by Packer, Vin
“I don’t know what that proves,” said Gloria. “A misprint?”
“No. It proves, Mrs. Wealdon, that in that day the letters, when printed in combination with certain other letters, appeared asf. At any rate, to our eyes it looks like anf. It’s the old style, that’s all. The word was not the word you think. The veal, you see, was to have fed on cow’s milk before being slaughtered.”
Min smiled.
Gloria handed back the cookbook. Her face felt hot with shame and embarrassment. How many many many times in the past had this sort of thing happened to her! If she had only thought, if she had only waited a moment before she spoke, she would have seen her error, but she had let impulse carry her headlong into disaster. “How would I have known that, anyway?” she murmured, knowing full well she should have known that; knowing too that she would have, if only she had not been so bent on challenging Min, challenging her in any way, even challenging her cookbook.
• • •
“You wouldn’t have known, of course,” said Min Stewart, “not without having learned it somewhere, or having been warned of it … The last lines of that verse are particularly pleasant to think of in terms of a sumptuous dinner party.”
She quoted the lines:
Madeira filled each Chink and Cleft
We ate, we drank, we went to bed,
And flept as though we all were dead.
She pronounced the letter as anf, inflept.
Then she placed the book beside her coat, and continued eating her shad roe.
“I should have warned you aboutthat too,” she said, “but my mind was largely on my earlier warning. It still is, Mrs. Wealdon. I wouldn’t wantyou tofleep as though you were dead, not when the likelihood of your actually being dead looms so large. Louie is all I have, and I want to keep him with me.”
• • •
After Gloria Wealdon finished giving her grocery order, she lifted the receiver again to order the wine. She lit a cigarette, and tried desperately to recall the name of the wine Pitts liked. With her pencil, doodling on the clipboard, she wrote:
you don’t fcare me Min, fo there!
“Would Tavel be the name of the rosé, Mrs. Wealdon?” the liquor dealer’s voice asked. “I think it is, by gum!” she said. “Yes, m’am. All right, m’am.”
Hanging up, sucking the smoke into her lungs, Gloria held her head where the pain seemed pinpointed.
She hoped Milo carried out his threat not to appear at dinner.
She could hear him now, droning on in that dull way of his. She shut her eyes and his voice came to her mind as fresh and alive as it was at all the countless dinner parties and luncheons and cocktail hours when he would be saying:
“Oh yes, often the botanical name is pretty, but the common names for rock plants have a certain flair, like amur adonis, prickly-thrift, whitlow grass, navelseed, toadflax, houseleek or moonwort. They’re weird, strange, delightful sounds, aren’t they, like — ”
And in her head now, she could not stop his voice calling out the common names of rock plants.
Gloria fumbled in her bucket bag for the new bottle of anti-acid pills. She got a glass of water from the kitchen, and a bottle of aspirin. As she settled down in the huge Morris chair by the window, she saw Secora’s manuscript and the piece of coconut ice. The latter she took after swallowing her pills, as a reward for swallowing them, and she thought of the way Milo always felt guilty about eating sweets; she thought of him that morning when she had seen him pocket one of the candies Stanley had brought, how flushed his face had become when he realized she was watching him. She imagined him off in some corner of the school gymnasium, eating his sweet in secret, like a tom-cat behind an ashcan in an alley with a fish head.
When P. got there she would tell him that about Milo and sweets; when P. got there she would tell him everything; and wouldn’t everything be all right then.
The thought gave her some solace, but she was tired now, and aching. She needed to curl up under the blanket on her bed. She would like to spend these hours between now and Pitts’ arrival as though unborn, huddling in the warm, dark protectiveness of her beige comforter. She remembered how last fall Milo had taken those bouvardia roots and planted them in the flats of sand and peat moss in the basement; she remembered the way suddenly one day near Christmas she had seen the huge, waxy, orange-blossom-scented flowers in the living room, and she’d said, “Where did these come from?” and Milo’d said, “They’re the bouvardia in bloom at last.”
She would be like the bouvardia when Pitts arrived. She got up from the Morris chair and wandered wearily into the bedroom. She left Secora’s manuscript on the endtable; she hurt too badly now to read in bed, or to do anything but curl there until her pills took effect. Kicking off her space shoes and pulling her girdle down, she opened the closet door to toss them in. She should have laughed at what she saw then; she should not have been afraid at all in light of all that had happened at lunch; but sometimes a sudden crazy unlikelihood, such as finding Virginia Fulton pressed against your dresses in your closet on a sunny May afternoon for no reason, was even more terrifying than the thought of Louie Stewart hunting you to murder you by dark.
Fourteen
People in the town had facial expressions that were almost wax-fixed, showing no emotion, like the faces of the dead, for everything that happened to them was like life under a rock — with the rock never letting on about the crawling world it hid.
— FROM Population 12,360
HE FOUND HER in the lobby of the hotel.
She said, “Why, Frederick, what are you doing here?”
“Looking for you,” he said.
“How flattering!” Min Stewart beamed.
Freddy Fulton took her arm, guiding her toward the rear door, which led to the parking lot. “My car’s outside.”
“Service with a smile,” said Min. “Except that you don’t seem to be smiling very much this afternoon, Frederick.”
“Min, have you seen Virginia?”
“No.”
“I’m in quite a state.” “I can see that you are.” “May I drop you somewhere?”
“As a matter of fact,” said Min Stewart, “I’ve been thinking of calling for Louie at Jay Mannerheim’s office.” She looked at her watch. “It’s two-fifteen now. He should be free in another fifteen minutes. But I don’t mind waiting.” She chuckled. “In fact, I rather enjoy thumbing through all of Jay’s magazines.”
“My car’s over there,” Freddy Fulton said.
“I had a lovely shad for lunch. Have you eaten at the hotel recently, Frederick? The food’s quite good. It’s a change from Oswald Ripley’s management!”
“I haven’t, but Fern has. She gave me the same report.”
“Oh, it’s quite agreeable now.”
“It’s about time,” said Fulton.
“Yes. Yes,” Min Stewart nodded.
When he slammed the door shut, after getting Min in on the other side, he faced her, and she nodded again. But this time it was different. It was a gesture that said, “I understand.”
“Trouble,” was all Freddy said. He started the car. “Shall we go right to Jay’s?”
“Yes, we’d better, unless you have — ”
“Min, I don’t know what I have. I just wish Gloria Wealdon had stayed away!”
“Have you seen her since she had lunch with me?”
“Yes.”
Min said, “I see.”
“I’m worried about Virginia. I thought Virginia might have tried to get hold of Gloria. Now I don’t know what to think. I’m afraid to think.”
“I don’t understand,” said Min.
“I know you don’t, Min.”
“What has Virginia got to do with it?”
“I’m going to have to tell you something that I don’t want to tell you, but you’re the only person I can tell.”
“It sounds serious, Frederick.”
“It is, Min. I think I’ll just tell you — just tell y
ou everything, without any explanations or embellishments. Is that all right?”
“Do you mean without anyexcuses or embellishments?”
“I suppose I do mean that,” said Freddy Fulton, “I might as well say what I mean from the beginning.”
Min Stewart sat back in the Packard’s front seat, stared straight ahead, and placed her hands in her lap. “Continue,” she said.
• • •
At the Cayuta Retreat, one of the switchboard operators guffawed at the male nurse’s joke. “ ‘At’s good,” he said, “so long as you love your mother, huh? Boy, that’s funny! So long as you love your mother! What you got to worry about, huh? So long as you love your mother! Oh boy!”
“Take your call,” said the nurse.
“As if I don’t know who it’s going to be,” the switchboard operator said. He yanked the plug out and then in. “Cayuta Retreat,” he said.
He made a face of exaggerated patience. “Yes, Dr. Mannerheim.” He said, “I am not the man in charge here. I only work the board, Dr. Mannerheim, so don’t sound off at me, see! … Yeah, yeah, I know that, and so does Dr. Waterman know it, and we’re going to take care of you just as soon as — ”
He held the arm of the phone out while the voice continued to rage. He yawned for the benefit of the male nurse, then pretended to plug his ears.
Then the switchboard operator said, “As soon as possible, Dr. Mannerheim. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Right away, sir. Of course, sir. Anything you say, sir. Goodbye, sir,” hanging up the phone. “And go to hell, sir!” he shouted at the instrument.
He said to the male nurse, “Can you imagine that? Calls up and tells us he’s got a catalonic schizophrenic over there we should come and get! Nerve!”
“Catatonic.”
“Huh? Okay, catatonic, catalonic, cataschmonic … so long as he loves his mother, huh?” he laughed at that for quite a few seconds.
“Mannerheim, huh?”
“Yeah. He’s not even a doctor.”
“He’s a psychologist. They don’t have to be doctors.”
“They don’t have to call up and chew me out neither. What can I do? Do I own the Retreat?”
“Did Dr. Waterman do anything about it?”
“He will.”
“How many times has he called?”
“Three, four — how do I know? He thinks he’s some kinda big deal. I got a catalonic schizophrenic over here, he says. SoI gotta common cold!”
“I heard he lost some patients because of that book.”
“Yeah?” The switchboard operator made an obscene gesture. “He shouldn’t fool around then.”
“Not because of that. Because of the part about income tax.”
“Yeah? I don’t remember,” he said. “That’s a part I musta skipped.”
“Naturally,” the male nurse laughed. He said, “People around here were taking him off their income tax. You know. Medical expense.”
“So?”
“Well, it’s the way you said. He’s not a doctor. It’s against the law.” “No kidding?”
“He’s not doing anything wrong, see? It’s just that the law says an M.D. has to head-shrink you, if you want it off your tax.”
“I don’t go for that psychoalley stuff.”
“A while back I had an idea to massage people,” said the male nurse, “relax them and everything. Go right to their homes.”
“Yeah?”
“Heck, I’m a nurse, aren’t I? So why couldn’t people take it off their income tax? I’d be giving them help, wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know,” said the switchboard operator. “I wouldn’t let you nearmy wife.”
“This would be for men, too, don’t you get it? I mean, I’d massage men, too!”
“Come to think of it,” said the switchboard operator, “I wouldn’t let you near me either.”
“Oh,you’d have a lot to worry about,you would.”
“Th-ure, why not? Th-ome people think I’m adorable!”
The pair laughed at the switchboard operator’s swishy inflection.
“Anyway,” said the nurse after,
“it wouldn’t have been deductible. I asked around and Bill Farley down at City Hall told me no dice.”
From around the corner, a man in a dark blue suit appeared.
“What about that ambulance for Mannerheim?” he asked the switchboard operator.
“None’s gone yet, Dr. Waterman.”
“Do you want to go along on this one?” the doctor asked the nurse.
“Sure.”
“Call Number Three and tell them to go there,” the doctor said, “and check that address. I think it might be his home address. It’s Saturday.”
“It’s his office address,” said the switchboard operator. “Check on it anyway.”
The doctor left through the revolving door. “Just your luck,” the switchboard operator said. “You get to wrestle with some nut on a hot afternoon in May.” “Catatonics are usually quiet.” “Yeah?”
“Real vegetables. The ones that sit around on the wards in the same position.”
“Ready to pick up: one vegetable,” said the switchboard operator as he dialed.
“Besides, I’d rather be out on a call then sitting around here.”
“Was’ the matter, lover, don’t you thee I think you’re thwell?” the switchboard operator laughed. Then he said, “Hello, Dr. Mannerheim? This is the Cayuta Re — What?”
He listened a moment, and then he put down the phone in its cradle. “Well!” he said.
“What’s the matter?”
“He flew the coop,” said the switchboard operator. “The catalonic took off on the doctor.”
“Great! I’ll bet Mannerheim’s steamed.”
“Real steamed, buddy-boy,” said the switchboard operator. “Very very steamed! Well, so,” he fished under the counter forLife Magazine, “should it work my blood pressure up because there’s another nut loose? So long as I love my mother, isn’t that right, nurse?”
Fifteen
… but Gina knew one thing — she was going to win her battle with this town — even if she had to fight dirty! In the end, she was going to win!
— FROM Population 12,360
STANLEY SECORA could not find Min Stewart for the doctor. He looked for her in the drug store, but she was not there; no one knew where she was. Twice he telephoned her from the drug store. After each call, he retrieved the dime in the coin-return slot and used it to try Gloria Wealdon’s number.
When eventually he decided to go directly to the Weal-dons’, he had in mind no thought of protecting her from Louie Stewart. Despite all he had heard in the doctor’s office, he felt that Louie was in good hands, that soon the funny-farm would come and get him and lock him up.
His decision to go to the Wealdons’ was the same impulsive sort of bravado which had stayed him in all the strange-sounding towns of the war, back when he was a hero, young, and such a crazy fighter (“You dumb Polack,” they used to say, laughing with him, clapping their hands across his back. “You dumb, death-happy Polack!”) in Santa Maria Infante, San Pietro, Monte Cerri, Monte Branchi, Gaeta, Cisterna — in all of them.
To Stanley Secora the truth of loving was touching. What you could not touch, you could not love; and when you fell in love, you wanted to touch and you wanted to perform intercourse (Stanley always phrased it that way, because all he knew about the “act” — another of his phrases — he had read in volumns on sexology). That was love. That was what he wanted when he got to Gloria Wealdon’s, and that was why he was going there now: to get what he wanted.
Yet he did not appear to be stalking a victim; he was not striding toward his destination with his shoulders squared and his jaw set; he was nearly rubber-kneed with the weakness that flooded through him, and he was trembling. Over and over, as he went down Alden Avenue toward the blue house at the end of the street, he had to stop and wipe off his glasses, because they were steaming, and he was afraid.
&nbs
p; • • •
In the war, hehad been brave. He had done crazy, wild, unbelievably courageous things, but then as now he had been terrified. Once he had been ordered to stay in an area where a number of men had been killed by a mortar shell (he could remember that, after the order had been given, a buddy had said, “You’re expendable, Secora. In other words you’re expendable” — but Stanley had not known what the word meant). He had sat out the watches alone in the dark and in the day, and he had not been afraid until there was the smell. That smell. He had heard that bodies left dead had a horrible odor, and that was it; and once or twice he had looked at them lying around him there, and he had found out something else about dead bodies that no one had ever told him, that he had never heard anywhere. Some of them bloated. He saw one bloated in the sun one morning just after he woke up. It had bust its buttons and had turned blue, and its skin was peeling. Its name was Private Carlton Phillips, and it had gone to Harvard, and that’s what everyone had called him, “Harvard,” and after Stanley had seen him, he had run away from where he had been ordered to stay. But for a long time after that day, that year, he could still remember the smell and the sight of the buttons popping in the sun on the corpse’s uniform.
So he knew fear. That was why his courage had to be so wild and crazy, because he knew the size of his fear, and that it was awfully big.
Today, going after love, Stanley could not visualize or even think of how love would be accomplished. Whenever he tried to do that, he either thought of those line illustrations from chapter six on positions for intercourse in his sexology book, or he thought of the character Will fromPopulation 12,360 — Will with the perspiration running down his well-tanned back and the grass in the cuffs of his white pants, and Gina, the heroine, saying, “Rip off my clothes and make me naked.” Stanley knew that if anyone ever said that to him, he would faint with embarrassment.
Today, going after Love, Stanley was unsure of himself, more so than ever because of that morning; but it was this very feeling of being unsure that made him determined to do it. He had to.
