“Yes.”
“Imagine me helping anybody, that’s a switch. I could laugh. I could laugh out loud.”
“Don’t.”
She put one hand gently over his mouth, staring into his eyes as she would twin pools of water. On the surface she saw her own reflection, but underneath there were live creatures of every shape and size, moving mysteriously in and out, toward and past each other; arriving, departing, colliding, unconcerned with time or joy or grief. At the bottom of the cold, dark water lay the stones of death, but small green creatures clung to them and survived, unafraid. There was enough light to live by, even down there, and they had each other for comfort.
Charlie said, “Why—are you looking at me like that?”
“Because I love you.”
“That’s not a reason.”
“It’s reason enough for anything.”
“You talk sillier than I do,” he said, touching her hair and the ribbon in it. “I like silly girls.”
“I’ve never been called a silly girl before. I’m not sure I approve.”
“You do, though. I can tell.”
He laughed, softly and contentedly, then he swooped her up in his arms and carried her over to the davenport. She sat on his lap with her face pressed against the warm moist skin of his neck.
“Louise,” he said in a whisper, “I want you and me to be married in a church and everything, like big shots.”
“I want that too.”
“You in a long fluffy dress, me in striped trousers and a morning coat. I can rent an outfit like that down at Cosgrave’s. One of the fellows at work rented one for his sister’s wedding and he said it made him feel like an ambassador. He hated to take it back because actually he’s just a truck driver. I wouldn’t mind feeling like an ambassador, for a few hours anyway.”
“An ambassador to where?”
“Anywhere. I guess they all feel pretty much the same.”
“I suppose I could stand being an ambassador’s wife for a few hours,” Louise said dreamily, “as long as I could have you back again exactly the way you are now.”
“Exactly?”
“Yes.”
“Now you’re talking silly again. I mean, it’s not sensible to want me just as I am, with all my—my difficulties.”
“Shhh, Charlie. Don’t think about the difficulties, think about us. We must start planning. First, we’ll have to decide on a church and a date and make a reservation. Someone told me that autumn weddings are starting to outnumber June weddings.”
“Autumn,” he repeated. “It’s August already.”
“If that’s too soon for you,” she said quickly, “we’ll postpone it. Is it too soon, Charlie?”
She knew the answer before she asked the question. The muscles of his arms had gone rigid and the pulse in his neck was beating fast and irregularly. It was as if he could picture her in a long fluffy dress and himself in a morning coat, looking like an ambassador, but he couldn’t put the two of them together, at one time and in one place.
“Actually,” she said, “when I consider it, it does seem like rushing things. There are so many plans to make, and as you said, it’s August already.”
“Yes.”
“I’ve always thought Christmas would be a good time for a wedding. Things are so gay then, with all the pretty parcels and people singing carols. And the weather’s usually good here at Christmas too. Sometimes it’s the very best weather of the year. You wouldn’t have to worry about rain getting your striped trousers wet. You couldn’t very well feel like an ambassador with your trousers wet, could you?”
“I guess not.”
“You like Christmas, don’t you, Charlie? Opening packages and everything? Of course I don’t want to rush you. If you’d rather wait until early spring or even June—”
“No,” he said, touched by her desire to please him and wanting to please her in return. “I don’t want to wait even until Christmas. I think we should be married right away. Maybe the first week of September, if you can be ready by then.”
“I’ve been ready for a year.”
“But we just met a year ago.”
“I know.”
“You mean you fell in love with me right away, just looking at me, not knowing a thing about me? That’s funny.”
“Not to me. Oh, Charlie, I’m so happy.”
“Imagine me making anyone happy,” Charlie said. “Ben will certainly be surprised.”
Ben wouldn’t be able to say I don’t know any more. He’d have to admit that the frog turned into a prince and lived happily ever after with his princess.
“Louise, I just thought, what if your parents don’t approve? Your father doesn’t seem to like me very much.”
“Yes, he does. He told me tonight as I was leaving that you were a fine young man.”
“Did he really?”
“It wouldn’t matter anyway, Charlie.”
“Yes, it would. I want everything to be right, everyone to be —well, on our side.”
“Everything will be right,” she said. “Everyone is on our side.”
She thought of the small green creatures clinging to the stones at the bottom of the cold dark water. They survived, with nothing on their side but each other.
(8)
It was the following noon that Kate Oakley received the letter. She was alone in the house; Mary Martha had gone to the playground with Jessie and Jessie’s brother, Mike, who was supposed to see to it that the girls stayed off the jungle gym and kept their clothes clean. Kate had promised to drive them to the Museum of Natural History right after lunch.
She liked to take the girls places and let people assume they were both her daughters, but she was dreading this particular excursion. The museum used to be—and perhaps still was—one of Sheridan’s favorite hangouts. He hadn’t seen Mary Martha for four months and Kate was afraid that if he ran into her now there would be a scene in front of everybody, quiet and sarcastic if he was sober, loud and weepy if he wasn’t. Still, she had to risk it. There weren’t many places she could take Mary Martha without having to pay, and money was very short.
She had received no check from Sheridan for temporary support for nearly two months. She knew it was Sheridan’s way of punishing her for keeping him away from Mary Martha but she was determined not to give in. She was strong—stronger than he was—and in the end she would win, she would get the money she needed to bring Mary Martha up in the manner she deserved. Things would be as they were before. She would have a woman to do the cleaning and laundering, a seamstress to make Mary Martha’s school clothes, a gardener to mow the vast lawn and cut the hedges and spray the poison oak. The groceries would be delivered and she would sign the bill without bothering to check it and tip the delivery boy with real money, not a smile, the way she had to tip everyone now.
These smile tips didn’t cost her anything but they were expensive. They came out of her most private account, her personal capital. Nothing had been added to this capital for a long time; she had been neither loved nor loving, she offered no mercy and accepted none; hungry, she refused to eat; weary, she couldn’t rest; alone, she reached out to no one. Sometimes at night, when Mary Martha was in bed asleep and the house seemed like a huge empty cave, Kate could feel her impending bankruptcy but she didn’t realize that it had very little connection with lack of money.
She was vacuuming the main living room when she saw the postman coming up the flagstone walk. She went out into the hall but she didn’t open the door to exchange greetings with him. She waited until he dropped the mail in the slot, then she scooped it up greedily from the floor. There was no check from Sheridan, only a couple of bills and a white envelope with her name and address printed on it. The contents of the envelope were squeezed into one corner like a coin wrapp
ed in paper and her first thought was that Sheridan was playing another trick on her, sending her a dime or a quarter to imply she was worth no more than that. She ripped open the envelope with her thumbnail. There was no coin inside. A piece of notepaper had simply been folded and refolded many times, the way a child might fold a note to be secretly passed during class
The note was neatly printed in black ink:
Your daughter takes too dangerous risks with her delicate body. Children must be guarded against the cruel hazards of life and fed good, nourishing food so their bones will be padded. Also clothing. You should put plenty of clothing on her, keep arms and legs covered, etc. In the name of God please take better care of your little girl.
She stood for a minute, half paralyzed with shock. Then, when her blood began to flow again, she reread the note, more slowly and carefully. It didn’t make sense. No one—not even Sheridan, who’d accused her of everything else—had ever accused her of neglecting Mary Martha. She was well fed, well clothed, well supervised. She was, moreover, rather a timid child, not given to taking dangerous risks or risks of any kind unless challenged by Jessie.
Kate refolded the note and put it back in the envelope. She thought, it can’t be a mistake because it’s addressed to me and my name’s spelled correctly. Perhaps there’s some religious crank in the neighborhood who’s prejudiced against divorced women, but it hardly seems possible now that divorce is so common.
Only one thing was certain: the letter was an attack, and the person most likely to attack her was Sheridan.
She went out into the hall and telephoned Ralph MacPherson’s office. “Mac, I hate to bother you again.”
“That’s all right, Kate. Are you feeling better today?”
“I was, until the mail came. I just received an anonymous letter and I think I know who—”
“Don’t think about it at all, Kate. Tear it up and forget it.”
“No, I want you to see it.”
“I’ve seen quite a few of them in my day,” Mac said. “They’re all the same, sick and rotten.”
“I want you to see it,” she repeated, “because I’m pretty sure it’s from Sheridan. If it is, he’s further gone than I imagined. He may even be—well, committable.”
“That’s a big word in these parts, Kate. Or in any parts, for that matter.”
“People are committed every day.”
“Not on the word of a disgruntled spouse. . . . All right. Bring the letter down to my office. I’ll be here until I leave for court at 1:30.”
“Thank you, Mac. Thank you very much.”
She dressed hurriedly but with care, as if she were going to be put on exhibition in front of a lot of people, one of whom had written her the letter.
Before leaving the house she made sure all the windows and doors on the ground floor were locked, and when she had backed her car out of the garage she locked the garage doors behind her. She had nothing left to steal, but the locking habit had become fixed in her. She no longer thought of doors as things to open; doors were to close, to keep people out.
She usually handled her small car without thinking much about it, but now she drove as she had dressed, with great care, as though a pair of unfriendly eyes was watching her, ready to condemn her as an unfit mother if she made the slightest mistake, a hand signal executed a little too slowly, a corner turned a little too fast.
She headed for the school playground, intending to tell the girls that she would be late picking them up. She had gone about three blocks when she stopped for a red light and saw, in the rear-view mirror, an old green coupe pull up behind her. Kate paid more attention to cars than most women, especially since she’d been living alone, and she recognized it instantly as the car she’d noticed parked outside her house the previous afternoon.
She tried to keep calm, the way Mac had told her to: Don’t jump to conclusions, Kate. If you thought Sheridan was driving that car, why didn’t you go out and confront him, find out why he was there? If it happens again—
Well, it was happening again.
She opened the door and had one foot on the road when the light changed. The left lane was clear and the green coupé turned into it and shot past her with a grinding of gears. Its grimy windows were closed and she could see only that a man was behind the wheel. It was enough. Sheridan was following her. He may even have been waiting outside the house while the postman delivered his letter, eager to watch its effect on her. She thought, Well, here it is, Sheridan, here’s the effect.
She didn’t hesitate even long enough to close the door. She pressed down on the accelerator and the door slammed shut with the sudden forward thrust of her car. For the next five minutes she was not in conscious control either of herself or of the car. It was as though a devil were driving them both and he was responsible to no one and for no one; he owned the roads, let others use them at their own risk.
Up and down streets, around corners, through a parking lot, down an alley, she pursued the green coupé. Twice she was almost close enough to force it over to the curb but each time it got away. She was not even aware of cars honking at her and people yelling at her until she ran a red light. Then she heard the shrieking of her own brakes as a truck appeared suddenly in front of her. Her head snapped forward until it pressed against the steering wheel. She sat in a kind of daze while the truck driver climbed out of the cab.
“For Chrissake, you drunk or something? That was a red light.”
“I didn’t—see it.”
“Well, keep your eyes open next time. You damn near got yourself killed. You woulda spoiled my record, I got the best record in the company. How they expect a guy to keep his record with a lot of crazy women scooting around in kiddie cars?”
“Shut up,” she said. “Please shut up.”
“Well, well, now you’re trying to get tough with me, eh? Listen, lady, you’ll be damn lucky if I don’t report you for reckless driving, maybe drunk driving. You been drinking?”
“No.”
“They all say that. Where’s your driver’s license?”
“In my purse.”
“Get it out.”
“Please don’t—”
“Lady, a near accident like this happens and I’m supposed to check on it, see? Maybe you’ve got some kind of restriction on your license, like you’re to wear glasses when you’re driving, or a hearing aid.”
She fumbled around in her purse until she found her wallet with her driver’s license in it. On the license there was a little picture of her, taken the day she’d passed her test. She was smiling confidently and happily into the camera.
She saw the truck driver staring at the picture in disbelief. “This is you, lady?”
She wanted to reach out and strike him between the eyes, but instead she said, “It was taken three years ago. I’ve been— things have happened to me. When you lose weight, it always shows in the face, it makes you appear—well, older. I was trying to think of a nicer word for it but there isn’t one, is there? More aged? That’s no improvement. More ancient, decrepit? Worn out? Obsolete?”
“Lady, I didn’t mean it like that,” he said, looking embarrassed. “I mean—oh hell, let’s get out of here.”
A crowd had begun to gather. The truck driver waved them away and climbed back into his cab. The green coupé had long since disappeared.
The two girls, on Mike’s orders, were sitting on a bench in an area of the playground hidden from the street by an eight-foot oleander hedge. Mike was lying face down on the grass nearby, listening to a baseball game on a transistor radio. Every now and then he raised his head, consulted his wrist watch in an authoritative manner, and gave the girls what was intended to be a hypnotic glance.
They had both been absolutely silent and motionless for seven minutes except for the occasional blink o
f an eye or twitch of a nose. Mike was beginning to worry about whether he actually had hypnotized them and how he was going to snap them out of it, when Jessie suddenly jumped off the bench.
“Oh, I hate this game! It’s not even a game, seeing who can stay stillest the longest.”
“You’re just sore because Mary Martha won,” Mike said airily. “I was betting she would. You can’t keep your trap shut for two seconds.”
“I can if I want to.”
“Yackety yak.”
“Anyhow, I know why you’re making us sit here.”
“O clever one, do tell.”
“So none of your buddies going past will see you baby-sitting. I heard you tell Daddy you’d never be able to hold up your head in public again if they saw you playing with two little girls. But Daddy said you had to play with us anyway. Or else.”
“Well, I wish I’d taken the or else,” Mike said in disgust. “Anything’d be better than looking after a pair of dimwitted kids who should be able to look after themselves. I didn’t need a baby-sitter at your age.”
Jessie blushed, but the only place it showed was across the bridge of her nose where repeated sunburns had peeled off layers of skin. “I don’t need one either except I’ve got sore hands.”
“You’re breaking my heart with your itty bitty sore hands. Man, oh man, you get more mileage out of a couple of blisters than I could get from a broken neck.”
“If I won the game,” Mary Martha said wistfully, “may I move now? There’s a bee on my arm and it tickles me.”
“So tickle it back,” Mike said and turned up the volume of the radio.
“My goodness, he’s mean,” Mary Martha whispered behind her hand. “Was he born that way?”
“I’ve only known him for nine years, but he probably was.”
“Maybe some evil witch put a curse on him. Do you know any curses?”
“Just g-o-d-d-a-m, which I never say.”
“No, I mean real curses.” Mary Martha contorted her face until it looked reasonably witchlike. Then she spoke in a high eerie voice:
The Fiend Page 8
