A Dangerous Woman

by Mary McGarry Morris

  “I have to go somewhere,” she said, pushing open the door to get away from him.

  “Where? Martha! When are you coming back?” Mr. Weilman called as she came squinting down the porch steps into the dizzying heat. “I’ll get some fish,” he called. “Some scrod, nice and light.”

  All along the street, the children paused on their vehicles, in their digging and games, to watch her. They knew she had been sick, because Mr. Weilman had made them whisper and close the door quietly. They darted out from under their sprinklers and stood dripping on the hot dusty sidewalks, but she would not look at them. Shielding her eyes, she concentrated on walking very slowly; the humidity and the heat were sapping what little strength she had.

  She was almost downtown before she came to a public telephone. The traffic was so noisy that she had to lean in close to the phone. Mack answered on the first ring, and he actually sounded pleased to hear from her. “I’ve been wondering how you’re doing,” he said in a tired, lazy voice. She heard his chair creak, and she pictured him leaning back, stretching his long hairy legs across the desk.

  “I’ve been sick,” she said, grinning. Her heart might burst at any moment. She was shaky, excited, happy, terrified. “But I’m better now.” She stuck her finger in her ear as a cement truck rumbled by. “I have something to tell you,” she shouted.

  “What is it? Martha, I can’t hear you very well.”

  “I’m pregnant! I’m going to have a baby!” She waited. “Mack? Did you hear what I said?”

  “Umm. Yes.”

  “Aren’t you going to say anything? I’m pregnant.”

  “Who’s with you? Where are you?”

  “I’m at a pay phone. I’m by myself.”

  “Why do you think you’re …” He lowered his voice. “… pregnant?”

  “Because the test says I am.”

  “Test? What test? Who gave you a test? I’m not following this.”

  “Julia did. She gave me a pregnancy test.”

  “Julia Prine?” Silence. “Why would she give you a test? What’re you talking about? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Silence. “Martha, are you all right? You’re not making sense.”

  “I’m pregnant. Did you hear what I said? I’m pregnant.”

  “Yes, I heard you.”

  “What’re we going to do, Mack?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean … I mean … Well, something.” He wasn’t being any help at all. He knew what she was trying to say.

  “What?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Be together?” she said in a small voice. “Get married? Something.”

  “You need an abortion as soon as possible,” Mack said. “You can’t have your whole life ruined by …”

  “No! No, you don’t understand. My whole life WAS ruined. Now it’s changed.”

  “My God, you can’t be serious! Think what you’re saying!”

  Listening, she closed her eyes. He was making her feel so helpless and stupid. Of course she knew all that this meant. He was right—she hadn’t had time to sort out her thoughts—but that was why she was calling him. What? She jerked around, and the short metal cord snapped her back. He kept talking about the father: what if the father denied it; what if he wouldn’t support it. “Especially when the father’s someone you can’t stand,” he said.

  “You’re the father!” She laughed. “What do you mean?”

  “I know how you feel about him, and you don’t need to be tied up to that all your life.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “You and Getso. I didn’t want to tell you that night and upset you, but your friend Birdy called Frances and told her everything that had happened; how you were always following him, and brushing up against him, and how when he turned you down you accused him of stealing. She said you’d started waiting out in his car for him, and when he told you to leave him alone, you accused him of dating her best friend.”

  Her head was reeling. Whose best friend? Birdy’s best friend? She had been Birdy’s best friend. Nothing was making sense. Mack was too far away. If he were here, she could make him understand.

  “And when I heard that, everything made sense. Getso grabbing you that day by the store, and then the time he brought the bag of clothes to the house. I haven’t said this to Frances, but I think I know what happened, Martha. It was the other way around, wasn’t it? He used you, and then he got scared Birdy would find out, so he accused you of stealing to get rid of you.”

  “Please deposit four more quarters,” a voice intruded on the line.

  She searched frantically through her pockets and her purse. All she had were bills. Just as the line disconnected, she spotted the Dairy Queen across the street. She darted between the oncoming cars and cut in front of the people waiting in line at the window.

  “Hey! What the …”

  “I just want change,” she said, waving a five-dollar bill.

  “And we just want ice cream,” a young woman said.

  She got in line. Tears welled in her eyes. How had everything gotten so twisted? How had the truth spawned such lies? An uneasy silence fell over the line, and people glanced back at her. She stared down at the ground and tried to dab away the tears. Behind her, a woman burst out laughing, and Martha ignored her. As soon as she got her change, she hurried back to the pay phone.

  This time the number was busy, so she called the Cleaners and asked for Birdy. Now more than ever, she had to make Birdy see how Getso’s poison had tainted everything.

  “Just a minute,” answered a young voice she didn’t recognize. “Birdy! Hey, Bird!” the voice called away from the phone, then returned quickly to ask, “Who’s this?”

  “An old friend of hers.”

  “Uh, she’s not here.”

  “But I heard you call her.”

  “Yah, well, she left and nobody told me.”

  “When did she leave?”

  “A while ago.”

  “When will she be back?”

  “Uh, she won’t be, I guess.”

  She was walking toward Birdy’s house. Though she had never been inside, she knew exactly where it was. There had been many lonely Sundays last winter when she would walk the two slushy miles from the boardinghouse to Birdy’s, making sure she passed the dark-green cottage slowly enough for Birdy to see her and invite her in.

  There it was, so deep in the verdant darkness of the tall pines as to be almost invisible. She ached at the thought of all the pain that little house must contain, and how betrayed Birdy must feel to think that Martha had repaid her kindness and attention by chasing after Getso. It wasn’t fair that one man could be so evil, so selfish, so coldly calculating, so powerful that he had managed to destroy her only friendship. And now, to protect himself from the truth, he was spreading these lies about her, this filth. He had obviously brainwashed Birdy. She had read about such things in magazines and seen it on talk shows, and here it was happening in real life. By isolating Birdy, he had made her his psychological prisoner, his love slave. It sickened her.

  Birdy’s car wasn’t in the driveway, but that wasn’t unusual, since he drove it all the time. Birdy probably had to walk everywhere now. The shades in the second-floor windows were pulled down. Maybe Birdy was up there in bed. Martha’s heart swelled as she tapped lightly on the lace-curtained door glass. She put her ear to the glass and listened.

  Birdy didn’t answer the front door, so she came along the driveway in slow careful steps over the slippery golden pine needles. The back door was open. She pressed her face to the screen and peered inside. The tiny pink-and-white kitchen with its tulip-patterned wallpaper was like a picture in a magazine. She could smell cinnamon and warm herbs.

  “Birdy?” she whispered a few times, then listened. She tapped lightly and called again, this time louder. She could hear water running and the sound of muffled music. She stepped inside, closing the door soundlessly. There were unwashed breakfast
dishes in the sink, and on the cutting board half of a green apple, its flesh beaded with moisture. The knife Birdy must have just used lay on the counter, its blade still streaked with juice. On the wall by the refrigerator, the telephone bore Birdy’s new number, written on a strip of masking tape. Sitting down, she whispered the number over and over to herself. She folded her hands on the edge of the table, careful to contain herself in this one small space so that Birdy would see that she had always known her place and had never overstepped the boundaries. As much as she wanted to, she wouldn’t even peek into the other rooms. Absolutely not. There was a banging sound, and her eyes shot to the ceiling, then followed the footsteps that moved back and forth overhead. The milk-glass light fixture trembled over the table, and a door slammed. Birdy was coming downstairs. She stared at the doorway, her smile bursting into a joyous grin.

  “Jesus Christ!” Getso said, jerking back, his scarred eye ridging higher into his forehead.

  She jumped up from the table and stood frozen, staring.

  There was a white towel around his neck, and all he wore was a pair of shiny black bikini underpants. He whipped the towel off his neck and tried to cover himself. “What the hell’re you doing in here?”

  “Birdy. I have to see Birdy.” She could barely expel the words.

  “She’s not here. She’s at work.”

  “They said she’s here.”

  His stringy wet yellow hair dripped down his neck and slick shoulders.

  “Well, she’s not. She’s at work. So you better go. Go ahead, now.” He gestured at her with the towel. “She’s not here.”

  “Don’t you lie to me,” she said, gripping the back of the chair. “I know she’s here. They told me she was here.”

  “Yah, because that’s what they’re s’posed to say.” He stepped closer. “Don’t you get it yet? She wants you to stop bothering her. So go on. Get the hell outta here,” he said, his face twisting contemptuously.

  “Bothering her!” she cried. He should talk about bothering Birdy. After all his lies and his cheating …

  “Yah, bothering her, like this,” he gestured disdainfully. “Like here you are, you just walk in.”

  She stared, mesmerized by his vileness, amazed that he could not only face her, but act so offended, so disgusted by her. “No matter what you do, you can’t stop the truth from coming out. No one can do that. No one can stop the truth,” she said, pleased that she was starting to calm down.

  “Jesus Christ, Martha, will you get the hell outta here and stop bothering people,” he snarled, grabbing her arm and pushing her toward the door.

  She struggled and her glasses fell to the floor and now everything was murky and shapeless. “Bothering people,” she groaned, trying to twist away. Oh God, she felt his crotch at her hip. What was next? Of course. That’s what had been on his mind all along, with his leering comments and his filthy lies. She yanked her arm free, but he grabbed her again, and she staggered back against the counter. He pulled her toward him, and she writhed in his hold, her face rubbing against his hairy chest. Groping behind her, her hand closed over the cold-handled knife. His arms dropped with the first stab.

  “Bothering people! Bothering people! Bothering people!” she grunted with each blow. “People bother me,” she cried, her eyes fixed on his, glassy with their stunned horror. “But nobody thinks of that! Nobody cares about that!”

  Gasping, he leaned on her, his wet head against hers, his flesh settling over her with the stony, sighing weight of an exhausted lover. And then he sagged down to the floor in sections, folding increments of joints and tissued flaps. Like spent wings, his arms hinged close to his sides, folding as he curled smaller and smaller in the widening bloody shadow that was seeping onto the shiny white tiles.

  She found her glasses on the floor and put them on; the right lens was shattered. She put the knife in the sink, and then she turned on the cold water and watched the pink water swirl into the drain as she rinsed her hands. She had to stay calm. But she couldn’t think clearly with her heart pounding in her head like this.

  It was all she could hear. She was on Prospect Street, and a motorcycle passed, but the only sound was the blood pumping in her brain. Had she turned off the water? She thumped her chest, unable to remember. Oh God, what if the sink plugged up and the water overflowed onto Birdy’s new floor. Poor Birdy, what a mess she would have to clean up.

  Not knowing any formal prayers, she murmured her own as she hurried along. “Dear God, please don’t let the water be on. Dear God, please don’t let the water be on. Dear God, help me.”

  She could call the new number. Maybe Birdy was upstairs and if she got down in time she could turn it off. Where was her purse? She must have forgotten it on Birdy’s table, and now she had no money to call.

  Cars raced by. People stared at her. The smashed lens in her glasses glared with sunlight. She tried not to run. Teeth bared, a German shepherd bounded to the edge of its yard, barking savagely through the thin dusty boxwood. “I hope that dog is leashed. There’s a leash law in this town,” she muttered, breaking into another half-trot. She caught herself, walked a few more feet, then ran again, panting, “Have to call Birdy. Have to call Birdy.” But her head was starting to ache, and she had forgotten what she had to tell her.

  Ahead was the boardinghouse. She would use their phone. The call would be catalyst enough. With the sound of Birdy’s voice, she would know what to say. She ran up the porch steps, but the door was latched, so she rang the bell. Three of the ladies appeared at once, Loiselle Evans, Mrs. Hess, and Claire Mayo, who carried a small rechargeable vacuum cleaner.

  “Martha!” cried Loiselle Evans, her hands flying to her face.

  “What in God’s name happened to you?” Claire Mayo gasped.

  “I have to use the phone.”

  “That’s blood! Oh my God, that’s blood. She’s covered with blood,” screamed Mrs. Hess, pointing.

  “Let me in!” She pushed the door. “I have to call Birdy!”

  “Get away from that door,” Claire Mayo ordered, pointing the vacuum as if it were a gun.

  “Oh, please let her in,” Loiselle Evans pleaded. “She’s hurt and we have to help her. We have to.” She stepped up beside Claire, her pert face at the landlady’s ear. “You know we do!” she said fiercely.

  Claire Mayo peered at Martha. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m not hurt,” she said, and Loiselle Evans sighed.

  “Where’d all that blood come from?” Claire’s lip trembled.

  Blood. The front of her shirt was covered with it. There was blood on her arms and her feet. Again the wave of sickness rose with the realization that he was on her, touching her, sticky and soaking wet against her flesh. “Let me in!” she cried. She banged on the door, and blood spurted from her fist. She looked down at the gash in her palm. Now she kicked the door, and her foot shot through the brittle screen.

  “Call the police!” Mrs. Hess shrieked, and Claire Mayo slammed shut the heavy oak door.

  She was walking so fast that at times she appeared to be skipping. Ahead, on the corner, was the funeral home, its black sign on the front lawn promising in gold script “Mount’s Where Caring Counts.” She began to run, then, staggering, forced herself to that stiff lurching gait again. She slipped inside, dazed by the sudden shock of air-conditioned air. It took her a moment to adjust to the vestibule’s dimness. From nearby came the melodic rise and fall of murmurous voices. Looking through the wide parlor doors, she saw a large candle burning at the head of an open casket. The corpse wore an orange tie, an ugly orange tie. Imagine wearing an orange tie at your own wake. An ugly orange tie. She shook her head to dislodge such an irrelevant, irritating thought. But it was caught, fixed there, that wide ugly orange tie consubstantiating all that was wrong in the world, all the ignorance. “The ignorance,” she muttered. “The terrible, terrible ignorance.”

  The mourners, mostly elderly women, prayed aloud with a priest in a long black cassock. Wesl
ey Mount stood at the back of the room, his arms folded and his head bowed. “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary …” The priest looked up at her. He took a couple of steps forward, then glanced back at the women, intoning, “Hail Mary, full of grace.”

  With the priest’s approach, Wesley Mount’s head rose. “Martha!” he said, reaching her first. “What happened? Are you all right?” He sniffed. “That’s blood. Martha, your glasses! What happened?”

  “I could tell by the way she was standing there something was wrong,” the priest said.

  “Were you in an accident?” Wesley asked.

  She tried to think. She didn’t know what to call it. There was a name for what had happened, but she didn’t know what it was. It had to do with honesty. Her eyes darted between the two men. A priest would know the word.

  “I think she’s in shock,” the priest said.

  The women’s prayers had stalled. They turned and watched from their seats.

  “I really think she should lie down,” the priest said.

  “Come with me,” Wesley said, guiding her up the stairs.

  Wesley led her to his sofa. He begged her to tell him what had happened. “Are you hurt? Martha, do you have some kind of wound?”

  “Yes,” she said, showing him her hand. “I do.”

  “Oh, poor dear,” he said, holding her hand in his. He touched the side of her face, and her eyes closed. “This is very deep, so I’ll do what I can here and then I’m taking you to the hospital. You’ve obviously lost a lot of blood.” He stood up and kissed the top of her head. “You came to me,” he whispered. “Oh, Martha, I can’t tell you what this means to me.”

  It was with great tenderness that he wrapped her hand in a wet towel, then assured her she would only have to be alone for a few minutes. “I’ll be right back.” His medical supplies were downstairs. When he left, she stood up. She had too much to do to go to the hospital. She went into the hallway, and she could hear the women and the priest talking to Wesley down in the vestibule. Trying to find her way to the back staircase, she stopped in front of a mirror, horrified by the sight of her bloody shirt. Turning, she ran into the casket-display room, opened the closet door, and there it was, the blue chiffon with seed pearls on the neck.