Needful Things - Stephen King [88]
Impossible. So let it alone.
Good advice, but hard to swallow. Because of the aspirin bottle.
And the seatbeltMostly it was the seatbelt that hung in the back of Alan's minda small black cloud that simply wouldn't go away. She never drove without buckling it. Not even down to the end of the block and back. Todd had been wearing his, just like always, though. Didn't that mean something? If she had decided, sometime after she had backed down the driveway for the last time, to kill herself and take Todd with her, wouldn't she have insisted that Todd unbuckle his belt as well?
Even hurt, depressed, confused, she wouldn't have wanted Todd to suffer, would she? impossible to say for sure. Let it alone.
Yet even now, lying here in Polly's bed with Polly sleeping beside him, he found it hard advice to take. His mind went back to work on it, like a puppy worrying an old and ragged strip of rawhide with its sharp little teeth.
An image had always come to him at this point, a nightmarish image which had finally driven him to Polly Chalmers, because Polly was the woman Annie had been closest to in town-and, considering the Beaumont business and the psychic toll it had taken on Alan, Polly had probably been there for Annie more than he had during the last few months of her life.
The image was of Annie unbuckling her own seatbelt, jamming the gas pedal to the floor, and taking her hands off the wheel. Taking them off the wheel because she had another job for them in those last few seconds.
Taking them off so she could unbuckle Todd's belt, as well.
That was the image: the Scout roaring down the road at seventy, veering to the right, veering toward the trees under a white March sky that promised rain, while Annie struggled to unbuckle Todd's belt and Todd, screaming and afraid, struggled to beat her hands away. He saw Annie's well-loved face transformed into the hagiike mask of a witch, saw Todd's drawn long with terror. Sometimes he woke in the middle of the night, his body dressed in a clammy jacket of sweat, with Todd's voice ringing in his ears: The trees, Mommy!
Look out for the TREEEES!
So he had gone to see Polly one day at closing time, and asked her if she would come up to the house for a drink, or, if she felt uncomfortable about doing that, if he could come over to her house.
Seated in his kitchen (the right kitchen, the interior voice asserted) with a mug of tea for her and coffee for him, he had begun to speak, slowly and stumblingly, of his nightmare.
"I need to know, if I can, if she was going through periods of depression or irrationality that I either didn't know about or didn't notice," he said. "I need to know if " He stopped, momentarily helpless. He knew what words he needed to say, but it was becoming harder and harder to bring them out. It was as if the channel of communication between his unhappy, confused mind and his mouth was growing smaller and shallower, and would soon be entirely closed to shipping.
He made a great effort and went on.
"I need to know if she was suicidal. Because, you see, it wasn't just Annie who died. Todd died with her, and if there were sighs signs, I mean, signs that I didn't notice, then I am responsible for his death, too. And that's something I feel I have to know."
He had stopped there, his heart pounding dully in his chest.
He wiped a hand over his forehead and was mildly surprised when it came away wet with sweat.
"Alan," she said, and put a hand on his wrist. Her light-blue eyes looked steadily into his. "If I had seen such signs and hadn't told anyone, I would be as guilty as you seem to want to be."
He had gaped at her, he remembered that. Polly might have seen something in Annie's behavior which he had missed; he had gotten that far in his reasoning. The idea that noticing strange behavior conveyed a responsibility to do something about it had never occurred