A Cup of Tea - Amy Ephron [41]
He stood there looking at her. “I think you are the one who ought to sit down, Rose,” he said finally. They both continued to stand.
She knew what he was going to tell her.
“I can’t—I can’t live here anymore, Rose,” he said.
“What do you think of New Orleans?” she asked immediately. “I hear it’s a nice—” But she realized this wasn’t going to play, it wasn’t the city he was referring to. “It isn’t true, Philip.” She turned on him. She knew she sounded hysterical. “It isn’t true, Philip.” She took a deep breath. “We—we ought to have gone away when you got back. We needed some time away. We never had a honeymoon.” She knew she sounded desperate but it didn’t matter to her.
“Don’t do this, Rose,” he said. “It isn’t you. Since I’ve been back I’ve—your life is perfect, Rose. It’s me that doesn’t fit into it.”
“Did I do something…?” she asked almost as if she hadn’t heard anything he’d said to her. “I—can change. I can be anything you want me to be. It—isn’t true, Philip.”
“Since I’ve been back, I’ve tried,” he said. “Maybe I haven’t tried as hard as I should have…”
He reached out to touch her hair and somehow the softness of the act infuriated her, as though it were evidence to her that he did love her. “It isn’t true,” she said again.
But he went on. “But your life—our life would never have made either of us happy.”
She walked away from him. She walked over to the vanity and looked at herself in the mirror. Her voice got deeper. “I know I can be cold,” she said. “Sometimes I’m so involved in—I’ll be better, Philip.”
“It isn’t any use, Rose,” he said. “There isn’t anything you can do. I’ve fallen in love with someone else.”
“You just think you have,” she said and the sound of her own voice frightened her. She hardly heard the next few things he said to her.
“I know it isn’t fair…”
“I know you think I can take care of myself,” she interrupted him.
“I know I made a vow to you,” he said.
She spoke on top of him. “I know you think I don’t need anything. But it isn’t true. When I thought you were—” She was hysterical now, “but I knew you were never. I knew you were coming back to me.” And then she was almost screaming. “What makes you think that she can make you happy? She can’t make you happy. Because she needs you to take care of her?”
She’d gone too far for Philip. He turned to go.
And she went after him. “What makes her think that she can have what’s mine!” Her left hand closed over the handle of the letter opener on the vanity. “She can’t have what’s mine.”
She touched him on the shoulder and when he turned, in one swift motion, in a mixture of rage and anger so precise that her aim and movement were unavoidable as he raised his arm to defend himself a moment too late, she stabbed him in the throat.
He gasped as his hand went to his throat and then fell to the floor.
From downstairs, she heard the sound of the front door closing as the first of the guests arrived. And the beginning strains of piano music from the party below.
The piano music was sedate, a little bit romantic. None of the guests thought that it was odd that neither Philip or Rosemary had come down, they were often late for their own engagements. Teddy was in a fabulous mood. He had a new suit on and he couldn’t keep his feet from dancing. He turned to his wife, Sarah, and said, “I can’t believe you don’t know the Castle Walk.” He gestured to the piano player to start it up and set his champagne glass on the mantel and demonstrated a few steps, then took Sarah by the waist and started to “walk” her about the room. Always game, she picked it up at once. Everyone was laughing. The music got a little louder. And then Rosemary opened the door to the parlor. Teddy and Sarah stopped dancing almost as if they were frozen in their spot. There was blood on Rosemary’s dress and where her hand touched the wall, was a stain of blood, as well. She stood there framed in the doorway. “Mr. Alsop,” she said, “Philip, will not be joining us for dinner.”
It was Jane who went upstairs and found his body lying on the floor.
Teddy had the presence