Nightmare At 20,000 Feet Read online

Eighteen years.

  How, he thought, did you mark the passing of almost two decades? The time seemed a shapeless lump of failing efforts, of nights spent in anguish; of the secret, the answer, the revelation always being withheld from him. Dangled overhead like cheese swinging in a maddening arc over the head of a berserk rat.

  And resentment creeping. Days spent watching Sally buy food and clothing and pay rent with his meagre salary. Watching her buy new curtains or new chair covers and feeling a stab of pain every time because he was that much farther removed from the point where he could devote his time to writing. Every penny she spent he felt like a blow at his aspirations.

  He forced himself to think that way. He forced himself to believe that it was only the time he needed to do good writing.

  But once a furious student had yelled at him, "You're just a third-rate talent hiding behind a desk!"

  He remembered that. Oh, God, how he remembered that moment. Remembered the cold sickness that had convulsed him when those words hit his brain. Recalled the trembling and the shaky unreason of his voice.

  He had failed the student for the semester despite good marks. There had been a great to-do about it. The student's father had come to the school. They had all gone before Dr. Ramsay, the head of the English Department.

  He remembered that too; the scene could crowd out all other memories. Him, sitting on one side of the conference table, facing the irate father and son. Dr. Ramsay stroking his beard until he thought he'd hurl something at him. Dr. Ramsay had said-well let's see if we can't straighten out this matter.

  They had consulted the record book and found the student was right. Dr. Ramsay had looked up at him in great surprise. Well, I can't see what… he had said and let his syrupy voice break off and looked probingly at him, waiting for an explanation.

  And the explanation had been hopeless, a jumbled and pointless affair. Irresponsible attitude, he had said, flaunting of unpardonable behavior; morally a failure. And Dr. Ramsay, his thick neck getting red, telling him in no uncertain terms that morals were not subject to the grading system at Fort College.

  There was more but he'd forgotten it. He'd made an effort to forget it. But he couldn't forget that it would be years before he made a professorship. Ramsay would hold it back. And his salary would go on being insufficient and bills would mount and he would never get his writing done.

  He regained the present to find himself clutching the sheets with taut fingers. He found himself glaring in hate at the bathroom door. Go on!-his mind snapped vindictively-Go home to your precious mother. See if I care. Why just a trial separation? Make it permanent. Give me some peace. Maybe I can do some writing then.

  Maybe I can do some writing then.

  The phrase made him sick. It had no meaning anymore. Like a word that is repeated until it becomes gibberish that sentence, for him, had been used to extinction. It sounded silly; like some bit of cliche from a soap opera. Hero saying in dramatic tones- Now, by God, maybe I can do some writing. Senseless.

  For a moment, though, he wondered if it was true. Now that she was leaving could he forget about her and really get some work done? Quit his job? Go somewhere and hole up in a cheap furnished room and write?

  You have $123.89 in the bank, his mind informed him. He pretended it was the only thing that kept him from it. But, far back in his mind, he wondered if he could write anywhere. Often the question threw itself at him when he was least expecting it. You have four hours every morning, the statement would rise like a menacing wraith. You have time to write many thousands of words. Why don't you?

  And the answer was always lost in a tangle of because and wells and endless reasons that he clung to like a drowning man at straws.

  The bathroom door opened and she came out, dressed in her good red suit.

  For no reason at all, it seemed, he suddenly realized that she'd been wearing that same outfit for more than three years and never a new one. The realization angered him even more. He closed his eyes and hoped she wasn't looking at him. I hate her, he thought. I hate her because she has destroyed my life.

  He heard the rustle of her skirt as she sat at the dressing table and pulled out a drawer. He kept his eyes shut and listened to the Venetian blinds tap lightly against the window frame as morning breeze touched them. He could smell her perfume floating lightly on the air.

  And he tried to think of the house empty all the time. He tried to think of coming home from class and not finding Sally there waiting for him. The idea seemed, somehow, impossible. And that angered him. Yes, he thought, she's gotten to me. She's worked on me until I am so dependent of her for really unessential things that I suffer under the delusion that I cannot do without her.

  He turned suddenly on the mattress and looked at her.

  "So, you're really going," he said in a cold voice.

  She turned briefly and looked at him. There was no anger on her face. She looked tired… "Yes," she said. "I'm going."

  Good riddance. The words tried to pass his lips. He cut them off.

  "I suppose you have your reasons," he said.

  Her shoulders twitched a moment in what he took for a shrug of weary amusement.

  "I have no intention of arguing with you," he said. "Your life is your own."

  "Thank you," she murmured.

  She's waiting for apologies, he thought. Waiting to be told that he didn't hate her as he'd said. That he hadn't struck her but all his twisted and shattered hopes; the mocking spectacle of his own lost faith.

  "And just how long is this trial separation going to last?" he said, his voice acidulous.

  She shook her head.

  "I don't know, Chris," she said quietly. "It's up to you."

  "Up to me," he said. "It's always up to me, isn't it?"

  "Oh, please darl- Chris. I don't want to argue anymore. I'm too tired to argue."

  "It's easier to just pack and run away."

  She turned and looked at him. Her eyes were very dark and unhappy.

  "Run away?" she said. "After eighteen years you accuse me of that? Eighteen years of watching you destroy yourself. And me along with you. Oh, don't look surprised. I'm sure you know you've driven me half insane too."

  She turned away and he saw her shoulders twitch. She brushed some tears from her eyes.

  "It's n-not just because you hit me," she said. "You kept saying that last night when I said I was leaving. Do you think it would matter if…" She took a deep breath. "If it meant you were angry with me? If it was that I could be hit every day. But you didn't hit me. I'm nothing to you. I'm not wanted."

  "Oh, stop being so…"

  "No," she broke in. "That's why I'm going. Because I can't bear to watch you hate me more every day for something that… that isn't my fault."

  "I suppose you…"

  "Oh, don't say anymore," she said, getting up. She hurried out of the room and he heard her walk into the living room. He stared at the dressing table.

  Don't say anymore?-his mind asked as though she were still there. Well, there's more to say; lots more. You don't seem to realize what I've lost. You don't seem to understand. I had hopes, oh God, what hopes I had. I was going to write prose to make the people sit up and gasp. I was going to tell them things they needed badly to know. I was going to tell them in so entertaining a way that they would never realize that the truth was getting to them. I was going to create immortal works.

  Now when I die, I shall only be dead. I am trapped in this depressing village, entombed in a college of science where men gape at dust and do not even know that there are stars above their heads. And what can I do, what can…?

  The thoughts broke off. He looked miserably at her perfume bottles, at the powder box that tinkled "Always" when the cover was lifted off.

  I'll remember you. Always.

  With a heart that's true. Always.

  The words are childish and comical, he thought. But his throat contracted and he felt himself shudder.

  "Sally," he said. So
quietly that he could hardly hear it himself.

  After a while he got up and dressed.

  While he was putting on his trousers a rug slid from under him and he had to grab the dresser for support. He glared down, heart pounding in the total fury he had learned to summon in the space of seconds.

  "Damn you," he muttered.

  He forgot Sally. He forgot everything. He just wanted to get even with the rug. He kicked it violently under the bed. The anger plunged down and disappeared. He shook his head. I'm sick, he thought. He thought of going in to her and telling her he was sick.

  His mouth tightened as he went into the bathroom. I'm not sick, he thought. Not in body anyway. It's my mind that's ill and she only makes it worse.

  The bathroom was still damply warm from her use of it. He opened the window a trifle and got a splinter in his finger. He cursed the window in a muffled voice. He looked up. Why so quiet? he asked. So she won't hear me?

  "Damn you!" he snarled loudly at the window. And he picked at his finger until he had pulled out the sliver of wood.

  He jerked at the cabinet door. It stuck. His face reddened. He pulled harder and the door flew open and cracked him on the wrist. He spun about and grabbed his wrist, threw back his head with a whining gasp. *

  He stood there, eyes clouded with pain, staring at the ceiling. He looked at the crack that ran in a crazy meandering line across the ceiling. Then he closed his eyes.

  And began to sense something. Intangible. A sense of menace. He wondered about it. Why it's myself, of course, he answered then. It is the moral decrepitude of my own subconscious. It is bawling out to me, saying: You are to be punished for driving your poor wife away to her mother's arms. You are not a man. You are a-

  "Oh, shut up," he said.

  He washed his hands and face. He ran an inspecting finger over his chin. He needed a shave. He opened the cabinet door gingerly and took out his straight razor. He held it up and looked at it.

  The handle has expanded. He told himself that quickly as the blade appeared to fall out of the handle wilfully. It made him shiver to see it flop out like that and glitter in the light from the cabinet light fixture.

  He stared in repelled fascination at the bright steel. He touched the blade edge. So sharp, he thought. The slightest touch would sever flesh. What a hideous thing it was.

  'It's my hand."

  He said it involuntarily and shut the razor suddenly. It was his hand, it had to be. It couldn't have been the razor moving by itself. That was sick imagination.

  But he didn't shave. He put the razor back in the cabinet with a vague sense of forestalling doom.

  Don't care if we are expected to shave every day, he muttered. I'm not taking a chance on my hand slipping. I'd better get a safety razor anyway. This kind isn't for me, I'm too nervous.

  Suddenly, impelled by those words, the picture of him eighteen years before flew into his brain.

  He remembered a date he'd had with Sally. He remembered telling her he was so calm it was akin to being dead. Nothing bothers me, he'd said. And it was true, at the time. He remembered too telling her he didn't like coffee, that one cup kept him awake at night. That he didn't smoke, didn't like the taste or smell. I like to stay healthy, he'd said. He remembered the exact words.

  "And now," he muttered at his lean and worn reflection.

  Now he drank gallons of coffee a day. Until it sloshed like a black pool in his stomach and he couldn't sleep any more than he could fly. Now he smoked endless strings of finger-yellowing cigarettes until his throat felt raw and clogged, until he couldn't write in pencil because his hand shook so much.

  But all that stimulation didn't help his writing any. Paper still remained blank in the typewriter. Words never came, plots died on him. Characters eluded him, mocking him with laughter from behind the veil of their non-creation.

  And time passed. It flew by faster and faster, seeming to single him out for highest punishment. He-a man who had begun to value time so, neurotically that it overbalanced his life and made him sick to think of its passing.

  As he brushed his teeth he tried to recall when this irrational temper had first begun to control him. But there was no way of tracing its course. Somewhere in mists that could not be pierced, it had started. With a word of petulance, an angry contraction of muscles. With a glare of unrecallable animosity.

  And from there, like a swelling amoeba, it had gone its own perverted and downward course of evolution, reaching its present nadir in him; a taut embittered man who found his only solace in hating.

  He spit out white froth and rinsed his mouth. As he put down the glass, it cracked and a barb of glass drove into his hand.

  "Damn!" he yelled.

  He spun on his heel and clenched his fist. It sprang open instantly as the sliver sank into his palm. He stood with tears on his cheeks, breathing heavily. He thought of Sally listening to him, hearing once more the audible evidence of his snapping nerves.

  Stop it!-he ordered himself. You can never do anything until you rid yourself of this enervating temper.

  He closed his eyes. For a moment he wondered why it seemed that everything was happening to him lately. As if some revenging power had taken roost in the house, pouring a savage life into inanimate things. Threatening him. But the thought was just a faceless, passing figure in the crushing horde of thoughts that mobbed past his mind's eye; seen but not appreciated.

  He drew the glass sliver from his palm. He put on his dark tie.

  Then he went into the dining room, consulting his watch. It was ten thirty already. More than half the morning was gone.

  More than half the time for sitting and trying to write the prose that would make people sit up and gasp.

  It happened that way more often now than he would even admit to himself. Sleeping late, making up errands, doing anything to forestall the terrible moment when he must sit down before his typewriter and try to wrench some harvest from the growing desert of his mind.

  It was harder every time. And he grew more angry every time; and hated more. And never noticed until now, when it was too late, that Sally had grown desperate and could no longer stand his temper or his hate.

  She was sitting at the kitchen table drinking dark coffee. She too drank more than she once had. Like him, she drank it black, without sugar. It jangled her nerves too. And she smoked now although she'd never smoked until a year before. She got no pleasure from it. She drew the fumes deep down into her lungs and then blew them out quickly. And her hands shook almost as badly as his did.

  He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down across from her. She started to get up.

  "What's the matter? Can't you stand the sight of me?"

  She sat back and took a deep pull on the cigarette in her hand. Then she stamped it out on the saucer.

  He felt sick. He wanted to get out of the house suddenly. It felt alien and strange to him. He had the feeling that she had renounced all claim to it, that she had retreated from it. The touch of her fingers and the loving indulgences she had bestowed on every room; all these things were taken back. They had lost tangibility because she was leaving. She was deserting it and it was not their home anymore. He felt it strongly.

  Sinking back against the chair he pushed away his cup and stared at the yellow oilcloth on the table. He felt as if he and Sally were frozen in time; that seconds were drawn out like some fantastic taffy until each one seemed an eternity. The clock ticked slower. And the house was a different house.

  "What train are you getting?" he asked, knowing before he spoke that there was only one morning train.

  "Eleven forty-seven," she said.

  When she said it, he felt as if his stomach were pulled back hard against his backbone. He gasped, so actual was the physical pain. She glanced up at him.

  "Burned myself," he said hastily, and she got up and put her cup and saucer in the sink.

  Why did I say that?-he thought. Why couldn't I say that I gasped because I was filled with terror
at the thought of her leaving me? Why do I always say the things I don't mean to say? I'm not bad. But every time I speak I build higher the walls of hatred and bitterness around me until I cannot escape from them.

  With words I have knit my shroud and will bury myself therein.

  He looked at her back and a sad smile raised his lips. I can think of words when my wife is leaving me. It is very sad.

  Sally had walked out of the kitchen. His mind reverted to its sullen attitude. This is a game we're playing. Follow the leader. You walk in one room, head high, the justified spouse, the injured party. I am supposed to follow, slope shouldered and contrite, pouring out apologetic hecatombs.

  Once more conscious of himself, he sat tensely at the table, rage making his body tremble. Consciously he relaxed and pressed his left hand over his eyes. He sat there trying to lose his misery in silence and blackness.

  It wouldn't work.

  And then his cigarette really burned him and he sat erect. The cigarette hit the floor scattering ashes. He bent over and picked it up. He threw it at the waste can and missed. To hell with it, he thought. He got up and dumped his cup and saucer in the sink. The saucer broke in half and nicked his right thumb. He let it bleed. He didn't care.

  She was in the extra room finishing her packing.

  The extra room. The words tortured him now. When had they stopped calling it "the nursery"? When had it begun to eat her insides out because she was so full of love and wanted children badly? When had he begun to replace this loss with nothing better than volcanic temper and days and nights of sheath-scraped nerves?

  He stood in the doorway and watched her. He wanted to get out the typewriter and sit down and write reams of words. He wanted to glory in his coming freedom. Think of all the money he could save. Think of how soon he could go away and write all the things he'd always meant to write.

  He stood in the doorway, sick.

  Is all this possible?-his mind asked, incredulous. Possible that she was leaving? But she and he were man and wife. They had lived and loved in this house for more than eighteen years. Now she was leaving. Putting articles of clothing in her old black suitcase and leaving. He couldn't reconcile himself to that. He couldn't understand it or ally it with the functions of the day. Where did it fit into the pattern?-the pattern that was Sally right there cleaning and cooking and trying to make their home happy and warm.