of dozed off. Couldn’t have been for much more than fifteen minutes, but when I woke up again I knew
something else. That old woman wanted me to eat his stuff, and I couldn’t do that if he went back to
Birmingham. So she got into the room service kitchen and put that mushroom on his tray and he ate part of it
and it gave him that idea. Turned out to be a book, in case you’re interested – Boys in the Mist, it was called.
It was about just what he told me that day, twin brothers, one of them an American soldier and the other a
German one ‘ that meet at the Battle of the Bulge. The critics didn’t like it as well as Blaze of Heaven, but the
people who go out and buy books surely must have liked it, because it was the biggest seller he ever had.”
She paused and added, “I read that in his obituary.”
19
“He stayed another week. Every day when I went in he’d be bent over the desk in the parlor, writing away on
one of his yellow pads, still wearing his pajamas. I’d ask him if he wanted me to come back later and he’d tell
me to go ahead and make up the bedroom but be quiet about it. Never looking up from his writing while he
talked. Each day I went in telling myself that this time I wasn’t going to do it, and each day I went ahead and
did it just the same. It wasn’t like fighting a – what do you call it? – a compulsion. It was more like blinking for
a minute and finding out you’d already done it. Or were doing it. He never came in, and the come was always
on the sheet, still partly wet, like he woke up at exactly the same time every morning and pulled off at exactly
the same time. I had no doubt then and no doubt now that was exactly what he did. He had my
morning-sickness and I had his night-sweats.
“It was at night I’d really start thinking about what I was doing, and I’d start to spit and drink water and then
I’d go down to the bathroom and throw up once or twice. Mrs Parker got so concerned that I finally told her it
was because I was pregnant, only she wasn’t to tell Johnny because I wasn’t sure how he’d take it.
“Johnny Rosewall was one self-centered son of a bitch, but I think even he would have known something
was wrong with me if he hadn’t had things of his own to think about – him and a couple of his no-good friends
were planning a liquor store holdup. He didn’t even have much time to knock me around. I knew by then I’d
have to leave him, but I just didn’t have the strength to do it. I was still living behind that glass wall, it felt like.
“Then I let myself into 1163 one morning and Mr Jefferies was gone. He’d packed his bags and headed back
to Alabama to work on his book and think about his war. Oh, Delores, I can’t tell you how happy I felt! I felt
the way Lazarus must have felt when he found out he was going to have a second turn at the bat. All at once
it seemed like everything might turn out all right after all, like in a story – I would tell Johnny about the baby
and he would straighten up, throw out his dope, and get a regular job. He’d be a proper husband to me and a
good father to his son – I was already sure it was going to be a boy.
‘I went into the bedroom of Mr Jefferies’s suite and seen the bedclothes all messed up like they always were
when he was there, the blankets kicked off the end and the sheet all tangled up in a ball. I walked over there
feeling like I was in a dream again and pulled the sheet back. I was thinking, Well, all right, if I have to but it’s