Маргарет Миллар - The Listening Walls

“Yes.”

“Why? Why a letter, I mean.”

“She preferred to do it that way,” Rupert said, without turning.

“Do what?”

“Explain why she went away.”

“Went away? Where?”

“I don’t know where. She refused to tell me.”

“But this is preposterous, it’s impossible.”

Rupert turned to face him. “All right, have it your way. It’s preposterous and impossible. It happened, though. Some things can happen without your knowledge or permission.”

They glared at each other across the sunny room. When Amy was around to smooth things over, the two men had been civil to each other and observed the amenities. Now, without her presence, the unspoken gibes and unvoiced criticisms that had accumulated through the years seemed to hang between them, ready to be plucked out of the air and used as strings to either bow.

“She took her clothes,” Rupert said, “and her dog, and left.”

“The dog, too?”

“It was hers. She had a right to.”

“Taking the dog, that means...”

“I know what it means.”

They both knew. If Amy had intended to come back, she wouldn’t have taken the dog with her.

“You’d better read your letter,” Rupert said.

Gill picked it up and held it in his hands for a moment, very carefully, as if it were a bomb that might detonate at any sudden movement. “Do you know — what’s in it?”

“It’s sealed and addressed to you. How should I know?” He did know, though. He remembered every word in the letter. He’d gone over it a dozen times looking for flaws. He’d found some, but only after it was too late.

Gill read slowly, mouthing the words like a beginning reader.

Dear Gilly:

I have told Rupert to give you this letter, rather than mailing it, because I know you will want to ask him questions. Some he’ll be able to answer, some he won’t. Some even I can’t answer, so how can I make you understand the reasons why I am going away for a while? The main thing is, I am. It is a very big decision for me. I can’t phone you to say good-bye because I know you’d argue with me and I’m afraid my decision might not be strong enough to stand up under an argument from you.

It is a week now since Wilma died, a week of regret and grief, but also one of reexamination of myself. I didn’t come out very well. I am thirty-three, and it seems that I’ve been living like a child, always leaning on other people. I didn’t enjoy it, I just could never get around to not leaning. I never will, if I simply stay here and sink back into the same old rut. I must get the feeling of being alone and being myself. I know that if I had been a mature, responsible person, used to making decisions and acting on them, I would have been able to prevent Wilma’s death. If I had not been drinking myself, I could have stopped Wilma from drinking to the point of depression...

“She’d been drinking,” Gill said in surprise. “How much?”

“A lot.”

“That doesn’t sound like the Amy I know.”

“Perhaps there’s another one. She was not only drinking, she was drinking in the company of an American barfly named O’Donnell.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“That’s your privilege.”

... All this may seem nonsensical to you, Gilly. But I can be practical, too. I have given Rupert the necessary authority to handle my financial affairs, so you needn’t worry on that score. And please, Gilly, whatever you do, don’t blame Rupert for my going away. He’s been a wonderful husband to me. Be kind to him, cheer him up, he’s going to miss me. You will, too, I know, but you have Helene and the children. (Give them my love and tell them I’ve gone east to recuperate or some such thing. Don’t tell them I’ve gone off my rocker which is probably what you’re thinking. I haven’t gone off, I’m just getting on.)

Best love, and don’t worry about me!

Gill returned the letter to its envelope, slowly and methodically, as if it were a bill he was thinking twice about paying. “Has she been doing much talking along these lines the past week?”

“Quite a bit.”

“Then she had planned on leaving even before she came home?”

“She came home to pick up Mack.”

“You should have warned me ahead of time, sent me a wire or something. I might have prevented this.”

“How?”

“By telling her not to go.”

“That’s the pattern she’s trying to break out of,” Rupert said, “being told what to do.”

“Have you any idea where she went?”

“No. I’m not even sure she had a definite place in mind.”

“Well, how did she leave?”

“She called a cab, but I persuaded her to cancel it and let me drive her to the station.”

“What time?”

“About eight.”

“Is there any possibility she was coming down to Atherton to see me?”

“None,” Rupert said. “She wrote you the letter, for one thing. For another, she had Mack with her. There are no baggage cars on the commuters’ trains to accommodate animals.”

“There are on the Lark. It leaves for Los Angeles around nine o’clock. By God, that’s it, that’s where she is, Los Angeles.”

“There are trains leaving as well as arriving at Los Angeles.”

“Even so, she shouldn’t be too difficult to trace, a young woman traveling by train with a bad-tempered Scottie.”

“Mack’s not bad-temp — Oh, for heaven’s sake, get it through your head, Gill. Amy doesn’t want to be traced.”

“She’s a woman. Half the time women don’t know what they want. They have to be told, guided. I’ve always thought you should have kept a firmer hand on the reins.”

“Funny, I thought you were holding them.”

Gill colored. “What do you mean by a remark like that?”

“Just what I said. The reins were never in my hands. Nor have I ever considered my wife in the same category as a horse.”

“Horses and women have a lot in common. Put them in an open field and they run to hell and gone.”

“Where did you learn so much about women, Gill?”

“I don’t want to quarrel with you,” Gill said firmly. “The situation is too serious. What are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing. What do you suggest I do?”

“Call the police. Tell them to locate her and bring her back.”

“On what grounds? Amy’s of age, considerably overage, in fact.”

“We’ll be able to think of some reason.”

“Oh, for... All right. Suppose we do and suppose they find her. What then?”

“They’ll bring her home and we’ll have an opportunity to talk some sense into her head.”

“By ‘we’ I presume you mean ‘you’?”

“Well, I’ve always been able to handle her, make her see reason.”

“Perhaps she is seeing reason,” Rupert said. “Her own. Not yours.”

Gill struck the arm of the davenport with his fist. Particles of dust scurried up and away in alarm. “You’re being pretty damn cool and collected for a man whose wife has disappeared.”

“ ‘Disappeared’ isn’t quite the word.”

“It is to me.”

A sudden draft rippled the moted shafts of sunlight, and a woman’s voice called out from the back door, “Mack. Here, Mack. Come on, boy. Time for your run.”

At the first word Gill had risen expectantly, but as the woman continued to call the dog he sat down again heavily as if he’d been pushed in the chest by Rupert’s fist. Rupert had not moved.

“Here, Mack. Come on, now. If you’re on that bed again I’m going to tell on you! Mack? Boy?”

Miss Burton appeared in the doorway, her cheeks pink with cold, her hair bleached to the color and texture of straw. “Why, Mr. Kellogg. My goodness. Why I had no idea you were home. Barging in like this, what must you think of me?”