Jack and Susan in 1933

by Michael McDowell

  “I think Harmon is making a very bad mistake.”

  “That’s Harmon’s business, not yours. I suppose you want to talk about terms.”

  “Ah—yes.”

  Susan looked around at the dining room. She sighed. She grimaced. “I’d love to ask for this place, but it wouldn’t be right. I couldn’t afford to keep it up anyway, and I’ve never enjoyed spoils. I don’t want anything from Harmon. Except, of course, Scotty and Zelda.”

  Jack stared. “That’s very foolish.”

  “Of course it is. It was very foolish of me to tear up a will that would have made me a very rich woman, independently of Harmon. But I do very foolish things sometimes. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself. I don’t want any of Harmon’s money.”

  “But you told me—” began Jack uncomfortably.

  “Oh, I know, I told you I married Harmon for his money, and I did. But I also gave him value for that money. I was a good wife—not in the general manner of the way wives are good, probably, but a good wife for Harmon. But if we’re not married, then I don’t deserve his money. That’s all. If he wants to think himself very generous, then he can let me take a few things from the wardrobe he paid for.”

  “I don’t like this,” said Jack.

  “I thought I was making your job easy,” said Susan with a small smile.

  Crack.

  “Susan, if you don’t get a settlement from Harmon, you won’t have anything more than what you had before you married him.”

  “I know,” she said, and shrugged. “In fact, I’ll have less, with two new dependents.” She reached down and lifted Scotty into her lap. Zelda made a small whine of jealousy, and Susan motioned her over. Zelda leapt into Susan’s lap beside Scotty. “For three years I lived on birthday cake and caviar—that was what was usually left at the end of the evening at the Villa Vanity. I suppose I can do that again.”

  “I’m not going to Harmon and tell him you don’t want anything—”

  Susan considered for a moment. “He can pay the expenses of the divorce. I can’t really afford that. I suppose he wants me to go to Nevada. That’s very fashionable.”

  “Probably best,” sighed Jack. “Six weeks’ residency requirement.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind.” Susan shrugged. “In fact, I’m rather looking forward to it. Didn’t I ever tell you? I’m a major landowner in Nevada.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I own several thousand acres of land in Nevada, about thirty miles outside of Reno. Some wild-eyed uncle of mine bought it in the nineties, during the gold boom. Of course he was very careful to purchase land on which there was no gold at all. No silver either. Or water, or anything else, so far as I know. The land was all that was left of the Bright fortune after twenty-nine.”

  “Why didn’t you sell it? Why don’t you sell it now?”

  “Great God! Why didn’t I ever think of that? Then I wouldn’t have had to marry Harmon, and I could have waited till I came across a man I actually loved.” She looked at Jack, giving him not too long or lingering a look, but one that made him blush harder than he had since he’d arrived at the Quarry.

  Then she laughed. “You find me a buyer, and I’ll sell that land in a minute. I’ll go down as low as twenty cents an acre.” She shook her head sadly. “No one wants that land. I’ve tried to sell. Besides, my cousin Blossom lives there now. She was knocked out in twenty-nine, too, and went out there and fixed up an abandoned ranch, makes a living by taking in fat women who want to get divorced.”

  “Fat women who want to get divorced?”

  “She drives them like slaves, I understand. After six weeks they’re twenty pounds and a husband lighter. I’d stay with her, but I don’t think I need to lose the weight.”

  Jack shook his head admiringly. “You’re perfect now.”

  “Oh, thank you, Mr. Beaumont. But flattery won’t get me to lower my demands in this case. I still get to keep Scotty and Zelda.”

  Crack.

  Jack glanced around. He’d remembered something else.

  “Harmon wanted me to let Louise go.”

  “I think you’d best let me tell her,” said Susan.

  Crack. Crack.

  “Possibly that would be best,” said Jack, relieved.

  Jack drove Susan to New York. She took with her only one bag, and Jack was certain it contained only clothing that Susan owned before her marriage. He was both sad for her and proud of the dignified way in which she was handling this dreadful business. He decided Harmon had never deserved her.

  He took her to her apartment, first making sure by telephoning Audrey that Harmon was out. Packing didn’t take Susan long. In fact, she appeared again with only one, much smaller bag. “Scotty and Zelda are inside, and they promised to be very quiet so that I could get them into my compartment. Otherwise, they’ll have to ride in the baggage car.” She smiled a little smile of self-deprecation that broke Jack’s heart. “It’s a long ride to Reno, and I think I may want their company.”

  She hugged Audrey. “Harmon is bound to propose to you,” Susan warned. “Think twice before you say yes.”

  “Get that divorce,” said Audrey. “Marry another rich man. Then send for me.”

  “If I was rich,” said George, holding open the door of the elevator for Susan, “I’d marry you.”

  “If you were rich, I’d make you marry Audrey, and then you’d send for me to work for you.”

  Jack drove Susan to the train station. He procured her tickets, and then led her to the first-class car.

  “No,” she said. “I made reservations for third class—”

  Jack blushed.

  “I changed them,” he said. “Ah—because of the dogs. They’re much less likely to be discovered in first class. Of course, until the divorce they’re Harmon’s joint property, so he’ll be happy to bear the increased expense.”

  Susan laughed. “Thank you, Mr. Beaumont, for taking such care of Scotty and Zelda.”

  The conductor took her bags and escorted her to her compartment.

  “Oh, please don’t wait with me,” she said to Jack, leaning out the window and speaking to him on the platform.

  “I’ve an appointment in the neighborhood in half an hour—I’d just as soon wait here. Oh, just a moment, there’s something I have to do. You get settled and I’ll be right back.” He hurried off, ducked out of sight against the side of the train, and then climbed onto the first-class coach.

  “Yes sir?” said the conductor.

  “Take care of Mrs. Dodge for me, will you?” said Jack, and slipped the conductor two worn ten-dollar bills.

  “Yes sir …”

  It was the last of his cash, except for some small change, and the banks might not open for another month, but Jack didn’t fret about that twenty dollars. It was well placed so far as he was concerned.

  He slipped surreptitiously from the coach and sauntered back to Susan’s window. He started to knock on it, but she was waiting for him.

  “Had to make a quick phone call to confirm—”

  “You always blush when you lie,” laughed Susan. “Again, thank you…for whatever it was you just did for me.”

  She disappeared for a moment, and then came back to the window. She quickly held up Scotty and Zelda, and then the two dogs disappeared again.

  “They say good-bye,” she said.

  “I’ll miss them very much. Never can remember when I found myself so much liking a—a…ah—”

  Susan’s smile faded. She looked suddenly so very much troubled that Jack broke off.

  “Please,” he cried earnestly. “You’ll be all right. I’ll make sure of that. Don’t trouble yourself. Enjoy Nevada. Visit your cousin Blossom and give her my best.”

  Susan looked even more troubled. She wouldn’t take her eyes from his face.

  “Please,” he pleaded. “Harmon Dodge isn’t worth it.” He blushed. “I’ll take care of you.”

  “I’m not worried about myself,
” she said in a low voice. “I’m worried about you.”

  “About me?” he asked in surprise.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  “Careful about what?”

  “About Barbara.”

  Jack frowned.

  Susan shook her head. “No. Don’t misunderstand me. This is quite apart from anything Barbara has ever said or done to me. This is not about her and me. This is about her and you. Please be careful.”

  “In what way?”

  She didn’t answer. Drawing back inside the cabin, she called, “Good-bye, Jack!” Then the curtains across the window were drawn.

  Jack waited on the platform for another ten minutes. But the curtains did not open again, and Jack did not venture inside the coach. If Susan wanted to talk to him, she would open the curtains. He would not force himself on her or demand her confidence.

  Finally, the conductor called “All aboard,” saluted Jack with a grateful grin, and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her. And in six weeks, Colonel, she’ll be a free woman, and I’ll bring her back to you.”

  Jack started to protest that that wasn’t the situation between them at all, but the train took off then, with a squeal and a growling and a grumble and a flash of electric sparks. His denial was lost.

  The curtains opened then, and Susan waved good-bye.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “THANK YOU, JACKIE my boy,” said Harmon, clapping him on the back in such a way to make Jack remember that he had broken several ribs a few months back. “John my man, I am in your debt.”

  “You certainly are,” said Jack. “It was a very unpleasant business.”

  “Can’t argue with you there. As the old ladies say, I sat down in the wrong pew with that young lady. In fact, if Barbara were here, she’d probably say that I got drunk and wandered into the wrong church entirely.”

  “On the contrary,” said Jack, who had always disliked the way Harmon perched on the edge of his desk and tore little scraps off the corners of important documents, “I think that you made an excellent choice of a wife. God protects drunks, they say.”

  Harmon drew back in apparent alarm. “Harsh words those, Jackson my savior. But I can’t argue with you there—about Susan, I mean. How long do you suppose I would have survived before my car was run off a cliff into the river?”

  “You don’t really mean to tell me you believe Susan killed Marcellus.”

  “Barbara believes so.”

  “Barbara is deranged on other topics as well,” said Jack.

  “Harsh words for everyone this morning,” Harmon noted. “Forget those little chocolate tablets last night?”

  “No. My harsh words are in response to what I feel is some fairly callous treatment of a woman who deserves nothing but consideration.”

  Harmon was silent a moment, and then grinned. “She is beautiful, isn’t she?”

  Jack blushed, and despised himself for blushing.

  “A piece of advice, Jackie my innocent, Susan’s got beauty that’ll melt your heart. And Susan’s got a heart that’ll freeze your balls. Barbara always knew it, and I found it out. Take my word, it’s not something you want to learn from experience. And take my word on something else, too—don’t talk about Susan to Barbara the way you’ve just talked about Susan to me.”

  Jack looked at Harmon long and hard. He liked him less and less.

  “She has done everything to make this as easy as possible for you, Harmon. She hasn’t asked for a dime, she left for Reno within two days of your announcing your intention of divorcing her, and she’s agreed to file for divorce on grounds of mutual incompatibility. Rather than your adultery.”

  “Or her murderousness,” Harmon pointed out.

  “You’re an idiot if you believe she’s guilty.”

  “If you think she’s innocent, Jackie, then you should prove it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Go up to Albany. See what the police are doing. Look around on your own. See if you can find who the murderer really is. If it isn’t Susan, then it’s someone else. Relieve your mind. Disperse the clouds of suspicion that now hover over that poor unfortunate chanteuse with the heart of ice.”

  “I think that may be a good idea,” said Jack.

  “On the contrary,” said Harmon, smiling a cool smile, “it’s probably a very bad idea. For if you found incriminating evidence or meddled too much in the investigation—if there is one—it might appear that I had sent you to prove the charge against the woman who is divorcing me.”

  “I’ll do my best to keep your reputation for straightforwardness and generosity intact,” said Jack dryly.

  “And take Barbara with you, would you please? When you’re away, she does hang on me.”

  “And gets in the way, I suppose?”

  “In the way of what?” echoed Harmon, as if he had no idea what Jack meant.

  Barbara was, as Jack suspected she would be, incredulous.

  “You’re going where?”

  “Albany.”

  “To do what?”

  “To see what I can do to clear Susan’s name.”

  “The only clearing that vampire’s name needs is to get rid of the Dodge at the end of it.”

  Jack was silent.

  Barbara looked at him steadily from the other end of the couch. She wore a robe of beige velvet, a gold turban, and embroidered slippers with curved toes that ended in tinkling silver bells. It was one of her most annoying at-home ensembles.

  She tapped a foot impatiently. The tiny little silver bell clanged, as if announcing a fire in a mouse hole.

  “May I remind you,” she said—and whenever she said that, Jack knew that she was going to bring up something that she had made perfectly clear a hundred times before—“may I recall to your failing memory the fact that Father was murdered, and that his murderer goes yet unpunished. In fact, Father’s murderer is probably at this very minute turning her pale skin up to the beautiful sun of the great American West. Suntans are going to be fashionable this year, I’m told.”

  Jack blinked. “I really am not sure what you’re trying to say to me, Barbara.”

  “I’m saying that I think it is in terribly bad taste for you to be assisting a murderess to set herself up as a fashion plate, when you should instead be trying to put a noose around her neck. I think that anyone—even someone like me, who never had a suspicious thought in her life— anyone would begin to imagine that there was only one reason you were doing it…”

  She stared at him.

  The tiny bell clanged again, and this time the conflagration seemed to be somewhere behind Jack’s brilliant cheeks.

  “What would that reason be?” asked Jack in a strangled voice.

  Barbara paused a moment before answering. “Anyone would think that you had paid the woman to do the deed in order to get at the inheritance through me. And that you had to make certain she wasn’t arrested, so that you wouldn’t be implicated. After all, I’m a very rich young woman now, and rich young women are a good deal rarer in 1933 than they were in 1923. You paid Susan Dodge to murder my father—that’s what even an unsuspicious mind might think.”

  A suspicious mind, thought Jack, might think that he was doing it merely because he was falling in love with Susan Bright Dodge.

  “In any case,” said Jack, “I’m going up to Albany and look around for a few days. And I’d like you to come with me.”

  “I’ll stay here and look after Harmon.”

  “I’m not sure Harmon needs looking after.”

  “Of course he does, and I’m the one to do it.”

  Jack started to protest, and then he realized he wouldn’t mind if all Harmon’s pleasures throughout the rest of eternity were stymied, canceled, punished, or turned into bitter ashes by Barbara’s “looking after” him. In fact, he hoped that she managed to make his life quite miserable. Harmon deserved it.

  “I think that’s probably a good idea,” said Jack. “For you to stay here and look afte
r Harmon.”

  The bell on Barbara’s slipper abruptly stopped its annoying peal.

  “I don’t like it when you say that,” said Barbara suspiciously. “It means you’re up to something.”

  “I am. I need to borrow a few dollars from you for gasoline.”

  “Absolutely not. I’m not going to stop you from making a fool of yourself. But I’m not going to pay you to do it either.”

  “Barbara, the banks aren’t going to open again till Monday at the earliest. I don’t have a penny—no, actually I have four pennies, but that’s all—and all I need is two dollars to get to Albany.”

  “Beg for it,” said Barbara, getting up.

  “Barbara,” said Jack, ashen with anger. “I will not beg you for anything. That is not what marriage is about.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean for you to beg me,” she said, going out of the room. “I meant beg on the street.”

  The chiming bells of her slippers muted as she walked toward the bedroom, and when she slammed the door, they were silent altogether.

  Jack looked around the room for something to destroy.

  He saw Barbara’s pocketbook—flat and fashioned of the skin of an infant alligator, whose reptilian head was pushed beneath a kind of miniature croquet hook for a clasp.

  Jack opened Barbara’s purse and went through it. He found over a hundred and forty dollars in cash. That was more legal tender than Rockefeller himself probably had at that moment. Jack started to count off five one-dollar bills, but then he decided against taking the money.

  Instead, Jack took the two tickets to the opera that he and Barbara were to have attended that evening. It was La Forza del Destino. That seemed appropriate.

  He had already packed a bag, and he left without saying good-bye to Barbara. He drove over to York Avenue, to the gasoline station where the attendant— Jack had remembered—was always whistling Verdi. In exchange for the orchestra circle tickets Jack got a full tank of gasoline, an extra two cans for the trunk just in case, and a sparkling windshield. The thrilled attendant wanted both to kiss Jack and give him a new tire, but Jack said that he already had a spare.