pain barbed into his upper arm. The arm went numb. He sprawled on the floor, writhing in pain. The walls clouded; they welled around him like a blank shroud.
He sat up, breath tearing at his throat. He pushed himself up with a gasp. His arm shot out, he pulled open the cabinet door. It flew open against his cheek, tearing a jagged rip in the soft flesh.
His head snapped back. The crack in the ceiling looked like a wide idiot smile on a blank, white face. He lowered his head, whimpering in fright. He tried to back away.
His hand reached out. For iodine, for gauze!—his mind cried.
His hand came out with the razor.
It flopped in his hand like a new caught fish. His other hand reached in. For iodine, for gauze!—shrieked his mind.
His hand came out with dental floss. It flooded out of the tube like an endless white worm. It coiled around his throat and shoulders. It choked him.
The long shiny blade slipped from its sheath.
He could not stop his hand. It drew the razor heavily across his chest. It slit open the shirt. It sliced a valley through his chest. Blood spurted out.
He tried to hurl away the razor. It stuck to his hand. It slashed at him, at his arms and hands and legs and body.
At his throat.
A scream of utter horror flooded from his lips. He ran from the bathroom, staggering wildly into the living room.
“Sally!” he screamed, “Sally, Sally, Sally…”
The razor touched his throat. The room went black. Pain. Life ebbing away into the night. Silence over all the world.
The next day Dr. Morton came.
He called the police.
And later the coroner wrote in his report:
Died of self-inflicted wounds.
7 – DISAPPEARING ACT
I shouldn’t be writing this. What if Mary found it? Then what? The end, that’s what, five years out the window.
But I have to put it down. I’ve been writing too long. There’s no peace unless I put things on paper. I have to get them out and simplify my mind. But it’s so hard to make things simple and so easy to make them complicated.
Thinking back through the months.
Where did it start? An argument of course. There must have been a thousand of them since we married. And always the same one, that’s the horror.
Money.
“It’s not a question of confidence in your writing,” Mary will say. “It’s a question of bills and are we or aren’t we going to pay them?”
“Bills for what?” I’ll say. “For necessities? No. For things we don’t even need.”
“Don’t need!” And off we go. God, how impossible life is without money. Nothing can overcome it, it’s everything when it’s anything. How can I write in peace with endless worries of money, money, money? The television set, the refrigerator, the washer-none of them paid for yet. And the bed she wants…
But despite all, I-I with wide-eyed idiocy keep making it even worse.
Why did I have to storm out of the apartment that first time? We’d argued, sure, but we’d argued before. Vanity, that’s all. After seven years-
All up to me. An admission of lack, a right move and everything would be solved. No more night work. Mary could stay home the way she wants to, the way she should. The right move, that’s all.
So, I’ve been making the wrong one. God, it makes me sick.
Me, going out with Mike. Both of us glassy-eyed imbeciles meeting Jean and Sally. For months now, pushing aside the obvious knowledge that we were being fools. Losing ourselves in a new experience. Playing the ass to perfection.
And, last night, both of us married men, going with them to their club apartment and…
Can’t I say it? Am I afraid, too weak? Fool!
Adulterer.
How can things get so mixed up? I love Mary. Very much. And yet, even loving her, I did this thing.
And to make it all even more complicated, I enjoyed it. Jean is sweet and understanding, passionate, a sort of symbol of lost things. It was wonderful. I can’t say it wasn’t.
But how can wrong be wonderful? How can cruelty be exhilarating? It’s all perverse, it’s jumbled and confused and enraging.
She’s forgiven me, thank God. I’ll never see Jean again. Everything will be all right.
This morning I went and sat on the bed and Mary woke up. She stared up at me, then looked at the clock. She’d been crying.
“Where have you been?” she asked in that thin little girl’s voice she gets when she’s scared.
“With Mike,” I told her. “We drank and talked all night.”
She stared a second more. Then she took my hand slowly and pressed it against her cheek.
“I’m sorry,” she said and tears came to her eyes.
I had to put my head next to hers so she wouldn’t see my face. “Oh, Mary,” I said. “I’m sorry too.”
I’ll never tell her. She means too much to me. I
We went down to Mandel’s Furniture Mart this afternoon and got a new bed.
“We can’t afford it, honey,” Mary said. “Never mind,” I said. “You know how lumpy the old one is. I want my baby to sleep in style.”
She kissed my cheek happily. She bounced on the bed like an excited kid. “Oh, feel how soft!” she said.
Everything is all right. Everything except the new batch of’ bills in today’s mail. Everything except for my latest story which won’t get started. Everything except for my novel which has bounced five times. Burney House
Well, Mary’s all right.
More trouble. Another argument. I don’t even know what it was about. She’s sulking. I’m burning. I can’t write when I’m upset. She knows that.
I feel like calling Jean. At least
