Robert Alter - 100 Malicious Little Mysteries

He could hear Angela moving in the darkness of the dining room behind him. “I’ve got candles,” she said in a moment, “if you’ll get the matches from the coffee table in there.”

John cautiously located the coffee table in the blackness and explored its surface for the book of matches always kept near the ashtray. As his hand closed on it, a match flared in the dining room, and a second later two candles set in silver candlesticks on the table were dissipating the darkness.

“Never mind, John,” Angela called, “I found a match in the buffet drawer. Come on and eat your soup now. It’ll get cold.”

Before John got back to his chair at the table, the electric lights came on again.

“Ah,” said Angela with relief. “That’s better.” She didn’t blow out the candles.

John picked up his soup spoon and then, with a distraught air, put it down again. He looked across the table at Angela whose gentle blue eyes were regarding him anxiously. “Is the soup cold, dear?” she asked. She took a sip of her own. “Mine isn’t.”

He shook his head. How lovely she is, he thought, and what a heel I’ve been to go running after those other women. His conscience was suddenly tender. An unaccustomed pang of shame caused him to lower his eyes.

“No,” he said, “I don’t suppose it’s cold, darling, but I’m not very hungry tonight.”

“It’s yellow pea soup, John. You love it.”

“I know.” He raised his head. “And I love you, too, Angela. You know that, don’t you?”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Let’s not go into that again,” she said, trembling.

John said, “I’m an All-American heel, Angela, I admit it. A woman-crazy, middle-aged wolf who ought to know better. And I’m genuinely sorry for it.”

Angela brushed aside her tears with the back of a flexed wrist, a somehow pathetic gesture. She stood up. “Now you’ve spoiled my appetite,” she said. She picked up the two soup plates and carried them out to the kitchen.

“So I want to divorce her,” John Marcy told his lawyer quietly the next day.

Bartley, the lawyer, aimed a faintly disapproving glance at his client and friend. “Divorce her?” he echoed. “Y ou want to divorce her?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t make me laugh, John. It’s common gossip in town that she ought to divorce you. And I know the score, John, so don’t try to kid me. I haven’t forgotten those breach-of-promise suits and the paternity action I had to settle for you, John.”

“I’m not forgetting them either. I just want to divorce Angela, that’s all. And I need your advice on how to go about it. That’s simple, isn’t it?”

“Not all that simple, no. Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to divorce her all of a sudden after letting things drift along like this for years?”

“Because she won’t divorce me, that’s why. And I want to be free of her.”

“Yes, but why won’t she divorce you? Some foolish idea that this way she can punish you for your past peccadillos?”

“No. You’ll think I’m even more insufferable than you do now if I tell you the true reason.”

“Try me and see.”

John hesitated. Then he said, “Well, it’s my considered opinion, knowing Angela as I do, that she won’t divorce me because she still loves me.”

“That’s no reason,” Hartley said.

“It is if she doesn’t want another woman to get her hooks into me permanently,” John said. “She knows how vulnerable and — uh — undiscriminating I am.” He paused. “You realize it isn’t easy for me to talk like this, Bart.”

“Go on,” Bartley said, and with the privileged candor of long friendship he added, “Everybody knows you’re a heel, John. No need to be embarrassed in front of me.”

Marcy flushed and plowed on doggedly. “Angela has decided that if she can’t enjoy my full-time love and loyalty, no other woman will get a chance at it, either.”

“Is that what Angela says?”

“Not in so many words, no. But I’m positive it’s how she feels.”

“How can you be positive about a thing like that?”

“From her actions, Bart. From her attitude lately.”

“And you want to charge mental cruelty, is that it?”

“No, you don’t understand at all.” Marcy sighed.

“I’ll say I don’t. But I might remind you, John, that even in these enlightened times you need stronger grounds for divorce than a simple statement that your wife loves you and you’re sure of it.”

John said, “Don’t clown with me, I’m serious. I tell you I want to divorce Angela.”

“I’m not clowning. But you’ve got to have grounds. Angela’s got plenty — but you haven’t. Understand?” Bartley didn’t wait for an answer. He went on, “Exactly when did you decide you had to divorce Angela? Maybe that’ll help.”

Resignedly John said, “Last night. At the dinner table.”

“What happened?”

“We had a power failure in our neighborhood. The lights went out.”

“Well, well.” Bartley lit a cigarette and examined his client’s glum face with interest. “That certainly explains a lot.”

“It did to me,” John said, “even if you think it’s some sort of joke.”

Exasperated, the lawyer leaned back in his swivel chair. “Nothing about divorce is some sort of joke, as you call it,” he snapped. “So be serious about this, John! Tell me about the lights going out, if you think it’s important.”

“It’s important, all right. The lights were out for only a couple of minutes, but during that brief period of total darkness I suddenly found out Angela’s true feelings for me, Bart.” John was dragging out the words reluctantly. “I’m being honest with you.”

“Good,” Bartley said. “So in the dark you had this great revelation of Angela’s true feelings. What did she do — try to seduce you, or what?”

Marcy shook his head. “I’m sorry to make you pry it out of me like this, Bart,” he apologized. “But I was pretty surprised at the time, and I’m not over my confusion yet.”

“Obviously. But let’s have it. You’re stalling.”

“I suppose I am,” Marcy admitted. He took a deep breath. “Well, you’ve got to get the picture. Angela had just brought in our soup. We were ready to begin eating. And it was at that instant, with our soup plates on the table before us, that the lights went out.”

“All right. What then?”

“Then,” Marcy said, “then I saw that Angela was trying to kill me.”

“Kill you!” Bartley dropped his cigarette on the rug and swore as he stamped it out.

“That’s what I said. Kill me. Poison me. She had poisoned my soup.”

Bartley stared at him, shaking his head. “But in the dark—” he began.

“If the lights hadn’t gone out, I’d be dead. I’d have eaten that damned soup and gone where no waitress or chorus girl could ever give me the come-on again.” For the first time Marcy smiled. “My soup was loaded with yellow phosphorus.”

“How did you know?”

“High school chemistry. When the lights went out, my soup glowed in the dark like a plate of incandescent paint.”

After a dazed moment Bartley managed to whisper, “Attempted murder.”

“Is that grounds for divorce?”

“Should be enough for a starter,” Bartley said, swallowing.

“Angela, poor darling, tried to distract my attention from the soup,” John went on. “She got candles lit as soon as she could, to hide the soup’s phosphorescence.” He paused. Then he said, “Understand, Bart, I’m telling this to nobody but you. If you go to Angela and tell her you know all about her attempt to murder me last night, I think that out of shame she’ll consent to divorce me for the old-fashioned reasons. But I don’t want the police to hear a word about this.”