I Married A Dead Man Read Free Page A

semblance of decayed vegetable-matter, all pattern, all color, long erased, adhered to the middle of the stairs, like a form of pollen or fungus encrustation. The odor matched the visual imagery. She climbed three ifights of them, and then turned off toward the back.
                    She stopped, at the last door there was, and took out a longshanked iron key. Then she looked down at the bottom of the door. There was a triangle of white down by her foot, protruding from under the seam. It expanded into an envelope as the door swept back above it.
                    She reached into the darkness, and traced her hand along the wall beside the door, and a light went on. It had very little shine. It had very little to shine on.
                    She closed the door and then she picked up the envelope. It had been lying on its face. She turned it over. Her hand shook a little. Her heart did too.
                    It had on it, in hasty, heedless pencil, only this:
     
                                    "Helen Georgesson."
     
                    No Miss, no Mrs., no other salutation whatever.
                    She seemed to come alive more fully. Some of the blank hopelessness left her eyes. Some of the pinched strain left her face. She grasped the envelope tight, until it pleated a little in her hold. She moved more briskly than she had until now. She took it over with her to the middle of the room, beside the bed, where the light shone more fully.
                    She stood still there and looked at it again, as though she were a little afraid of it. There was a sort of burning eagerness in her face; not joyous, but rather of desperate urgency.
                    She ripped hastily at the flap of it, with upward swoops of her hand, as though she were taking long stitches in it with invisible needle and thread.
                    Her hand plunged in, to pull out what it said, to read what it told her. For envelopes carry words that tell you things; that's what envelopes are for.
                    Her hand came out again empty, frustrated. She turned the envelope over and shook it out, to free what it must hold, what must have stubbornly resisted her fingers the first time.
                    No words came, no writing.
                    Two things fell out, onto the bed. Only two things.
                    One was a five-dollar bill. Just an impersonal, anonymous five-dollar bill, with Lincoln's picture on it. And over to the side of that, the neat little cachet they all bear, in small-size capitals: "This certificate is legal tender for all debts public and private." For all debts, public and private . How could the engraver guess that that might break somebody's heart, some day, somewhere?
                    And the second thing was a strip of railroad-tickets, running consecutively from starting-point to terminus, as railroad tickets do. Each coupon to be detached progressively en route. The first coupon was inscribed "New York"; here, where she was now. And the last was inscribed "San Francisco"; where she'd come from, a hundred years ago--last spring.
                    There was no return-ticket. It was for a one-way trip. There and--to stay.
                    So the envelope had spoken to her after all, though it had no words in it. Five dollars legal tender, for all debts, public and private. San Francisco--and no return.
                    The envelope plummeted to the floor.
                    She couldn't seem to understand for a long time. It was as though she'd never seen a five-dollar bill before. It was as though she'd never seen an accordion-pleated strip of railroad-tickets like that before. She kept staring down at