Then, "Gary, don't give up. There's sure to be some way of getting through to the truth. It's not pollyannaism. There just has to be some way. Maybe if I saw this man--this what's his name? Hennley?--maybe I could make him talk to me? You're awfully nice, and I've been thinking how there might be some way ..." She let the words trail off.
"You're pretty nice, too," he said. He let his hand touch hers on the chair arm, and when her fingers partly closed around it, left it there.
There was another silence. Then Erica said:
"Look, Gary! Quick! A shooting star!" She got to her feet, still holding his hand as though forgetfully, and moved close to the screen to stare out over the water. He followed her perforce, but not reluctantly. When she let go his hand, after a moment or so, he put his arm around her shoulder.
"You know," he said, "I wish you didn't work for my boss--the doctor, I mean." But that wasn't what he meant at all. He knew she understood.
"Don't let it worry you," she said, turning to face him. "And you don't have to put it in euphemisms. That trip on the boat was the last time. From now on I just work here."
She leaned toward him a little, turning her face up to his. He bent and kissed her once, lightly, on the lips. "That's nice," he said. He kissed her again, excitement welling in him as her lips became soft under his.
After a while she said, "Couldn't we sit down somewhere? Maybe on the couch over there?" Her breathing had changed and the timbre of her voice was different. She sat bolt upright on the couch at a little distance from him, tucking her legs primly beneath her skirt.
"Look, Gary," she said, "I don't know where this--between us--is going to lead. But I want you to know about--Ivan and me."
"You don't have to tell me anything," Gary said.
"I know. But I want it to be all straightened out. I was never in love with Ivan, except maybe for a little while at the beginning. After all, he was my boss. I was with him all the time. He's a doctor. I guess all women go for doctors. He's goodlooking. He's an older man, in quotes. And I was pretty young. I suppose he fascinated me. He really did impress me. Later on I wasn't in love with him at all. I just couldn't get away from him.
"The man is insistent and persistent and demanding. When you get set to refuse a demand he makes another demand so you forget to refuse the first one, you're so busy trying to fight the second. Do you know what I mean?"
"I guess so," Gary said.
"He's a sadist, really. Not the kind with whips. They're mild compared to his kind. They only take possession of your body. Ivan wants your body through your mind and your personality until you don't have anything left that belongs to you. May I have a cigarette?"
Gary lit one for her and she went on without breaking the tone or rhythm of her speech, "The physical sadism only comes, for him, when he's exhausted all the emotional possibilities; when he's shown you his power to make you cry and his power to make you stop and forget how unhappy you were.
"I tried to get away from him. I tried to quit. The last time was the day you came here. I even had a cab here and was carrying my bags out when he came in. He stopped me. He embarrassed me in front of the cab driver, made me look like a criminal. He treated me like a--a slave. I was paralyzed with shame about the whole thing. I turned around, like a good little child, and trotted right back upstairs.
"I know it was a pretty spineless thing to do. I was sick about it. But I couldn't do anything else.
"Then, after the trip to New York with you, something happened to me.
"Anyway, the way you treated me gave me a little feeling of self-respect again. I guess that was all I needed. When I went out in the boat with Ivan that day I told him I would never sleep with him again." She broke off suddenly and there was a long silence.
Gary said, "Another beer?"
"No, thanks." Her voice was choked and he realized that she was crying.
"What's the trouble, honey?" he said. He put his arm about her shoulder.
"Nothing, Gary. Do you have a handkerchief?"
He gave her one.
"I guess I'm making a perfect fool of myself talking like this to you ...?"
He pulled her close to him and kissed her gently. "I don't think so," he said. It was no longer important that Erica had been Ivan's mistress. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted any woman before.
He let his hands slip lightly over her smoothly curving back, caressing the slenderness of her neck beneath the warm hair. He kissed her lips, her eyes, and the soft line of her jaw, feeling her body tensing.
She pressed closer to him with a responsive warmth, and he dropped his hands to her waist, almost encompassing it with his clutching fingers.
She said, "Gary--not here! Not now!"
He said, "Yes, darling. Now." Her body went all limp.
For a moment he thought of Dolores' scheme. Now, in this moment of confessional, he should tell her. Now, this very instant. But the thought touched him fleetingly and was gone. She turned her body until she lay, odalisque-fashion, against the leather pillows. She drew him close.
Then, very distinctly, he heard the latch of the garden house door leading down to the garage click closed. But, in a moment, he had forgotten that ...
XII
IRENE CARTER
When Irene came out of the garage she was in something bordering on a state of shock. She walked back toward the house slowly, stopping from time to time and, finding herself stopped, starting up again. She was trying desperately to disbelieve what she had seen and heard.
Gary couldn't do a thing like that A man whom you loved as much as you loved Gary couldn't actually actually make love to another woman; not before your very eyes. Not even if he didn't know you were looking.
And what Erica had said! "That day ... on the boat ... I told him I would never sleep with him again ..." Erica? Daddy? Right here in this house?
It did explain a lot of things: The way Erica avoided Mother; the cool way Mother spoke to Erica; the trips when Daddy needed a secretary; the hostility between Mother and Daddy; the meaningless dinner conversations.
Now Gary, too? Beautiful Gary, whom you loved so much.
A sudden, fierce anger overcame her at the betrayal Gary and Erica had perpetrated upon her. The two people she loved best had done this to her. Erica who already had Daddy, had stolen Gary from her, too. And Gary, whom she loved, had taken Erica. Each of the crimes was more heinous than the other.
She felt her teeth biting into her lower lip, and her jaws trembling with enraged tension. Yet you couldn't really hate people for doing something perfectly natural. It was perfectly natural, after all, wasn't it? Well, then. You just had to protect them from themselves. She looked up and saw the light in her Mother's room and the decision was instant. A moment later she tapped gently at her mother's door.
Dolores said, "Baby! What's the matter with you? You're pale as a ghost." She sat clown on the bed and patted the coverlet beside her. "Sit down here, Baby, and tell me what's the trouble."
"Mother ..." Irene began. Her chin trembled. Her voice broke.
Dolores put her arms about the girl and hugged her close. "Come on, Baby. Tell me all about it. Don't cry now, sweetheart."
The sudden affection was more than the girl could take. The tears came. She buried her face against her mother's shoulders. Her body shook with anguish.
Dolores held Irene close, patting her back, as one soothes a crying child. Little by little the dry sobs subsided.
"Now tell me about it, Baby," Dolores said. "Unless you don't want to."
"It's Gary and Erica," she said. "I saw them in the playroom."
"Darling!" Dolores said, faintly mocking. "I thought somebody had told you. In fact, I seem distinctly to recall having told you myself ..."
"That's not what I mean, Mother," Irene said. The mockery was almost, but not quite, enough to destroy the sudden access of maternal warmth she had just now found in her mother. "Erica told Gary ... she told him something about her and--and
Daddy ..."
After a while Dolores interrupted the spiral of repetition. "Look, Baby, there are a few things I have to tell you. Some about Daddy and me, and--well, something about Gary, too ..."
ERICA LEDBITTER
It was with a sure feeling of purest joy that Erica awoke next day. The morning was lovely. The sunlight was pure white and the air dry. A fresh breeze tossed the curtains at the windows, and when she rose a little in the bed she could see crisp white ridges riding the waves in Willet's Cove.
She dressed quickly, with a special energy. All the while she was thinking of Gary, of seeing him, of being with him, of talking to him. But when she came downstairs, he was not yet risen.
The land surrounding Willet's Cove rolls slightly where glacial debris once piled. In the main, however, it is flat and sandy.
The County Road is parallel to the Cove's edge, maintaining a respectful distance of some three hundred yards. Off-shooting from the County Road are automobile tracks and driveways leading, respectively, to small ranch-type cottages and large expensive establishments which front unanimously upon the Cove itself.
Pine and cedar run to the water's edge. But at the very brink is a sort of half footpath, sometimes awash at high tide, sometimes blocked by fallen timberlets, but always the only direct means of passing from one Willet's Cove home to another. Thus, if one member of the Carter household sought another missing from the grounds, the logical thing was to follow this path until the absent Carter was found.
Erica, who needed someone as a vessel for her joy, accordingly sought Irene at the water's edge.
The morning breeze that kicked up remote white caps was off the Carter shore. The water close to the path was crystal clear and still. Sidewise scuttling crabs slipped in and out of the seaweed that drifted submerged a few feet off shore. An occasional early jellyfish, live or dead, drifted aimlessly on undetectable currents. Farther out seagulls plunged at fish or swooped gracefully aloft, uttering scathing remarks to one another. At the very brink sandpipers skittered, snapping at unwary fiddler crabs.
Behind, invisible in the woods, a solitary crow interrupted the silences formed by lapping water, hum of insects, the distant chugging of a fishing boat on Block Island Sound and the chopping of someone's hatchet.
Erica walked slowly, shoes in hand, savoring the pristine quality of her happiness. The morning's beauty was doubled in her autointoxication.
After a time she spotted Irene, in bathing suit and white cap, far out in the shallows of the Cove. She cupped her hands. " 'Ware jellyfish!"
Irene turned to face shore. Her tanned body glistened. "None out here," she shouted. "Come on out. I found the hull of Bob Solomon's boat."
"I can't," Erica said. "No suit."
"Don't be a drip. Wear your underwear. There's nobody around."
"What about my hair?"
"Oh, come on and bring a pole so we can mark this thing."
"All right. But don't splash my hair." She hung her dress and slip beside her shoes on a fallen tree and--in bra and panty--waded through the shallows, avoiding the seaweed clumps that might conceal an angry crab.
The water was warm about her thighs, and the sandy bottom rippled underfoot. It was too lovely to be missed. She cast her hair upon the waters and swam to where Irene struggled with something beneath the surface.
Irene straightened up as Erica reached her. "Where's the marker pole? Gee! Are you ever naked!"
Erica looked down to find her underthings transparent. "Can't be helped," she said. "You'll have to stand in from of me if anyone comes along."
"I'll have to stand all around you, then, because you're even nakeder in back," Irene said. "Look at the boat." She pointed downward. "It just tore loose and got swamped. The hull is okay. Even the motor isn't rusty. Maybe, if we fish it up, they'll let me have it for myself. Bob's already got a new one with the insurance money."
For a while she prattled on. Then Erica said, "Why don't we try to get it to float. If we can dump some of the mud, the bow should come up by itself. Then we can lift the stern enough to spill out the water."
They struggled for a long time, finally overturning the whole small vessel and sloshing it up and down until the mud drained off in stormy clouds through the clear water. The sun beat on Erica's shoulders. It was lovely to be playing this lovely morning, lovely to know that Gary would be waiting when you returned, lovely to be in love.
Unexpectedly, the boat was afloat, its hull and outboard streaked with underwater slime; and they set about towing it through the shallow water toward the Carter inlet.
"Get in and ride," Irene said. "You can keep bailing while I push."
Erica clambered into the shell, while Irene sloshed behind.
Then she heard Irene say, "Erica?"
"What's the matter, Honey?"
"There's something I've been meaning to tell you all morning, only I--I guess I didn't know how to say it. I only found it out last night. Mother told me and ..." She stopped.
Something about sex? Reenie, though, was a little old for menstrual instruction. And besides, she'd already asked you enough questions to write a book. Wasn't sex wonderful? Wasn't Gary? He was probably waiting for you now, wondering where you had gone.
"What is it, Reenie?"
"Gee, I don't really know if I should tell you. It's an awful thing, but you ought to know."
"All right, girl. Spit it out in mama's hand."
"Well," the words came in a sudden rush, "Mother said she hired Gary to make love to you. On account of Daddy ..."
"Are you sure?" Erica said, sharply. "Are you absolutely sure ...?"
XIII
IVAN CARTER
On that same Sunday morning in August, Doctor Ivan Carter lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Doctor Carter was feeling extremely sorry for himself.
He reviewed his frustrations giving each its full weight before allowing it to pull him deeper into his depression. His wife was contemptuous of him, downright disdainful. She even went so far as to sleep with the chauffeur in his own--beg pardon--her own house. She was contemptuous because she supported him. And she supported him because the vast and unrelenting availability of her inherited money had stifled all his drive to work.
His mistress, whom he had raised from something like virtue, had bit the hand that trained her, and rejected him as a lover.
His treasure and joy, the Ivalor, had sunk spitefully in the midst of Block Island Sound, and the Coast Guard officers who rescued him had insulted him and treated him like an infant idiot for her loss.
Ivan pictured himself as a ludicrous figure whose medical colleagues jibed at the papers he wrote to regain his self-respect. Why, just for example, had Heinrich Reingold adopted so sneering a tone when he directed his criticism to the editor of the Journal of Thoracic Surgery?
But, he realized, it was all his own fault. He had done nothing to change it. Even now he lay here, not happening to things, but waiting for something to happen to him. And, at that point, something did. The telephone rang. That, at least, promised momentary relief from his own merciless self-contempt. He snatched at the instrument without waiting for the protocol of official answerers to be run through.
"Doctor Carter's residence ... Speaking ... I suppose so, what's the problem? ... I'm a thoracic surgeon, man! Get Austerlitz. He's done cranial surgery ... Then what about Winick?... Isn't there some way of reaching him?... What about Chet Roberts at the hospital? He's done cranial work ... Well, can't somebody take over for him? ... All right. I'll come, of course. Give me a description of the injury ... Yes ... Through the left orbit? ... All right. I've never done it. Never even seen it done, but I'll do what I can. Get things ready ... Give me fifteen minutes ... Right." He slammed down on the cradle of the receiver and pressed repeatedly at the row of buttons on its base.
"Heaslip? ... Well where is he? ... All right. Vera. Go out and tell him to get the Jaguar out. I've got an emergency call. Tell him to wait by the front door. But before you g
et him, pour me out a cup of coffee and leave it on the table in the front hall." And then, because the idea of dragging her out of bed and asserting his self-importance had occurred to him, he said, "Don't disturb Mrs. Carter, please. There's nothing she can do ... No. There's no need to disturb Miss Ledbitter either." He hung up.
He dressed hurriedly in a clean polo shirt, freshly laundered dungarees and tennis shoes--because they would be more nearly antiseptic--and ran down the stairs to the office. From the glass instrument case behind his desk he picked an assortment and put them in a satchel. Then he went into the dispensary closet, where he hastily swallowed ten milligrams of benzedrine. On the bookshelf he found Leafer's "Cranial Surgery." He carried book and satchel into the hall.
Dolores was standing by the hall table, holding a full cup of black coffee in her hand. For a moment he felt a twinge of pain at the sight of her loveliness. She wore a light dress that set off the young lines of her body.
She said, "Heaslip's bringing the car. I put an ice-cube in this to cool it. What's happening?"
"Some idiot at the water works blew up a machine. A fragment went through his left eye and wound up in the back of his skull. They got a GP named Puhn who lives down the road. He's been trying to get a surgeon for an hour. Everybody who does cranial work is out of town, and I'm the nearest the hospital could think of. So it's up to me."
"Can you do it?"
"I don't think so. But there isn't anybody else. Puhn says the man's only chance is immediate surgery. Where's that damned car?"
He searched frantically through Leafer's. When the Jaguar grated before the front door, he ran out. Dolores stood for a second, then started after him. "Wait for me," she called. But the Jaguar had already jerked forward, and her voice was drowned in the roar of the motor.
AUGUST HENNLER
August Hennler, that morning, was devoting his fullest attention to his offspring. He was making an effort to regain their attention as a preliminary to re-earning their esteem.
With deliberate calm he had pulled Alec from beneath the car, and in tortured patience explained the wherefores and whereforenots of under-car crawling. He had peroxided a wounded knee for Bertha. He had repaired a broken fire-engine, walked, to the store for ice cream, purchased and read aloud a comic book about an uniquely asinine character named "Deadly Hector," rescued a cat from a tree, agreed to the purchase and installation of a hutch full of white rabbits for the improvement of the back yard, promised to watch Alec dive from a springboard in the coming afternoon, conceded cancellation of a haircut proposed for the following day, restrained himself when Alec used his electric razor to mow Jack Castle's dog, and shown himself a model of fatherly patience and fortitude. All this he had done despite a monumental headache and unassisted by a hair of the classical dog.
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