by Packer, Vin
“Do I live at the fireplace of your eyes?”
He might just as well have chased around after Edgar Guest, he decided.
On his desk were his notes on hexerei, his paper on sgraffito ware and the dissertation on gruttafoos. He opened the drawer to the right and pushed all of it in there; then shut it. From the drawer on the left, he took out a paperback novel from a pile of them stacked there. It was a Dashiell Hammett; he had marked his place with one of Maggie’s hairpins. He sank into his comfortable chair and took up where he had left off: “God will see that there’s always a mug there for your gun or blackjack to sock, a belly for your foot….”
When Maggie came home near six that night, the martini pitcher was full, cooling in the refrigerator.
After his first drink, Joseph said, “I’m sorry about this morning. I was rude. I hope everything is all right at the Harts'! I really do!” And he meant it. He hoped everything was all right at the Amos Fentons', at the John Kennedys', at T. S. Eliots', at The Risestaver Coffee Corporation — everywhere, he hoped everything was all right. That afternoon in the Bucks County Journal, he had seen a picture of Billy Duncan’s widow. She was sitting on one of those old-fashioned davenports, the kind with claw feet and antimacassars, and there were half a dozen assorted children climbing over her and the couch. She wore a shabby flowerprint housedress and rimless glasses. Muriel. He hoped everything was all right with Muriel too.
“Everything is not all right at the Harts', Joseph! Please don’t pretend! You know very well what the situation is!”
“I guess I do. Better than anyone, really.”
“You see, you do feel responsible! Look, Billy Duncan’s fate — whatever it is — isn’t your fault.”
“Isn’t it, Maggie?” Joseph smiled. “More martini?”
“No, thank you. And I wish you’d cut it out! Oh, I know how you feel, Joseph. It was simply a series of unfortunate coincidences, that’s all.”
“Wear your clouds inside out, Maggie dear,” Joseph said.
“Lou doesn’t even remember being here Friday. We’ve agreed to keep quiet about it. It won’t help him.”
“Remember when I used to have blackouts? Remember that was why I stopped drinking?”
“That’s right. I thought of that today. Back on 94th Street you used to drink and go out and not remember where you were. I hope that’s not going to start all over.”
“No. Those were my salad days, Maggie. I was just a little out of control. But I soon brought myself to, didn’t I, dear? I got a good hold on myself!”
“Then why lose it?”
“I don’t have any reason for it any more, dear. Control implies there’s something you have to hold in check. Well, there isn’t any more.”
“What do you mean, Joseph?”
“I’m wearing my clouds inside out!”
Maggie got very angry. “Oh, stop it!” she shouted at him. “Stop it! Stop it!”
• • •
Before they went to bed that night she asked him very seriously if he would consent to an interview with her psychoanalyst. Just as seriously, Joseph said he would not. He felt bad that she cried herself to sleep. From his study, he could hear her in there sobbing. He wondered if Muriel Duncan was sobbing herself to sleep as well. Then he remembered that day he was driving along the canal and he had seen the tall, lone Boy Scout, lagging behind the other smaller boys, slumped over with the handkerchief in his hand, bawling. Why had it not occurred to him to stop and go up to the boy, to help him? What kind of a person had he been before all this happened to him! And he thought of that night with Varda on the day of the Wallace rally; and he wanted to cry out to her as though she were a God who could hear and grant forgiveness for the way he had been, and not a girl who had married someone else and now no longer knew or cared that he was sorry. So long ago. And he had never thanked the boy in his art class who had mistaken his oil painting for a Henner. He had never said to him, “How proud you’ve made me!”; not said anything to him. God!
He shut his eyes, wet with tears, and remembered again those beloved words: “… and my dear I love your soul — profound, sad, wise and exalted like a symphony …!”
“Lies!” he screamed, “Lies, Varda!”
He woke up the next day there in his study. It was ten minutes after eleven and Maggie was gone. Scotch-taped to the bathroom mirror was a note from her:
Dear Joseph,
I don’t know whether you realize how very drunk you were last night! I know you are troubled. I appreciate the fact it is hard for you to talk about it with me, much less admit it to yourself. I want to help you. I can’t if you continue to shut me out.
You are perfectly right in reacting to this difficulty with seriousness, and I know it is seriousness, and not the frivolity you pretend to be taking it with. Lou Hart is in dire trouble. By accident, you had something to do with it. If you can just pull yourself together long enough to realize that the best way you can help him now is by getting yourself under control, it will be a very unselfish and fine thing to do. You have always been an overly-sensitive person. I should have appreciated that fact when I came home Monday night and blurted out all that Janice had told me about Lou, and I never should have hammered at you for giving him that book. I too have my selfish moments. I honestly did not realize how much you were going through inside that first night…. Now that I do, I beg you to let me help you, this once! Think about it through the day. Always, M.
After he shaved, he drove to Doylestown to buy the newspapers, and four or five more “thrillers.” His stomach was queasy and he had a slight headache. When he came to the Cross Keys Diner on his way back from Doylestown, he went in for a coffee. He took the newspapers with him, and spread them before him in a back booth while he sipped the coffee. The Times was not giving the story very much space, and it was buried in the back pages, but the local papers were playing it up big, as were the Philadelphia papers. The Doylestown Daily had a photograph of Muriel, a different one from the picture in the Bucks County Journal. She was sitting in a rocking chair knitting, before a television set. She seemed very small and thin and unhappy, and over her photograph was the headline: “THE NIGHTS ARE LONG NOW …”
Under the picture was the story.
• • •
Tonight is Thursday. At eight-thirty, after the children are in bed, Muriel Duncan will walk into her small, cozy, front room on Landers Lane in Lambertville, New Jersey, and turn on the television. She will sit and knit on the red sweater she is making for her youngest boy, and watch “Bat Materson.” She will watch “The Untouchables,” and she will watch “The Million Dollar Movie.” It will have seemed like any other Thursday night for Muriel Duncan, were it not for one fact. Her husband will not be there watching their favourite shows with her.
Tonight is Thursday, and Billy Duncan will not be home, not unless his wife’s prayers are answered. He is not working late at the office, and he is not ill in the hospital, and he is not out of town on one of his frequent business trips as a salesman for the Merriweather Mayonnaise Corporation. “Please bring him back to me,” Muriel Duncan prays each night. Back from where? Nobody knows. Back from a hunting trip he went on Monday morning, or back from the dead — nobody knows. The green station wagon which was found in the yard of Dr. Louis Hart, of New Hope R.D. No. 1, is once more back in the Duncan garage, but there is no trace of the man who set off in that car on the first day of deer season.
There are many mysterious rumours. Rumours of a fight between Billy and the doctor on last Friday night, in Danboro, Pennsylvania. Rumours of a “lost weekend” during which the doctor registered at a Trenton motel, under the name Duncan Tondley. Why “Duncan”? The doctor has no answer. Why “Tondley”? The answer to that question embarrasses the doctor. Five years ago Dr. Louis Hart was charged with negligence in the death of another war hero, Fredrick Tondley, victim of an electric-saw accident. The doctor was never able to explain fully why he said he would be there to aid Tondley
, and then set off in his car only to pull to the side of the road and nap while Tondley was dying.
There are rumours, theories, and some plain old-fashioned hunches, but there is still no answer to the question: Where is Billy Duncan?
“When Billy was overseas in all that fighting and war,” Mrs. Duncan said, “I somehow knew he’d get back to me. I don’t have that feeling this time. The nights are long and I can’t sleep wondering about it all.”
“The Million Dollar Movie,” then the news, and then? Maybe another movie. The nights are long for Muriel Duncan.
Joseph folded up the paper, paid for his coffee and drove home. He read some of the paperbacks for a while, then he sat back deep in his chair and shut his eyes and thought for a while. In a way, he was sorry that Louis Hart had not been Ishmael’s killer. It would all be poetic justice then. It was just messy now. If it had not been for the fact Louis had remembered that the Sunday night Ishmael was killed, a mechanic had driven his Benz, even Louis might be convinced he was both the cat’s killer and Duncan’s. A “blackout” killer — it would all at least have been more interesting that way.
As it was, it was shabby. Was the world really supposed to mourn over Muriel Duncan watching “Bat Masterson” alone on Thursday nights? Joseph sighed and went downstairs to the kitchen. Even though it was only three o’clock, he fixed himself a before-dinner martini.
By the time Maggie came home, he was very jolly, as usual, with the gin inside him. At the sound of her footsteps on the side porch, Joseph hurried to the door to greet her. Maggie was smiling, and in her arms she held a Siamese cat.
“Surprise, Joseph!”
It was not a kitten, but it was not yet a year old. It was badly frightened. When Joseph took it from Maggie’s hands to hold it close, the cat squirmed and scratched and Maggie urged him to be careful with her. “Not too rough, Joseph!”
Joseph knew he was very high. He went about fixing up a bed by the fireplace for the cat, telling Maggie that he would name her Yillah, jumping about the kitchen and talking too fast, and all the time thinking he really only wanted to get everything over with so he could sit down and have his next drink. Maggie had several drinks with him, and that was what he liked, sitting there with the drinks and the talk; and when Maggie lit the candles and served a modest dinner of lamb chops and salad, Joseph picked at the food to please her, and talked and talked. He told Maggie that Yillah, in Melville’s book Mardi, was a beautiful golden-haired girl who represented truth. Maggie seemed fascinated with his account of the book, with the stories of the heroes in Mardi who searched the world for Yillah. At one point Joseph became so excited with his recollections of the beautiful novel, that he stood up on his chair and recited: “Yillah! Yillah! now hunted again that sound through my soul. Oh, Yillah! too late, too late have I learned what thou art!”
“You really like the cat?” Maggie asked.
“Of course!”
He went to sleep very early, very drunk, and happy. Before he dropped off Maggie ran a cool hand across his brow. “It’ll be all right now, Joseph,” she said.
Friday morning when Joseph woke up, he did not remember the cat right away. He mixed himself a Bromo and shaved and dressed, trying to recollect a dream he had had about Muriel Duncan. Something about her glasses, about getting new frames for them. He was disgusted with himself for caring about the woman enough to dream of her. He opined that if he were to dream of anyone, it ought to be of Louis. It was Louis who was coming out the worst in the matter. Yet Louis, to Joseph’s mind, was like some lost cause he had already wasted too much time on. Hating Louis had taken too much energy, too; and the knowledge that it was all for nothing, made Joseph even more tired of Louis Hart when he thought about him.
When he went downstairs, he saw the cat. She was sitting in the box he had made for her, by the fireplace. She was not a very handsome cat, scrawny and scared, with a fat face that was oddly out of proportion with the rest of her. Joseph remembered too that he had decided to call her Yillah. He did not know why he was annoyed with her presence in his house, but his hangover was too painful to dwell on the annoyance. He walked across and said, “Hello, Yillah,” bent over to pick her up.
She spat at him and he pulled his hand away.
“Did I handle you too roughly last night, is that it?”
He put his finger by her chin and she bit him hard.
“All right, have it your way.”
Joseph wandered across to the stove for coffee. On the counter-top was a note from Maggie, Scotch-taped to the toaster. He ran the water in the sink to get it good and cold for a drink, and read Maggie’s message.
“Yillah (her name used to be Miss Me, so she may have trouble with the new one) is eight months old. Tom Spencer knew a neighbour who wanted to place her, so it’s really a sort of premature Christmas gift from Tom and Miriam. The cat is used to the outdoors and likes mackerel. She’s housebroken on newspapers, but prefers the outdoors! See you around six. So glad you like Yillah! Love, M. “P.S. Weekend to ourselves!”
Joseph drank two full glasses of cold water and stood by the sink thinking of Maggie and Tom Spencer. “Give him a cat,” he could imagine Tom Spencer advising, “something to take his mind off Ishmael and all the rest of it.”
“Perfect!” Maggie had probably said, “but won’t he think that’s exactly what we’re trying to do, and resent it a bit?”
“Oh,” Tom Spencer undoubtedly countered, “tell him I got the cat from a neighbour, and it’s sort of a premature Christmas gift from Miriam and me.”
Joseph went back to the fireplace and stared down at the cat. She stared back, blue eyes like ice.
“Be sure thy Yillah never will be found,” Joseph quoted, “or found will not avail thee.”
The cat made an ugly face, crying back at him.
Chapter Sixteen
The moment Janice Hart arrived at the Meakers’ on Saturday evening, she knew they were fighting. She had telephoned Maggie just one half-hour before she pulled in the drive, and Maggie had sounded quite cheerful then, but now there was a pall of tension over the place. Joseph took her coat without smiling, and Maggie made some crack about the jolly host, then, in an aside to Joseph, said, “Go on out and drag her in then!”
“I’m sorry to bother you,” said Janice. “I didn’t want to go into all of this over the phone, and I didn’t think it would be right to make you come to our place.”
Joseph said to Maggie, interrupting Janice. “You could at least call her! You know she doesn’t answer me.”
“Our cat,” Maggie explained. “We have a new cat. It seems she prefers the outdoors to the indoors, and I don’t mind saying I can see why!”
She led Janice into the living room without acknowledging Joseph’s suggestion, and when they were out of his sight she made circles by her ear with her finger, then pointed the finger in the direction of the kitchen, and sighed.
Janice felt a little hurt at the fact Maggie was her old self, teasing about her husband and wisecracking with him, as though it were any ordinary evening. Maggie lit a cigarette and casually offered one to Janice, and seemed not at all eager to hear what Janice had to say.
In a whisper she said, “I’ve had some day with him! God!”
Janice thought of Lou’s sad and tired eyes when he had come back from the State Police Barracks that afternoon, and she resented Maggie’s petty attention to her own troubles at a time like this. Joseph Meaker, to Janice Hart’s way of thinking, was a spoiled neurotic! The whole thing might not have happened if Joseph Meaker hadn’t — but she stopped that thought dead in the middle. It was spilled milk. For all Maggie said about Joseph’s guilty conscience, and Joseph’s sensitive reacting to Lou’s plight, Joseph Meaker seemed no different than usual. He had not once come to the house, not once called Louis. Now she could hear him out on the back porch shouting for the cat.
Maggie said, “I thought a new cat would make things a little better around here. Well, the cat hates Jose
ph and Joseph hates the cat, and everything around this place is just ducky!”
“I’m sorry, Maggie,” Janice said, feeling more and more like a martyr. “Oh, he’s impossible!”
“How’s the drinking?” When she said it she thought of Lou home alone. She had told him she would not be long. She had not dared hide the bottle of Jack Daniels, but she had wanted to.
“He hasn’t been drinking today. He has the cat to occupy him!”
“It’s a mess, isn’t it? Look, I have something to tell you.”
Behind Janice in the kitchen she could hear Joseph say, “She won’t come in!”
“Then the hell with her!” Maggie shouted. Her face was very red and her hand was trembling as she knocked the ash off her cigarette.
“Go on,” she said to Janice. “Never mind us.”
“Lou was at the State Police Barracks all afternoon. Maggie, he decided to tell the truth, what he knows of it. He told them he was here too on Friday night, but he didn’t remember it. He told them about Joseph thinking his cat had been killed by Lou, and about the book Joseph bought and gave to him, and well — the works!”
“Oh God! Really?”
“Yes. I think he was right. This is very serious, Mag. He had to tell them everything.”
“Oh, Lord, I hope he didn’t bring Amos Fenton into it.”
“I’m afraid he did. It was Fenton he had the fight with. He had to bring him into it.”
“Lord, oh Lord! Look, I’m not angry or anything. I just have to think.”
Angry, Janice Hart thought; the hell with Amos Fenton! She said, “I can’t see what it matters! Lou’s being questioned like he was a murderer! Don’t you realize that?”
“Yes, honey, yes! It’s just that everything is so complicated. Did they ask Lou why Fenton fought with him?”
“Lou told him the same thing you told us, that Fenton couldn’t get him to leave, so there was a fight.”
