A Cry In The Night

She went to bed early in the hope that Erich might be more likely to come in if the house was dark. She bathed as she had that first night, only this time she used a handful of pine crystals in the tub. The fragrance of the pine filled the room. She let her hair trail in the water so that it too absorbed the scent. Each morning she rinsed out the aqua gown. Now she put it on, slipped a dry cake of soap under the pillow and looked around the bedroom. Nothing must be out of place, nothing must disturb Erich’s sense of orderliness. The closet doors were closed. She moved the brush of the silver dressing set a half-inch nearer the nail buffer. The shades were drawn exactly even. She folded the cranberry brocade spread over the lace-edged sheets.

At last she got into bed. The walkie-talkie the sheriff had given her that she carried in the pocket of her jeans made a outline under her pillow. She slipped it in the night-table drawer.

Hour by hour she listened as the clock chimed the night away. Please, Erich, come, she thought. She willed him to come. Surely if he were in the house, if he crept down this hallway, the scent of pine would draw him in.

But when the first light of the sun began to filter through the drawn shades, there was still no sign of his presence. Je

Now she had only the hours until the evening news broadcast.

The day was overcast, but when she turned on the radio, them was no forecast of snow. She was not sure how to dress. Erich was so suspicious. If he came upon her in anything other than slacks and a sweater, he might accuse her of expecting another man.

She barely bothered to look in the mirror anymore. This morning she studied herself, saw with shock the prominent cheekbones, the haunted, staring look in her eyes, the way her hair had grown past her shoulders. With a clip, she caught it at the nape of her neck. She recalled the night she had looked in this mirror and, as she wiped away the steam, had seen Erich’s face, Erich’s outstretched hands holding the aqua gown. Her instincts had warned her about him that night but she hadn’t listened.

Downstairs she scrutinized every detail of every room. She washed the surfaces of the kitchen counters and appliances. She’d barely used the kitchen for more than a can of soup these past weeks but Erich wanted everything mirror-bright. In the library, she ran a dustcloth over the bookshelves and noticed that the third shelf, fourth from the end, did have a vacancy, as Erich had said.

How odd that she had resisted truth so long, refused to face the obvious, lost the baby and maybe the girls because she didn’t want to know what Erich was!

Clouds darkened the house at noon; a wind began to blow at three, sending a moaning sound through the chimneys but driving the clouds back so that the late-afternoon sun burst out, shining on the snow-crusted fields, making them glisten as though with warmth. Je

At four she watched the hired men begin to leave, men she’d never really gotten to know. Erich never let them near the house. She never went near them in the fields. The experience with Joe had been enough.

At five o’clock she turned on the radio for the news. The briskly crisp voice of the commentator reported on new budget cuts, another summit meeting in Geneva, the attempted assassination of the new president of Iran. “And now here’s an item just in… The Wellington Trust Fund has just a

Je

Blindly she stumbled out of the kitchen. What could she do? What could she do? Without knowing where she was going, she walked into the parlor. The evening sun was streaming into the room, illuminating Caroline’s portrait. A bleak pity for the woman who had known this same bewildering helplessness made her study the painting: Caroline sitting on the porch, that dark green cape wrapped around her, the tiny tendrils of hair brushing her forehead. The sun setting, the small figure of the boy Erich ru

The figure ru

The sun rays were diffused throughout the room. It would be a brilliant sunset, reds and oranges and purples and charcoal clouds streaked with diamond-tinted light.

The figure ru

Erich was out there somewhere in those woods. Je

The shawl Rooney had made for her… No, it wasn’t large enough, but if she wore something with it… The army blanket that had been Erich’s father’s in the cedar chest? That was almost the same color as Caroline’s cape.

Racing up the two flights of stairs to the attic, she tore open the cedar chest, reached down into it, pushed aside the old World War Two uniforms. On the bottom was the army blanket, khaki-colored but not unlike the shade of the cape. A scissor? She had scissors in the sewing basket.

The sun was getting lower. In a few minutes it would begin to sink…

Downstairs, with trembling hands she cut a hole in the middle of the blanket, a hole just large enough for her head, and drew it around her. Then she pulled the shawl over her shoulders. The blanket fell around her, draped capelike to the floor.

Her hair. It was longer than Caroline’s now, but in the painting Caroline had it loosely drawn up into a Psyche knot. Je

Je

She opened the door and unhurriedly stepped out into the sharp cold air. Closing the door she walked over to the swing, adjusted it so it directly faced the sunset and sat down.

She remembered to shake the shawl so that it folded over the left arm of the swing, as it had in the painting. She tilted her head so that it was at a slight angle to the right. She folded her hands in her lap until the right hand lay encased in the left palm. Then, slowly, very slowly, she began to rock the swing.

The sun slipped out from behind the last cloud. Now it was a fiery ball, low in the heavens, about to slip over the horizon, now it was going down, down, and the sky was diffused with color.

Je

Purples, and pinks and crimsons and oranges, and golds, and the occasional clouds billowing like gossamer, the wind just sharp enough to move the clouds, rustle the pines at the edge of the woods…

Rock, back and forth. Study the sunset. All that matters is the sunset. The little boy will soon run out from the woods to join his mother… Come, little boy. Come, Erich.