The Tattooed Girl

by Joyce Carol Oates

  3

  STILL SHE HAD the key to the house. For still she was Joshua Seigl’s assistant. She would be Joshua Seigl’s assistant for the remainder of her life.

  The family wanted her gone. But he’d left instructions protecting her. He hadn’t expected to die yet he’d left detailed instructions protecting Alma Busch after his death.

  She held the key to the house, his house, in her perspiring shaky fingers. Always she would keep this key close by her, in a pocket, beneath her pillow at night, or literally in her hand. For if she lost the key to Joshua Seigl’s house she would lose everything.

  Got to get out, Alma. Can’t breathe!

  Come with me, Alma.

  She fell onto her bed fully clothed. Even her shoes. Shiny black patent leather shoes for mourning. A crease in the bedspread would leave a sharp serrated crease in her face. She was neither drunk nor drugged but her sleep was stuporous and when she wakened eleven hours later it was to the knowledge that Joshua Seigl was still dead.

  “HE HAS MADE you a beneficiary of his estate.”

  A stone head with eyeglass-eyes regarded her with cool civility.

  “Crossman” was the name. It was like trying to cup water in her hands, Alma kept forgetting.

  She’d swallowed three tablets prescribed for J. Seigl. Muscle relaxant. Pain control. May cause drowsiness. Do not combine with alcohol. Do not operate large machinery. The drug had a coarse-chalky-milky effect upon her brain that would have made her uneasy in other circumstances. In Crossman’s office it was a comfort.

  For “Crossman” was a lawyer. Alma understood that he had power over her, power delegated to him by Joshua Seigl, and so she smiled at him with clumsy coquetry. She knew no other way to confront a man of such severity wearing a suit, a white shirt, a necktie.

  Reading to Alma Busch from documents spread out on his desk. Peering through his eyeglasses at her as you’d peer at an insect through a a magnifying lens. “. . . concerned for your welfare, it seems. He has made you a beneficiary of his estate. Specifically, he has left a certain sum of money in trust for you, out of which you will receive a monthly stipend for the remainder of your natural life, at which time the trust will revert . . . Over and above this monthly stipend, the estate will pay for your tuition, room, and board at any fully accredited institution of higher learning including secretarial school and nursing school . . . It is stipulated in Mr. Seigl’s will that you, Alma Busch, be retained as an assistant to his literary executor if you and the literary executor agree to this arrangement, and that you continue to reside in the house at eight Greaves Place if you so wish for a period of not more than five years at which time the property will revert to the estate . . . Do you have any questions, Miss Busch?”

  Alma frowned, wiping at her nose.

  “. . . questions, Miss Busch? You must have questions.”

  Alma tried to think. The chalky-milky seepage in her brain was making it difficult to think. She’d forgotten the man’s name but knew that what he’d told her was important. “. . . I should k-keep doing the things? I’m Mr. Seigl’s assistant?”

  “Yes. If you wish. For a while, at least.”

  “Like, answer the phone? Bring in the mail, open it . . . some of it, I can answer. Mr. Seigl taught me how. And there’s typing . . . filing. I should keep doing the things?” Alma was anxious suddenly that she’d misunderstood.

  The man, the lawyer, stared at her with undisguised contempt. Like static it was, confusing her. For his voice was so polite.

  “Yes. Until such time as you meet with Mr. Seigl’s literary executor. His name is—”

  Alma interrupted, laughing nervously. “I should k-keep doing the things, like he taught me? And I can live in the house like before?”

  “Yes, Miss Busch.” The voice was even, only the set of the jaws suggested contempt. “You may continue to ‘do the things.’ Until such time as you meet with Jeremy Essler who will know more precisely, more professionally, what’s to be done with Joshua Seigl’s estate.”

  Alma smiled. She hadn’t heard most of this.

  It was enough to know, Seigl needed her. Even after his death he needed her, and he could trust her.

  Alma stood, uncertainly. Was it time to leave?

  The static in the air was so loud, she would think afterward that the lawyer had in fact told her to leave. Abruptly she turned and walked out of the office still smiling as the man stared after her in astonishment. He would say afterward to Seigl’s relatives and to others how “Alma” had come into his office coked to the gills: he knew the symptoms. Stumbling out of his office, and those wild fish-colored eyes. Smiling!

  Like Alma Busch had won the lottery.

  4

  I’M WORRIED NOW, there isn’t God. And there isn’t . . .”

  She was talking to herself. Prowling the locked, brightly lit house. Sometimes, in fear of her former lover breaking in, she carried a steak knife from the kitchen with her; this knife, she made certain she kept on her bedside table when she went to bed at night, and the door to her room locked.

  “There isn’t God, maybe. And now there isn’t . . . him.”

  She meant to say “Mr. Seigl” but he’d asked her to call him “Joshua.” Neither name could she utter.

  Seigl had not believed in God. What he’d believed in, Alma would believe in, too; but she could not remember what it was. Books?

  She had straightened all the shelves of books. The spines were even now, there was a pleasure in seeing such orderliness. His study was immaculate. He would laugh in amazement to see. Alma! What have you done? The manuscripts he’d been working on at the time of his death were neatly stacked on a table in his study. Correspondence was opened, letters smoothed out awaiting someone to read them.

  When the phone rang, Alma cleared her throat before lifting the receiver and saying, “Hello. This is Mr. Seigl’s residence. But . . .”

  The man who was Joshua Seigl’s “literary executor” had called several times. Alma listened politely as “Jeremy Essler” spoke but when he suggested coming over, when would be a good time for him to come over to the house, Alma stammered and made excuses. She was “too busy with things” right now. There was “too much” happening.

  After a few days she ceased answering the phone. Messages went onto the answering service, that would have to be enough.

  A lawyer for the Steadman family called several times. Insisting that his clients be allowed to “make an inventory” of the household. A court injunction was imminent forbidding Alma Busch from “removing any property” from the household. Alma scarcely listened to these messages, deleting them as the stranger’s self-important voice droned.

  “I don’t want anything. There’s nothing I want.”

  On the dining room table she’d placed his books. Beginning with The Shadows. She’d been trying to read the books but lines of print swam in her vision, she felt nauseated. Was this all that remained of Joshua Seigl, these . . . books? She turned them in her hand. Paper, print. It was nothing, was it?

  Trying to remember why she’d hated him so.

  (Because he was a Jew? What did that mean?)

  It made no sense. She could not remember. In her pocket was the key to the house, she touched it repeatedly, held it in her hand.

  “ ‘He has made you a beneficiary.’ ”

  She knew the word: beneficiary.

  “ ‘Because he loved you. He loved you best. He still loves you. See, that’s why? Alma.’ ”

  5

  MISS BUSCH. Tell us again what happened in Mount Carmel Cemetery on May 19, approximately eleven A.M.”

  Oh Christ why she was making such a bad impression on the police detectives, she was thinking of how she’d been arrested in Pittsburgh, more than once she’d been taken into custody by street cops and one time with a girl who’d slashed at them with a razor out of her boot and so the Tattooed Girl had been roughly handled, she was beginning to tremble thinking of this, how they’d cuffed her wrists
behind her back and so tightly she’d cried in pain and in disgust with her crying they’d jerked her arms up behind her back practically to her shoulders until she fainted with the pain and urine leaked out of her soaking her clothes. And, oh God she was thinking of the bench warrants for her arrest in Akron County and in Pittsburgh, for passing bad checks, for soliciting, she’d slipped out of town with a man who’d claimed to be crazy for her and would drive her across the country to San Diego where he had a condominium on the ocean, he promised!

  “Miss Busch? Again, tell us what happened. You climbed the steps in the cemetery behind Mr. Seigl or you were waiting at the top of the steps for Mr. Seigl, which was it? The groundskeeper has said, when he looked up . . .”

  Alma smiled nervously. She’d told them, or tried to tell them, but her tongue was too big for her mouth. She was rocking forward and back in the hard vinyl seat hugging herself tight. See, she was waiting for them to say the gloating words You are under arrest. Both the men would rise then, and move upon her, and one of them would have the handcuffs. Their eyes on her ardent, eager. For arresting and handcuffing is better than sex for a cop, any-age cop. No words happier than You are under arrest. Alma was listening so hard for these words, almost she believed she’d heard them.

  “Miss Busch? Do you understand the question?”

  Alma wiped at her mouth. “What? Say it again . . .”

  Miss Busch. Alma Busch. The name meant nothing to her. Pronounced by strangers like the name of a disease.

  “. . . Joshua Seigl’s assistant? For how long? Since when?”

  On her fingers she counted the months. The first time, she counted six months; the second, seven. Coldly the detectives regarded her as she shifted her weight in the vinyl chair feeling the lower part of her face shift too, her mouth smiling in a desperate plea. “I guess—seven months? Since last November.”

  At a distance she heard her own plaintive voice. A guilty voice. She was describing how she’d told Mr. Seigl not to climb the steps because they were so steep, she’d followed behind him, and at the top he had . . . Pausing then in horror recalling how he’d pushed away her hand, his face contorted in pain, and when she’d tried to hold him . . .

  There was a long pause. The interview was being taped. But both men were taking notes, too. In her pocket was the key to Mr. Seigl’s house. If she lost it, she would lose everything.

  “Miss Busch . . .”

  Was she supposed to answer? Like in school, raise her hand and say, That’s me?

  “. . . we’ve been told by several parties who have come forward since the ‘accident’ that you boasted of planning to kill your employer Mr. Seigl. Did you?”

  The Tattooed Girl sat stunned.

  The detective repeated, “Miss Busch? Did you boast of . . . ?”

  A long time passed. Then, with clumsy coquetry, the Tattooed Girl managed to say, “W-why’d I do that?”

  “Because, as our informants say, Mr. Seigl was a Jew.”

  “He—he wasn’t a Jew.”

  “Miss Busch, did you say these things? Before witnesses?”

  Her former lover had betrayed her. Some of the other guys. His friends. Maybe someone had been arrested, he’d informed on her to make a deal. The Tattooed Girl was having trouble thinking as she was having trouble breathing through her fishy-gaping mouth. Thinking was like passing clumsy-sized stones from one hand to the other trying not to drop any . . .

  The name Busch was being enunciated. Busch Busch Alma Busch. The cassette in the tape recorder turned. There were more than two shadow-figures in the room, she saw now that there were others. All were watching her closely, ardently.

  “. . . say these things? ‘Planning to kill’ your employer? And steal from him? Or ‘get him to marry you, leave you money’ . . . ?”

  The Tattooed Girl hid her face in her hands.

  In a loud laughing voice crying, “Why’d I do that! I wouldn’t do that! I . . .”

  I loved him. I would die for him.

  That he was a Jew, I loved him.

  Hunched in the hard vinyl chair that made her ass sweat, like a cringing dog waiting for the words to be uttered You are under arrest. Now they would cuff her wrists behind her back and lead her out, to be locked up in a holding pen. But when she looked up cautiously she saw that they were only just watching her.

  They released her! They did not arrest her.

  They told her that the “investigation” would continue. She was warned not to leave Carmel Heights.

  Giddy with relief the Tattooed Girl laughed. “Where’d I go, if I left? There’s no place.”

  6

  SHE STOOD BESIDE the ringing phone. She watched her hand hesitate, then reach out to lift the receiver.

  “. . . Mr. Seigl’s residence.”

  She’d forgotten to clear her throat. Her head was filled with mucus. Her voice came out flat, nasal. She sensed the party at the other end of the line recoiling in disdain.

  A voice identified itself as “Crossman.” Alma needed a moment to think who Crossman was.

  Not one of the detectives. The lawyer.

  He has made you a beneficiary.

  Strange that Crossman who’d stared at her in such dislike was calling her now to offer advice. Telling her that, for her own good, she should seriously consider “retaining legal counsel.”

  Alma said nothing. She was breathing through her mouth, wetly.

  Crossman told her that Carmel Heights police were investigating Joshua Seigl’s death. Though the medical examiner had ruled that he’d died of a heart attack, still Seigl’s relatives were accusing Alma Busch of “having a hand” in his death.

  There was talk of an “eyewitness” in the cemetery who’d seen them “struggle” at the top of the steps. There were said to be other witnesses, informants. Did Alma know anything about these?

  Alma mumbled a vague reply. She stood barefoot in a part-buttoned white cotton shirt of Seigl’s, no bra beneath. White cotton panties thin from numerous washings. Even as she stood pressing the receiver against her ear she was forgetting who’d called.

  It was a man’s voice. A deep-chested voice. Warning her she should not speak to the police without a lawyer present. “For your own good, Miss Busch.”

  The voice went on to ask if she had paper handy, a pen? To take down the name and telephone number of a good defense lawyer.

  A yawn overtook Alma with the sudden violence of a sneeze.

  “Sure.”

  She had no paper, and she had no pen. While the voice continued to speak, she hung up the phone.

  7

  MR. S-SEIGL—?”

  She was in the kitchen, she’d swear she had heard his voice. As if he’d just let himself in the front door and in another moment she would hear his heavy footsteps in the hall.

  She smiled. He has a way of talking to himself, you were confused not knowing if he was talking to you.

  “Mr. S-Seigl? I guess . . .”

  She forced herself to wait, to hear his reply. Even though she knew he wasn’t there.

  Glancing at the clock: ten-twenty. Night. But how had it gotten to be night, so quickly? The date was May 27, she knew because it was a Monday and the beginning of a new week and there was the calendar on the wall beside the refrigerator.

  Alma was standing vigilant. Rarely did she sit down to eat, since it had happened. It was Alma’s word. Not his death but only just it. For she could not have acknowledged his death, and the end of my life. She had not the words for this, nor would she have wished to perceive herself as pessimistic.

  In one of the interviews she’d read, Joshua Seigl was quoted as saying I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist but a realist.

  “That’s right. ‘I am a realist.’ ”

  She was being asked questions now, in this unexpected phase of her life. She was being interviewed. Seigl had been the first, asking her about God, going-to-church.

  Alma found herself crouched in front of the refrigerator, eating. S
he’d believed she was not hungry, the mere thought of food would make her gag, yet once she began eating she ate hungrily, stuffing her mouth.

  Before it, she’d been plenty hungry. After it, she’d had a lot of stomach trouble. She ate, too quickly. And then her guts hurt. Damn it was like snakes writhing in her intestines. Some nights, she was on the toilet a half-dozen times.

  “Serves you right. Eating like a pig.”

  (Who’d said that? Not Seigl. Not ever Seigl. Her mother, maybe. Or Dmitri.)

  Strange it was to Alma, and repulsive. That the life of her body should continue more or less as before. The way, after her grandmother died, a long time ago, there was a morning-after the funeral, and then two-days-after, finally a week-after, and a month. And pretty soon people were forgetting including Alma.

  It was disgusting, how she had to eat. And her bladder and bowels became bloated and had to be relieved, like an animal she relieved herself. She slept, she ate. The cycle persisted. Never would it cease until she herself ceased.

  Got to get out, Alma. Can’t breathe.

  It had not been true, that Seigl had spoken her name in the ambulance. She would say this, she would swear this to his relatives, but it was not true. He had been unconscious, strapped onto a stretcher. An attendant had held an oxygen mask to his face. None of it had anything to do with Alma Busch, and would not. Seigl’s skin had gone gray. His soul, if that was what it was, that looked at you out of his eyes, had vanished. It was turned inward, it was becoming smaller and smaller like a flame about to go out. Alma knew, Alma understood that he would die. He would die, she could not keep him with her. Yet she prayed God don’t let him die, God I love him don’t let him die You won’t will You? Won’t let him die? rocking forward and back on the seat like an animal in pain. It was then, or it might have been a little later, a young Asian-girl attendant was trying to stop Alma from clawing at her forearms, frantically at her arms and the skin around her mouth. Drawing blood from the roughened ugly skin (the “birthmark”!) on her right cheek.