Holding Wonder Part 23

Memory tells me someone spoke about murder. Memory-or imagination-saw someone putting something in someone's food or drink. My lost self is the one who cries murder, but I can't peek into that thin wedge of Not Being and see what's there. I can't even see if I'm the one who dropped death, or if it was into my coffee that death was dropped. I've worried myself into indigestion-indigestion? Oh, does it matter? Does it really matter if I drop dead! I'm so tired. Life is too complicated. Let me see no more the raised eyebrows, or the slanted glance or the trembling mouth or clenched fist. I wish I were just eyes feeding figures to fingers that hardly need a brain to produce the right response on the right keys.

It's coming! It's coming! The dark whirlwind down the hall! The cold roar of eternity! The sudden staccato of hurried feet! Listen! Listen! Like a storm breaking! Like n wave cras.h.i.+ng against the rocks! Like a flashflood battering into our dorm! Hear the cries! Hear the hurrying! Oh, let me hide! Let me cover my ears! Let me close my eyes-let me huddle alone-alone on my bed. The pain-the terror-the empty, empty voices-they're mine-they're mine. Of course!Of course! Since I was a parasite on someone else's life, I have to be a partaker of her death. I can't stay here, now that it's too late. Hurry, hurry, I must join the others! Shake off this paralysis! Run! Run!

"She's dead," said Dorothea wondering, dropping the limp hand. "What do we do now?"

"She told me she felt bad when we left the cafeteria. She wouldn't even come over to my room with us for a decent cup of coffee. She said she was going to take something and lie down." Allison's mouth pursed tremulously and folded in between her teeth, dimpling her cheeks. "When I brought her a cup-"

"We'll have to tell someone," trembled Cleo. "The police will come. Only we haven't any police--the sheriff?"

"So her bottles finally got her." Kit's bra.s.sy voice was muted. She pushed one small bottle and it started a chain of tiny clicks down the length of the shelf. "They were the death of her after all, weren't they?"

"I'll call the hospital." Dorothea deftly tucked the covers under the quiet figure, then slowly untucked them and pulled the sheet up over the mop of dark hair. The sheet wasn't quite long enough and left the top tangle of curls uncovered. There was a doorwards surge behind Kit.

"But we can't leave her alone!" Cleo pulled back. "Not all alone!"

"You stay then." Kit's face turned away. "Much thanks you'll get from her."

"Oh, no, oh, no!" Cleo hurried into the hall with the others.

I'm alive! I'm alive! Death has come and gone and I'm alive! I wasn't the victim! I didn't die in agony. That tiny round white door into death wasn't for me! I'm alive! I'm alive! Oh, thank you, G.o.d-But Oh, G.o.d, have mercy!

Since I'm not the victim, maybe I'm the killer! I can't be-I can't be! And yet-and yet-that other self. How can I tell what she might have done? But I can't remember doing- Of course not. Break every fingernail you have, you can't pry open that honeycombed bell.

Greta is gone now and we hardly avert our faces as we pa.s.s her closed door.

Someone will be moving in there soon and the ripple that was Greta will be stilled forever. The law came and went. I don't know what they think. They didn't say much. They didn't leap to life at a sudden betraying word and hurry someone off, screaming, to the bar of justice. It's a little disappointing. In fact, as they gathered together all those little boxes and bottles of hers, they said, " 'S a wonder she didn't poison herself long before this." They took Greta away with her bottles. We're in a lull now-a smooth nothing. We can slide through the day without even having to think. The last three days we've rattled out numbers like m.u.f.fled hail-mechanically.

I haven't been lost even once since Greta died. It's as though I had been purged of some dark sickness-which doesn't comfort me as I huddle on my bed listening to the papery rustle of rain across my darkening windows.

I wish I didn't have that other lost self. She well could have dreamed up the whole thing. People who are bankrupt of legitimate interest and excitement often take refuge in imaginary terrors. They're much more engrossing than imaginary delights. My lost self may have done just that. Or perhaps that last meal of Greta's in the cafeteria actually did have death in it-natural death-and my lost self sensed it and misinterpreted it giving it a local habitation and a name.Anyway, today the personnel office asked me if I'd pack Greta's things and get them ready to send back home to her folks-back in Tennessee somewhere, I believe. As soon as I gather myself up a little more, I'll go get it done.

There are cardboard cartons in the hall awaiting the overflow from her suitcase and trunk.

Well, they told me to pack everything-but what good will all these little charts do them? Little hand-drawn charts something like the ones you find on the foot of hospital beds, with Greta's temperature and pulse and all the other tickings of her body for the last three years-temperature graphs that stubbornly stay on normal. One excited chart kept in red pencil is of her flu last winter.

What will they do with all these notations of prescriptions-these lists of pills, powders and vitamins? How did she ever find room for meals if she took all this junk? And why keep the lists? Look at this one.

'Pick up at pharmacy. Tuesday 12th PM' and a bunch of abbreviations. I ought to throw them all out. But then they said to pack everything. Let me ease my knees. I've been folded up here on the floor too long. Tuesday. Tuesday the 12th. That rings something. Tuesday, 12th. Oh, I remember. That's the afternoon we practically had old home week at the pharmacy. There had been a sudden flurry of colds and hayfever, diarrhea, aches and pains and other unpleasantnesses. I was trying to untie the knots in my breathing apparatus with antihistamines and had plodded heavy headed and streaming eyed to the hospital pharmacy and slumped against the wall by the prescription window. I was but completely miserable and sort of-dozed-I guess, waiting in the empty silence for Our Pharmacist to come back from wherever he'd gone.

That's odd. I can't remember. I slumped against the wall. Then there I was, trying to go out the door as someone was trying to come in. I almost dropped my little box twisted in that ugly buff paper. She steadied me and laughed a little and said, "You make the third one of us I've b.u.mped into so far. I saw the other two out in the parking lot. What's going on? A convention?"

My answering snort of laughter ended disastrously and I was m.u.f.fled in Kleenex all the way out to the car-too busy to wonder. But now I'm wondering. What happened in that time I lost? Lost? Maybe that was the first time I really got lost, instead of the time at the office.

Maybe I leaned through that window and helped myself from one of those cryptic jars. Maybe my lost self needed more excitement. Maybe it was fun to hold death in her hand, even if she never meant to use it. Oh, cuss this paper! I wish I'd never seen it. Quick. Pack everything. There there there. Let them sort it out in Tennessee. The list is still by me on the floor. Even if I crumple it as tight as I can, I can't erase the sick fear that's welling up in me. What happened to me in the pharmacy? That day must have been my first honeycomb bell.

All of Greta's things are gone now. All except the crumpled list. I've smoothed it out and crumpled it up again so many times that it's beginning to be limply flexible. I've been feeling odd of late as though Greta's death pulled up a long string in me somewhere and tightened me all together like a pearl necklace. Now each facet of me is so tight up against every other facet that there's no room for wandering or losing myself. Even these days of monotony seem fuller because they're more a cohesive whole-but rather a dull whole. That's why I haven't thrown the list away. It's a sort of touchstone for excitement.Cleo leaned her arms on the cafeteria table. "You know, it's awful, but it seems as though Greta has been gone a hundred years."

"Or never existed," said Dorothea. "You have your sleeve in a puddle of coffee."

"Oh-darn! My clean sweater." Cleo mopped at it with a paper napkin.

"If those busboys would get off their fat and start bussing-" Allison dabbed fretfully at the table in front of her. "And this floor is a disgrace."

"I'm eating out tomorrow night." Kit's face softened cross the cheek bones. "Bunny's taking me to The Settlement."

"Forty miles for a meal?" Allison gulped her coffee.

"And I hear the food's as lousy as it is expensive and who on earth is Bunny?"

"Yes, who is Bunny?" Dorothea chased the last quivering morsel of red gelatin around her plate. "Have I missed something?"

"Oh," said Cleo, flus.h.i.+ng awkwardly. "Bunny's her GS 12, isn't he, Kit. His real name is Brunford, I think."

"Yes," said Kit shortly. "He's the one I wanted to kill the other night. He's so pigheaded sometimes."

Kill? A ripple ran around the table. Kill? To make unalive? To extinguish? To take Being away from someone? "But he'll do," Kit went on.

"Until someone better comes along?" Allison smiled unpleasantly.

"Until someone better comes along! Precisely. Anything wrong with that?" Kit's face was wooden.

"You know, I thought you were real gone on Our Pharmacist," said Dorothea, trying to stir some warmth into her cold coffee. "It's a shame nothing came of it."

"Huh!" Allison deftly shoved a falling piece of lettuce back into her mouth.

"It looked suspiciously like he dropped her. How's that for a switch! Now maybe I'll have half a chance with him myself. He's worth six Bunnys."

"Please, girls, don't fight!" Cleo pleaded into the wrath on Kit's face. "Not so soon after Greta-?"

"What on earth has that got to do with it?" Kit stood up, shoving her chair back abruptly. "And what makes you think she was ever living? Pill to pill-pain to pain- She's well out of it. "

"Who are we to say she's well out of it?" Cleo's eyes flashed unaccustomed fire. "She didn't ask to die!"

Then why did she? Why did she die? She shouldn't have. Invalids like that outlive us all. But she did die. Whose hand dropped death in a cup and why?

Why? Maybe she died of Tuesday the 12th. Why should Tuesday the 12th be so fatal? Who else was at the pharmacy? Did they have to wait for Our Pharmacist, too? Where was he? In some back room bandaging his emotional wounds-cast aside for a G S 12? Oh let me back! Let me catch the thread of conversation. I won't get lost again.

"It must have been something she took. Sit down, Kit." Allison's tone was halfan apology. "What kind of a car has this Bunny of yours?"

"An Olds-like riding on air," Kit's face filled out subtly as she fed on the interior vision of such a car.

"Do you think he might be The One?" Dorothea turned her spoon over and over in her hands.

"The One?" Kit laughed shortly. "Naive, aren't you? There is no One. There's only a make-do."

"That's awful cynical," protested Cleo.

"It's true," said Kit. "You can't fool me when it comes to people. They're what they are because of the pressures moulding them at the moment. Relax any one of the pressures, or increase one, and you get a different person."

"My how learned we are," smiled Dorothea. "Where did you read that, Kit."

"I don't know that I did." Kit's face sharpened again. "I only know there's no sureness about people. They always change."

"Well, I'm going. I've got my hair to do tonight." Allison looked after her as she left "That sounded logical," she said. "But I don't like the sound of it."

"It's true in a sense, I guess," said Dorothea. "Only Kit's forgetting the fundamental person before pressures distort him. That determines largely how he'll react."

"Going to the store, anyone?"

"No, I have a book due at the library," said Cleo.

"And I have to go over to that dern office again," frowned Allison. "

'Overtime, fellows and girls,"' her voice was a falsetto mimicry. " 'Only about an hour."' Her voice dropped to its usual tone. "Or two or three or four. Why did they pick on me? Why not one of you instead?"

"I don't know," winced Cleo.

"Relax." Allison smiled mirthlessly. "Who's blaming you? Well, I'll get back to the Dorm and put my face back on."

I'm back again. We're all back in the Dorm. If I listen carefully I can hear the goings and comings and voices and a big blank silence where Greta used to be. But she's still here, too. The others may forget her, but I am remembering. And I hope someone else is, too. I'm remembering because I felt her death before she did. I'm only hoping someone else is remembering because they brought death to her. Unless after all she did die of the way she was living. I'd like to know more about this pharmacy thing, though. Of course that bare, temporary waiting room was practically her second home. What little happiness I ever saw on her face was when she was leaving there, her hands full of filled prescriptions. That is one joy I was never able to get inside of.

You know, if you look at it just right, that Pharmacist was pretty well tied up with our Dorm. We all called him Our Pharmacist because we teased one another about him until suddenly he wasn't a kidding matter any more. I suppose if you dug deep enough you'd find all of us yearned after him in some manner or other and all of us had some sort of contact with him. If onlythrough that little arched window of his- Sound comes through little windows! They were talking! No one's supposed to go back there except authorized personnel. But she wasn't authorized. She went right back there and talked to him. Two of them did. I heard them! I heard them!

"-flitting from man to man like a b.u.t.terfly from flower to flower. Some have it and some don't. You're the eighth on our boxscore!"

His voice then, deep-toned, but the words were light. "Well, flowers get as much pleasure as the b.u.t.terflies. Someone's coming. You're not supposed to be in here."

And her fluttery, "Oh, I know. I'm sorry. I'll go-"

And later there was another voice.

"-tomorrow night?"

And his again, cold this time, flat and uninflected. "I'm sorry. I just found out that I'm busy twenty-six hours a day until the third Thursday of the first week in July. Someone's waiting-" And a door opened somewhere.

So that was Tuesday the 12th! I've pried open the honeycomb bell a little.

Only whose voices were they? Was one mine? Did I go back in the unauthorized area? Did I babble that foolishness to Our Pharmacist? Sometimes, often when emotions are the strongest, we babble the awfullest things, things we don't mean-things that aren't so-things we'd give a lifetime to recall. We cut our own throats with our own tongues. I could have been one of those girl voices.

It's possible.

But what has this all got to do with Greta? What possible importance could it have? Let's see now. It couldn't have been the one I met at the door because she was only coming in as I was leaving. Unless she went out a back door and came back in the front door, which sounds sort of silly. But then the Second Voice must have come in through the back door because she didn't come through the waiting room. But it could have been me! I lost that time. I don't know what I did. But where was Greta? And what does it mean anyway?

Ah, let me hold on! Let me hold on! She just came in with her eyes big with shock. "It's murder," she whispered, a shame-faced pleasurable excitement making her breathe faster. "The sheriff's coming tomorrow. She had some kind of poison in her stomach. Of course it could have been an accident. One of those one in a million." Disappointment tinged her voice. "But it was an unnatural death." Her tongue moistened her lips. "I've got to go tell the others:"

What pushed me away this time? I'm lost, I'm lost again, in the echoing corridors of this other world. I'm not me any more. I'm looking into the faces of all of us. Tuesday the 12th has surrounded me like a palisade fence. 12 12 12 12 all around me and I can't get out. She said, "We've been wondering how long you'd last with Kit with her flitting from man to man-" and Kit heard!

Kit was just outside the door. She knew who was talking. She went away and came back again. She said, "I wanted to check on what clothes to wear for our date. Will it be a slacks-type date or a ruffles and fluffies type? Where are we going tomorrow night?"

I can't add! I can't add! Not without all my fingers and a machine that nibbles the numbers off my fingertips like a hungry rat. Don't ask me to puttwo and two together and get me, murderess! I won't believe it. I'm going to hold on this time and not let the bell close. I'm going to find out where this lost self belongs. I'm not going to let it wander any more up and down the Dorm hall, hesitating at each door, wondering if that's home. It isn't fair!

My un-lost self knows me. Why can't I know her? I can't add! Honest, I can't.

Even in school I made marks on the paper. Little rows of three. Little squares of four. Little dominoes of fives- Do you suppose I fainted when I heard about Greta? I hope so. I don't want any more bells to pry open. But twilight was on the edge of my window when I got the news and now the street light is smudged along the sill. I don't feel well. I have a queer tightness in my chest. I keep wanting to look over my shoulder. I feel-I feel afraid! I'm scared! I must have been lost! My lost self must have figured out something. Maybe I'm a murderess. But why should I kill Greta? She was a nonent.i.ty-annoying sometimes, infuriating sometimes, but what could she ever have done to me to make me want to kill her?

But if I did kill, my other self must be looking frantically for a way to get rid of any witness. At least three of us and maybe all four were at the pharmacy that day. On the other hand, if I'm not the murderess, then maybe I know who is. Maybe someone is crouching on her bed now, trying to figure out what to do about me. How to kill me! Am I going to have to walk around with fear and suspicion like a heavy lump in my stomach, wincing from every word, terrified at every movement? "We're having coffee. Too bad you're busy. I brought you this cup."

"No thanks. It might be poisoned."

"We're hiking up to Picture Rock. You like to hike. Come along."

"No, thanks, one of you might push me over." See? See what an impossible situation!

We're all gathered here in our usual after-supper coffee klatch. The sheriff didn't make it today. A flashflood in the Tortellas mountains took out Dead Horse bridge. He'll be out tomorrow. Meanwhile-I'm going to finish whatever needs finis.h.i.+ng. I'm going to tie all the ends neatly. Please G.o.d one of the knots won't be around my own neck.

"I wish he'd got here today." Cleo's face was gaunt with fear. "If he had come today, it'd probably be all over with by now. We'd know by now-" Her voice broke off abruptly and one shaking hand crept over her mouth. Her eyes moved from one to another. Then her voice came faintly. "If she was murdered, someone killed her!"

"My, you're sharp, Cleo," said Allison, coffee slopping soundlessly back and forth in her cup. "It follows as night the day. If she was murdered, someone killed her."

"It's not necessarily murder." Dorothea put her cup down slowly and clasped her hands around her knees. "It could have been an accident. The wrong pill-"

"Maybe Our Pharmacist made a mistake," suggested Allison.

"He wouldn't- " Kit thumped her cup down on the floor and reddened. "Well, he is accurate, whatever his other faults are-and they are many."

"You loved him!" Cleo took her cup up again. "Honest, you did, Kit. I could tell by your eyes-"I suppose my ears wiggled, too!" snapped Kit sullenly "Drop it, Cleo, drop it. I'm in no mood for True Love that lasts just until the wind changes."

"The wind changed Tuesday the 12th."

"Tuesday the 12th!" Cleo's voice repeated the words, her shrill voice slitting the silence that had closed in palpably.

"That must have been the day we all b.u.mped another at the pharmacy." Allison ran her hands through her hair. "We all made the pilgrimage there."

"Yes, we were all there." Dorothea rubbed one hand painfully against the other. "That's probably why the wind changed."

"What's that got to do with Greta?" asked Allison. "We were talking about Greta and the sheriff."

"It was an accident." Kit's cheek bones sharpened. "He'll find she died of her own foolishness."

"I can't bear to talk about it," said Cleo, standing up, almost in tears. "I'm going back to my room." She paused, looking back over her shoulder. "Whoever killed her, whatever killed her, we'll know tomorrow. I've heard about this sheriff. He would pry the marrow out of your bones if he thought it necessary."

"That's an exit line if I ever heard one," said Dorothea. "Well, we can all employ the next few hours contemplating the blood on our several hands." She held her hands out, but s.n.a.t.c.hed them back as they -began to shake uncontrollably.

I heard three latches snap shut down the hall. We never lock our doors, but tonight we are, for whatever reason. Maybe to lock Death out, since now we know he has our address. Maybe for the necessary privacy for facing a guilty soul and trying to rub the d.a.m.ned spot out. Maybe because fear has become a tangible thing that could even creep under the door like a rolling fog. Maybe because- But I haven't locked my door. If I am guilty, everything has happened to me that can. You can't lock time out, and time will publish my guilt, locked door or no locked door. If I'm not guilty, my door will open sometime in the night and- Now that my light is turned out, I have noticed something. There's no bright rim around my door which is usually haloed all night long. The hall light has either gone out or been turned out. My palms are wet. Has my lost self prepared the way? Am I to walk the dark hall tonight, trying the locked doors gently? No one seems to have remembered that my key is a master key. We found it out last winter when we had a rash of locking ourselves out. Mine worked in all the locks except Greta's. Except Greta's! If Greta got the poison in her room, I couldn't have got in-silly straw! No one else could have either, but we're in and out of each other's rooms all the time. The poison could have been left there in one of those innumerable bottles or boxes any time since the 12th.

The 12th, the 12th, the 12th, like a chant, like a rhythm, like footsteps, like a door swinging open . . .

Wake up! Wake up! Wake up! It's death again! Death is all around! Raise your hands. Everyone raise your hands. Whose palm is scarlet? Whose is black? Who gives? Who takes? Listen! Oh, so slowly, oh, so softly. Coming in through the door. Am I? Am I creeping toward a bed? Or is it my bed that is shaking as I shake.