The Fury of Rachel Monette

by Peter Abrahams

  “Jews are tough,” he said when they were in bed.

  “It pays in the end.”

  Later, with her head on his shoulder, she had thought about the book. It had been with them for a long time, almost like another child; a child that needed special attention from both of them. Now Rachel hoped that Dan would regard it as the culmination of years of work, and move on to something else. She said so as they drifted off to sleep. Dan sighed:

  “I don’t think I’m finished with it yet, Rachie. There’s always more.”

  Someone, Rachel saw, had discovered the wine cache under the sink. A cigarette butt was floating in a half-full bottle of Gevrey-Chambertin, taxing her level of tolerance to mess. It was high, but it had limits.

  “Dan,” she called up the stairs, “come help me clean up.”

  “Can’t. I’m engaged.” That meant on the toilet. Rachel sighed and went to the phone. Mrs. Flores would take care of it.

  Rachel went into the morning routine, an orderly progression which finished when she was back where she was the morning before. First, hygiene: floss teeth, expectorate blood. Brush teeth because they don’t feel clean without toothpaste, no matter what the dentist says. Step into shower. Regulate water with rotating retracting swiveling control lever. Scalding. Screaming. Freezing. Scrub every square inch of skin with transparent English soap. Skip the middle of the back. Rinse. Step out. Shiver. Dry. Second, clothing: always from the bottom up. Wool socks, blue cotton long underwear, jeans. A sensible brassiere for sensible breasts. Irish sweater. Fur-lined suede boots to the knee. Third, food: her turn to make breakfast. Reheat last night’s coffee. Squeeze fresh orange juice. Dan always used frozen and in that Dan failed as a nurturer. Yogurt into bowls, blueberries onto yogurt, brown sugar on Adam’s blueberries. Set table in breakfast nook. Fix Adam’s lunch: BLT on brown bread, sweet pickle in Saran Wrap, banana. Apple juice in thermos. Pack it in lunch box with Porky Pig on the front. Sip coffee. Look out window. See Mrs. Candy across the street open door, clutch pink gown at fat throat, stoop for newspaper, straighten with effort, reveal glimpse of white sagging thigh, close door. Fourth, departure: stuff into briefcase tapes, notes, pen, stopwatch, apple. Put on blue down jacket, leather gloves, wool headband. Open door.

  Garth was relieving himself against Mrs. Candy’s garage. The houses in their neighborhood near the edge of town stood about fifty yards apart but Garth seldom ventured into the wide open spaces alone, preferring a man-made environment.

  In their red sweatsuits Dan and Adam were pushing at the trunk of the oak tree, stretching their calf and thigh muscles. Adam enjoyed the warm-up as much as the run.

  “Limbered up, Adam?” Dan asked.

  “Not yet, Daddy,” Adam grunted, red in the face.

  “No one goes anywhere until the driveway is cleared,” said Rachel. “Shoveling is the best limbering exercise there is.”

  “It is not.”

  “It is. Bill Rodgers says so.”

  “He does not, Mummy.” They went to fetch the shovels, too late to be of any use to the mailman, a gaunt Vermonter who was making his way with difficulty up the walk.

  “You should get this walk cleared,” he said, handing Rachel a letter. “The law says the mailman is not obligated to negotiate an uncleared access.”

  “Sorry.” She took it from him. The return address said Leonine Investments, 1550 Fifth Avenue, New York. It would contain a quarterly dividend. Leonine Investments was her father’s frozen fish.

  Quickly the shoveling degenerated into a game which involved tossing snow high into the air and watching Garth jump at it, snapping. Rachel brushed the snow from the windshield of the little Japanese station wagon.

  “You’re really going in this?” she asked.

  “Sure. It’s what makes tough guys tough. Right, Adam?”

  “Right.” They leaned on their shovels.

  “Okay, tough guys. Breakfast’s on the table and there’s fresh O.J. in the fridge.” She walked over to Dan to kiss him goodbye. There were dark smudges under his eyes.

  “You didn’t sleep well.”

  An odd look surfaced in his eyes. “Not very.” He lowered his voice so Adam wouldn’t hear. “I even had a nightmare, if you can believe it.”

  “I’m not surprised, with all the booze you drank. What was it about?”

  “Nothing really. I’ll tell you later.”

  “Was Tom Dawkins in it?”

  He laughed. “It wasn’t that scary.”

  She kissed him on the lips. “The run will do you good. Don’t be late for school, Adam.” The school was a few hundred yards away, on the road to town.

  Rachel backed the car out of the drive. As she drove off she saw them in the rearview mirror, running along the road: Dan in the lead with his long-legged lope and Adam falling behind but going as quickly as his little legs would carry him, more graceful than his father. Garth stayed right beside Adam.

  2

  Rachel touched the play button and the girl said, “I gave up the baby because my father beat the shit out of me when he saw it was half black, you know?” It was a problem. Using the fast forward Rachel searched through the tape until she heard the girl saying, “It’s all a load of crap no matter what the social workers tell you.” With her hands on the reels Rachel slowly moved the word “crap” across the tape head, bracketing it with a grease pencil. She lay the tape in the editing block and cut along the two lines with a razor blade. She spliced the tape with a piece of adhesive, rewound to “beat the shit,” isolated “shit” with the grease pencil, excised it and replaced it with “crap.” “Crap” was half an inch longer than “shit”: she supposed it was due to the girl’s drawl. She stuck on the adhesive, rewound and heard, “… father beat the crap out of me.” The intonations matched. “Crap” wasn’t as strong, and it wasn’t what the girl had said when Rachel held the microphone in front of her in the dingy room, but it would play in the high schools of Massachusetts and “shit” wouldn’t. That’s what they meant by editorial judgment.

  Rachel rubbed her eyes. The fluorescent lights hurt them. As did, come to think of it, the flaking yellow paint on the walls of the editing cubicle, and the poster advertising a forgotten concert by a forgotten folk singer. Once, in her last year of high school, she had an orgasm while listening to one of his songs. More than any adolescent longing it had probably been due to the two-hundred-dollar earphones her father had given her, or marijuana bought in the girls’ washroom. The episode seemed incredible to her now.

  Andy Monteith opened the door and leaned in. “Thanks for the party last night, if that’s what it was.” He moved his chubby body a step farther into the room, and lifted his nose inquiringly toward the Ampex.

  “Adoption in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”

  The nose turned up. It did a lot of his talking, like a dog’s tail. “Sounds dry. But I loved the one you did for NPR.”

  “Which one? I’ve done two for NPR.”

  “You know. The one on skin flicks, or whatever excuse you found to air all that titillation.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be titillating—it was meant to be frightening. Now vamoose. I’ve got work to do.”

  The nose drooped and Andy backed out of the room, neglecting to close the door. Everyone remembered skin flicks, no one mentioned commodity futures, a much better piece. Sex sells, even in documentaries for nonprofit radio.

  Blues drifted in from the control room. For some reason WMS, the college radio station where she did her editing, liked to devote mornings to scratchy blues recordings. Bessie Smith was singing:

  I ain’t gonna play no second fiddle

  I’m used to playing lead

  in a threatening voice and young Louis Armstrong was blowing into his cornet as if he couldn’t agree more.

  Rachel threaded the tape through the timer. The standard length for a half-hour documentary was twenty-eight minutes and fifteen seconds. She had thirty-two fifty. It was too much work to do before lunch. S
he left the tape on the machine and went home, as she often did when Dan had no afternoon classes. They would eat in the study while Dan marked papers or read monographs for a while before she lured him into bed. “Just for a quick nap.” There were many of these quick naps during the winter, and often they lasted until Adam came home from school.

  The snow had stopped falling as Rachel drove home. It lay everywhere in puffy pure white carpets, as in the Christmas cards of yesteryear. It made the branches bend and the roofers rich. The whole town was very quiet, and she could hear the deep-tread tires gently compressing the snow beneath. Then the bell on the old white Congregational church rang one peal, signifying 12:15, and the streets filled with hungry students on the way to lunch, and then more classes, study, labs, writing letters home, sleeping, reading comic books, watching TV, drinking beer, smoking marijuana, having sexual encounters, stealing money from the lockers in the gym. The Ephs, they were called, after Colonel Ephraim Williams, a minor performer in the Revolutionary War and founder of the school. An Eph did not have the formidable sound of an Eli, to say nothing of a Sooner, a Razorback or a Fighting Irish; but many parents paid good money to make sure their child became one.

  She passed the airplane hangar that called itself a New England Inn and turned the corner that led by Adam’s school to the house. The new inn had replaced the bona fide one which had become a residence when the college finally began admitting women. In the dark paneled bar of the old inn, on a warm spring night with the birds singing and the waiter dispensing free drinks, Dan had asked her to marry him. She had said yes. The waiter was fired soon after.

  The plow had already been by to wall off the driveway. Rachel left the car by the side of the road, climbed over the snowbank, feeling the snow infiltrate her boots, and walked up the unshoveled path, taking advantage of the footprints that led to and from the house.

  Rachel turned the doorknob and pushed. The door didn’t open, which was strange because they never locked it, not in a small place like Williamstown. She remembered the front-door key she had on the ring that held the car keys. She tried it; the door wasn’t locked, only stuck. Rachel pushed again, harder. The door yielded an inch. She put her shoulder against it. It refused to open until she had strained with all the power in her strong legs. The difficulty was Mrs. Flores lying against it on the other side.

  “Mrs. Flores?” Rachel bent down. Dark red blood was spreading slowly through Mrs. Flores’s iron-gray hair. A pool of it no bigger than a peanut butter cookie had dripped onto the shiny black tile floor, where it quivered with surface tension. Rachel heard a sound from above. She didn’t even stop to discover if Mrs. Flores was breathing.

  “Dan? Dan?” She tried to control her voice as she bolted up the stairs, leaving little pads of snow on the deep blue runner. “Dan?” she called, throwing open the door of one room and then another.

  She found him in the study. Still wearing the red sweatsuit, he knelt on the floor with his back to her, surrounded by a sea of books and papers. Very slowly he turned to face his wife. She saw the gold handle of the letter opener sticking out of his chest. The letter opener she had bought in San Francisco, she thought stupidly. Chinatown.

  “Danny.” Not taking her eyes off him, Rachel ran to the desk, picked up the phone and dialed the operator. No sound came from the other end of the line. Frantically she tapped on the depressor button until she noticed that the line to the wall plug had been cut. It dangled in the air, ending in a fray of copper wire.

  Outside she saw Mrs. Candy shoveling snow. She tore at the window catch but it was jammed. Seizing a dictionary she heaved it through the window with both hands. The glass shattered and landed in the snow without a sound. She leaned into the opening and screamed: “Mrs. Candy. Call the ambulance. My husband is badly hurt. Quickly.” Mrs. Candy stared up at her for a second and ran into her house.

  With a soft groan Dan slumped down on all fours. Rachel gently turned him and propped his back against the wall. She felt his blood on her hands. Despair filled his eyes and he opened and closed his lips as if to speak. Rachel put her ear to his mouth.

  “Adam,” he said. She could barely hear him. And then something else that sounded like, “it can’t happen.”

  “I can’t hear you, darling.” He tried to take a deep breath but could not. She held him. “Oh, Danny; oh, Danny.” He was trying to push her away.

  “Get Adam,” he said in less than a whisper. His vocal chords could not make sound with the tiny volume of air that was passing over them.

  “Yes, darling, after the ambulance comes.” She heard the siren. His hand squeezed her arm with desperate strength.

  “Now, Rachel, now.” He struggled for breath. “Get him now.” His eyes were pleading and his face tense with effort, or pain, or both. Suddenly she understood and felt something that made her whole body shake. The siren was very loud. She tried to find her normal voice.

  “All right, Dan.” She wanted to say something hopeful, to forge a link with the future, but she couldn’t think of a word. Rachel kissed his forehead, feeling a cold dampness on her lips. Slowly she stood up, and left him sitting against the wall with the letter opener in his chest and his eyes staring into the middle distance.

  Rachel ran down the stairs. In the front hall Mrs. Flores sat on a little bentwood chair, dabbing her head carefully with a dish towel.

  “Mrs. Flores, are you all right?” Mrs. Flores murmured something in her own language. Her dark eyes seemed unfocused. “Don’t worry, the ambulance is coming.” When Rachel opened the door she saw it had already arrived. Two young men were carrying a stretcher up the path.

  “Hurry,” she said. “He’s upstairs and he’s been stabbed. And the housekeeper’s in shock.”

  “We always hurry, ma’am,” one of them said as they passed her.

  “Please,” she said. They looked at her for a moment before they entered the house.

  In her mind she began running the block and a half to the school, running along the snowy road as fast as she could. But she continued to stand outside the house. She realized she was holding her breath, had been holding it for some time.

  She let it out and ran. She ran in the tread marks she had left a few minutes before, ran with long swinging strides that risked a slip or a fall. But she didn’t slip. An approaching car honked at her; Rachel stayed in the track and the car pulled to the side of the road, stopped and honked again.

  The schoolhouse, a two-story white frame structure with a parking lot in front and playing fields behind, had a main entrance which Rachel ignored. Automatically she ran to the rear of the building, to the door that led directly to the kindergarten. She turned the handle and burst into the room.

  A dozen children sat at a long table eating lunch and making noise. They looked at her in surprise, stopped eating, and became still. She saw fair faces and dark faces and faces streaked with mayonnaise. She didn’t see Adam’s face.

  “Oh, Mrs. Monette.” Miss Partridge, the tiny white-haired teacher appeared in the doorway of the small kitchen at the rear of the class. She crossed the floor and nudged Rachel toward the windows, away from the children. She spoke in a hoarse whisper.

  “Mrs. Monette, I’m so sorry to hear about your husband.” Miss Partridge’s tongue moved nervously behind her yellow teeth. Her breath smelled of coffee and cigarettes. “The rabbi came and took Adam twenty minutes ago. He should be home by now. I hope someone’s there.” Tentatively she reached out and patted Rachel’s hand.

  “What do you mean, Miss Partridge? What rabbi?”

  Miss Partridge’s liver-spotted bony hands began to tremble. She raised them to her thin chest and held them in a position of prayer. “I’m afraid I don’t remember his name, Mrs. Monette. I’m sorry. I’m not Jewish myself.”

  Rachel grabbed the little woman by the shoulders. “Miss Partridge! What are you talking about?” One of the children started to cry.

  “Please don’t raise your voice, Mrs. Monette. I know how upset
you must be, but it’s not fair to the children.”

  “What rabbi?” In trying to moderate her voice she was squeezing the old woman’s shoulders very hard.

  “Why, the one you sent to take Adam home.” Rachel wanted to shake her and she almost did. Miss Partridge saw it in her eyes and went on quickly. “He said you phoned the synagogue from the radio station and asked if someone could call for Adam.”

  “There is no synagogue in Williamstown, Miss Partridge.” Rachel suddenly pushed her away, thrusting her against the wall, which kept her from falling. Her hands left red stains on Miss Partridge’s white blouse. More children were crying. Miss Partridge’s whole body trembled, afraid of Rachel and afraid of something else as well.

  “Maybe there’s one in North Adams,” she said. Her pointed tongue appeared and moistened her lips.

  “Jesus Christ,” Rachel said. She walked toward the door, suddenly feeling very big and very awkward in the room with the little chairs and the little blankets and the little people. On the windows hung snowmen the children had cut out of thick paper. By the door Rachel saw one with Adam written on it. The snowman held a hockey stick. Rachel took it, folded it carefully and put it in her pocket. The folding seemed to take a very long time. As she went out Miss Partridge said, “He was the religious kind of rabbi, Mrs. Monette, with the black robe and the beard and the funny hat. Like at that wall in Israel.”

  Again Rachel ran.

  Several cars were parked outside the house. She was stunned to see the ambulance still there. How could they be so slow, so irresponsible? The attendants came out of the house, supporting Mrs. Flores on either side as she walked to the ambulance. A well-groomed man carrying a black bag followed them.

  “Mrs. Monette?” He came forward and took her arm. “Better not go in just now.” He looked closely at her, then reached into his bag and quickly fitted a needle into a plastic cartridge of colorless liquid. “Can you take your coat off for me, Mrs. Monette?” he asked gently.