He trailed off. I could tell what was coming—or so I thought. “And so she...?”
Vance, who had been looking down at my desk rather than at me, sprang to attention as if he had been slapped. “No! Not like that! It wasn’t what you think!” His face contorted, in a mixture of pain, remorse, and bewilderment. “There’s more to it than that....”
And this is what he said.
CHAPTER THREE
“Arthur, please sit down here for a moment.” Katharine patted the space on the couch next to her.
I knew what she was going to say before she said it; and yet, it was still a jolt—still something so incomprehensible that I could hardly believe my ears, hardly believe it was not a bad dream from which I’d awake if I tried hard enough.
“I think....”—even she was having trouble saying it, although she had surely been thinking it for a long time—“I think I want to die.”
If I had been less stunned by her words, I should have suspected something odd about the way she chose to make that statement. She didn’t say: “I want to kill myself”; she said, “I want to die.”
What can you say when someone says a thing like that?—especially someone who is your wife, someone scarcely more than twenty-six years old, someone you thought you loved and who you thought loved you? I could not speak; but I felt beads of perspiration sprouting on my forehead, and I began shaking all over. Finally:
“Katharine, darling, you can’t mean that....”
I’m sure she had been preparing for a reaction like that, for she started speaking almost immediately, like a schoolgirl giving a rehearsed speech.
“Oh, Arthur, I know what you must be thinking.... But please don’t think it has anything to do with you! I love you dearly, but it’s something I really have to do. It’s my only way of taking control of my life, don’t you see?”
She looked at me almost pleadingly. Then, unable to suppress her nervous energy, she almost leaped up from the couch and began pacing about.
“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. It’s the only way! Oh, Arthur!”—as if she were exasperated by my stupidity—“I’m so useless! I have nothing to live for! I don’t serve any purpose!”
I was stung. “You can live for me. I love you.”
I said it with a calmness that even now strikes me as eerie. Perhaps I was already becoming resigned to the inevitable.
Katharine seemed a bit taken aback; maybe she was expecting me to scream, shout, throw a tantrum. She sat down beside me again and put both her hands on my cheeks:
“Arthur, dearest, a person can’t live for someone else. Can’t you see that? I have to have my own reasons for living! I’ve done nothing in my life, and don’t see how I ever will. There’s so much waste in the world, Arthur....”
By now I was getting angry. I was hurt, but more than that, I was deeply insulted. Katharine was making me feel worthless. I shouldn’t have said it, but I did:
“Katharine, if it’s because of what your father did....”
It was a mistake. Leaping up from the couch, she turned on me with a rage I had never seen in her before:
“Don’t you dare bring up my father! He was a far better man than you’ll ever know. What he did was the bravest, most decent...” She became speechless with fury.
“I’m sorry, Katharine....” I went to her, tried to comfort her by putting my arms around her shoulders, but she shook me off. She’d never done that before. Then she tried to get a grip on herself, taking some deep breaths and looking fixedly at the floor.
“I told you I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I don’t think there’s been a day in the last ten years when I haven’t thought about it.” That means she had been thinking about this since she was about fifteen. “Do you take me for some flighty, irrational creature who’s come to this decision on a whim? I thought you’d give me more credit than that, Arthur! Can’t you see this is my life we’re talking about?” Her eyes glared at me like a Gorgon’s.
I thought I’d better take a different tack. I knew that she’d spent much of her life in a depression, and that a lot of people had hovered around her in a futile attempt to make her happy and normal. Probably they’d ended up just irritating her. Although I wouldn’t in the least think of her as argumentative—that would have been so contrary to how she had been taught a lady should behave—I could see she had a kind of quiet, desperate determination that fueled itself upon opposition.
“All right, Katharine,” I said in a soothing voice that I hoped had no trace of patronage or condescension, “let’s say you want to do...what you want to do. How exactly do you intend to go about it?”
The response was anything but what I would have expected. Stunned as I was by this whole turn of events, I was even more stupefied by what she now did.
For she changed her demeanor entirely and became eager, dynamic, even cheerful in an appalling way. She flung herself around, went to her handbag lying on the bureau, and fished around inside. She then drew out a business card and silently handed it to me, with a weird gesture of triumph. It read:
THE REMOVAL COMPANY
MUrray Hill 4-3802
I could hardly utter for a moment. Then: “What’s this?”
“Dr. Grabhorn told me about it,” she said with that hideous eagerness that was chilling me more and more. “He didn’t really explain what they do, but I think they must...you know, help people who....”
It was now my turn to dance with rage.
“Grabhorn! I knew it! That wretch! I knew that witch-doctor was behind all this! If I ever—”
Katharine interrupted me with the simple gesture of holding her hand calmly in front of her.
“Arthur, you don’t understand. Dr. Grabhorn has been wonderful to me. He’s helped me so much! If it weren’t for him, I would have done this a long time ago. But even he can’t help me now—not that way. But he can help me this way.”
Grabhorn was one of those psycho-analysts—disciple of Freud, evidently; had even met the eminent Austrian on a trip to Europe years ago. Katharine had been going to see him for the better part of two years. He apparently had a very exclusive clientele—only the best (that is, the richest) for him. He didn’t come cheap.
I was rapidly losing control of the entire situation, and also of my emotions. My head was spinning. It was too much to digest—and even if I could digest it, the whole thing was so repulsive that my mind refused to accept even the least part of it.
“Wait a minute, Katharine.... What exactly does this ‘Removal Company’ do? You don’t mean to tell me that they...that they kill people?”
She took on a peculiar expression—rather sheepish, as if apologizing for some faux pas. “Well, yes, I guess they do. Dr. Grabhorn doesn’t even know the details himself, and of course it’s all very secret and confidential.... I mean, we’d have to go to New York—that’s where the place is—and I think we’d have to sign some papers, and apparently it’s pretty expensive...they’re taking on an awfully big risk, you know.”
This was sounding awfully fishy. “Katharine, there’s something funny about all this....”
“Oh, Arthur, there isn’t!” Again that eagerness, mixed now with impatience. “Dr. Grabhorn wouldn’t get me into anything unsavory! He’s such a dear, dear man. But don’t you see, it has to be a secret.... My God, Arthur, the whole thing’s illegal, you know—at least illegal according to the laws we have...maybe someday it will be different. But there are so many people who need help in this way...so many! I think it’s wonderful