Mamma would be kept there in San Fernando, and he had the undertaker’s card, and he would have to go to Brownsville and make the necessary arrangements with a Brownsville undertaker to send for the body and fix up her papers at the border. Mamma had always liked things done efficiently and just so, and this sort of thing would have driven her crazy.
And the man who had lived in Kerrville had told him, in all seriousness, that in Mexico one could not transport a body past any cemetery without stopping and giving a sum of money to that cemetery. It was the custom. Who is to say, Señor, how much sense it makes? It is just a thing that is done here, and one cannot escape it. But as there are but three cemeteries between this place and the border, it does not make it expensive.
And then he had gone back to take another look at Mamma only to find, to his horror, that the man who had been ordered not to touch her had carefully applied a heavy coating of white face powder, plus rouge and lipstick and eye shadow. It made Mamma look as though she were the dead madam of a whore house. It took away every bit of her dignity. And in the end he had to pay twenty pesos for the labor of applying the make-up, and twenty more pesos to have it cleaned off.
He would think that he was over all the crying, and then a harsh sob would come out of his throat and it would start again. Mamma, painted up like a clown, had brought him right to the threshold of hysteria. That stupid grinning doctor had tried to make him take a powder, but he wasn’t going to take anything when he didn’t know what on earth it was. They could drug you and take all your money, and take Mamma’s rings out of your pocket.
It was Linda who had insisted on this crazy Mexican trip, and it was the trip that had killed Mamma. Mamma had offered that perfectly good camp on the lake, just outside the Rochester city limits. It was familiar and pleasant. He had learned to swim out in front of the camp. The old desk upstairs was still cluttered with the things he had as a kid, the things that Mamma had said she’d save for her grandchildren.
She’d never see a grandchild. And if Linda got pregnant because of what they did while Mamma was dying, he hoped the baby would be born dead. And she could die having it. It would be justice, certainly.
Linda and all her cute ways. Mamma was right, way back in the beginning.
“Now, John, I know how taken you are with this… girl. She’s as pretty as a picture. But, darling, you know she’s been working in New York as a model, and those girls are not always… too virtuous. You can talk freely to Mother, dear. I’m not a Mid-Victorian type and you know it. Have you had intercourse with this girl?”
He remembered how shocked and angry he had been.
“Now, John, listen to Mother, and don’t get so upset. I have the feeling that this is just an infatuation. You know it would be a very good marriage for her. She won’t sleep with you because she is clever enough to know that if she did, then you might back out of this marriage.”
“Mother, please! You’re making it sound so… devious and dirty.”
“I’m not implying anything of the sort. I just want to make absolutely certain that my boy isn’t being too impulsive about this pretty little model.”
“I’m going to marry her, no matter what you say or what you do.”
Mamma had been right. So terribly right about the whole thing. And Linda had fooled him, right along. Laughed at him behind his back. That wedding-night business had obviously been just so much acting. Because certainly no virgin was suddenly going to begin acting the way she did in bed. It was easy to see that little Linda had been having herself a time, probably for years. All that funny talk about nothing being wrong when you were truly in love was just a feeble excuse for dirtiness. She was sex-crazy and Mamma had seen it and tried to tell him, and he had been too stubborn and too blind to see that Mamma was right, as usual. Linda had got what she wanted, a marriage that gave her the social position she didn’t have. And if Mamma hadn’t died like this, she might have got away with it. But now it was easy to see things clearly. She killed Mamma just as though she’d used a knife. She hated Mamma. You could see that the way she was trying to get him to go see his father. She wanted to go out there because she must have guessed that the woman Dad ran off with would be a kindred spirit. She and Linda would do well together.
I’m not going to let her get away with it, he thought. After this, I can’t live with her. I couldn’t touch her.
Mamma was clean and good and decent. That’s why Linda couldn’t stand her. She tried to hide it, but I could see it. Trying to make me think that Mamma hadn’t done the right things, raising me the way she did.
I thought it was a face like an angel would have. Someday I’ll be able to forget the filth and the craziness, but I’ll never forget this day. Mamma was brave. She was accepting the marriage and trying to make me happy. She told us all about the little house she had looked at, just two blocks from our house. And Linda had been so funny and cold about it. No capacity for gratitude.
As far as I’m concerned, she can stay right here. She seems to love Mexico so much. Dotty Kale came here for her divorce. I won’t marry again. I’ll keep the big house just as it was. It will be a memorial for Mamma. There’ll be all the books and the records and the garden. Somebody could come in to help share the expense. Maybe Tommy Gill could give up his apartment and move in. We’ve always had such fun. And he’s so clean-looking.
It will be good to be rid of her. Odd, how she is. When you see her standing at a distance, in the daylight, she has the clean dry look of an etching. But oh, in the tumbly night she’s a dark and fleshy thing. The waist that looks by daylight as though it could be spanned with my two hands turns to a massive warmth. Buttocks and breasts swell overpoweringly thick and soft, heated and smothering, and she’s at me like some animal, and there is no more cleanness in her, no crispness, no dryness, and while the cloying feeling of disgust at the vast softness of her sickens my mind, my animal body works at her, like some blind thing, until dirtiness is exploded within her and nothing is left but the sticky disgust, the unbearable desire to get away from her, but that’s then she wants to be held, and wants to hear the tender words that can be parroted, even while they’re acid in my mouth.
The statue was cold and clean in the midnight garden moonlight, and the cold breast was hard and good against my cheek, the loins like ivory.
He squinted across the river and saw that fewer cars than he expected had been brought across. The ferry was on his side and the planks had just been put in place. He moved aside to let the cars go by.
He went up one of the planks on the ferry deck and moved to the front of the craft. The lead cars in line had their lights on, and the lights made silver of the muddy river. Cars came on behind him and he didn’t turn. He watched the far bank come steadily closer. The time to say it was now. Take her aside, in the darkness, and tell her she was filth, that she was a murderess, that she was dirty-minded. Say it coldly, as Mamma would say it. And then it would be all over, and there would be no more pretending.
She had been a temporary insanity. A craziness that had cost Mamma her life. He remembered striking her. Remembered it with satisfaction. She had been laughing inside herself, thinking of how she had won over Mamma. He’d broken the lying mouth on her, shaming her properly in front of the others, who weren’t properly aware of the way she was gloating.
He stood straight, weak eyes searching the night shore for the pallor of her hair, the slightly darker texture of the tan linen dress. He thought he could make out the Buick back in the line, but he could see no one near it and the lights were off. As soon as the first plank was in place, unblocked, he walked down it, ignoring the incomprehensible complaints of the workmen. The first four cars were gone, and that would mean the man named Danton was gone, in his pickup truck. He was glad Danton was gone. The gun-bearing guards had dealt almost contemptuously with him, but Danton had given them trouble, had raised his voice boldly to the fat toad in the lead car.
John walked up the road to the Buick and look
ed inside. She wasn’t there. The two cars came off the ferry and the two lead cars took their places aboard. He felt for the keys and they were not there. Motors were starting up and down the line, ready to move forward to the vacated places. John got in the car and got behind the wheel. Linda would see the cars move and she’d be along with the keys, and maybe this was the place to do it. Though the windows had been down, there was a faint odor of sickness in the car. The sun heat had left the metal, so that it was just enough less than body temperature to feel faintly cool to his touch.
And, in the unmoving air within the car, he could detect Linda’s perfume. In the beginning it had pleased him. A light, flowery fragrance. But he had learned to detect the rotten ripeness beneath the fragrance.
He heard her then, heard her light fond laugh, and it was like a blow across his heart. How could she laugh? A man laughed with her, his voice deep and slow, and then, incredible thing, they sang together. “And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye. But me and my true love…”
The sick anger propelled him out of the car. He whirled, facing them, slamming the car door hard behind him, ending their song with its explosive note.
“Are you happy, Linda?” he shouted, his voice rising thin and high. “Are you real happy, darling?”
“John, what are you doing here?”
“What are you doing? That’s a better question. Who is that with you? Danton? Isn’t she fun, Danton? Isn’t she a dream?”
“Easy, boy, easy,” Danton said in his low, slow voice.
“That’s a good word for her too. Easy.”
“John! Lower your voice.”
“No, I’d rather sing to show you how happy I am. Sing with me, Linda. Come on, now. Are there any words to the Funeral March?”
“John, I know you’re upset, but don’t make a scene.”
“I couldn’t take her to Brownsville tonight. The undertaker in Brownsville will have to arrange to have her brought across the border. What do you care whether I make a scene? You obviously don’t give a damn one way or the other. You couldn’t stand being without a man for a few hours.”
Linda started to cry. John watched her, feeling a good satisfaction. Tears like that were obviously faked.
“Give her a break, Gerrold,” Danton said. “She was pretty blue. I was trying to cheer her up a bit.”
“Obviously.”
“You left her to drive the car to Matamoros. That’s no job for a girl. I didn’t think she could get it up those planks.”
“She’s an expert driver, Danton. You’re just gullible. Why don’t you leave us alone? This is a husband-and-wife quarrel. You’re not wanted.”
“Guess I’ll just sort of listen in, if it’s O.K. with Linda.”
“Then listen and be damned to you. Linda, you can stop pretending to cry now. You haven’t got enough heart to be the crying type.”
“Please, oh, please,” she said.
“You just happened to get caught sooner than you expected. If we stayed together I’d have caught you at it sooner or later. You know that as well as I do.”
He saw her head lift. He could see her shadowed eyes. A car behind the Buick honked impatiently. John Gerrold ignored it.
“What are you trying to say?” she asked.
“I’m through. I don’t care where you go or what you do after this.” His voice broke on the last words. He took a deep breath. “You can get a divorce any way you want it. If there’s a child, you can have it and I’ll contribute to its support. But I don’t want you around me. Mamma had to die to open my eyes to how cheap and common you are. I think she’d be glad to know I’m doing this. You can keep the things I’ve given you, and I’ll finance the divorce.”
She rubbed at tears with the back of her hand, with two quick gestures. “Are you quite certain you know what you’re saying, John? When did you decide that? After you saw me with Mr. Danton?”
“Don’t flatter yourself that much, my dear. I decided it on the other side of the river. I was going to break it to you a bit more easily, that’s all. You two gave me the excuse to be blunt. I’m thankful for that. It saves time. Well, Linda?”
Astonishingly, Danton chuckled.
“This amuses you, Danton?”
“In a way, I guess you could say it does.”
“You have a funny sense of humor.”
“Oh, he has!” Linda said. “He’s a perfect riot. He’ll have you rolling on the ground.”
The car honked again. John got in and moved the Buick down. He got out of the car again. Danton said, “You need any help with the arrangements you have to make?”
“I can manage.”
“You’ll have to take Mr. Danton to Matamoros, John. His friend is waiting for him there.”
“I’ll take both of you there. It doesn’t matter one way or the other.”
He decided that he had hit exactly the right note of indifference. They didn’t seem to be as uneasy as he would have liked.
She said softly, “It will seem odd to get a divorce when all the time you weren’t married to me. You were married to your mother.”
“She knew what you were the moment she saw you. She told me and I wouldn’t believe her. She said you—”
“Better take it a little easy, Gerrold,” Danton said in his soft way.
“So it’s all right if the nastiness comes out of her mouth. It’s all right if she says lewd things. But when I—”
“You gave up your claim, Gerrold. I’m staking one.”
“Didn’t take long, I see,” John said. “How many before me and how many after you, Danton? She’s a—”
“You keep talking and you’re going to say something you’ll wish you’d never thought of.”
“Both of you, stop it,” Linda said. “I won’t be squabbled over like—like some sort of floozy. I’ll get the divorce, John, if that’s what you want. Yesterday it would have mattered a great deal. Today it doesn’t seem important. I’m past feeling anything, one way or the other.”
“Little walk won’t hurt you, Linda. Little airing.”
John watched them walk away, silhouetted against the car lights, and his wife was small beside the tall Danton. It gave him, for just a moment, a curious sense of loss. He tried to shrug it off.
He got back into the car and folded his arms across the top of the steering wheel, rested his forehead on his arms. “I did what you’d want me to do,” he said. And he waited a moment and the tears came. “All alone,” he said, and the tears came faster, channeling beside his nose, wet-salting his lips.
Such a damnable waste. Mamma was in her prime, really. Everybody respected her. We were such good pals. Just last year, coming home from school for vacation, and then having dinner, and Pauline in the kitchen clearing up afterward, and the way Mamma would give me that sly look across the room and without a word I’d set up the table and get the cards and the Russian-bank game would be on.
Or other nights, just listening to the records. Or reading to each other. If it wasn’t for Linda it could still have been that way. And then coming into my bedroom, tucking me in as though I were a little kid.
She told me a lot of things. She never told me what a dirtiness marriage is. How it humiliates your body. I can go back there alone and I can make myself well and whole again. I’ve got to get over Linda the way you get over an illness. And the house will be so desperately empty. There’s no good reason for Tommy to keep that sleazy little apartment. I can make it very inexpensive for him. That school certainly can’t pay him very well.
Tommy will know what I mean. He’s the one I’ll tell it all to. Every bit of it. I guess he still thinks of that time two years ago when we were both counselors at Camp Raedor, and that moonlight walk we took, when the whole world was an impossible silver, touching every leaf, and the beauty was so great it filled up your throat, and how it seemed so natural for us to walk hand in hand that night. Back in the lights it seemed odd to us that we’d done that, but it was right while we were in the moonlig
ht. Tommy said then that true friendship can exist only between two men, and that women do not know the meaning of the word. He explained how a woman’s existence is so functional a thing, and tied in so grimly with the business of procreation, that there is no room in their souls for friendship as such. I argued the point with him, but now I know he was right. And Mamma was right. And I was blind and wrong. I’ll forget all those little scenes between Linda and me. Some of them will be hard to forget. They left deep scars.
His chin touched the horn ring and the horn blatted, shocking him with the noise. He slouched in the seat, resting his head on the back of the seat. The day had bitten deeply into his reserves of strength. There was a dull ache at the place where he had been struck by the gun barrel.
If he could take just a short nap, between ferry trips, it would help a lot. Mamma always said the way to relax and go to sleep quickly is to think of something beautiful. He thought of a moonlit garden at night, and a statue gleaming white in the moonlight. He could see it from the porch door of his uncle’s house. And he walked out, the dew cold against his bare feet.
There in the car, with his eyes closed, he could see the statue across the years. He moved closer to it. Now he was actually in the garden. He walked up to it, and it seemed as though he had never really looked at it before. Uncle was silly, calling it Diana, and calling it a girl. Anybody could see it was the marble statue of a young, clean-limbed boy. Flat white symmetry of chest, and the careful interweaving of the muscles of the flanks. He stood in the dream garden and the statue turned, bright and shocking and beautiful in its nakedness, pure in its perfect maleness. It stepped down from the pedestal and it held out its hand and he saw at once that it was Tommy, as he had known it would be. And he touched the firm cool hand, and Tommy spoke, calling him Linda. He tried to pull his hand away, protesting, but Tommy held it tightly, and he was Linda and John all at once, and he tilted his face upward…
“Sorry, Gerrold,” Danton said, joggling his elbow. “We’ll be second car on this load.”
The Damned Page 15
