Stephen King - Gerald’s Game

You’re not lost, Goodwife Burlingame said, but Jessie did not trust that voice. Its control sounded bogus, its rationality only paint-deep. You know just where you are.

Yes, she did. She was at the end of a twisting, rutted camp road which split off from Bay Lane two miles south of here. The camp road had been an aisle of fallen red and yellow leaves over which she and Gerald had driven, and those leaves were mute testimony to the fact that this spur, leading to the Notch Bay end of Kashwakamak, had been used little or not at all in the three weeks since the leaves had first begun to turn and then to fall. This end of the lake was almost exclusively the domain of summer people, and for all Jessie knew, the spur might not have been used since Labor Day. It was a total of five miles, first along the spur and then along Bay Lane, before one came out on Route 117, where there were a few year-round homes.

I’m out here alone, my husband is lying dead on the floor, and I’m handcuffed to the bed. I can scream until I turn blue and it won’t do me any good; no one’s going to hear. The guy with the chainsaw is probably the closest, and he’s at least four miles away. He might even be on the other side of the lake. The dog would probably hear me, but the dog is almost certainly a stray. Gerald’s dead, and that’s a shame-I never meant to kill him, if that’s what I did-but at least it was relatively quick for him. It won’t he quick for me; if no one in Portland starts to worry about us, and there’s no real reason why anyone should, at least for awhile…

She shouldn’t be thinking this way; it brought the panic-thing closer. If she didn’t get her mind out of this rut, she would soon see the panic-thing’s stupid, terrified eyes. No, she absolutely shouldn’t be thinking this way. The bitch of it was, once you got started, it was very hard to stop again.

But maybe it’s what you deserve- the hectoring, feverish voice of Goody Burlingame suddenly spoke up. Maybe it is. Because you did kill him, Jessie. You can’t kid yourself about that, because I won’t let you. I’m sure he wasn’t in very good shape, and I’m sure it would have happened sooner or later, anyway-a heart attack at the office, or maybe in the turnpike passing lane on his way home some night, him with a cigarette in his hand, trying to light it, and a big ten-wheeler behind him, honking for him to get the hell back over into the right-hand lane and make some room, But you couldn’t wait for sooner or later, could you?” Oh no, not you, not Tom Mahout’s good little girl Jessie. You couldn’t just lie there and let him shoot his squirt, could you? Cosmo Girl Jessie Burlingame says “No man chains me down.” You had to kick him in the guts and the nuts, didn’t you? And you had to do it while his thermostat was already well over the red line. Let’s cut to the chase, dear: you murdered him. So maybe you deserve to be right here, handcuffed to this bed. Maybe-

“Oh, that is such bullshit,” she said. It was an inexpressible relief to hear that other voice-Ruth’s voice-come out of her mouth. She sometimes (well… maybe often would be closer to the truth) hated the Goodwife voice; hated it and feared it. It was often foolish and flighty, she recognized that, but it was also so strong, so hard to say no to.

Goody was always eager to assure her she had bought the wrong dress, or that she had chosen the wrong caterer for the end-of-summer party Gerald threw each year for the other partners in the firm and their wives (except it was really Jessie who threw it; Gerald was just the guy who stood around and said aw shucks and took all the credit). Goody was the one who always insisted she had to lose five pounds. That voice wouldn’t let up even if her ribs were showing. Never mind your ribs! ” it screamed in tones of self-righteous horror. Look at your tit s, old girl! And if they aren’t enough to make you barf a keg, look at your thighs!

“Such bullshit,” she said, trying to make it even stronger, but now she heard a minute shake in her voice, and that wasn’t so good. Not so good at all. “He knew I was serious… he knew it . So whose fault does that make it?”

But was that really true? In a way it was-she had seen him deciding to reject what he saw in her face and heard in her voice because it would spoil the game. But in another way-a much more fundamental way-she knew it wasn’t true at all, because Gerald hadn’t taken her seriously about much of anything during the last ten or twelve years of their life together. He had made what almost amounted to a second career out of not hearing what she said unless it was about meals or where they were supposed to be at such-and-such a time on such-and-such a night (so don’t forget, Gerald). The only other exceptions to the general Rules of Ear were unfriendly remarks about his weight or his drinking. He heard the things she had to say on these subjects, and didn’t like them, but they were dismissible as part of some mythic natural order: fish gotta swim, bird gotta fly, wife gotta nag.

So what, exactly, had she expected from this man? For him to say, Yes, dear, I will free you at once, and by the way, thanks for raising my consciousness?

Yes; she suspected some naive part of her, some untouched and dewy-eyed little-girl part, had expected just that.

The chainsaw, which had been snarling and ripping away again for quite some time, suddenly fell silent. Dog, loon, and even the wind had also fallen silent, at least temporarily, and the quiet felt as thick and as palpable as ten years of undisturbed dust in an empty house. She could hear no car or truck engine, not even a distant one. And now the voice which spoke belonged to no one but herself. Oh my God, it said. Oh my God, I am all alone out here. I am all alone.

Jessie closed her eyes tightly. Six years ago she had spent an abortive five-month period in counselling, not telling Gerald because she knew he would be sarcastic… and probably worried about what beans she might be spilling. She had stated her problem as stress, and Nora Callighan, her therapist, had taught her a simple relaxation technique.

Most people associate counting to ten with Donald Duck trying to keep his temper, Nora had said, but what a ten-count really does is gives you a chance to re-set all your emotional dials… and anybody who doesn’t need an emotional re-set at least once a day has probably got problems a lot more serious than yours or mine.

This voice was also clear-clear enough to raise a small, wistful smile on her face.

I liked Nora. I liked her a lot.

Had she, Jessie, known that at the time? She was moderately astounded to find she couldn’t exactly remember, any more than she could exactly remember why she had quit going to see Nora on Tuesday afternoons. She supposed that a bunch of stuff Community Chest, the Court Street homeless shelter, maybe the new library fund drive-had just all come up at once. Shit Happens, as another piece of New Age vapidity passing for wisdom pointed out. Quitting bad probably been for the best, anyway. If you didn’t draw the line somewhere, therapy just went on and on, until you and your therapist doddered off to that great group encounter session in the sky together.