Spellbinder

by Collin Wilcox

  When he’d asked her for the five dollars, it had been the middle of the month—the twelfth, or the fifteenth. He’d known she’d gotten the check, and had already taken it to the bank, and cashed it. She’d had the check, but hadn’t admitted it. She’d lied to him. So, a dollar at a time, patiently, he’d taken the money from her purse. That was magic, too. Because, after that, he always had money.

  When he slipped that first dollar from his mother’s purse, he’d been aware of a small, intense tremor of fear, followed by a rush of exhilaration when the purse was closed and he was safe. Over the years, as the jobs got riskier and the money got better, it was always the same for him. The fear never lessened, but neither did the high that followed. The two went together—first the fear, then the exhilaration. Without the first, the second wasn’t possible.

  He closed the copy of Argosy, rose from the couch, returned the magazine to the rack and stood for a moment watching the TV. The scene was the campus of Oral Roberts University. A group of carefree girls crossed the campus, laughing and talking. An appreciative murmur went through the day room.

  At that moment, his mother lay across her bed, sobbing. Her goblin’s face, streaked black and red, was buried in the filthy sheets.

  Why did she do it, every Sunday?

  And why was he there, watching as she watched—remembering?

  During the last four years, he’d hardly thought of her, except to wonder fleetingly when she would die, and release him.

  Yet now, watching the TV and wondering, suddenly, whether his mother might be dead, he realized that a tremor was beginning, deep inside him. It was the same tremor he’d experienced when he’d stolen that first dollar from his mother’s purse, so long ago.

  Four

  WITH BOTH FEET ON the blue circle that spotted her for the cameras, Katherine Holloway stood with hands clasped, chin lifted, eyes wide—smiling at a point just beneath camera two. To her right, alone on center stage, her husband had turned directly to the front, squarely facing camera one, suspended above the pulpit. Alone among them all, Austin was the only one allowed to look directly into the cameras. It was Austin’s first principle.

  In the wings, the director was holding up one finger. The show had one minute to run.

  In one minute, for this week, it would be all over, and she would soon be home. Soon her car would be turning into the circular driveway. She would wait for the car door to be opened before she alighted. It was another of Austin’s principles. Nodding and smiling to Susan, who would open the front door for her, she would enter the house. Without haste, climbing slowly in her organdy dress, holding her long skirt gathered before her like a duchess rising step by regal step above her subjects, she would gracefully ascend the staircase to her bedroom. Moments later, with the door closed safely behind her, she would be alone.

  One more week—seven more days—would have passed. Gone forever—days and hours passed dust unto dust, slipped somewhere far behind her, lost forever.

  Someday, alone in her bedroom, she would cry for all the lost hours and all the forgotten days.

  Because even a duchess cried. Secretly. Alone.

  But now she must smile at her husband as he raised his right hand high in final benediction, left hand lifting Daddy’s old leather prayer book for a better camera angle. She could feel her smile widening—wonderfully, radiantly widening. Her smile was her best, most photogenic feature. Everyone said so. Even Austin. On TV next Sunday, wearing the new organdy dress, she would see herself as others saw her. On tape, rebroadcast, millions would see her. Paying millions.

  Millions upon millions, blessed dollars. Riches upon riches, dust unto dust. All to Austin’s glory. His voice was rising now, saving the sinners who paid for the pleasure. She glanced quickly at the small red light glowing beneath the lens of the nearest camera. Soon—in seconds—the light would wink out, releasing her.

  Until next week.

  Seven days.

  Alone.

  She heard her husband’s voice rise, saw his arm raise one last time, watched him hold the pose.

  Until, at last, the red light winked out.

  Austin was free, too.

  Slowly, slowly, she let the smile fade graciously away. Now a half turn to her right, take three steps, hesitate as Austin turns toward her, offering his left arm, as gracefully as a princeling, escorting his lady. He was smiling into her eyes. Head lifted, she was answering his smile as she took his arm, doing a dainty dancing-school pirouette.

  For more than thirty years, once a week, they’d smiled at each other like this.

  Had they smiled when they’d lain together in the bedroom darkness, coupled, conceiving their children? She couldn’t remember.

  Did she care?

  She couldn’t remember.

  Ahead, at the parting of the golden curtains, Elton was waiting for them. Elton, too, had learned to smile. He’d become rich, these last few years, smiling and singing.

  In San Francisco next week, Denise might smile. To Denise, watching the family on TV, it would all be a joke.

  Dust unto dust.

  Now she was smiling at Elton, her firstborn. For eighteen hours, she’d labored to birth him. It had been a breech birth—the first of countless agonies he’d caused her.

  Taller than his father, Elton was smiling down at her. His arm, too, was crooked. Six steps separated them. Five. Four. Now, in unison, arms linked, they pivoted in platoon front, smiling a last time out toward the footlights. In front of them, on cue, Elton’s three children—“the grandkids”—bowed and curtsied, herded fondly by their mother, also smiling.

  And then, left turn, they were filing through the curtains. Finished for the week. Free.

  And instantly, the backstage furies surrounded them. Mitchell, unsmiling, was ready with the white towel and white terrycloth robe, for Austin. Flournoy, always watchful, revealed nothing behind his courtier’s oily smile. Cowperthwaite, as always, congratulated them. Later, he would complain about cues and timing and lighting. Elton’s own lackey, newly hired, waited for his master, grinning, proffering towel and robe. Like his father, the son had his own shower. Austin preached, Elton sang. So they both perspired.

  But for those who only smiled for the camera—for the wives—there would be no showers. Instead, Elton’s wife would herd the three “grandkids” into the waiting Lincoln. One of the children, Amy, had a fever. Already Amy was wailing, complaining of her cold. But on camera, Amy had been a hit. Because Amy, with her dimples, was the fairest of them all.

  Walking behind her daughter-in-law and her three grandchildren, Katherine reached out to touch Amy’s shoulder. Without looking around, Amy pulled sharply away from her. Carrie, Elton’s wife, didn’t turn. As Katherine fell back, Carrie and the three children were suddenly surrounded by a polite phalanx of cheerful, efficient assistants, each one plucking at the children, chattering their congratulations and ritual compliments.

  As if on cue, Katherine felt a touch on her arm, just above the left elbow. It was a jailer’s touch, cold and firm.

  “You were wonderful, Mrs. Holloway. Perfectly radiant. And the new dress, it’s perfect.”

  It was another Sunday morning ritual.

  “Thank you, Miss Fletcher.” As she said it, she felt the pressure of Miss Fletcher’s grip subtly tighten as they turned toward the door opening onto the enclosed driveway that led from the Temple’s underground garage. Now they were walking toward the door together. A dozen faces beamed at her, nodding and smiling. They were strangers’ faces, without names. Every Sunday she saw them, smiling. But they would always be strangers.

  One of them opened the door. Beyond the door, her Mercedes waited. Jack Calder stood beside the car. Jack was smiling, too. But Jack’s smile was real. Among them all, Jack was her only real friend. He was her jailer. But he was also her friend.

  “How’d it go, Mrs. Holloway? Good turnout?” As he asked the question, still cheerfully smiling, Jack opened the car’s rear door for her.<
br />
  “Yes, Jack. It was a good turnout. Thank you.”

  Inside the car, sunk deep in its glove-leather seat, she sighed softly, letting her eyes close. In less than thirty minutes she would be in her own room, safe. In the armoire beside her vanity, it would be waiting.

  Breathing deeply, she stood for a moment with her back against the bedroom door. Today, the climb up the long spiral staircase had tired her. She could feel her heart beating hard: a small, throbbing animal, struggling inside her breast, trapped and frightened. Always, now, her heart beat hard when she climbed the stairs. Her breath came short. Sometimes multicolored spots danced before her eyes. Was this how Austin felt? If he did, then finally they’d found something to share: the ominous sound of time’s winged chariot, inexorably hurrying near.

  Did Austin fear his appointment in Samaria?

  Did she?

  No, she didn’t. Lately, the void waiting beyond seemed to invite her. Sometimes she could almost hear voices from the past, calling to her.

  Yet she was only fifty-six. Austin was only sixty-three. For both of them, death should still be years ahead.

  Without realizing it, she’d allowed her eyes to close. When she’d been a very young child, she’d always closed her eyes when she wished for a present, or when a rush of happiness suddenly overwhelmed her, sometimes leaving her weak and trembling. Somehow, when she closed her eyes, she could commune more closely with the pleasure she felt.

  And then, slowly, she would allow her eyes to open—as they were opening now. She was looking at her bed, with its ruffled canopy, damask spread, its elaborately embroidered pillow slips. She loved her bed. She loved the feel of its satin sheets against her skin. In bed, she always felt safe.

  Now her gaze rested on a bookcase filled with mementos: her favorite books, her grandmother’s Bible, her mother’s collection of Dresden dolls, the framed snapshots of the children. She’d always preferred snapshots of Elton and Denise, rather than studio photographs. Children were meant to laugh and play and squint up at the sun, not pose for formal photographs.

  Next she let her eye fall on the chaise, with its small sidetable and its floor lamp with the pleated silk shade. The chaise was covered in flowered chintz, matching a loveseat set against the far wall.

  On the table beside the chaise, in the center of a small silver tray, a glass had been placed. The glass was cut crystal, and sparkled in the sunshine that came through the crisscrossed organdy curtains.

  Every Sunday this same glass waited for her. It was a ritual. An offering, she sometimes thought.

  Once more she allowed her gaze to circle the large, sunny room: first the bed, then the chaise and the loveseat—finally the vanity with its bench and, close beside it, the delicately carved French provincial armoire, where she kept her most treasured possessions. The room—these things—defined her life. Its four walls protected her.

  Because, beyond this room, demons waited.

  Pushing herself away from the door and slipping off her silk sandals, she walked across the thick woolen rug toward the vanity. The feel of the thick, luxuriant wool on her stockinged feet suddenly evoked a teen-age memory. She’d fled to the privacy of her room after her father had forbidden her to act in a class play, because the play was immoral. That night, she’d cried herself to sleep, the first of many times.

  As if to inflame the wound, her eyes fell on a snapshot of her father, slipped under the glass top of her vanity. He’d been a tall, good-looking man, secretly vain. All her life, her mother had been grateful that he’d married her.

  But her mother’s life had been short, only thirty-five years. A week before Katherine’s ninth birthday, her mother had killed herself with sleeping pills. In her coffin, her mother had looked prettier than she’d ever looked in life.

  She trailed an idle finger across the glass as she turned finally to the armoire.

  It was inside the armoire, on the bottom shelf. Waiting for her.

  So, moving with grave deliberation, as ceremoniously as Austin might move for the camera, blessing the penitents, she opened the armoire’s door.

  As always, it had been placed precisely in the center of the bottom shelf.

  And, as always, she began to tremble as she reached with both hands for the bottle. It was the same secret, tremulous pleasure that had always overwhelmed her, ever since childhood. Sometimes the trembling made her sob. She’d never known why.

  Five

  HOLLOWAY STOOD WITH HIS back to his desk, staring out across Prospect Park toward the improbably small, isolated cluster of skyscrapers that marked downtown Los Angeles. Except for the skyscrapers, miniatures in the distance, the city was flat and featureless, sprawling low and gray beneath an obscene yellow stratum of smog and smoke.

  Forty years ago, he’d come to town with a single valise, a postal money order made out to himself for six hundred dollars and a letter from the manager of a local radio station. He’d been twenty-three years old, green as grass. The station manager had immediately tied him up for twenty-six weeks at a hundred twenty-five dollars a week—a fortune, he’d thought.

  Three years later, in the spring of ’41, the same radio station had begged him to take a thousand dollars a week, week-to-week, no strings attached. He’d been twenty-six years old when they’d made the offer, and the world was bright with promise. He’d just bought his first tabernacle, a. decrepit I.O.O.F. hall in Pasadena. He’d owned a twin-six Packard touring sedan, his third Packard in two years. His Malibu apartment had looked out over the ocean. Every Wednesday, after prayer meeting, Marie Thatcher had come to his apartment in her own car. Thirty-three years old, twice divorced, Marie had taught him the art of love. He’d been a virgin until age twenty-two, when the wife of a Baptist minister had taken him to her husband’s vestry, and kissed him, and put his hand on her breast. Then, smiling dreamily, she’d stood in front of a moonlit window, undressing. Making love, he’d had a momentary vision of heaven splitting open before him, a thundering golden cleft between two pearlescent halves, spilling forth pleasure that had carried him soaring far beyond himself, free forever.

  The woman had never let him make love to her again. Later—much later—he’d learned that she took neurotic pleasure in taking men to her husband’s vestry. Any man, any time. But never the same man twice.

  That first time, he’d felt weak with release, utterly surfeited. But it wasn’t until he’d known Marie Thatcher that he’d truly experienced the full rush of sexual love. With Marie, he’d learned what love could mean. For him, there would never be another woman like her. He’d wanted to marry her. Many times, he’d asked her. But she would never agree to marriage, saying that her past would ruin him. Finally, one Saturday, he’d gotten a letter from her. She was leaving for St. Louis, she’d said. She was going to marry a high school sweetheart, a man who’d just inherited a wholesale heating oil business. It would be her third marriage.

  Two months later, he’d met Katherine. She’d been nineteen years old, and had auditioned for a vacancy in his choir. She’d looked at him like Mary Magdalene must have looked at Jesus, her brilliant blue eyes moist with wonderment, rapt with adoration.

  A year later, in 1942, they’d married. The wedding had been staged by Floyd Mangrun, who later directed the second unit of Ben Hur. After the ceremony, with Katherine at his side, he’d preached his first hour-long radio sermon. Price, five thousand dollars. He’d never felt so fulfilled, so completely confident of his destiny.

  Behind him, a buzzer sounded. Reluctantly, he turned away from the window. The time for reverie had passed. Flournoy was waiting.

  He slipped on his jacket, smoothed down his hair in front of the mirror and sat behind his desk. Now he pressed the intercom switch.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you ready for Mr. Flournoy, sir?”

  “Send him in, Marge.”

  “Mr. Elton Holloway would like to see you, too.”

  “Regarding what?”

  “He didn’t say, s
ir.”

  He glanced at his gold desk clock, a Christmas present from Billy Graham.

  “Give us a half hour. Then send Elton and Cowperthwaite and Reynolds in. Mr. Flournoy will stay. We’ll be discussing China.”

  “Yessir.”

  Moments later, the tall walnut door to the outer office swung open. Flournoy strode into the office without closing the door behind him. As always, Flournoy wore a conservative suit, an immaculate white shirt and a small-figured silk tie. His shoes, as always, were a gleaming black. At age forty-four, slightly balding, Flournoy was as slim as a matador. His eyes were as watchful and dangerous as a hired assassin’s. He never raised his voice—never revealed either anger or pleasure. Flournoy was a machine: completely efficient, utterly cold.

  As Flournoy took an armchair facing the desk, the secretary tentatively smiled as she quietly closed the door. She’d always been a little frightened of Flournoy.

  “What can I do for you, Austin?”

  He allowed a long, deliberate moment to pass as he stared into Flournoy’s unrevealing gray eyes. Finally he said, “CBS called me last night, at home. They want to do a Sixty Minutes segment on me.”

  Typically, Flournoy didn’t respond directly. Instead, giving himself time, he said, “How’d they get your number?”

  Holloway smiled. “They have their sources, I imagine.”

  Now Flournoy was ready with his response: “Is it about your China initiative?” Since Sunday, Flournoy had consistently referred to the China mission as an “initiative.” Signifying, perhaps, that Flournoy thought the idea smacked more of statecraft than evangelism. Of course, no one had ventured to ask Flournoy for an explanation.