Cloud Nine

Chapter 19

Hook or no hook, the summer dragged on, and what had been a beautiful dream, with us up there on our cloud, had turned into an ugly nightmare, but not one that you hoped would end, because somehow you knew the awakening was going to be still worse. I carried on, I got listings. I helped the salesmen, I closed deals, though it was all tougher than usual, as the recession was on, and things were slow, terribly slow.

But all that time the other was bugging me, especially Stan Modell. Couple of days after that evening with Mother, he called with news of the new will, which he’d got from Mort Leonard — Jane had drawn it, making Burl her heir, had it witnessed, signed it, and handed it over to him. Stan was all hot to sue, to recover the ten thousand I’d paid, “or at least draw the papers, and out of courtesy show them to Mort. Graham, he dare not let that suit come to trial. Because if it comes out in court, that while claiming to farm her land, to enjoy Rural Agricultural assessment, she was actually deriving her main income from you, that does it. They pop her up to her proper status, on the basis of actual value, probably retroactive, so she’ll be eaten alive by taxes. She’ll have to do something about you, at the very least refund your ten thousand dollars. It’s not hay, Graham — and what do you have to lose? — I’ll carry the load, on a contingent basis, of course, and all you have to do is nothing.”

I told him I’d think about it.

I told him on Mother’s phone, where I did all my talking with him, on call-backs I’d give him, when he’d ring me at the office. He’d call, I’d tell him stand by, and then go running out and drive to Mother’s. Helen Musick thought I’d gone nuts, and who am I to say I hadn’t? Of course, when I’d hang up on a call, I’d talk it out with Mother, who was still dead set against suing.

“Gramie,” she told me very solemn, “you’ll do as you like, of course, and Stan’s idea sounds good — certainly she has her nerve, to be keeping the money you’ve paid her. Just the same, who says you’ll get it back? Suppose the court holds that while you were paying her, you were actually heir to her land, if she had died in that time, and would have inherited. When she didn’t die, you had assumed a risk and lost, on the principle of insurance, and have no refund coming.

“Also, Gramie, suppose she says, suppose she swears in open court, after coaching from we-know-who, that wedlock was part of the deal, that you promised to marry her, after spending years in her bed, but when out of the blue, you up and married a young girl, she decided to call it off. Don’t forget, you lived for ten years in her house, and the bed may be hard to disprove.

“I’m against the lawsuit, Gramie. It would be wonderful, I’d love it myself, I confess, to get a judgment against her that Burl would have to pay, out of that money he made, from poor little Dale Morgan’s death — but it might not turn out that way, and I’d simply hate it, his laughing at us in court, the wolfish grin he’d give it, in case we lost, which we might very well do. It’s a wrench to give up that dream, it had become part of me. But let’s face it, it’s gone! It’s not there any more! Well, life is like that! I say let’s forget it!”

“Amen, I say it too!”

“...We can’t forget it!”

She screamed at me, after one of Stan Modell’s calls, marching up and down, digging her fingernails in, and nipping her lip with her teeth. “We’re in one key, the orchestra in another, as your little wife reminded us, that evening at your house. Jane won’t live to see the snow, that’s what we’re up against, unless something is done! So she’s a nut, a screwball, a kook, but we always knew that, didn’t we? Now she’s a screwball with a bad egg winding her up, a Trilby who met her Svengali — but can we hold it against her?

“The main thing is, she’ll be hit by some horrible accident, as Dale Morgan was hit, and for exactly the same reason — so he can cash in on it big! So okay, okay, okay, now we’re on key, at last. But what do we do about it? What can we do about it? Go to the police? What do we know to tell them? Let Stan Modell file his suit? What good is that going to do? Go to her? Warn her? Then he could file suit against us. And, it wouldn’t do any good, not in her present mood. Can you think of anything, Gramie?”

“Not right now I can’t.”

“I’m at my wits’ end, I confess.”

I’d have given anything to talk all that out with Sonya, but something came up, so I couldn’t. The beds were delivered, and Modesta made them up, so they looked identically the same as the ones that were taken away. And I got into mine, pleased to be back again in our own proper room.

And I waited and waited and waited, but nobody came in there with me. I called, and she answered, from across the hall in the guest room. I went over there, and she was in bed, in the same bed she’d been sleeping in, reading Playboy. I asked if she wasn’t coming in with me, and she said: “Better I sleep in here.”

At that I blew my top. “In what way better?” I asked. “You keep screeching that you’re my wife. Has it occurred to you, I’m your husband? Get out of that bed! Get in there, where you belong!” I ripped the covers off her and tried to pull her out, but she fought me off, stronger than you might think. I wound up slapping her and she started to cry. So a woman in tears calls for love, and God knows I was willing. But these weren’t that kind of tears. They came in heaves and twitches and jerks, and had a bitter sound. I tried to ease her, but she wouldn’t relax to let me. Then I went back to my room, sobbing worse than she was. So I couldn’t talk anything out with her, not in a friendly way.

And then one day, at the office, came a mysterious call, from some guy I probably knew. “Mr. Kirby,” he said, “if you’ll drive down past the playground, the playground by the creek, where Forty-fourth intersects, you’re going to see something, you’re going to get a surprise.” I paid no attention, but went back to work, for at least eighteen seconds. Then I had Elsie ring the house. When no answer came I went down and got headed for Forty-fourth Avenue.

The “playground” is only a halfway thing, mainly grass and bushes and trees, with a brook running down the middle that’s really the head of Anacostia Creek. One or two rustic benches are there, but no restrooms or supervision, so parents don’t like it and forbid their kids to go there, with the results it’s usually deserted. It was deserted today, as I drove past on Forty-fourth, except for two people, lolling around on the grass, one Burl Stuart, the other Sonya Kirby. I drove by in a hurry, then at East-West stopped and took a U-turn, to go back. When I did I spotted their cars, her Valiant down near the bridge, his Pinto behind it. I drove by once more, slowing down a little to stare, and at Understood pulled in and stopped. I debated whether to go back, to stop and have it out, with her, with him, with both of them, but somehow couldn’t. I wish I could say I had some good reason, a deep reason that made sense, but it wouldn’t be true. I just lost my nerve, couldn’t make myself.

I drove back to the office and sat down at my desk again. Helen Musick came in, had a look at me, and wanted to know the trouble. I told her, “Nothing.” But she took me down and drove me around in her car, making me open the wing, so the cool air blew on my face. Then she took me in People’s and bought me a Coke. It revived me enough so I was able to carry on, the rest of the afternoon.

At last, around six, I got home and Sonya got up from reading the afternoon paper, the Evening Star. She brought me the cocktail tray, but I said: “I don’t care for anything.”

“Well you may as well have one.”

“I said I don’t want it!”

“Listen, you don’t have to yell.”

So we sat there a minute, and then, very casually, she said: “I saw you drive by today. Why didn’t you stop?”

“Some particular reason I should have?”

“Well after all it was me.”

“And also Burl Stuart.”

And then, as sour stuff boiled up in my throat, I went over and bellowed: “Why? Why was he there with you?”

“I said you don’t have to yell!”

“Answer me! What was he doing there?”

By that time, I was in slapping range, and might have fired one at her, except that she turned into something I was always forgetting she was, a brash teenager. She snapped a kick at my stomach, which I flinched away from in time, but it shut me up. She sulked a moment, then said, as though talking to a child: “What was he doing there? Well if I told him to meet me there, how could he, without being there?”

“You? Told him to meet you there?”

“That’s right. Now you know.”

“He called you, he...”

“No, no! I called him!”

“You? Called him? At his home? And...”

“Well you seem to know all about it.”

“Sonya! I’m asking you!”

“At his office I called him, of course.”

“What did you call him about?”

“To ’gradulate him, on his marriage. It was the least I could do, I thought. After all we had been friends.”

“And, he raped you — a real friendly thing.”

“I try not to think about that.”

“I do too, unsuccessfully.”

“You needn’t make cracks, Gramie.”

“Couldn’t you ’gradulate him over the phone?”

“Yes, of course. I did.”

“Then why the grass sandwich out in the park?”

“That was his idea. He said come up to his office, he wanted to see me. But I said meet me outside.”

“What did he want of you?”

“Screw me, was all.”

“I told you to refrain from using that word!”

“Well you asked what he wanted of me!”

“And what did you tell him?”

“Told him no, for the reason he already knew, as I’d told him that day at the house. So he said I should reconsider, as he didn’t stink any more. He said he’d used that lotion, the one that’s advertised, which he realizes now is no good, but he went for the girl in the ads. So I said after what I’d said, I owed him to give it a sniff, but I’d do it out in the park, on account if I had to throw up I could do it on the grass. So he said okay, and that’s why we were there.”

“And how did he smell, if I may ask?”

“Not good, but better. Enough, anyway, that I had to ’pologize for those various things I had said.”

“Did he ’pologize for raping you?”

“That subject didn’t come up.”

“...Or did he?”

“Did he? Did he? Did he what?”

“Rape you?”

“I thought I told you he did.”

“You did, and now I’m telling you, it’s not true, what you’ve said — or if it is, it’s not the whole truth, or even a fractional part of it. Sonya, on TV one night, in connection with White House stuff, I heard a guy say: ‘The truth bears its own thumbprint, right in the middle of its forehead — and so does a lie, except bigger, from having a bigger thumb.’ It’s all a lie, what you’ve said, so maybe the other was too. Maybe it wasn’t rape, maybe you weren’t held by two kind friends of his. Who were they, anyway? Do you realize you’ve never said? And why didn’t you tell your mother, until you got knocked up? Then, and then only, did you remember you were raped.

“You know what it reminds me of? Of Lincoln’s story, of the man he was defending, as a lawyer, in Illinois, from a woman’s charge that he raped her. She took the stand and he asked her: ‘Madame, if it is true, as you say, that this defendant raped you on Tuesday afternoon, how come you didn’t tell your husband till Friday night? ‘Well I just didn’t recollect,’ she answered — and that’s how it was with you!”

I could have said more, but didn’t, and went back to my chair, where I slumped down, with no more steam in my boiler. She came over, knelt beside me, moistened her thumb, pressed it against her brow, and said: “I was raped — now what does the print say?”

“You were raped.”

“Yes.”

“Now rub again, for today.”

She stared, then got up again, without rubbing, and went back to her place on the sofa. “Okay, it was the truth, every word, but not the whole truth, of course, so it was really a lie, with an extra big thumb. Gramie, what I left out was why. And that I’m not going to tell you. I told you before, our cloud went pop, soon as Miss Jane came back, so I know what I have to do, get out. And I’m going to. I said I wouldn’t be inny pest, and I won’t be, that I promise you. But I have something to do first, something that has to be done, and be done by me, as I was the cause of it all — and because I’m the one and the only one that can do it. So my time hasn’t quite come. But until it comes, can I ask that you give me some peace? That you quit bugging me? I’m not going to lay up with Burl — maybe he thinks I am, but Burl can make a mistake. But I am going to use him, I hope, for what I must do, what I must!

“What I hafta!”

She almost screamed it, being suddenly all wrought up. I went over, sat down beside her, and took her in my arms. I whispered: “Fine, anything you say. But why do you have to go?”

“Because I love you is why.”