Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 34, No. 5, April 1974

DEAR MAMA:

You were right. I know that now. I know I should never have come here. Remember the day you said, “Don’t go, son, you will only regret it.” You were right, Mama. I do regret it.

I was deaf to your words because of the people at the office. They had never been friendly before. After all those years. They even clapped me on the back and called me “Vince” and told me I should go. They said it was the chance of a lifetime.

Mama, when Mr. Hammill first explained the need for a top accountant at the Home Office, and how he had recommended me, of course I was flattered, but I certainly didn’t think about it seriously. I just thanked him for his faith in me and went back to work. It was only when everybody crowded around, calling me “Vince,” which they had never done before, telling me how they would give their eyeteeth for a chance to transfer with a big raise. Telling me to go.

Mama, they made it seem so wonderful, so great. But it hasn’t been either. This is a strange and terrible city and everyone is cold, and distant at the office, not like the people in the office back home where they were friendly, at the last anyway, calling me “Vince” and telling me to go.

That apartment I lived in was awful, Mama. You know I am used to a great big house, with you always there... The apartment was one big room with a tiny kitchen and a small b.r. A couch folded out in the big room to make a bed. I have not had a decent night’s sleep since I have been in this city — all during those months in the apartment, and these weeks in Carol’s house. You would think, with my own room in. Carol’s house like I used to have at home, I could sleep, but I cannot.

It was the house, I think, Carol’s house, that made me do what Carol wanted me to do. I don’t think I would have otherwise, Mama, even if she was the only person at the office who was nice to me, and lonely too, as she told me so many times.

A lonely old maid, she called herself, and then she told me she was thirty-six, one year younger than I, but that was after she first called me “Vincent” instead of “Mr. Nugent,” so I know she read the personnel file on me or how would she know my name was Vincent and that I was thirty-seven? I am pretty sure she is forty-something, not that that makes any difference, but I just don’t like a liar.

I didn’t think of that then. I am thinking about it now.

Carol worked in the File Department and almost always, if I needed something from the files, she brought it to me in my own office. I have an office of my own, Mama, here in the Home Office, but that doesn’t help.

I didn’t even notice her for a long time. You know how I work, Mama, diligently and with concentration. When she brought me a file, she always said, “here you are, Mr. Nugent,” and I said, “thank you,” without looking at her and went back to my work.

She didn’t call me “Vincent,” until after we ate next to each other in the cafeteria. Mama, this Home Office is so big that there is even a cafeteria for the employees, which I did not frequent, preferring instead, to get out in the air and walk, eating my milk chocolate bar on the way, even though these city streets are hemmed in by tall buildings with the air filled with smog.

But the day I sat next to Carol, or rather, she found a seat next to me, it was raining torrents so, rather than walk in it and take a chance on catching cold, I went to the cafeteria for the first time, and as soon as I had sat down with my milk and bread pudding (the only decent things offered) she came, with her tray, and sat next to me.

Mama, she had to tell me who she was before I even knew her. She had to explain that she was Carol, the file clerk, who brought me the files I needed, and before I had finished my lunch and was ready to go back to my office, she had called me “Vincent” and said she was a lonely old maid of thirty-six, a year younger than I, which certainly proves to me that she had been reading my personnel file. I didn’t think about that then. I guess I was just grateful for her friendliness and my name.

She got to asking me, when she brought the files to my office that I had asked for, if I would be going to the cafeteria for lunch. She said she wanted to know and she would save a place for me next to her, although I explained to her that, unless the weather was inclement, which it all too often was during those late winter days (the “rainy season” they call it here) that I much preferred to walk.

That being a mistake on my part, my telling her that I walked, because she intercepted me one noon hour at the lower doorway and said she liked to walk too, which was very disconcerting. As you know, there is only one person with whom I care to take a walk... remember our walks, Mama, back home? How we kicked the fallen poplar leaves in the autumn and laughed together to see them dancing along the wide sidewalks — and in the spring we planned, as we walked, the flowers we would plant in the garden? By now, I suppose, the bridal wreath has bloomed and fallen, the tulips and crocus are dormant, and the roses, full-bloomed and heavy on the bush, wilt in the hot summer sun.

Mama, I didn’t want to leave and come here, except the people in the office back there were so friendly, at the last, calling me “Vince” and telling me to go. I am very lonely and don’t know what to do.

Well, Carol, here, was the only friendly one.

After all this time, I cannot describe her. I suppose I could go to the back bedroom and open the door and look. But I don’t want to do that either.

During one of our noontime walks, with her doing all the talking and me surreptitiously nibbling my milk chocolate bar, she told me about her house, and I am afraid that the idea of a house rather excited me after my one big room with the tiny kitchen and the b.r. in which I felt stifled, I must have imagined her house as being somewhat like ours back home — old, large and impressive, set in the shade of towering trees, especially since she said that the house had belonged to her parents, and now to her after their death.

But the house was not like that at all. Mama, you would never believe the way things are out here — everything new and gaudy and brash. I hope you come in answer to this letter, not so much to see the way things are, but to help me. I need your help, Mama, I need it greatly.

Carol drew a map of how to get out to her house. You need maps here all the time, Mama. You need a map to turn around. My big room with the tiny kitchen and b.r. was quite close to the office, but Carol lived out in what she called the suburbs. She invited me to her house on a Saturday, “Start early,” she said gaily, “so you have enough time to get lost in.” Well, I don’t think there is any gayety in getting lost, but I didn’t say as much.

You would have to see the freeways to believe them, Mama. There are signs up in the center with arrows that all point downward to show you which way to go, and if you are not accustomed to these signs, which I certainly was not, it is very easy to miss the freeway you are supposed to go on, so that you get off on another freeway, and a map doesn’t do you much good.

I have never had such an awful time in my life as I did on those freeways that Saturday — well yes, I guess the time right now is more awful. I do hope you come, Mama, and help me out.

I didn’t arrive at Carol’s house until dusk after driving those freeways all day! But even in the dusk I could see that the house was not as I had imagined it, on a street with a lot of other houses oh it... I remember the streets back home, especially ours — big, broad avenues, lined with poplars, the houses set back in wide lawns. Mama, I get so choked up with emotion just remembering that it is difficult to go on with this letter, but I shall...

I haven’t seen an old house, I mean an elegant old house, gabled, columned and pilastered, since I have been here. They tear down the old things and put up new atrocities. When I mentioned that fact, Carol said that her house certainly was old, twenty years old! I would have offered a sardonic chuckle at that had I not been a bit, cross after all the freeway difficulties.

Remember how it was when I got cross at home, Mama? You always knew and always had a roguish remark to make. “My boy’s feathers have been ruffled, but I have just the right thing to oil them,” then you crossed the flowered Aubusson in the dining room and poured me a wineglass of sherry. Mama, you always knew the right thing to say and the right thing to do. I should never have left home.

I told Carol about home that night, Mama — about the velvet lawns, the clipped hedges, the old carriage house we use as a garage, and how the house always smelled of lemon furniture polish... and I don’t think she understood, but she listened carefully and I believe she finally realized that her modern house, which she has further modernized, even to installing air conditioning, was but a crass affectation to me.

I am glad now, however, for the air conditioning which, fortunately, is quite efficient?

That night, Mama, was a strange one. I never should have gone to that house, such a small excuse for the one I grew up in and love, but so much larger than one big room, a tiny kitchen and b.r. in which I lived here, so that I found myself reminiscing and weeping softly. Carol said that I was lonely and she propped pillows behind my head on the couch and made me hot lemonade — remember, like you used to do when I caught a bad cold and my sinuses hurt?

Since it was late spring by then and quite warm and I didn’t have a cold and my sinuses were not clogged, it must have been an incident of reminiscence that she was replaying to make me feel less lonely. She even turned the air conditioning up high while I drank the hot lemonade so that the cold air would tend to minimize the heat of the lemonade, which lulled me off to sleep — probably from exhaustion after being lost on those strange freeways.

When I awakened, it was just short of midnight and Carol asked how I expected to drive back to my room on the freeway with all the confusion of night lights when I couldn’t even do it during daylight? Then she suggested that I sleep in the back bedroom (where she is now) and I thought it the better part of valor to do so — but now I think I should have risked limb and life on the freeway...

Mama, I wish I had listened to you instead of those late friends at the office back home who called me “Vince”, and told me to go.

There was no lock on the back bedroom door, so I spent a wakeful night, but no more so, I suppose, than all those nights spent on my fold-down bed in my big room.

Carol has only one b.r., which is located toward the front of the house next to her bedroom (but not the bedroom she is now in), which was rather embarrassing not knowing whether or not she might be in the b.r. when I might wish to enter it.

She prepared a nice breakfast that next morning, except she soft boiled the eggs four minutes and you know I like mine boiled four and a half minutes exactly. The toast was all right, but she served jam instead of marmalade and orange juice instead of fresh tomato juice.

She said maybe we ought to get married, two lonely people like us, and we weren’t getting any younger, and she had the house which was clear and paid for.

I don’t know what got into me, Mama, but I guess I went into what you used to call one of my “whimsical moods”, and told her I never could marry a woman who boiled my eggs for only four minutes and didn’t serve marmalade and tomato juice. I can’t remember all my easy banter now, but I went on with it for quite some time, and I will never understand how it came about that she started to plan our wedding!

A lot of the rest of it is blanked out of my mind — practically all the rest of it, including all these weeks from that spring morning to this summer day. I seem to recall her leading me back to my room in her car while I followed in mine so that I would learn the right on-ramps and off-ramps and freeway switches. As she said, and I do remember this quite clearly, “After I quit my job and we are married, you will have to learn to negotiate this freeway alone.”

Mama, every morning when I arrive at work, my hands are so wet with nervous perspiration and shake so violently from freeway fear that when my finger does manage to hit the correct calculator key, it slips off — and every evening when I arrive at Carol’s house, I am aquiver with tense fatigue.

I am very tired.

I explained to Carol that I desired a life of simple culture, the kind of life you gave to me, Mama. I suppose I did suggest, a number of times, that she change her way of doing things to conform more to yours, that she attempt to cook the wonderful dishes you always prepared for me...

But, Mama, Carol did not seem to aspire to a life of simple culture. She wanted something shockingly different. I have explained, many a night during these last weeks, at the door of the back bedroom after she had broken down the chair I placed under the knob, how she should act and in what ways she should change. I explained simple culture to her, patiently, Mama, and considerately...

And then, last night at the back bedroom door, she interrupted my careful explanation with such a degradingly scandalous remark about you, my sainted Mama, one that I cannot and will not repeat, that I lost control and reacted automatically. I am not, ordinarily, a violent man, you know that, Mama, something simply snapped and that is the reason she is now in the back bedroom with the air conditioning turned high, and I need you, Mama, with the desperation of a lost and lonely son.

Now here is what I want you to do, Mama, as soon as you receive this letter, I want and hope that you will take a plane out here to me so that you can decide what we must do about Carol. I will be right here in Carol’s house, for this is my summer vacation from the office and it is very hot, but with the air conditioning turned high in the back bedroom, I am sure Carol will keep. I haven’t looked in there to see, of course. I am waiting for you.

As soon as I finish this letter, I shall take it out to the corner box and airmail it to you. When you arrive at the airport here, Mama, you can get a cab and direct the cab driver to the address on the corner of this envelope. Those cab drivers can find anything, and as you know, from what I have written you, freeway driving shatters me — but even so, Mama, I would gladly meet you at the airport except that I must stay here. Someone must be here constantly — you understand that — it is not that my loyalties are divided, they are not.

Mama, I am terribly lonely. All I want out of life is to return home with you — after, of course, you have decided what it is we are to do with Carol.

Mama, even if you did tell me not to write to you once I was gone after choosing to leave your room and board... those were your very words, Mama... still, I have started many letters to you. This one I am finishing and this one I must send.

Now, Mama, you know about taking the plane and getting the cab and coming out here to the return address on the envelope. I do hope you will come, Mama, because I will be waiting here with the air conditioning turned high in the back bedroom.

Your loving son,

Vincent