A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion

“We were confused about the double-indemnity part.”

Ashfield rocked back in his oak chair, glorying in the superiority of an instructor. “An indemnity is just a fancy way of saying ‘compensation for a loss.’ Since the vast majority of people pass away through natural causes rather than accidents, it’s a good deal for the insurance company to entice buyers by making a policy seem like it’s worth twice as much. Is what I’m saying over your head?”

She smiled indulgently but said nothing.

With self-importance, Ashfield got out a slide rule for some calculations and then groaned. “We got a problem with the disability clause. Because of your husband’s income, my company cannot pay more than five hundred dollars a month, and the fifty-thousand-dollar policy works out to pay five hundred twenty.”

She moped. “Oh.”

“But if you’ll indulge me,” Ashfield said, “we could fill out a policy for forty-five thousand that would include the clauses for disability and double indemnity, and another policy for five thousand, without those clauses, and everything’s hunky-dory.”

Mrs. Snyder seemed to him either confused or conflicted. “Would I need to get Albert’s signature again?”

“We have established that he wants fifty thousand dollars in coverage, have we not?”

She nodded.

“With your permission, then, I’ll just trace his signature on this five-thousand-dollar policy and we’ll change the one for fifty to forty-five.”

Ruth smiled. “You’re a very handsome man, do you know that?”

He was not, but he blushed and got busy with his forms.

She said, “

My husband worries about money and hates handling our bills. Would it be possible for you to personally contact me about the premiums?”

Ashfield leered as he said, “It would be my pleasure.” Within ten minutes the forms were finished, and with his commissions Ashfield was five hundred dollars richer. She collected the policies and immediately walked to the Queens-Bellaire Bank, where she locked them in a safe-deposit box that she registered under her maiden name of Ruth M. Brown.

The first accident occurred that weekend.

Lorraine Snyder celebrated her eighth birthday on Sunday, November 15th. After the noon meal, Josephine and Ruth were in the kitchen, lighting eight candles on the birthday cake, when they heard Albert yell in the dining room, “Don’t eat with your elbows on the table, Lora! This is not a cafeteria!”

She was still crying when her mother walked out with the cake. Ruth said, “I’ll take you to lunch in the city tomorrow, Lora. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

She nodded. Ruth gifted her with an “I Say Ma-Ma” doll, a nainsook “princess” slip, and tap-dancing shoes; she got a dollar bill and A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh from Mrs. Brown; and Albert, who still grieved that she was not a boy, gave Lora a jackknife and an Erector Set. Even as her father excitedly got down on all fours in the living room to help her bolt together the struts for an imaginary railway trestle, Lora lost interest and sat cross-legged on the floor in order to chatter with the doll about the state of its pretty rompers and bonnet. Albert knelt upright and frowned at his child, then at Ruth. “Well, that went over like a lead balloon,” he said.

“Don’t blame me. It wasn’t my idea.”

Hurt, Albert went outside to the garage to tinker with his Buick.

Half an hour later, Ruth got into old gutta-percha overboots and her favorite leopard-skin coat, then filled a milk glass with Canadian whisky that she carried out through the first fall of snow. She was surprised at how warm it was inside the garage and saw that Albert had installed a natural-gas space heater and a stovepipe that vented through a chiseled-out windowpane. The Buick Eight was jacked up and the left front wheel was off, and Albert was lying on a trolley underneath the car so she could see only his grease-stained khaki trousers and his high-button shoes.

She tapped his left foot with her right as she said, “Al?”

“What?”

“I have some whisky for you with it so cold.”

The skate wheels on the trolley screeched on the concrete as he rolled himself out and frowned at the generosity she held in both hands. Sitting up, he took the whisky from his wife, swallowed an inch of it, and coughed. “Thank you.”

“What are you doing?”

Albert allotted that smile that was not a smile, that was like the blade of a fishing knife. “I could tell you in detail, Root, but you still wouldn’t understand.”

“I was just making conversation.”

Albert looked at the snow that the garage heat was easing down her gutta-percha overboots and the new water trickling onto the concrete. “You’re making a mess of my floor. You should stamp your feet before coming in.”