Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives: Stories from the Trailblazers of Domestic Suspense

by Unknown

  “I know what,” Marion suggested, “let’s you and I go down to the creek and count waterbugs.”

  The offer was a sacrifice for Marion because her favorite quiz program was on and she liked to answer the questions along with the contestants. “How about that?”

  Cathy knew all about the quiz program; she’d seen it a hundred times, had watched the moving mouths claim her mother’s eyes and ears and mind. “I counted the waterbugs yesterday.”

  “Well, minnows, then.”

  “You’ll scare them away.”

  “Oh, will I?” Marion laughed self-consciously, rather relieved that Cathy had refused her offer and was clearly and definitely a little guilty about the relief. “Don’t you scare them?”

  “No. They think I’m another minnow because they’re used to me.”

  “Maybe they could get used to me, too.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  When Cathy went off down the canyon by herself, Marion realized, in a vaguely disturbing way, that the child had politely but firmly rejected her mother’s company. It wasn’t until dinnertime that she found out the reason why.

  “The Smiths,” Cathy said, “have an Austin-Healey.”

  Cathy, like most girls, had never shown any interest in cars, and her glib use of the name moved her parents to laughter.

  The laughter encouraged Cathy to elaborate. “An Austin-Healey makes a lot of noise—like Daddy’s lawn mower.”

  “I don’t think the company would appreciate a commercial from you, young lady,” Paul said. “Are the Smiths all moved in?”

  “Oh, yes. I helped them.”

  “Is that a fact? And how did you help them?”

  “I sang two songs. And then we danced and danced.”

  Paul looked half pleased, half puzzled. It wasn’t like Cathy to perform willingly in front of people. During the last Christmas concert at the school she’d left the stage in tears and hidden in the cloak room . . . Well, maybe her shyness was only a phase and she was finally getting over it.

  “They must be very nice people,” he said, “to take time out from getting settled in a new house to play games with a little girl.”

  Cathy shook her head. “It wasn’t games. It was real dancing—like on Ed Sullivan.”

  “As good as that, eh?” Paul said, smiling. “Tell me about it.”

  “Mrs. Smith is a nightclub dancer.”

  Paul’s smile faded, and a pulse began to beat in his left temple like a small misplaced heart. “Oh? You’re sure about that, Cathy?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what does Mr. Smith do?”

  “He’s a baseball player.”

  “You mean that’s what he does for a living?” Marion asked. “He doesn’t work in an office like Daddy?”

  “No, he just plays baseball. He always wears a baseball cap.”

  “I see. What position does he play on the team?” Paul’s voice was low.

  Cathy looked blank.

  “Everybody on a ball team has a special thing to do. What does Mr. Smith do?”

  “He’s a batter.”

  “A batter, eh? Well, that’s nice. Did he tell you this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cathy,” Paul said, “I know you wouldn’t deliberately lie to me, but sometimes you get your facts a little mixed up.”

  He went on in this vein for some time but Cathy’s story remained unshaken: Mrs. Smith was a nightclub dancer, Mr. Smith a professional baseball player, they loved children, and they never watched television.

  “That, at least, must be a lie,” Marion said to Paul later when she saw the rectangular light of the television set shining in the Smiths’ picture window. “As for the rest of it, there isn’t a nightclub within fifty miles, or a professional ball club within two hundred.”

  “She probably misunderstood. It’s quite possible that at one time Mrs. Smith was a dancer of sorts and that he played a little baseball.”

  Cathy, in bed and teetering dizzily on the brink of sleep, wondered if she should tell her parents about the Smiths’ child—the one who didn’t go to school.

  She didn’t tell them; Marion found out for herself the next morning after Paul and Cathy had gone. When she pulled back the drapes in the living room and opened the windows, she heard the sharp slam of a screen door from across the canyon and saw a small child come out on the patio of the new house. At that distance she couldn’t tell whether it was a boy or a girl. Whichever it was, the child was quiet and well behaved; only the occasional slam of the door shook the warm, windless day.

  The presence of the child, and the fact that Cathy hadn’t mentioned it, gnawed at Marion’s mind all day. She questioned Cathy about it as soon as she came home.

  “You didn’t tell me the Smiths have a child.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know why not.”

  “Is it a boy or a girl?”

  “Girl.”

  “How old?”

  Cathy thought it over carefully, frowning up at the ceiling. “About ten.”

  “Doesn’t she go to school?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “She doesn’t want to.”

  “That’s not a very good reason.”

  “It’s her reason,” Cathy said flatly. “Can I go out to play now?”

  “I’m not sure you should. You look a little feverish. Come here and let me feel your forehead.”

  Cathy’s forehead was cool and moist, but her cheeks and the bridge of her nose were very pink, almost as if she’d been sunburned.

  “You’d better stay inside,” Marion said, “and watch some cartoons.”

  “I don’t like cartoons.”

  “You used to.”

  “I like real people.”

  She means the Smiths, of course, Marion thought as her mouth tightened. “People who dance and play baseball all the time?”

  If the sarcasm had any effect on Cathy she didn’t show it. After waiting until Marion had become engrossed in her quiz program, Cathy lined up all her dolls in her room and gave a concert for them, to thunderous applause.

  “Where are your old Navy binoculars?” Marion asked Paul when she was getting ready for bed.

  “Oh, somewhere in the sea chest, I imagine. Why?”

  “I want them.”

  “Not thinking of spying on the neighbors, are you?”

  “I’m thinking of just that,” Marion said grimly.

  The next morning, as soon as she saw the Smith child come out on the patio, Marion went downstairs to the storage room to search through the sea chest. She located the binoculars and was in the act of dusting them off when the telephone started to ring in the living room. She hurried upstairs and said breathlessly, “Hello?”

  “Mrs. Borton?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Miss Park speaking, Cathy’s teacher.”

  Marion had met Miss Park several times at P.T.A. meetings and report-card conferences. She was a large, ruddy-faced and unfailingly cheerful young woman—the kind, as Paul said, you wouldn’t want to live with but who’d be nice to have around in an emergency. “How are you, Miss Park?”

  “Oh, fine, thank you, Mrs. Borton. I meant to call you yesterday but things were a bit out of hand around here, and I knew there was no great hurry to check on Cathy; she’s such a well-behaved little girl.”

  Even Miss Park’s loud, jovial voice couldn’t cover up the ominous sound of the word check. “I don’t think I quite understand. Why should you check on Cathy?”

  “Purely routine. The school doctor and the health department like to keep records of how many cases of measles or flu or chicken pox are going the rounds. Right now it looks like the season for mumps. Is Cathy all right?”
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  “She seemed a little feverish yesterday afternoon when she got home from school, but she acted perfectly normal when she left this morning.”

  Miss Park’s silence was so protracted that Marion became painfully conscious of things she wouldn’t otherwise have noticed—the weight of the binoculars in her lap, the thud of her own heartbeat in her ears. Across the canyon the Smith child was playing quietly and alone on the patio. There is definitely something the matter with that girl, Marion thought. Perhaps I’d better not let Cathy go over there anymore, she’s so imitative. “Miss Park, are you still on the line? Hello? Hello—”

  “I’m here,” Miss Park’s voice seemed fainter than usual, and less positive. “What time did Cathy leave the house this morning?”

  “Eight, as usual.”

  “Did she take the school bus?”

  “Of course. She always does.”

  “Did you see her get on?”

  “I kissed her goodbye at the front door,” Marion said. “What’s this all about, Miss Park?”

  “Cathy hasn’t been at school for two days, Mrs. Borton.”

  “Why, that’s absurd, impossible! You must be mistaken.” But even as she was speaking the words, Marion was raising the binoculars to her eyes: the little girl on the Smiths’ patio had a straw curtain of hair and eyes as blue as the periwinkles along the creek banks.

  “Mrs. Borton, I’m not likely to be mistaken about which of my children are in class or not.”

  “No. No, you’re—you’re not mistaken, Miss Park. I can see Cathy from here—she’s over at the neighbor’s house.”

  “Good. That’s a load off my mind.”

  “Off yours, yes,” Marion said. “Not mine.”

  “Now we mustn’t become excited, Mrs. Borton. Don’t make too much of this incident before we’ve had a chance to confer. Suppose you come and talk to me during my lunch hour and bring Cathy along. We’ll all have a friendly chat.”

  But it soon became apparent, even to the optimistic Miss Park, that Cathy didn’t intend to take part in any friendly chat. She stood by the window in the classroom, blank-eyed, mute, unresponsive to the simplest questions, refusing to be drawn into any conversation even about her favorite topic, the Smiths. Miss Park finally decided to send Cathy out to play in the schoolyard while she talked to Marion alone.

  “Obviously,” Miss Park said, enunciating the word very distinctly because it was one of her favorites, “obviously, Cathy’s got a crush on this young couple and has concocted a fantasy about belonging to them.”

  “It’s not so obvious what my husband and I are going to do about it.”

  “Live through it, the same as other parents. Crushes like this are common at Cathy’s age. Sometimes the object is a person, a whole family, even a horse. And, of course, to Cathy a nightclub dancer and a baseball player must seem very glamorous indeed. Tell me, Mrs. Borton, does she watch television a great deal?”

  Marion stiffened. “No more than any other child.”

  Oh dear, Miss Park thought sadly, they all do it; the most confirmed addicts are always the most defensive. “I just wondered,” she said. “Cathy likes to sing to herself and I’ve never heard such a repertoire of television commercials.”

  “She picks things up very fast.”

  “Yes. Yes, she does indeed.” Miss Park studied her hands, which were always a little pale from chalk dust and were even paler now because she was angry—at the child for deceiving her, at Mrs. Borton for brushing aside the television issue, at herself for not preventing, or at least anticipating, the current situation, and perhaps most of all at the Smiths who ought to have known better than to allow a child to hang around their house when she should obviously be in school.

  “Don’t put too much pressure on Cathy about this,” she said finally, “until I talk the matter over with the school psychologist. By the way, have you met the Smiths, Mrs. Borton?”

  “Not yet,” Marion said grimly. “But believe me, I intend to.”

  “Yes, I think it would be a good idea for you to talk to them and make it clear that they’re not to encourage Cathy in this fantasy.”

  The meeting came sooner than Marion expected.

  She waited at the school until classes were dismissed, then she took Cathy into town to do some shopping. She had parked the car and she and Cathy were standing hand in hand at a corner waiting for a traffic light to change; Marion was worried and impatient, Cathy still silent, unresisting, inert, as she had been ever since Marion had called her home from the Smiths’ patio.

  Suddenly, Marion felt the child’s hand tighten in a spasm of excitement. Cathy’s face had turned so pink it looked ready to explode and with her free hand she was waving violently at two people in a small cream-colored sports car—a very pretty young woman with blonde hair in the driver’s seat, and beside her a young man wearing a wide friendly grin and a baseball cap. They both waved back at Cathy just before the lights changed and then the car roared through the intersection.

  “The Smiths!” Cathy shouted, jumping up and down in a frenzy. “That was the Smiths.”

  “Sssh, not so loud. People will—”

  “But it was the Smiths!”

  “Hurry up before the light changes.”

  The child didn’t hear. She stood as if rooted to the curb, staring after the cream-colored car.

  With a little grunt of impatience Marion picked her up, carried her across the road, and let her down quite roughly on the other side. “There. If you’re going to act like a baby, I’ll carry you like a baby.”

  “I saw the Smiths!”

  “All right. What are you so excited about? It’s not very unusual to meet someone in town whom you know.”

  “It’s unusual to meet them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is.” The color was fading from Cathy’s cheeks, but her eyes still looked bedazzled, quite as if they’d seen a miracle.

  “I’m sure they’re very unique people,” Marion said coldly. “Nevertheless, they must stop for groceries like everyone else.”

  Cathy’s answer was a slight shake of her head and a whisper heard only by herself: “No, they don’t, never.”

  When Paul came home from work, Cathy was sent to play in the front yard while Marion explained matters to him. He listened with increasing irritation—not so much at Cathy’s actions but at the manner in which Marion and Miss Park had handled things. There was too much talking, he said, and too little acting.

  “The way you women beat around the bush instead of tackling the situation directly, meeting it head-on—fantasy life. Fantasy life my foot! Now, we’re going over to the Smiths’ right this minute to talk to them and that will be that. End of fantasy. Period.”

  “We’d better wait until after dinner. Cathy missed her lunch.”

  Throughout the meal Cathy was pale and quiet. She ate nothing and spoke only when asked a direct question; but inside herself the conversation was very lively, the dinner a banquet with dancing, and afterward a wild, windy ride in the roofless car . . .

  Although the footpath through the canyon provided a shorter route to the Smiths’ house, the Bortons decided to go more formally, by car, and to take Cathy with them. Cathy, told to comb her hair and wash her face, protested: “I don’t want to go over there.”

  “Why not?” Paul said. “You were so anxious to spend time with them that you played hooky for two days. Why don’t you want to see them now?”

  “Because they’re not there.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Mrs. Smith told me this morning that they wouldn’t be home tonight because she’s putting on a show.”

  “Indeed?” Paul said grim-faced. “Just where does she put on these shows of hers?”

  “And Mr. Smith has to play baseball. And after that they’re going to see a friend in the
hospital who has leukemia.”

  “Leukemia, eh?” He didn’t have to ask how Cathy had found out about such a thing; he’d watched a semidocumentary dealing with it a couple of nights ago. Cathy was supposed to have been sleeping.

  “I wonder,” he said to Marion when Cathy went to comb her hair, “just how many ‘facts’ about the Smiths have been borrowed from television.”

  “Well, I know for myself that they drive a sports car, and Mr. Smith was wearing a baseball cap. And they’re both young and good-looking. Young and good-looking enough,” she added wryly, “to make me feel—well, a little jealous.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Cathy would rather belong to them than to us. It makes me wonder if it’s something the Smiths have or something the Bortons don’t have.”

  “Ask her.”

  “I can’t very well—”

  “Then I will, dammit,” Paul said. And he did.

  Cathy merely looked at him innocently. “I don’t know. I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Then listen again. Why did you pretend that you were the Smiths’ little girl?”

  “They asked me to be. They asked me to go with them.”

  “They actually said, Cathy, will you be our little girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, by heaven, I’ll put an end to this nonsense,” Paul said, and strode out to the car.

  It was twilight when they reached the Smiths’ house by way of the narrow, hilly road. The moon, just appearing above the horizon, was on the wane, a chunk bitten out of its side by some giant jaw. A warm dry wind, blowing down the mountain from the desert beyond, carried the sweet scent of pittosporum.

  The Smiths’ house was dark, and both the front door and the garage were locked. Out of defiance or desperation, Paul pressed the door chime anyway, several times. All three of them could hear it ringing inside, and it seemed to Marion to echo very curiously—as if the carpets and drapes were too thin to muffle the sound vibrations. She would have liked to peer in through the windows and see for herself, but the Venetian blinds were closed.

  “What’s their furniture like?” she asked Cathy.

  “Like everybody’s.”