car. Dr. Julian’s visit would not be hard to explain, but there would inevitably be taut moments when the introduction would have to be acknowledged and Fletcher suffered the exposure of his infirmity. Just the same, Elaine was enjoying the unexpected visit and asked the guest if he would like to see how she had done the inside of the house.
He liked her furniture and hangings, noted the crammed bookshelves in the room which had been his foster-father’s library and enjoyed, after proper protest about not wanting to bother her, a cup of tea. Elaine said she always made tea for herself in the afternoon, and he said it was like old times with Aunt Cora pouring Tibetan tea and serving cookies on a silver plate.
After he had gone and she had put the tea things in the dishwasher, she bathed and dressed in a bright hostess gown to greet her husband. She told him all about the visit of Dr. Ralph Julian who had grown up in this house as the son of Dr. Harry and Mrs. Cora Julian, who had adopted him after their son had drowned in the swimming pool. “When he came to live here he was eight and this seemed the most beautiful place in the world. He’s sentimental about it.”
Sentiment brought Dr. Julian back after two weeks. He brought bulbs of a new tuberous begonia for the shade garden which he still considered his foster-mother’s. Elaine happened to have baked chocolate brownies that morning. Once more the spirit of Aunt Cora joined them. Eulogies were devoted to her cooking. Ralph had her recipe books somewhere in his apartment and promised to look for them. The next week he brought the books, which Elaine refused to keep since his future wife (on the second visit she had discovered that he was a bachelor) would surely want them. All week she copied out recipes and on the following Thursday tried her hand at macaroons. Fruitlessly. It was three weeks before he turned up to collect the cookbooks. There were no explanations as there were no formal dates. He came or did not. Elaine bought three new summer dresses and two pairs of bright slacks.
It was inevitable that her husband would meet the new friend. Ralph had been prepared for the maimed voice and showed neither the layman’s offensive tact nor a doctor’s clinical interest. When the subject was brought up . . . by Fletcher himself . . . Ralph praised the Los Angeles specialist recommended by Fletcher’s doctor in New York.
A few weeks after this Elaine had become ill with the flu. Fletcher’s specialist was certainly not the doctor to attend to her, and while he might have given her the name of a good internist, Fletcher suggested that she call Dr. Julian. Elaine was not so ill that she required that much attention, but Ralph came for daily visits, usually after all his other calls were finished so that he could linger with the patient and her husband. She was a healthy girl and recovered quickly. Nevertheless Ralph suggested a checkup. Fletcher drove her to his office and read magazines in the waiting room while she was with the doctor.
After her heartbeat and blood pressure had been recorded Ralph said, “I’m not coming to visit you anymore.”
Elaine hugged the coarse white examination gown tighter around her nakedness. “Oh dear, I’m sorry,” she said.
“So am I. I’ve enjoyed coming to the house again, but I don’t think it’s good for your husband. Lie down on the table, please.”
She had thought she would shrink at the exquisitely personal examination. Austere in his white coat, Ralph Julian studied her with the detachment of an engineer concerned with the working of a familiar machine. “Nothing wrong with you except tensions. You must try and relax.”
“Don’t I need vitamins or a tonic or something?”
He suspected the cause of her nervousness, but was not licensed to ask about her relations with her husband. She would have liked to speak out, but could not say aloud that she lived in the constant dread of her husband’s suicide. In Fletcher’s every sigh and whim, his frequent rages, his sudden bursts of tenderness, she saw the compulsion. When they were alone and Fletcher croaked out his ideas and opinions, she listened for words that might reveal his intentions. It would have relieved her to relate these fears to Dr. Julian. She could not. They shook hands in parting and the doctor came out to the waiting room for a word with Fletcher.
Months passed before she saw Ralph again. She thought about him endlessly, held long conversations . . . in her bed, in the bathtub, swimming in the pool, digging in the garden, while she tended the kitchen machines . . . poured out a stream of fear and evidence of the increasing danger. In this harmless way a certain portion of her fear was absorbed. A shade, never clearly seen, Ralph became not a lover but a compassionate listener.
“How Fletch adores that diary of his. Isn’t it awfully good for him to be so interested in something?” No response, but none was expected. “Don’t you think that means that underneath everything, deeply, he wants to live?” In finding words for the question she had framed her own answer. “He hides the diary like a priceless treasure, a guilty secret. If I come in when he’s writing, he sneaks it into a desk drawer. With a new Yale lock. And the look on his face! An anarchist hiding his bomb.” She laughed at the simile. “Fletch is such a child, really. Have you ever noticed that wide-eyed look? So unexpected in a big, tough, successful business man. I fell in love with that little-boy look.” Facing the absent confessor she dared hope. “I believe, I honestly do, that the fatal mood is dwindling. He can enjoy himself. Did I tell you we went to the movies? It was a good comedy for a change and then we went to a Chinese place to eat. He had such an appetite, like the old days. Almost the same, but . . .” Here she faltered for she could not, even in revery, permit herself to play out another one of those teeth-clenching climaxes, the failure and remorse. She changed the subject. “That doctor! A good man, they say, in his field, but specialists can be too special, People aren’t all bone and flesh. Doesn’t he know what’s underneath? Fifty sleeping pills! Can you believe it for a man in Fletch’s state? I have the prescriptions filled myself and keep the pills hidden. He gets two a night, never more. I don’t want him getting the habit, first two, then three, and so on. Fletch pretends to be amused, but I wonder. Perhaps it’s all in my own mind; do you think I’m worrying uselessly?” As though the man were talking she answered herself hastily, “Of course it is. My own crazy imagination. There’s really no danger.” And finally like a prayer repeated as self-hypnosis, “I worry because I love him so much. I do, you know.”
ONE NIGHT IN a dream, a sleep-dream rather than revery contrived as appeasement of an unborn wish, she walked with Ralph Julian on the deck of a ship. A band played, banners fluttered, her hand was locked in a firm warm palm. Suddenly, with the angular movement of nightmare, the mood changed. Shame chilled her like a sharp wind, and she knew she was not properly dressed for the journey. The chiffon nightgown did not half cover her breasts and the flimsy material whirled about her bare legs. Horrified strangers stared. She knew that dozens of lovely dresses, colored slippers, jackets, and sweaters had been packed in her mother’s old wardrobe trunk, which she could see clearly on the pier. The ship moved off, faster and faster. She trembled and perspired in the cold wind, cried out, and woke to find herself locked in shivering tension. At once, in another fruitless fantasy conversation, she asked Ralph Julian if the dream had significance. Was there evil in her unconscious mind? “Do I want to be free? Do I, down deep in me, want Fletcher to die?” The question was as shocking as the nightmare.
At once she forced herself out of bed and walked on bare feet to Fletcher’s room, saw that the man-made mouth at the base of his neck was uncovered, heard the click of his breathing. Like a criminal reprieved she hurried back to bed. As punishment she gave up the talks with Ralph Julian, vowed to forget him, and on Thursdays tried not to listen for his car. And from this time on, it became her habit to creep into Fletcher’s room once or twice a night to listen to his breathing.
He noted in the diary:
At night she visits my room to watch me sleep. What does she hope to find? How easy it would be to end it all with a man who breathes through a hole in his neck. Is she trying to work up the courage?
