Marcia Muller: Crucifixion River

But not blaming her or hating her didn’t mean I would let her get away with what she’d done. Life was still precious to me, and I wouldn’t let go of it without a fight.

She wasn’t in the kitchen. She had been, though; as I passed the stove, I smelled a sour odor and saw that she’d thrown up in the sink. My God! Maybe she hadn’t been faking in Murphys or on the way up here; maybe she’d poisoned herself, too. Hollis was dead, she couldn’t have him, and she didn’t want me anymore, so what did she have left to live for? It was just like her to concoct a quixotic Shakespearean finish for both of us.

I stumbled into the living room. She wasn’t there, either, but I could hear her-low sobbing sounds coming from out on the balcony that ran across the entire rear of the lodge. I almost fell before I reached the open balcony doors; I had to clutch at the glass for support, all but drag myself around the jamb. The weakness and the cramping pain made me even more determined.

Melissa was sitting on one of the redwood chairs, her arms wrapped across her middle, rocking slightly and grimacing. A closed book lay in her lap. A book, for God’s sake, at a time like this!

“Melissa.”

She stiffened and her head turned toward me. Her eyes were enormous, luminous with pain. In spite of what she’d done, in spite of myself, I experienced a surge of feeling for her-compassion, protectiveness, even tenderness, like suddenly materialized ghosts from the past.

“Why, Ray?” she said. “Why did this have to happen?”

“You know the answer to that better than I do. But it’s not too late. I won’t let it be too late.”

“I don’t want to die. I thought I did, for a while, but I don’t.”

“Neither of us is going to die. I’ll call for emergency medical help…but I have to know what it was first.” She shook her head as if she didn’t understand.

“The poison,” I said. “What kind of poison?”

“How should I know! Ray, don’t torture me any more…”

“Listen to me. It’s not too late. An antidote, some kind of emetic…what did you use?”

“I didn’t…I didn’t…”

I lurched toward her, fell to my knees beside her chair. “How long ago? What kind of poison? How much?”

“Stop it! You know it wasn’t me!”

“Melissa…”

“You did it. You, you, you!”

I stared at her in disbelief. “That’s crazy. I wouldn’t do a thing like that to you, to myself. I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“But if you didn’t poison us…?”

“I didn’t.” Confusion gripped me now; I couldn’t seem to think clearly. “And you swear you didn’t?”

“I swear!”

“If it wasn’t poison, then what…” I broke off, staring at the book in her lap, seeing its title for the first time. Symptoms: The Complete Home Medical Encyclopedia.

I reached out to it-and the pain came again, a sudden wrenching so violent it brought an involuntary cry from my throat. Gagging, I clutched at Melissa. Felt her hands on me. And then we were clinging to each other, holding tighter than we had in a long, long time.

As Ray kneeled beside my chair and we held each other, I felt something that I’d never felt for him before: compassion. He’d never needed it, never wanted it, and he probably wouldn’t now. But a man who had climbed mountains, who had been unafraid to step out into space with only a parachute to depend on-it tore at my heart to see him reduced to this sweating, trembling weakness by…what?

He was staring at the home medical encyclopedia I’d found on the shelf above the kitchen desk. Now he raised his eyes to mine and said thickly: “Did you look up our symptoms in there?”

“No, not yet…”

He reached again for the book, but another wave of pain drove him down into a sitting position, forehead against my knees.

“Can’t do it,” he said. “My eyes…”

The admission seemed to rob him of his last strength. Ray had always taken charge, always, in every situation.

A sharp spasm wrenched my stomach. When it eased, I put my hand on the back of his head and said: “I can.”

It was a huge volume, and for a moment I couldn’t focus on how to use it. Then I realized the first part was a reverse dictionary of symptoms; you looked yours up, and it referred you to the causes described in the second section. I started with the section on nausea and vomiting.

“This doesn’t help,” I muttered after scanning the entry. Vomiting…Characteristic of nearly all infectious diseases, none of which it was likely we’d both come down with…Wait, here was vomiting coupled with headache…

Ray grabbed onto my calves now, his fingers spasming along with his body. More cramps, worse than what I was experiencing. I gripped his shoulder reassuringly and read on.

Brain tumors, migraine headache, acute glaucoma…

Oh, God, this was no good! I felt the beginnings of panic, took a deep breath, and continued skimming the entry. It told me nothing.

Ray moaned, his face contorted.

I flipped to the front of the book, looking for a table of contents. An encyclopedia of symptoms-wouldn’t they expect that a user might be in pain, want answers in a hurry? Why wasn’t there…?

Severe pain in the abdomen, nausea, cramps, vomiting. Acute gastritis…Staphylococcus…Botulism…“I’ve narrowed it down. Hold on.”

“What…?”

A strong spasm stiffened me before I could focus clearly on the next page. The chills that followed were intense enough to make my teeth chatter.

“Melissa?”

“I’ll be all right in a minute. Are your eyes any better?”

“…A little.”

I fumbled the book toward him. “Look at page three fifty-two, darling. Three fifty-two…”

Darling. Had I heard that right? She hadn’t called me darling, dear, honey, any of the endearments in a long while, even on the rare occasions the past few years when we’d made love…

Another twinge of pain made me grit my teeth, focus on the open book. Page 352. Infected Food, Gastroenteritis. Usually due to eating food that is infected by salmonella bacteria.

Food poisoning. What fools we’d been, each imagining that the other had resorted to arsenic, strychnine, some damned thing. And all along…

“Salmonella,” I said. “But how did we get it? We haven’t eaten anywhere but here the past couple of days.”

“The kitchen! You remember how filthy it was when we arrived? I thought I cleaned everything thoroughly, but I must’ve missed something…That damn’ plastic cutting board. Bacteria breeds in plastic like that, and I diced the raw chicken on it for our pasta.”

Rarely fatal, the book said. But nevertheless a medical alert. Severe cases develop dehydration, kidney failure with urinary suppression, shock. Call physician immediately.

“Nine-eleven,” I said. “Can’t waste any more time.” I tried to push up onto my feet, but I seemed to have no strength in my arms or legs. The entire lower half of my body felt heavy, almost numb from the vomiting and cramping.

“You’re too weak.”

“No. I’ve got to make the call…”

“You ate more than I did,” Melissa said, “your case is more severe. I feel better now…I’ll do it.” She touched my face. “I’m the strong one right now, darling. Let me be the strong one for once.”

I looked up at her through the wetness and the pain. The same Melissa, the same woman I’d married and had children with and lived with for a quarter of a century. And yet she seemed different somehow. Or maybe I was seeing her differently. The little-girl-lost quality was gone; for the first time I saw strength in my wife. Hazily I wondered if it was something new, a courage born of this crisis, or if it had been there all along, hidden or suppressed or just not visible to me for what it was.