something at her. She was right, of course. I just didnât want her to be right, not just then; I wasnât in the mood for it. I went over to the United Parcel carton and thought about kicking it again.
âWhy donât you open it?â Marian asked. Then, when I hesitated: âWould you like me to open it for you?â
âNo, Iâll do it.â I couldnât spend the rest of my life being afraid of boxes . The carton was taped shut and I had to get a knife from the kitchen to cut it open.
âYouâd think the crown jewels were in there,â Marian said as I sawed away at the tape. But it wasnât the crown jewels inside.
It was toilet paper. Seventy-two rolls of White Cloud toilet paper, three hundred double-ply sheets to the roll.
CHAPTER 4
FIONA BENEDICT
When I got back to Washburn, Ohio, I âconfidedâ in a few people that Rudy had died of an allergic reaction to a new medicine he was taking for high blood pressure. Some of my high-minded colleagues immediately assumed overdose , Iâm sure, but I couldnât help that. It was better than putting up with the kind of stares that were bound to come my way if it were known I was even remotely connected with a murder. Washburn, Ohio, was where I intended to live out my retirement, starting in three yearsâ time. I did not intend to live there as an object of curiosity.
Poor Rudy. How hard heâd tried, how much boasting heâd done. He was too bright for that world of flash and glitter heâd moved in, but not really inventive enough for any enduring work. In the beginning Iâd thought television would be good for him, mature him a little. By constant exposure to the perfectly horrible example television offered, heâd learn how not to write, Iâd hoped. Eventually, I thought, heâd move on to better things.
But no, he never did. At first Iâd assumed Rudy had been seduced by the easy success heâd found, but later I came to understand it was fear that kept him from venturing farther afield. He never took any real risks in his life, and for that I blame his father. All of Rudyâs confidence in himself evaporated the day that cowardly man left us to cope on our own. Rudy was supposed to have been planning a play when he died, and thereâs always the possibility that he would actually have gone ahead and written it. But I didnât think so; it was all talk. Rudy was a big talker. That New York police detective, the doughfaced woman named Larchâsheâd brought up the subject of Rudyâs play every time she could. I suppose she was trying to give me a good final memory of him: the serious writer embarking on a major work. But it was a false picture; I knew my son.
Rudy had started rebelling against me soon after his father left us and never quite grew out of it. He blamed me for his fatherâs going; and by the time he was old enough to understand what had happened, it was too late. The pattern was setâhe needed to blame me. In the last letter I had from him, he was still telling me (in a disguised manner, of course) how important he was in the world he had chosenâas distinguished from the one I inhabited. His father had also been a historian, but in college Rudy had taken courses exclusively in the soft disciplines, art and literature and music appreciation, the sort of thing in which the studentâs opinions of works of art are treated as more important than the works themselves. And then midway through his senior year, he quit. One semester away from graduation, and he walked out. Rudy had taken a perverse pleasure in leaving school before getting a degree; it was his way of thumbing his nose at the academic life that he identified with me.
At least, thatâs what I was supposed to believe. On the surface Rudy and I were always on good terms; the rebelling was more in the nature of needles in the side. And I did believe his walking out of