Different Seasons - Stephen King [251]
She told me it was that final, contemptuous 'dear' that brought all her anger to a sudden head. A moment later Mrs Kelly's jaw dropped and her eyes widened as Miss Stansfield, her hands locked together as tightly as links in a steel chain, so tightly she left bruises on herself (they were fading but still perfectly visible when I saw her on 1 September), began to 'locomotive' between her clenched teeth.
It wasn't a funny story, perhaps, but I burst out laughing at the image and Miss Stansfield joined me. Mrs Davidson looked in-to make sure we hadn't gotten into the nitrous oxide, perhaps-and then left again.
'It was all I could think to do,' Miss Stansfield said, still laughing and wiping her streaming eyes with her handkerchief. 'Because at that moment, I saw myself reaching out and simply sweeping those sample bottles of perfume-every one of them-off her desk and onto the floor, which was uncarpeted concrete. I didn't just think it, I saw it! I saw them crashing to the floor and filling the room with such a God-awful mixed stench that the fumigators would have to come.
'I was going to do it; nothing was going to stop me doing it. Then I began to Breathe, and everything was all right. I was able to take the cheque, and the pink slip, and get up, and get out. I wasn't able to thank her, of course- I was still being a locomotive"
We laughed again, and then she sobered.
'It's all passed off now, and I am even able to feel a little sorry for her-or does that sound like a terribly stiff-necked thing to say?'
'Not at all. I think it's an admirable way to be able to feel.'
'May I show you something I bought with my severance pay, Dr McCarron?'
'Yes, if you like.'
She opened her purse and took out a small flat box. 'I bought it at a pawnshop,' she said.
'For two dollars. And it's the only time during this whole nightmare that I've felt ashamed and dirty. Isn't that strange?'
She opened the box and laid it on my desk so I could look inside. I wasn't surprised at what I saw. It was a plain gold wedding ring.
'I'll do what's necessary,' she said. 'I am staying in what Mrs Kelly would undoubtedly call "a respectable boarding house". My landlady has been kind and friendly but Mrs Kelly was kind and friendly, too. I think she may ask me to leave at any time now, and I suspect that if I say anything about the rent-balance due me, or the damage deposit I paid when I moved in, she'll laugh in my face.'
'My dear young woman, that would be quite illegal. There are courts and lawyers to help you answer such -'
The courts are men's clubs,' she said steadily, 'and not apt to go out of their way to befriend a woman in my position. Perhaps I could get my money back, perhaps not.
Either way, the expense and the trouble and the the unpleasantness hardly seem worth the forty-seven dollars or so. I had no business mentioning it to you in the first place. It hasn't happened yet, and maybe it won't. But in any case, I intend to be practical from now on.'
She raised her head, and her eyes flashed at mine.
'I've got my eye on a place down in the Village-just in case. It's on the third floor, but it's clean, and it's five dollars a month cheaper than where I'm staying now.' She picked the ring out of the box. 'I wore this when the landlady showed me the room.'
She put it on the third finger of her left hand with a small moue of disgust of which I believe she was unaware. There. Now I'm Mrs Stansfield. My husband was a truck-driver who was killed on the Pittsburgh-New York run. Very sad. But I am no longer a little roundheels strumpet, and my child is no longer a bastard.'
She looked up at me, and the tears were in her eyes again. As I watched, one of them overspilled and rolled down her cheek.
'Please,' I said, distressed, and reached across the desk to take her hand. It was very, very cold. 'Don't, my dear.'
She turned her hand-it was the left-over in my hand and looked at the ring. She smiled, and that smile was as bitter as gall and vinegar, gentlemen.