Gerald's Game(11)
No answer. No movement. She could feel that deep homesick dismay again, welling and welling, like an unstanched wound.
"Gerald?" she whispered again.
Why are you whispering? He's dead. The man who once surprised youwith a weekend trip to Aruba-Aruba, of all places-and once woreyour alligator shoes on his ears at a New Year's Eve partythatman is dead. So just why in the hell are you whispering?
"Gerald!" This time she screamed his name. "Gerald, wake up!"
The sound of her own screaming voice almost sent her into another panicky, convulsive interlude, and the scariest part wasn't Gerald's continued failure to move or respond; it was the realization that the panic was still there, still right there, restlessly circling her conscious mind as patiently as a predator might circle the guttering campfire of a woman who has somehow wandered away from her friends and gotten lost in the deep, dark fastnesses of the woods.
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'mhandcuffed to the bed. I can scream until I turn blue and it won't do meany good; no one's going to hear. The guy with the chainsaw is probablythe closest, and he's at least four miles away. He might even be onthe other side of the lake. The dog would probably hear me, but the dogis almost certainly a stray. Gerald's dead, and that's a shame-I nevermeant to kill him, if that's what I did-but at least it was relativelyquick for him. It won't he quick for me; if no one in Portland starts toworry about us, and there's no real reason why anyone should, at leastfor 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 didkill him, Jessie. You can't kid yourself about that, because I won't letyou. I'm sure he wasn't in very good shape, and I'm sure it would havehappened sooner or later, anyway-a heart attack at the office, or maybein the turnpike passing lane on his way home some night, him with acigarette in his hand, trying to light it, and a big ten-wheeler behindhim, honking for him to get the hell back over into the right-hand laneand 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. Youcouldn't just lie there and let him shoot his squirt, could you? CosmoGirl Jessie Burlingame says "No man chains me down." You had to kickhim in the guts and the nuts, didn't you? And you had to do it whilehis 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, handcuffedto 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 tits, old girl! And if they aren'tenough 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.