The Fiend

by Margaret Millar

  She stepped out on the balcony and began the slow difficult descent, trying not to look at the ground. The gray mottled bark of the tree, which appeared so smooth from a distance, scratched her hands and arms like sandpaper. She passed the kitchen window. The hamburger was thawing on the sink and the sight of it made her aware of her hunger but she kept on going.

  She dropped onto the grass in the backyard and crossed the dry creek bed, being careful to avoid the reddening runners of poison oak. A scrub jay squawked in protest at her intrusion. Mary Martha had learned from her father how to imitate the bird, and ordinarily she would have squawked back at him and there would have been a lively contest between the two of them. But this time she didn’t even hear the jay. Her ears were still filled with her mother’s voice: “He’s got what he wanted, that fat old gin-swilling whore who treats him like little Jesus.” The sentence bewildered her. Little Jesus was a baby in a manger and her father was a grown-up man with a mustache. She didn’t know what a whore was, but she assumed, since her father was interested in birds, that it was an owl. Owls said, “Whoo,” and were fat and lived to be quite old.

  Mr. and Mrs. Brant were in the little fenced-in patio at the back of their house, preparing a barbecue. Mr. Brant was try­ing to get the charcoal lit and Mrs. Brant was wrapping ears of corn in aluminum foil. They both wore shorts and cotton shirts and sandals.

  “Why, it’s Mary Martha,” Ellen Brant said, sounding pleased and surprised, as though Mary Martha lived a hundred miles away and hadn’t seen her for a year. “Come in, dear. Jessie will be out in a few minutes. She’s taking a bath.”

  “I’m glad she didn’t get blood poisoning and convulsions,” Mary Martha said gravely.

  “So am I. Very.”

  “Jessie is my best friend.”

  “I know that, and I think it’s splendid. Don’t you, Dave?”

  “You bet I do,” Dave said, turning to give Mary Martha a slow, shy smile. He was a big man with a low-pitched, quiet voice, and a slight stoop to his shoulders that seemed like an apology for his size.

  It was his size and his quietness that Mary Martha especially admired. Her own father was short in stature and short of temper. His movements were quick and impatient and no matter what he was doing he always seemed anxious to get started on the next thing. It was restful and reassuring to stand beside Mr. Brant and watch him lighting the charcoal.

  He said, “Careful, Mary Martha. Don’t get burned.”

  “I won’t. I often do the cooking at home. Also, I iron.”

  “Do you now. In ten years or so you’ll be making some young man a fine wife, won’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not going to get married.”

  “You’re pretty young to reach such a drastic decision.”

  Mary Martha was staring into the glowing coals as if reading her future. “I’m going to be an animal doctor and adopt ten children and support them all by myself so I don’t have to sit around waiting for a check in the mail.”

  Over her head the Brants exchanged glances, then Ellen said in a firm, decisive voice, “No loafing on the job, you two. Put the corn on and I’ll get the hot dogs. Would you like to stay and eat with us, Mary Martha?”

  “No, thank you. I would like to but my mother will be alone.” And she will have a headache and a rash on her face and her eyes will be swollen, and she’ll call me sweetie-pie and lambikins.

  “Perhaps your mother would like to join us,” Ellen said. “Why don’t you call her on the phone and ask her?”

  “I can’t. The line’s busy.”

  “How do you know that? You haven’t tried to—”

  “She wouldn’t come, anyway. She has a headache and things.”

  “Well,” Ellen said, spreading her hands helplessly. “Well, I’d better get the hot dogs.”

  She went inside and Dave was left alone with Mary Martha. He felt uneasy in her presence, as if, in spite of her friendliness and politeness, she was secretly accusing him of being a man and a villain and he was secretly agreeing with her. He felt heavy with guilt and he wished someone would appear to help him carry it, Jessie or Ellen from the house, Michael from the football field, Virginia and Howard Arlington from next door. But no one came. There was only Mary Martha, small and pale and mute as marble.

  For a long time the only sound was an occasional drop of butter oozing from between the folds of the aluminum foil and sputtering on the coals. Then Mary Martha said, “Do you know anything about birds, Mr. Brant?”

  “No, I’m afraid not. I used to keep a few homing pigeons when I was a boy but that’s about all.”

  “You didn’t keep any owls?”

  “No. I don’t suppose anyone does.”

  “My ex-father has one.”

  “Does he now,” Dave said. “That’s very interesting. What does he feed it?”

  “Gin.”

  “Are you sure? Gin doesn’t sound like a suitable diet for an owl or for anything else, for that matter. Don’t owls usually eat small rodents and birds and things like that?”

  “Yes, but not this one.”

  “Well,” Dave said, with a shrug, “I don’t know much either about owls or about your fath—your ex-father, so I’ll just have to take your word for it. Gin it is.”

  Twin spots of color appeared on Mary Martha’s cheeks, as if she’d been stung by bees or doubts. “I heard my mother telling Mac about it on the telephone. My ex-father has a fat old whore that drinks gin.”

  There was a brief silence. Then Dave said carefully, “I don’t believe your mother was referring to an owl, Mary Martha. The word you used doesn’t mean that.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “It’s an insulting term, and not one young ladies are supposed to repeat.”

  Mary Martha was aware that he had replied but hadn’t an­swered. The word must mean something so terrible that she could never ask anyone about it. Why had her mother used it then, and what was her father doing with one? She felt a surge of anger against them all, her mother and father, the whore, David, and even Jessie who wasn’t there but who had a real father.

  Inside the kitchen the phone rang and through the open door and windows Ellen’s voice came, clear and distinct: “Hello. Why yes, Mrs. Oakley, she’s here.... Of course I had no idea she didn’t have your permission…. She’s perfectly all right, there’s no need to become upset over it. Mary Martha isn’t the kind of girl who’d be likely to get in trouble…. I’ll have Dave bring her right home…. Very well, I’ll tell her to wait here until you arrive. Good-bye.”

  Ellen came outside, carrying a tray of buttered rolls and hot dogs stuffed with cheese and wrapped in bacon. “Your mother just called, Mary Martha.”

  Mary Martha merely nodded. Her mother’s excitement had an almost soothing effect on her. There would be a scene, naturally, but it would be like a lot of others, nothing she couldn’t handle, nothing that hadn’t been said a hundred times. “If you truly love me, Mary Martha, you’ll promise never to do such a thing again.” “I truly love you, Mother. I never will.”

  “She’s driving over to get you,” Ellen added. “You’re to be waiting on the front porch.”

  “All right.”

  “Jessie will wait with you. She’s just putting her pajamas on.”

  “I can wait alone.”

  “Of course you can, you’re a responsible girl. But you came over here to see Jessie, didn’t you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Why did you come, then?”

  Mary Martha blinked, as if the question hurt her eyes. Then she turned and walked into the house, closing the screen door carefully and quietly behind her.

  Dave Brant watched his wife as she began arranging the hot dogs on the grill. “Maybe yo
u shouldn’t question her like that, Ellen.”

  “Why not?”

  “She might think you’re prying.”

  “She might be right.”

  “I hope not.”

  “Oh, come on, Dave. Admit it—you’re just as curious as I am about what goes on in that household.”

  “Perhaps. But I think I’m better off not knowing.” He thought of telling Ellen about the fat old whore but he couldn’t predict her reaction. She might be either quite amused by the story or else shocked into doing something tactless like repeating it to Mrs. Oakley. Although he’d been married to Ellen for eighteen years, her insensitivity to certain situations still surprised him.

  “Dave—”

  “Yes?”

  “We’ll never let it happen to our children, will we?”

  “What?”

  “Divorce,” Ellen said, with a gesture, “and all the mess that goes with it. It would kill Michael, he’s so terribly sensitive, like me.”

  “He’s going to have plenty of reason to be sensitive if he’s not home by 6:30 as he promised.”

  “Now, Dave, you wouldn’t actually punish him simply for losing track of the time.”

  “He has 20-20 vision and a wrist watch,” Dave said. But he wasn’t even interested in Michael at the moment. He merely wanted to change the subject because he couldn’t bear to talk or even think about a divorce. The idea of Jessie being in Mary Martha’s place appalled him, Michael was sixteen, almost a man, but Jessie was still a child, full of trust and innocence, and the only person in the world who sincerely believed in him. She wouldn’t always. Inevitably, the time would come when she’d have to question his wisdom and courage, perhaps even his love for her. But right now she was nine, her world was small, no more than a tiny moon, and he was the king of it.

  The two girls sat outside the front door on the single concrete step which they called a porch. Jessie was picking at the loose skin on the palm of one hand, and Mary Martha was watching her as if she wished she had something equally interesting to do.

  Jessie said, “You’ll probably catch it when your mother comes.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Do you suppose you’ll cry?”

  “I may have to,” Mary Martha said thoughtfully. “It’s lucky I’m such a good crier.”

  Jessie agreed. “Maybe you should start in right now and be crying when she arrives. It might wring her heart.”

  “I don’t feel like it right now.”

  “I could make up a real sad story for you.”

  “No. I know lots of real sad stories. My ex-father used to tell them to me when he was you-know-what.”

  “Drunk?”

  “Yes.”

  It had been two years now since she’d heard any of these stories but she remembered them because they were all about the same little boy. He lived in a big redwood house which had an attic to play in and trees around it to climb and a creek at the back of it to hunt frogs in. At the end of every story the little boy died, sometimes heroically, while rescuing an animal or a bird, sometimes by accident or disease. These endings left Mary Martha in a state of confusion: she recognized the house the little boy lived in and she knew he must be her father, yet her father was still alive. Why had the little boy died? “He was better off that way, shweetheart, much better off.”

  “I wish you could stay at my house for a while,” Jessie said. “We could look at the big new book my Aunt Virginia gave me. It’s all about nature, mountains and rivers and glaciers and animals.”

  “We could look at it tomorrow, maybe.”

  “No. I have to give it back as soon as she gets home from the beach.”

  “Why?”

  “It was too expensive, twenty dollars. My mother was so mad about it she made my father mad too, and then they both got mad at me.”

  Mary Martha nodded sympathetically. She knew all about such situations. “My father sends me presents at Christmas and on my birthday, but my mother won’t even let me open the packages. She says he’s trying to buy me. Is your Aunt Virginia trying to buy you?”

  “That’s silly. Nobody can buy children.”

  “If my mother says they can, they can.” Mary Martha paused. “Haven’t you even heard about nasty old men offering you money to go for a ride? Don’t you even know about them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then.”

  She saw her mother’s little Volkswagen rounding the corner. Running out to the curb to meet it she tried to make tears come to her eyes by thinking of the little boy who always died in her father’s stories. But the tears wouldn’t come. Perhaps her father was right and the little boy was better off dead.

  Kate Oakley sat, pale and rigid, her hands gripping the steer­ing wheel as if she were trying to rein in a wild horse with a will of its own. Cars passed on the road, people strolled along the sidewalk with children and dogs and packages of groceries, others watered lawns, weeded flower beds, washed off driveways and raked leaves. But to the woman and child in the car, all the moving creatures were unreal. Even the birds in the trees seemed made of plastic and suspended on strings and only pretending to fly free.

  Mary Martha said in a whisper, “I’m sorry, Momma.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I thought you’d be talking on the telephone for a long time and that I’d be back before you even missed me.”

  “You heard me talking on the telephone?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you listened, deliberately?”

  “Yes. But I couldn’t help it. I wanted to know about my father, I just wanted to know, Momma.”

  Real tears came to her eyes then, she didn’t have to think of the little dead boy.

  “God forgive me,” her mother said as if she didn’t believe in God or forgiving. “I’ve tried, I’m still trying to protect you from all this ugliness. But how can I? It surrounds us like a lot of dirty water, we’re in it right up to our necks. How can I pretend we’re standing on dry land, safe and secure?”

  “We could buy a boat,” Mary Martha suggested, wiping her eyes.

  There was a silence, then her mother said in a bright, brittle voice, “Why, lamb, that’s a perfectly splendid idea. Why didn’t I think of it? We’ll buy a boat just big enough for the two of us, and we’ll float right out of Sheridan’s life. Won’t that be lovely, sweetikins?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  (5)

  Quickly and quietly, Charlie let himself in the front door. He was late for supper by almost an hour and he knew Ben would be grumpy about it and full of questions. He had his answers ready, ones that Ben couldn’t easily prove or disprove. He hated lying to Ben but the truth was so simple and innocent that Ben wouldn’t believe it: he’d gone to 319 Jacaranda Road, where the child Jessie lived, to see if she was all right. She’d taken a bad fall at the playground, she could have injured herself quite seriously, her little bones were so delicate.

  He knew from experience what Ben’s reaction would be. Playground? What were you doing at a playground, Charlie? How did you learn the child’s name? And where she lives? And that her little bones are delicate? How did she fall, Charlie? Were you chasing her and was she running away? Why do you want to chase little girls, Charlie?

  Ben would misunderstand, misinterpret everything. It was better to feed him a lie he would swallow than a truth he would spit out.

  Charlie took off the windbreaker he always wore no matter what the weather and hung it on the clothes rack beside the front door. Then he went down the dark narrow hall to the kitchen.

  Ben was standing at the sink, rinsing a plate under the hot-water tap. He said, without turning, “You’re late. I’ve already eaten.”

  “I’m sorry, Ben. I had some trouble with the car. I must have floo
ded it again. I had to wait half an hour before the engine would turn over.”

  “I’ve told you a dozen times, all you’ve got to do when the engine’s flooded is press the accelerator down to the floorboard and let it up again very slowly.”

  “Oh, I did that, Ben. Sometimes it doesn’t work.”

  “It does for me.”

  “Well, you’ve got a real way with cars. You command their respect.”

  Ben turned. He didn’t look in the least flattered, as Charlie had hoped he would. “Louise called. She’ll be over early. She’s getting off at seven because she’s taking another girl’s place tomorrow night. You’d better hurry up and eat.”

  “Sure, Ben.”

  “There’s a can of spaghetti in the cupboard and some fish cakes.”

  Charlie didn’t particularly like fish cakes and spaghetti but he took the two cans out of the cupboard and opened them. Ben was in a peculiar mood, it would be better not to cross him even about so minor a thing as what to have for supper. He wanted to cross him, though; he wanted to tell him outright that he, Charlie, was a grown man of thirty-two and he didn’t have to account for every minute of his time and be told what to eat and how to spend the evening. So Louise was coming. Well, suppose he wasn’t there when she arrived. Suppose he walked out right now…

  No, he couldn’t do that, not tonight anyway. Tonight she was bringing him something very important, very urgent. He didn’t understand why he considered it so important but it was as if she were going to hand him a key, a mysterious key which would unlock a door or a secret box.

  He thought of the hidden delights behind the door, inside the box, and his hands began to tremble. When he put the fish cakes in the frying pan, the hot grease splattered his knuckles. He felt no pain, only a sense of wonder that this grease, which had no mind or will of its own, should be able to fight back and assert itself better than he could.