"Scream about your husband's rights all you want," she said. "The business is mine now and I don't want you anywhere near it. Ohhh, I know why you married me. You didn't fool me for long, Nev. Not for long."
"Ruth, you . . ."
"No more! Andy's out there waiting for me. I'm going to take the few things I want here and I'm leaving."
Nev's wide high forehead creased. The shoe-button eyes stared at her with their matched nothingness. On one of her rampages again, that's all. And enjoying it, damn her! I can tell by the way she shakes her head like a horse . . . whores . . . horse . . . whores -- a horsey, high-class whore.
Ruth broke her gaze away from him. Nev frightened her when he stared that way. She studied the room, wondering if there were anything here she wanted now. Nothing. It was a Nev Hudson room with overlapping muted reds and browns, Oriental bric-a-brac, a grand piano in one corner, a closed violin case that opened to reveal three bottles of liquor and a set of glasses. Nev liked that. "Lets get drunk and make beautiful music, honey." Windows beyond the piano stood uncurtained to the night and garden lights, lawn, barbecue pit, wrought iron furniture standing whitely dripping after the rain.
"California is a community-property state," Nev said.
"You'd better look into the law again," she said. "The business is my inheritance."
"Inheritance?" he asked. "But your father's not dead yet."
She stood staring at the night, refusing to let him goad her.
Damn her! he thought. I should've done better in a woman but not with a business thrown into the bargain. She's thinking about that bastard Andy Thurlow. She wants him but she needs my brains running the business. That ugly stick of a boy-man in her bed! She won't have him; I'll see to it.
"If you go away with this Dr. Thurlow, I'll ruin him professionally and I'll ruin you," he said.
She turned her head sideways, presenting a Greek profile, the severe line of her red hair tied at the back. A barely perceptible smile touched her lips, was gone. "Jealous, Nev?"
"I've warned you."
"You married me for the business," she said. "What do you care how I spend my time?" And she turned toward him. Squirm, you little pig of a man! What was I thinking of? What was I ever thinking of to take you instead of Andy. Did something twist my emotions, make me do it? She felt suddenly weak with the hungry hating. Is any choice ever right right right? Andy choosing that Fellowship instead of me, his eyes full of innocence oh hateful! Where did I spend my innocence? Unthinking about animal bodies and power. Did I choose power in Nev? But he let me take it away from him his own power and now I can hate him with it.
"The daughter of a murderer!" he snapped.
She glared at him. Is this what I chose? Why why why? Lonely, that's why. All alone when Andy left men for that damned Fellowship and there was Nev Nev Nev insistent kind kind like a fox. Drunk I was drunk and feeling hateful. Nev used my hate that's the only power he had -- hate my hate my hate I mustn't hate then and he's powerless I won't even hate him putting his hand on my knee oh so kind so kind and a little higher and there we were in bed married and Andy away in Denver and I was still alone.
"I'm going," she said. "Andy's going to drive me over to Sarah's. If you try to stop me, I'll call him in and I'm quite sure he can handle you."
Nev's narrow, purse-string mouth tightened. His shoe-button eyes betrayed a brief flaring and then the mask was back in place. I'll ruin them both! The bitch prattling about Andy well I showed dear old honest Andy the boy with the built in system of honor and what would she say if she learned I was the one put on the pressure to get him that Fellowship?
"You know what the town'll think," he said. "Like father like daughter. They'll take my side. You know that."
She stamped her foot. "You pig!"
Certainly, Ruth, my dear. Get angry and stamp around like a wonderful animal my god would I like to take you to bed right now angry and hurting throwing yourself and twisting and jerking my god you're splendid when you're angry. I'm better for you than Andy and you should know it we're two of a kind we take what we want and damn the honor no honor no honor on her on her on her what an animal when she's angry but that's what life's for to take to take and take and take until we're filled up on it and she raves about Andy going back to him but Andy doesn't take from me no siree I'll get rid of him just as easily as I did before and Ruthy'll come crawling back to her ever loving Nev who knows her right down to her adorable most angry adorable if I only had the guts to yank you into the bedroom right now . . . well, I'd get rid of Andy just like I did before.
"We'll strike a bargain," he said. "Go along with your lover, but don't interfere with how I run the business. You said it yourself: what do I care how you spend your time?"
Go ahead, compromise yourselves, he thought. I'll own you.
She whirled away, strode down the hall, jerked open the bedroom door, snapped on the light.
Nev was right behind her. He stood in the doorway watching as she yanked clothes from drawers and the closet, threw them on the bed.
"Well, what about it?" he asked.
She forced words out of her mouth, knowing they told more than she wanted to reveal. "All right! Keep the business . . . or whatever. We know what's precious to you." She turned to face him, near tears and fighting to hide it "You're the most hateful creature I've ever met! You can't be human." She put a hand to her mouth. "I wonder if you are."
"What's that supposed to . . ." He broke off, stared past her toward the French doors onto the patio. "Ruth . . ." Her name came out in a strangled gasp.
She whirled.
The French doors stood open to reveal three squat figures clothed in green moving into the room. To Ruth, their heads seemed strangely large, the eyes faintly luminous and frightening. They carried short tubes of silvery metal. There was a disdainful sense of power in the purposeful way they fanned out, pointing those metal tubes casually at the bedroom's occupants.
Ruth found herself wondering with an odd feeling of surprise how they'd opened the French doors without her hearing it.
Behind her, Nev gasped, said: "See here! Who . . ." His voice trailed off in a frightening hiss, an exhalation as though he were a punctured balloon. A liquid trilling sound poured from the mouth of the creature on Ruth's right
This can't be happening, she thought. Then: They're the creatures who frightened us in the grove! What do they want? What're they doing?
She found suddenly that she couldn't move. Her head felt detached, mind clear, but there were no connections to her body. One of the creatures moved to stand directly in front of her -- a queer little manling in green leotards, his torso partly concealed in a cloudy, bulging roundness that pulsed with a purple inner light. She remembered Andy's description of what he'd seen: "Glowing eyes . . ."
Andy! She wanted to scream for him, but her voice wouldn't obey. How drifting and soft the world seemed!
Something jerked past her and she saw Nev there walking as though pulled by strings. Her eyes focused on a smudge of powder along his shoulder, a pulsing vein at his temple. He tipped forward suddenly in that strange marionette way, falling rigidly into one of the open French doors. There came the crash and tinkling of broken glass. The floor around him became bright with flowing red. He twitched, lay still.
The gnome creature in front of her spoke quite distinctly in English: "An accident, you see?"
She had no voice to answer, only a distant horror somewhere within the powdery billowing that was her self. Ruth closed her eyes, thinking; Andy! Oh, Andy, help me!
Again, she heard one of the creatures speak in that liquid trilling. She tried to open her eyes, couldn't. Waves of darkness began to wash over what remained of her awareness. As unconsciousness came, her mind focused clearly on a single oddly pertinent thought: This can't be happening because no one would believe it. This is nightmare, that's all.
10
Thurlow sat in the dark car smoking his pipe, wondering what was taking Ruth so
long in the house. Should I go in after all? he asked himself. It isn't right that I stay out here while she's in there alone with him. But she said she could handle him.
Did Adele think she could handle Joe?
That's a crazy thought!
It was raining again, a thin drizzle that misted the streetlight at the corner in front of him. He turned, glanced at the house -- lights in the living room, but no sign of movement behind the drawn shades.
When she comes to the door, I'll go up and help her carry whatever . . . no! Dammit, I should go in now. But she must know if she can handle him.
Handle him!
What was it like, those two? Why did she marry him?
He shook his head, looked away from the house. The night appeared too dark beyond the streetlights and he eased off the setting on his polarizing lenses.
What was keeping her in there?
He thought suddenly of the hovering object he'd seen at the grove. There must be some logical explanation, he thought. Perhaps if I called the Air Force . . . anonymously . . . Somebody must have a simple, logical explanation.
But what if they haven't?
My God! What if the saucer nuts turn out to've been right all along?
He tried to see his wristwatch, remembered it hadn't been wound. Damn she was taking a long time in there!
Like a train shunted onto an odd track, his mind veered to a memory of Ruth's father, the compelling directness of the man's eyes. "Take care of Ruthy!"
And that thing hovering at Joe's window --what had that been?
Thurlow took off his glasses, polished them with a handkerchief, slipped them back on his nose. He remembered Joe Murphey in April, right after the man had turned in the false fire alarm. What a shock it had been to find Ruth's father facing him in the dirty little examination room above the sheriff's office. And there'd been the even greater shock at evaluating the man's tests. The dry language of his report to the probation office couldn't begin to convey that shock.
"I found him to be a man lacking a good central core of balanced feelings. This, coupled to a dangerous compulsive element such as the false fire alarm, should be considered a warning of serious disturbance. Here is a man whose psychological makeup contains all the elements necessary for a terrible tragedy."
The language of the report -- so careful in its wording, maintaining the strict esoterica of officialese . . . he'd known how little it might convey and had supplemented it with a verbal report.
"The man's dangerous. He's a definite paranoid type and could explode. He's capable of violence."
The disbelief had been frightening. "Surely this is nothing more than a prank. Joe Murphey! Hell, he's an important man here, Andy. Well . . . could you recommend analysis . . . psychoanalysis."
"He won't have anything to do with it . . . and I doubt it'd do him any good."
"Well, what do you expect us to do? Can't you recommend something?"
"Maybe we can get him into a church. I'll call Father Giles at the Episcopal church and see if . . ."
"A church?"
Thurlow remembered his rueful shrug, the too pat words: "I'll probably be read out of the order for this, but religion often does what psychology can't."
Thurlow sighed. Father Giles, of course, had been unsuccessful.
Damn! What was keeping Ruth in that house? He reached for the car door, thought better of it. Give her a few more minutes. Everything was quiet in there. Probably it was taking her time to pack.
Ruth . . . Ruth . . . Ruth . . .
He remembered that she'd taken his probation report with better balance than the officials. But she was trained in his field and she'd suspected for some time that her father was disturbed. Thurlow remembered he'd gone out to the hospital immediately after the session in the probation office. Ruth had accompanied him, looking withdrawn and fearful, into the almost deserted cafeteria. They'd taken their cups to a corner table. He remembered the steam-table smell of the place, the faint antiseptic background, the marbleized linoleum tabletop with its leftover coffee stains.
Her cup had clattered in a trembling staccato as she'd put it down. He'd sat silently for a moment, sensing her need to come to grips with what he'd told her.
Presently, she'd nodded, then: "I knew it . . . I guess."
"Ruth, I'll do everything I . . ."
"No." She tucked a strand of red hair under her cap. "They let him call me from the jail . . . just before you came. He was furious with you. He won't accept anything you say."
They must've told him about my report, Thurlow thought. "Now he knows his mask of sanity isn't working," he said. "Of course he's furious."
"Andy . . . are you sure?"
She put her hand on his, her palm damp with perspiration. He held her hand, thinking of mingled perspiration: the idea carried an odd sense of intimacy.
"You're sure," she sighed. "I've seen it coming." Again, that deep sigh. "I didn't tell you about Christmas."
"Christmas?"
"Christmas Eve. My . . . I came home from the hospital. I had the late shift then, remember? He was walking around talking to himself . . . saying horrible things about mother. I could hear her upstairs in her room . . . crying. I . . . I guess I screamed at him, called him a liar."
She took two quick breaths.
"He . . . hit me, knocked me into the Christmas tree . . . everything knocked over . . ." She put a hand to her eyes. "He'd never hit me before -- always said he didn't believe in spankings, he'd had so many beatings when he was a boy."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"We were . . . I . . . I was ashamed of . . . I thought if . . ." She shrugged. "I went out to the clinic and saw Dr. Whelye, but he said . . . fights, people in the conflict of marriage are . . ."
"Sounds like him. Did your mother know he hit you?"
"She heard him storm out and slam the door. He didn't come back all night. Christmas Eve! She . . . she'd heard the commotion. She came down, helped me clean up the mess."
"I wish I'd known this when I was talking to . . ."
"What good would it do? Everyone defends him, even mother. You know what she said while she was helping me clean up? 'Your father's a very sick man, Ruthy.' Defending him!"
"What about your neighbor, Sarah French? Does . . . ?"
"Oh . . . she and Dr. French heard the fights. Sarah . . . Sarah knows daddy's sick. Dr. French . . ." Ruth shrugged.
"But as long as she knows, maybe . . ."
"She doesn't mean mental illness. Dr. French thinks he has a progressive sclerotic condition, but daddy won't go into the hospital for a complete examination. She knows about that and that's what she meant. That's all she meant!"
"Ruth . . ." He thought about this revelation for a moment. "Ruth, severe conditions of this kind, Monckeberg's sclerosis, for example, frequently are accompanied by personality distortions. Didn't you know this?"
"I . . . he wouldn't cooperate, go to a hospital or anything. I talked to Dr. French . . . Whelye. He was no help at all. I warned mother -- the violence and . . ."
"Perhaps if she'd . . ."
"They've been married twenty-seven years. I can't convince her he really might harm her."
"But he struck you, knocked you down."
"She said I provoked him."
Memories, memories -- an antiseptic little corner of the hospital cafeteria and it was fixed in his memory now as indelibly as was this dark street outside the house where Ruth had lived with Nev. The warnings about Joe Murphey had been plain enough, but the world wasn't yet prepared to understand and protect itself from its own madness.
Again, he looked at the silent house, the glow of lights through the rain. As he looked, a woman in a glistening raincoat came running out between Ruth's house and the one on the left. For an instant, he thought it was Ruth and he was half out of the car before the streetlight hit her and he saw it was an older woman with a coat thrown on over a robe. She wore slippers that squished wetly as she crossed the lawn.
Thurlow came fully out of the car. The rain was cold in his hair, on his face. He felt overcome with foreboding.
The woman came panting up to him, stopped with the rain running down out of her gray hair. "Our telephone's out," she said. "My husband's run across to the Innesses to use theirs, but I thought maybe all the phones're out, so I came . . ."
"Why do you need a phone?" The words sounded hoarse even to him.
"We live next door . . ." She pointed. "I can see from our kitchen across the patio to the Hudsons' and I saw him lying there, so I ran over . . . he's dead . . ."
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