Patricia Highsmith - Strangers on a Train

With his chin in his hand, Bruno frowned down at Herbert’s silent, polished, turned-out shoes. Herbert’s insolence lately was intolerable! Gerard had made him think he was the key to the whole case, if they just produced the right man. Everyone said how brave he was to have chased the murderer. And his father had left him twenty thousand in his will. Herbert might take a vacation!

“Does madam know if there’ll be six or seven for dinner?”

As Herbert spoke, Bruno looked up at his pink, pointed chin and thought, Guy whammed him there and knocked him right out.

“Oh, dear, I haven’t called yet, Herbert, but I think seven.”

“Very good, madam.”

Rutledge Overbeck II, Bruno thought. He had known his mother would end up having him, though she pretended to be doubtful because he would make an odd number. Rutledge Overbeck was madly in love with his mother, or pretending to be. Bruno wanted to tell his mother Herbert hadn’t sent his clothes to be pressed in six weeks, but he felt too sickish to begin.

“You know, I’m dying to see Australia,” she said through a bite of toast. She had propped a map up against her coffee pot.

A tingling, naked sensation spread over his buttocks. He stood up. “Ma, I don’t feel so hot.”

She frowned at him concernedly, which frightened him more, because he realized there was nothing in the world she could do to help him. “What’s the matter, darling? What do you want?”

He hurried from the room, feeling he might have to be sick. The bathroom went black. He staggered out, and let the still corked Scotch bottle topple onto his bed.

“What, Charley? What is it?”

“I wanna lie down.” He flopped down, but that wasn’t it. He motioned his mother away so he could get up, but when he sat up he wanted to lie down again, so he stood up.“Feel like I’m dying!”

“Lie down, darling. How about some—some hot tea?”

Bruno tore off his smoking jacket, then his pajama top. He was suffocating. He had to pant to breathe. He did feel like he was dying!

She hurried to him with a wet towel. “What is it, your stomach?”

“Everything. ” He kicked off his slippers. He went to the window to open it, but it was already open. He turned, sweating. “Ma, maybe I’m dying. You think I’m dying?”

“I’ll get you a drink!”

“No, get the doctor!” he shrieked. “Get me a drink, too!” Feebly he pulled his pajama string and let the pants drop. What was it? Not just the shakes. He was too weak to shake. Even his hands were weak and tingly. He held up his hands. The fingers were curved inward. He couldn’t open them. “Ma, somp’n’s the matter with my hands! Look, Ma, what is it, what is it?”

“Drink this!”

He heard the bottle chatter on the rim of the glass. He couldn’t wait for it. He trotted into the hall, stooped with terror, staring at his limp, curling hands. It was the two middle fingers on each hand. They were curving in, almost touching the palm.

“Darling, put your robe on!” she whispered.

“Get the doctor!” A robe! She talked about a robe! What did it matter if he was stark naked? “Ma, but don’t let ‘em take me away!” He plucked at her as she stood at the telephone. “Lock all the doors! You know what they do?” He spoke fast and confidentially, because the numbness was working up and he knew what was the matter now. He was a case! He was going to be like this all his life! “Know what they do, Ma, they put you in a straitjacket without a drop and it’ll kill me!”

“Dr. Packer? This is Mrs. Bruno. Could you recommend a doctor in the neighborhood?”

Bruno screamed. How would a doctor get out here in the Connecticut sticks? “Massom—” He gasped. He couldn’t talk, couldn’t move his tongue. It had gone into his vocal chords! “Aaaaagh!” He wriggled from under the smoking jacket his mother was trying to throw over him. Let Herbert stand there gaping at him if he wanted to!

“Charles!”

He gestured toward his mouth with his crazy hands. He trotted to the closet mirror. His face was white, flat around the mouth as if someone had hit him with a board, his lips drawn horribly back from his teeth. And his hands! He wouldn’t be able to hold a glass anymore, or light a cigarette. He wouldn’t be able to drive a car. He wouldn’t even be able to go to the john by himself!

“Drink this!”

Yes, liquor, liquor. He tried to catch it all in his stiff lips. It burnt his face and ran down his chest. He motioned for more. He tried to remind her to lock the doors. Oh, Christ, if it went away, he would be grateful all his life! He let Herbert and his mother push him onto the bed.

“Tehmeh!” he choked. He twisted his mother’s dressing gown and nearly pulled her down on top of him. But at least he could hold to something now. “Dome tehmeh way!” he said with his breath, and she assured him she wouldn’t. She told him she would lock all the doors.

Gerard, he thought. Gerard was still working against him, and he would keep on and on and on. Not only Gerard but a whole army of people, checking and snooping and visiting people, hammering typewriters, running out and running back with more pieces, pieces from Santa Fe now, and one day Gerard might put them together right. One day Gerard might come in and find him like this morning, and ask him and he would tell everything. He had killed someone. They killed you for killing someone. Maybe he couldn’t cope. He stared up at the light fixture in the center of the ceiling. It reminded him of the round chromium drainstop in the basin at his grandmother’s house in Los Angeles. Why did he think of that?

The cruel jab of the hypodermic needle shocked him to sharper consciousness.

The young, jumpy-looking doctor was talking to his mother in a corner of the darkened room. But he felt better. They wouldn’t take him away now. It was okay now. He had just been panicky. Cautiously, just under the top of the sheet, he watched his fingers flex. “Guy,” he whispered. His tongue was still thick, but he could talk. Then he saw the doctor go out.

“Ma, I don’t want to go to Europe!” he said in a monotone as his mother came over.

“All right, darling, we won’t go.” She sat down gently on the side of the bed, and he felt immediately better.

“The doctor didn’t say I couldn’t go, did he?” As if he wouldn’t go if he wanted to! What was he afraid of? Not even of another attack like this! He touched the puffed shoulder of his mother’s dressing gown, but he thought of Rutledge Overbeck at dinner tonight, and let his hand drop. He was sure his mother was having an affair with him. She went to see him too much at his studio in Silver Springs, and she stayed too long. He didn’t want to admit it, but why shouldn’t he when it was under his nose? It was the first affair, and his father was dead so why shouldn’t she, but why did she have to pick such a jerk? Her eyes looked darker now, in the shaded room. She hadn’t improved since the days after his father’s death. She was going to be like this, Bruno realized now, stay like this, never be young again the way he liked her. “Don’t look so sad, Mom.”

“Darling, will you promise me you’ll cut down? The doctor said this is the beginning of the end. This morning was a warning, don’t you see? Nature’s warning.” She moistened her lips, and the sudden softness of the rouged, lined underlip so close to him was more than Bruno could bear.

He closed his eyes tight shut. If he promised, he would be lying. “Hell, I didn’t get the D. T. s, did I? I never had ‘em.”

“But this is worse. I talked with the doctor. It’s destroying your nerve tissue, he said, and it can kill you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

“Yes, Ma.”