“That was pretty,” Evelyn said.
Luisa tossed her head, flushing. She didn’t want her voice to be called pretty. Terrific, or super, or divine—these were the words that would find an echo in her mind. Pretty was an insult.
She said, “I’m supposed to be practicing.”
“I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
“If I don’t keep practicing so Mama can hear me I’ll have to go in and do the dishes or something.”
It was an invitation to leave, but Evelyn ignored it. Pushing aside a box of withered bulbs, she sat down on the bench along the wall. Dust rose from the bulbs like a sigh.
“Mayn’t I listen?” Evelyn said.
“I can’t sing if anyone listens. Last year at school I was supposed to be on the Christmas program. I had a costume and everything—an angel costume—only at the last minute I lost my voice. I was scared people would laugh at me.”
“Why?”
“I looked so funny. The costume was pure white, and I looked—I looked just like a nigger in it. Angels are supposed to be blonde.”
“It was silly to feel like that. You have a beautiful complexion. Why, my goodness, other girls your age spend weeks and weeks trying to get a tan like yours.”
“It isn’t a tan,” Luisa said woodenly. “I’m this color all over. I was born with it. In the winter the other girls get white again, and I stay like this.” She added, with a sudden frown, “You don’t understand. You sort of talk to me like you talk to Jessie. I’m not a child. I’m old enough to get married and have a baby. And if I can’t think of any other way, that’s what I’ll do.”
“Any other way to do what?”
“Leave here and go to a city.”
“I live in a city. It has its faults.”
“At night everything is bright, though,” Luisa said. “That’s the part I’d like best. And the people. Just think, every time you go outdoors meeting different people and seeing what they wear and everything. Out here, it’s gotten so I even appreciate Jessie sometimes.”
The roof of the lathhouse was hexagonal, and the sun, squeezing between the slats, divided Luisa into stripes.
“You’ll soon be leaving,” Evelyn said. “The house is up for sale.”
“No one will buy it when they find out about the water shortage. And even if it is sold I don’t believe my father will ever start a restaurant in town. He doesn’t know anything about restaurants. All he ever was before was a caretaker.” She kicked the leg of the table with her shoe, in quick rhythm, keeping time to the quick rhythm of resentment beating within
her. “Maybe we’ll end up going away with her.”
Evelyn hesitated. She was sorry in advance for what she was going to do, but nothing could have stopped her. She said, “That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
“I’d hate it.”
“Why, I thought you and Mrs. Wakefield were old friends. She gave you that gorgeous necklace, didn’t she?”
“Only so I wouldn’t—only for business reasons.”
“Luisa—only so you wouldn’t do what?”
“She don’t want anyone to know about Billy and Mr. Wakefield.”
“What about them?”
“I’m not supposed to tell,” Luisa said. “I’m scared to.”
“Are you afraid she’ll take the necklace away from you? Or worse than that?”
“I don’t know. I’m just scared, is all. She gives me the creeps. Billy did, too. I used to have to play with him until Miss Lewis said it wasn’t good for me. Miss Lewis was the only one Mrs. Wakefield would listen to. She knew she had to, she’d be sunk without her.” She broke off with a sharp sound almost like a laugh. “She didn’t fool Miss Lewis or me when she went into that sweet, sympathetic act, the way you were trying to do a minute ago.”
“I’m glad I didn’t fool you,” Evelyn said, rising, and brushing off the back of her skirt. “It was worth trying, though. Maybe some day you’ll understand.”
“I understand already.”
Luisa slid down from the table. She was as tall as Evelyn and as fully developed. The seventeen years that stood between them were like the pleats of a fan that could be folded and unfolded but were always joined at the base.
At the base, they were two women with a common enemy.
“He was funny in the head,” Luisa said, fingering the necklace. “Billy, I mean. He was born that way. He couldn’t hardly talk, not so anyone could understand much except Mrs. Wakefield and Miss Lewis. He couldn’t even stand up alone until he was over three, and sometimes he just sat for hours with his tongue kind of sticking out. He was awful. I hated to be near him. Miss Lewis didn’t mind, though. She used to pet him and call him nicknames like Billy-boy and Old Timer.”
Evelyn remembered the first night that Mrs. Wakefield had spoken of Billy: My son was very fond of music . . . Billy and I were traveling . . . All the references had seemed to indicate that Billy had been a little different from ordinary sons, a little superior.
“Mr. and Mrs. Wakefield used to fight about him,” Luisa said. “Not at first, when he was little; but later, when I got old enough to hang around and listen, I often heard them arguing. Mr. Wakefield always talked quiet, but she used to cry and carry on until he agreed with her.”
“What did they argue about?” Evelyn said, feeling, as yet, no pity for Mrs. Wakefield. The boy Billy was still too shadowy; he wasn’t a real child who had to be fed and clothed and supervised and given affection.
“Mr. Wakefield wanted her to put Billy in a special school, so then the two of them could go away and live some place like normal people. But she wouldn’t leave. All the time she lived here she never went further away than town, and then she was always in such a hurry to get home that she didn’t get half the things on the list and my father’d have to go back again next day.”
“Did Mr. Wakefield stay here all the time, too?”
“No. He had something to do with shipbuilding, and he used to go away sometimes up to San Francisco and Seattle. But this is a funny thing: every time he came home something had happened, like Billy falling and hurting his knee, or Mrs. Wakefield getting an abscess on her tooth, or the filter system breaking down.”
The wind slipped through the laths and stirred the dust.
“Every night he was away he sent her a telegram,” Luisa said. “She kept them all in the hall desk. When he died she read them all through again and burned them in the incinerator. Before the inquest some men came and poked into everything, even the incinerator, and all of Mr. Wakefield’s drawers and his desk.”
“What were they looking for?”
“A note. The man said it would make it easier for everyone if they could find a note from Mr. Wakefield saying he was going to kill himself.”
“Did they find one?”
“No. There wasn’t any.”
Through the slits between the laths they saw Mr. Roma coming down the path, carrying the pails of chicken mash. He passed on without a glance into the lathhouse. When he opened the gate of the chicken pen the hens squawked and clucked and took nervous little leaps into the air like fat and ancient ballerinas.
“I better go on with my practicing now,” Luisa said, “so they’ll hear me.”
“I’ll go in a minute. What was the result of the inquest?”
“They said he killed himself.”
Evelyn said, from the doorway, “Thanks, Luisa. I don’t know how it will help, but thank you, anyway.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” Luisa said, frowning. “I did it against her.”
“Same difference. You’re not frightened anymore, are you?”
“Not a bit.”
“That’s good. After all, she’s just an ordinary woman. I expect we’re both rather silly to hate her so much. We should feel sorry for her.”
She di
dn’t convince Luisa, and she didn’t convince herself.
She had now in her possession some of the facts that Mrs. Wakefield had been trying to hide, but she didn’t know how to use them. It would be difficult to admit to Mark that she had pumped the information out of a bewildered adolescent girl. As for the facts themselves, she had no way of knowing how he would react; he might be shocked, or repelled, or his attraction for Mrs. Wakefield might only be strengthened by pity.
It was, finally, Luisa herself who forced the issue.
Luisa perceived in the situation an opportunity to change her role from a common tattletale to a martyr. Taking off the necklace in her room, she saw herself as a pure and nunlike creature kneeling before an altar of truth. She put the necklace in a box left over from Christmas and gave it to Evelyn to return to Mrs. Wakefield.
She felt delightfully holy for the rest of the morning.
16
The box lay unopened on the bureau where once Miss Lewis had kept her talcum and unscented cologne and her sterile combs and brushes.
Mrs. Wakefield knew what was inside the box, and she felt no anger at Luisa, only at herself for making an error in judgment. Poor Luisa, she thought. After I leave I’ll send the necklace back to her. Perhaps it will be a lesson to her.
It was two o’clock and she was beginning to feel hungry. She had gone without lunch, partly in order to finish the inventory, and partly to avoid seeing Mark with his family. There was no chance to see him alone, even to say goodbye. Evelyn swept through the house like a wind, penetrating every corner. She dusted and mopped and aired the blankets, singing as she worked, so that there was hardly a moment during the morning that Mrs. Wakefield hadn’t heard her voice, or her steps crossing and re-crossing the hall like a patrol.
She packed the notebook, now nearly half-filled, in her suitcase, and went downstairs to the kitchen.
Mr. Roma was at the sink washing his hands and forearms with a piece of the rocklike soap that he and Carmelita made themselves.
“It is very hot,” he said, “considering the morning fog.”
Considering the morning fog that should never have lifted. “I haven’t eaten. I thought I’d make myself a sandwich.”
“There’s no chicken paste, the kind you like.”
“That’s all right.”
“If you wanted to wait, though, Mr. Banner could get you some. He is going into town for a haircut.”
“When?”
“Very soon, I think.”
“Are you going with him?”
“Not today. The pump isn’t working so good, I have to see what is the matter.”
“I’ll ask Mrs. Banner to get the chicken paste,” Mrs. Wakefield said. “She’s more likely to remember.”
“Mrs. Banner is not going either. The jeep is too rough for her.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll tell him to get some then?”
“If it’s convenient. I don’t want to put him to any trouble.” She paused at the door and said over her shoulder, “I finished the inventory. I think I’ll go for a walk.”
“A good idea.”
“It will be my last walk here,” she said with a smile he couldn’t understand. “I want to remember every minute of it.”
When she went out she saw that the garage hadn’t been opened yet, and she knew that if she hurried she would be able to cut through the woods and reach the road in time.
James, the gander, sauntered over with his contemptuous greeting. She passed him without speaking. He was not accustomed to being ignored by people, and he followed her, hissing, and moving his neck back and forth in outrage. The faster she walked, the faster he waddled along behind her, using his powerful wings to gain speed.
She was amused, at first, by the pursuit. But as it was prolonged, past the garage and the cypress windbreak, she began to wonder how far he intended to follow her, and whether his hissing had attracted the attention of the people in the house. She didn’t want anyone to know where she was going, and the gander’s hissing seemed to point to her and to her destination like a malicious accusing whisper.
She knew how absurd she must look, racing against time and an obstinate gander. He had never before followed her beyond the garage, and she wondered what perverse devils were driving him.
She stopped, and looked back at him with hatred.
“Go away, James. Go back. Go back now.”
She tried to sound patient, in spite of her hurry, but the gander wasn’t fooled. He circled her, clockwise, his blind eye, ringed with orange, glowing like an opal. In his male arrogance he thought she was a victim, and when she started on her way again he shortened the distance between them. The flap of his wings frightened the birds. The meadow larks fled to the tree tops and the jays cursed him from the shelter of the leaves.
At the pepper tree where the path curved toward the bridge, she stopped for the second time. Leaning over she picked up a handful of dirt and hurled it at the gander. The dirt hit him square in the face.
He raised his orange beak and honked. The noise was like an earthquake of sound, shaking the trees and splitting the air. Every living thing in the woods responded to the trumpet of war. The lizards streaked for cover. The myopic gophers who had come up to nibble the roots of devil grass, scuttled back into their catacombs, their ears bursting with danger. Every tree quivered with angry birds in ambush.
She waved her arms and shouted. The gander worked the ground with his feet, and raising his bill, trumpeted again.
She couldn’t quiet him and she couldn’t outrun him. She stood, in despair, expecting that at any moment Luisa or Jessie or someone from the house would come running to investigate the noise. By the time it was explained it would be too late, Mark would already have
passed the place on the road where she intended to meet him. It seemed that the whole of nature was in league against her: the morning fog that should never have lifted, the bright day that hid nothing, the tattling birds; everything—time, and the weather, and Mark himself, and the gander’s trumpet summoning more of her enemies from the house.
She reached down and picked up a stone.
“Go back,” she said, as if the gander was not an animal but a bewitched human who could understand her words. “I warn you, go back.”
He honked again, beating his wings powerfully. But he didn’t look fierce; instead, he seemed curious, as if he had never before witnessed such strange behavior and was trying his best to do his part in the pantomime. He had known this silly woman for years; she had fed and watered him and stroked his feathers and chased him away from the chickens; if she wanted now to play a new game, he was willing. He leaped into the air in his excitement and listened to the full satisfying sounds that came from his own throat.
The stone hit him just over his opal eye.
He fell gracefully on his side. His opal eye remained unchanged, but almost immediately a glaze came over the other eye. His legs stuck out from his body, stiff as boards.
He lay among the leaves, looking smaller than he had when he was alive. She came over and spoke his name, “James?” She felt among his feathers for the beat of his heart. There was no blood, no evidence at all to show that the stone had hit him except his instantaneous excretion at the moment of death.
She would have liked to run away and leave him lying where he was; someone would find him and assume he had died naturally, of old age. But she was afraid that the finder might be Jessie. Jessie didn’t understand that death could come to her friends.
She decided to carry him further away from the path and cover him with fallen leaves and branches. There was no way to take hold of him except by his legs. The yellow skin felt like the skin of an old man, dry and cracked. She picked him up very carefully, so the oozing excrement wouldn’t soil her dress. He was surprisingly light. His fierce wings and huge body had almost made her for
get that he was only a bird, after all; the body was merely fat and feathers, and the bones were like twigs.
Fifty feet from the path there was a small hollow under a eucalyptus tree, which shed its leaves and bark continually. No matter how often the wind swept them away, the ground was constantly littered with chips and chunks of bark. The trunk of the tree, where the bark had already been shed, was as grey and smooth as old bones.
She placed the gander in the hollow and covered him with dried leaves and pieces of bark. His drab feathers were easily camouflaged. When she returned to the path and looked back, she couldn’t even see the place where she’d buried him. No one would ever find him. He would lie there until he became part of the earth itself as Billy had become part of the sea. Not death, she thought, only change. Change, quick and violent and startling, like a hand grabbing you from behind in the dark. It took time to adjust and to realize that, though its pressure was relentless, the hand itself was friendly. Only change, nothing is wasted.
She wasn’t immediately sorry that she’d killed the gander. Like Billy, like the starfish, it had had no future but death, and that death should have come at her hand (the friendly hand in the dark), wasn’t important. She was merely an instrument in the cycle of change. The gander had escaped disease, and the roasting pan, and the wheels of cars, only to die by a stone over his opal eye.
She crossed the barranca, picking her way among the boulders, pursued only by her own squat black shadow that hid behind the trees and jumped out at her again in the clearing where the swimming pool was, and the old well, gone to salt. A hundred yards beyond, she reached the fence where once a year Mr. Roma posted new No Trespassing signs to replace the ones that had been bleached by the sun or shredded by the wind or turned into a soggy pulp by the sea fogs. She lifted the bottom wire of the barbed-wire fence and crawled underneath. One of the barbs caught the hem of her dress but she jerked free, leaving behind strands of green silk for some enterprising nuthatch to use to decorate his nest.
She sat down by the side of the road, breathing hard and feeling quite faint from the heat.
The Cannibal Heart Page 13
