Rose's Last Summer [= The Lively Corpse]

14

Willett crossed the hall, hugging his bathrobe around him as if it was a protective coat of armor. The door of his mother’s bedroom was closed and he stood there looking at it for a moment. It seemed to him not like a door but like a high, impenetrable wall which he could neither scale nor break down.

He said, at last, in a feeble voice, “Are you there?”

The answer was a grunt, which Willett rightfully construed as an invitation to enter.

She was sitting on the bed playing solitaire and listening to a ball game. But it was obvious that she was bored and in a bad mood. She gave Willett a sour glance and made no attempt to turn the radio down or off.

She talked above it. “I’m getting damn good and sick of these four walls.”

“Yes, I know. I know, but—”

“Why can’t I come downstairs?”

“You know why.”

“Oh, you make me sick.” She jerked her knees up and the table tray crashed on the floor and the cards scattered like confetti. “I can’t go on like this, I’d be better off dead.”

“Please don’t—”

“I’ve got to see people and do things. You can’t keep me shut up in here like a mummy in a case, I’m alive, I tell you, alive.”

Willett looked grim. “Will you listen to me for a minute?”

“All I do is listen, listen, listen.”

“Jack phoned. He’s coming here tomorrow. And that’s not all. Dalloway’s out in the backyard right now. God knows what he’s got up his sleeve.”

“Dalloway again,” she said thoughtfully. “What’s he doing?”

“Talking to Ortega.”

“It’s Monday, Ortega’s day off. What’s he doing here anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you think you’d better find out?”

“How can I?”

“Just go out there and ask him what the hell he’s doing.”

“I couldn’t.”

“You’re a big boy now, Willett.”

“I tell you I can’t. I... it’s against my principles, butting into other people’s affairs.”

“It isn’t other people’s,” she shouted. “It’s ours!”

“Even so.”

“You have every right to go out there and boot Dalloway off the property. Now go and do it. Boot him off.”

Willett looked down at his feet. They seemed singularly ill-equipped for booting people off property, especially rather large men like Dalloway.

The old lady was pink with excitement. “This namby pamby manner of yours — it’s no wonder Dalloway’s suspicious. Get in there and fight. Show him who’s boss. Fling your weight around a little.”

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“Listen, Willett, you can’t ask for respect, you’ve got to demand it, with bare knuckles if necessary.”

“You mean, hit him?”

“Naturally.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, he might hit me back,” Willett protested. “Besides, a gentleman doesn’t go in for that sort of thing, fisticuffs and all that. I mean—”

“You mean you’re scared of him.”

“Well, what if I am? He’s bigger than I am.”

“He’s only got one arm.”

This fact, which Willett had forgotten, cheered him considerably.

The effect, however, didn’t last. By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, the lathhouse loomed in his mind as formidable as a lion’s den, and the stabbing pain in his back had set in again.

Standing beside the highboy in the hall, he thought the whole situation over carefully and decided that what it needed was a woman’s touch.

He found Ethel in the kitchen stacking the luncheon dishes in the dishwasher. When no one was watching her, Ethel moved with speed and efficiency, but as soon as Willett entered the room she resumed her air of languor and her face took on its customary trancelike expression.

“I thought Murphy was supposed to do that,” Willett said.

“She wanted to read the morning paper. She says she missed yesterday morning’s because I used it to wrap the garbage. I did, too.”

“What do we pay her for if she doesn’t do anything?”

“She’s very helpful about giving advice and suggestions and so on.” Ethel closed the lid of the dishwasher and turned on the hot water tap. She wondered what was the matter with Willett, who was looking hot and fretful like an overfed baby, but she didn’t ask. That was one thing about Willett — you never had to ask what was the matter with him, he always told you.

This time was no exception. He explained that Ortega and Dalloway were conspiring in the lathhouse and something had to be done about it immediately.

“Why the lathhouse?” Ethel said.

“How should I know why the lathhouse.”

“It seems a funny place to conspire, doesn’t it.” She took a stick of gum from the pocket of her apron, unwrapped it and stuck it in her mouth. Chewing helped her powers of concentration, and they frequently needed help. “Does she know about it?”

There was no doubt who she was. Both Willett and Ethel always spoke of her with the same mixture of fear and appeasement.

Willett nodded. “I told her.”

“What’d she say?”

“She said” — Willett cleared his throat to allow the lie easier passage — “she said you were to go out there and — well, sort of investigate. Know what I mean?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea, and why me anyway?”

“She said you do that kind of thing so gracefully and all that.”

Flattery was such a rare treat to Ethel that she ate it up raw like caviar. “Naturally I’ll do what I can, though I must say I could probably do it better if I knew what it was I was supposed to do.”

“Just be firm. Tell them they have no right conspiring in our lathhouse. Get the idea?”

“Sort of.”

Willett retreated before she could change her mind. When he had gone, Ethel glanced at herself in the mirror over the sink, smoothed her hair and mentally studied her lines: you have no right, Mr. Dalloway, to conspire in our lathhouse, so kindly, no, better make it please, so please leave, or how about please vacate the premises. You have no right, Mr. Dalloway, to conspire—

Ethel was flinging herself into her role when the door opened and Murphy came in, dragging the morning newspaper limply behind her. The paper was no longer in very good condition since Murphy had a habit of clipping whatever news items interested her and pasting them in a scrapbook.

Ethel took one look at the mutilated paper. “Willett hasn’t seen it. He’ll be furious.”

“I was merely trying, milady, to prevent a repetition of last night,” Murphy said sternly. With her short, bristling, black hair and her small, upturned nose, she reminded Ethel of an aggressive terrier.

“I had to wrap the garbage in something, didn’t I?”

“Since you yourself have brought the subject up, milady, I suggest you install a garbage disposal unit. The cost is minimal, say about two hundred dollars.”

“I don’t think it will sound very minimal to Willett.”

“I hesitate to say this, milady, but Mr. Goodfield appears to be living in the past when domestics were treated like slaves. He has failed to develop a social and economic conscience.”

Ethel sighed. It wasn’t the only thing Willett had failed to develop.

After the interruption Ethel found it difficult to get back into her role, but she did her best. Walking out the back door and across the lawn, her mouth moved in rehearsal: Mr. Dalloway, what do you mean by lurking around our lathhouse?

Whatever Mr. Dalloway meant, Ethel was not destined to learn. The lathhouse was empty except for flats of seedlings on the cement floor, and cuttings of pelargoniums and carnations rooting in pots on the long wooden table, and Ortega’s gardening tools, sharpened and glistening with oil, neatly placed in a corner.

Her first thought was that the strain of the situation had affected Willett’s mind and that he had imagined the whole thing. Then she noticed, beside the bamboo rake, the final inch of a cigar smoldering. She was quite sure that Ortega didn’t smoke cigars, since she’d frequently seen him working in the yard with a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth.

She called out sharply, “Ortega!”

Almost instantly he appeared from around the corner of the garage. Ethel gave a little gasp of surprise at the abruptness of his appearance. She had not expected so quick a response, and what was even more disturbing was the fact that this was her first direct contact with him. Up to this point Ortega had been just a vague figure moving behind the power mower or snipping endlessly at the eugenia hedge with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

She realized now with an odd feeling of excitement which she couldn’t or wouldn’t identify, that Ortega was a good-looking young man. He was not wearing his ordinary working clothes; instead of levis he wore grey flannel slacks, and instead of a T-shirt a gaudy Hawaiian-print blouse of blue and red. Pointed brown oxfords polished like brass took the place of his heavy work boots.

“You want something, ma’am?” He approached her slowly, his dark bold eyes studying her with an expression of alert suspicion.

“I... yes, I thought I saw Mr. Dalloway out here.”

“He was here. He left.”

“What did he want?”

“Golly, I don’t know,” Ortega said with a sudden, ingenuous grin. “He asked questions but I told him I didn’t know nothing — anything.”

“Questions about what?”

“He wanted to know most how come the dead lady wasn’t found before I found her. He wanted to know, didn’t you people ever use the patio and wasn’t there milk delivered to the back door and didn’t you have to pass the lily pond to get to the garage, lots of questions.”

“He’s very nosy.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Did he offer you money?”

“Oh golly, no.” Ortega shook his head in vigorous denial.

Ethel was not convinced. She was, in her way, a rather shrewd judge of character, and the first time she’d seen Dalloway at Rose’s funeral, she had taken him for a man who was accustomed to buying his way into and out of places and people. She did not despise the type, she merely liked to label it accurately as she labeled the food packages she stored in the deep freeze, and the jams and jellies in the fruit cellar: quince, raspberry, Dalloway, and, on the bottom shelf in the darkest corner, Willett. Unlike Dalloway, Willett would never buy things; he waited until they were bought for him and then complained about the price.

Thinking of Willett had its customary effect on Ethel. She said, quite crossly, “You’re not supposed to be working here today, are you?”

“I’m not working.”

“What are you doing then?”

Ortega reached down and brushed a speck of dust off his right shoe before he replied. “I’m waiting for someone. If it’s all right with you, ma’am.”

“There are thousands of other places to wait, surely.”

“Yes, ma’am.” His tone was docile enough but his jaw was set and his eyes looked resentful. “Only this is where I’m supposed to wait.”

“Supposed to?”

“I have a date.”

“My goodness, I hate to be unreasonable but our garden seems to be used by everybody but us and for the oddest things. I don’t—” Ethel stopped abruptly in the middle of the sentence. “Did you say a date?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Who with?”

Ortega examined the tips of his shoes again. “She said not to tell. She said Mr. Goodfield is full of prejudice.”

There was no doubt now who Ortega’s date was. “My God,” Ethel said with feeling. “You mean Murphy.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

It was incredible — Murphy with her flighty airs and crisp contemptuous tongue, dating a part-time gardener several years her junior. It couldn’t be true and yet Ethel knew that it was, and after the initial shock she realized that the affair was not so unreasonable or strange as she’d thought. To Ortega, Murphy must represent class, the kind of educated and genteel-acting woman he had never dared aspire to; and Murphy, with her peculiar egocentricity, would respond to any man who appreciated her half as much as she appreciated herself.

Yes, it was easy enough to imagine Murphy’s attraction to Ortega and her deliberate flaunting of the conventions by meeting him publicly. Murphy did as she pleased, outside as well as inside the house.

“I didn’t mean to tell,” Ortega said with an uneasy glance toward the house. “She’ll be mad. She’s got a temper, by golly.”

This was news to Ethel who couldn’t believe that Murphy would let anyone or anything disturb her to the point of losing her temper.

“Really,” Ethel said quite coldly. “Well, that’s your problem. My problem is to get a little peace and quiet around here. I suggest that in the future you and Murphy meet somewhere else.”

Ortega shrugged. “That suits me, ma’am. Only Ada said for me to wait here for her today, so I’ll just wait here if it’s all the same to you.”

It wasn’t all the same to Ethel but it seemed both undignified and futile to argue about it. Murphy had given Ortega his orders, and like a good soldier Ortega intended to obey them, stand or fall.

Ethel returned to the house vaguely disturbed by the encounter and wishing she had someone to confide in. If she told Willett, his reaction would undoubtedly be to fire Murphy, and Ethel had a number of reasons for not wanting this to happen. For one thing Ethel often felt so confused and amorphous inside that she had come to depend on Murphy’s hard-boiled detachment. For another, Murphy served both as an ally against Willett and as a buffer against the old lady, taking quite a few of the slings and arrows that would otherwise have been aimed at Ethel herself.

Ethel spent most of the afternoon in Mrs. Goodfield’s bedroom playing gin rummy. It was nearly six o’clock when she went down to the kitchen to start preparing supper, feeling rather relieved that Murphy was absent and the meal could be quite simple.

The heat of the sun had begun to decrease and a hint of mist in the air had turned the mountains to violet. Ethel loved to watch the mountains. They changed from hour to hour. In the morning they were grey, and at noon they were green with streaks of brown, and now, just before evening, they seemed to be shrouded in layers of violet-colored chiffon.

Her glance fell on the lathhouse. It stood empty, abandoned by the sun and the trysting lovers. But from some place directly behind it, a thin column of smoke twisted skyward like the magic rope of an Indian conjuror.

Ethel’s first notion was that Murphy and Ortega were still there, and that Willett, with his perverse talent for doing the wrong thing, might go out into the garden and find them. With a sigh that was half-anger and half-envy, Ethel put down the skillet she had just taken out of the cupboard, and for the second time that afternoon headed in the direction of the lathhouse to give Murphy warning.

This time she had no lines prepared. No lines were necessary. Ortega was lying on his back on the grass behind the lathhouse, spread-eagled, eyes closed, mouth half-open. Cigarette butts were strewn all around him, one of them still smoldering.

For one terrible moment Ethel thought he was dead, and her legs felt so weak that she staggered and almost fell on top of him. Regaining her balance, she looked at him more closely and saw the gentle rise and fall of his chest under the gaudy red and blue shirt.

Her voice was high and uncertain. “Ortega? Are you asleep?”

Ortega stirred and smiled slightly.

“You’d better wake up? You’d just better?”

With a sudden unexpected movement Ortega’s arm reached out and his left hand grabbed her ankle, and held it, not tightly or cruelly, but in a soft caress. She meant to scream but she felt suffocated, as if Ortega’s hand was around her throat instead of her ankle. She had no breath, no strength, no will.

“No,” she whispered. “Stop. Help. Please.”

Ortega murmured something that she couldn’t understand.

“What? What did you say?”

She leaned over so that she could hear him better, and then she saw that he was still asleep. His embrace, his words, were not for her.

“Get up,” she said harshly. “Get up, you.”

She kicked free of his hand, the toe of her shoe cracking against his wrist bone. Ortega flung himself over on his side with a cry of pain. Groggily, still dazed from sleep, he got up, first to his knees and then to his feet. His flannel slacks were wrinkled, and stained with grass. Around his eyes there were dirt marks like the marks on the face of a child who had wiped away tears with a grubby hand.

He looked first, not at Ethel, but at the sun that was slowly falling toward the sea.

“She never came,” he said. “Ada never came.”

By nine o’clock that night, when Frank arrived home from San Francisco, at least twenty people knew that Ada Murphy had disappeared.