Resume Speed and Other Stories

Dead to the World

Ellen drove home from the Spragues’ house. Roy had first attempted to do the driving himself, but he let himself be talked out of it; he had a tendency to wrap his car around a tree after parties. So Ellen drove, and he sprawled upon the seat beside her, his head tossed back at an awkward angle.

It had been a usual sort of party, with Roy cast as the life of it. He told all the jokes, kissed all the women, and drank almost all of the Scotch. All of the men laughed loudly at his jokes and said what a great fellow he was, telling themselves all the while that they were damned glad they didn’t drink the way Roy Farrell did. The women flirted with Roy and pitied Ellen with their eyes, thanking the stars for their own husbands all the while. Throughout the evening, Ellen played the role of the wife who loved her husband dearly in spite of his faults, faults which became progressively more obvious as the night moved onward.

Roy Farrell was the third husband whom she had loved in spite of his faults. Ellen seemed to be accident-prone in a very special way. She kept marrying alcoholics. She had married Fred Land first, had lived with him for five intoxicating years, during which all her friends wondered to themselves and to one another how she could possibly stand it. He died, and she married Arnold Beadle, and Arnold Beadle drank twice as much as Fred ever drank. For three more years her friends wondered how she stood him, until he dropped dead after an especially exuberant debauch.

Now she was married to Roy Farrell, a florid-faced red-eyed man who made both her late husbands look like teetotalers, and by now her friends had given up wondering. Evidently Ellen had a compulsion about alcoholics; she married them as other women adopted stray cats.

Odd, too, because Ellen herself never touched a drop. She never lectured her husbands, never dragged them bodily to temperance meetings, never opened precious bottles to pour their contents down the drain. She merely endured.

“Fine wife for any man,” Roy said suddenly. He sat up and peered around vacantly. “My girl,” he said.

“Try to rest, dear.”

“Ummm,” Roy said thoughtfully. He closed his eyes and passed out again.

Ellen drove her car into the driveway, opened her door, and walked around the car to open the door on Roy’s side. It took her a moment to get him on his feet. He finally draped a limp arm around her neck and let her guide him into the house. She eased him into an armchair and went around the living room putting on lights.

“Don’t feel good,” Roy Farrell said.

“We’d better get to bed, dear.”

“Want a drink,” Roy Farrell said.

“And then will you go to bed?”

“Ummm,” he said.

She found an open bottle of Scotch in the dining room cabinet and poured him a double shot. She started toward the living room, then stopped, set the glass down, and went to the medicine chest. When she came back with the glass of liquor in one hand and a pill in the other he was staring ahead blindly, his jaws slack.

“I think you ought to take a sedative tonight,” she said.

He took the pill from her, examined it. He said, “What is it?”

“Just phenobarbital, dear.”

“Stuff you take?”

“That’s right.”

“ ’Cause you’re nervous is why you got to take it. I make you nervous, Ellie?”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “Take your pill and drink your drink. You’ll get a good might’s sleep for a change.”

“Ummm,” he said. He took his pill and drank his drink. She took a phenobarbital tablet for herself and washed it down with two tall glasses of tap water. Then she helped Roy into the bedroom, undressed him, got him into bed. She hung his clothes neatly in his closet. By the time she lay in bed at his side, he was already snoring lightly. She closed her eyes and let the sedative take hold of her and whisk her off to sleep.

In the morning when Ellen awoke she lay still for several minutes with her face pressed to her pillow. The room was very silent. She listened for ragged breathing or heavy snoring and heard neither. Some mornings a bad hangover woke Roy early, sent him stumbling out of the house or kept him noisily ill in the bathroom. She yawned luxuriously, then rolled over onto her side.

Roy was there, sprawled on his back, his hands at his sides, his mouth open, his eyes shut. He looked infinitely peaceful. She smiled at him, then continued to stare at him while her smile faded and died. She put a hand over her own heart and felt it pounding furiously. She reached to touch Roy. He did not seem to be breathing.

She grabbed his wrist, felt for a pulse. There was none. She crouched over him and pressed an ear against his bare chest; she could not hear his heart beating.

Ellen forced herself to sit back, tried to make her own heart slow down by pure force of will. It hammered madly. With one hand still pressed to her chest, she turned in the bed and reached slowly for the telephone.

The doctor had a long face and sad eyes. He stirred the cup of coffee Ellen had made for him but did not drink it. Ellen sat across the breakfast table. She was calm now, he had given her a shot of something, and her nerves had ceased to be a problem.

“He was perfectly all right last night,” she said her voice oddly steady. “When I woke up, I thought he was sleeping, but he was—”

The doctor nodded gently. “Unusual,” he said. “But men who drink the way Roy Farrell drank, they kill themselves by inches. The human body is a wonderful machine. It can take all kinds of punishment. But like any machine, sooner or later it breaks down.” He shook his head. “Heart failure, I’m afraid. It couldn’t have been hard for him. He simply died in his sleep.”

Ellen shivered.

“And yet it’s surprising,” the doctor continued. “I saw Roy just two months ago, gave him a complete physical, EKG and all. I told him he could look forward to liver trouble within the next five years if he didn’t cut back on his drinking. But his heart was sound. Of course you can never tell with an alcoholic. They do horrible things to their bodies. Roy’s heart, though — I never expected trouble from that area just now.”

Ellen said nothing. The doctor stirred his coffee, raised the cup to his lips. Then he put it down abruptly.

“Would you object to an autopsy?”

“Why? Is it—”

“Necessary? I don’t suppose so. I’m curious, though. I wouldn’t order an autopsy against your wishes, Ellen, but—”

He let the sentence trail off. She looked at him vacantly. “If you think it’s important,” she said.

“It might be.” He actually sipped the coffee this time. “Roy had a lot to drink last night, didn’t he?”

“We were at a party. Ken and Mary Sprague.”

“That answers that question. Did he exert himself especially? Take any drugs, stuff himself with food? Sit in the car with the motor running? Anything?”

Her eyes narrowed. “No,” she said finally. “We came home, he had one drink before bed, I made him take something to help him sleep—”

“What?”

“Phenobarbital,” she said. “I take it myself quite frequently, it’s just a mild... Is something wrong?”

“Drugs,” the doctor said heavily.

“I don’t—”

“People should be told these things,” the doctor said. “A drug that’s perfectly safe in one instance is dynamite in combination with other ingredients. Phenobarb’s a perfect example. Mild, safe, effective — unless you’ve got a load of alcohol in your bloodstream. Then it can easily be fatal.”

“Oh, my God!”

“Ellen—”

“I made him take it,” she said. “I thought it would help him relax, and I wanted him to get a good night’s sleep. I made him take it!”

He took her hand.

“I killed Roy,” she said.

“Easy now,” he said. It took him a few moments to calm her down. “You couldn’t know,” he kept saying. “People don’t know these things. They should, but they don’t. Some people take nitroglycerine for angina. With a certain body chemistry, alcohol and nitroglycerine can combine to produce a type of temporary insanity, a very violent form. There are dozens of combinations like that. You couldn’t be expected to know, Ellen. You did nothing wrong!”

She was crying.

“And he’d have drunk himself to death soon enough anyway. Don’t blame yourself, Ellen.”

“I was just trying to help him,” she said.

“I know.”

After the doctor left she spent a long time sitting in her chair and gazing off into space. The future yawned before her. Roy’s funeral, a black dress neatly accenting her graveside pallor, her hands locked together, her mouth quite grim. She would have to endure their pity. Poor Ellen, all alone, but she’s better of this way, better without him than with him.

She would mourn Roy, and then she would live her life alone, and then she would marry again. She knew in advance the sort of man she would pick. Another of the hollow ones, another of the sort that measure out their live in shot glasses. She would marry such a man, and her friends would shake their heads and begin to pity her once again.

She would care for that new husband. She would fetch him bottles when his supply ran out. She would laugh at his jokes, she would hold his hand, she would drive home from parties and tuck him tenderly into bed. And she would see that he never, never, never took phenobarbital.

Something else would do as well.