His foot scraped across the floor. “I’m not paralyzed,” he said. “Thank God for that. But it hurts.”
“I know, honey.”
“Call the ambulance! Hurry!”
She went into the kitchen, spared a brief glance for the phone in its charger-cradle, then opened the cabinet under the sink. “Hello? Hello? Is this 911?” She took out the box of plastic GLAD bags, the storage-size ones she used for the leftovers when they had chicken or roast beef, and pulled one from the box. “This is Darcellen Anderson, I’m calling from 24 Sugar Mill Lane, in Yarmouth! Have you got that?”
From another drawer, she took a dishwiper from the top of the pile. She was still crying. Nose like a firehose, they’d said when they were kids. Crying was good. She needed to cry, and not just because it would look better for her later on. He was her husband, he was hurt, she needed to cry. She remembered when he still had a full head of hair. She remembered his flashy breakaway move when they danced to “Footloose.” He brought her roses every year on her birthday. He never forgot. They had gone to Bermuda, where they rode bikes in the morning and made love in the afternoon. They had built a life together and now that life was over and she needed to cry. She wrapped the dishwiper around her hand and then stuffed her hand into the plastic bag.
“I need an ambulance, my husband fell down the stairs. I think his neck might be broken. Yes! Yes! Right away!”
She walked back into the hall with her right hand behind her back. She saw he had pulled himself away from the foot of the stairs a little, and it looked like he’d tried to turn over on his back, but at that he hadn’t been successful. She knelt down beside him.
“I didn’t fall,” he said. “You pushed me. Why did you push me?”
“I guess for the Shaverstone boy,” she said, and brought her hand out from behind her back. She was crying harder than ever. He saw the plastic bag. He saw the hand inside clutching the wad of toweling. He understood what she meant to do. Perhaps he had done something like it himself. Probably he had.
He began screaming… only the screams weren’t really screams at all. His mouth was filled with blood, something had broken inside of his throat, and the sounds he produced were more guttural growls than screams. She jammed the plastic bag between his lips and deep inside his mouth. He had broken a number of teeth in the fall, and she could feel the jagged stumps. If they tore into her skin, she might have some serious explaining to do.
She yanked her hand free before he could bite, leaving the plastic bag and the dishwiper behind. She grabbed his jaw and chin. The other hand she put on top of his balding head. The flesh there was very warm. She could feel it throbbing with blood. She jammed his mouth shut on the wad of plastic and cloth. He tried to beat her off, but he only had one arm free, and that was the one that had been broken in the fall. The other was twisted beneath him. His feet paddled jerkily back and forth on the hardwood floor. One of his shoes came off. He was gurgling. She yanked her dress up to her waist, freeing her legs, then lunged forward, trying to straddle him. If she could do that, maybe she could pinch his nostrils shut.
But before she could try, his chest began to heave beneath her, and the gurgles became a deep grunting in his throat. It reminded her of how, when she was learning to drive, she would sometimes grind the transmission trying to find second gear, which was elusive on her father’s old Chevrolet standard. Bob jerked, the one eye she could see bulging and cowlike in its socket. His face, which had been a bright crimson, now began to turn purple. He settled back onto the floor. She waited, gasping for breath, her face lathered with snot and tears. The eye was no longer rolling, and no longer bright with panic. She thought he was d Bob gave one final, titanic jerk and flung her off. He sat up, and she saw his top half no longer exactly matched his bottom half; he had broken his back as well as his neck, it seemed. His plastic-lined mouth yawned. His eyes met hers in a stare she knew she would never forget… but one she could live with, should she get through this.
“Dar! Arrrrrr!”
He fell backward. His head made an egglike cracking sound on the floor. Darcy crawled closer to him, but not close enough to be in the mess. She had his blood on her, of course, and that was all right—she had tried to help him, it was only natural—but that didn’t mean she wanted to bathe in it. She sat up, propped on one hand, and watched him while she waited for her breath to come back. She watched to see if he would move. He didn’t. When five minutes had gone by according to the little jeweled Michele on her wrist—the one she always wore when they went out—she reached a hand to the side of his neck and felt for a pulse there. She kept her fingers against his skin until she had counted all the way to thirty, and there was nothing. She lowered her ear to his chest, knowing this was the moment where he would come back to life and grab her. He didn’t come back to life because there was no life left in him: no beating heart, no breathing lungs. It was over. She felt no satisfaction (let alone triumph) but only a focused determination to finish this and do it right. Partly for herself, but mostly for Donnie and Pets.
She went into the kitchen, moving fast. They had to know she’d called as soon as she could; if they could tell there had been a delay (if his blood had a chance to coagulate too much, for instance), there might be awkward questions. I’ll tell them I fainted, if I have to, she thought. They’ll believe that, and even if they don’t, they can’t disprove it. At least, I don’t think they can.
She got the flashlight from the pantry, just as she had on the night when she had literally stumbled over his secret. She went back to where Bob lay, staring up at the ceiling with his glazed eyes. She pulled the plastic bag out of his mouth and examined it anxiously. If it was torn, there could be problems… and it was, in two places. She shone the flashlight into his mouth and spotted one tiny scrap of GLAD bag on his tongue. She picked it out with the tips of her fingers and put it in the bag.
Enough, that’s enough, Darcellen.
But it wasn’t. She pushed his cheeks back with her fingers, first the right, then the left. And on the left side she found another tiny scrap of plastic, stuck to his gum. She picked that out and put it in the bag with the other one. Were there more pieces? Had he swallowed them? If so, they were beyond her reach and all she could do was pray they wouldn’t be discovered if someone—she didn’t know who—had enough questions to order an autopsy.
Meanwhile, time was passing.
She hurried through the breezeway and into the garage, not quite running. She crawled under the worktable, opened his special hiding place, and stowed away the blood-streaked plastic bag with the dishwiper inside. She closed the hidey-hole, put the carton of old catalogues in front of it, then went back into the house. She put the flashlight where it belonged. She picked up the phone, realized she had stopped crying, and put it back into its cradle. She went through the living room and looked at him. She thought about the roses, but that didn’t work. It’s roses, not patriotism, that are the last resort of a scoundrel, she thought, and was shocked to hear herself laugh. Then she thought of Donnie and Petra, who had both idolized their father, and that did the trick. Weeping, she went back to the kitchen phone and punched in 911. “Hello, my name is Darcellen Anderson, and I need an ambulance at—”
“Slow down a little, ma’am,” the dispatcher said. “I’m having trouble understanding you.”
Good, Darcy thought.
She cleared her throat. “Is this better? Can you understand me?”
“Yes, ma’am, I can now. Just take it easy. You said you needed an ambulance?”
“Yes, at 24 Sugar Mill Lane.”
“Are you hurt, Mrs. Anderson?”
“Not me, my husband. He fell down the stairs. He might only be unconscious, but I think he’s dead.”
The dispatcher said she would send an ambulance immediately. Darcy surmised she’d also send a Yarmouth police car. A state police car as well, if one were currently in the area. She hoped there wasn’t. She went back into the front hall and sat on the bench there, but not for long. It was his eyes, looking at her. Accusing her.