I shook my head, and looked out at the road.
“Your wife called,” she said. “I told her I’d wait up.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Sweeney—and I wish there was something I could say about all this—”
“It’s on the news,” she said. “It’s a big news story.”
“I’ll watch for it.”
“They’re going to come talk to me. The newspeople. They’re going to ask me if I knew anything.” She shook her head, turning. “You think you know a person.”
In the room, I thought of calling Elaine, but what I did was lie across the bed, still wearing the borrowed suit, and, dreaming of a woman twenty years older than I was, I fell deeply, drunkenly asleep.
In the morning I woke to see a shadow move across my window, high up. I lay there with a dry mouth and a headache, watching it for awhile, and finally I decided to investigate. As I came to my feet, I thought I heard Mrs. Sweeney’s voice, and then other voices. Outside, across the way, on the grassy hill that led onto the interstate ramp and above which the sun had just risen, men were walking. Their shapes were all blazingly outlined, but I could see that they were combing the ground, searching. Mrs. Sweeney stood in the gravel lot, talking to one man while another filmed her, and there were police cars and news-media vans blocking the entrance to the motel. I went back into my room and turned on the television set, but it was too late for morning news; it was all movies and situation comedies and quiz shows. I started to go back out, and then decided not to. I didn’t want to see whatever they would find out there, if they found anything at all.
4
THERE WAS all that work to do on the house, and I was gone a lot during the next couple of days. I had an excuse to be gone, and I took it. One late night I arrived to find Mrs. Sweeney waiting up for me. She wanted to tell me about the interview with the news people, and her voice as she spoke was an exact blend of excitement and horror. The men searching the hillside had found nothing, she said. To think that murdered children might have been buried within yards of her own house; to think that she had been on the nightly news. “I told them,” she said. “I made them understand that when Eddie lived with me he never did anything like hurting a little child.”
“It’s an awful thing,” I said.
“I wrote a letter to my son. I don’t know how to tell him.”
“Would you like me to look at it?” I said.
She seemed puzzled by such a suggestion. “No,” she said.
“Well, anything I can do to help.”
She thanked me, but something about my offer to read the letter had made her nervous. I think she considered its contents too private even for the eyes of the faraway young man to whom it was addressed. The next day I stayed around the motel—I took a swim in the pool, and basked in the late-morning sun—and Mrs. Sweeney was uncharacteristically cool and distant. When she came to ask if I wanted lunch, I thought she was almost wary of me. I said I wasn’t hungry, and thanked her, then went back to my room, certain that removing myself for the moment was the best thing for her peace of mind. In the room I napped and read magazines and watched television. Mrs. Sweeney’s husband was big news, all right. The authorities were turning up bodies all over the country. When I called Elaine, I told her about the man whose tie I now apparently owned, and though she feigned interest, I could tell that she was restive, wanted to hang up.
“So,” I said, “tell me about your day.”
“I studied.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing else.”
“No movies? No television? No talk with friends?”
“I said nothing else.”
“Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
“You were telling me about the mad killer-rapist.”
“Did I tell you about Brooker’s wife?”
“Tell me about Brooker’s wife.”
“I’m in love with her.”
“Wonderful.”
“We’re going to run away to Paris.”
“Terrific.”
“We’re madly, desperately, spiritually, and physically in love.”
“I’m very happy for you.”
“Elaine,” I said.
“You have my blessing,” she said.
“Are you coming out in August?” I asked. “We’ll have their place all to ourselves.”
“We can play Pretend.”
“We can do anything you want,” I said.
“All I know how to do is study.”
“Are you coming out or not?” I said.
“Not.”
“Come on, Elaine.”
“Not, I’m afraid, is the truth.”
“All right,” I said, “why not?”
“Maybe I’ve decided I don’t want to live in Virginia.”
I didn’t say anything then.
“What if I don’t like Virginia?” she said.
“Elaine, you loved it. Remember? You picked out the house. You were all excited about fixing it up. I’ve been working on it all this time.”
“I guess I’m getting cold feet. It’s senior syndrome, or something.”
“Are you serious?” I said.
“Half.”
“You mean it.”
“A little, yes.”
“Are you telling me you might not come out here at all?”
“I don’t know what I’m telling you. Don’t badger me.”
“I have a place for us both to stay until the house is ready. It’s a very nice place, Elaine. It’s luxurious, in fact.”
“And it’s famous.”
“I don’t understand your attitude about this. Yes, it is William Brooker’s apartment, and William Brooker is widely known.”
“He’s famous.”
“All right, goddammit, he’s famous. Yes.”
“Don’t get mad,” she said. “I’m too tired for anger over the telephone.”
“Elaine,” I said, “what’s the matter?”
She paused, then sighed. “Nothing.”
“No,” I said, “what’s the matter. Tell me.”
“Nothing’s the matter. I’m tired, and I don’t feel like making any big decisions now, all right? I don’t want to think about moving and all that. I’m trying to finish up a degree.”
“All right, fine,” I said.
She said, “Terrific.”
We hung up simultaneously, I think. Then I called her back. We traded apologies and explanations. We were both under a lot of pressure; it was a new job, a new situation. She was so tired and beaten down by the work. She had been having anxiety attacks, and was beginning to wonder what it had all been for. I had upset her by talking about child murders and rape, and now the idea of living in a place where such things happened made her tremble. “I know, things like that happen anywhere, but I still feel jittery about living there and I was feeling jittery about it before you told me this horror story.”
“It’s just nerves,” I said. “It’s just getting settled, that’s all. Once you get settled you’ll see.”
But in the silence that followed, I wondered if there weren’t something more than nerves bothering her.
“Elaine?” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t want to talk now. We’ll talk later.”
And again, we hung up almost simultaneously.
IN THE MORNING, I had breakfast in Mrs. Sweeney’s small diner-kitchen. There were five or six other people staying at the motel now, and she was too busy to speak to me, except to say that her cook, Clara, would be coming back on in a few days, and it couldn’t be a minute too soon. She made a gesture like a swoon of exhaustion. Outside, cars slowed going by, or pulled in and sat idling while the curious got out to stare and take pictures. Mrs. Sweeney’s husband was a national story now—and each day brought new revelations about him: he had been killing people, mostly little girls, all his adult life. He had drifted across the country, killing as he went, years before settling in Virginia with M
arilee Wilson. The psychiatrists who were conducting interviews with him found that he was completely without remorse, without any sense of the enormity of his crimes, and when he spoke about his victims he was chillingly direct and simple, a man describing uncomplicated work, something about which there were only the barest considerations of technique. Police officers from seven states would be converging on the small town jail where he was presently incarcerated; they would all be about the business of talking to the killer to clear away open files, unsolved cases. Some were guessing that it might take years for all the crimes to come to light, and estimated that the numbers were well into the hundreds.
Mrs. Sweeney was glad that business was better, but weary of all the questions, and she didn’t like being stared at. The day her husband’s picture appeared on the cover of a newsmagazine, she closed her shutters and put up the NO VACANCY sign.
“I don’t care about the business anymore,” she told me. “I think I’ll sell the place now, anyway.”
This was about a week before I checked out. I hadn’t told her yet that I would be leaving before the September date we had initially agreed on. She had come over from her place on the stoop, and headed me off from a night walk. We stood outside my room and watched the lights on the interstate beyond the crest of the hill across the way. “I used to get lonesome for him,” she said, “nights like this.”
I had the feeling that she was lonesome for him now, but I said nothing.
“Were you on your way somewhere?” she said.
“I was going to take a walk.”
“It’s a pretty night for a walk.”
“Would you like to come with me?” I said, and knew immediately that I had embarrassed her again. “I mean I wouldn’t mind company.”
She mumbled something about having too much to do.
“Well,” I said.
“You know what?” she said. “I don’t believe him. I lived with him for three years. If he was like they say he was he would’ve killed me, wouldn’t he?”
I said that seemed logical.
“But maybe with someone like that, there isn’t really any logic to go by.”
“That’s probably true,” I said.
“I’m going to sell this place and move out of the state.” She walked off toward her yellow-lighted stoop.
I watched her go into the office, saw her shadow in the window, and there was something so bowed and unhappy and reproachful about the way she stood gazing out at me that I decided against the walk. I didn’t want to find her waiting for me when I returned. I was sorry for everything, but I was in fact a little tired of her trouble; I had troubles of my own. I got into my car and drove over to the rental house, and worked for a few hours painting the rooms. While I worked, I thought about Elaine, and then I was thinking about Brooker’s wife. It started as an idle daydream, but I found myself putting embellishments on it, and soon enough I was engaged in a full-fledged fantasy. I imagined that she drove by in the night and saw me in the curtainless windows of the rental house, that she came to the door and knocked, and I let her in. We strolled through the house, talking about what I planned to do with it once Elaine and I moved in, and then we said things that led to kissing. I was on a stepladder, with a roller in my hand, dripping paint, and I realized that I had been quite motionless, deep in this fantasy, for some time. I had seen myself removing Helen Brooker’s white cocktail dress, sliding the straps down her shoulders, and I had kissed the soft untanned places on her belly. “Are you a womanizer?” she had asked me that night in her kitchen.
Before I was through, I imagined visiting her at the apartment—saw her arriving early from her travels while I was still alone and sleeping in her bed; I played out a small lubricious drama in which I told her that Elaine was staying behind, would not be joining me, and in which Helen Brooker became my mistress, visiting me every day in the rental house, full of appetite for me and the excitement of our illicitness. In other words, I conjured up a woman who bore no real relation to Helen Brooker—a dream woman who wished only to satisfy my whims.
When, a week later, I carried my suitcases up the sidewalk and the stairs to the landing of Brooker’s apartment, I kept my eyes averted for fear of catching a glimpse of his wife, as if to see her would be to cause the whole business to come blurting out of me, the confession of a secret and obsessive lust; for I had kept my fantasies about her, had added to them, had suffered them in my sleep, along with crazy shifts of logic in which the mad mass killer Mr. Sweeney appeared, always in the guise of someone quite harmless at first, and then simply as himself, crouched in a kind of striped, shadowy corner, staring out. I had awakened from these dreams with a jolt, and with the sense that I had come into an area of my life that was utterly uncharted and dark. I found myself deciding against calling Elaine, or putting it off, and when she called me I was as uncommunicative and anxiety-ridden as she was. We had a few very unhappy, very gloomy discussions of plans for the end of summer, and we still hadn’t established what she would do. For the time being, I was to move into the Brookers’ apartment alone.
When I said good-bye to Mrs. Sweeney, she seemed oddly relieved to have me go. Her son was coming home on leave, she said, and it was too bad I wouldn’t be able to meet him.
“Maybe I’ll come visit,” I said.
“That would be very nice,” she said. But I think she was only being polite. I was the last of her customers, and she was closing up for good. She had even let Clara go. She told me this almost as an afterthought: it was too bad that someone like Clara had to go off and work for one of the big places, like Holiday Inn. She didn’t think a big chain would appreciate someone of Clara’s gifts. Everything was so cut-and-dried these days. She went on like this, tallying up my bill, and I knew she was glad I was leaving.
I didn’t have to worry about seeing Brooker’s wife, for she was already on her way north. Brooker told me this as he helped me inside with my things. He gave me his key, then called a taxi to come take him to the airport. When I offered to drive him there, he said, “Well, I should’ve thought of that. The taxi’s on its way, though.”
“Call and cancel it,” I said. “I don’t mind taking you.”
He considered for a moment. “If you’re sure about this, lad.”
In the car, I caught the odor of alcohol on his breath. He sat staring out the passenger window, and I coasted along trying to think of something to say to him. I had hoped we might talk on the way, that I might get to know him better. Finally I said, “Will you be meeting your wife in New York?”
“I’m going to Toronto first. Overnight.”
“Will she be at Chautauqua with you?”
“Part of the time, maybe. She has friends in the city—Chautauqua’s a little too Victorian for her taste.”
“Will you be lecturing about the Kennedy years?”
“Some.”
“I wish I could’ve been around for some of that time.”
“It wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.”
“You knew John Kennedy pretty well, didn’t you?”
“He was my boss for a while. I knew him, all right.”
“He looks so brilliant in all the films—you know, the speeches.”
Brooker said nothing to this.
“Everybody who knew him wrote a book about him,” I said. “Why didn’t you?”
“I decided instead to give lectures. It means more money over a longer period of time. The colleges will pay handsomely for somebody like me to come tell them what they already suspect. After you get famous, lad, you’ll be paid handsomely to come read from your work—it’s a lot like that. All fiction. Don’t tell anyone I said so, but the colleges are full of stupid, limited people, with a very few exceptions. And to be blunt about things, I might as well tell you that it’s entirely possible I won’t be teaching at our quaint little peaceful school after next year.”
“Why not?” I said, breathing the alcohol again. And even so, I thought he would tell me about s
ome grant or other, or plans to spend a year abroad. What he did say was so surprising that I took my eyes off the road a moment to look at him.
“It seems that I’m to be removed—for a few small indiscretions.”
I was speechless.
“You must’ve noticed that I’m inclined to be a bit careless what I say.”
If I could’ve said anything at all, I would have. I sat there staring out at the road and waiting for him to go on.
“The wife and I used to booze it up pretty good. She’s got a lot better than I am, of course. But the two of us made a few powerful enemies. It doesn’t matter now, you know, because I’m getting near retirement anyway. I guess you’re wondering why I’m telling you all this.”
“No,” I said stupidly, as if I might’ve expected him to confide in me.
“The truth of the matter is that I did want to salvage something if I could. I mean I hoped that by showing some college spirit I might be able to persuade the Board to reconsider, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
“They’re firing you?” I said.
“Not exactly.”
“You’re tenured,” I said, “aren’t you?”
“I never accepted tenure, lad. I didn’t want it. I’ve had a series of special contracts, each year.”
I had pulled into the airport terminal. There was a small knot of people at the far gate, and I drove toward it. He already had the door open. “I hope you’ll forgive me for deceiving you about—well, about the work. I do like your stories, but I only read them to make this last try, so to speak. I mean I know you thought I was just one of those prescient types who read everything. I searched them out and read them because Helen thought it might impress the Board. I’m afraid it didn’t even impress you quite as much as I could’ve hoped it would.”
I had stopped the car.
“I guess not,” he said, giving me a look.
I got out and helped him with his things, and when he was in line, waiting to board the plane, he shook my hand and told me to make myself at home in his place. I was to use everything just as if it were mine, and he would telephone now and again, if it was all right, just to be sure there wasn’t any important mail, or phone calls that needed immediate attention. When I left him there, and started the drive back to town and my new surroundings, I felt as though I had been duped. And I don’t mean I was bothered by the fact that he hadn’t come upon my work in the course of his normal habits of reading—that had been too outlandish to believe in the first place, and I had indeed been a little embarrassed all along at my own wish to take him at his word; this is hard to explain, muddied as it is by hindsight. In any case, my sense of having been duped had, oddly, to do with Brooker’s attitude in the few moments just before I left him at the airport. It was as if I were somehow a creation of his; as if everything I had thought and felt in the few days since I first met him at the faculty orientation party had been produced, orchestrated by him, with calculation and in the certain knowledge that each gesture, each wave of his baton would bring another shade of admiration out of me. I must have looked like an adoring boy at that first meeting.
Wives & Lovers Page 20
