I’m so mad I could spit.

I walked into her room that morning as always; quietly, though not on tiptoe. The loose board creaked, but she didn’t move, of course: she sleeps like a pig. At the side of her bed I stood looking down. She lay flat on her back, her skin, even her eyelids, yellow and wrinkled, her skull showing behind the sagging old flesh, and her mouth, without her teeth, puckered to a slit. How I hate it when I have to kiss her. It takes a day for the feeling to leave my lips.

Her pillow was on the floor. It always is, though I’ve often spoken about it. I wore gloves and my suede jacket and skirt. I picked up her pillow and held it tightly at each end, stretched between my hands. I edged closer to her bed, almost touching it. The rest I went through only in imagination, for I was rehearsing. I had to be certain, first, that I could really do it. But I saw it in my mind as though it were happening. I could even teel tentative little muscle movements.

Down with the pillow, flat across her face, a knee on the bed, shoulders hunched over my arms, the knuckles of each fist pressed deep in the mattress. A moment of utter silence, then her bony hands shoot out, clawing rapidly, senselessly, at my arms and hands, scratching at the leather. Then they tug purposefully at my wrists. A silent, almost motionless struggle . . . and now her old hands begin to relax.

Suddenly a new picture flashed through my mind, and up to that moment this possibility had never occurred to me. Suddenly, and I could hear it in my brain, her feet began to drum on the mattress. Fast! Fast as a two-year-old’s in a tantrum, and loud.

I couldn’t stand that. Not even in imagination. I could feel the blood drop from my face. Perhaps I made a sound, I don’t know. And I don’t like to think how my face must have looked. But when I turned it to hers — I’d been staring straight ahead — those mean, blue eyes were, boring into mine.

“What are you doing?” she said, in her flat, cold voice. The panic remained for a moment. Then I could speak.

“Nothing, Mother,” and my voice was easy. “I decided to shop early.” That explained my jacket and gloves. “And I thought I’d tidy up your room first.”

“Can’t do much tidying while I’m still here.”

“No, I guess not. It was foolish of me. I’m sorry I disturbed you. Try to sleep some more.”

“Can’t sleep once I’ve been waked up; you know that.” She was trying to prolong the conversation, alert for a clue.

“I’m sorry. Mother. I’ll be back in a few minutes and get you some breakfast.” Then I went out to the stores, though there was really no shopping to do. I bought a few staples.

It’s infuriating, though. So perfect, so simple — and I just can’t do it.

She wouldn’t be smothered, you see. Her creaky old heart would give out! Her doctor has warned us, and he’d be the doctor I’d call. Then I’d phone Al: “I tiptoed into her room to see if she wanted breakfast, and she looked sort of funny, and — oh, Al, she’s dead!”

Almost true, and it would have been true, really, by the time they arrived. I’d have run it over and over in my mind, like a film, till I believed it myself, almost. I know how to lie. But I’m just not a murderer, that’s all. I’m simply a housewife.

I’m thirty-two years old, five feet five inches tall, wavy hair, dark-blue eyes, reasonably pretty, and I’m in love with my husband. I’m a homemaker, much as I dislike that word, and I want my home the way it was before she came.

We didn’t do much, then, Al and I. Evenings mostly at home, reading in the living room. In the spring and summer, the garden till dark. Bridge with the Dykes fairly often: we hardly see them now. And occasionally a movie. Daytimes I cleaned, I shopped, I cooked. That’s all. But I liked it. I made a home — for my husband and me. And I want it back.

But now it’s like this. The other morning I was doing the dishes. She sat on the back porch, “taking the air” — an unpleasant phrase. I couldn’t see her, actually, but I could see her in my mind, staring out at the pile of new lumber in the yard, hands folded in her lap. And thinking of me. As I was thinking of her. For a long time she made no sound, and then she cleared her throat. That doesn’t mean anything to you, does it? But it did to me. And she knew it. It was a nasty, deliberate, spiteful reminder that she was present and existing, sharing my house and my husband. Do you see now, what I mean? I can feel her, actually feel her, in every room of the house at all times, day and night! Even in our bedroom which she never enters.

Oh, I’m going to kill her, all right. Al will get over it. He must hate it as much as I do. We’ve had four years of it. And it started as soon as she came.

We’d had a date with the Crowleys, made just before she arrived — a weekend at their cottage on the lake. And we kept it: she insisted. “You children go ahead. I’ll be glad to get rid of you!”

“Sure, now, Mother?” Al asked. “You know, a weekend’s not important, and if —”

“Of course I am! Now, I won’t hear another word — you’re going!”

The doctor was there when we returned Sunday evening. An ambulance in front of the house, a nurse inside with an oxygen tent. A heart attack. I know she did it deliberately; not faked, exactly, but somehow self-induced. She’d phoned a neighbor in the late afternoon, hardly able to talk. Our neighbor hurried over, called the hospital — and that’s what we came home to. She’s never had another attack, and we’ve never had another weekend.

I mentioned it again a few days ago. “Yes, I’d have got over it,” Al said. “You can’t foresee and guard against everything. But you have to try. I have to see that she has as long and happy a life as she can.” And then he startled me by adding this, “But I know it’s hard on you sometimes, Annie.”

I’d thought he didn’t realize, wasn’t aware. Of course he must have been, a little, at least. But he’ll never know how I really feel, that I’m sure of.

My new plan is so perfect, you see. It’s going to be a push, a sudden push from a high place. So simple, but it took me a long time to think of it. I was afraid I couldn’t trust myself to go through with any of the plans I was able to think of. And then it came to me. There’s nothing, really, to go through with in a push! It’s over before you can think, over the moment it’s started! And then . . . well, I heard her gasp, turned around, and there she was, disappearing over the edge! Her heart, I suppose.

But what high place? She never leaves the house. The stairs, from our second floor to the first, turn at a landing; not much of a fall. It wouldn’t be certain. I wish I could plan ahead and think more logically. Al says I’d be out of house and home in a month if he weren’t here to plan for me. Maybe he’s right, but I’ve always found, it seems to me, that things work themselves out in the long run.

And sure enough. One night Al and I were reading in the living room; his mother had gone to bed. One of my magazines had come that day. I was leafing through it and I came to an article on “Widow’s Walks” — photographs of the originals in New England, sketches of modern adaptations. So cute. Perfect little porches, the article said, for sunbathing and for sitting of an evening. Perfect: a “Widow’s Walk” with a knee-high railing.

Al’s set in his ways, though, and I could just hear what he’d say if I suggested a “Widow’s Walk” on our house!

I did, though. “Look, dear,” I said, and he glanced up from his book. “Aren’t these darling?” I held up my article.

“Uh, huh,” he answered. I smiled expectantly and didn’t move. “Yeah, they are,” Al said. I continued to wait, still smiling, still holding my magazine up. I know the game: we’ve been married six years. He was hoping I’d consider his comment sufficient and let him get back to his book. Or that I’d be the one to get up. So I waited. Al is a polite man, and he started to rise. In an instant I was on my feet, carrying the magazine over to him. And because he’d kept his comfort, I’d earned my interruption. He laid his book in his lap and took my magazine.

“Aren’t they darling.?” I knelt on the floor beside Al’s chair. “‘Widow’s Walks,’ they’re called.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen them,” Al said. “The old whaling days. The women watched for the men at sea.”

“So that’s what they’re for!”

“Sure. That’s why the name. Half the time the husbands never came back.”

“Well, no danger of your drowning at the office, dear. And I could watch for you to come home after work. How about building one on our roof?”

That half-irritated, half-pitying look men reserve for women’s impracticality came over his face, but before he could turn to look at me, I was smiling. He grinned, then. “Oh, sure,” he said, “I’ll start tomorrow.”

I waited three nights before I mentioned it again. We were walking home from the movies. And I waited till we were less than a block from home; just time enough to voice his objections, not time enough to get dead set against it. “I’ve been thinking, Al. It would be nice to have a ‘Widow’s Walk.’ It’d be easy to build,” and now I was excited and enthusiastic. “You’re so handy with tools and the plans are all in the magazine. It’d be so nice in the evening. I’ll bet we could see the river, and —”

“Oh, Annie,” Al said, “in the first place —” And I listened, and nodded, and agreed.

“It was just an idea,” I said: we had reached our porch and he took out his keys. “But you’re right, it wouldn’t be practical.” And as we entered the house, I added only this, “Your mother would like it, though.” Then we had to be quiet: she was asleep.

It took less than two days. Spring came to stay on a Thursday. The sun was warmer, closer, the ground moist and crumbling, and the air was alive. Al, I knew, would be aching to build something, anything. He’s a marvel with tools and loves to work with them. The lumber was delivered on Friday, dumped in the back yard, and I signed the receipt.

I grinned when Al came home, “What’s the wood for.?” I asked, and Al grinned back. His mother had to be told, then, and I let Al tell her. She mumbled and muttered about the lumber on the flower beds. Is there anything she likes, anything that meets with her royal approval? But I didn’t care, not this time.

Sunday, it happened again. That damned, unexpected panic! Maybe I relaxed too much — it was that kind of day. Everything green and alive, the outdoor sounds so new and clear and soft; the sort of day you think of when someone says, “Spring.”

It should have been perfect. Al was working on the roof in the sun — no shirt. His mother and I on the lawn in canvas chairs, she with the Sunday paper, while I shelled peas. Dinner was a comfortable two hours off, the meat was on and needed no attention. You could feel the air, soft and cool, moving across the backs of your hands. And it carried sound as it never does otherwise. A dog barking, many houses away, the chitter of birds, and the soft, clean sound of the wood as Al worked on the little, half-finished platform he’d built on the roof. A pause, then the sudden loose clatter of light new planking as it dropped on the heavier timbers already in place. A grunt from Al as he got down on his knees, then the skilled tap, tap of his hammer nudging a board to position. The tiny rattle of nails, the sharp ping, ping as he set one in the wood, then the heavy, measured, satisfactory bang, bang, bang, on a rising scale, as he drove it home.

“He’s going to fall,” she said nastily.

“Oh, no. Mother, Frank’s light as a cat on his feet.” I spoke gently, kindly, and I smiled. She didn’t answer directly, didn’t look at me.

“Don’t see the use of it, anyway. Porch on a roof!”

“But, Mother,” I said, “you’ll love that porch!” That was a mistake: her face set. Any urging from me is like pulling a mule with a rope. I said nothing more, but I was annoyed at myself and at her. If you only knew, I thought, and then, without warning, the panic broke. I hadn’t expected, hadn’t allowed for it, but suddenly the sound of that hammer, bang, bang, bang, was the sound of a hammer building a scaffold. The next plank scraped and bumped hollowly over the others, then dropped into place. And I couldn’t bear to hear the next nail, to hear the sound of her scaffold moving nearer and nearer to completion. I rose, turned, set the bowl carefully on my chair, and ran to the house.

Al called to me, “What’s the matter?” then he yelled. “Annie!”

“The meat!” I shrieked, and yanked the screen door open.

I leaned on the kitchen table, hands flat on the top, my eyes closed. “Take hold of yourself, take hold of yourself,” I muttered senselessly, and then, in a moment or two, I was all right. The heavy, hollow, hammer sound began again and I listened. “Yes,” I thought, “a scaffold. For her. Make it good and strong.”

What a ridiculous weakness, though. Not to be able to count on yourself, to trust yourself! Oh, I wish she’d die of her own accord!

She won’t though. She knows I want her to. Yes, she’s that stubborn! Al finished the porch — it’s really very cute — but she wouldn’t use it. He painted it Sunday night, a light green, and we went up next morning before he went to work. His mother, too: trust her to be in on everything. But she wouldn’t go back. I’d try to keep from urging her, but sometimes I couldn’t help it. Then she’d smile, stay just where she was, and answer, “No, you go up, dear. I’m comfortable right where I am.” Then I’d have to go up there and sit.

Things work themselves out, though. I stopped talking about the porch, and spent a lot of time there. It was rather nice, and presently she began to suspect that I liked getting away from her. And maybe she was a little lonely. Then, one evening at dinner, Al mentioned the porch. I told him how much I liked it, how quiet and so sort of away from things it seemed. Maybe it was my speaking of the pleasant quiet that gave her the idea. She thought it would be so nice to have a radio up there — the one from the kitchen, perhaps. She knows I use it whenever I’m cooking. I wanted her to start using the porch so much that I nearly agreed with her. But I caught myself.

“I don’t know that a radio would be so good up there. Mother. It’s —”

“Don’t see why not!” she answered instinctively. “Like to hear a few programs myself, sometimes, and if we’re going to sit up there all the time —”

I was elated, “We’ll see,” I said, coldly, and later when she’d gone to bed, I told Al, “Put the radio up there tonight — from the kitchen. I hardly ever use it.”

“You’re sweet,” he said, and kissed me. He’s a darling.

Now she likes the porch. Loves it! She puffs and mutters her way up to the attic, rests for a few moments on the old cedar chest, then pulls herself up the new flight of stairs to the roof. And there she sits, with her fan and her handkerchief, all morning long, till the sun gets at it from the west. Of course she has me on the jump all the time. Downstairs for the mail, for her glasses, for a drink of water, for anything and everything she can think of. “Do you mind, Annie? I’d go myself, but —”

Sometimes I’ll say, “In a minute,” and then let her wait. But usually I answer, “Of course not, Mother, I have to go down anyway.” And I don’t mind. Not in the least. Because it makes me madder and madder every time she does it. And that’s what I want.

I know I can’t trust myself, can’t be sure I won’t stop an instant before it happens, unable to go through with it — unless I see red. I really do see red. Some people think that’s a figure of speech, but it isn’t. When I get really furiously angry, it’s as though a sheet of red cellophane were in front of my eyes. I actually see red, and then I can do anything.

I think it’s going to happen soon, now — about the radio. Things work themselves out, you see. She had to use it, of course, once it was up there. And she’s discovered a particularly unpleasant program. It comes on at ten; old-time songs played on an organ, and an obnoxious-voiced man reading bad poetry. Ten, she knows, is when I’ve always listened to “Woman of Destiny.” I asked her, the other day, if she’d mind my occasionally hearing it just to keep up with the story. She guessed not. But when I get up there, after breakfast dishes and the beds, there she sits listening to her, program. Never a move, never a suggestion to change it to mine. I haven’t said any more. I just sit there, seething. She knows it, too, and likes it.

One other thing has been happening, lately. I’ve forgotten, several times, to fold the canvas chairs when we leave the porch for the day. Then, next morning, the seats are damp from the dew and she has to sit on the rail till the chairs dry. She’s complained about it.

Oh, things do work themselves out. One of these mornings the chairs will be damp again. I’ll come up at ten and there she’ll be, sitting on the rail listening to that sanctimonious fool on the radio. I’ll sit down beside her. She’ll complain in that nagging voice of hers that I forgot the chairs again yesterday. I’ll suggest that she might think of it herself occasionally. Then that sullen silence. I’ll glance at the radio, then back at her; hinting that she might just suggest hearing my program for a change. She’ll ignore that, as always. My blood will start to boil. And I’ll let it. I’ll feed the flames, remembering everything she’s ever done, and that’s plenty. I’ll start back through the years and remember them all. And suddenly — I’ll see red. Really red, just for an instant. Then, afterwards . . . panic? Well, let it come! Who wouldn’t be panicky when she’d seen her mother-in-law fall two and a half stories to a cement driveway? Things, you see, do work themselves out. And it’ll serve her right. It will! It’ll — serve — her — right! The old bitch.

***

I don’t know, now, why I wrote what you’ve read. I started, I remember, with some idea of getting all my plans on paper. It became something else; of course, but I continued to write just the same. I meant to burn it, but I never have. I’ve kept it and read it, many times, over and over again.

Somehow I didn’t think much about Al’s using the porch. Naturally he did, on weekends especially. He went up one Saturday morning, shortly after his mother. I’d forgotten the chairs again, the night before, and she was sitting on the railing. I suppose, this time, her attack was a real one. Al sat on the opposite rail, the width of the porch away, and she couldn’t have been sure he’d be able to reach her in time. He almost did, though. When she started to fall, he shot across that porch faster than I’d ever seen him move before. I was watching; I’d been coming up the stairs and my eyes were level with the floor of the porch.

He got a hand on her skirt, a tight strong hold, reaching way over the railing a split-second after she was clear of the porch. And then, as she plunged, her skirt went taut, yanked on his arm with the force of a whip, and the precarious balance he held, leaning way over the rail, was gone.

Things do work themselves out, I suppose. Long after their husbands were dead and gone, the old seafarers’ wives must have continued pacing the floors of their “Widow’s Walks.” The name says that. Back and forth, back and forth they walked, day after day after hopeless day. As I do.