A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick Read Free Book Online

was one of these odd pieces, all gilded arms and carved swans and sunset colored damask, now stained with
     Truitt’s blood. From her view, it looked like the kind of room where nobody would know where to sit, the kind of place maintained
     in perfect order, even though it was never used.
    There was one chair, plain, strong oak, which was clearly where Truitt sat in the evenings, smoking a cigar, an ashtray and
     humidor on the low plain table next to it, the table covered also with farm journals and almanacs and ledgers. Next to it,
     a lamp that glowed with brilliant colors from a stained-glass shade, crimsons and purples, grapes and autumn leaves and delicate
     birds in flight. It was the kind of lamp she’d seen only in hotels. She had never imagined an ordinary person would own one,
     but Ralph Truitt did.
    He must be very rich, she thought. The thought warmed her, and brought a smile to her face. He’s not going to die. Now it’s
     beginning. Her heart raced as though she were about to steal a pair of kid gloves from a shop.
    She could hear the heavy sounds of the three moving upstairs, one boot falling on the floor, then another. Ah, they were undressing
     him, she realized. She had thought she had been shut out because they had not wanted her to see his weakness, but it was,
     in fact, his body they were denying her.
    The clock ticked steadily. The wind howled without peace. Catherine sat alone, wondering if anybody on the face of the earth
     knew where she was, could picture how she sat, her hands quietly in her lap, her fingers touched with blood, her torn hem,
     her lost jewels.
    She wanted a cigarette. A cigarette in her little silver holder. And a glass of whiskey, one glass to take away the chill.
     But that was another life in another place, and here, in Ralph Truitt’s house, Catherine simply sat, her hands in her lap.
    Here they were, four people, each one moving separately through the rooms of the same house. She had held his head in her
     lap and her clothes were wet with his blood, yet she was alone. Alone as she had always been.
    Sometimes she sat and let her mind go blank and her eyes go out of focus, so that she watched the slow jerky movements of
     the motes that floated across her pupils. They had amazed her, as a child. Now she saw them as a reflection of how she moved,
     floating listlessly through the world, occasionally bumping into another body without acknowledgment, and then floating on,
     free and alone.
    She knew no other way to be. Her schemes, she saw now, were listless fantasies, poorly imagined, languidly acted, and so doomed
     to failure, again and again.
    She rose to her feet and wandered through the rooms of Truitt’s house. There were not many of them, and they were all alike,
     equally immaculate, furnished with the same odd blend of the rustic and the magnificent. The dining room was tiny, but the
     table was elaborately set for dinner for two. She picked an ornate fork from the table; it was almost as long as her forearm
     and astonishing in its weight. The brilliant polish caught the light as she turned it over to read the maker: Tiffany & Co.,
     New York City. She felt she had never seen anything so beautiful in her life.
    “Larsen’s with him.” Catherine dropped the fork as Mrs. Larsen came into the room. “I’ve made supper. It’s maybe not spoilt
     too bad, and you might as well eat.” She adjusted the fork Catherine had dropped, so that it was in perfect alignment with
     the other, equally massive utensils.
    “I was just . . .”
    “Looking. I saw. Sit. It’ll just be a minute. You must be starved.”
    Catherine sat at the table. She felt she was about to cry, for no reason except that it was a long way back and she was alone.
     She tried to fix her hair, then let it go.
    The soup was clear and hot, the lamb cooked in a sauce that was both delicious and exotic, all of it accomplished and fine
     in a way that would have been admired in any restaurant in any