[Revised from a piece I wrote in 1966]
My Last Duchess
That's my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. ...................
Robert Browning
Gilbert has passed away. We had been married for almost forty years. After that long a time, it was like losing an arm or leg -- a diseased arm or leg, perhaps, but still an extension of one's own self...a terrible loss. Oh, but I do have my memories. No one can take those from me. What would one do without one's memories to sustain one? My consolation is that he had absolutely no inkling that he was going to die until the very end. I, on the other hand, had a premonition early on, and the idea grew, nurtured by his increasingly disturbed behavior. More than six months before his death, I had already resigned myself to it, but kept the secret locked in my heart.
How ironic that all our married life before this, I took it for granted that I would be the first to go. He was so robust and I, insulin dependent for years, so fragile. Still and all, I survived my surgery without too much difficulty -- the nose job I had right after I turned forty-five. Gilbert thought it was ridiculously vain of me, but we had come into some money from his father, and I had had about all I could stand of it, -- my nose, that is. It had looked like a large spatula. Gilbert used to tease me mercilessly about it.
"What do you think, Nose?" he would ask me, and then to our friends, "I value her opinion because the Nose knows." I would chide him in private for his lack of sensitivity, but he did the same thing time after time.
Well, the operation made a marvelous improvement in my life, to say nothing of my face, but Gilbert was not at all pleased. Now Niles Ridgeway, he thought I looked wonderful. As a matter of fact, so did I...or do...but perhaps I should not be the one to say so.
"Angela," Niles would say, "what's a living doll like you doing married to a clump like Gilbert?" I thought "clump" was a humorous description, although "jealous clump" would have been more accurate, since it was right after my operation that Gilbert's jealousy first showed itself.
About that time, too, Gilbert took to drinking -- I mean drinking seriously. Our friends knew he took a nip or two now and then, but what they didn't know was that quite often he became roaring drunk. Within a year, his addiction had progressed to the point of making my life miserable. He hurled all sorts of foul epitaphs at me, casting aspersion of the vilest sort on my morals -- which was silly of him, really, because Niles and his wife had already moved away by then, and I hadn't even met Wilson yet.
Wilson was such a dear to me. I don't know what I would have done without his shoulder to cry on during those trying months. The benefit of his shoulder was short-lived, however, because one summer evening Gilbert came home in one of his drunken states and found us together. We weren't doing anything, really, -- just talking. Maybe we kissed a little, but just a little.
Well, Gilbert grabbed Wilson by the neck and banged his head against the porch post, screaming, "You lousy bastard! You stay away from my wife! Stay away from that whore, you hear me?"
Not only did Wilson hear him, but I'm afraid the rest of the neighborhood must have, too. I thank heaven that Rita, his wife, was visiting her mother in Duluth. It was all so embarrassing. And to add to my woes, Wilson turned out to be somewhat of a coward, for almost immediately thereafter our friendship dwindled. But I mustn't let myself degenerate into the type of woman who reminisces on and on about things of little interest to anyone but herself.
As I say, though, no one but me knew the real extent of Gilbert's drinking. I put up with it and never complained to a soul. I'm a very loyal sort, and I feel strongly that once a woman has taken on her husband's name, she should do everything in her power to keep that name unbesmirched in the eyes of the world. I rather pride myself in this. No, I never mentioned a word of it. Except to Walter, of course, and then only within the last year or so, as Gilbert became steadily worse. Walter is married to Minnie, my next-door neighbor. We understand each other. Walter, that is, not Minnie. Minnie is an insipid, canasta-playing moron. Ah, but Walter is....well, Walter is the very soul of kindness. One must have someone to lean upon in one's hour of need. In Gilbert's last year, I leaned on Walter.
I remember well the evening Gilbert found I had slipped over to Walter's. You see, Gilbert watched me like a hawk. It wasn't so bad when he was still working, but after he retired, just a little over fourteen months ago, he made spying on me his whole life. Poor thing, it saddens me to put it that way, when such a short time of life was destined to be left for him. But of course, he didn't know that then. He had always, since my operation, made my whereabouts his business, but that last year, it was almost unbearable. He followed me everywhere, like a little puppy dog. He even insisted upon coming marketing with me, for fear, I was sure, that I would take up with someone. At times, I thought I'd scream for want of privacy. All of which makes my loss that much more poignant, don't you see? Does one become easily accustomed to the absence of one's shadow? Well, Minnie was meeting elsewhere with her canasta group that particular evening, and Gilbert, or so I thought, was under the influence enough for me to run next door for an hour or so undetected.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned, Gilbert found out and came over for me, behaving like a true madman. There followed then another of his wild tantrums. He not only bandied Walter's and my name about, but implicated me with two or three others, whom I wouldn't have looked at twice if they were the last men on earth. It infuriated him that I didn't give his accusations the dignity of so much as a denial, but merely let a slight smile play upon my lips.
He pushed his fist in front of my face then, and shouted, "So help me, if I ever catch you at it again...."
I said, "Oh, Gilbert, honestly!"
"I mean it!" he said. "I'll smash your nose! I'll make it worse than before!"
I didn't let on how this upset me, but I thought of the money and pain I had put into my nose and how the surgery had changed my whole outlook on me and my life, and I knew then that he was unsettled beyond repair.
Oh, but I fear I'm getting boring with my reminiscing. It's all still so fresh, though. Sometimes I go around the house and imagine I hear him sniveling. I used to try to analyze it -- his snivel -- in an effort to find why it irritated me so. A sniffle is one thing, annoying enough in itself, but a snivel is quite another. Gilbert's was definitely a snivel. Before his retirement, I had to contend with it only on evenings and Saturdays and Sundays. The past year, though, it drove me fair out of my mind.
"Gilbert," I would say, as sweetly as I knew how, especially so when I began to realize how little time he had left, "please do stop that infernal thing!"
"What infernal thing?" he would ask.
And of course, there I was. If I answered, "Your infernal sniveling," he would return with "What infernal sniveling?", and so it would go -- on and on.
At Walter's kind suggestion, I placed boxes of tissues strategically all over the house, but to no avail. A snivel, unfortunately, is not a physical thing that can be cured by blowing. Well, the poor soul is gone now, and with him, the habit. Strange, how good can come from the saddest of things.
Gilbert had retired the first of April last year. Now here it is June, and he's gone already. So often it happens that way. A man retires in perfect health, and less than two years later, he's dead. Tragically ironic, isn't it?
Gilbert's death, although I could see it coming, was actually sudden when one comes right down to it. Truthfully, I can't put my finger on exactly what precipitated it. I do remember, however, that he had been drinking the night before, and that he looked, -- how shall I say? -- revolting that morning, asleep with his mouth open, a gray stubble of beard covering his, -- I must admit -- ugly face. We had had words before bed...cruel words. He had threatened me with nose-smashing again. All this went through my mind as I looked at him. I began to dress as quietly as possible, hoping to slip off to the market without him for once.
One of the first things I do after getting dressed in the morning is to give myself an insulin injection, so that it isn't forgotten in the course of my busy day. I did so that morning, plunging the needle into my upper arm. It takes but a moment. I happened to glance over at Gilbert, and for some fortuitous reason, like a jigsaw puzzle, things suddenly fell into place. With the needle still in hand, I thought, why not? By the time I had refilled the syringe and advanced toward him, he must have, as I mentioned earlier, sensed something. He awoke. I smiled my loveliest smile, for I wanted him to remember me throughout eternity that way. I swabbed his arm with the same cotton I had used on my own.
He lay frozen to his pillow. "What are you doing?" he asked.
"Just some insulin, Gilbert," I said. "Enough to kill a horse, but you'll hardly feel it. You'll convulse a bit, go into shock, possibly even suffer a heart attack. The best of it is that there will be no evidence of foul play. Your convulsions will use up the excess insulin, and this little old prick-mark won't even be noticed."
He began to thrash around then somewhat. "But please keep your arm still," I said, with all the gentleness I could muster. "We wouldn't want to hurt you and leave a nasty bruise on the corpse now, would we?"
He looked up at me, and I was surprised how much he really does, ... that is, did... resemble a puppy. For the first time that I ever remember, he became affectionate. "Sweetheart!" he said. He hadn't called me that since before we were married. "You can't be serious! You wouldn't! Oh, I never meant all those things I said! I love you....you know that!"
By this time I had already removed the needle from his arm. "Just lie still, Gilbert," I said, "and please stop sniveling. Your convulsions won't begin for a few minutes, perhaps as many as ten."
"My God! Isn't there anything can be done?"
"Oh, yes, Gilbert...several things, but I'm not going to do any of them. I could have you ingest sugar, for instance, or any food, preferably carbohydrates, to counteract..."
He tried to get up, but I pushed him down and sat on him to keep him there. "Please try to remain calm, Gilbert," I begged. "It's probably too late to do anything by now anyway."
He began to whimper and promised me all the reforms he would make if only I'd try to do something to save him. I looked at my watch, and let him blubber on for several minutes. At last, he began to twitch and quiver, and because of my sensitive nature, I couldn't remain there any longer to witness it.
"I'm going marketing now," I said, standing up and straightening my skirt. "Good-by, Gilbert. By the time I return, you should be quite dead."
As it turned out, I was exactly right.