by Gil Brewer
“Yes. Well, we’ll ride into town, how’s that? Have to take the old gal along. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Sure.” I could feel myself relax.
“Yes. Then we’ll come back here and eat. I’d like to show you around. Tomorrow we’ll go to the lake.”
“Be right with you.” I hurried upstairs and into my room to get Madge’s letter from beneath the blotter.
The picture of Petra lay face up on the center of the desk. Something tense and slow tightened inside my chest, like black thread slowly winding on a spool.
I got the letter to Madge, found my pipe and tobacco pouch, and went on downstairs.
Petra and the old lady waited in the hall. “Ready?” Petra asked.
“Yes,” I told her. “I’m ready.”
The old woman watched Petra, and her eyes glowed in the daytime just as they did at night.
Chapter Six
WE DROVE between hills through autumn. Petra had insisted that I sit in front with her. Verne’s mother was perched in the middle of the back seat. Twice I looked around at her expressionless yet sly face. I wanted to mention the picture. Several times I nearly did, but I couldn’t, quite. I felt she knew. It was a large car, black, a Buick. Petra drove at a steady sixty.
“We couldn’t talk so well with her up here, you see?”
“I guess that’s right. If she doesn’t mind.”
“She put up a fuss. But what the hell?” She glanced at me. Each time she moved her right leg, the skirt parted a bit more. I avoided looking toward her, but I felt compelled to.
“It’s so nice to ride,” Verne’s mother said. “We take one every day, hey, Petra?” The laugh. The dry rustling of leaves with chipmunks or mice skittering among them. “Hey, Petra?”
“Yes!” Petra shouted. She was biting her lip and the car’s speed increased. Then we were in the small town of Allayne. A long, elm-shrouded main street. The business section was about four or five blocks long. We went to the post office and I mailed the letter to Madge. Allayne seemed a quiet, peaceful town. There was a courthouse with a silver dome and the sun gleamed on it. The clock on the city hall read eleven-thirty as we headed back out of town.
“Wonder how Verne’s making out,” I said.
“Don’t bother,” Petra said. “I mean, don’t trouble yourself about him. You’re on a vacation, remember? Verne’s had bad luck. He’ll have to work it out himself.”
“I wish there were something I could do.”
“There’s nothing. There’s the lake, over there—see?” She nodded toward the left. A faint patch of blue water showed momentarily between two hills, like a sliver of glass. “We’ll go there tomorrow. We’ll have to take her with us.” The car’s speed increased.
“Probably her only pleasure.”
“No, Alex. Her pleasure is spying on me. She follows me around. She hates me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know why. She’s bad, evil, Alex. I wish to God she’d die—die!”
“She will,” I said.
“Now, though, now.”
“She’s just a harmless old woman, Petra. Sometimes old people become dominant, like that.” I wasn’t saying exactly what I meant. I wasn’t saying that I wanted to reach out and touch her hair….
“She’s vicious. I’m a nurse, that’s all, a nurse. Left out here with that harridan.” She laughed and we didn’t speak again until she parked the car behind the house by the garage. Then she said, “You’ll see what I mean about her. You can’t help but see.”
We both helped the old woman out of the car. Petra leaned close to me with her arm outstretched, and for one long moment her right breast pressed full, round, and hard against my arm. At the instant of contact she looked straight at me and her eyes said, Yes, yes, yes!
I turned, went into the house. I wanted to run. I went into the study and had a drink and closed my eyes and saw the red taillight of the taxi winking around the corner.
“She saw that.”
I turned. Standing in the doorway, Petra watched me.
“Who saw what?”
“Mother. She saw that at the car.” Her eyes were bold. She was too bold, yet at the same time oversecretive. All wrong. “You’ll see now,” she went on. “There’ll be no rest.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I lied. She was making something out of nothing.
“Yes. We touched and she saw it.”
“Oh, that. It was—”
She smiled. “You do know, don’t you? I was beginning to think you were immune.” She unhooked her red skirt, ripped it off savagely. “It’s too hot for this. Yes, you know, and she saw it all. She’s got eyes like a cat. There’ll be trouble now.”
“But, Petra!”
“You don’t know her, I tell you. She makes mountains out of molehills.”
“Aren’t you doing just that, Petra?”
She dampened her lips with her tongue, shook her head slowly. “I’m afraid not, Alex.” Turning, she vanished from the study doorway. I heard her walking down the hall.
… and Alex, it’s almost like writing to a lover. Because I have no lover, you see. But then, I shouldn’t talk like that, should I? Verne says you embarrass easily.
• • •
… feel lonely? I mean, among trees, like, when even others are around? Chicago can’t be lonely, though, can it? Funny you aren’t married. Verne says you’re quite a guy with the gals! That why? I mean, I’ll bet you have some time!
• • •
… mind my writing so often? It’s really nice here, but it’s rather quiet, though I like the quiet. There’s a big old apple orchard behind the house where I walk. Let you in on a secret, Alex. I talk to you there. I mean, you know what I mean. Verne isn’t much for talking—much for doing some of the things I like to do. We do wish you’d come, Alex.
And that afternoon I saw the apple orchard.
“Take my hand.”
“What?”
“Take my hand, I say.”
Her fingers were tense, her palm slightly damp, warm.
“We’ll cross the creek here, on these stones. We can both go at once. Come on, Alex.”
It was a small creek, twisting below a knoll at the edge of the orchard. Beyond was a grassy knoll sparse with hickory trees and, from where we stood, three pines.
“I thought you wanted to show me the orchard.”
“Come on, Alex. Cross the creek.”
We did. Twice our bodies brushed.
We started through the trees over the knoll. There were more pines and a large sycamore.
“We’ll go on the other side of that knoll,” she said. There was something abrupt, terse, in the tone of her voice. “It’s cooler there. See? It’s cooler already. A breeze comes down off the hills. Always that way. Hurry.”
“But Petra—”
She didn’t release my hand. We reached the top of the knoll. From where we stood the house showed only in red-bricked tiny patches of distance between trees. It was cool and shady, which was good, because the afternoon sun was very hot as it sometimes is in Indian summer.
We paused and she turned to me and said, “Kiss me, Alex.” Her hair streamed to one side of her head, thick and full of vagrant sunlight. Her lips glistened, her eyes were molten black.
“Petra …”
“Please, Alex. Don’t wait now. Talk later, if you must, but kiss me. Don’t lie. You want to and I want you to. Don’t wait, I couldn’t bear that now, Alex!”
“Petra!”
She rushed against me. I stepped back, but I was against the trunk of the sycamore. She pressed against me, her hands moving slowly along my throat, her head flung far back, eyes wide, lips parted.
“Alex!”
Her lips were all-yielding, her body strained, tense, hot with nervousness; her fingers bit into my shoulders. I felt the moving curve of her back and the whole vibrant length of her as my mouth closed over hers.
Then I had her against the tree. Her mouth slid away from
mine along my cheek as she pushed away from me, her hands pushing against my chest, and she moaned.
I stepped back. “Petra, good Lord!”
She watched me, leaning back against the trunk of the tree. Her lips were parted as she breathed, her eyes heavy-lidded. Her hands lay on either side of her against the tree trunk, trembling. “It’s as I thought,” she said. “Just as I thought. As I knew it would be.”
I should have struck her then. I should have struck her and run. Because the fuse was lit now—the long hot fuse that would blow me straight to hell.
Chapter Seven
SHE did not move from against the trunk of the sycamore. My own breathing was as sharp as hers. “Petra,” I said. “Why? What happened to you?”
“It was the waiting, I guess. That’s all.”
“The waiting?” She was making too much of a kiss. But perhaps I was, too.
“Yes, the waiting. We both wanted that, we both want more. It’s been silly to waste so much time. Time is too precious.”
“But you’re Verne’s wife.”
“Yes. Verne often said you were his best friend, maybe the only real friend he ever had. Because you disregarded things other men wouldn’t put up with. So he never had any real friend, other than you. I’m his wife, yes. But you and me—that’s something different again.”
“Then why did you push me away?”
“Because—not all at once.”
“Petra, this means I’ll have to leave. It couldn’t possibly go on.”
She laughed. Shortly. Then she threw her head back and laughed still harder. She sobered. “You won’t go, Alex. I won’t let you.”
“Petra—”
“You wanted that. You want more—you want me, and you know it. Why be childish?”
We stared at each other. The sharp shadows of leaves lay across her bare legs, her red halter and shorts, her arms, and sunlight still sought and found her hair.
“You’re very bold.”
“Am I? Listen, Alex. I’ve felt like this for over two years and you tell me I’m bold. Why did you come here? To play checkers with that shell of a man? With what actually never was, never will be? He’s shot, Verne is.” She smiled. “Don’t tell me that. You read my letters, you aren’t blind.”
She stepped up to me and took my hand, lifted it, laid my palm in her hair. My fingers clutched instinctively, but I jerked my hand away.
“There,” she said. “You wanted that, didn’t you?”
“Petra. That picture. Why did you put that picture on the desk in my room?”
“Because you wanted that, too.” She moved closer to me, stared at me, and the faint, elusive odor of her perfume recalled three years of jasmine-scented mail. “I watched you,” she said. “You ate it up with your eyes, Alex. It was all you could do to put that picture of me down on the desk—where Verne laid it face down after he picked it up from the floor, where he’d thrown it.” She paused. “You know,” she said, glancing away, “I think you really wanted to steal it.”
I grabbed her waist and she chuckled. “Really, Alex. I mean that. You were like a small boy all alone in a candy store.”
I flung her arm down, turned, and started down the knoll toward the creek.
“Wait!”
I waited. She reached me. “Admit it.”
“I won’t admit anything.”
“Verne told me about you—about how honest you are, to the point of mania, almost. All right, you’re like that. You’re too serious and you’re overhonest. Then you’re probably being tortured right now. You admit it!”
I hit her. Across the face with the back of my hand. She moved with the blow like a boxer. I hit her again, the heel of my hand bouncing off her cheek.
“Yes,” she said. “I was right. Do you see now why it was silly to wait? I was going to wait. Take my time. Because I didn’t want to frighten you off. Verne being your friend, and all that rot. Go ahead, hit me again. It won’t change anything.”
“Only one day,” I said.
“No. That’s just it, Alex. It isn’t one day. It’s over three years. Two years, anyway, and that’s long enough. Too long.” Something came into her eyes, something like tears, only they couldn’t be tears, and she walked rapidly away down the knoll.
I watched her cross the creek, then I crossed. She didn’t wait for me until she was nearly through the orchard. Then she waited and we walked through the ankle-deep grass together.
“Will you take my hand again?” she said softly.
“No. I won’t take your hand. Now or ever.”
She looked at me and smiled. “O.K. Straighten out now, Alex. I told you she had eyes like a cat. We’re in sight of the house.”
• • •
I closed and locked the door to my room and sat on the bed. I could still taste her lips, feel them, tremulous, surrendering, and offering and giving all at the same time.
But this wasn’t all of it. I felt this wasn’t all. A kiss—a mere single afternoon kiss. Nothing more?
God, yes. Too much more always. The all-impending more that lay even beyond imagination.
As I stripped my clothes off, I realized I was soaked with perspiration. And I knew with a sensation of conscious guilt that the only reason I hadn’t taken Petra out there this afternoon was because she was Verne’s wife. I had wanted her, I wanted her now.
I had come that close to taking her—beneath the sycamore, on the knoll.
It was bad enough now. I had to leave. I couldn’t stay on, not with that … And yet, she pushed me away from her.
“Because—not all at once.”
I went in and took a shower and shaved and came back to the bedroom. I dressed. I put on a pair of crepe-soled shoes, the same gray flannels, and a clean white shirt. I looked through my shirts. They were all white. I wasn’t a very colorful fellow. Just a guy who had damn near attacked his best friend’s wife. No, not attacked. It wouldn’t have been that. Or would it?
I was combing my hair when somebody knocked at the door. I opened the door.
“Hello, Alex. This came for you. It was in the mailbox. I guess nobody looked this morning.”
It was from Madge. In a white envelope. There was no perfume. Only a faint trace of powder, and a very faint smudge of lipstick where she had dampened the flap with her tongue.
I felt her hand on my arm.
“Don’t,” I said.
“All right.” Her hand went away. She wore a white dress and it fitted like a white glove. With the black of her hair and eyes, and the dark red of her lips, and everything, she was a very beautiful woman.
“I’m sorry I hit you.”
“It’s all right. Only swollen a little. See?”
“I don’t want to see.”
“All right.”
“But I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“You were talking to me that way, that’s all. It was the only way you could tell me without committing yourself by voice.”
“Look out, or I’ll hit you again.” I didn’t smile and neither did she. We looked at each other, then I looked down at the envelope in my hand. I tapped it against my other hand.
“So her name’s Madge?”
“Yes.”
“How nice. Is it too bad you had to meet me?”
“No. It’s not too bad.”
“You’re still trying not to admit it.”
“I’m not trying not to do anything.”
She smiled now and she was a bold, beautiful woman.
“I’ll have to leave,” I said. “I’m trying to be honest.”
“You don’t have to try, darling.”
“Don’t call me that. I mean it. I’d better leave now, tonight.” I really meant it. Just holding the letter from Madge was enough, and with Verne, too. “Verne is my friend,” I said. “I know you don’t understand. I don’t ask you to. I wouldn’t have understood myself once. But I do now. Maybe it’s wrong, but it’s how I feel.”
“You have the mos
t peculiar way of admitting things.”
“I told you I wasn’t admitting anything.”
“Well, for the very reason that Verne is your friend—for the very reason that you two went through a war together, and saved each other’s lives, and all that—that’s why you can’t leave, Alex.”
“Can’t I?”
“No. Don’t be thick as well as honest, damn you!” She wiped her palms on her hips, then pushed her hair back. When she released her hair, it flowed around her shoulders like black smoke. Something was happening inside me; something I couldn’t control.
“What do you mean, ‘thick’?”
“What would Verne think if you left now? What would that old witch tell him? He’s suspicious, Alex, as it is. He’s kept me cooped up here. I’ve never been able to go anyplace. If you left now, he’d know. How would you feel then? Your bloody conscience would knock you dead.”
She kept jamming that knife home. But all the time, I knew it wasn’t that alone. I knew there was something else. But she was right about Verne—what he might think about us.
I said, “I told Verne I should go back home.”
“But he said not to, didn’t he?”
“You’re crazy to try something like this.”
“I’m not trying anything. It’s there, that’s all.”
“What’s the matter with Verne?”
“His business has got him down. He’s knocked himself out. Listen, you don’t know what I’ve been through. I’m watched by that old woman. Watched all the time. I never see anybody. I’m all alone in this lousy house with that crawling old woman!”
“Take it easy. Why don’t you go out?”
“Because Verne says I have to be with her.” She placed both palms against the sides of her face and sucked in her cheeks. Her voice was very low; she was obviously keeping it under control with effort. “Wherever I go, whatever I do, have done, for years, she’s with me. I’ll go mad, Alex. Oh, God, I’ll go mad!”
“You must have done something to—”
Petra turned. The old woman was slowly climbing the stairs. Just the top of her head showed, ascending into our line of vision with an almost awesome slowness.
“Quick,” Petra said. “Close the door. And for God’s sake, forget about leaving!” She went off down the hall. I closed the door on her perfume, but some of it oozed in with me. A funny thing. She wore so little of it that if you tried to smell it, you couldn’t Yet it was always there, faint, elusive.
