Do Evil In Return

7

The Ballards lived in a canyon below the fogline. By five-thirty, when Charlotte arrived, the fog had already covered the sun and the air was moist and cold.

Three of the collies met her at the door. They didn’t bark because Gwen had told them to be quiet, but they sniffed Charlotte’s medical bag and her shoes, and one of them, a huge, handsome sable, planted his feet on her chest and studied her face with grave curiosity. His gold and white nose was at least five inches long. Charlotte stroked it gently.

“Oh, that Laddie,” Gwen said, laughing. “Down, Lad.”

She was wearing a blue silk housecoat that brushed the floor, and though she seemed a little nervous, she looked as well as she usually did. She had always been tiny and very thin. She traded on her size and made sure she kept it. She wore little heelless slippers and she dieted constantly, dulling her appetite with gallons of hot, strong tea.

“Down, Laddie boy,” Gwen repeated. “I just can’t teach him to stay down. He won’t listen. I guess he knows I love him best.” She took the dog’s front paws and lowered him to the floor. “He’s my baby. Shake hands with Dr. Keating, Lad.”

All three of the collies sat down and offered their paws with an air of polite boredom. Charlotte shook hands with each of them, feeling, as she always did when she came to this house, that she was entering an unreal world where values were reversed and the dogs kept Gwen as a pet.

“Are you feeling better?” Charlotte asked.

“Oh yes. Much.”

“Good.”

“I’ve made tea... I love tea.”

Charlotte left her medical bag in the hall and followed Gwen into the sitting room. The dogs came too; they went everywhere that Gwen went.

The room belonged to Gwen; there was nothing of Lewis here or anywhere in the house except his study. Gwen had braided the oval rugs herself, woven the textile for the slip covers, made the pieces of petit-point and sewed the ruffled chintz drapes. Milk glass and pewter, chintz and maple suited her, and the furniture was scaled to her size. Everything was small and fragile, and Gwen looked both picturesque and right sitting in the spindly maple chair with one foot resting delicately on a petit-point footstool. (No wonder Lewis bought me the big leather chair, Charlotte thought. There’s no place here for him to sit.)

The tea table was set with Gwen’s best Spode, and the tea was already made, the pot protected against the chill of the fog by a yellow wool cozy Gwen had made herself.

The dog, Laddie, came and put his chin on Gwen’s lap. She stroked his heavy white ruff as she talked. “In fact, I feel so much better really, I guess it was silly of me not to cancel your call. But...”

She put her head on one side, in a kind of winsome, you-know-me gesture. Her fair hair had thinned and sallowed, and her fine white skin was loose beneath her chin, but she had the mannerisms of a woman who had once been beautiful. Her history was written on her face and illustrated by her artful, fluttering hands. At eighteen she had had the world at her feet — she was the most popular debutante in Louisville; she had clippings to prove it — but the world had gradually deserted her. She had had nothing to offer it but her youth.

At forty she lived for her house and her dogs, and sometimes in the middle of the night she had spells of terror. Her pulse was so fast it couldn’t be counted; her body twitched; her head took fire. Twice Charlotte had been called in the night and found her like this and given her a sedative. There was nothing organically wrong with Gwen’s heart. Her symptoms were typical of the cardiac neurotic and couldn’t be tracked down by a doctor who had had no special psychiatric training.

“Was this attack like the others?” Charlotte felt for the pulse in Gwen’s wrist. It was still rapid, nearly a hundred.

“A bit worse, I think. Oh, I was frightened — what’s my pulse?”

“Just about normal. Have you been taking the capsules and medicine I prescribed?” The medicine was a sedative and the capsules contained estrogenic hormones, but Gwen wasn’t the kind of patient you could tell these things to. She would certainly misinterpret the hormones, Charlotte thought grimly.

Gwen looked vague, and a little hurt. “I try. I take them when I can remember. But I have so much on my mind. Winkie’s having pups again in six days. It’s going to be a huge litter, perhaps a dozen. She’s so heavy she can hardly...”

“You should be especially careful to remember the capsules. After all, you’re more important than Winkie or her pups.”

Gwen let out a little cry. “Why, that’s just what Lewis says! He’s always telling me, look after yourself, darling. Remember you’re much more precious than any dogs.”

Precious. Darling. The words stung Charlotte’s ears. She’s lying. He wouldn’t call her... But why not? They were married: they lived together day after day; there must be some tender moments. Perhaps some very tender ones, though Lewis claimed there weren’t.

She said, without expression, “It might be a good idea to cut down on stimulants like tea and coffee and coke.”

“I try, I really do. But then I love my tea so much... It’s ready now if you’d like some, doctor...”

“Thanks, I would.”

The tea was lukewarm and so strong it coated Charlotte’s tongue and the roof of her mouth. She drank it fast and put the empty cup on the table.

Gwen’s hands had a bad tremor. Because she fluttered and fussed so much by nature the tremor wasn’t noticeable until she picked up the empty cup to refill it. The cup rattled in the saucer like hail against a window.

“Are you still dieting?” Charlotte asked.

“Well, not very much. I have to, a little bit. I’m so tiny every pound shows. I mean, one avocado and there’s an inch around my hips.”

“You’re underweight I advise you to skip the diet for a while.”

“I’ll try.”

“I can’t do anything for you, Mrs. Ballard, if you won’t help yourself. There’s not much use in paying me five dollars for a prescription and then leaving it to gather dust on the bathroom shelf.”

Gwen clapped her hands with delight like a child. “Oh, that’s what I like about you, doctor. You’re so outspoken and so honest.”

“Am I? Thanks.”

The dogs sensed something, a tension, an excitement in Gwen’s laugh. They crowded her, raising their noses for attention, their wagging tails sweeping across the teacups and the ash tray. They were more than Gwen’s dogs, Charlotte thought. They were part of Gwen herself — each of them like a separate sympathetic nervous system, feeling everything that Gwen felt.

“Mollie, you bad girl,” Gwen said. “You’ve spilled the ashes. Settle down, now, all of you, and behave yourselves, or I’ll put you out in your dog run.”

The dogs quieted but they wouldn’t leave her. They followed her around the room as she turned on the lamps, as if they were expecting something out of the ordinary.

Charlotte rose, too, and began brushing the silky white collie hairs from the front of her dress. “Though it sounds pretty hackneyed, I think your real trouble may be nerves, Mrs. Ballard.”

“Oh, please call me Gwen. After all, we’ve known each other nearly a year now.”

“Nervous disorders aren’t really in my field and I suggest that you consult someone else.”

“I won’t be shunted off to some so-called specialist. You’re too modest, doctor. You don’t realize how much good you do me. Why, after one of your visits I feel just wonderful. Lewis notices it too. He said one day, Dr. Keating’s a regular tonic for you, Gwen darling.”

Gwen darling. “That only proves my point. I don’t actually do anything for you. I’m a kind of emotional sedative, a reassurance.”

“Why, I believe you’re right.”

“That’s why I recommend a — nerve specialist.”

“You mean a psychiatrist?”

“Yes.”

Gwen smiled. But the smile wasn’t real and the dogs knew it; they stood with their plumed tails between their legs and watched and waited.

“But I don’t want to,” she said. “I can never do anything I don’t want to.”

“There’s no longer any stigma attached to going to a psychiatrist, you know. As a matter of fact it’s become a mark of distinction — only rich people can afford to.”

Gwen’s tone was playful. “Now doctor, you’re only trying to get rid of me, ’fess up. You think there are so many really sick people in the world that you’re wasting your time on me and my silly old spells.”

“Not at all. When I can’t treat a patient to my satisfaction I recommend someone else.”

“Well, I won’t have anyone else, so there. Imagine me at a nasty psychiatrist’s, telling him everything. Oh, I’d die!”

Charlotte drew on her gloves. Throwing words at Gwen was like throwing bubbles; they burst before they got anywhere. “I’m glad I was able to help in some way,” Charlotte said. She felt such tension and weariness that she was ready to weep. You’re so honest, doctor, so honest... “Take the capsules and the medicine and try not to worry too much about the spells. I don’t think they’re serious.”

She went out to the hall and picked up her medical bag, and Gwen and the dogs followed, Gwen looking a little hurt by her departure, like a disappointed child.

“Oh, it’s a shame you have to leave, doctor. Dinner’s ready, and it would be easy as pie to set another place. Lewis will be home any minute now.”

“Thanks. I...”

“Another time, perhaps?”

“Yes.”

“I know,” Gwen said gently, “that Lewis would love to have you.”

“That’s — nice.”

“Good-bye, now.”

“Good-bye.”

Outside, the fog had thinned, but the sky was darkening.