Like Love

5

There is something about big women that is always a little frightening: a reversal of roles, a destruction of stereotype. Women are supposed to be delicate and fragile; everybody knows that. They’re supposed to be soft and cuddly and a little helpless and dependent. They’re supposed to seek comfort and solace in the arms of strong, clear-eyed resolute men.

The two men who rang the doorbell of Mary Tomlinson’s house on Sands Spit were strong, clear-eyed, and resolute.

Steve Carella was six feet tall with wide shoulders, narrow hips, thick wrists and big hands. He did not present a picture of overwhelming massiveness because his power was deceptively concealed in the body of a natural athlete, a man who moved easily and loosely, in total control of a fine-honed muscularity. His eyes were brown with a peculiar downward slant, combining with his high cheekbones to give his face a curiously Oriental look. He was not a frightening man, but when you opened the door to find him on your front step, you knew for certain he wasn’t there to sell insurance.

Cotton Hawes weighed a hundred and ninety pounds. He was six feet two inches tall, and his big-boned body was padded with obvious muscle. His eyes were an electric blue, and he had a straight unbroken nose, and a good mouth with a wide lower lip. He carried a white streak in the hair over his left temple, where he had once been stabbed while investigating a burglary. He did not look like the sort of man anyone would want to challenge-even to a game of checkers.

Both men were big, both men were strong. And besides, they were each carrying loaded guns on their hips. But when Mary Tomlinson opened the door of the development house, they both felt slightly inadequate and seemed to shrink visibly on the doorstep.

Mrs. Tomlinson had flaming red hair and flashing green eyes. The eyes and the hair alone would have been enough to present her as a woman of force, but they were accompanied by height and girth, and a granite-like, no-nonsense face. She stood at least five feet nine inches tall inside her doorway, a woman with a large bosom and thick arms, her legs and feet planted firmly to the floor, like a wrestler waiting for a charge. She wore a flowered Hawaiian muumuu, and she was barefoot, and she looked at the detectives with suspicion as they faced her inadequately and timorously showed their shields.

“Come in,” she said. “I was wondering when you’d get to me.”

She did not deliver the cliché with any sense of unoriginality. She seemed not to know that “I was wondering when you’d get to me” had been spoken by countless fictitious heavies long before she was born, and would probably continue to be spoken so long as heavies existed. Instead, she delivered the line as if she were chairman of the board of General Motors who; having called a meeting, was irritated when some of her executives arrived a little late. She had been expecting the police to get to her, and her only question now was what the hell had taken them so long.

She stamped flatfooted into the house, leaving the door for Hawes to close behind him. The house was a typical Sands Spit development dwelling, a small entrance hall, a kitchen on the left, a living room on the right, and three bedrooms and a bath running along the rear. Mrs. Tomlinson had furnished the place with the taste of a miniaturist. The furniture was small, the pictures on the walls were small, the lamps were small, everything seemed to have been designed for a tiny woman.

“Sit down,” she said, and Hawes and Carella found seats in the living room, two small caned chairs in which they were instantly uncomfortable. Mrs. Tomlinson spread her ample buttocks onto the tiny couch opposite them. She sat like a man, her legs widespread, the folds of the muumuu dropping between her knees, her big-toed feet again planted firmly on the floor. She looked at her visitors unsmiling, waiting. Carella cleared his throat.

“We’d like to ask you a few questions, Mrs. Tomlinson,” he said.

“I assume that’s why you’re here,” she answered.

“Yes,” Carella said. “To begin with…”

“To begin with,” Mrs. Tomlinson cut in, “I’m in the middle of preparations for my daughter’s funeral, so I hope you’ll make this short and sweet. Somebody’s got to take care of the damn thing.”

“You’re handling all arrangements, are you?” Hawes asked.

“Who’s going to handle it?” she said, her lip curling. “That idiot she lived with?”

“Your son-in-law, you mean?”

“My sow-in-law,” she repeated, and she managed to give the words an inflection that immediately presented Michael Thayer as a fumbling creature incapable of coping with anything more difficult than tying his own shoelaces. “Some son-in-law. The poet. Roses are red, violets are blue, let it be said, happy birthday to you. My sow-in-law.” She shook her massive head.

“I gather you don’t like him very much,” Carella said.

“The feelings are mutual. Haven’t you talked to him?”

“Yes, we’ve talked to him.”

“Then you know.” She paused. “Or do you? If Michael said anything kind about me, he was lying.”

“He said you don’t get along, Mrs. Tomlinson.”

“That’s the understatement of the year. We hate each other’s guts. The bully.”

“Bully?” Hawes said. He looked at Mrs. Tomlinson in astonishment because the word seemed thoroughly inappropriate coming from her lips.

“Always shoving his weight around. I hate men who take advantage of us.”

“Take advantage?” Hawes repeated, the astonishment still on his face.

“Yes. Women are to be treated with respect,” she said, “and cared for gently. And with tenderness.” She shook her head. “He doesn’t know. He’s a bully.” She paused, and then reflectively added, “Women are delicate.”

Hawes and Carella looked at her silently for several moments.

“He… uh… he bullied your daughter, Mrs. Tomlinson?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Bossing her. He’s a boss. I hate men who are bosses.” She looked at Hawes. “Are you married?”

“No, ma’am.”

She turned instantly to Carella “Are you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Are you a boss?”

“I… I don’t think so.”

“Good You seem like a nice boy.” She paused. “Not Michael. Always bossing. Did you pay the electric bill? Did you do the marketing? Did you do this and that? It’s no wonder.”

Again, the room was silent.

“It’s no wonder what?” Carella asked.

“It’s no wonder Margaret was going to leave him.”

“Margaret?”

“My daughter.”

“Oh. Oh, yes,” Carella said. “You call her Margaret, do you?”

“That’s the name she was born with.”

“Yes, but most people called her Irene, isn’t that true?”

“Margaret was the name we gave her, and Margaret was what we called her. Why? What’s the matter with that name?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Carella said hastily. “It’s a very nice name.”

“If it’s good enough for the princess of England, it’s good enough for anybody,” Mrs. Tomlinson said.

“Certainly,” Carella said.

“Certainly,” Mrs. Tomlinson agreed, and she nodded her head vigorously.

“She was going to leave him?” Hawes asked.

“Yes.”

“You mean divorce him?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know?”

“She told me. How do you think I know?

Mothers and daughters shouldn’t keep secrets from each other I told Margaret anything she wanted to know, and she did the same with me.”

“When did she plan on leaving him, Mrs. Tomlinson?”

“Next month.”

“When next month?”

“On the sixteenth.”

“Why that particular day?”

Mrs. Tomlinson shrugged. “Is something wrong with that day?”

“No, nothing at all. But was there a special reason for picking the sixteenth?”

“I never stuck my nose in my daughter’s business,” Mrs. Tomlinson said abruptly. Carella and Hawes exchanged a quick glance.

“But yet you’re certain about the date,” Hawes said.

“Yes. She told me she would leave him on the sixteenth.”

“But you don’t know why the sixteenth?”

“No,” Mrs. Tomlinson said. She smiled suddenly. “Are you going to bully me, too?” she asked.

Carella returned the smile. Graciously, he answered, “No, certainly not, Mrs. Tomlinson. We’re only trying to get the facts.”

“I can give you all the facts,” Mrs. Tomlinson said. “The first fact is that my daughter didn’t commit suicide. That you can count on.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I know my daughter. She was like me. She loved life. Nobody who loves life is going to take her own life, that’s for sure.”

“Well,” Carella said, “all the indications…”

“Indications! Who cares about indications? My daughter was vital, energetic. People like that don’t commit suicide. Look, it runs in the family.”

“Energy?” Hawes asked,

“Energy, right I’ve got to keep moving all day long. Even sitting here, I’m beginning to feel fidgety, would you believe it? There are nervous types of women, you know. I’m one of them.”

“And your daughter was another?”

“Absolutely. Always on the go! Vital! Energetic! Alive! Listen, do you want to know something? Shall I tell you how I am in bed?”

Carella looked at Hawes uncomfortably.

“When I get in bed at night, I can’t sleep. All that energy. My hands twitch, my legs,

I just can’t sleep. I take pills every night. Only way I can relax. I’m like a motor.”

“And your daughter was that way, too?”

“Positively! So why take her own life? Impossible. Besides, she was going to leave that bully. She was going to start a new life.” She shook her head, “This whole thing stinks. I don’t know who turned on that gas, but it wasn’t Margaret, you can count on that.”

“Maybe it was Barlow,” Hawes suggested.

“Tommy? Ridiculous.”

“Why?”

“Because they were going to get married, that’s why. So would either of them turn on the gas? Or leave a stupid note like the one in the apartment? ‘There is no other way!’ Nonsense! They’d already decided on another way.”

“Now, let me get this straight, Mrs. Tomlinson,” Carella said, “You knew your daughter was seeing Tommy Barlow.”

“Of course I knew.”

“You didn’t try to discourage it?”

“Discourage it? Why the hell would I do that?”

“Well… well, she was married, Mrs, Tomlinson.”

“Married! To that bully? That was a marriage? Hah!” Mrs. Tomlinson shook her head. “She married Michael when she was eighteen. What does a girl of eighteen know about love?”

“How old was she now, Mrs. Tomlinson?”

“Almost twenty-one. A woman. A woman capable of making up her own mind.” She nodded. “And what she decided to do was to leave Michael and marry Tommy. As simple as that. So why should she kill herself?”

“Are you aware, Mrs. Tomlinson, that your daughter told her husband she was coming to visit you on the day she died?”

“Yes.”

“Did she do that often?”

“Yes.”

“In effect, then, you alibied her, is that right?”

“Alibied? I wouldn’t call it that.”

“What would you call it?”

“I would call it two sensitive women helping each other against a bully.”

“You keep referring to Mr. Thayer as a bully. Did he ever strike your daughter?”

“Strike her? I’d break every bone in his body!”

“Threaten her then?”

“Never. He’s a boss, that’s all. Believe me, I was glad she planned to leave him.”

Carella cleared his throat. He was uncomfortable in the presence of this big woman who thought of herself as a small woman. He was uncomfortable in the presence of this mother who condoned her daughter’s adultery.

“I’d like to know something, Mrs. Tomlinson.”

“What’s that?”

“Michael Thayer said he called you after he saw your daughter’s picture in the newspaper…”

“That’s right.”

“… and asked you whether she was here.”

“That’s right.”

“Mrs. Tomlinson, if you approved of your daughter’s relationship with Barlow, if you disliked Michael so much, why did you tell him she wasn’t here?”

“Because she wasn’t.”

“But you knew she was with Barlow.”

“So what?”

“Mrs. Tomlinson, did you want Michael to know what was going on?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why did you tell him the truth?”

“What was I supposed to do? Lie and say Margaret was here? Suppose he asked to speak to her?”

“You could have invented some excuse. You could have said she’d stepped out for a minute.”

“Why should I lie to that louse? Anything he got was coming to him!”

“What do you mean?”

“The divorce, I mean, Margaret leaving him.”

“Did he know she planned to leave him?”

“No.”

“Did she tell anyone else about this divorce, Mrs. Tomlinson?”

“Certainly. She was seeing a lawyer about it.”

“Who?”

“I think that’s my daughter’s business.”

“Your daughter is dead,” Carella said.

“Yes, I know,” Mrs. Tomlinson said.

And then, for no apparent reason, Carella repeated, “She’s dead.”

The room, for the space of a heartbeat, fell silent. Up until that moment, even though Mrs. Tomlinson had been in the midst of funeral preparations when they’d arrived, even though the conversation had most certainly dealt with the circumstances of their visit, Carella had had the oddest feeling that Mrs. Tomlinson, that Hawes, that he himself were not really talking about someone who was utterly and completely dead. The feeling had been unsettling, a persistent nagging feeling that, despite references in the past tense, despite allusions to suicide, they were all thinking of Margaret Irene Thayer as being alive, as a girl who was indeed about to leave her husband next month to begin a new life.

And so, his voice low, Carella repeated, “She’s dead,” and the room went silent, and suddenly there was perspective.

“She was my only daughter,” Mrs. Tomlinson said. She sat on the sofa that was too small for her, a huge woman with flat feet and big hands and lustreless green eyes and fading red hair, and suddenly Carella realized that she was truly tiny, that the furniture she’d surrounded herself with was bought for a small and frightened woman lurking somewhere inside that huge body, a woman who really did need gentleness and tenderness.

“We’re very sorry,” he said. “Please believe that.”

“Yes. Yes, I know. But you can’t bring her back to me, can you? That’s the one thing you can’t do.”

“No, Mrs. Tomlinson. We can’t do that.”

“I was looking at all my old pictures of her yesterday,” she said. “I wish I had some pictures of Tommy, too. I have a lot, of Margaret, but none of the man she was going to marry.” She sighed heavily. “I wonder how many pills I’ll have to take tonight,” she asked. “Before I can sleep. I wonder.”

In the silence of the living room, a small porcelain clock, delicately wrought and resting on a small inlaid end table, began chiming the hour. Silently, Carella counted the strokes. One, two, three, four. The echo of the chimes faded. The room was still again. Hawes shifted his position on the uncomfortable caned chair.

“I’ve made a hundred lists,” Mrs. Tomlinson said. “Of things to do. Michael is of no help, you know, no help at all. I’m all alone in this. If Margaret were only alive to…” And then she stopped because the absurdity of what she was about to say suddenly struck her. “If Margaret were only alive to help with her funeral preparations” were the words in her mind and on her tongue, and she swallowed them at once because the presence of death was suddenly very large in that small room. She shivered all at once. She stared at Carella and Hawes in the deepening silence of the room. Outside on the street, a woman called to her child. The silence lengthened.

“You… you wanted the lawyer’s name,” Mrs. Tomlinson said.

“Yes.”

“Arthur Patterson I don’t know his address.”

“In the city?”

“Yes.” Mrs. Tomlinson shivered again. “I’m telling you the truth, you know. Margaret was leaving him.”

“I believe you, Mrs. Tomlinson,” Carella said. He rose suddenly and crossed the room. Gently, tenderly, he took her huge hand between both his own and said, “We appreciate your help. If there’s anything we can do, please call us.”

Mrs. Tomlinson looked up into the face of the tall man who stood before the couch.

In a very small voice, she said, “Thank you.”

* * * *