Wicked Angel

by Taylor Caldwell

  Then Jack mutely lifted his hand. There was nothing he could do.

  He said, “I think Angelo should be told at once, by his mother. I think he should be reassured, vehemently, that the coming baby will not threaten his position, that he will be the more important because of it. Do you understand, Mark?”

  The two men looked into each other’s eyes.

  “Does he suspect what you’re thinking about him, Mark?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never known what he thought, Jack. But he watches me. When I can’t read any longer, and begin to think, there his, right beside me, watching me—as if listening to my thoughts. Jack, is this inherited? Is it possible we can have—another?”

  “It isn’t inherited. The chance of having another atavist, or psychopath, is about the same as anyone else’s, no more, no less.”

  “I wish,” said Mark, with deadly quiet, “that he had died when he was born.”

  “Yes. I understand that. And you’re not the only parent in the world, in this city, in your own suburbs, perhaps on your own street, who thinks that, too, though he never says it. He hopes against hope.”

  “Why have we been afflicted this way?”

  Why don’t you ask God? thought Jack. But he said, “The parents of those born lacking always ask that. It’s a mystery.”

  “Kathy always spoils him. She sings over him, chirps, bubbles, radiates over him. Perhaps—”

  “No, Mark. I don’t think he would have been better.” Mark stood up and went to the window and looked far down at the busy street, boiling with taxis and buses and automobiles and crowds. It would be so easy! Jack was beside him, his hand on his arm, his face full of compassion. Mark said, staring down blindly, “Jack, do you think he has—killed—anyone yet?”

  “Probably not! I told you, they’re careful. I don’t think he ever intended openly to kill anyone, except Alice. As they grow older, these atavists, they understand they must protect themselves. When Angelo is fourteen he will not only be in the highest fifth of his class, but he will have learned to control himself so well that even you will relax and think it all over.”

  “It won’t be over.”

  “No. But you may never see any more signs of it. Try to think of the other child. You, too, have a life to live. Forget Angelo, if you can.”

  “He is my son. I love him.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was an unusually hot summer. Even the suburbs were hot, and even the country cabin and its surroundings. It was late July. Kathy’s voluminous and tilting skirts hid her condition; she had not as yet taken to the blatant floating tunics of other women. “They advertise!” she would say. “Why, anyone can have a baby! They put on these silly tunics the first week, then stick out their stomachs. When I was a girl women had a little modesty. They didn’t proclaim loudly to the world, in sequined or flaring tunics, that they’d been sleeping lustfully with their husbands and the result was practically in a playpen. Thank goodness Angel doesn’t have the slightest suspicion! He would be so embarrassed! Do you know, Mark dear, it came to me as something quite horrifying and shameful, when I was about Angel’s age, that my parents had been sleeping together!”

  Mark said, smiling, “I know. All kids go through that stage. They like to think, even when they know better, that their own existence happened without natural intervention first. Their parents are ‘different’ from other parents. They wouldn’t do that!”

  Kathy sighed; she felt very close to Mark these days. They sat on the porch of the cabin, side by side, hands clasped affectionately together. Angelo was far away, playing with the now devoted Sally and Bobbie. Kathy leaned her head on her husband’s shoulder, and he felt a rush of tenderness for her. The obstetrician, who did not approve of middle-aged women having children, especially when there was such a gap between ages as there would be between Angelo and the coming child, had assured Mark that Kathy was in excellent condition and he had nothing to fear. “A little difficult, perhaps, because middle-aged bones aren’t as pliable as young bones, but nothing to worry about.”

  Kathy looked well; her skin had taken on a bloom, her eyes a luster that was not strained and forced. “I suppose I’ll have to tell Angel soon,” she said. “Perhaps in another month or so, when it just can’t be hidden any longer, and I graduate to tunics myself. But I certainly won’t wear those coy slacks under them, which make a pregnant woman look like a cantaloupe on sticks.”

  “Do you want me to tell him, Katherine?”

  She meditated, then gave him a sidelong, jealous look. “No. I don’t think so. I can make it so sweet; men are so coarse.”

  “You’ll tell him about the birds and the bees, perhaps.”

  “Mark, don’t be so sarcastic! Angel has had a thorough sex education. We’ve had many talks about it in the past. I’ve given him an almost—holy—regard for the processes of life—a reverence.”

  Mark stood up abruptly and went to the porch rail, and he looked at the railing on which Alice had sat, and from which she had been pushed almost to her death.

  “I’ve talked to him, too,” said Mark, still looking at the railing. And he thought of the maid, Bertie, and Jane Whythe. Who else had there been, never to be known by him, Mark? Had anyone died?

  “Mark,” said Kathy suddenly. “You are getting thinner and thinner! You worry me to death, and your color is awful! Oh, I’m afraid! Why don’t you go to the doctor?”

  “I did,” said Mark, not turning. “I even went to a cardiologist. Now, don’t get excited. There’s nothing wrong. I’m not so young myself any longer, you know. I’m thirty-eight. And, I’ve been working very hard this year.” He paused. “Have you ever thought that Angelo may be jealous, when you tell him? After all, he’s been the center of your life ever since he was born. He might not want to share that center with anyone else; he might resent it; a lot of children do, you know.”

  “Oh, Mark, you never did understand Angel! There isn’t a jealous bone in his body! I never heard a word of envy from him! Why, he’ll be out of his mind with joy and anticipation. A brother, or a sister, all his own, to cherish, to teach to walk, to love, to watch over!”

  Mark thought of the unborn child with a prayer in his heart. A boy? A girl? He hoped for a girl, a kind little creature who would wear long braids with ribbons on the ends, and with stiff little skirts showing pretty underpants. A girl—a companion. Men loved their daughters dearly. They would walk along the street together, hand in hand; she would ride on his shoulder. She would make him forget all his agonies, his longing for Alice, his terror for his son, his impatience with his wife, the looming threat in all the world. When he looked in his daughter’s eyes he would forget Angelo. He would protect her from all the Angelos in the world. No young man, in the coming years, would ever be able to deceive him.

  “You don’t mind now, do you dear?” he asked his wife.

  “Oh, no, I’m so happy! I just can’t wait to share my happiness with Angel. And isn’t it wonderful that we still have Betty, who adores Angel? She is the only one he ever liked.”

  Thank God for that, thought Mark.

  Mark returned to the City after the usual four weeks; he would come back to the cabin only for weekends after this. The house was hot and still and closed. He opened windows and doors. A woman came in every week to dust and clean, so there was no musty smell in the house. But the sun and air lay in hot dead brightness in every room. The silence seemed to ring. Mark took a shower. It was late Sunday afternoon. He went into the garden, neat and colorful with flowers. But he did not want to stay here; everything reminded him of Angelo, and the horror that was Angelo, the saber-toothed tiger that was his son. He thought of calling friends, but he was too tired to talk with them. A walk in the Park, perhaps? It was a long ride into the blazing City, but the Park was cool and dusky, surrounded though it was by the cloudy and pearl-colored towers of apartment buildings and hotels. If he hurried, he could be there long before sunset; he could walk alone along the quiet paths
and under the quiet, heavy trees and see no one he knew. The City would be ringing with quiet; everyone who could went to the “country” on the weekends, and those who could not stayed in their sweltering or air-conditioned apartments and later pretended they had spent the two days with unnamed friends near the Sound, or up in Connecticut. Only tourists would be on the streets, and it would be good to see their fresh and wondering faces, their innocent admiring faces.

  So Mark drove quickly into the City, parked his car on an almost empty street and walked into the Park. He had not been born in the City; he had not lived here until he was twenty-one. But it had a charm for him beyond the charm of neat suburbs and spacious quiet houses.

  Few people were in the Park, though he heard children at a distance laughing at the ponds where they sailed boats, and the barking of pet dogs on leashes. Mark sat on a bench and a cool wind blew against his weary face and ruffled his hair, in which there were new streaks of gray. He smiled as young shy couples passed him, hand in hand. A policeman stopped to exchange talk of the weather and wipe his hot red face. Squirrels ran about on the grass and the birds swore at them, and they returned the oaths in good measure. There was a scent of pine abroad, and leaves glittered on the topmost branches in the lowering sun. The cloudy towers surrounding the Park became incandescent.

  A young bareheaded woman and a tall young boy approached Mark’s bench. They were laughing happily at each other; the boy’s laugh was full and strong, and did not sound like Angelo’s—rich and warming and full of beguilement. Mark turned his head and looked full into Alice’s face.

  She stopped instantly, as if shocked, and, as he slowly rose, she turned scarlet. But she was all composure. She shook hands with him gravely, and smiled her beautiful smile, and she introduced the boy to him. “This is Kennie Richards,” she said. “How—how is Kathy? And Angelo, Mark? And what are you doing here alone, and not at the cabin?”

  He had not seen her for almost two years, though she lived only in Boston. Two years! No, that was impossible. She had never gone away; she had always been with him, her voice in his ear, her face close to his. The girl sat down on the bench, and Mark sat down, too, and Kennie surveyed them with a shy smile. “Why don’t you go down to the pond, dear?” asked Alice. “And here are the peanuts for the squirrels. Don’t be long. You have the watch I gave you? Good. Be back in about fifteen minutes.”

  The boy went off, and Mark looked after him. Now, why couldn’t he have had a son like that, with clear honest eyes, kind lips, and a face that expressed inner cleanliness? He had made no effort to charm; he had no coaxing and winning ways. A boy, a good boy.

  Mark heard himself talking, and Alice replying, but it was some moments before he became conscious of what they were really saying. Alice was making her usual excuses for not visiting her family. She was very busy; she’d been getting her PhD. She was taking an advanced art course. She had many friends. Her classes were heavy, and she loved them all. She did not know where the time went. She had often planned …

  She paused. Mark gazed at her calm profile, with its almost classic features. Alice was twenty-four now. The slight rigidity of expression that he remembered had disappeared. Her lips were softer, still sad, but with a brighter touch of color. She said, “I’m so happy for you and Kathy, Mark. I hope the baby will be a girl. I teach boys, of course, and I love them dearly, but I’d like to teach girls for a while. Kathy writes me the most buoyant and excited letters. Is she really as well as she sounds?”

  “Yes, she’s very well, and happy, Allie.”

  Alice paused again. “And—Angelo? How does he like the idea of a new brother or sister?”

  “He doesn’t know yet.” Alice turned quickly on the bench and looked into his eyes, and they did not need to ask a question or form a reply.

  “Kathy will tell him soon,” said Mark at last. Dear Alice, dear clean Alice, with her decent look of integrity and pride, and all her unshakable dignity! He looked at the long neck, at the modest but well-fitting linen dress on her lovely figure, at her long quiet hands, at her smooth calves and delicate ankles. And then he could look no more and averted his face, and Alice saw his gray pallor, his thinness, the ashen streaks in his hair, his look of absolute exhaustion. She clenched her hands on her knees.

  There were whole days together now, when she did not think of Mark. There were nights when she slept, and did not dream of him. There were occasions when she really enjoyed the company of other men; there was actually one young professor whom she was seriously considering marrying. And now, it was all gone, the hard-won peace, the tranquillity, the new life, the new hope, the feeling that her existence had not stopped and that she had not reached a blank wall in which there was not a door that could be opened on a fresh garden. It blew away like nothingness, and there was only Mark after all, and there had never been anyone else but Mark.

  She bent her head and they sat in silence and stared sightlessly at the grass. Then with an effort Alice said, “You remember me talking about Kennie? I—I sent him to Miss Simmons’ school, and I thought he liked it. And then he wouldn’t go any longer, and he wouldn’t tell me why. But he’s going to a very nice new public school, with young teachers who are determined really to teach, and he’s doing well and is happy.” She hesitated. Did Mark know anything about what had happened to Kennie? But he had forgotten that she had ever spoken about him that summer day so long ago. He tried to listen with a show of interest. Alice sighed.

  “When Jack and Mary are married the end of this month they are going to try to adopt Kennie,” she said. “Jack McDowell. He says he often sees you. In fact, they have already put in an application. It will be wonderful for Kennie; he loves them both.” She had thought that when she herself married she would adopt Kennie. But he was growing up; he needed a home of his own. And now her own hopes of being his adopted mother were gone forever.

  “Yes,” said Mark, in his listless voice. “Kathy and I are invited to the wedding, of course.” He closed his eyes involuntarily. Something is terribly wrong, thought Alice, with alarm.

  “Mark!” she cried. “Is something the matter? Is there anything I can do?”

  “Allie,” he said, not looking at her. “Why didn’t you tell me that Angelo tried to kill you that day at the cabin?”

  She put her hand quickly to her lips and looked at him with fear.

  “You see,” said Mark, “I went to Jack. I told him about—other occasions. I thought I was losing my mind for years. I wanted to believe that, honestly. I wanted to think I needed treatment or even confinement. Anything but the truth. And then, Jack told me the truth. He told me about you and Angelo, also.”

  “He shouldn’t have! That was wrong!”

  Mark shook his head. “No, Allie dear. It was right. If you had been the only—one—he wouldn’t even have mentioned it, for kids sometimes do stupid and dangerous things out of impulse. But—there were the others, you see. And I went to Jack for help. And, he told me everything I would rather have died than hear.”

  Alice’s face changed, became fixed as if in stone. “Mark,” she almost whispered. “What are you saying? There were—other people?”

  “Yes, Allie. And if you had told me the truth that day perhaps these others wouldn’t have been hurt. I would have watched, just as I am watching now. Who knows, Allie,”—and out of his despair he wanted a sharing despair—“but that someone has been maimed, someone I haven’t even heard of, someone I never even knew, an old man or a child or a woman, in an ‘accident.’ I’ll never know. And it’s my fault, and yours.”

  Alice began to cry, soundlessly, bending her head to hide the tears she could not stop. “I didn’t tell you, Mark. I didn’t want you to know, I was afraid it would hurt you too much.”

  He nodded like an automaton. “Yes, I understand that. I can understand that. I never told Kathy. I shouldn’t have blamed you, Allie. Don’t cry, please. Forgive me; I shouldn’t have talked that way to you. But I’ve come to the end of something
—I don’t see how I can go on, knowing my son is a dangerous psychopath, and that unless he is caught at some violence he’ll never be taken away from others he can hurt. Jack tells me he is about to enter another stage of his development, and that he’ll probably abandon even the slightest violence in the future. He’ll be even more careful of himself than ever. But I begin to think of some little girl, somewhere, playing like those children around a pond, or in her backyard, or walking with her mother right now, perhaps, whom he’ll marry. And I’m thinking of the children he’ll have, and all the misery and despair he’ll spread.”

  He struck his knee with his fist. “All the misery and the despair. It’ll widen around him; he’ll destroy his wife’s happiness and love. His children will come to hate him; he’ll make misfits and neurotics of them, and ruin their lives. He won’t be able to help it. He is what he is. He can’t be stopped or changed, no more than an elemental force, or a storm. You know there’s nothing to appeal to, except his own welfare, and he’ll take care of that very well out in the world which can either hate or love him! Yes. And serve him, too. Sometimes, Allie, I wish he’d get out of control, really out of control, and do something, something frightful which he can’t hide, and then, perhaps, there will be a place for him and he’ll be locked away safely.”

  Alice could not bear the anguish in his voice, the stifled breathing she heard. She put her hand on Mark’s arm, and tightened her fingers around it. She was horrified at its emaciation.

  “He used to have such awful rages,” the girl stammered. “But Kathy writes me that now he seldom loses his temper, hardly more than once a month, and he’s easier to calm. Perhaps we can hope a little.”

  Mark shook his head again. “His rages are fewer, yes, and sometimes he gets over them quicker; he doesn’t throw or smash things as he used to do. But he looks wild and mad when he is in a rage, Alice, not with a child’s wildness and madness, but a man’s. I don’t care what Jack says, Alice. Angelo’s insane when he’s in a rage. I can still take hold of him forcibly, and hold him until he subsides. But the day will come when he will be too big and too strong. What then?”