I Married A Dead Man Read Free

realization.
                    Her hair was hazel-colored, and limp and listless, as though no great heed had been paid to it for some time past The heels of her shoes were a little run-down. A puckered dam in the heel of her stocking peered just over the top of one. Her clothing was functional, as though it were worn for the sake of covering, and not for the sake of fashion, or even of appeal. She was a good height for a girl, about five-six or seven. But she was too thin, except in one place.
                    Her head was down a little, as though she were tired of carrying it up straight. Or as though invisible blows had lowered it, one by one.
                    She moved at last. At long last Her hand dropped from the pushbutton, as if of its own weight. It fell to her side, hung there, forlorn. One foot turned, as if to go away. There was a wait. Then the other turned too. Her back was to the door now. The door that wouldn't open. The door that was an epitaph, the door that was finality.
                    She took a slow step away. Then another. Her head was down now more than ever. She moved slowly away from there, and left the door behind. Her shadow was the last part of her to go. It trailed slowly after her, upright against the wall. Its head was down a little, too; it too was too thin, it too was unwanted. It stayed on a moment, after she herself was already gone. Then it slipped off the wall after her, and it was gone too.
                    Nothing was left there but the door. That remained silent, obdurate, closed.
     
     
    2
     
                    In the telephone-booth she was motionless again. As motionless as before. A telephone pay-station, the door left shunted back in order to obtain air enough to breathe. When you are in one for more than just a few moments, they become stifling. And she had been in this one for more than just a few moments.
                    She was like a doll propped upright in its gift-box, and with one side of the box left off, to allow the contents to be seen. A worn doll. A leftover, marked-down doll, with no bright ribbons or tissue wrappings. A doll with no donor and no recipient. A doll no one bothered to claim.
                    She was silent there, though this was meant to be a place for talking. She was waiting to hear something, something that never came. She was holding the receiver pointed toward her ear, and it must have started out by being close to it, at right angles to it, as receivers should be. But that was a long time before. With the passage of long, disappointing minutes it had drooped lower and lower, until now it was all the way down at her shoulder, clinging there wilted, defeated, like some sort of ugly, black, hard-rubber orchid worn for corsage.
                    The anonymous silence became a voice at last. But not the one she wanted, not the one she was waiting for.
                    "I am sorry, but I have already told you. There is no use waiting on the line. That number has been discontinued, and there is no further information I can give you."
                    Her hand dropped off her shoulder, carrying the receiver with it, and fell into her lap, dead. As if to match something else within her that was dead, by the final way it fell and stirred no more.
                    But life won't grant a decent dignity even to its epitaphs, sometimes.
                    "May I have my nickel back?" she whispered. " Please . I didn't get my party, and it's--it's the last one I've got."
     
     
    3
     
                    She climbed the rooming-house stairs like a puppet dangling from slack strings. A light bracketed against the wall, drooping upsidedown like a withered tulip in its bell-shaped shade of scalloped glass, cast a smoky yellow glow. A carpet-strip ground to the