after her slowly, in a sort of acquiescent frustration, rather than in importunate haste.

               
"I'm no lover," he said. "I can't say it right--"

               
"Bill," she said again, almost grief-strickenly.

               
"Patrice, I see you every day and--" He flung his arms apart helplessly, "What am I to do? I didn't ask for it I think it's something good. I think it's something that should be."

               
She leaned her head for a moment against the porchpost, as if in distress. "Why did you have to say it yet? Why couldn't you have-- Give me more time. Please, give me more time. Just a few months--"

               
"Do you want me to take it back, Patrice?" he asked ruefully. "How can I now? How could I, even if I hadn't spoken? Patrice, it's so long since, now. Is it Hugh, is it still Hugh?"

               
"I've never been in love bef--" she started to say, penitently. She stopped suddenly.

               
He looked at her strangely.

               
I've said too much, flashed through her mind. Too much, or not enough. And then in sorrowful confirmation: Not enough by far.

               
"I'm going in now." The shadow of the porch dropped between them like an indigo curtain.

               
He didn't try to follow. He stood there where she'd left him.

               
"You're afraid I'll kiss you."

               
"No, that isn't what I'm afraid of," she murmured almost inaudibly. "I'm afraid I'll want you to."

               
The door closed after her.

               
He stood out there in the full bleach of the moonlight, motionless, looking sadly downward.

25

               
In the morning the world was sweet just to look at from her window. The sense of peace, of safety, of belonging, was being woven about her stronger all the time. Soon nothing could tear its fabric apart again. To wake up in your own room, in your own home, your own roof over your head. To find your little son awake before you and peering expectantly out through his crib, and giving you that crowing smile of delight that was already something special he gave to no one but you. To lift him up and hold him to you, and have to curb yourself, you wanted to squeeze so tightly. Then to carry him over to the window with you, and hold the curtain back, and look out at the world. Show him the world you'd found for him, the world you'd made for him.

               
The early sunlight like goldenrod pollen lightly dusting the sidewalks and the roadway out front. The azure shadows under the trees and at the lee sides of all the houses. A man sprinkling a lawn a few doors down, the water fraying from the nozzle of his hose twinkling like diamonds. He looked up and saw you, and he gave you a neighborly wave of the hand, though you didn't know him very well. And you took Hughie's little hand at the wrist, and waved it back to him in answering greeting.

               
Yes, in the mornings the world was sweet all right.

               
Then to dress, to dress for two, and to go downstairs to the pleasant room waiting for you below; to Mother Hazzard, and her fresh-picked flowers, and her affectionate, sunny greeting, and the mirror-like reflection of the coffee-percolator (that always delighted him so) showing squat, pudgy images seated around it on its various facets: an elderly lady, and a much younger lady, and a very young young-man, the center of attraction in his high chair.

               
To be safe, to be at home, to be among your own.

               
Even mail for you, a letter of your own, waiting for you at your place. She felt a pleased little sense of completion at sight of it. There was no greater token of permanency, of belonging, than that. Mail of your own, sent to your home.

               
"Mrs. Patrice Hazzard," and the address. Once that name had frightened her. It didn't now. In a little while she would no longer even remember that there had been another name, once, before it. A lonely, frightened name, drifting ownerless, unclaimed, about the world now--

               
"Now Hughie, not so fast, finish what you've got first."

               
She opened it, and there was nothing in it, Or rather, nothing written on it. For a moment she thought there must have been a mistake. Just blank paper. No, wait, the other way around--

               
Three small words, almost buried in the seam that folded the sheet in two, almost overlooked in the snowy expanse that surrounded them.

                                               
"Who are you?"

26

               
In the mornings the world was bitter-sweet to look at from her window. To wake up in a room that wasn't rightfully yours. That you knew--and you knew somebody else knew--you had no right to be in. The early sunlight was pale and bleak upon the ground, and under all the trees and on the lee side of all the houses, tatters of night lingered, diluted to blue but still gloomy and forbidding. A man sprinkling the lawn a few doors down was a stranger; a stranger you knew by sight. He looked up, and you hurriedly shrank back from the window, child and all, lest he see you. Then a moment later, you already wished you hadn't done that, but it was too late, it was done.

               
Was he the one? Was he?

               
It isn't as much fun any more to dress for two. And when you start down the stairs with Hughie, those stairs you've come down so many hundreds of times, now at last you've learned what it's like to come down them heavyhearted and troubled, as you said you might some day have to, that very first night of all. For that's how you're coming down them now.

               
Mother Hazzard at the table, beaming; and the flowers; and the gargoyle-like reflections on the percolator-panels. But you only have eyes for one thing, furtive, straining eyes, from as far back as the threshold of the doorway. From farther back than that, even; from the first moment the table has come into sight Is there any white on it, over on your side of it? Is there any rectangular white patch showing there, by or near your place? It's easy to tell, for the cloth has a printed pattern, with dabs of red and green.