The Specialty of the House

by Stanley Ellin

  Golf club and ball in hand, he had explored the kitchen until he turned up a can of fruit really a little too large for his purpose but all the better for that reason. He had emptied the syrupy fruit into a bowl, placed it in the refrigerator, and carefully washed out the empty can. Then, using a trowel, he had dug a proper hole in the center of the spacious lawn behind the house, had sunk the can into it, neatly replaced the turf around it, and had discovered, after a few tries, that he hadn’t lost too much of his putting touch.

  When Regina and Ada and their families arrived in the late afternoon Howard was ready for them. Ordinarily, during the tedious couple of hours before dinner, the children, maintaining a glum silence, kept their elders company in the living room. Now Howard, with a nod and a wink – it took several nods and winks, in fact – lured them out of the room, much to the mystification of their parents and grandmother, and led them to his one-hole golf course. When he held up the club and ball before them he saw with joy that they looked interested.

  ‘Do you play golf, Uncle Howard?’ asked one of the twins doubtfully.

  ‘I used to,’ said Howard. ‘A long time ago.’

  ‘Let’s see,’ said the other twin, even more doubtfully.

  Howard placed the ball about six feet from the hole – it had to be a respectable distance, he knew, to make it properly impressive – and hands shaking a little on the club, stomach churning at the magnitude of this test, he sank the putt.

  ‘Hey, there,’ said both nephews, and his niece said with honest admiration, ‘Hey, wow.’

  ‘We’ll take turns,’ Howard said, ‘starting close and getting farther back.’

  They were raptly taking turns when the kitchen window was thrust up and Mattie’s head appeared. ‘Your mother says what’s going on here,’ she called to Howard. ‘And you better get inside right away.’

  ‘Is dinner ready?’ Howard said.

  ‘Not for a while, but she says come in right away. She’s in a real snit, Howard.’

  It was decision-making time, Howard saw. He drew a deep breath and made the decision. ‘Whenever dinner’s ready,’ he called to Mattie.

  Two minutes later the screen door of the kitchen squealed on its hinges and Mrs Wicks appeared there, freezing the golfers in their tracks. ‘Howard, what do you think you’re doing? And look at that lawn, all trampled apart. Get in here at once, all of you.’

  Howard took another deep breath. ‘The lawn isn’t being trampled apart, Mother. And there’s plenty of time before dinner.’

  Howard looked at his companions. A minute before, they had been having a merry time of it, evidently as happy in their company as he was in theirs. Now all three faces were stony again, taking his measure. Howard turned back to the menacing figure in the doorway. ‘Mother, there’s no need for us to …’

  The rest of it trailed off to inaudibility as Mrs Wicks marched down the steps and across the lawn. It had been Howard’s turn at the game; the ball rested near his feet. Mrs Wicks reached down, picked up the ball, and marched back the way she had come. It was the slamming of the screen door after her that brought Howard slowly out of his daze. Then, unaware that he was still gripping the golf club, he headed for the house in such a turmoil of emotion that he tripped going up the porch steps and nearly fell headlong.

  He righted himself, pulled open the door hard enough to almost tear it from its hinges, and found his mother already reseated in her favorite armchair in the living room at the head of the family semicircle. Her cheeks were flushed, her lips compressed. The absconded golf ball was nowhere in sight.

  ‘Mother,’ said Howard without ceremony, ‘I’d like my golf ball back.’

  ‘Indeed?’ said Mrs Wicks coolly.

  ‘Mother—’

  ‘Don’t raise your voice, Howard. I’ve given that thing to Vernon.’ Mrs Wicks motioned with her chin at Vernon who looked thoroughly uncomfortable. ‘He plays golf. He’ll have much more use for it than you will.’

  ‘All the same, Howard,’ said Vernon, embarrassedly digging into his pocket, ‘I don’t really need—’

  ‘No,’ Mrs Wicks said sharply. ‘You will keep that thing, Vernon. I will not have my lawn destroyed by any foolish games.’

  All question about this in Vernon’s mind was promptly put to rest by his wife. ‘Vernon,’ said Regina in a deadly voice, ‘you heard Mother, didn’t you?’

  He had, Howard knew. So had they all, including the children who from the doorway were taking this in. Howard stared at his mother through a red mist, feeling the blood pounding in his head so hard that it was like a series of painful blows against his skull.

  Not far from Mrs Wicks’ chair, purely decorative, was a handsome little table, a square of polished marble on ebony legs. Howard raised his golf club high over his head with both hands and brought it down with savage impact on the table. Regina and Ada gave small screams. Vernon and Thomas sprang to their feet. Mrs Wicks sat there rigid, her nostrils flaring.

  Howard looked with incredulity at the crack running the width of the marble, looked at the bent shaft of the golf club, and felt all the strength drain out of him. His stomach heaved, his legs felt like rubber under him. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mother,’ he said breathlessly.

  ‘You should be,’ said Mrs Wicks. She appeared in complete control of herself. ‘That table was one of your grandfather’s treasures.’

  ‘It can be repaired,’ Howard pleaded. ‘I’m sure it can be repaired.’

  ‘It had better be,’ said Mrs Wicks.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Howard. ‘The first thing tomorrow. Meanwhile, if you’ll all excuse me—’

  So for the first time in all those years Howard was not at his place during a Friday dinner, but, of course, in all the years that followed, this dereliction was never repeated. As he came to see with the passing of time, it was as if the episode had never taken place. His mother never mentioned it, and no other witness to it ever brought it up. The table was repaired, and that’s all there was to it. Naturally, as a sad aftermath, there was no getting close to the children again as he had that magical hour. Too bad really. It had, up to its shocking denouement, really been a magical hour.

  The children grew up, entered the State University, dropped out of it, and went their way, the boys to share chronic unemployment in Chicago, the girl to share unwedded bliss with a dubious young man in New York. Regina and Ada aged perceptibly under these trials but lost none of their spirit in dealing with Howard. Nor was the relationship made any easier for Howard by the fact that since Mr Wicks’ death the original million bequeathed to his widow had become, under wise management, three million.

  ‘Three million?’ said Regina. ‘Really three million?’

  ‘Really,’ said Howard apologetically. ‘It’s been very soundly invested.’

  ‘A million dollars each,’ said Regina bitterly.

  ‘And there it is,’ said Ada even more bitterly.

  And there it was, every dollar of it tight in their mother’s unyielding grasp. Even a fraction of it, Howard thought miserably, would bring smiles to those two aging faces confronting him. He didn’t share their feelings, true, but he could understand them. And how good it would be to finally see those smiles turned his way. At the same time, the thought of his mother’s remains being laid away under the ground, of the house empty of her presence, filled him with a cold sense of the old loneliness lying in wait for him. It was not a thought he liked to dwell on.

  ‘I’ve said it once,’ Regina stated, ‘and I’ll say it again. Mother is bound and determined to outlive us all.’

  ‘That includes you, Howard,’ said Ada.

  They were wrong. At least, whatever Mrs Wicks was bound and determined to do she didn’t succeed in doing.

  That night Howard was waiting for her to come out of the tub he had prepared for her – moderately hot water fortified by a cup of scented crystals – so that he could apply the usual massage. Fifteen minutes was the time she always allotted for the tub, so he waited
as ever on her bedside chair, an eye on the clock. The 15 minutes went by, then 20, and Howard began to get a little uneasy. He waited a few more minutes, then knocked tentatively on the bathroom door and got no response. With nerves on edge he knocked harder. Still no response.

  This, he finally told himself, was no time for modesty. He pushed open the door and saw at a glance all there was to be seen.

  The bathtub was the old-fashioned kind that stood on claw feet, and it was long and deep enough for anyone to stretch out in at full length. Mrs Wicks’ body was stretched out in it at full length, face just under the surface of the water, wide-open eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

  For the life of him Howard couldn’t bring himself to enter the bathroom. Instead, he pulled the door shut and stood there trying to get his wits together. Then, holding himself in tight control, he phoned Dr Gottschalk to come at once.

  ‘Dead?’ said the doctor. ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Howard, the dreadful old loneliness now with a suffocating grip on him. ‘Please hurry, doctor.’

  He managed to maintain an outward composure when he went upstairs to rouse Lorenzo and Mattie with the news. Lorenzo took it well – there was even a hint of triumph in him, Howard suspected, at this information that he had outlived the lady of the house – but Mattie proved a highly emotional case. It gratified Howard, as he comforted her, to find his own composure standing up so well to this flood of tears and lamentations. Finally, almost as an afterthought once Mattie was under control, he phoned Regina and Ada.

  The doctor showed up almost at once. He went quickly about his business, then said to Howard, ‘Of course you realize the police must be called in. I’ll attend to it right now.’

  ‘The police?’ Howard said.

  ‘Legal fol-de-rol, Howard. A death under these conditions is a police matter, willy-nilly. And there must be an autopsy, too. Sorry, but that’s the way it goes.’

  So when Regina and Ada and their husbands arrived, the police were very much present, several of them, led by an unpleasantly large and officious man who had identified himself as Lieutenant Steele. The family party looked taken aback at this display of officialdom and, seating itself in the living room, had very little to say. Still, Howard felt, it would have been comforting to have them all present when Lieutenant Steele, at his overbearing worst, said that he now wanted Howard to describe in detail the events leading up to the death. This comfort was not granted Howard, however, because the lieutenant led him away for a private interview in the sitting room across the hall where Howard told all there was to tell and the lieutenant laboriously recorded it all in a small notebook.

  But at last it was all over, and when the body was removed to a waiting ambulance the family was first to depart, offering the briefest of farewells on its way out, then the police took their leave, and Dr Gottschalk alone remained for a parting word.

  ‘Think you can use a sedative?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Howard, thinking he probably could.

  ‘If you say so. Anyhow, stay by the phone tomorrow. I’ll try to have the medical examiner get the autopsy report to me by noon.’

  The call came at precisely noon. ‘No unusual marks on the body,’ said Dr Gottschalk bluntly. ‘No signs of drugs. Looks like she blacked out in the bath and just went under. I warned her more than once about those hot baths.’

  ‘She never told me that,’ said Howard.

  ‘No, she wouldn’t, I suppose. It might have meant your tattling to me about it, and your mama always did know how to have things her way, didn’t she? Well, any time you want to claim the body, Howard—’

  The funeral was elaborate and well-attended, and Howard, watching the shovelfuls of earth fall with thuds on the coffin, manfully managed to restrain tears that were very near the surface. Just as he had anticipated, the chilling loneliness was always with him now, spelling out his bleak future. So when the ceremony was over he was gratified that Regina, as if to demonstrate an unexpected sensitivity to his feelings, should propose that the family members gather together in the old house, where Mattie and Lorenzo could easily enough whip up a lunch. He was even more gratified at the way the others instantly nodded agreement.

  Back in the house they gathered in the living room, all taking their familiar seats, with Mrs Wicks’ empty chair a powerful presence among them, while Regina gave Mattie her instructions and sent her off to the kitchen. As soon as Mattie was out of the room Regina drew its heavy double doors tight shut. The shining brass key in the lock had, within Howard’s memory, never been used, but now it was. Regina twisted it firmly, locking the doors and testing them to make sure they were locked. When Howard looked surprised at this she said tersely, ‘Mattie can be an awful busybody, you know. This is no time for her to come barging in here.’

  ‘It isn’t?’ said Howard.

  ‘No,’ said Regina. She seated herself and fixed her eyes on Howard. At last she said, ‘I guess this shouldn’t be brought out into the open at all, Howard, even behind locked doors. But if I didn’t come out with it, it would stick in my throat the rest of my life.’

  ‘We all feel that way, Howard,’ said Ada.

  ‘So,’ said Regina, ‘I’ll speak my piece, Howard, and then never again will any of us even touch on the subject.’ She pointed to the small marble-topped table which had been so perfectly repaired that the damage once done to it was impossible to detect. ‘All those years ago, Howard, when you smashed that thing right in front of us all – well, we had the idea that someday you might – just possibly might – have the nerve to do what had to be done in this house.’

  ‘And you did,’ said Ada. ‘It took a long, long time, but you did, didn’t you, Howard?’

  Howard stared at them with disbelief and then with mounting horror. His mouth opened, but he couldn’t seem to find words that would properly express the horror.

  ‘And the way you handled it,’ said Regina’s Vernon. ‘Putting it over on a tough old coot like Dr Gottschalk.’

  ‘And,’ said Ada’s Thomas with a broad wink, ‘not to mention whatever song and dance you gave that mean-looking cop.’

  Howard finally found his voice, although it was hard for him to recognize it as his voice. ‘Now look here. If any of you believes for one minute—’

  ‘Oh, come on, Howard,’ said Regina with amusement. ‘You know we’ll keep this in the family. Really, you don’t have to play games with us.’

  And she was, Howard saw, smiling at him. She was bright-eyed with admiration, smiling with affection. And so was Ada. And Vernon. And Thomas. All of them were actually smiling at him with open and honest and long-overdue affection.

  Howard allowed himself a few seconds to consider the future. Then he smiled back at them. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘as long as it’s kept in the family—’

  Reasons Unknown

  This is what happened, starting that Saturday in October.

  That morning Morrison’s wife needed the station wagon for the kids, so Morrison took the interstate bus into downtown Manhattan. At the terminal there, hating to travel by subway, he got into a cab. When the cabbie turned around and asked, ‘Where to, Mister?’ Morrison did a double take. ‘Slade?’ he said. ‘Bill Slade?’

  ‘You better believe it,’ said the cabbie. ‘So it’s Larry Morrison. Well, what do you know.’

  Now, what Morrison knew was that up to two or three years ago, Slade had been – as he himself still was – one of the several thousand comfortably fixed bees hiving in the glass-and-aluminum Majestico complex in Greenbush, New Jersey. There were 80,000 Majestico employees around the world, but the Greenbush complex was the flagship of the works, the executive division. And Slade had been there a long, long time, moving up to an assistant managership on the departmental level.

  Then the department was wiped out in a reorganizational crunch, and Slade, along with some others in it, had been handed his severance money and his hat. No word had come back from
him after he finally sold his house and pulled out of town with his wife and kid to line up, as he put it, something good elsewhere. It was a shock to Morrison to find that the something good elsewhere meant tooling a cab around Manhattan.

  He said in distress, ‘Jeez, I didn’t know, Bill – none of the Hillcrest Road bunch had any idea—’

  ‘That’s what I was hoping for,’ said Slade. ‘It’s all right, man. I always had a feeling I’d sooner or later meet up with one of the old bunch. Now that it happened, I’m just as glad it’s you.’ A horn sounding behind the cab prompted Slade to get it moving. ‘Where to, Larry?’

  ‘Columbus Circle. The Coliseum.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, let me guess. The Majestico Trade Exposition. It’s that time of the year, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And it’s good politics to show up, right? Maybe one of the brass’ll take notice.’

  ‘You know how it is, Bill.’

  ‘I sure do.’ Slade pulled up at a red light and looked around at Morrison. ‘Say, you’re not in any tearing hurry, are you? You could have time for a cup of coffee?’

  There was a day-old stubble on Slade’s face. The cap perched on the back of his graying hair was grimy and sweat-stained. Morrison felt unsettled by the sight. Besides, Slade hadn’t been any real friend, just a casual acquaintance living a few blocks farther up Hillcrest Road. One of the crowd on those occasional weekend hunting trips of the Hillcrest Maybe Gun and Rod Club. The ‘Maybe’ had been inserted in jest to cover those bad hunting and fishing weekends when it temporarily became a poker club.

  ‘Well,’ Morrison said, ‘this happens to be one of those heavy Saturdays when—’

  ‘Look, I’ll treat you to the best Danish in town. Believe me, Larry, there’s some things I’d like to get off my chest.’

  ‘Oh, in that case,’ said Morrison.

  There was a line of driverless cabs in front of a cafeteria on Eighth Avenue. Slade pulled up behind them and led the way into the cafeteria which was obviously a cabbies’ hangout. They had a little wrestling match about the check at the counter, a match Slade won, and, carrying the tray with the coffee and Danish, he picked out a corner table for them.