The Girl Who Passed for Normal

by Hugh Fleetwood

  “I’m very happy to meet you, Marcello,” Mary Emerson said. “Please come in. Wasn’t it a gorgeous morning, and isn’t it miserable again now?” She sailed ahead of them toward the front door, and Barbara realized that she wasn’t going to have to explain anything after all.

  Catherine was standing in the hall talking to the myna bird. When she saw Marcello she turned and darted toward the living room.

  “Catherine, come here!” Mary Emerson went to the girl, took her by the shoulder, and led her to Marcello. “Shake hands,” she told her.

  Marcello gave a small bow and a smile, and shook hands with Catherine.

  “Barbara, my dear, would you like some tea before you start?” Mary Emerson asked.

  Barbara shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.” She glanced at Catherine, who was backing toward the living room.

  “Come with me, Marcello,” Mary Emerson said, “We’ll have some tea while these two are working.” She took Marcello by the arm and swept from the room, calling over her shoulder with a laugh, “Be seeing you!”

  *

  “Do you believe me now?” Catherine whispered.

  Barbara shook her head no.

  “Why did you bring your friend then?”

  “He gave me a lift.”

  Catherine smiled broadly, as if to say that explanation wouldn’t do, even for a mad girl. “I’ve been thinking what she could have done with him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “With David. If she killed him I don’t know exactly how she did it or what she did with the body.”

  Barbara shook her head. “Catherine —”

  But Catherine ignored her, and went on as if she were alone. “I decided that she must have invited him out here and hit him on the head and then buried him in the wilderness. You see she only had to take him somewhere out there.” She waved, standing at the window, toward the wilderness beyond the rock garden. In the fading gray light it looked cold and sad and endless, as if it were the beginning of a real wilderness, rather than an uncultivated stretch of land on the edge of an old city. “She could dig a hole — it wouldn’t have to be too deep. If she cut the grass away carefully she could replace it afterward and you’d never be able to see that someone was buried there.” She came close to Barbara and whispered, “There are some bags of cement in the garage. If she put some cement in on top of him it would stop him from coming up to the surface, wouldn’t it?” She looked inquiringly at Barbara, waiting for confirmation.

  “I don’t know, Catherine. I don’t know anything about burying bodies.” Barbara smiled, but Catherine was no longer looking at her; she was looking out again toward the gray-green grass.

  “She wouldn’t have buried him very far in, I’m sure. She’s too lazy. And she knows I never go out there in the winter, only when it’s hot. And by the time next spring comes, the grass will be grown over it. He must have been very heavy,” she said softly and dreamily. Then she put her head on one side and appeared to be considering something. “I guess she could have taken him in a wheelbarrow. That way she could have taken him a long way in.” She paused. “Except that the wheelbarrow’s broken.” She chewed her lower lip for a moment. “You know why she’s always told me not to go out there? She says it’s because of the snakes and the scorpions, but it isn’t. She just doesn’t want me to find any bodies.”

  Barbara smiled. “Catherine, you’ve always been told not to go out there, for as long as you’ve lived here. Not just for the last week.”

  Catherine nodded, and shrugged her shoulders. Then she went over to the French windows, unlocked them, and ran out.

  Barbara ran after her. “Catherine, come back. You can’t go out there.”

  Catherine didn’t stop until she reached the sparse, low hedge that marked the beginning of the wilderness. Then she turned and beamed at Barbara.

  “You look over there and I’ll look over here.”

  Barbara felt as if she had subscribed to something that had got suddenly out of control. “Catherine,” she said, “come here. You’ve only got thin shoes on, and the grass is soaking. And it’s getting dark.” She looked back at the house. There were lights on, and it looked warm. She looked around at the umbrella pines, at the cypresses, at the wall that ran alongside the wilderness and across the road in front of the house, whose top she could just see above the roof of the garage where the cement bags were …

  “Come in, Catherine,” she called. “Immediately.”

  Catherine giggled and ran off into the knee-high grass. “Look and see if any turf’s been cut recently,” she shouted back.

  Barbara ran into the grass after her, feeling it damp against her legs, soaking through her shoes. She wondered where snakes went in the winter. Catherine ran away from her, laughing, her pale hair rising and falling in clumps as she went, her gray skirt and red sweater flapping as if they had suddenly grown too large for her. Barbara stumbled and fell to her knees. Her hands were on the ground, and she wondered whether there was a body underneath the wet earth that she was touching. “Catherine,” she called, “I’ve hurt myself.”

  She didn’t look up, but heard the girl coming back toward her. When she put out a hand, Catherine took it and helped her up, staring at her blankly, as if she couldn’t comprehend what Barbara was doing, kneeling in the grass in the early darkness.

  They walked back toward the house, hand in hand.

  “Catherine, when your brother was here, were he and David very friendly?” Barbara asked.

  Catherine looked sulky and said, “I don’t know.”

  Barbara squeezed her hand. “It’s very important.”

  Catherine tried to pull her hand away. “I told you I don’t know,” she said crossly.

  “Did you like having your brother here?”

  Catherine bowed her head, and Barbara saw that she had started to cry. She put her arm around her shoulder, and they stepped together through the low hedge.

  Mary Emerson was standing by the fountain, looking at them, with Marcello a yard or so behind.

  “What have you two been doing?” she drawled. “Catherine, your shoes are soaked. Go up and change them immediately.”

  Catherine, with her head still bowed, went toward the house.

  Barbara was blushing. She felt guilty, like a schoolgirl who has committed some unforgivable schoolgirl crime and been discovered. She wanted to cry with mortification. She muttered, “Catherine ran out there and —”

  Mary Emerson laughed. “Come in, my dear, and have some tea. What an extraordinary time of the day and year for Catherine to go on one of her country rambles. Are your shoes wet, too?”

  “Rather,” Barbara said. She let herself be led into the house, feeling guilty and ridiculous and barren, cold and thin and old beside the warm, rich woman from the South. She didn’t dare look at Marcello.

  When she had had her tea, and changed, and Catherine had come downstairs, Mary Emerson said, “Well, I think you should do some exercises now, to get you warm. Marcello and I are having a most interesting conversation. He’s been giving me some advice.” She whispered, loudly, to Barbara, “Call me if you need me, my dear.”

  Barbara glanced at Marcello, who was looking pleased with himself and smiling gravely. “Yes,” she said.

  When her mother had left the room, Catherine whispered to Barbara, “She knows we were out looking for where she put the body.” She smiled. “You’ll have to come and live with me now when she goes, or else she’ll kill you, too.”

  “Catherine, you’re never, ever, to say anything like that again.”

  Catherine appeared not to have heard. “Do you understand what I say?” Barbara said.

  Catherine nodded.

  5

  “Well?” Barbara said.

  Marcello was driving her home; he still looked pleased with himself. He frowned, and nodded. “It was very strange. She told me far too much.”

  “Well?”

  “She feels guilty. Otherwise she wouldn
’t have told me.”

  Barbara looked out of the window.

  “Oh, not what you’re thinking about.” He laughed.

  “I don’t think that anymore,” Barbara said. “I’m afraid Catherine is madder than I thought. I suppose it was better before, when she was fat and her mouth was open. Now that she passes for normal, one expects too much of her.”

  “Mrs. Emerson told me in great detail about her financial arrangements.”

  “You? Why you?”

  “That’s what I say — it was very strange.”

  “But she doesn’t know you. She’s never met you before.”

  “I guess she wanted to talk about it, and it’s easier with someone you don’t know. Or maybe she told me because she wanted to tell you but didn’t know how to, and knew I’d tell you. She probably thinks it will affect your decision as to whether to go and look after her daughter.” He smiled. “Or there again, it might just be that you make her nervous.”

  Barbara looked out of the window again. She felt hurt. If she was going to look after Catherine, she assumed she would have to know something about her charge’s financial position. But she should have been told, not someone else. Not Marcello. She remembered what David had written in one of his letters: “… you must make her nervous.” So that was why Mary Emerson had been so pleased to see Marcello today. She had been thinking of some way to talk to her — and she, Barbara, had brought the means with her. She had brought Marcello to work for her, and Mary Emerson had used him. She looked at Marcello and said, “She recognized a fellow capitalist.”

  Or she recognized someone who belongs, Barbara thought; but Marcello was talking.

  “That’s just it. She’s a classic — almost a caricature — of the capitalist victim. She’s not rich at all herself. It’s that mad daughter of hers who’s rich. So Mrs. Emerson has to live here, tied to her mad child, just so she can have money. And what’s the result? She’s miserable, she has no culture, she does nothing and creates nothing. She’s the ultimate parasite. She has to live with her capital, which she can’t stand — because she knows it’s maiming her life — but which she can’t live without, because she’s already so maimed. That’s why she’s guilty. Her daughter is a symbol for her of her own loss, of her own madness.”

  Barbara sniffed. “Oh, do shut up, Marcello.” She smiled faintly. “What you mean is you liked her and found her attractive, and it doesn’t match your theories because you can’t find a single good reason for her existence in your little state and yet you still find her attractive. Right?”

  “She is attractive. But it’s a wasted, decadent attraction.”

  Barbara wondered what sort of attraction hers was, if she was attractive at all. “Well, if I’m supposed to know, you’d better tell me everything,” she said.

  “I asked her if she was bored here, if she felt cut off from her society, and she said yes. Then I told her I’d met her son, with David, and she suddenly told me everything, as if I were some sort of confessor — or at least her stockbroker.”

  Barbara looked out of the window and sighed. “Well, that’s what you are, isn’t it? Spiritually speaking, of course. The stockbroker of the bankrupt Western spirit. Look, please, either tell me or don’t tell me what she said, but I really don’t want to hear your idiot analyses.”

  “Well, apparently she and her husband didn’t get along. He was very wealthy, and when he died he left all his money in trust for Catherine and her brother until they were twenty-one, when they were to receive half each. However, realizing that Catherine wasn’t well, he stipulated that the trustees were to pay Catherine’s share of the income to her mother until Catherine was twenty-one, on the condition that the mother looked after the girl to the full satisfaction of the trustees. If they weren’t satisfied they could appoint someone else to look after Catherine, and mother would be left without a cent. He also left that villa to Catherine. So there we are — Mrs. Emerson was stuck in a foreign country with a foreign daughter.”

  “You do know all the terminology, don’t you,” Barbara said. “I do think she should have told me. What happens when Catherine’s twenty-one?”

  “Then she passes under her brother’s control. That is, the brother can tell the trustees to pay someone to look after Catherine — and he’s responsible for seeing that she’s looked after properly. That’s what he came over to see about. To see how Catherine is, and decide with his mother what to do about her.”

  “And did she tell you that, too?”

  “Apparently the boy’s going to give his mother an allowance from his share of the money, so she can go off and do as she pleases. If she stays with Catherine she’ll also get money from the trustees out of Catherine’s share, to pay for everything. Or else she can find someone to look after Catherine, whom the trustees will pay.”

  “That person being me. She is going away for good. And do you still say she hasn’t been planning all this?”

  “No, obviously she’s always known this. But I’m sure she intended staying here with Catherine if she couldn’t find anyone suitable to look after her — and getting extra money, of course. Then when David left — well, you were not only suitable, but available, too.”

  “Poor Catherine,” Barbara said. Then she said with false brightness, “Well, you know everything, Marcello. What would you advise me to do?”

  “I’d say no,” Marcello said quickly. “If I were you I’d leave Rome, go back to England, forget David, Catherine, everything here.”

  Barbara smiled. “Yes. I’d like to. But I’ve got nothing to go back for. If I can do some good here, wouldn’t it be better to stay? And besides, what would happen to Catherine if I left?”

  “They’d find someone else, wouldn’t they?”

  “And that would be horrible for Catherine.”

  “She probably wouldn’t notice after a couple of days.”

  “She would. She’s changed so much, honestly, since I’ve known her. Ask Mrs. Emerson.”

  “Mrs. Emerson said you were wonderful.”

  “Then why didn’t she talk to me, instead of you? I don’t make her that nervous, do I?”

  “She probably will tell you, now that you already know. She’ll be able to talk to you easily.”

  “As if I had to be broken in first, or as if my knowing would affect my decision. Thanks. Well, if I’m so wonderful why should I go back to England?”

  “Because you look on Catherine as more than a job. You sort of feel you have a divine mission with her, don’t you? You’re sure you’ll be able to ‘save’ her, and no one else would.”

  “I can try, can’t I?”

  Marcello didn’t reply.

  They drove into her street, but Barbara made no move to get out of the car. “I think David’s gone out to California with Mary Emerson’s son,” she said, “and she’s going to join them there. I think he might have gone for your reasons, but inverted, sort of. I think he wanted to give up his work, but then decided that whatever he did would be the wrong thing, so he thought he’d do really the wrong thing and go out to California. They’ll support him, between them. And like that he’s not only rejecting his work but also proving, perversely, that he’s free. That he can do the wrong thing for the right reason. Or what he thinks is the right reason. Most people do the opposite, don’t they!”

  “I don’t know.” Marcello paused, and obviously wanted her to get out of the car. But she sat still, so he said, “David wasn’t perverse, you know.”

  Which meant, Barbara thought, that she was.

  Marcello leaned over her and opened her door. Slowly, she started to get out.

  “By the way,” Marcello said, “what were you doing in the garden with Catherine?”

  Barbara held the door. “Nothing,” she said. “Catherine ran out and wanted to go for a walk. Thank you for the lift.”

  *

  She was happy. She turned on all the lights in the apartment, put on a record of Bellini arias, took off her clothes, and
put on David’s dressing gown. She looked at herself in the mirror and felt beautiful. Marcello had made her so depressed that she’d wanted to cry. Then she’d realized what a fool he was. He didn’t know anything about anyone. He just had theories, ideas; and he didn’t want her to stay because he knew that if she did she’d belong, too. She’d be his equal. He wouldn’t be able to dismiss her as a theory then. She would have a part. She would exist. Yes, she’d stay, and get her revenge on Marcello.

  She was happy, suddenly, that David had gone. She would be happier if he came back. But not just yet. She wanted time. Perhaps he had realized that. Perhaps he had gone for her. She was glad that he had gone, because it had given her a shock. It had made her look at herself and take stock. Ever since she’d come back from England she’d been reeling, feeling sorry for herself, listening to Marcello’s fatuous theories simply because she didn’t know who else to listen to or talk to. But she would get her revenge on him. After she moved in with Catherine she would ring him up, see him, perhaps even invite him out to the villa. She would force him to reckon with her, to recognize that she existed. She felt happy, and young, and alive.

  Her mother had made her, and Howard had found her, and when he’d died she’d fallen to pieces. David had taken the pieces and put them together again, so that she was more or less one. But what she hadn’t realized was that the way she’d been put together wasn’t quite right, because she’d been reformed in her old shape, and she no longer fitted into her old shape; she was new. She was going to stay new, and be free.

  She would go and live with Catherine. She would live in the villa and teach Catherine and make her free. She would make Catherine see that there was beauty in the world, that there was a chance of something other than being told to sit down or stand up, keep her back straight or her mouth closed. And Catherine, in exchange, would give her beauty and freedom of another sort; a beautiful house, and an address — a home. A place where she would belong, in which she would be safe; where she would be equal with Marcello, and more than equal with Mary Emerson. Mary Emerson had been a prisoner, because she hadn’t loved Catherine. Barbara thought of what Marcello had said, and though his motives for saying it were suspect, the words themselves were, perhaps, true: “Mrs. Emerson has to live here, tied to her mad child … she’s miserable … her daughter is a symbol of her own loss.”