She thought that he wasn’t hungry. My God!
How long had it been? How long was it since he’d eaten a decent uninterrupted, meal? How long? A week, a month, a year? No. It couldn’t be a year. He’d be dead by now. A year ago he was in Denver. Cousin Grey Ellis hadn’t been dead a year. It was actually only a few weeks since Esther brought him to Dr, Green’s hospital for treatment. They’d just got back from Honolulu, from their honeymoon. Honeymoon! Esther had been so regular about everything. Not that she understood what was really wrong. How could he tell her? If he told her anything at all, then he would have to tell her everything. And then she would shrink away from him, the soft love-light in her clear blue eyes would harden into hatred. He did it for Esther, so they could be married, so Esther could have all the things she should have. But Esther was sweet and good. The fact remained that he had done it and she could no longer love him if she knew.
Another thing was ironic. That was Gordon’s fetishistic attitude toward food. Ever since he was a child Gordon had revered food. Not that he was a glutton. It was merely a delicious over-emphasis on the pleasures of the table. He loved to eat, to talk about food, to read about it.
His mind flitted back to his childhood in Grantyille, a little mining town in southern Colorado. His father couldn’t work, having contracted tuberculosis from long years spent underground. His mother took in washing. They were hideously poor, so poor that hamburger was a luxury. Every once in a while, between racking coughs, his father would mention Cousin Grey Ellis out in California. His voice used to be pinched and bitter.
As a child Gordon had never had much or the best of anything. Maybe that’s what did it. He worked hard in school and after school, picking up and delivering heavy sacks of laundry. There was nothing extraordinary about Gordon. He had fair looks, a fair mind. But he wasn’t brilliant in any department. He had to work and he did work, hard, to climb up from that pit of poverty.
He was in charge of men’s dry goods at Tilson’s Mercantile in Denver when he met Esther Craig. He had worked his way up from stock boy, and was now next to Mr. Chambers, the floor walker. Mr. Chambers liked Gordon because he was decently subservient; it was whispered around Tilson’s that one day Gordon might be floor walker. All this paled into insignificance when he met Esther. His hunger for food was nothing compared to his hunger for Esther. But Esther Craig lived with an uncle and a grandmother, both of whom enjoyed wealth and social position. Esther was femininely fragile and sweet, he was sure money didn’t matter to her. But it did to her uncle and her grandmother. They would never consent to Esther marrying a store clerk—well, department head—and Esther was too feminine to defy them.
Gordon spent many sleepless nights brooding, over his unfortunate position before that letter came—the letter telling him Cousin Grey Ellis in California had died.
“Well, Mr. Keel!”
Gordon leaped out of his memories to find Dr. Green by his bed. Dr. Green was a tall brisk man, even brisker than Nurse Rawlins. Tonight Dr. Green had brought another doctor with him, a solemn little man with penetrating eyes. Nurse Rawlins hovered behind them, her brisk little cough said, see what I told you, Doctor?
“You haven’t touched your dinner, Mr. Keel,” Dr. Green chided. His reproachful smile identified Gordon with a spoiled child.
Gordon’s eyes leaped to the food tray.
He retched. He longed to tell them to get out, all of them, as he had Nurse Rawlins.
But if he did they might take drastic measures. They might send him to an institution for the insane, and he was not insane.
The little man with the penetrating eyes touched Dr. Green’s arm. He gestured Nurse Rawlins to take the tray and herself out of the room. She obeyed with awe, and that told Gordon that the little man was important.
Dr. Green confirmed this. “Mr. Keel, this Dr, Ramsey Folliger. Do you know who Dr. Folliger is, Mr. Keel?”
Gordon scowled at the little man. “He’s a psycho doctor. But I’m not crazy, Doctor! I’m not!”
Dr. Folliger brushed Dr. Green behind him. He shook his head and smiled at Gordon. “We don’t think that at all, Mr. Keel.
But frankly, we do think that there is something, some mental block, at the bottom of this obsession of yours.”
Gordon laughed and sobbed at the same time. “You can’t help me, Dr. Folliger.”
“All the same,” and the little man fixed him with his penetrating eyes, “I intend to try.”
In the end Gordon told Dr. Folliger everything. Dr. Folliger was that kind of a man. Maybe it was his eyes. When he looked at Gordon and asked questions, he had to answer them truthfully. He had to tell Dr. Folliger just what went on in his mind. Oh, he was clever. Within two hours after Dr. Green stepped back out of Gordon’s room, Dr. Folliger had the whole story…
That letter about Cousin Grey Ellis had changed Gordon’s life. It put wealth within his grasp. It had traveled quite a bit before it reached him. If only it never had! He might have been happy. After awhile that hungry ache in his heart for Esther would have gradually faded away, he would have become floor walker at Tilson’s and more than likely have married Cora Anderson, who made sheep’s eyes at him from behind the ribbon counter.
Cousin Grey Ellis had that letter written just before he died. In it he willed Gordon something. No, not his money. He willed Gordon his Cousin Aubrey Ellis. Aubrey was Grey’s son and it seemed that he—
In telling Dr. Folliger about it, Gordon relived the whole thing. These memories were all too vivid, etched on his mind with inexorable acid. He remembered hiking down the wet dirt road off the highway, from the cut-off where the Greyhound bus dumped him and his three suitcases. It was evening. It had rained. So it did rain in California! He remembered his first sight of that big brown house, half-hidden behind those curiously warted palms with their funny drooping fronds. He had noticed how the brown paint had peeled off the rococo veranda in great patches, how the shingles were loose on that little tower leaning across the lead-gray sky. How the concrete sidewalk was crumbling in places so that tufts of new spring grass thrust through the cracks. Cousin Grey Ellis had money, lots of money. Yet he persisted in living in this big old country house, which he didn’t even keep up.
Then—Cousin Aubrey.
He was sitting at the dining room table in an arm chair. The arm chair had a strap across it, so he wouldn’t fall out. He sat there drooling over a plate of fricasseed chicken. His gaping mouth was sloppy with white gravy and bits of chicken, his vacant eyes gawked up at Gordon with idiotic disinterest. He made little puppy noises at the large woman who had set down his spoon to welcome Gordon.
“Can’t he even feed himself?” Gordon stared at seventeen-year-old Cousin Aubrey with sharp repugnance. Gordon had great respect for fricassee of chicken, to see it slopped over like that repelled him.
“Nope.” The big woman adjusted a hairpin in her graying knot, and then started putting on her cloth coat, which was handy on a chair by the oval dining room table. “Can’t eat, nor talk, nor walk. Can’t do nothin’ for himself.” She eyed Gordon sharply. “Case you want to know who I am, I’m Nellie Fawcett. I’ve been Grey Ellis’s nearest neighbor for twelve years. I do his cleaning, and help out. I been takin’ care of Aubrey since Grey died.” She pierced a long pin through her dowdy black hat with emphasis. “Am I glad to see you. I’ve got my own kids to feed. Aubrey!” She shook the lackwit’s shoulder. “This is your Cousin Gordon. He’s come all the way from Denver to take care of you. Won’t that be nice?” She turned back to Gordon with a shrug. “He don’t understand, but I think he likes to be talked to. After you’ve fed him, take his clothes off and bathe him, and put him to bed. Oh, yeah, there’s a twin baby buggy in the parlor. He likes to be took for a ride in it every afternoon. You’ll find out what else there is to do for yourself. Anything comes up, give me a buzz. The number’s tacked up on the almanac calendar by the phone. Phone’s in the hall, by the cellar door.”