“Yes.”

I heard the sheets whisper and when I looked again she was sitting with her knees drawn up. Her arms were clasped around her calves and her head was pressed forward, and a Modigliani or a Gauguin could have done something remarkable with her. She sat that way for a long time and when she finally lifted her face she kept it straight ahead, not looking at me. Her voice was muted and hard to hear.

“Two-thirty,” she said, “perhaps a quarter to three. She was… I thought she was drunk. She told me about the robbery, things about Troy and running away from a man — it was difficult to follow. Perhaps I was too sleepy, too annoyed to want to understand. She hadn’t been here in weeks, hadn’t even been to see mother in the hospital. I told her to take back the money to whomever she’d gotten it from and to stop acting like a child….

“She took the phone and dialed a number, then she hung up without saying anything and ran out. That was when I saw it in her face, I think, whatever it was that made me realize she really was in trouble. I wanted to make her explain it more carefully. My summer coat was in the front closet and I pulled it on over my pajamas. I took my pocketbook and ran to the elevator….

“I had to wait for it. There was a small foreign car pulling out across the way when I got down, one of those MG’s, and I saw that Catherine was driving it. I called out but she didn’t hear me. My Plymouth was right out front. I got in and followed her….”

“You didn’t see anyone else? A red-haired man in a Dodge?”

“No.”

“Go on, Estelle.”

“Yes.” She had not moved. “I thought I could pull up next to her, but she was driving too fast. She didn’t stop for lights. I didn’t either, after the first one. When she got over to 68th I remembered that your apartment was there. I realized it was probably you she’d called. I thought she would be all right with you. I was going to turn around and go back home. I…”

Her voice broke. I butted my smoke in the tray, not saying anything. Her eyes were deeply shadowed in the dimness. After a while she went on.

“I don’t know why I stopped. I remember she made her tires screech. I parked behind her and I opened the door to get out, then I changed my mind. I don’t think she’d been aware of me at all, she was in such a peculiar state, but she did look around when I closed the door. She turned back and came over to me….

“My hands were actually shaking, I had been so unnerved by it all. I opened the door again, almost just to have something to do with them. I asked her what was the matter….

“She had stopped next to the door, and she was smiling at me. She said… she said, ‘Oh, I don’t need you anymore, Estelle. I’m going up to see a man, he’ll help me. The kind of mm you wouldn’t know anything about. The kind couldn’t get in your life.’ And then she laughed…

“She laughed. I don’t think she meant to be cruel, she was simply upset. But to say that to me, after all those years…”

Estelle stopped. She sat there. I waited. “Nineteen,” she said then. “I was nineteen when our father died, and Catherine was seven. Even then mother was deaf, capable of almost nothing. All those years when Catherine was a child I supported us. I brought her up. I never asked her to be grateful. But what time did I have for anything else — for men? What man would have married me anyhow, with two other people to support?

“No, I couldn’t get a man. She was right. She was the one who could. She was sixteen when it started. I tried to talk to her but she wouldn’t listen. Six years it went on, seven, I don’t know how long. She was a slut, there was no other word for it. She had abortions. Not one, two. The first time when she was eighteen. Conceived children without even being sure whose they were and then had them torn out of her while I who was never going to have them, who would have given my life to have one, had to watch while she…

“She came to me for the money. Both times. I went with her to the doctor, hid it from mother. She always came to me, but only when it was something like that, only when it was dreadful and…

“And then she married you. You. And I was so glad for her, so glad, because that should have been the end of it. My God, what else could she ask but a man like you? And then when she threw you away, went back to being a tramp…

“And then to say that to me this morning, whether she meant it or not, to throw it up to me that she could still go back to you whenever she wanted, that even after the way she had been unfaithful she could still have you, while I who had no one, no one…

“There was a fruit knife wrapped in tissue paper on the front seat. I’d bought it the day before and forgotten to bring it upstairs. She was standing there, laughing, and I could hear the mockery of it, and I remembered so many things, so many… And then the knife was in my hand and there was blood on it and… and.. “

“Estelle—”

She sobbed once, making no other move. Her voice was still flat, almost emotionless, and I knew there had to be something she was leaving out. I did not say anything. I told myself to let her finish it first.

“I saw her kneeling there. I threw the knife on the floor. I tried to lean out toward her and I couldn’t, I…

“And then she got up. She.. Oh, God! She stumbled across the sidewalk and she almost fell and I still could not do anything. And then I saw her go into the hall—

“The money was on the curb. I don’t know why I picked it up. And then I was driving, running away….

“But I stopped again. I was on Third Avenue. I sat there,

shaking. I had to go back

“I didn’t know what I was doing. I left the car and walked as far as the tailor shop on your corner and I stood in the doorway. And then you came down and the drunk was there and I was going to scream. I couldn’t make a sound. I could only stand there, even after you went back inside, not knowing whether she was alive or…

“You came out again and drove away. I saw you leave the key and I ran across. I went upstairs and I saw her and I… I…

“I vomited in the bathroom. I flushed it three times. I remember that, three times, to make sure it was clean. I was going to wait for you but I couldn’t, not with Catherine on the floor, not knowing I was the one who…

“I had the sack of money with me all the while. I put it in the laundry bag. I didn’t think anyone would find it there, not right away. I thought I was going to be sick again but I wasn’t. I ran out—

“I put the key back under the mat. I walked slowly, I remember that, too. The knife was still in the car. I drove home and brought it upstairs and washed it. I didn’t know if she had told you who had done it, I thought perhaps you had been here looking for me while I was still out, still… And then when that Duke came I thought it was you at the bell, I didn’t even ask who it was, and then a minute later you were here and I could see that you didn’t know, and… and…”

Estelle suddenly had her face in her hands. Her body shook violently. She threw herself face-down against the pillows.

I sat there. The soft light reminded me of places I’d been under dense high firs. If I hadn’t been looking at her, the sobbing could have been the sounds of scavengers in the brush, chipmunks foraging.

“Why?” I said then. “Not just because she said something about a man you couldn’t get, Estelle. Not just for that.”

The sobs died slowly. She lay still. “Why, Estelle?”

Her face was still buried. She lifted it slightly, not toward me. “Yes,” she said. “For that and… and…”

“What, Estelle? What?”

I was watching her. She pressed her head back against her raised shoulders with her weight on her forearms, holding it there. Her eyes were squeezed shut. Really her head dropped again.

“This morning,” she said. “I told you what happened to Catherine when she was six, what… what a man did to her. The man who attacked her was… his name was Robert Bell. He was twenty. My father was still alive, and Robert was staying with us for a weekend at the cottage we had rented. He was my fiancé, my…