THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction

by LEE OLDS

  Several days later when Sarah did return from the crisis ward, heard about the tragedy and had begun drinking again, she found her son had come and gone, and now she must’ve thought he’d be gone forever, for he’d be going off to school back east. She knew the very date and the time. She was sad to’ve missed the boy and she’d been sure he’d’ve come and seen her if she’d been there, for evidently she was thinking of doing the suicide bit all over.

  The first attempt occurred one morning on a mild day at the beach. Feeling very lonely as only manics can, drink in hand she walked over to her small garage which contained no car … her ex’s old pickup was still in front of the house … but instead had been turned into the carpenter’s tool shed. She’d never had a car and he’d always been content to park his on the street. Opening the door a sparrow flew out and startled her. Nervously she began to remember all his friends from the swamp people, who gathered there on Sundays with their various items that needed repair, as Barney’d work his table saw; one of them might use his drill or lathe. She’d bring them a pot of coffee, sit a bit, listen to their chatter; then go back to the house where she’d sit in the kitchen and have a drink of her own. Need I have to tell you what it was. But she felt good. She’d just socialized. That was her life. At least then she’d had one. Now…

  Cobwebs had begun to drape the presses; dust lay thick on the work-table. She … quite frankly, hadn’t been out there since Barney’d been taken away and she hadn’t heard from him. Faces come back, like a gallery of rogues, which, of course, is exactly what they were and still were, most of them, and likely always would be. She waxed nostalgic when her eye caught a simple tool on the bench and the idea came to her.

  “What was that?” Said Hammond.

  “The idea or the tool?” I caught him. “The idea, of course, was suicide. It was the first time it’d inveighed upon her though she’d thought of it before. The tool, of course, was a razor knife. She’d picked it up and thought how easily then it would have been to slash her wrists. Luckily she didn’t. For that thing was razor sharp; she might not’ve been able to save herself. She dropped the thing like it’d shocked her, then abruptly left the garage.”

  “So,” said Hammond. “What was the problem?”

  Her drinking mainly, I said, and her loneliness as far as I could tell. She’d simply held too many meaningless relations in her life. Some women are like that. They go from man to man. She was one of them. While sitting at her kitchen table this time she began to entertain the idea again. But now it was a bread knife that sat there, fortunately a dull one for since Barney’d left she never sharpened it but had used it to cut everything. After staring at that ‘still life’ for an hour or so in sheer terror and stasis, upon a sudden impulse she grabbed the thing, drew it across one wrist then another, so lightly, of course, the moves barely caused two scratches though they bled like hell. In her panic she quickly wrapped towels around both arms and ran to the firehouse, which was several blocks away. She burst in on the resident.

  “I … I’ve cut myself,” she blathered and held out her arms.

  “Sarah,” said the fireman, for everyone there knew her. As I said someone that attractive was hard not to know. “What have you done to yourself?”

  “I cut my…” She got out before bursting into tears and the hulk’s arms opened wide to receive her. He, of course, exposed the cuts, which weren’t bleeding badly by that time and bandaged them. Then he sat her down and began talking to her, which was the procedure in shock cases. Seems even if the patient can’t respond the sound of another’s voice soothes them. It’s like a mother coos or sings lullabies to her child. He naturally called the ambulance and that’s when they’d taken her away.

  This time, however, she’d learned a better method (don’t all miscreants from their associates in jail) from those ‘like her’ she’d met in the crisis center. In innocent discussion no less. Nembutal and booze was a concoction hard to beat. It was a pleasant high and she’d been assured it’d work. She’d gotten the pills over the hill when she’d been released. The booze was in her cupboard. She didn’t have much to wait around for, estranged as she was from both her children – one of whom’d been adopted. Another who was about to be, for evidently one of June’s conditions for her benevolent sponsorship had recently become that Marcus was to change his name to hers. The legal work’d already been taken care of. She’d imposed it as a condition, not that she’d spelled it right out and said he’d forfeit his good fortune if he didn’t comply. Still the threat with her was always tacit. It loomed over you. You knew it was there a fortiori.

  But I guess by that time after living several months with his sponsor Marcus’d been exposed to her darker side. He’d witnessed the anguish June’d put Jennifer her pianist daughter through and had balked at that. The name change, however, was a little too much. It also brought him to the boiling point. And he, quite frankly, decided to call his mother. To at least say goodbye to her. He was in fact to leave in a week. His travel itinerary’d been taken care of. His matriculation at school prepared and everything he’d need including a flashy new laptop he’d never been able to afford was ready to travel.

  While it wasn’t so strange he hadn’t been able to get hold of his mother for her phone’d been disconnected, he found it odd she hadn’t been able to get hold of him since now that the miscreant’d gone, he felt she surely would have. That’s when he sat down one day when June was at work and began delving into her computer.

  “And,” said Hammond, “he found the call block?”

  “Did he ever?” I said. “It showed up like the seven genies on a dollar slot machine. Believe me he was pissed. Excited and pissed. He decided to confront his stepmother as he’d come to call her right then and there, for who knew who’d been trying to get hold of him. Just the thought of his poor mother’s frustration if it existed put him in a tailspin far more than merely blasting June. What do they say, ‘blood’s thicker than water’. Meaningless, yet…?”

  “So, did he?” Said Hammond. “Blast her.”

  Not before talking to Sarah. He called the payphone at the grocery store; got someone on it, evidently one of the locals who hung around there all the time and he got him to leave the phone off the hook and to go call his mother who was all of two blocks away. She in her inebriated state was helped down the hill by the Samaritan whereas chance would have it the phone still hung off the hook. She picked it up and her son was on the other end. She, of course, could scarcely believe it.

  “Mom!”

  “Marcus, son, is this you, where’ve you been? I’ve been trying to get you forever.” He knew how drunk she was by her slurred voice and her reaction level. After all, how many years of her states had he endured? He, of course, was aggrieved. Sometimes distance’ll do that to you and believe me with a hound like June on your back the distance doesn’t have to be very much. Seventeen miles over the hill in this case.

  “So,” said Hammond “What’d the two say (conclude)?”

  Not much. Though she leveled with him and told him nearly everything. About her attempt and all. Though not about her new considerations. That I’m sure didn’t sit too well with the kid nor at that point I imagine did the owner of the house he was sitting in, whose car he was driving and whose phone he was using. At least it set him to thinking. What was the point of it all? Of anything perhaps for that matter. For as I told you the kid was highly philosophical for his age. Sensitive and endowed with no little Weltschmerz. He and Hartwig used to have torturous conversations over Nietzsche, Sartre, Heidegger and the like, to mention a few of the ‘big names’.

  The two talked, finally, like mother and son. She wished him well in his school endeavors and he told her to take care of herself and that he’d write often. I paused.

  “Of course that’s not all that happened?” Said Hammond. “Tell me the truth.”

  “I guess not,” I agreed. “After several hours thinking mind you, only several hours through which fortunately
the battle axe didn’t show up, though he wouldn’t’ve minded if Jennifer had for he’d’ve gladly told her everything without hesitation, Marcus phoned Hartwig and said to him bluntly.”

  “I need you. Can you give me a ride?”

  “Who is this, Marcus? Where are you? A ride to where? You’re kidding. What’s wrong with your car? I’m in the middle of …”

  “I can’t use it. I’m at the despot’s.” Hartwig sensed a crisis. That he was good at though it didn’t justify his laissez faire existence.

  “Look,” said a sinister voice, one Hartwig hadn’t quite heard before. “I just need this one favor. A ride or not?”

  “OK,” Hartwig gave in. “But you know I’m not welcome there anymore.”

  He figured the kid’d just need a lift down to the shopping center not a hop all over the county. Besides, after the episode with Sandy, especially now, Marcus was one of the few beach friends he had left. So he went. Marcus, meantime, had made several other calls. One to Benji, who was overjoyed his friend wasn’t ‘leaving’ after all, and the other to his girlfriend who though not knowing what to think about her boyfriend’s new decision in light of the circumstances thought it probably a just one and agreed to help. She … was getting tired of living with her parents. Ever since the boy’d met June she felt she’d been losing the man she’d loved and suddenly an opportunity had presented itself to change all that.

  “Really?” Hammond asked.

  “What else?” I said, “but for the girlfriend to go back with Marcus and the two of them move in with the mother at the beach to keep an eye on her and conduct their affairs from there.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Hammond. “With those kids and the life out there, good luck. If Marcus was intent on following such a reckless plan and giving up the one promise he had to almost immediately change his social status, he’d blown it.”

  “You just didn’t know his girlfriend, Kathleen, who was studying to be a nurse. She was one strong cookie and very organized. She could hold the country together though it’s doubtful anyone could do that no matter who he (or she) was.”

  When Hartwig drove up around cow circle to stop before the stately colonial only to spy an Ivy League kid standing in the driveway with two suitcases plastered with stickers and wearing a wool cap, of course, he was duly surprised. As soon as he stopped Marcus launched his things into the back seat.

  “Listen,” said Hartwig looking out from under,” I don’t know if my car’ll make it to the airport.”

  “Don‘t worry,” said the boy sitting beside him and slamming the door before looking up with a smile. “We’re not going there. I want you to take me home.”

  “You mean your sister’s?”

  “No, home, my mother’s. First we’re going to pick up Kathleen. You know where she lives.”

  Hartwig, of course, was dumbfounded. He’d not only been part of the plan to get the boy off to school but he was evidently so close to the kid he somehow felt responsible for him. Like a father he’d bonded with the boy. That’d been some time ago and though he and June were no longer speaking, that, he felt, should have no bearing on the kid’s future.

  “Does your ‘friend’ know this?” Said Hartwig.

  “She’s no longer my friend,” said a rather mature voice. “I left her a note. I told her I couldn’t do it.”

  “She’ll love that,” Hartwig smiled wryly.

  “Mother needs help. She tried to commit suicide.” Marcus continued angrily. “I didn’t tell her yet but I…” And with that and a crack in his voice the kid began to sob and it was only after some minutes he was able to convey the discovery of the deception when he finally had to call his mother that Hartwig saw a different side of his friend. “And she (his mother) doesn’t even know. I haven’t told her. I said goodbye.”

  “Well,” Hartwig said simply. “You know my feelings about the heiress.” He was talking about June, of course and with that statement serving as a sort of common bond between them no more was said on the matter. The two picked up the girl and her things at her house in Corte Madera. She, it seems, who was traveling lighter than Marcus with merely an overnight bag like a doctor’s had also to run out on her family, but for her it was more complicated. She had a new school to attend, obligations to fulfill so she knew she’d be back. Back and forth, but she was extraordinarily excited about the turnaround of events and decided to work everything in. The beach wasn’t so far and her father’d promised to buy her a car. Her parents loved Marcus and felt he could do anything in life he wanted. They’d been proud he’d been going off to school. But so… There were local institutions he could attend just as well.

  The three happy campers drove over the hill. The familiar but beautiful ride over the mountain upon which Mother Nature always reveals a new surprise. If it wasn’t a bobcat crossing the road or an eagle on a post, a torrent might’ve caused a rockslide you had to drive around. It was almost winter and the rains had begun. The forest had become rife with living things, mosses, trees, bushes, where animals lived and at least some of the trails were still made by them. And the beach was unchanged despite what’d happened there.

  As to this help for the mother they were talking about, the aspirant nurse had mentioned it to Marcus before.

  “She, your mother, unfortunately needs someone to be there and watch over her at all times to make certain she doesn’t stray, that she goes to her meetings (AA) and she has warm companionship to fall back on.”

  A nice thought all right, which even if fulfilled might not work, but at least something that was worth a try and if approached correctly had all the right signs that it would (work).

  “Why then?” Said Hammond “Hadn’t she and her boyfriend done it then?

  Maybe, I said, because he hadn’t suggested it. Kathleen, you see, wasn’t a pushy woman like June for instance. She let things go their own way instead of rushing out and attacking them like the socialite who’d followed that tack her whole life. Though obviously needing affection, that woman drove it away from her. Her mother or father, whomever, had denied her love at some point when she’d needed it most and she’d continue looking for it at the same time she’d reject it. Or maybe the love’d been proffered and she just incapable of responding to it. It has something to do with honesty, of course but sometimes one wonders. What good’s honesty without some sort of achievement or reward. And believe me no analyst nor anyone else could tell her that or she’d bombard you with negativity. And in the business world that had been a very successful approach for her. She’d made lots of money.

  “Yeah,” said Hammond unenthusiastically shaking his head and rocking back and forth, “in the business world.”

  Once at the little white two-story cottage on the hillside, its half-moon shingles drawing in the ambiance of the ocean in the offing, Hartwig parked the old sedan behind the ex con’s pickup, the three piled out chattering like magpies at the altruistic mission they were on.

  “Let me go in first,” Kathleen said to Marcus. “If she sees you she might have a heart attack. And after what happened last week.” She glanced at Hartwig who, of course, didn’t flinch. Did he ever one wondered?

  “I know,” said Marcus hanging his head. “She doesn’t expect me. I told her I was going away.

  The young girl opened the door, which was unlocked (now), the kid and the man in tandem behind her.

  “Oh, Sarah,” she called.

  But receiving no answer the three went in. Not finding her there they brought in the luggage and had a conference. There were only several places she could be her son reasoned, either at the store or the Sand Piper. She scarcely ever went to the beach or the post office now. Lately she’d been receiving payment notices on the loan that’d been thrust on her. Seeing how she’d already gone through the principal she could hardly afford them from the only money she received, which was welfare for herself and the kid who was now going to depart would just cut her income further.

  “Maybe in the end result a
justifiable reason for suicide after all,” said Hammond. “At least in her depressed existence. Certainly not for those who’ve lost millions (or billions) overnight but still have one or two around in the closet yet still do.”

  “Possibly,” I half agreed, “but the more you have it seems the harder you lose. And that means anything. A whole lot …? That’s one reason the rich are so tight with their money. Every penny means the world to them. Like every other fixation of ours it’s a sickness. This is just one of the more pathetic examples.”

  Figuring it wouldn’t exactly look right for Marcus to go probing for his mother in light of his recent exile and putative departure it was decided to send Hartwig as emissary. He was to locate her, relay the info and fetch her.

  “Oh, fine,” said Hammond, “does that place (Sand Piper) have a rear exit? If it does, once she sees him she’ll need it. Bringing all that back!”

  “No,” I said caught up in his fancy. “I mean it ends in a cul-de-sac but there’s a side door that leads onto the deck. From it she can step down into the street.”

  “Lucky woman.”

  She was sitting in her usual corner seat at the short end of the L next to the stained glass window. The light from it hit her long thick auburn hair like a rainbow. Not exactly an aesthetic dream but then not unlike some of your younger women nowadays who tend to dye their entire hair in bright colors. Hammond shook his head as though he were disgusted at the very thought or at least dismayed. Even though he’d seen it. And I’m sure he had in our country.

  “Sarah!” Hartwig came up behind her as she turned and almost jumped over the bar in fright.

  “Oh,” she said. “It’s only you.”

  The nervous alcoholic, I suppose, meant to demean him not only to cover up her reaction but also because she’d been thinking about our ersatz hero as had almost everyone in town who’d known Sandy (and that was almost everyone) in his relation to shall we say, the ‘incident’. She turned to the bartender and ordered another gin over, determined to ignore the unwelcome visitor. Hartwig saw all this, naturally, and was flattered. He also noticed how well she looked despite her deterioration from the booze. People who’re still young and physically well constituted can look good for a long time under some pretty heavy dissipation. She was thin from not eating very much, her hair luxuriant and cascading over her low cut dress like the soft riffles of a stream. Every time her blue eyes blinked with their long lashes it was as though the rest of her had vanished. You were sucked in or left feeling completely denuded.