Camilla
“All the lamps were on and the place seemed full of a light as sharp and cruel as the light in an operating room. I heard feet running back and forth and then I heard my mother scream and I thought, Father is murdering her, oh God, Father is murdering her; and I went running through the apartment to my mother’s room. It was full of people: Father and Dr. Wallace and Carter and the cook, and Mother was flinging herself about on the bed and screaming and Father and Carter were trying to hold her d...own and there was blood all over the bed.
The cook saw me and cried, “Here’s Miss Camilla.”
My father said, “Get her out of here.”
Dr. Wallace said to the cook, “Get me some boiling water.”
The cook pushed out into the hall, taking me with her, and we went into the kitchen and she splashed hot water into the kettle, spilling half of it on the floor, and slopped it onto the stove, turning on the gas, high.
And I thought, Somebody came in time. Somebody came in time to stop Father. And I thought of the newspapers Carter reads, with pictures of women with battered heads on bloody kitchen floors and women lying in satin-quilted beds with bullets through their hearts; and I remembered Carter’s eager expression as she reads the headlines—SEX MURDER ON PARK AVENUE or MAN KILLS WIFE AND LOVER IN PENTHOUSE RENDEZVOUS, or whatever it might be—and then I saw her face as she tried to hold my mother down, and it looked exactly the same way, only now it was a little frightened too.MoreLess
The cook saw me and cried, “Here’s Miss Camilla.”
My father said, “Get her out of here.”
Dr. Wallace said to the cook, “Get me some boiling water.”
The cook pushed out into the hall, taking me with her, and we went into the kitchen and she splashed hot water into the kettle, spilling half of it on the floor, and slopped it onto the stove, turning on the gas, high.
And I thought, Somebody came in time. Somebody came in time to stop Father. And I thought of the newspapers Carter reads, with pictures of women with battered heads on bloody kitchen floors and women lying in satin-quilted beds with bullets through their hearts; and I remembered Carter’s eager expression as she reads the headlines—SEX MURDER ON PARK AVENUE or MAN KILLS WIFE AND LOVER IN PENTHOUSE RENDEZVOUS, or whatever it might be—and then I saw her face as she tried to hold my mother down, and it looked exactly the same way, only now it was a little frightened too.MoreLess
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