Little Less Than Kind

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “Abby, to disagree is not so terrible.” He took her hand. She squeezed his; she was pleading. He said, “But please, don’t ask me to do my best in your way, darling. Especially when you have said that you can’t do the job at all.”

  “And I was thinking of scolding you,” she said in her strange mixture of humor, and childishness, and truth.

  “Disagree with me,” he invited. “I am only saying that I can act by my own judgment or I can defer to yours, but I can’t do both at once, when they differ.”

  “Oh, mercy,” said Abby. She put her head back. He couldn’t tell what she was thinking. “Don’t leave me,” she murmured.

  He said nothing. He held her hand.

  “Mercy,” she said, “and kindness. He has to know that we love him.”

  What if we don’t? thought David. But he said, “We’ll see what the doctors can do tomorrow.”

  “Yes, tomorrow.” She smiled and sighed.

  David kissed her lightly and left her. She was going to read a while. He went downstairs and into the library and found his own book. Something had been said that started up that glimmer in the recesses of his mind, but it fled again. He wondered if Abby thought that the boy would be healed miraculously, in a minute, tomorrow. He didn’t know what Abby thought. Mercy she advised. Kindness she decreed. Love she assumed. But these were very precious and quite rare and not easily come by. Like honesty. Like courage.

  And there was one thing Abby thought with which he disagreed. God bless her, she thinks that “fighting” breaks people apart. Yes, sometimes. But sometimes, on the contrary. Sometimes, they are revealed to each other. Alas, what always breaks two people apart, or never lets them come together in the first place, is the lie. The condescending lie. Damn it, thought David, all by myself, I am related to that boy. But I’ve been pulling my punches too long. We ought to meet.

  Well, never mind, be quiet, wait for tomorrow. He began to read. The door to the hall was open. His armchair faced the door. If the boy came home, he would say a kind “Good night.”

  He read until eleven o’clock. Nobody disturbed him. David went up to bed.

  Ladd Cunningham came walking under the trees at midnight. It was pleasant to be a lonely shadow, slouching along the sleeping town. Only he was aware.

  All the rest were fools in dusty death.…

  He went around to the terrace door, turned off the downstairs light from the top of the stairs, and walked along the wing, from old habit. He opened the bedroom door and felt for the switch. The shock disoriented him for a moment. Where am I? Panic. Everything was gone. What to grab on to! Then he realized that he was in the guest room, his old room, by mistake. He left the light and stumbled to the other door, and put his own light on.

  Now he was very tired. He fell upon his bed, just as he was. The thing in his pocket was hurting his hip. He lay, inspecting pain.

  He was quiet at first, sitting with the guys at the table. But the joint was jumping and, in all the noise, his silence wasn’t noticed. He was floating, that was the trouble. Trying to grab on, somewhere. Not to anything in this place. But to anything. He had a feeling that something very funny was going on in the world. He kept squeezing in and ballooning out, in a kind of rhythm. He’d squeeze in, feeling desperate, with an inner screaming after what it was that he absolutely had to do. Then he’d balloon out, with a funny feeling of satisfaction. But that didn’t dare last long. He might balloon way, way out—too far. So squeeze. He was beginning to feel sick at his stomach when Ron and Charlie went off to the Gents and Gary said in his ear, “Hey, Ladd, my Uncle Walt was over today. Listen.” (Yes, in the smoke, under the music, listen.) “He checked everything out. Honestly, everything. And your Dad died from a heart attack, actually. Listen, he says you can believe it. So okay?” Gary beamed and began to work his leg to the beat the way musicians did.

  And Ladd grabbed on. Oh ho, just as he had expected! Cover! He grabbed on to something hard. All right! Okay! Nobody else would do it, so he would have to do it.

  He felt better. He kidded around, after that, the secret hard inside. He did a lot of figuring and thinking, without anyone knowing it.

  Going home, he made Charlie let him off in the bad part of town. That was amusing. They didn’t know his secret. They thought they knew what he was after. They had to respect his purpose and his nerve, not only because it went against the rules for good children, but because it really was risky down here. Those houses were filthy. So they shrugged it off. They let him go. They acted bored. They couldn’t say that they were scared.

  But he wasn’t after what they thought (And never had been.) He got what he was after.

  He lay upon the pain for a long time. Then he rolled over and took the object out of his pocket. He put it on the shelf behind his bed, next to the stone. He touched the stone.

  Suddenly he got up, tore off his clothing, went to the bathroom, put on his pajama bottoms, switched the light off.

  He got into bed. His hand groped for the cold stone. Stone cold dead. Left it, and touched the warm knife. The switch-blade. He had known he could find some kid who had one, down in that part of town, and so he had. A skinny kid, with white eyes in the streetlight, who took his money.

  Warm, from his own pocket. Destined for warm flesh. He took it from the shelf and slid it under his pillow and then he was floating again.

  Certainly funny when David said he was scared. You didn’t say that. Sure, you’d get scared … and tear ducts like everybody else. Squeeze. Not too far, the balloon. Couldn’t bear it. That’s what his mother always said.

  He wondered if she was alive.

  The telephone screamed alarm in the night.

  David sat up and put on the light and grabbed the phone before it had rung four times. But Abby, in her own bed, was already up on her elbow, terrified. One did not know, did not know, what might make a telephone scream in the night.

  “Hello,” croaked David.

  A voice was already speaking, insistently. “Is this Mr. Crown?”

  “Yes?”

  “Mr. Crown, this is Justin Lorimer.”

  “Oh. Oh, Justin.” David repeated the name for Abby’s benefit and saw her sink back and hold her hands to her pounding heart.

  “I’m sorry if I woke you but I have to know what’s going on.”

  “Yes, that’s all right.”

  “Dad just called me. He says the police are looking for my sister.”

  “Yes … they—”

  “Why?” said Justin.

  Oh, that bright force! There would be no fooling this one, David thought. He began to cough.

  “Mr. Crown?”

  “Yes, Justin.” David coughed. “Minute. I’m half asleep. What did your father …?”

  “He is in a state,” said Justin rather impatiently. “I guess he got himself worked up, he had to talk. He told me why she went. But he said you’d been a big help. So I want to know from you, why the police?”

  David put the instrument aside to cough again.

  In Ladd’s room, Ladd lay in the dark, listening. He had picked up his extension on the third ring.

  ‘I’m coming home,” said Justin.

  “The police will find her,” David said, strangling back his coughing fit. “Better than any of us can. Or she’ll come home by herself. But to answer your question …”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The thought was … although I’d say the danger was past by now … that she might have been in such a … state … as to harm herself. It just seemed wise to try.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Justin said calmly. “Did Ladd Cunningham tell that story?”

  “The … old man is in the hospital. I hope to see him and make sure, one way or the other, tomorrow. But about that story … I have already talked to people …”

  “Dad told me. Thanks. That part doesn’t worry me. Who cares if some idiot wants to tell a lousy lie and make a damn fool of himself? But, see, if it was Ladd … Well, Felic
ia thought he was the greatest.”

  “She did?”

  “I told her to stay away from him.” Justin began to speak with some heat. “Oh no, she thought she was the only one who could understand him. She was all set to go hunting around, Saturday night, so she could find him and hold his little hand and listen to all his little troubles. I told her she was stupid. Oh no, somebody had to talk to him and let him talk.” Justin became cool again. “What worries me, if he did a thing like that to her, it could have hit her pretty hard. She was making such a big hero out of him.”

  “I see. I see,” said David in misery. (Rafe had got it backwards, then? One ought to have suspected.) “But they haven’t found her. She should be all right.”

  “Maybe.” Justin took the reassurance skeptically.

  “She left a note,” said David, in a stronger voice. “I saw it. She did say a couple of days.”

  “And that was on Monday?”

  “Right.”

  “Tomorrow is only Wednesday. Well, thanks a lot, sir. Probably she’s got more sense. He sure isn’t worth it. I’ll see you.”

  “Justin, need you …?”

  “My father is in a flap,” said Justin. “He isn’t the most competent person in the world. And you’ve got troubles of your own.”

  Justin hung up.

  David, holding the phone, a bit bemused, heard distinctly the click of an extension cutting off. It was Ladd in Ladd’s room, or a burglar in the library. But there was no burglar in the library.

  “Justin’s terribly upset?” Abby begged this not to be so.

  “He says he is coming home.”

  “Oh, that long, long drive,” Abby said. “Oh, dear!” She sat up. “Oh, David, look! The light! Look … in the guest room.” They could see across to the other wing. “Why is that? Is Ladd in?”

  “He is in,” said David. “I’ll go turn off the light. I’ll see.”

  “Oh, please do,” said Abby trembling.

  David didn’t bother with a robe. He went out into the upstairs hall and around the elbow of the house, guided by lighting streaming from the bedroom door behind him. The guest room door was open, shedding light. Nobody was in there.

  David clicked the switch. Now he stood in half dark. The other door was closed and no light rimmed it along the cracks. No sound within.

  But the boy was in there, and awake, and he had listened. David hesitated. A very strong impulse took hold of him. He must open that door. He must speak. But he hesitated. Don’t meddle, he said to himself, remembering his expert’s advice. So he did not.…

  But yet … David made his way back … but yet.… If that was my boy, or one of my girls, in such deep trouble behind that door, could anything keep me out?

  The boy’s mother said, “Is he all right, David?”

  “Everything is quiet,” he told her.

  Back in his bed, he turned his thoughts to Justin’s long drive, and he knew what he had better do to Ladd’s car in the morning. He had better immobilize it. Suggest this to Abby?

  David rolled. Damn it, am I his father now, or am I not? You can’t be two different things at once. It’ll drive you nuts.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  David got to the hospital at 9:30 on Wednesday morning, but he was not allowed to see old Mr. Harper. It was out of visiting hours. Furthermore, the patient was not reacting as well as had been hoped, so he could have no visitor but his wife and she only between two and four. So sorry.

  David had no argument. So he drove to the little white cottage and found old Mrs. Harper. The timid little lady was in a state of anxiety, over which she had pasted a stubborn hope. Yes, she would try to remember, and if the chance came, yes, she would show the photograph to Mr. Harper. Mr. Harper was going to be all right. It was just a matter of time. He would have to be careful, perhaps, but she and Mr. Harper would not mind that.

  David could see, in her, Abby’s way. Hold on, with muscle and nerve. Insist. Insist that what you want is so. Then the old man’s feet would be again on the single path of peace, the well-pruned narrow way to their survival in this brawling world that grew younger and younger all around them. He went away, sad for her, and quite sure that she would forget.

  Ten o’clock. Could he spend an hour in the office? No, better not.

  He thought, It is like having a bomb in the house, the mechanism of which you do not understand, so that you had better not tinker with it, yet you cannot go away and leave it and you cannot throw it out. A hell of a note!

  It was a quarter after the hour when he turned into the drive and braked his car in a hurry. The Cadillac had been backed out of the garage so that it stood like a dam across the way. Dingy from disuse, it looked derelict and strangely squatty. David walked to it. All four tires were flat. Three of them seemed to have been slashed with a knife. Hob Cunningham’s car was immovably in the way.

  David went in at the kitchen door. “Cleona, what happened?”

  “Mr. Ladd, he fit to be tied when his automobile won’t go. He bound he’ll take his daddy’s. But it won’t go, either. Seems like them tires all busted.” She gave her report calmly, but there was fear in her eye.

  “Where is he now?”

  “He up in his room. He won’t let me in to make the bed.”

  “Where is Miss Abby?”

  “Oh, she out on the terrace, now.”

  “I didn’t see her.”

  “She there. She sitting in the corner. I’m real glad you come home, Mr. Crown. Miss Abby, she say to bring some good eatings over to poor Mr. Rafe Lorimer. But I didn’t want to go and leave her.” There was the faintest question in the last sentence.

  “Good for you,” he said.

  Her hands went to a round tray on which a napkin covered something in the shape of a mound. Her hands were nervous.

  “I’m here now.” He nodded comfort.

  He hurried through the house and out upon the terrace. Abby was, indeed, sitting in a corner, an especially shady spot beyond the chimney. She wore a white dress and sat in a white chair knitting on a sequined sweater.

  “Good morning again. I only just came down. Isn’t it warm?” said Abby, all together.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Of course.” She bent to her work and David looked down at the top of her head, Oh, Abby, darling liar! Sitting in the deep shade on a cool fresh morning, where you cannot see the Cadillac. But you could not miss it from our bedroom, Just holding, insisting. Nothing frightening, nothing ugly, must happen or have happened.

  He said, “I’m going up to talk to Ladd.”

  “Oh, should you?” The puckered brow. The troubled eyes. “David, you look so big and stern. Please, you mustn’t scold him.”

  “For what, Abby?” he asked quietly.

  Her lids fluttered. She abandoned the lie. “After all, you did something to his car. Surely you can understand.”

  “That doesn’t make it right for him to damage your property.”

  “But, darling.” she cried, “I don’t care. I love him.”

  “Ah, but then you should care.”

  “No, David. I beg of you. You mustn’t upset him. Not now. Aaron is coming.”

  “I don’t intend to upset anyone.”

  “You are upsetting me,” she wailed. “I’m trying so hard to be calm … and to eat … eat the idea that my son is sick in this terrible way. I’m so confused and worried. I need you.”

  (A rock, am I? thought David. Or a piece of putty in those pretty helpless hands? Oh, Hob old friend, what were you?)

  While he pondered, she dropped her hands and the work on her lap and said, “David, I know you’ve tried very hard and been so patient. But you don’t love my son. How could you? You are not responsible for his behavior, either. How could you be? Just please … go on being …?”

  “Patient? Kind?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  But David thought, What am I?

  “I was going to do better than that, Abby,” he said, “ac
cording to my lights. It seems to me that I committed myself not to kid him. So I think I owe him an apology for what I did to his car, without his knowledge and without explanation. I am also going to tell him that those doctors are coming.”

  “Oh, David, no! Please … he won’t like it! Why should you?”

  “Because …” (David was going to say, Because we are setting a nice little trap for him here, conniving at it behind his back. Oh for his own good, oh yes, and in mercy and kindness and love—of a sort. But it smells like a kind of betrayal. And it is condescending. And I won’t do it. I will maintain my own ways. He couldn’t say all that.) He said, rather sadly, “Because I am responsible for my behavior, Abby.”

  “But, David, after all, you are not—”

  “Not his father?”

  “That’s true.”

  “I have married his mother. I live in the same house. I am his elder. I am also a male. I think all that obliges me, enough.”

  She said, “He might …”

  “It’s between us,” David said gently. “We’ve met, Abby.”

  She looked off at the roses and her throat worked.

  He went into the house.

  Ladd was on the stairs, looking down morosely.

  David looked up and said, “Good morning, Ladd. I should have told you. I didn’t want you driving off to parts unknown this morning. Dr. Silver and another doctor are coming to talk to us all.”

  The boy looked down, dull of eye.

  “I had to go out, you see,” said David. “That is, I thought I had. But Mr. Harper can’t be seen yet.”

  “Harper?”

  “The old man.”

  “The one in the car?”

  “That you talked to.”

  “Yes, about the Lorimers.”

  “Why did you?”

  “I … don’t remember why.” The boy was slack, spiritless. He was disheveled. His clothes looked slept in. “I didn’t know where you were,” he mumbled.

  David took note of his condition and it seemed to him to be symptomatic. He said, “You go up and down, don’t you?”

  “Well, it’s …” The boy took his hand off the bannister and put his palms parallel. He moved them near, then apart. “It’s more—in and out,” he said and then, pitifully, “You know?”