The Man Who Lost the Sea (42 page)

 … or maybe these were only her own imaginings; maybe he wasn’t thinking at all. He could do that, she was sure. Ha! she’d soon enough turn them on again! She said, batting at the brass handle, and speaking very softly as if to herself, “Couldn’t get closer to certain death if you’d planned it,” and watching his widening eyes and the slight babyish protrusion of his lower lip, she just knew he was saying to himself, “She knows. Oh my God, I bet she knows.”

She felt a thrill of anticipation. Get him scared; oh fine. Fear will make him move. And worry: let’s make him worry a little. “Tomorrow,” she said, “we’ll just have to put up something else besides that copper cable. Just too dangerous.” And she saw him look down into his hands and pout miserably. (Was he thinking,
I’ll never get a chance like this again
. Sure he was.)

Oh, he looked so miserable! Oh, did any woman ever have such a toy as this? Let’s bring back the hope now.

She swatted the magazine explosively, making him jump. “It shouldn’t be allowed!”

“Oh,” he mumbled, “the factory called them all back in. All they could find.”

“I don’t mean that,” she said, and hit the magazine again. “This thing, with the photographs and diagrams and all. Why, you know what this amounts to, just this one picture of a screw tightened too much? Why, it’s instructions, that’s what it is; any fool could take a safe set and make a killer out of it, just by reading this. It shouldn’t be allowed!” She took the magazine and flung it at his feet, making him jump again. “Take the filthy thing out of here!”

His hands, she gloated, literally trembled as he picked it up. He rolled it and turned it over and over between his hands. It was like a caress. (Oh Hubert, she called silently, if you only knew how wonderful you are!) “Yes, Aunty,” he said, his eyes on the magazine. He put it, rolled, into his back pocket, and rose.

“Put your old aunty to bed.”

“All right.” Preoccupied, he did all the things he had to do with the drapes, the shade, the heat, the TV, her covers, the lights. She was glad when he turned out the lights; it had been hurting her face not to smile openly.

What would he be thinking now? She knew: oh, she knew, especially because—
“Hubert!”
—because, silhouetted in the door, he already had the magazine out of his pocket, though it was still rolled. Ah, he could barely wait! Imagine—Hubert eager, Hubert dedicated, Hubert excited … and Hubert certainly wondering how on earth he would get the chance to make that one little change, turn that one screw just far enough to break the insulating washer. “Hubert!”

“Yes, aunty.”

“In the morning ask Mrs. Carstairs to turn up the hot water heater right after breakfast. I’m going to have a good long hot soak. Just this once I’m going to soak for a whole hour.”

He thought he was answering but his voice was lost in a peculiar abrupt wheeze. Smiling in the darkness, she asked, “What, Hubert?”

“All right, Aunty; I’ll tell her.”

He went away.

She soaked for more than an hour. She drowsed, almost fell asleep in the tub. In the first place she had been awake almost all night, smiling most of the time, making little bets with herself. Even with a clear photograph and a concise explanation, would Hubert be able to find the right screw? Could there be any guarantee he’d turn it the right way? Would he wait so long for the coast to be clear that he wouldn’t have time to do it at all? She had forgotten, at first, about Mrs. Carstairs and the Saturday cleaning, which she would certainly do while the old lady was in the tub. She could all but see poor Hubert in his room down the hall, an ear cocked to the arthritic housekeeper’s puttering about in his aunt’s room, his eyes glued to the page in the consumer’s magazine, reading it, over and over, moving his lips. A killer.

Hubert, Hubert. Dear Hubert. Maybe the silly old thing wouldn’t
even try to fix the set. Mrs. Carstairs left at last. There was long, long silence. She began to doze.

A sharp sound snapped her out of it, and she literally clapped her soapy hand over her mouth to keep in the burst of shrill laughter that filled her mouth and throat. For dear dedicated worried fearful Hubert, with the bone head and the ham hands, Hubert had dropped his screwdriver. The picture of him, round-eyed and whey-faced, staring in terror at the closed bathroom door, was almost more than she could bear.

More silence, a bit more hot water and another doze. She came to herself with a start, and looked with amused horror at her wrinkled fingerpads; she was as waterlogged as Davy Jones’ floor mop. She began the arduous process of draining, drying, dressing, and loading the useless parts of herself onto the agonizing wheelchair. She took as long as possible … long enough. He was not in her room when he opened the door.

Back in bed, she composed herself for her Saturday televiewing, and with her hand on the control, remembered. Then: why not? and she laughed and clicked it on.

The sun was out. The birds were out. Hubert was out (she laughed) shopping for rope for her helper-handle, for no matter what, he had his orders. (Oh the fool; what on earth does he think he could with himself without me? But isn’t he the one? Isn’t he the gutsy boy, though?) The TV was excellent, all of it, even the commercials. She thoroughly enjoyed her afternoon.

At last he came up. She did not greet him; she wondered too much what he would say. She had been philosophizing about murder and the murderer: at what exact point did a man become a murderer? According to the law, when the victim died, be it a microsecond or forty years after the attack. But was that really so? When a man pulls a trigger, and the bullet is on its way, and it’s too late for anything but death to happen, is he not already a murderer? Hubert now: Hubert had already pulled his trigger. She might have died any time today. As a matter of fact, she had lain impotently watching a big grey squirrel gobbling up all the suet from the feeder, because she
had rather not take hold of that brass handle and swing herself so close to the TV in order to reach the feeder-rope.

And Hubert, out shopping: was he wondering if he would come home to a curious sidewalk and the white wailing of ambulances? She had purposely not called him, and he had delayed downstairs until quite late, doubtless screwing up his courage for the trip upstairs to find—what?—in her room. Surely he had not reckoned on being the one to discover her. She could almost hear his half-articulate complaint: after all he had done, did he have to go through all that too?

She resisted a temptation to arrange herself sprawling on the carpet between the bed and the TV, to lie still until he bent over her, and then to start laughing; a sure instinct told her that this was the way, even with Hubert, to get herself not only murdered, but beaten to death along with it. She contented herself with lying as still and—what was the word? waxen was the word—as possible, with her eyes closed, until he stood over the bed and murmured, “Aunty?”

She opened her eyes and he stepped back two paces and stood, not knowing what to do with his hands. Still she waited, to see what he would say next, and it was (the clumsy, blundering dunderhead), “Watch some TV today, did you?”

She laughed and struggled up, elbow-walking back to her backrest. “Lots, and it was fine. It’s late.”

“Yes, I … think I’ll go turn in.”

She tilted her head to one side and said, “Had a tough day, Hubert?” and smiled at him. The quick, passing contraction of his features convinced her he was shouting silently to himself, “She knows! She knows!”

“Well,” she said, “You’re going to put your old aunty to bed first.”

Did he hesitate? Did he really? Did he care? He seemed to be ready to turn and walk out … or did he turn to remind himself that downstairs the housekeeper kept a living ear, a remembering brain, and there must be no quarrel for her to remember? He said docilely, “All right, aunty.”

“I think,” she said, “I’ll watch the late show tonight. I had a nap.”

“The late show, yes,” he echoed. He did the window blind and window things, the drape things. Passing the TV, which faced her,
he hit it with his hip; it swung to face the door.

She nodded approvingly. She couldn’t have done better herself. She said, “Hubert—turn the TV to me.”

“All right,” he said. But instead he came over and straightened her covers. His face was especially shiny, and she could see the dark marking of damp where his hands touched the bedclothes.

She began to laugh.

For the first, and, the last time in her life, she heard Hubert speak to her in the imperative: “Don’t laugh,” he said.

She subsided, but she took her time about it, laughing all the way. “Funny boy.” Suddenly she cut it dead and said coldly, “Turn that TV to me.”

His back was to the set: he stood between it and her. “You can see it all right from there.” He held his right wrist hard with his left hand. She could see the shiver of the fabric of his trousers as his knees trembled.

“We don’t want a quarrel for Mrs. Carstairs to hear,” she said carefully.

“Oh gosh no,” he said fervently.

A crazy situation. Extraordinary. Delightful. This, she thought, is living. “ ‘Turn the set, Hubert.” She smiled. “It won’t bite you. It isn’t even on.”

He wet his lips, so wet already. His hands were wet, his face and his mouth. His tears were wet, waiting to come. He whispered—she knew he didn’t mean to whisper, but it was all he could manage—“You can reach it.”

“All right,” she said suddenly, gently, with all the tones and overtones of complete capitulation.

“Well I.” He said it as if it were a complete and sensible statement, turned and marched to the door.

“Hubert!”

He stopped as if she had roped him. He was in the doorway; he stayed where he was and did not turn. He was like a machine with brakes locked and the clutch disengaged; but one could feel the motor racing; in the split tatter of a second it would be gone from there screaming.

“Please,” she said gently (to
Hubert?
Please?) “You forgot to check the heat. You’ll do that for me, won’t you?”

His shoulders slumped and he turned back into the room. “Oh, sure, I guess,” he said wearily. He crossed to the corner and leaned over and felt the radiator. It was the metal top of the TV set that he leaned over. His aunt moved her thumb
that
much on the remote control and turned the set on.

Hubert made the most horrible sound the aunt had ever heard; it was like a particularly raucous sneeze—inward. She had read that sometimes when a jolt first hits them they swallow their tongues, and then suffocate on them. That is what Hubert was doing. One stiff hooked arm rested on the top of the TV set, and the other stiff hooked arm rested on the radiator, and his legs stuck straight out behind him with the toes pointed, and quivered. Through the legs of his trousers, at the calves, could be seen muscle mounding up in cramps like golf-balls.

“Kill me, will you?” croaked the aunt, but the set warmed up just then and roared and drowned her out. She turned the volume down and stared at Hubert’s legs and pointing toes sticking out from behind the TV set, and knew with crushing certainty that from the very beginning she had set things up to come out this way. She didn’t recall having purposely, consciously done so; she knew only that she must have, that’s all. She glared at the legs and said, “But you broke my back!”

All in all, that was a pretty good day. And night. Living; really living. One of the best parts of all had to do with the police, who took all of fifteen seconds to sniff out that there was more to this “accident” than met the eye. There was a young man with two deep measures of vivid intelligence for eyes, and a quick quiet voice; he asked almost exclusively important questions, one right after the other. Who brought that set in here? Who hung that cable from the radiator to a point over the bed? Well, if it was rope before, who substituted woven copper? Who took the leather grip off the brass handle?

Hubert, Hubert, Hubert.

Men came up and brushed fine white dust around the TV, and
took off the back and brushed dust inside, and photographed everything. Whose fingerprints?

Finally, and funniest of all, was the man who regretted the accident, who assured her that the police expert had removed the short circuit, making the set now quite safe, but at the same time warning her to get rid of it, just in case. Lastly, he hemmed and he hawed and he suggested in extremely careful language that she not attempt to bring an action against the set manufacturer in this particular case, in view of certain technicalities which we needn’t go into at such a time as this “but I faithfully assure you that if you don’t take my advice you will only wish you had, and you will find out at great—ah—trouble to yourself that I was right.” In short, it was unanimously agreed to conceal from this little old bedridden lady that her nephew had gotten himself caught in the vicious trap he laid for her. Why bother her with it? The only thing that would ever force her to know it would be if she started lawsuits; lying there like a real little old protected female woman, waxen as possible, she agreed in a faint voice that they were right and she trusted them all. It was grand fun. Her finish didn’t come until the next afternoon, when a sniffling Mrs. Carstairs brought her the things out of Hubert’s room to sort. There wasn’t much, and among the few papers was the copy of the consumer’s magazine, still folded back open to the article about the metal-cased TV set. Over this Hubert had pondered and waited, and while waiting, had doodled, filling O’s and putting mustaches on the faces of the consumers’ electronicians in the photos. He had also written a sentence and a word.

It was as if Hubert had been denied understanding and intelligence and the ability to articulate, all his life, the formless clouds of feeling within him, in just and equal compensation for this single, simple, devastating insight. He had written:

Without me she is nothing but an old woman
.

And under that, in very large, careful letters:

OLD

His aunt read this and closed her eyes to consider it, and that was the finish for her. When she opened her eyes again she looked at her hands, skinny and crooken-a-clawed, and she pulled at her sparse
white hair, drawing it forward over her face to be able to look at it, through it. All her life she had been too busy to be loved, too busy to be liked. She had been too busy to have a childhood and she had been too busy to be old.