And this, too, Charley tended to accept, because first of all he wasn’t as quick with his tongue as she — and, in the final analysis, he imagined that since she was more intelligent and educated than he then she must, when they disagreed, be night. He considered her much the same as a book or a newspaper: he might grumble against it, denounce it, but ultimately what it said was true. He had no faith in his own ideas. Like everyone else, he, too, recognized himself as a grade A slob.
Take their friends, for instance. Take the Anteils. Both of them, Gwen and Nat, were obviously university people who shared her interests in cultural and scholarly subjects. Here was a man, another man, not a woman, who showed up and sat around discussing –not business or plowing techniques– but Medieval religious sects. Fay and the Anteils could communicate, and so it became three to one, not one to one. Charley used to listen awhile and then go off to his study to do paper work. This was true not only with the Anteils but with the Fineburgs and the Meritans and all the rest of them — artists, dress-designers, university people who had moved up to Inverness … all of them belonged to her, not him.
(eight)
They took an hour off to fly kites. His got up off the ground and stayed, not falling but not going higher; he ran along the mushy pasture, splashing, unreeling the string, and still his kite stayed up the same height, only now the string was played out, parallel to the ground.
Off beyond the horse’s barn, Fay raced like a water bug across a pond: her feet landed and rose, carrying her at enormous speed. Her kite shot straight up. When she stopped at the fence she turned, and they both saw nothing at first; the kite had gone so high that for a moment neither of them could spot it. The kite was directly above their heads, a true celestial object, launched out of the world’s gravity.
The children screamed to be allowed to take the string of Fay’s kite; they cursed Fay for not letting them fly it, and at the same time they marveled at her success. Admiration and anger… he stood gasping, holding his second-rate kite by its sagging string.
Having given her kite string to the children, Fay walked toward him, her hands in the front pockets of her jeans. Smiling against the mid-day glare she reached him, halted, and said,
“Now let’s put you on the end of a string. And I’ll fly you.”
That filled him with wrath, terrible wrath. But at the same time he felt so winded and spent from the kite-flying that he could not express it; he could not even yell at her. AU he could do was turn his back and without speaking start slowly in the direction of the house.
“What’s the matter?” Fay called. “Are you mad again?”
He still said nothing. He felt depressed, a complete hopelessness. Suddenly he wished he could die; he wished he was dead.
“Can’t you take a joke?” Faysaid, catching up with him. “Say, you look as if you felt sick.” Putting her hand up she touched his forehead, the way she did with the children. “Maybe it’s the flu,” she said. “Why did that upset you?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
“Remember,” she said, going along with him, “that time you had gone into the duck pen to feed the ducks –it must have been the first time you fed them, after we had just gotten them– and I was standing outside the pen watching you, and all of a sudden I said, ‘You know, I think of you as a pet duck; why don’t you stay in there and I’ll feed you.’ Could you have been thinking of that? Did my remark about the kite make you remember that? I know that upset you at the time. It was really a dreadful thing to say; I can’t imagine why I said it. You know I say every kind of thing — I have no control over my tongue.” Catching hold of his arm, she dragged against him, saying, “You know nothing I say means anything. Right? Wrong? Inbetween?”
“Leave me alone,” he said, jerking away.
“Don’t go in,” she said. “Please. At least play badminton with me for a little while… remember, the Anteils are coming over for dinner tonight, so if we don’t play now we won’t get a chance to play — and tomorrow I have to go into the city. So couldn’t we play, just for a minute?”
“I’m too tired,” he said. “I don’t feel well.”
“It’ll do you good,” she said. “Just for a minute.” Passing him, she raced across the field, the patio, and into the house. By the time he had reached the house, there she stood, holding up the badminton rackets and the shuttles.
The two girls appeared, shouting together. “Can’t we play? Where’s the other paddles?” Seeing that Fay had all four rackets, they struggled to get two of them away from her.
In the end they did play. He and Bonnie took one side, with Fay and Elsie on the other. His arms felt so tired that he could barely lift his racket to swat the shuttle. Finally, in running back to get a long one, his weary legs caught together, became rigid, and he tumbled over backward. The children set up a wail and hurried to him; Fay remained where she was, looking on.
“I’m okay,” he said, getting up. But his racket had snapped in half. He stood holding the pieces and trying to get his breath; his chest hurt and bones seemed to be sticking into his lungs.
“There’s one more racket in the house,” Fay said, from the far side of the net. “Remember, Leslie O’Neill brought it over to play, and left it. It’s in the cupboard in the study.”
He started into the house to get it. After a long rummaging about he found it; starting back out again he felt his head swim and his legs wobble like cheap plastic, the junk they use to make free toys, he thought. Toys they give away in cereal packages or hand out in stores … Then he fell forward. As he fell he reached for the ground; he sank his hands into it and clutched it. He tore it up, stuffed it into him, ate it and drank it and breathed it in; he lost his breath, trying to breathe it in — he could not get it inside him, into his lungs. And, after that, he could not do anything.
Next he knew he lay in a big bed, his face and body shaved. His hands, his fingers on the bedsheets, looked like the pink fingers of a pig. I turned into a pig, he thought. They took my hair away and curled what was left; I’ve been squealing now for a long time.
He tried to squeal but all that came out was a rasp.
At that, a figure appeared. His brother-in-law Jack Isidore peering down at him, wearing a cloth jacket and baggy brown pants, a knapsack on his back. His face had been scrubbed.
“You had an occlusion,” Jack said.
“What’s that?” he said, thinking that someone had hit him.
“You had a heart attack,” Jack said, and then he went into a mass of technical details. Presently he went off. A nurse took his place, and then, at last, a doctor.
“How’m I doing?” Charley said. “Pretty robust for an old man. Lots of life in the old frame left. Right?”
“Yes, you’re in good shape,” the doctor said, and left.
By himself, he lay on his back thinking, waiting for someone to come. The doctor eventually returned.
“Listen,” Charley said. “The reason I’m here is that my wife’s responsible. This was her idea from the start. She wants the house and the plant and the only way she can get it is if I die, so she fixed it up so I’d have this heart attack and drop dead according to plan.”
The doctor bent down to listen.
“And I was going to kill her,” he said. “God damn her.”
The doctor departed.
After a long time, evidently several days –he saw the room get dark, then light, then dark, and they shaved him and washed him with warm water and a sponge, and had him urinate, and fed him– several persons entered the room and stood off together talking. At last, beside his bed, Fay appeared.
His wife had on a blue coat and heavy skirt and leotards and her pointed Italian shoes. Her face was orangish and pale, the way it often was early in the morning. Even her eyes were orange, and her hair. Her neck had wrinkles in it, as if her head had twisted back and forth. She carried her big leather purse under her arm, and as she came to the bed he smelled the leather of the purse.