Chapter Twenty-­Six

I awakened early that Saturday morning and got up and showered for a long time. Then I opened Duff’s door quietly. He was still sleeping. I went downstairs and began to mix the ingredients for his birthday cake. Around nine he came down, and after I had put the cake in the oven, I made breakfast.

“When we go into town we’ll buy your present,” I said. “What would you like?”

“Let’s get something for all of us, but especially for Franny,” he said. “A television set.”

I agreed and he laughed and clapped his hands. We went to the hospital and afterward to a nearby furniture store where I bought the largest portable color television set the two of us could carry. We took it home and Duff watched part of a football game while I frosted the cake. He was pretending he didn’t know anything about it, and I went along with that, putting the cake in a cupboard before I called him to dinner.

After dinner I went out to the kitchen, lit the seventeen candles on the cake, and brought it into the dining room. He reacted with convincing surprise. Then he blew out the candles and made a wish.

“Do you want to know what I wished for?” he asked.

“The wish won’t come true if you tell it,” I said.

“I’ll take a chance. I wish we could be together like this for always, just the two of us.”

“You know that’s impossible, Duff.”

“Well, for a long time anyway.”

“It can’t even be for very long. You’ll be going away to college next year.”

“Maybe I won’t go.”

“Now you’re being silly. In any case even if you didn’t go to college, you’d go somewhere else. You’d get a job and eventually find a girl and go away.”

He just shook his head and grinned. We didn’t say any more on that subject, but instead moved on to more pleasant things—again the old days in Scarsdale mostly, but I also talked about my girlhood, telling him things I had never told Jack. Lately I’ve been wondering why I didn’t tell him about some of the recent things that had happened to me—the times I had seen the General, for example, and the things that had happened at Mrs. Reddy’s house. Maybe that would have made a difference. Maybe it would have persuaded him to run, to make him make me run.

Anyway, we cleared away the dishes and moved into the front room, where we watched some inane television programs until ten o’clock or so.

Just after he turned off the set Duff said out of the blue, “I’ve done some bad things, I know, Mother, but I didn’t kill Stephanie.”

“All right, Duff, I believe you,” I said.

“Good night, Mother. Thank you for the nice birthday.”

He went upstairs. In a little while I heard him playing his flute—a Bach minuet, I think. Then I went into Jack’s room and got his yellow legal pad, the one he had been using most recently to write his novel. The first page was half filled with his scribbling, but the only thing I could make out was the page number—five hundred and something. I never could read Jack’s handwriting.

I found a ball-­point pen and went out to the kitchen, where I tore off the uncompleted page, crumpled it and threw it away. Then I sat at the kitchen table and wrote some letters of instruction, one to our Scarsdale lawyer, Bill Levitt, and another to my sister Marilyn in Albany.

Jack and I had made wills at the same time, and mine specified that in the event of his preceding me in death the estate should go to the children, with Marilyn as guardian and Bill Levitt as executor. I asked Bill to see that the terms of the will were carried out, and I asked my sister to be loving in the care of my children.

Finally I wrote a note to Duff, asking him not to try to understand what I was doing, but to be assured that it was necessary. I told him to look after his sister and see that she was moved to a good hospital or nursing home near his aunt’s home in Albany. Last, I asked him to have my body cremated—I didn’t want any part of the Caine graveyard, although I didn’t tell him that—and then to go to his aunt’s home immediately and make the arrangements for Franny. For some reason, I had the notion that once I was out of the way, Franny would quickly return to normal. Sometimes I still think that.

Then I went upstairs, got the pills from the drawer where I had hidden them, returned to the kitchen and made myself some cocoa. All together I had twenty-­eight pills, and I thought that many ought to do the job. I put them in the cocoa, and after they had dissolved I tasted the mixture. It was slightly bitter, but not unpleasant. After a couple of more sips it didn’t seem to taste any different from ordinary cocoa.

Then Duff came downstairs again. “I was wondering what you were doing,” he said.

I turned my letters over quickly. “Nothing,” I said. “Getting ready to go to bed.”

“Could I have some cocoa too?” he asked.

“Sure.”

The water was still hot. I made more cocoa in a large cup that matched the one I was using, being careful to take mine with me when I moved away from the table. Then I brought both cups back with me. The one I held in my right hand was the one with the dissolved sleeping medicine. I put both cups on the table, the one with the fresh cocoa in front of Duff. I know that. There is no doubt in my mind at all.

He sipped his cocoa. “Good,” he said.

I don’t remember what I replied, because I was getting sleepy. I closed my eyes for an instant, and when I opened them again General Caine was seated across from me, grinning at me. I screamed, I guess, and jumped up and covered my face, and then Duff was beside me with his arms around me.

“What is it, Mother?” he was saying.

“Nothing, nothing . . .” Why couldn’t I have told him then?

He led me to a chair, the same chair I was sitting in before. And my cup of cocoa was in the same place, or seemed to be.

“Drink up, Mother, and let’s get to bed,” he said. “This whole thing with Dad and Franny has just been too much for you.”

So we drank our cocoa. Mine tasted the same as before. Then we went upstairs together. At my door he gave me a hug.

“I’m really groggy,” he said, smiling. “Hard day, I guess. Good night again, Mama.”

I went into my room, undressed and got into bed and waited for the barbiturates, or whatever they were, to take effect. I remember thinking it a bit strange that Duff hadn’t asked me any questions about what I had been writing.

I lay awake for a long time, thinking after a while that I hadn’t taken enough medication. Then at last I fell asleep and didn’t die, but slept the night through.

In the morning when I remembered what I had tried to do, I was unexplainably glad to be alive. I had been saved, I thought, and maybe that meant my troubles were over. Whatever power had come to my rescue might now move in between me and my enemies.

And I’ll help myself by moving away, I resolved. I’ll do what Father Jackson advised. I’ll take Duff and Franny and go back East. Then I thought of the letters I had left on the kitchen table, got up quickly, put on my robe and went out into the hall.

Duff’s door was ajar. I was going to ignore it and had started down the stairs, but then I wondered if he was up already. I went back to his room and found him on his bed. He hadn’t undressed, hadn’t even taken off his shoes. I touched his hand and I knew.