Focus on Words

“How?”
“I could just –” he began, “I could just say to you – I could just tell you something
–” He stopped, then suddenly rose to his feet, spilling the papers off his knees. “But I
won’t,” he said cheerfully, and smiled directly at me.
I stooped to pick up the papers, and he watched me from his height.
“Judge,” I said, “I’ll be back tomorrow. You think it over, and make up your mind
tomorrow.”
“Why, it’s made up.”
“You’ll –”
“No, Jack.”
I went to the hall door. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said.
“Sure, sure. You come back. But my mind is made up.”
I walked down the hall without saying good-bye.
I took my shower and lay down on my bed and went to sleep.
I came out of the sleep and popped straight up in the bed. I was wide awake. The
sound that had awakened me was still ringing in my ears. I knew that it had been a
scream. Then it came again. A bright, beautiful, silvery soprano scream.
I bounced off the bed and started for the door, realized that I was buck-naked,
grabbed a robe, and ran out. There was a noise down the hall from my mother’s room,
a sound like moaning. The door was open and I ran in.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed, wearing a negligee, clutching the white
bedside telephone in her hand, staring at me with wide, wild eyes, and moaning in a
spaced, automatic fashion. I went toward her. She dropped the telephone to the floor
with a clatter, and pointed her finger at me and cried out, “You did it, you did, you
killed him!”
“What?” I demanded, “what?”
“You killed him!”
“Killed who?”
“You killed him!” She began to laugh hysterically.
I was holding her by the shoulders now, shaking her, trying to make her stop
laughing, but she kept clawing and pushing at me. She stopped laughing an instant to
gasp for breath, and in that interval I heard the dry, clicking signal the telephone was
making to call attention to the fact it was not on its rack. Then her laughter drowned
out the sound.
“Shut up, shut up!” I commanded, and she suddenly stared at me as though just
discovering my presence.
Then, not loud now but with intensity, she said, “You killed him, you killed him.”
“Killed who?” I demanded, shaking her.
“Your father,” she said, “your father and oh! you killed him.”
That was how I found out.
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