QUIET HORROR
Alfred Hitchcock once said that suspense is letting your audience know there is a live bomb under someone’s chair, and then talking about baseball. To create supernatural terror, one must never let the reader actually meet the demon in the closet or the monster in the attic. As to quiet horror, this can only grow from a perversion of the commonplace, a distortion of the ordinary. A restaurant which specializes in a frightful entrée, for instance, as in Stanley Ellin’s first published story. Or a classroom where angelic-faced children resort to obscene threats as in “Robert”—where the final paragraph gives its own sudden glimpse into unsuspected hells. Mr. Ellin is the recipient of three Edgars; his work, as epitomized by such connoisseurs’ novels as The Eighth Circle and Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, consistently blurs the line between popular entertainment and lasting literature. - J.G.
The windows of the sixth-grade classroom were wide open to the June afternoon, and through them came all the sounds of the departing school: the thunder of bus motors warming up, the hiss of gravel under running feet, the voices raised in cynical fervor.
“So we sing all hail to thee,
District Schoo-wull Number Three...”
Miss Gildea flinched a little at the last high, shrill note, and pressed her fingers to her aching forehead. She was tired, more tired than she could ever recall being in her thirty-eight years of teaching, and, as she told herself, she had reason to be. It had not been a good term, not good at all, what with the size of the class, and the Principal’s insistence on new methods, and then her mother’s shocking death coming right in the middle of everything.
Perhaps she had been too close to her mother, Miss Gildea thought; perhaps she had been wrong, never taking into account that someday the old lady would have to pass on and leave her alone in the world. Well, thinking about it all the time didn’t make it any easier. She should try to forget.
And, of course, to add to her troubles, there had been during the past few weeks this maddening business of Robert. He had been a perfectly nice boy, and then, out of a clear sky, had become impossible. Not bothersome or noisy really, but sunk into an endless daydream from which Miss Gildea had to sharply jar him a dozen times a day.
She turned her attention to Robert, who sat alone in the room at the desk immediately before her, a thin boy with neatly combed, colorless hair bracketed between large ears; mild blue eyes in a pale face fixed solemnly on hers.
“Robert.”
“Yes, Miss Gildea.”
“Do you know why I told you to remain after school, Robert?”
He frowned thoughtfully at this, as if it were some lesson he was being called on for, but had failed to memorize properly.
“I suppose for being bad,” he said at last.
Miss Gildea sighed.
“No, Robert, that’s not it at all. I know a bad boy when I see one, Robert, and you aren’t one like that. But I do know there’s something troubling you, something on your mind, and I think I can help you.”
“There’s nothing bothering me, Miss Gildea. Honest, there isn’t.”
Miss Gildea found the silver pencil thrust into her hair and tapped it in a nervous rhythm on her desk.
“Oh, come, Robert. During the last month every time I looked at you your mind was a million miles away. Now, what is it? Just making plans for vacation, or, perhaps, some trouble with the boys?”
“I’m not having trouble with anybody, Miss Gildea.”
“You don’t seem to understand, Robert, that I’m not trying to punish you for anything. Your homework is good. You’ve managed to keep up with the class, but I do think your inattentiveness should be explained. What, for example, were you thinking this afternoon when I spoke to you directly for five minutes, and you didn’t hear a word I said?”
“Nothing, Miss Gildea.”
She brought the pencil down sharply on the desk. “There must have been something, Robert. Now, I must insist that you think back, and try to explain yourself.”
Looking at his impassive face, she knew that somehow she herself had been put on the defensive, that if any means of graceful retreat were offered now, she would gladly take it. Thirty-eight years, she thought grimly, and I’m still trying to play mother hen to ducklings. Not that there wasn’t a bright side to the picture. Thirty-eight years passed meant only two more to go before retirement, the half-salary pension, the chance to putter around the house, tend to the garden properly. The pension wouldn’t buy you furs and diamonds, sure enough, but it could buy the right to enjoy your own home for the rest of your days instead of a dismal room in the County Home for Old Ladies. Miss Gildea had visited the County Home once, on an instructional visit, and preferred not to think about it.
“Well, Robert,” she said wearily, “have you remembered what you were thinking?”
“Yes, Miss Gildea.”
“What was it?”
“I’d rather not tell, Miss Gildea.”
“I insist!”
“Well,” Robert said gently, “I was thinking I wished you were dead, Miss Gildea. I was thinking I wished I could kill you.”
Her first reaction was simply blank incomprehension. She had been standing not ten feet away when that car had skidded up on the sidewalk and crushed her mother’s life from her, and Miss Gildea had neither screamed nor fainted. She had stood there dumbly, because of the very unreality of the thing. Just the way she stood in court where they explained that the man got a year in jail, but didn’t have a dime to pay for the tragedy he had brought about. And now the orderly ranks of desks before her, the expanse of blackboard around her, and Robert’s face in the midst of it all were no more real. She found herself rising from her chair, walking toward Robert, who shrank back, his eyes wide and panicky, his elbow half lifted, as if to ward off a blow.
‘‘Do you understand what you’ve just said?” Miss Gildea demanded hoarsely.
“No, Miss Gildea! Honest, I didn’t mean anything.”
She shook her head unbelievingly. “Whatever made you say it? Whatever in the world could make a boy say a thing like that, such a wicked, terrible thing!”
“You wanted to know! You kept asking me!”
The sight of that protective elbow raised against her cut as deep as the incredible words had.
“Put that arm down!” Miss Gildea said shrilly, and then struggled to get her voice under control. “In all my years I’ve never struck a child, and I don’t intend to start now!”
Robert dropped his arm and clasped his bands together on his desk, and Miss Gildea, looking at the pinched white knuckles, realized with surprise that her own hands were shaking uncontrollably. ‘‘But if you think this little matter ends here, young-feller-me-lad,” she said, “you’ve got another thought coming. You get your things together, and we’re marching right up to Mr. Harkness. He’ll be very much interested in all this.”
Mr. Harkness was the Principal. He had arrived only the term before, and but for his taste in eyeglasses (the large, black-rimmed kind which, Miss Gildea privately thought, looked actorish) and his predilection for the phrase “modern pedagogical methods” was, in her opinion, a rather engaging young man.
He looked at Robert’s frightened face and then at Miss Gildea’s pursed lips. “Well,” he said pleasantly, “what seems to be the trouble here?”
“That,” said Miss Gildea, “is something I think Robert should tell you about.”
She placed a hand on Robert’s shoulder, but he pulled away and backed slowly toward Mr. Harkness, his breath coming in loud, shuddering sobs, his eyes riveted on Miss Gildea as if she were the only thing in the room beside himself. Mr. Harkness put an arm around Robert and frowned at Miss Gildea.
“Now, what’s behind all this, Miss Gildea? The boy seems frightened to death.”
Miss Gildea found herself sick of it all, anxious to get out of the room, away from Robert. “That’s enough, Robert,” she commanded. “Just tell Mr. Harkness exactly what happened.”
“I said the boy was frightened to death, Miss Gildea,” Mr. Harkness said brusquely. “We’ll talk about it as soon as he understands we’re his friends. Won’t we, Robert?”
Robert shook his head vehemently. “I didn’t do anything bad! Miss Gildea said I didn’t do anything bad!”
“Well, then!” said Mr. Harkness triumphantly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, is there?”
Robert shook his head again. “She said I had to stay in after school.”
Mr. Harkness glanced sharply at Miss Gildea. “I suppose he missed the morning bus, is that it? And after I said in a directive that the staff was to make allowances—”
“Robert doesn’t use a bus,” Miss Gildea protested. “Perhaps I’d better explain all this, Mr. Harkness. You see—”
“I think Robert’s doing very well,” Mr. Harkness said, and tightened his arm around Robert, who nodded shakily.
“She kept me in,” he said, “and then when we were alone, she came up close to me and she said, ‘I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you’d like to see me dead! You’re thinking you’d like to kill me, aren’t you?’”
Robert’s voice had dropped to an eerie whisper that bound Miss Gildea like a spell. It was broken only when she saw the expression on Mr. Harkness’ face.
“Why, that’s a lie!” she cried. “That’s the most dreadful lie I ever heard any boy dare—”
Mr. Harkness cut in abruptly. “Miss Gildea! I insist you let the boy finish what he has to say.”
Miss Gildea’s voice fluttered. “It seems to me, Mr. Harkness, that he has been allowed to say quite enough already!”
“Has he?” Mr. Harkness asked.
“Robert has been inattentive lately, especially so this afternoon. After class I asked him what he had been thinking about, and he dared to say he was thinking how he wished I were dead! How he wanted to kill me!”
“Robert said that?”
“In almost those exact words. And I can tell you, Mr. Harkness, that I was shocked, terribly shocked, especially since Robert always seemed like such a nice boy.”
“His record—?”
“His record is quite good. It’s just—”
“And his social conduct?” asked Mr. Harkness in the same level voice.
“As far as I know, he gets along with the other children well enough.”
“But for some reason,” persisted Mr. Harkness, “you found him annoying you.”
Robert raised his voice. “I didn’t! Miss Gildea said I didn’t do anything bad. And I always liked her. I like her better than any teacher!”
Miss Gildea fumbled blindly in her hair for the silver pencil, and failed to find it. She looked around the floor distractedly.
“Yes?” said Mr. Harkness.
“My pencil,” said Miss Gildea on the verge of tears. “It’s gone.”
“Surely, Miss Gildea,” said Mr. Harkness in a tone of mild exasperation, “this is not quite the moment—”
“It was very valuable,” Miss Gildea tried to explain hopelessly. “It was my mother’s.”
In the face of Mr. Harkness’ stony surveillance, she knew she must look a complete mess. Hems crooked, nose red, hair all disheveled. “I’m all upset, Mr. Harkness. It’s been a long term and now all this right at the end of it. I don’t know what to say.”
Mr. Harkness’ face fell into sympathetic lines.
“That’s quite all right, Miss Gildea. I know how you feel. Now, if you want to leave, I think Robert and I should have a long, friendly talk.”
“If you don’t mind—”
“No, no,” Mr. Harkness said heartily. “As a matter of fact, I think that would be the best thing all around.”
After he had seen her out, he closed the door abruptly behind her, and Miss Gildea walked heavily up the stairway and down the corridor to the sixth-grade room. The silver pencil was there on the floor at Robert’s desk, and she picked it up and carefully polished it with her handkerchief. Then she sat down at her desk with the handkerchief to her nose and wept soundlessly for ten minutes.
That night, when the bitter taste of humiliation had grown faint enough to permit it, Miss Gildea reviewed the episode with all the honesty at her command. Honesty with oneself had always been a major point in her credo, had, in fact, been passed on through succeeding classes during the required lesson on The Duties of an American Citizen, when Miss Gildea, to sum up the lesson, would recite: “This above all, To thine ownself be true…” while thumping her fist on her desk as an accompaniment to each syllable.
Hamlet, of course, was not in the syllabus of the Sixth Grade, whose reactions over the years never deviated from a mixed bewilderment and indifference. But Miss Gildea, after some prodding of the better minds into a discussion of the lines, would rest content with the knowledge that she had sown good seed on what, she prayed, was fertile ground.
Reviewing the case of Robert now, with her emotions under control, she came to the unhappy conclusion that it was she who had committed the injustice. The child had been ordered to stay after school, something that to him could mean only a punishment. He had been ordered to disclose some shadowy, childlike thoughts that had drifted through his mind hours before, and, unable to do so, either had to make up something out of the whole cloth, or blurt out the immediate thought in his immature mind.
It was hardly unusual, reflected Miss Gildea sadly, for a child badgered by a teacher to think what Robert had; she could well remember her own feelings toward a certain pompadoured harridan who still haunted her dreams. And the only conclusion to be drawn, unpleasant though it was, was that Robert, and not she, had truly put into practice those beautiful words from Shakespeare.
It was this, as well as the sight of his pale accusing face before her while she led the class through the morning session next day, which prompted her to put Robert in charge of refilling the water pitcher during recess. The duties of the water pitcher monitor were to leave the playground a little before the rest of the class and clean and refill the pitcher on her desk, but since the task was regarded as an honor by the class, her gesture, Miss Gildea felt with some self-approval, carried exactly the right note of conciliation.
She was erasing the blackboard at the front of the room near the end of the recess when she heard Robert approaching her desk, but much as she wanted to, she could not summon up courage enough to turn and face him. As if, she thought, he were the teacher, and I were afraid of him. And she could feel her cheeks grow warm at the thought.
He re-entered the room on the sound of the bell that marked the end of recess, and this time Miss Gildea plopped the eraser firmly into its place beneath the blackboard and turned to look at him. “Thank you very much, Robert,” she said as he set the pitcher down and neatly capped it with her drinking glass.
“You’re welcome, Miss Gildea,” Robert said politely. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his hands with it, then smiled gently at Miss Gildea. “I bet you think I put poison or something into that water,’’ he said gravely, “but I wouldn’t do anything like that, Miss Gildea. Honest, I wouldn’t.”
Miss Gildea gasped, then reached out a hand toward Robert’s shoulder. She withdrew it hastily when he shrank away with the familiar panicky look in his eyes.
“Why did you say that, Robert?” Miss Gildea demanded in a terrible voice. “That was plain impudence, wasn’t it? You thought you were being smart, didn’t you?”
At that moment the rest of the class surged noisily into the room, but Miss Gildea froze them into silence with a commanding wave of the hand. Out of the corner of her eye she noted the cluster of shocked and righteous faces allied with her in condemnation, and she felt a quick little sense of triumph in her position.
“I was talking to you, Robert,” she said. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Robert took another step backward and almost tumbled over a schoolbag left carelessly in the aisle. He caught himself, then stood there helplessly, his eyes never leaving Miss Gildea’s.
“Well, Robert?”
He shook his head wildly. “I didn’t do it!” he cried. “I didn’t put anything in your water, Miss Gildea! I told you I didn’t!”
Without looking, Miss Gildea knew that the cluster of accusing faces had swung toward her now, felt her triumph tum to a sick bewilderment inside her. It was as if Robert, with his teary eyes and pale, frightened face and too-large ears, had turned into a strange jellylike creature that could not be pinned down and put in its place. As if he were retreating further and further down some dark, twisting path, and leading her on with him. And, she thought desperately, she had to pull herself free before she did something dreadful, something unforgivable.
She couldn’t take the boy to Mr. Harkness again. Not only did the memory of that scene in his office the day before make her shudder, but a repeated visit would be an admission that after thirty-eight years of teaching she was not up to the mark as a disciplinarian.
But for her sake, if for nothing else, Robert had to be put in his place. With a gesture, Miss Gildea ordered the rest of the class to their seats and turned to Robert, who remained standing.
“Robert,” said Miss Gildea, “I want an apology for what has just happened.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Gildea,” Robert said, and it looked as if his eyes would be brimming with tears in another moment.
Miss Gildea hardened her heart to this. “I apologize, Miss Gildea, and it will not happen again,” she prompted.
Miraculously, Robert contained his tears. “I apologize, Miss Gildea, and it will not happen again,” he muttered and dropped limply into his seat.
“Well!” said Miss Gildea, drawing a deep breath as she looked around at the hushed class. “Perhaps that will be a lesson to us all.” The classroom work did not go well after that, but, as Miss Gildea told herself, there were only a few days left to the end of the term, and after that, praise be, there was the garden, the comfortable front porch of the old house to share with neighbors in the summer evenings, and then next term a new set of faces in the classroom, with Robert’s not among them.
Later, closing the windows of the room after the class had left, Miss Gildea was brought up short by the sight of a large group gathered on the sidewalk near the parked busses. It was Robert, she saw, surrounded by most of the Sixth Grade, and obviously the center of interest. He was nodding emphatically when she put her face to the window, and she drew back quickly at the sight, moved by some queer sense of guilt.
Only a child, she assured herself, he’s only a child, but that thought did not in any way dissolve the anger against him that stuck like a lump in her throat.
That was on Thursday. By Tuesday of the next week, the final week of the term, Miss Gildea was acutely conscious of the oppressive atmosphere lying over the classroom. Ordinarily, the awareness of impending vacation acted on the class like a violent agent dropped into some inert liquid. There would be ferment and seething beneath the surface, manifested by uncontrollable giggling and whispering, and this would grow more and more turbulent until all restraint and discipline was swept away in the general upheaval of excitement and good spirits.
That, Miss Gildea thought, was the way it always had been. But it was strangely different now. The Sixth Grade, down to the most irrepressible spirits in it, acted as if it had been turned to a set of robots before her startled eyes. Hands tightly clasped on desks, eyes turned toward her with an almost frightening intensity, the class responded to her mildest requests as if they were shouted commands. And when she walked down the aisles between them, one and all seemed to have adopted Robert’s manner of shrinking away fearfully at her approach.
Miss Gildea did not like to think of what all this might mean, but valiantly forced herself to do so. Can it mean, she asked herself, that all think as Robert does, are choosing this way of showing it? And, if they knew how cruel it was, would they do it?
Other teachers, Miss Gildea knew, sometimes took problems such as this to the Teacher’s Room, where they could be studied and answered by those who saw them in an objective light. It might be that the curious state of the Sixth Grade was being duplicated in other classes. Perhaps she herself was imagining the whole thing, or, frightening thought, looking back, as people will when they grow old, on the sort of past that never really did exist. Why, in that case—and Miss Gildea had to laugh at herself with a faint merriment—he would just find herself reminiscing about her thirty-eight years of teaching to some bored young woman who didn’t have the fraction of experience she did.
But underneath the current of these thoughts, Miss Gildea knew there was one honest reason for not going to the Teacher’s Room this last week of the term. She had received no gifts, not one. And the spoils from each grade heaped high in a series of pyramids against the wall, the boxes of fractured cookies, the clumsily wrapped jars of preserves, the scarves, the stockings, the handkerchiefs, infinite, endless boxes of handkerchiefs, all were there to mark the triumph of each teacher. And Miss Gildea, who in all her years at District School Number Three had been blushingly proud of the way her pyramid was highest at the end of each term, had not yet received a single gift from the Sixth Grade class.
After the class was dismissed that afternoon, however, the spell was broken. Only a few of her pupils still loitered in the hallway near the door, Miss Gildea noted, but Robert remained in his seat. Then, as she gathered together her belongings, Robert approached her with a box outheld in his hand. It was, from its shape, a box of candy. Automatically, she reached a hand out, then stopped herself short. He’ll never make up to me for what he’s done, she told herself furiously; I’ll never let him.
“Yes, Robert?” she said coolly.
“It’s a present for you, Miss Gildea,” Robert said, and then as Miss Gildea watched in fascination, he began to strip the wrappings from it. He laid the paper neatly on the desk and lifted the cover of the box to display the chocolates within. “My mother said that’s the biggest box they had,” he said wistfully. “Don’t you even want them, Miss Gildea?”
Miss Gildea weakened despite herself. “Did you think I would, after what’s happened, Robert?” she asked.
Robert reflected a moment. “Well,” he said at last, “if you want me to, I’ll eat one right in front of you, Miss Gildea.”
Miss Gildea recoiled as if at a faraway warning. Don’t let him say any more, something inside her cried; he’ s only playing a trick, another horrible trick, and then she was saying, “Why would I want you to do that, Robert?”
“So you’ll see they’re not poison or anything, Miss Gildea,” Robert said. “Then you’ll believe it, won’t you, Miss Gildea?”
She had been prepared. Even before he said the words, she had felt her body drawing itself tighter and tighter against what she knew was coming. But the sound of the words themselves only served to release her like a spring coiled too tightly.
“You little monster!” sobbed Miss Gildea and struck wildly at the proffered box, which flew almost to the far wall, while chocolates cascaded stickily around the room. “How dare you!” she cried. “How dare you!” and her small bony fists beat at Robert’s cowering shoulders and back as he tried to retreat.
He half-turned in the aisle, slipped on a piece of chocolate, and went down to his knees, but before he could recover himself Miss Gildea was on him again, her lips drawn back, her fists pummeling him as if they were a pair of tireless mallets. Robert had started to scream at the top of his lungs from the first blow, but it was no more than a remote buzzing in Miss Gildea’s ears.
“Miss Gildea!”
That was Mr. Harkness’ voice, she knew, and those must be Mr. Harkness’ hands which pulled her away so roughly that she had to keep herself from falling by clutching at her desk. She stood there weakly, feeling the wild fluttering of her heart, feeling the sick churning of shame and anguish in her while she tried to bring the room into focus again. There was the knot of small excited faces peering through the open doorway, they must have called Mr. Harkness, and Mr. Harkness himself listening to Robert, who talked and wept alternately, and there was a mess everywhere. Of course, thought Miss Gildea dazedly, those must be chocolate stains. Chocolate stains all over my lovely clean room.
Then Robert was gone, the faces at the door were gone, and the door itself was closed behind them. Only Mr. Harkness remained, and Miss Gildea watched him as he removed his glasses, cleaned them carefully, and then held them up at arm’s length and studied them before settling them once more on his nose.
“Well, Miss Gildea,” said Mr. Harkness as if he were speaking to the glasses rather than to her, “this is a serious business.”
Miss Gildea nodded.
“I am sick,” Mr. Harkness said quietly, “really sick at the thought that somewhere in this school, where I tried to introduce decent pedagogical standards, corporal punishment is still being practiced.”
“That’s not fair at all, Mr. Harkness,” Miss Gildea said shakily. “I hit the boy, that’s true, and I know I was wrong to do it, but that is the first time in all my life I raised a finger against any child. And if you knew my feelings—”
“Ah,” said Mr. Harkness, “that’s exactly what I would like to know, Miss Gildea.” He nodded to her chair, and she sat down weakly. “Now, just go ahead and explain everything as you saw it.”
It was a difficult task, made even more difficult by the fact that Mr. Harkness chose to stand facing the window. Forced to address his back this way, Miss Gildea found that she had the sensation of speaking in a vacuum, but she mustered the facts as well as she could, presented them with strong emotion, and then sank back in the chair, quite exhausted.
Mr. Harkness remained silent for a long while, then slowly turned to face Miss Gildea. “I am not a practicing psychiatrist,” he said at last, “although as an educator I have, of course, taken a considerable interest in that field. But I do not think it needs a practitioner to tell what a clear-cut and obvious case I am facing here. Nor,” he added sympathetically, “what a tragic one.”
“It might simply be,” suggested Miss Gildea, “that Robert—”
“I am not speaking about Robert,” said Mr. Harkness soberly, quietly.
It took an instant for this to penetrate, and then Miss Gildea felt the blood run cold in her.
“Do you think I’m lying about all this?” she cried incredulously. “Can you possibly—”
“I am sure,” Mr. Harkness replied soothingly, “that you were describing things exactly as you saw them, Miss Gildea. But—have you ever heard the phrase ‘persecution complex’? Do you think you could recognize the symptoms of that condition if they were presented objectively? I can, Miss Gildea, I assure you, I can.”
Miss Gildea struggled to speak, but the words seemed to choke her. ‘‘No,” she managed to say, “you couldn’t! Because some mischievous boy chooses to make trouble—”
“Miss Gildea, no child of eleven, however mischievous, could draw the experiences Robert has described to me out of his imagination. He has discussed these experiences with me at length; now I have heard your side of the case. And the conclusions to be drawn, I must say, are practically forced on me.”
The room started to slip out of focus again, and Miss Gildea frantically tried to hold it steady.
“But that just means you’re taking his word against mine!” she said fiercely.
“Unfortunately, Miss Gildea, not his word alone. Last week end, a delegation of parents met the School Board and made it quite plain that they were worried because of what their children told them of your recent actions. A dozen children in your class described graphically at that meeting how you had accused them of trying to poison your drinking water, and how you had threatened them because of this. And Robert, it may interest you to know, was not even one of them.
“The School Board voted for your dismissal then and there, Miss Gildea, but in view of your long years of service, it was left for me to override that decision if I wished to on my sole responsibility. After this episode, however, I cannot see that I have any choice. I must do what is best.”
“Dismissal?’’ said Miss Gildea vaguely. “But they can’t. I only have two more years to go. They can’t do that, Mr. Harkness; all they’re trying to do is trick me out of my pension!”
“Believe me,” said Mr. Harkness gently, “they’re not trying to do anything of the sort, Miss Gildea. Nobody in the world is trying to hurt you. I give you my solemn word that the only thing which has entered into consideration of this case from first to last has been the welfare of the children.”
The room swam in sunlight, but under it Miss Gildea’s face was gray and lifeless. She reached forward to fill her glass with water, stopped short, and seemed to gather herself together with a sudden brittle determination. “I’ll just have to speak to the Board myself,” she said in a high breathless voice. “That’s the only thing to do, go there and explain the whole thing to them!”
“That would not help,” said Mr. Harkness pityingly. “Believe me, Miss Gildea, it would not.”
Miss Gildea left her chair and came to him, her eyes wide and frightened. She laid a trembling hand on his arm and spoke eagerly, quickly, trying to make him understand. “You see,” she said, “that means I won’t get my pension. I must have two more years for that, don’t you see? There’s the payment on the house, the garden—no, the garden is part of the house, really—but without the pension—”
She was pulling furiously at his arm with every phrase as if she could drag him bodily into a comprehension of her words, but he stood unyielding and only shook his head pityingly. “You must control yourself, Miss Gildea,” he pleaded. “You’re not yourself, and it’s impossible—”
“No!” she cried in a strange voice. “No!”
When she pulled away, he knew almost simultaneously what she intended to do, but the thought froze him to the spot, and when he moved it was too late. He burst into the corridor through the door she had flung open, and almost threw himself down the stairway to the main hall.
The door to the street was just swinging shut and he ran toward it, one hand holding the rim of his glasses, a sharp little pain digging into his side, but before he could reach the door he heard the screech of brakes, the single agonized scream, and the horrified shout of a hundred shrill voices.
He put his hand on the door, but could not find the strength to open it. A few minutes later, a cleaning woman had to sidle around him to get outside and see what all the excitement was about.
Miss Reardon, the substitute, took the Sixth Grade the next day, and, everything considered, handled it very well. The single ripple in the even current of the session came at its very start, when Miss Reardon explained her presence by referring to the “sad accident that happened to dear Miss Gildea.” The mild hubbub which followed this contained several voices, notably in the back of the room, which protested plaintively, “It was not an accident, Miss Reardon; she ran right in front of that bus,” but Miss Reardon quickly brought order to the room with a few sharp raps of her ruler and after that, classwork was carried on in a pleasant and orderly fashion.
Robert walked home slowly that afternoon, swinging his schoolbag placidly at his side, savoring the June warmth soaking into him, the fresh green smell in the air, the memory of Miss Reardon’s understanding face so often turned toward his in eager and friendly interest. His home was identical with all the others on the block, square white boxes with small lawns before them, and its only distinction was that all its blinds were drawn down. After he had closed the front door very quietly behind him, he set his schoolbag down in the hallway, and went into the stuffy half-darkness of the living room.
Robert’s father sat in the big armchair in his bathrobe, the way he always did, and Robert’s mother was bent over him, holding a glass of water.
“No!” Robert’s father said. “You just want to get rid of me, but I won’t let you! I know what you put into it, and I won’t drink it! I’ll die before I drink it!”
“Please,” Robert’s mother said, “please take it. I swear it’s only water. I’ll drink some myself if you don’t believe me.” But when she drank a little and then held the glass to his lips, Robert’s father only tossed his head from side to side.
Robert stood there watching the scene with fascination, his lips moving in silent mimicry of the familiar words. Then he cleared his throat
“I’m home, mama,” Robert said softly. “Can I have some milk and cookies, please?”