by Packer, Vin
Forever, Gretchen.”
He handed it back to his wife, saying nothing.
“That came yesterday,” she said.
“It’s some sort of make-believe between them, Louisa.”
“It is? And is it make-believe what I heard last Friday evening in Mary Drew’s bedroom?”
“You shouldn’t have spied on them. It isn’t honorable. It isn’t right. Listening outside Mary Drew’s door, and sneaking her mail from her this way.”
“Aren’t you at all concerned, Henry?”
“It’s all some sort of make-believe, Louisa. You know how imaginative Mary Drew is. Apparently, Martha is the same way. After all, this business of Raynor and Gretchen and their garden. There’s none of that real.”
“Last Friday evening they were kissing, Henry! Need it be any more plain?”
“They don’t have any garden,” Henry Edlin said. “Why can’t you see that it’s all some sort of make-believe!”
He took his newspaper from the table behind him and folded it over to tuck in his overcoat. It embarrassed him somehow when Louisa dwelt on the matter of Mary Drew’s and the Kent girl’s relationship. For himself, he was convinced it was an adolescent stage Mary Drew was passing through, but each time it was mentioned, he could never help recalling how he had refused to believe that there was anything wrong with their first-born, Belinda.
“I’ve raised one normal child,” Louisa Edlin said, “and I think I know a little bit about what is a normal growth process and what is not a normal growth process.”
Even after all these years, she could never fail to hit her mark when she aimed at a comparison between her son and their daughters. Nothing could hurt him more deeply. That didn’t seem to be very obvious to her.
He said, “Do as you please, Louisa. Take her to Dr. Mannerheim, if you like,” glancing at his watch, “I have to operate at nine. Is Mary Drew ready for school?”
“She’s your child, Henry. I should think you’d be able to summon up a little more interest in her.”
“She’s our child,” Edlin answered.
His wife said, “Yes, ours” and something about her tone insinuated that she had been forced to share with him some wretched disgrace for which he was solely responsible.
He turned toward the staircase to call Mary Drew, to tell her he was ready to leave, but not until after he had spoken did he realize he had called out another name. “Belinda?” he had said,” are you ready?”
The two girls always met on the stone steps of the Victoria statue at Chillam before morning bell rang. School had been in session two weeks now, after the Christmas holidays, and first semester final grades were to be posted that morning. Roddy Sawyer had let Martha Kent off early, so that there was at least ten minutes to wait for Mary Drew. Martha sat on the steps writing in another of the copy books that comprised her novel. The name of it was Only Fools Laugh. It was a fantasy about a glacier in love with a warm body of water, moving against the elements to reach it. The glacier was named Lord Love-Lost, shortened to “L.L.,” and the body of water, Heart-Robbed, was called “Rob.”
A voice startled Martha Kent.
“Who’s ‘L.L.’?”
It was Rush, bending down to read over her shoulder, the black leather coat she must have gotten for Christmas draped around her like a long cape. They had had nothing to say to one another since vacation had ended, but Martha had seen Rush often, strutting about in the leather coat, with the monogrammed white silk scarf she affected as an ascot tied at her neck. Even indoors, Rush wore this outfit as long as she possibly could, and to complete it, a small black cap that she cocked to one side, with the Chillam insignia sewed to its crown.
Martha closed the copy book. “It’s not any business of yours.”
“Is it a story you’re writing?” Rush came down the steps and stood before Martha Kent in that Napoleon stance of bravado, with her hands behind her back and her shoulders squared.
“I don’t have to tell you.”
“I wish you wanted to,” Rush said.
“I don’t.”
Rush watched her for a moment without saying anything. Martha was putting her copy book with her school books, avoiding her glance. It was a cold winter day, and Martha put on the fur-lined gloves that were in the pocket of her polo coat, tied the yellow wool scarf she was wearing around her long black hair, and looked off in the direction Mary Drew would come.
“Will you leave another note in the library for Mary Drew today?” Rush asked.
“And so you know about that.”
“About everything it’s possible to know, where you’re concerned,” Rush said. “I can’t seem to help myself. It makes me feel like an idiot. When my parents brought me back to Chillam, I asked them not to come directly, but to drive down Alden road. I saw your house. I’d looked the number up in the directory. I wanted to see where you lived. There! You see what an ass you’ve made of me, Martha.”
Martha said, “Has Beth Dragmore changed schools?”
The biggest gossip at Chillam, after Beth failed to return from the holidays, was that she’d transferred elsewhere.
“I don’t think I want to discuss Beth,” Rush said. “In fact, I know I don’t.” She brought her hands from behind her back and folded her arms in front of her. “I’m afraid I shocked you right before Christmas. It was a poor thing to do. Will you accept my apologies?”
“Why not?” said Martha Kent.
“Look, Martha, can’t it be any different with us? What I want to tell you is, must we behave so impossibly together? I’m really not a bad sort. There’s so much I’d like to talk with you about. I read a lot. I know you do too. I’m not just a sports fiend, you know. There’s more to me than that.”
“You’re a show-off,” Martha Kent said, “wearing your coat that way, and that cap.”
Rush’s face brightened. “Yes, exactly. You know me. At least that side of me. I like to strut and swagger about, and act like somebody. I like to have a style. Yes. But not for the reason you think. It’s not to show-off really. It’s to spark. To spark! Do you understand me?”
“I suppose so.”
“You do, don’t you?” Rush became more enthusiastic. “Do you know what’s queer — I’ve never said it right out that way to anyone. That’s the way you affect me, Martha. You’re like a short-cut to what’s inside of me.” She went over and sat down beside Martha Kent. “I guess you know how I feel. I’ve got to tell you.”
Martha felt wretchedly uncomfortable and suddenly conspicuous, with Rush so close to her.
She said, “I’m waiting for someone, you know.”
“I know. Mary Drew. But I’m not afraid of her. I’ve seen Mary Drews come and go — hundreds of them.” She placed her long square hand on Martha’s lap. “But I’ve never seen a Martha.”
“I wish you wouldn’t, Rush.”
“I can’t help myself, really. You know I want you. Let’s bring it out in the open.”
“Talk like that, behavior like this,” she pushed Rush’s hand away, “makes me nervous.”
“Nervous?” Rush smiled. “Why?”
“Not nervous,” Martha Kent said, irritated, “bored. I’m not like you, Rush! I don’t want to be anything but what I am!”
“I’ve heard people say that before. Plenty of times.” “Well, I mean it!” Martha Kent stood up, and then Rush did.
“This thing you and Mary Drew have,” Evelyn said, “it’s not healthy.”
“You say that to me? After what you told me?” Martha forced a hollow, mocking laugh. “Oh, no, Rush. You won’t do that again! You won’t try to compare my friendships with yours again! I’m more wise now. I won’t be pulled in by that!”
“Everyone says the same thing. You and Mary Drew cut off the world.”
“We cut off Chillam! We both think Chillam and all the silly people here are fools!”
Rush stared at her hard her hands knotted to fists. “I don’t know why I love you,” she said. �
��I wish I didn’t. But I do. Remember that today. Remember that I love you, and that I think Mary Drew is bad grapes for you. Not just sour grapes, bad grapes.”
“So?” Martha Kent said, looking straight at Rush, her bravado buoyed by the girl’s confession of love. “So?”
Rush said very gently and very seriously, “Just remember, Martha. That’s all.”
She gave a rather wistful salute before she turned and strode down the cement walk in the direction of Old House.
• • •
Mary Drew Edlin was late for school that morning. There had been the fight between her father and mother to delay her start; then the talk her father had given her, putting it off to the very last minute so that they had sat in front of the entrance to Chillam, with the car motor running, while he had mouthed such platitudes as “Mother knows best,” “It can’t hurt,” “Give it a try” and “It’s for your own good.”
So it was settled. As Mary Drew rushed up the walk to classes too tardy for her morning talk with Martha at the Victoria statue, she wondered how she would tell Martha. It would not be enough to say simply that her mother had the preposterous idea there was something neurotic about her and was planning to send her to a psychiatrist. Martha would want to know everything that had been said. And what had been said?
Her mother had explained it this way: “Your father and I are worried about you, Mary Drew. It’s not just the things you’ve refused to tell us about yourself and that man, whoever he may be; it’s much more. It’s the way you’re letting Martha devour your time and your thoughts, and your energy really. Young people should have a whole circle of friends, not just one.”
Mary Drew had answered, “You used to complain because I didn’t have any. Now you complain because I have a good friend.”
“It’s too extreme,” her mother had answered. “Far too extreme.”
And Mary Drew’s father?
“I know you and Martha seem to be very much alike. But your mother is afraid you’re missing a lot of opportunities to have other nice friends. She wants you to talk with the doctor.”
“Does she think I’m crazy?” Mary Drew asked.
“Of course not, dear. Mother just thinks you need to have someone in authority advise you. Someone not as partial to you as we are.”
But Mary Drew knew exactly what her parents were worried about. She had read The Well of Loneliness last year and thought it perfectly absurd. Just as absurd as Rush and Beth Dragmore were, with one of them acting like a man and the other playing the woman’s role. It was silly and laughable. Even when she and Martha pretended to kiss as their characters would, or wrote to one another as they would, or talked together as they would, neither one played the male, in particular, or the female. And that was only play.
The fact that sometimes — that a great many times — after Martha kissed her Mary Drew felt dizzy and shaken and weak all through had nothing to do with anything like The Well of Loneliness! It wasn’t as cheap, or as vulgar, or as adolescent as that.
It was ironical that at the one glorious moment in her life when Mary Drew had found Martha, and found a unique friendship, her mother had chosen to take her nose from Tony’s life, at last, and put it in Mary Drew’s. Just at the point Mary Drew no longer cared who her mother loved most and worried over most!
But how would she tell Martha?
She was ashamed for Martha to know her mother could dream such an absurd situation could exist. As she went up the steps to the library, where she always spent No. 1 period, she decided she would not tell Martha at all. It was too embarrassing!
Everyone in the library was occupied behind a book. Mary Drew reported late to Miss Francie, the librarian, a gross woman with liver marks covering the exposed parts of her skin. Her severe asthma had earned her the nickname “Wheezy.” Mary Drew wrote out her points off slip and then went immediately to the rear of the library, where she always went. There, in a lower stack, was Oswold’s History of Landscaping and Gardening.
The note was pressed between the first and second chapters. She put the book back and sat down.
“Rob dear,” the note read, “missed you at Victoria. Much to tell you. Gretchen thinks Raynor has a dear mouth. Weekdays drag so! Am hurrying with this. Almost late to class. A kiss on the lowermost part of the last quarter inch of Raynor’s ear lobe, three minutes and a third in duration. Your L.L., lost without you.”
“May I have that, Miss Edlin?”
Mary Drew saw the liver marks on the wizened hand that came around in front of her. Miss Francie stood by her chair waiting. Mary Drew wadded the note up into a ball.
“I want you to give that to me, Miss Edlin.” Mary Drew refused to open her hand. She said, “It’s not yours.”
“Neither is Oswold’s History of Landscaping and Gardening your mailbox. Very well, I won’t argue with you. At any rate, you are to report to Miss Pierce-Morgan immediately. Those are my instructions.” After she said this, Miss Francie bent over in a fit of coughing and wheezing, her face becoming very red, with the thin blue veins bulging. She waved her hand at Mary Drew as if to force her on to Miss Pierce-Morgan’s with that gesture and a senior seated opposite Mary Drew at the rear table said, “You heard Miss Francie. Do as she wishes. Can’t you see the state she’s in?”
Miss Pierce-Morgan’s office was across from the library in the Administration Building. The waiting room was decorated in the English Victorian manner — leather chairs and gold-knobbed mirrors, drab brown draperies, and a painting of a founder of Chillam framed with a light spotted at it from the frame’s base. There was always the smell of disinfectant in this room, and Chillamites claimed that because so many girls came down with upset stomachs immediately after leaving Miss
Pierce-Morgan’s office, the rug was worn through with cleaning fluid.
For once, Miss Pierce-Morgan was prompt. Almost the moment after Mary Drew gave her name to Miss Ficklin, the receptionist, the monstrous brown door with the eagle carved into the wood swung open. There Miss Pierce-Morgan stood, her pince-nez swinging from her bosom, her jowls twitching nervously the way they did when she was waiting to capture an offender.
She never said come in. One simply knew to do it. And once Mary Drew passed over the threshold, she looked at the leather chair beside the huge desk and saw, sunken down in it, Martha.
Miss Pierce-Morgan shut the door behind her and went to the desk, adjusting her pince-nez on her nose.
“Sit down, Miss Edlin, anywhere.”
Mary Drew sat opposite Martha. Instantly as they looked at one another, wry smiles came at their mouths, and they looked away, down at their hands to keep from laughing.
“I’ll come right to the point” Miss Pierce-Morgan said, “I have had a report from a trustworthy source that you two have a significant relationship,” She took a deep breath, picking up the spoon-shaped letter opener from her desk blotter. “I have been too lenient in the past about these significant relationships. This was brought to my attention in a very unhappy and tragic way. In this special case to which I am referring now, it was a one-sided significant relationship. There was no way of predicting the disaster that resulted, but none-the-less, that is no excuse for my permissiveness with regard to this matter. When you leave this office, in a few moments, I am going to call both of your parents and inform them that I have sufficient reason to believe a significant relationship exists between you two girls. I am going to inform them that I must forbid you to fraternize with each other henceforth. Being day girls, it is up to your parents to decide whether or not you may fraternize off campus, but while you are on Chillam grounds, you are to ignore one another. If you were residents, I should ask one of you to withdraw from Chillam. I feel that strongly on this matter. But as you are not, I can only warn you that I am alerted, and the faculty and seniors-in-charge shall be alerted, and any violation of this rule will bring on expulsion.”
She stood up. “Are there questions from either of your’
Neither
Mary Drew nor Martha spoke. Both sat white-faced, shocked.
“This decision is not without foundation. I am fully aware of your use of the library as a receptacle for your fond notes, and the Victoria statue as a rendezvous point; and I can only repeat that we will not allow a significant relationship to exist hereafter at Chillam.”
She nodded. “Good day.”
Martha and Mary Drew walked slowly toward the door.
Miss Pierce-Morgan gave a final thrust: “This is effective immediately, of course. You are not to converse together once you leave this room.”
They went out the door and past Miss Ficklin, then down the hallway toward the front door of the administration building. Mary Drew was just in front of Martha.
Martha whispered, “Slow up and keep your head exactly as it is.”
“Miss Pierce-Morgan will watch us as we leave, from her window,” Mary Drew whispered back.
“I know. Go slow until then. Rush did this.”
“Are you positive?”
“Yes, and there’s more.”
“What?”
“On my way to No. 1 period, before I was sent for, I heard the most curious news. Everyone’s talking hush-hush about it. Beth Dragmore slit her wrists.”
“What? Are you serious?”
“Perfectly serious. She’s dead. And her family’s hired a lawyer.”
Mary Drew was at the door now.
“Go ahead,” Martha Kent said, “but meet me at the boardwalk, where we were before, directly after Class 7.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I am Senior Detective at the Criminal Investigation Bureau at Weerdale. On the evening of the murder, I visited the Kent home twice. My first interview with Mary Drew Edlin was at 9:15 p.m. At that time I received a signed statement from her in which she described the attack on her mother by an unknown assailant. At 11 $0 p.m., I returned …
