He nodded.
"Ray was her doctor, and if it was there, he didn't see it. I was her friend, and if it was there, I didn't see it. You were her husband, and if it was there, you didn't see it, either. And you think that's all, that's the end of the line, but it's not."
"I don't understand what you're getting at."
"Someone else was close to her," Polly had said. "Someone closer than either of us, I imagine."
"Who are you talking ah-"
"Alan, what did Todd say?"
He could only gaze at her, not understanding. He felt as if she had spoken a word in a foreign tongue.
"Todd," she said, sounding impatient. "Todd, your son. The one who keeps you awake nights. It is him, isn't it? Not her, but him."
"Yes," he said. "Him." His voice came out high and unsteady, something starting to shift not like his own voice at all, and he felt inside him, something large and fundamental. Now, lying here in Polly's bed, he could remember that moment at his kitchen table with almost supernatural clarity: her hand on his wrist in a slanting bar of late-afternoon sun, the hairs a fine spun gold; her light eyes; her gentle relentlessness.
"Did she force Todd into the car, Alan? Was he kicking?
Screaming? Fighting her?"
"No, of course not, but she was his m-"
"Whose idea was it for Todd to go with her to the market that day? Hers or his? Can you remember?"
He started to say no, but suddenly he did. Their voices, floating in from the living room, as he sat at his desk, going through county warrant-orders: Gotta run down to the market, Todd-you want to come?
Can I look at the new video-tapes?
I guess so. Ask your father if he wants anything.
"It was her idea," he told Polly.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. But she asked him. She didn't tell him."
That thing inside, that fundamental thing, was still movlonugt. oltf the ground when it did, for its roots were planted b t was going to fall, he thought, and it would rip almighoythhedelep and wide.
"Was he scared of her?"
Now she was almost cross-examining him, the way he had crossexamined Ray Van Allen, but he seemed helpless to make her stop.
I Nor was he sure he wanted to. There was something here, all right, something that had never occurred to him on his long nights.
Something that was still alive.
"Todd scared of Annie? God, no!"
"Not in the last few months they were alive?"
"No."
"In the last few weeks?"
"Polly, I wasn't in much condition to observe things then. There was this thing that happened with Thad Beaumont, the writer... this crazy thing-"
"Are you saying you were so out Of it you never noticed Annie and Todd when they were around, or that you weren't at home much, anyway?"
"No... yes... I mean of course I was home, but-" It was an odd feeling, being on the receiving end of these rapid fire questions. It was as if Polly had doped him with Novocain and then started using him for a punching bag. And that fundamental thing, whatever it was, was still in motion, still rolling out toward the boundary where gravitation would begin working not to hold it up but to pull it down.
"Did Todd ever come to you and say 'I'm scared of Mommy'?"
"No-"
"Did he ever come and say 'daddy, I think Mommy's planning to kill herself, and take me along for company'?"
"Polly, that's ridiculous! I-"
"Did he?"
"No!"
"Did he ever even say she was acting or talking funny?"
"No-"
"And Al was away at school, right?"
"What does that have to do with-"
"She had one child left in the nest. When you were gone, working, it was just the two of them in that nest. She ate supper with him, helped him with his homework, watched TV with him-"
"Read to him-" he said. His voice was blurred, strange.
He hardly recognized it.
"She was probably the first person Todd saw each morning and the last person he saw at night," Polly said. Her hand lay on his wrist. Her eyes looked earnestly into his. "If anyone was in a position to see it coming, it was the person who died with her. And that person never said a word."
Suddenly the thing inside fell. His face began to work. He could feel it happening-it was as if strings had been attached to it in a score of different places, and each was now being tugged by a gentle but insistent hand. Heat flooded his throat and tried to close it.
Heat flooded his face. His eyes filled with tears; Polly Chalmers doubled, trebled, and then broke into prisms of light and image.
His chest heaved but his lungs seemed to find no air. His hand turned over with that scary quickness he had and clamped on hersit must have hurt her terribly, but she made no sound. "I miss her!" he cried out at Polly, and a great, painful sob broke the words into a pair of gasps- "I miss them both, ah, God, how I miss them both!"