Too Much Happiness

nice,” imitated Old Mrs. Crozier in a mean mincing voice, and then they both looked at me, and Roxanne said, “Pitcher’s where it always is.”
    I took Mr. Crozier’s pitcher of water out of the fridge. It occurred to me that they could offer me a golden macaroon out of those sitting in the box, but apparently it did not occur to them.
    I expected him to be lying back on the pillows with his eyes closed, but Mr. Crozier was wide awake.
    “I’ve been waiting,” he said, and took a breath. “For you to get here,” he said. “I want to ask you-do something for me. Will you?”
    I said sure.
    “Keep it a secret?”
    I had been worried that he might ask me to help him to the commode that had recently appeared in his room, but surely that would not have to be a secret.
    Yes.
    He told me to go to the bureau across from his bed and open the left-hand little drawer, and see if I could find a key there.
    I did so. I found a large heavy old-fashioned key.
    He wanted me to go out of this room and shut the door and lock it. Then hide the key in a safe place, perhaps in the pocket of my shorts.
    I was not to tell anybody what I had done.
    I was not to let anybody know I had the key until his wife came home, and then I was to give it to her. Did I understand?
    Okay.
    He thanked me.
    Okay.
    All the time he was talking to me there was a film of sweat on his face and his eyes were bright as if he had a fever.
    “Nobody is to get in.”
    “Nobody to get in,” I repeated.
    “Not my stepmother or-Roxanne. Just my wife.”
    I locked the door from the outside and put the key in the pocket of my shorts. But then I was afraid it could be seen through the light cotton material, so I went downstairs and into the back parlor and hid it between the pages of
I Promessi Sposi
. I knew that Roxanne and Old Mrs. Crozier would not hear me because the massage was going on, and Roxanne was using her professional voice.
    “I got my work cut out for me getting these knots out of you today.”
    And I heard Old Mrs. Crozier’s voice, full of her new displeasure.
    “… punching harder than you normally do.”
    “Well I gotta.”
    I was headed upstairs when some further thoughts came to me.
    If he and not I had locked the door-which was evidently what he wanted the others to think-and I had been sitting on the top step as usual, I would certainly have heard him and called out and roused the others in the house. So I went back down and sat on the bottom step of the front stairs, a place from which it could have been possible for me not to hear a thing.
    The massage seemed to be brisk and businesslike today; they were evidently not teasing and making jokes. Pretty soon I could hear Roxanne running up the back stairs.
    She stopped. She said, “Hey. Bruce.”
    Bruce.
    She rattled the knob of the door.
    “Bruce.”
    Then she must have put her mouth to the keyhole, hoping he could hear but nobody else could. I could not make out exactly what she was saying, but I could tell she was pleading. First teasing, then pleading. In a while she sounded as if she was saying her prayers.
    When she gave that up she started pounding up and down on the door with her fists, not too hard but urgently.
    After a while she stopped that too.
    “Come on,” she said in a firmer voice. “If you got to the door to lock it you can get there to open it up.”
    Nothing happened. She came and looked over the bannister and saw me.
    “Did you take Mr. Crozier’s water into his room?”
    I said yes.
    “So his door wasn’t locked or anything then?”
    No.
    “Did he say anything to you?”
    “He just said thanks.”
    “Well, he’s got his door locked and I can’t get him to answer.”
    I heard Old Mrs. Crozier’s stick pounding to the top of the back stairs.
    “What’s the commotion up here?”
    “He’s locked hisself in and I can’t get him to answer me.”
    “What do you mean locked himself in? Likely the door’s stuck. Wind blew it shut and it stuck.”
    There was no wind that day.
    “Try it yourself,” said Roxanne. “It’s locked.”
    “I wasn’t aware there was a key to this door,” said Old Mrs. Crozier, as if her not being aware could negate the fact. Then, perfunctorily, she tried the knob and said, “Well. It’d appear to be locked.”
    He had counted on this, I thought. That they would not suspect me, thinking of his being in charge. And in fact he was.
    “We have to get in,” said Roxanne. She gave a kick to the door.
    “Stop