Authors: Hilary Norman
Chris arrived just after nine that evening. Lally had made supper early, after Hugo had telephoned to say he would be out all night at a friend’s, and then, seeing that
Katy was exhausted, Lally had persuaded her to take a nap on her bed, promising to let her know when her father came or called.
“Come in,” she said, softly.
He looked haggard and sad, and Lally saw, with new horror, that there were fresh scratches on his right cheek and left hand, but she restrained herself from mentioning them, just invited him to
come and sit down by the fire.
“Katy’s having a sleep,” she told him. “I said I’d wake her when you came.”
“Would you mind if we left her a while longer?”
“Of course not. She needs the rest.”
The sitting room was very hushed.
“Can I fix you something to eat?”
“I’m not really hungry.”
“It’s all ready – just needs heating up. It’s no trouble, and you look as if you could use something.”
Chris nodded wearily. “Maybe you’re right.”
They sat at the big pine table in the kitchen, and Lally set down a dish of chicken casserole and mashed potatoes, and in spite of his misery, Chris found that he was pretty hungry, and Lally,
having eaten very little with Katy, joined him and, after just a moment’s hesitation, she opened a bottle of red wine and poured two glasses.
It was a strange meal. Two virtual strangers, knowing just the bare essentials about each other, the way people did in a small community, their only real common link asleep upstairs. Chris was a
married man, the father of a pupil, and there was no real reason for Lally to feel the slightest intimacy with him, and yet she was aware that she did feel that, and that it wasn’t just
because of what had happened that afternoon. If it hadn’t been for Andrea’s bizarre attack on her, Chris would probably never have felt able to enlist her help, but sitting there now,
watching him eat, feeling his pain, Lally realized, with a pang of guilt, that there was something disturbingly attractive about Chris Webber, and that it bothered her more than a little.
“Would you mind,” he asked, after a while, “if I talk to you about things?”
“Not a bit,” she replied. “So long as you don’t feel obligated.”
“I’d like to talk,” Chris said. “I think I’ve needed to open up – to unload, I guess – for a long time.” He paused. “But I have no right to
burden you.”
“No burden,” Lally said.
He spoke slowly but candidly, letting it out a little at a time. He was from Philadelphia, but had come north-east on a long painting vacation thirteen years ago and had fallen in love with the
Berkshires and with Andrea. They had married within six months and settled in Williamstown, and it had seemed in the early days to be a good, loving marriage of equal minds, until Andrea had
started to experience some irrational anxieties about what she regarded as her own inadequacies. No matter how often Chris had tried to reassure her, Andrea felt that she was too inhibited, that
she was unpopular, that she was a poor wife. She had never drunk liquor of any kind before, having grown up in a teetotal household, but about a year after marrying Chris, she had taken her first
glass of wine at a party, and had become, out of the blue, the life and soul of the evening. Chris had enjoyed watching Andrea’s self-confidence bloom that night, and if she’d stopped
there, it might have been okay, but one glass had become two and then three, and then she’d begun experimenting with spirits, and that was when her new-found abandon had turned to
aggression.
“The drink changed her so much – literally changed her,” Chris told Lally. “From being irrationally self-critical and a little obsessive, she became resentful and
belligerent.”
“But only when she drank?”
“Absolutely.” Chris picked up his own wine glass, then set it back down on the table. “It wasn’t as bad then as it is now, and after she became pregnant, things got a lot
better because she stopped drinking.”
“And after Katy was born?”
“She started again.”
With their child to consider, and aware to a degree of the bad effect liquor had on her, Andrea seldom took a drink outside the home. She wanted to be as good a mother as possible, and up to a
point, she had always been great, but ever since they had moved to Stockbridge things had become worse.
“My brilliant plan,” he said wryly. “My great hope for the future. Andrea had always been crazy about dogs, so I figured that going into the breeding business might be just
what she needed to keep her happy. I guess I hoped that all that space and independence might help her to quit again.”
It hadn’t helped. From lashing out verbally, Andrea had begun to react physically, and so long as she hadn’t taken out her rages on Katy, Chris had managed to control his own anger,
but since the first time she’d struck their daughter, he’d been living in a nightmare.
He paused for a moment. Lally’s kitchen was warm and snug, the only sounds the low hum of the refrigerator and Nijinsky’s loud purring from his comfortable spot on Lally’s
lap.
“You don’t have to go on,” Lally said.
“It feels strange, opening up this way,” Chris admitted. “I’ve always been a pretty private man. And in spite of everything, I still feel disloyal talking about Andrea
this way to – ” He stopped again.
“To an outsider?” Lally smiled. “But isn’t that just why you feel you can talk to me? Because I’m not involved, other than with Katy.”
“To be candid,” Chris said, “you don’t exactly feel like an outsider.”
“Because of this afternoon,” Lally said quickly. “Because I was there.”
“I guess so.”
Lally took a sip of wine, then went on stroking the cat.
“I’ve pushed Andrea as hard as I can to quit,” Chris said. “I’ve offered her every kind of help I could think of, but she’s rejected them all. She claims that
she could give it up if she chose to, but that she doesn’t choose to. She says it’s what she needs to make life with me bearable.”
Ever since he had found the first bruises on Katy a couple of weeks before, Chris had known that the writing was on the wall. If it hadn’t been for their daughter, he would have done
Andrea a favour and left years earlier, but he hadn’t wanted to break up the family.
“And now?” Lally asked, gently.
“I know the situation can’t be allowed to continue.”
“No.”
“I tried talking to her before I came here tonight, but she was way too far gone for anything to get through.”
“I saw the scratches,” Lally said. “They look sore. Would you like something to put on them?”
Chris shook his head. “They’re nothing.”
“How about some coffee then?”
“Good idea.”
Lally set Nijinsky on the floor, and cleared the table. Chris started to help, but she motioned to him to stay where he was. The silence was there again, but there was nothing too uncomfortable
about it, it felt easy, almost intimate. Lally made a pot of coffee and poured them both a cup.
“I’ve made up my mind about three things,” Chris said. “Number one, I have to protect Katy from this moment on. Number two, I have to get Andrea into a clinic, with or
without her agreement.” He stopped.
“And number three?”
“I have to accept that my marriage is over.”
“Are you sure?”
“Andrea wasn’t a drunk before she married me. She wasn’t unhappy before she married me, and she started drinking because she was miserable.” He shook his head.
“I’m not taking all the blame, believe me, and I want to help her – I’m
going
to help her. But it was marrying me that changed Andrea. And it’s high time we
ended it.”
Chris asked Lally if Katy could stay with her the rest of the night. He knew it was a great imposition, but it seemed cruel to wake her now and take her back home. And besides,
with Katy safely out of the house, Chris would be able to tackle Andrea more easily when she woke, talk to her about his feelings before she had a chance to start the day’s drinking.
Lally showed Chris to her bedroom, watched him stoop and gently kiss his daughter’s hair, but she was sleeping soundly.
“I should write her a note,” he whispered. “So she’ll know I haven’t just abandoned her.”
“She wouldn’t think that.”
Chris looked at the bed. “Where will you sleep?”
“I have a spare room,” Lally whispered.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” He looked anxious again.
“I can sleep anywhere.” Lally looked down at the sleeping child. “And to be honest, I think I’ll be happier knowing she’s here tomorrow morning, rather than – ” She stopped.
“I know,” Chris said. “You’re right.”
The dizziness hit Lally again at the front door. It was a worse attack than the one a few days earlier, and she thought for a moment she was going to fall down in a real faint,
but Chris was beside her, holding her up, and in another minute it was gone.
“What in hell was that?”
“I don’t know. I just got a little dizzy.”
He helped her back into the sitting room, and made her sit down on the sofa. “Are you sick?” he asked, anxiously. “You seemed okay before – you had a good
appetite.”
“I’m fine,” Lally assured him. “I’ve been a little off colour lately, that’s all.”
He was appalled. “And you took the time and trouble to come to our house, and all you got was a pile of abuse. And now I’ve sat here all evening telling you my troubles – ” He started for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To wake Katy.”
“Don’t you dare wake her.” Lally got up, then quickly sat back down.
“Are you dizzy again?” He returned to her side.
“No, I’m all right. But you mustn’t wake Katy – I’m fine, truly.”
“You almost passed out.”
“It was just a little dizzy spell, no big deal.”
“Easy for you to say – you didn’t see how white your face was.”
“All the more reason to let Katy stay. Hugo’s out for the night – it’ll be nice to know there’s someone else in the house. Not that I’m going to need
anyone,” she added, quickly.
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Can I get you something before I go?” He hesitated. “Should I stay?”
“No,” Lally said firmly. “You’re needed at home.” She managed a smile. “Anyway, I really am okay now. See?” She stood up, and it was true enough, the
dizziness was gone.
“You’re quite sure?”
“It’s time you left, Chris.”
“I don’t know about this.”
“Do you want me to turn pirouettes to prove I’m okay?”
“No! Definitely not.”
“Then go home, please.”
It was another ten minutes before he drove away, finally satisfied that she wasn’t about to pass out and injure herself. Though Lally did have to admit to herself that she felt pretty
sick, as if she’d run a marathon without water. If she didn’t perk up in a day or two, she guessed she’d have to see Charlie Sheldon, though it was years since she’d last
visited the doctor.
Maybe I’m just more upset about Katy than I realized
, she thought.
She walked upstairs slowly, holding onto the banister rail just in case. She went into her bedroom very quietly, took the things that she needed for the night, looked down at the sleeping child
for a moment or two, and then, leaving the door ajar and the light on in the corridor, Lally went to bed in the spare room.
The five factories that made up Hagen Industries occupied a site of nine acres of land behind Western Avenue in the Logan Square district of Chicago. Most of Hagen’s
employees reported for duty between seven and nine in the morning and went home between four and six o’clock in the evening. During their eight or so hours of work, they had no real call to
leave the complex; Hagen Industries was a paternalistic employer, and everything its people needed was on tap. There was a restaurant and a coffee shop, a branch of North Community Bank and a post
office, a grocery and drugstore, and a doctor’s office.
Most of the men and women who worked for Hagen Industries had the satisfaction of knowing that they were producing articles that benefited mankind, none more so than those who worked for Hagen
Pacing. Their factory was the smallest of the five in the complex, and it was accepted by the parent company that this was one area where financial growth was considered a lower priority than
continued quality, for Albrecht Hagen, the president, was known to care more passionately about the further development of these brilliant pieces of gadgetry than anything else in his business
empire.
The modern pacemaker was the most reliable electronic device ever made by man. It needed to be, for it was called upon to correct, without discomfort or even awareness, natural imperfections of
the human heart, and each device was expected to provide more than three hundred and fifty million pulses in its own lifetime. At least three hundred and fifty thousand pacemaker implants were
performed worldwide each year, and since its beginnings in the mid-seventies, Hagen Pacing had steadily and meticulously built itself a substantial slice of the manufacturing cake.
The pacemaker factory was divided into two main areas, Research and Development, headed by Olivia Ashcroft, PhD, and Production, headed by Howard Leary, a scientist whose first
ten working years had been spent designing weapons systems, but who had told Al Hagen, after joining his corporation, that he felt he’d come home. Ashcroft and Leary were both devoted to the
company and its products, but at forty-five and fifty-two respectively, both were aware that they were now virtually over the hill. The peak of an electronic engineer’s career these days came
much earlier than that of almost any other profession. There was so much new development to absorb, and so much growth, that within three years of an engineer starting out, he would have forgotten
half of what he had learned, and would only be able to keep up with half of what was going on in his own area. There was nothing that Ashcroft and Leary did not know about pacing, but when it came
down to the most crucial area of all – quality – the number one in the factory was Fred Schwartz, the Quality Assurance Manager. Schwartz lived and breathed for his work. Everyone who
reported to him had been trained to check, check and check again that whatever they handled was one hundred per cent perfect, but no one had a sharper eye and a more acutely developed instinct for
the most minute flaw that Schwartz himself.