“Frequently.”
“Here’s your coffee. Help yourself to cream and sugar. You didn’t tell me what business you were in.”
“Stocks and bonds.”
“Stocks and bonds? And you want to see Evelyn? Heavens, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Neither of us is in a position to invest a nickel. As a matter of fact, Evelyn’s out of a job right now.”
“It won’t hurt to talk to her.”
“I guess not. As I told you on the phone, she’s not here at the moment. She’s spending two or three days with a friend whose husband is out of town. The friend hates to stay alone at night and Evelyn’s always anxious to oblige. She’s that kind of girl, she’d do anything for a friend.”
Her tone was proud and maternal and Blackshear deduced from it that Mrs. Merrick was as blind about her daughter as Verna Clarvoe was about her son. He said, “May I have this other woman’s name and address?”
“Certainly. It’s Claire Laurence, Mrs. John Laurence, 1375 Nessler Avenue, that’s near U.C.L.A. Evelyn won’t be there during the day, she’s looking for a job, but she’ll arrive around dinnertime, I expect.”
“What kind of job is she looking for? I might be able to help.”
“I’m afraid stocks and bonds aren’t in Evelyn’s line.”
“What is her line, Mrs. Merrick? Is she stage-struck? Does she want to be a model, or something like that?”
“Good heavens, no! Evelyn’s a sensible and mature girl. What on earth gave you the idea she might want to be a model?”
“A lot of pretty girls do.”
“Evelyn’s pretty enough, but she’s not vain, and she has far too many brains to enter a profession that’s so temporary. Evelyn wants a future. More coffee?”
“No, thank you.” But she didn’t seem to hear him. She poured more coffee into his cup, and he noticed that her hand was trembling.
He said, “I hope I haven’t upset you in any way, Mrs. Merrick.”
“Perhaps you have. Then again, perhaps I was upset to begin with.”
“Are you worried about Evelyn?”
“What else does a mother worry about, especially when there’s only one child? I want Evelyn to be happy, that’s all I ask for her, that she be happy and secure.”
“And isn’t she?”
“I thought she was, for a while. And then she changed. Ever since her marriage she’s been different.” She looked across the table with a bleak little smile. “I don’t know why I should tell you that, you said on the phone you don’t even know Evelyn.”
“I don’t. I’ve heard of her, though, through the Clarvoes.”
“The Clarvoes are friends of yours?”
“Yes.”
“You know about the marriage, then?”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you’re here? Did Verna send you to make amends?”
“No.”
“I thought perhaps—well, it doesn’t matter now. It’s over. Spilled milk and all that.” She took her empty plate to the sink and began rinsing it under the tap. “My own marriage failed. I had high hopes for Evelyn’s. What a fool I was not to see.”
“See what, Mrs. Merrick?”
“You know what.” She turned so suddenly that the plate fell out of her hands and crashed in the sink. She didn’t even notice. “My daughter married a homosexual. And I let her. I let her because I didn’t know it, because I was blind. I was taken in, the way Evelyn was, by his gentleness and his pretty manners and his so-called ideals. I thought what a kind and considerate husband he would make. Do you begin to see the picture Evelyn had of him?”
“Yes, clearly.”
“I guess it’s happened to other girls, but it wouldn’t have happened to Evelyn if I hadn’t been divorced, if her father had been here. He’d have known right away that there was something wrong with Douglas. As it was, we had no hint, no warning at all.
“They went to Las Vegas for their honeymoon. I had a post card from Evelyn saying she was fine and the weather was beautiful. That was all, until the doorbell rang one night a week later, and when I opened the door there was Evelyn standing on the porch with her suitcases. She didn’t cry or make a fuss, she just stood there and said in a matter-of-fact way, ‘I’ve left him. It wasn’t a marriage. It was only a wedding.’
“It was a terrible shock, terrible. I kept asking her if she was sure, I told her some men were like that at first, timid and embarrassed. But she said she was sure, all right, because he had admitted it. He had apologized. Can you beat it? He apologized for marrying her! I know now how much suffering that apology cost him. I’m not blaming Douglas any more. How can I? But at the time all I cared about was Evie.
“She left her suitcases out on the porch, wouldn’t even let me bring them into the house, and the next day she took them down to the Salvation Army, her whole trousseau, wedding dress and all. When she came back around lunchtime she looked so pale and exhausted my heart turned over with pity—yes, and guilt, too. I should have known. I’ve been around. I was responsible.”
Mrs. Merrick turned back to the sink, gathered up the bits of broken plate and tossed them into the trash can. “A plate breaks and you throw it away. A person breaks and all you can do is pick up the pieces and try to put them together the best way you can. Oh, Evelyn didn’t break, exactly. She just—well, sort of lost interest in things. She’d always been an outgoing and lively girl, very quick to express her opinions or her feelings. On the night she came home she should have made a fuss, I ought to have encouraged her to talk and cry out a little of the hurt. But she was withdrawn, detached. . . .”
“Evelyn, dear, did you have dinner?”
“I think so.”
“Let me heat up a little soup for you. I made some corn chowder.”
“No, thank you.”
“Evelyn—baby . . .”
“Please don’t get emotional, Mother. We have to make plans.”
“Plans?”
“I’ll get an annulment, I suppose. Isn’t that what I’m entitled to when the marriage wasn’t consummated, as they say?”
“I think so.”
“I’ll see a lawyer tomorrow morning.”
“There’s no need for such haste. Give yourself a chance to rest up.”
“Rest up from what?” Evelyn said with a wry smile. “No. The sooner the better. I’ve got to shed that name Clarvoe. I hate it.”
“Evelyn. Evelyn dear. Listen to me.”
“I’m listening.”
“He didn’t—mistreat you?”
“You have,” Evelyn said distinctly, “quite the wrong picture. I’ll give you the right one, if you like.”
“Not unless you feel like it, dear.”
“I don’t feel one way or the other. I just don’t want you to get the idea in your head that I was physically abused.” As she talked she rubbed the third finger of her left hand, as if massaging away the marks of her wedding ring. “It began on the plane when he became sick. I thought at the time it was airsickness, but I realize now he was sick with fear, fear of being alone with me.
“When we arrived at the hotel, he went into the bar while I unpacked. He stayed in the bar all night. I waited for him, all dressed up in my flossy nightgown and negligee. Around 6 o’clock in the morning two of the bellboys brought him up and poured him out on the bed. He was snoring. He looked so funny, yet so pathetic, too, like a little boy. As soon as he began to show signs of waking up, I went over and spoke to him and stroked his forehead. He opened his eyes and saw me bending over him. And then he let out a scream, the queerest sound I ever heard, an animal sound. I still didn’t know what the trouble was, I thought he merely had a hangover.” Her mouth twisted with distaste and contempt. “Well, he had a hangover, all right, but the party had been years and years ago.”
“Oh, Evelyn. Baby . . .”
“Please don’t fuss.”
“But why, why in heaven’s name did he marry you?”
“Because,” Evelyn said dr
yly, “he wanted to prove he was a man.”
Blackshear listened, pitying the woman, pitying them all; Evelyn waiting in her flossy nightgown for the bridegroom, Douglas sick with fear, Verna trying desperately to hide the truth from herself.
“Yesterday,” Mrs. Merrick continued, “Evelyn met me downtown at noon to do some shopping. For the first time since the wedding we saw Verna Clarvoe. I was quite upset, I could think of nothing but bitter things to say. But Evelyn was perfectly controlled. She even asked about Douglas, how he was and what he was doing and so on, in the most natural way in the world.”
“Verna went into that spiel of hers—Dougie was fine, he was taking lessons in photography, and doing this and doing that. It seemed to me that she was trying to start the whole business over again, trying to whip up Evelyn’s interest. And then it struck me for the first time, she doesn’t know, Verna still doesn’t know, she still has hopes, doesn’t she?”
“I think she has.”
“Poor Verna,” she said quietly. “I feel especially sorry for her today.”
“Why especially?”
“It’s his birthday. Today is Douglas’ birthday.”
Chapter 9
DOUGLAS’ DOOR was locked; it was the only way she had of knowing that he had come back some time during the night, perhaps because he wanted to, perhaps because he had no place else to go.
She knocked and said, “Douglas,” in a harsh heavy voice that was like a stranger’s to her. “Are you awake, Douglas?”
From inside the room there came a mumbled reply and the soft thud of feet striking carpet.
“I want to talk to you, Douglas. Get dressed and come downstairs. Right away.”
In the kitchen, the part-time maid, a spare elderly woman named Mabel, was sitting cross-legged at the breakfast bar, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the morning Times. She didn’t rise when she saw Verna, who owed her back wages in civility as well as cash.
“There’s muffins in the oven. Yesterday’s. Heated up. You want your orange juice now?”
“I’ll get it myself.”
“I made a grocery list. We’re out of eggs and coffee again. I need a drop of coffee now and then to steady myself and there’s barely a cup left in the pot.”
“All right, go and buy some. You might as well do the rest of the shopping while you’re at it. We need some 100-watt bulbs and paper towels, and you’d better check the potato bin.”
“You want I should do it now, before I have a bite to eat?”
“Our understanding was that you were to eat before you come here.”
“We had other understandings too.”
“You’ll be paid this week. I expect a check in the mail today.”
When the maid had gone, Verna took the muffins out of the oven and tested one. It was rubbery, and the blueberries inside were like squashed purple flies.
She added water to the coffee and reheated it, and then she poured some orange juice out of a pitcher in the refrigerator. It smelled stale. The whole refrigerator smelled stale, as if Mabel had tucked odds and ends of food into forgotten corners.
Hearing the wheeze and rattle of Mabel’s ancient Dodge as it moved down the driveway, Verna thought, I’ll have to let her go, as soon as I can pay her. How awkward it is to have to keep her on because I can’t afford to fire her.
Douglas came in as she was pouring herself a cup of coffee. He hadn’t dressed, as she’d asked him to. He was wearing the terry-cloth robe and beaded moccasins he’d had on the previous night before Blackshear’s visit. He looked haggard. The circles under his eyes were like bruises, and from his left temple to the corner of his mouth there ran three parallel scratches. He tried to hide the scratches with his hand, but the attempt only drew attention to them.
“What happened to your cheek?”
“I was petting a cat.”
He sat down beside her, on her left, so that she would only see the uninjured side of his face. Their arms touched and the physical contact jabbed Verna like a needle. She got up, feeling a little faint, and walked over to the stove.
“I’ll get you some muffins.”
“I’m not hungry.” He lit a cigarette.
“You shouldn’t smoke before breakfast. Where did you go last night?”
“Out.”
“You went out and petted a cat. A real big evening, eh?”
He shook his head wearily.
“What kind of cat was it that you petted?”
“Just an ordinary alley cat.”
“Four-legged?”
“Most cats are four-legged.”
“Not the one that scratched you.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at, I really don’t.” He turned his eyes on her, dove-colored, full of innocence. “What are you so angry about, Mother? I went for a walk last night, I saw this cat, I picked it up and tried to pet it and it scratched me. God help me, that’s the truth.”
“God help you, yes,” she said. “No one else will.”
“What brought on this somber mood?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“Certainly I can guess.”
“Go ahead, then.”
“You tried to borrow money from Helen and she turned you down.”
“Wrong.”
“Mabel asked for her back wages.”
“Wrong again.”
“It has something to do with money, that’s for sure.”
“Not this time.”
He got up and started toward the door. “I’m tired of this guessing game. I think I’ll go up . . .”
“Sit down.”
He stopped at the doorway. “Don’t you think I’m too old to be ordered around like . . .”
“Sit down, Douglas.”
“All right, all right.”
“Where did you go last night?”
“Are we going to start that all over again?”
“We are.”
“I went out for a walk. It was a nice night.”
“It was raining.”
“Not when I left. The rain started about 10 o’clock.”
“And you just kept on walking?”
“Sure.”
“Until you got to Mr. Terola’s place?”
He stared at her across the room, unblinking, mute.
“That was your destination, wasn’t it, one of the back rooms of Terola’s studio?”
He still didn’t speak.
“Or perhaps it wasn’t Terola’s, perhaps it was just anybody’s back room. I hear your kind isn’t particular.” She heard herself saying the words but still she didn’t believe them. She waited, her fists clenched against her sides, for the reactions she wanted from him: shock, anger, denial.
He said nothing.
“What goes on in that studio, Douglas? I have a right to know, I’m paying for those so-called ‘photography’ lessons of yours. Are you really learning anything about photography?”
He walked unsteadily back to the breakfast bar and sat down. “Yes.”
“Are you behind the camera or in front of it?”
“I don’t know—what you mean.”
“You must know, other people do. I heard it myself last night.”
“Heard what?”
“About the kind of pictures Terola takes. Not the sort of thing one would want in a family album, are they?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Who would know better than you, Douglas? You pose for them, don’t you?”
He shook his head. It was the denial she’d been waiting for, praying for, but it was so fragile she couldn’t touch it for fear it would break.
“Who’s been talking to you?” he said.
“Someone called me last night after you went out.”
“Who was it?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“If rumors are going around about me, I have a right to know who’s passing them along.”
She clutched at the straw. “Rumors? That’s all they are t
hen, Douglas? None of it’s true? Not a word?”
“No.”
“Oh, thank God, thank God!”
She rushed at him across the room, her arms outspread.
His face whitened and his body tensed as he braced himself for her caress. She stroked his hair, she kissed his forehead, she touched the scratches on his cheek with loving tenderness, she murmured his name, “Dougie. Dougie dear. I’m so sorry, darling.”
Her arms entwined around him like snakes. He felt sick with revulsion and weak with fear. A scream for help rose in his throat and suffocated there: God. God help me. God save me.
“Dougie dear, I’m so sorry. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, what a horrible mother I am, believing those lies. That’s all they were, lies, lies.”
“Please,” he whispered. “You’re choking me.”
But the words were so muffled she didn’t hear them. She pressed her cheek against his. “I shouldn’t have said those terrible things, Dougie. You’re my son. I love you.”
“Stop it! Stop!”
He tore himself out of her grasp and ran to the door, and a moment later she heard the wild pounding of his feet on the stairs.
She sat for a long time, stone-faced, marble-eyed, like a deaf person in a room of chatterers. Then she followed him upstairs.
He was lying spread-eagled across the bed, face down. She didn’t go near him. She stood just inside the door.
“Douglas.”
“Go away. Please. I’m sick.”
“I know you are,” she said painfully. “We must—cure you, take you to a doctor.”
He rolled his head back and forth on the satin spread.
Questions rose on her tongue and died there: When did you first know? Why didn’t you come and tell me? Who corrupted you?
“We’ll go to a doctor,” she said more firmly. “It’s curable, it must be curable. They cure everything nowadays with all those wonder drugs they’ve got, cortisone and ACTH, things like that.”
“You don’t understand. You just don’t understand.”
“Try me. What is it? What don’t I understand?”
“Please. Leave me alone.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes.”
“Very well,” she said coldly. “I’ll leave you alone. I have an errand to do anyway.”
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