‘Is it a plot, a game, a secret?’ said Annie, looking at Ma.
Ma smiled.
‘If you want to put it that way, yes.’
‘But look here,’ objected Joe.
‘Shut up, Joe, you’ll spoil everything.’ To the other two, ‘Now, let’s repeat it. She’s your mother-in-law. Her name is Ma Tiller.’
‘Ma Tiller,’ said the two women.
‘I want to see you outside,’ said Joe, and lurched Ed out of the room. He held him against the wall and threatened him with a fist. ‘You fool! I don’t want her to stay on, I want to get rid of her. Now you’ve helped make Annie worse, made her believe in that old witch!’
‘Worse, you nut, I’ve cured her, both of them. Fine appreciation!’ And Ed struggled to get free. ‘I’ll send a bill over in the morning!’ He stalked down the hall.
Joe hesitated a moment before entering the room again. Oh God, he thought. God help me.
‘Hello,’ said Ma, looking up, preparing a home-packed bottle of cucumber pickles.
At midnight and breakfast again, the living room was empty. Joe got a crafty glint in his eyes. He looked at the radio and stroked the top of it with his trembling hand.
‘Stay away from there!’ cried his wife.
‘Oho,’ he said. ‘Is this where she hides at night, in here, eh? In here! This is her coffin, eh, this is where the damn old vampire sleeps until tomorrow when her sponsor lets her out!’
‘Keep your hands off,’ she said hysterically.
‘Well, that settles her hash.’ He picked the radio up in his hands. ‘How do you kill her sort of witch? With a silver bullet through the heart? With a crucifix? With wolfsbane? Or do you make the sign of a cross on a soapbox top? Eh, is that it?’
‘Give me that!’ His wife rushed over to grapple with him. Between them, they swayed back and forth in a titanic battle for the electric coffin between them.
‘There!’ he shouted.
He flung the radio to the floor. He tromped and stomped on it. He kicked it into bits. He ravened at it. He held the tubes in his hands and smashed them into silver flinders. Then he stuffed the shattered entrails into the wastebasket, all the time his wife danced frantically about, sobbing and screaming.
‘She’s dead,’ he said. ‘Dead, God damn it! I’ve fixed her good.’
His wife cried herself to sleep. He tried to calm her, but she was so deep in her hysteria he could not touch her. Death was a terrible incident in her life.
In the morning, she spoke not a word. In the coolness of the separated house, he ate his breakfast, confident that things would be better by evening.
He arrived late to work. He walked between the typing, clicking rows of stenographers’ desks, passed on down the long hallway, and opened the door of his secretary’s office.
His secretary was standing against her desk, her face pale, her hands up to her lips. ‘Oh, Mr Tiller, I’m so glad you came,’ she said. ‘In there.’ She pointed at the door to the inner office. ‘That awful old busybody! She just came in and–and—’ She hurried to the door, flung it open. ‘You’d better see her!’
He felt sick to his stomach. He shuffled across the threshold and shut the door. Then he turned to confront the old woman who was in his office.
‘How did you get here?’ he demanded.
‘Why, good morning.’ Ma Perkins laughed, peeling potatoes in his swivel chair, her tidy little black shoes twinkling in the sunlight. ‘Come on in. I decided your business needed reorganizing. So I just started. We’re partners now. I had lotsa experience in this line. I saved more failing businesses, more bad romances, more lives. You’re just what I need.’
‘Get out,’ he said flatly, his mouth tight.
‘Why now, young man, cheer up. We’ll have your business turned around in no time. Just let an old woman philosophize and tell you how—’
‘You heard what I said,’ he grated. ‘Isn’t it enough I had trouble with you at my house?’
‘Who, me?’ She shook her head. ‘Sakes, I never been to your house.’
‘Liar!’ he cried. ‘You tried to break up our home!’
‘I only been here in the office, for six months now,’ she said.
‘I never saw you here before.’
‘Oh, I been around, around, I been observin’. I seed your business was bad, I thought I’d just give you some gumption you need.’
Then he realized how it was. There were two Mas. One here, one at home. Two? No, a million. A different one in every home. None aware of the others’ separate lives. All different, as shaped by the individual brains of those who heard and lived in the far homes. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘So you’re takin’ over, moving in on me, are you, you old bastard?’
‘Sech language.’ She chuckled, making a crisscross pie on his green blotter, rolling out the yellow dough with plump fingers.
‘Who is it?’ he snarled.
‘Eh?’
‘Who is it, who’s the traitor in this office?!’ he bellowed. ‘The one who listens to you in secret here, on my time?’
‘Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no fibs,’ she said, pouring cinnamon out of his inkwell onto the piecrust dough.
‘Just wait!’ He rammed the door open and ran past his secretary and out into the big room. ‘Attention!’ He waved his arms. The typing stopped. The ten stenographers and clerks turned away from their shiny black machines. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Is there a radio somewhere in this office?’
Silence.
‘You heard what I said,’ he demanded, glaring at them with hot eyes. ‘Is there a radio?’
A trembling silence.
‘I’ll give a bonus and a guarantee I won’t fire her, to anyone who tells me where the radio is!’ he announced.
One of the little blond stenographers put up her hand.
‘In the ladies’ restroom,’ she whimpered. ‘Cigarette time, we play it low.’
‘God bless you!’
In the hall, he pounced on the restroom door. ‘Is anyone in there?’ he called. Silence. He opened the door. He entered.
The radio was on the window ledge. He seized it, jerking at its wires. He felt as if he were clutching at the live intestines of some horrible animal. He opened the window and flung it out. Somewhere there was a scream. The radio burst into bomb fragments on the roof below.
He slammed the window and went back to his office door.
The office was empty.
He picked up his inkwell and shook it until it gave forth—
Ink.
Driving home, he considered what he had said to the office force. Never another radio, he had said. Whoever is responsible for another radio will be fired out of hand. Fired, did they understand!
He walked up the flight of stairs and stopped.
A party was going on in his apartment. He heard his wife laughing, drinks being passed, music playing, voices.
‘Oh, Ma, aren’t you the one?’
‘Pepper, where are you?’
‘Out here, Dad!’
‘Fluffy, let’s play spin the bottle!’
‘Henry, Henry Aldrich, put down that platter before you break it!’
‘John, oh, John, John!’
‘Helen, you look lovely—’
‘And I said to Dr Trent—’
‘I want you to meet Dr. Christian and—’
‘Sam, Sam Spade, this is Philip Marlowe—’
‘Hello, Marlowe.’
‘Hello, Spade!’
Gushing laughter. Rioting. Tinkling glass.
Voices.
Joe fell against the wall. Warm perspiration rolled down his face. He put his hands to his throat and wanted to scream. Those voices. Familiar. Familiar. All familiar. Where had he heard them before? Friends of Annie’s? And yet she had no friends. None. He could remember none of her few friends’ voices. And these names, these strange familiar names—?
He swallowed drily. He put his hand to the door.
Click.
The voices vanished. The music was cut off. The tinkling of glass ceased. The laughter faded in a great wind.
When he stepped through the door, it was like coming into a room an instant after a hurricane has left by the window. There was a sense of loss, a vacuum, an emptiness, a vast silence. The walls ached.
Annie sat looking at him.
‘Where did they go?’ he said.
‘Who?’ She tried to look surprised.
‘Your friends,’ he said.
‘What friends?’ She raised her eyebrows.
‘You know what I’m talking about,’ he said.
‘No,’ she said firmly.
‘What’d you do? Go buy a new radio?’
‘And what if I did?’
He took a step forward, his hands groping the air. ‘Where is it?’
‘I won’t tell.’
‘I’ll find it,’ he said.
‘I’ll only buy another and another,’ she said.
‘Annie, Annie,’ he said, stopping. ‘How long are you going to carry this crazy thing on? Don’t you see what’s happening?’
She looked at the wall. ‘All I know is that you’ve been a bad husband, neglecting me, ignoring me. You’re gone, and when you’re gone, I have my friends, and my friends and I have parties and I watch them live and die and walk around, and we drink drinks and have affairs, oh yes, you wouldn’t believe it, have affairs, my dear Joseph!
And we have martinis and daiquiris and manhattans, my good Joseph! And we sit and talk and crochet or cook or even take trips to Bermuda or anywhere at all, Rio, Martinique, Paris! And now, tonight, we had such a grand party, until you came to haunt us!’
‘Haunt you!’ he shrieked, eyes wild.
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘It’s almost as if you’re not real at all. As if you’re some phantom from another world come to spoil our fun. Oh, Joseph, why don’t you go away.’
He said slowly, ‘You’re insane. God help you, Annie, but you’re insane.’
‘Whether I am or not,’ she said, at last, ‘I’ve come to a decision. I’m leaving you, tonight. I’m going home to Mother!’
He laughed wearily. ‘You haven’t got a mother. She’s dead.’
‘I’m going anyway, home to Mother,’ she said endlessly.
‘Where’s that radio?’ he said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t be able to go home if
