The Cannibal Heart

3

It was one of Jessie’s new characteristics that when she was frightened she no longer ran to her mother or father to be comforted, she comforted herself. If she was badly frightened she shut herself up in her room and sobbed into her pillow. If she was only half-frightened she went into her mother’s room and dressed up in her mother’s clothes. Traces of tears were covered up with rouge, and over her own small mouth she painted a voluptuous and sophisticated pair of lips.

When Evelyn went upstairs she found her parading in the hall, wearing a pink satin nightgown and green high-heeled sandals.

“That’s my best nightgown,” Evelyn said.

“I’m not hurting it.”

“It’s dragging on the floor. The hem is dirty already. See?”

“It’s good clean dirt,” Jessie protested. “Not like tar or paint or anything.”

“Well, I think you’d better change anyway, and wash your face while you’re at it.”

“But I haven’t even had time to see myself yet. I want to see if I look eighteen.”

“Well, come on then. We’ll both see.”

She led the way into Jessie’s room, with Jessie, voluntarily crippled by the high heels, flopping and shuffling along behind her.

In the door of Jessie’s closet was a full-length mirror.

“Do I look eighteen?”

“Not quite.”

“Seventeen?”

“Just about seventeen, I guess.”

“Older than Luisa anyway,” Jessie said in bitter triumph.

She held up her arms while Evelyn pulled off the satin nightgown, revealing the soiled cotton playsuit underneath.

Jessie began to brush the twigs out of her hair. All her movements were quick and vigorous, like Mark’s, and she was beginning to look more like Mark every day. In the past year her face had lost its round babyish contours and her nose seemed larger. It was no longer an indeterminate button, it had a definite shape and character, like Mark’s nose in miniature.

“When I grow up,” Jessie said thoughtfully, “I’m going to boss Luisa around and tell her lies.”

“We won’t be here when you’re grown up.”

“I can always come back. I’ll get married and make my husband bring me back.”

Evelyn smiled, a little anxiously. “Why should you want to tell lies to anyone?”

“Because.”

Jessie put down the brush and began to rub off her lipstick with a piece of tissue. She didn’t rub very hard. There was always the faint chance that her mother would let her leave a trace of it on. Jessie didn’t know why this large mature mouth was important to her, but it was. She felt better with it on, more capable of dealing with Luisa and the secrets in the woods.

“Do you believe in devils?”

Evelyn shook her head briskly. “Of course not.”

“Neither do I,” Jessie said, without conviction.

“You’d better use some soap. Who told you about devils?”

“No one.”

“Was it Luisa?”

Mute and stubborn, Jessie fixed her gaze on a fly sitting on the mirror cleaning its legs.

“You didn’t answer my question, Jessie.”

“You ask so many questions. I can’t answer everything. I’m not a genius.”

Evelyn let out a sigh of exasperation. “You don’t have to be a genius to answer yes or no.”

Jessie moved her head so that the fly on the mirror seemed to be sitting interestingly on her left eye. Then she tried the fly on her nose and her right eye and the middle of her mouth.

“You’re getting so obstinate,” Evelyn said. “I can’t understand it. If Luisa frightened you I want to know about it, so I can make her stop. After all, she’s only fifteen, she’s got very little more sense than you have.”

Mark came in from the hall. He had been reading in the sun and he wore his khaki shorts and a towel around his shoulders where the skin was beginning to peel. He was a tall, decisive man, with handsome but slightly irregular features, and an air of controlled impatience. Though he was thirty-eight, he looked younger, partly because he wore a crew cut, a reminder of the days he’d spent in the Navy during the war.

“What’s up now?” he said. “Are you two girls arguing again?”

Jessie gave him a brief cold glance. She didn’t like her father to go around the house in shorts because he had hair on his chest which looked silky but felt like wire. To Jessie this hair was rather mysterious and secret and should be kept covered up, except when her father went in swimming. Luisa said that lots of men had hair on their chests, and that it was a sign. She wouldn’t tell Jessie what it was a sign of, but Jessie knew from Luisa’s sudden gust of giggling that it was something little girls weren’t supposed to discuss.

“I wasn’t arguing,” she said with a scowl. “I was just keeping a secret.”

“Lord, another one.” Mark rubbed his eyes and yawned. “Get the books, Evelyn?”

“Some. Not the ones you asked for. Marsalupe is hardly the most literate metropolis west of the Mississippi. You’ll save time by wiring for them.”

Still scowling, Jessie explored with her teeth the hangnail on her right thumb. She had been aware for some time now that as soon as her father came into the room there was a subtle shift of interest, away from herself. It seemed that this shift was Evelyn’s fault; when Mark was around Evelyn focused her eyes on him, steadily and intensely, as if he had just come back from a long journey and was leaving again at any moment. Jessie, left with mere sidelong glances, felt neglected. To draw Evelyn’s eyes back to herself again, she kicked the leg of the vanity, not too hard.

“Stop that,” Evelyn said. “Honestly, angel, I’ve told you — the furniture isn’t ours.”

“It’s Luisa’s, so I don’t care.”

“No, it’s not Luisa’s, either. Mark, you tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“Not to kick the furniture.”

“Okay. Do not kick the furniture,” Mark said obligingly. “Kick Luisa, if you have to kick.”

“Mark, for heaven’s sake, don’t say things like that to her.”

“Damn it, I mean it. That girl’s driving me loco. She haunts me, she creeps out from behind trees, she...”

“Maybe she has a crush on you.”

“I’m as old as her father.”

“Even so.”

The shift of attention again; the invisible string that bound Mark and Evelyn, that Jessie could tangle but not break.

“She’d kick me back,” Jessie said, feeling around for the string, tugging at it subtly. “Hard, too. Oh, I just hate Luisa!”

“Why?” Mark asked.

“I can’t tell. Luisa said not to tell.”

“Come on, baby.”

Jessie was silent a moment. “She said there were devils in the woods. Under the boards of the swimming pool.”

Mark’s quick frown was in Evelyn’s direction. “That girl’s getting to be a damned nuisance. You’ll have to talk to her.”

“I already have.”

“Then you weren’t firm enough.”

“I tried to be,” Evelyn said, looking baffled. She hadn’t been firm, of course, but she had tried, several times and at several different levels, to make friends with Luisa. But the girl was unresponsive and Evelyn had found it impossible to talk to her. Sometimes, racing down to the beach behind Jessie to dig for clams at low tide, Luisa seemed to be a child, as wild and free as the cormorants that lived on the face of the cliff. But when she was doing her tasks, dusting or helping her mother in the kitchen, or collecting the eggs from the chicken pen, she looked as old and shrewd as Carmelita herself. Luisa’s life seemed to be a dance before mirrors, all of which were more or less distorted. No one could see the real Luisa through these mirrors, and Luisa herself could not see out.

“You didn’t see any devils, did you?” Evelyn said.

“I heard them.”

“What nonsense! Come with Mark and me and we’ll show you what nonsense it is.”

“I’d rather — stay here.” She saw that her mother had turned quite pale, so that the freckles on the bridge of her nose and across her cheekbones stood out like brown crumbs on a white tablecloth.

“Now listen, Jessie. Do you want to know the real reason why the pool was boarded up? It was because the lady who used to live here was afraid her little boy might fall in. See, they couldn’t spare any water to put in the pool, and you can take a pretty bad tumble into a dry swimming pool.”

“What was the little boy’s name?”

“Billy. Billy Wakefield.”

Jessie nodded. Now that the little boy had such a real-sounding name, it was very possible that he was a real boy, not a once-there-was boy. This real boy was given to falling from places and into places, just like Jessie herself, so the story about the swimming pool sounded quite plausible.

“I never believed there were devils,” she said contemptuously. “I ran away for fun to scare Luisa.”

Mark raised his thick straight eyebrows in a half-amused way. “Even so, I think we’ll settle this business once and for all. Come on, Jess. We’ll go and get Luisa and investigate the pool.”

“She won’t come.”

“She’ll come if I have to drag her by the hair.”

Jessie giggled at this delightful vision — Luisa being dragged through the woods by her long crackly hair, screaming piteously. Luisa bereft of her magic powers. Luisa unbewitched, cut down to girl-size again.

Walking down the steps between her father and her mother, Jessie felt wonderfully brave.

“I forgot to tell you, Jess,” Mark said. “We’re having company today or tomorrow.”

“Company with children?”

“No children, no. It’s a grown-up lady called Mrs. Wakefield.”

“That’s the little boy’s name. Why isn’t she going to bring him with her?”

“I don’t know,” Mark said, after a slight hesitation.

Jessie let out a squeal of anticipation.

Company, even if it was only another grown-up lady, was always exciting. It meant someone new to talk to without interruption, and a new pair of eyes to marvel at her hoard of treasures — the doll igloo she was making out of abalone shells, her new friend, James the gander who could make fearful noises, the double swing Mr. Roma had hung from the pepper tree, and, best of all, the baby starfish she had found yesterday in a tide pool. The starfish was no bigger than a silver dollar, and Jessie kept it in a bowl of sea water in her room and fed it everything she could think of that a starfish might like.

“When is she coming?”

“We don’t know exactly.”

“I’ll show her my starfish and I’ll take her down to see...”

“Well, don’t make a nuisance of yourself,” Mark said, with a little warning glance. “And don’t talk her head off. She’s — not feeling very well.”

“Has she got nerves like you?”

“That’s right.”

They found Luisa in a corner of the kitchen reading a movie magazine and sucking an orange. She kept her gaze fixed on the magazine, deliberately ignoring their presence, until Mark spoke:

“We’re going to take a little walk in the wood. We’d like you to come along.”

Luisa’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, and she shook her head, with the orange still fastened to her mouth like a huge leech.

“I’d like to see these ghosts or devils of yours, Luisa.”

Luisa opened her mouth and the orange dropped into her lap. “I didn’t do a thing to her,” she said, with a black look at Jessie. “I didn’t do a single thing.”

“Come along, anyway.”

They walked in single file out the door.

James the gander waddled over from his usual place beneath the magnolia tree. No one knew for certain why he preferred this spot, though Mr. Roma had suggested that it was because the fresh-fallen magnolia petals looked like huge snowy goose eggs.

He advanced on them, hissing in a half-friendly, half-warning manner. James’ origin was uncertain; he had simply appeared one day, and stayed. He was very old now, and his one eye had clouded and his temper was uncertain, but he still felt it was his duty to patrol the yard, and keep things in order. Though he actually despised people, he sometimes needed them, in the absence of geese or other ganders. At night, when he had a spell of loneliness, he rapped his bill against the lighted windows, or scraped it up and down the screen door of the kitchen, coaxing for a little companionship, however objectionable it might be. It was difficult to be fond of James because of his haughty contempt for the human race, but it was equally difficult to dislike him.

Hissing, he followed them as far as the garage, then circled back again to the magnolia tree with cumbersome dignity.

“Here, James,” Jessie called. “Come on, James.” The gander snorted, and shuffled around and around among the fallen petals of the magnolia.

The beginning of the path that led to the woods was made of flagstones, bordered on the left with scraggly pelargoniums, and on the sea side a cypress hedge to break the wind. The cypress was dying from the drought, and when the wind touched it, it mourned and dropped its needles like tears. Further on, where the flagstones ended, the path was crackly with oak leaves that stung Jessie’s bare feet.

At the pepper tree where Mr. Roma had hung Jessie’s swing, the path curved abruptly to the left, past a wide barranca filled with scrub oak, and huge boulders where the lizards sunned themselves at noon. Over the barranca there was a bridge made of planks and wire cable, but no one knew who had built it or how old it was and how safe. When the wind blew, the bridge rocked and squeaked, and the only ones who ever used it were the jays and the mocking birds who came to sing and quarrel and splatter their droppings, and the termites who tunneled through the planks, leaving behind tiny pellets of wood.

With Jessie in the lead, they scrambled down over the boulders and up on the other side into a grove of eucalyptus and juniper trees. In a clearing in the middle of the grove was the small swimming pool, neatly covered with planks nailed together at the ends. It looked like a raised little dance floor, and this was precisely what Jessie had used it for until today.

“Well, I don’t see any devils,” Mark said, with exaggerated surprise.

“I just told her that,” Luisa muttered.

“Why?”

“I had to tell her something. She’s always following me. No matter where I go she follows me. I’ve got a life of my own to live.” She glanced at Mark out of the corner of her eye. “Besides, she wanted to take the boards off. She got a hammer out of the garage.”

“I wanted it to be a wading pool,” Jessie said anxiously. “In case it rains.”

“The boards are supposed to stay on. Mrs. Wakefield said so. She put them on herself.”

Mark went over and tried to loosen one of the planks but it wouldn’t budge. “She did a good enough job. It seems a funny spot to build a pool in the first place.”

“Mr. Wakefield liked privacy,” Luisa said. “He didn’t like anyone else around.” The mention of Mr. Wakefield seemed to make her uneasy. She glanced over her shoulder and added in a burst, “Can I go now? I’m supposed to be watching the beans.”

“It’s getting chilly,” Evelyn said. “We might as well all go, if Jessie is satisfied. You’re not frightened anymore, are you, Jessie?”

“No.” Jessie stared grimly down at her big toe where two ants were rather ticklishly playing follow the leader. Mr. Roma said all the ants were searching for water, which was why they often invaded the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom. Thoughtfully, Jessie spit on the ground, and then with her forefinger she eased the thirsty ants off her big toe so they could locate the spit. “I was never frightened a bit.”

She raised her head and saw Luisa’s faint sneer, and the amused skeptical glances exchanged by her parents. Their disbelief astounded her, and when she spoke again her voice trembled with intensity:

“I’ll stay here and prove it. You just watch me!”

Ducking past her mother she leaped up on the planks and began stamping her feet and shouting challenges.

“Leave her alone,” Mark said. “She has to work out her own problems.”

When they reached the house again they could still hear Jessie’s faint scornful chant mingling with the rise and fall of the sea and the sighing of the cypress — I’m the king of the castle and you’re the dirty rascals.

Mark closed the windows of the living room so he couldn’t hear it. But it wouldn’t be shut out. It kept beating rhythmically inside his head and the pulse in his temple throbbed in time to it.

He glanced across the room at Evelyn, sitting, mute and placid as a china doll, in the wing chair by the window. For a moment he felt a savage resentment against her placidity; it ripped through his body and out again, like an electric current. It seemed to Mark that she lived entirely on and off the surface; her strongest emotions were affection, dislike, anger. She enjoyed weeping at movies, and she was always careful to bring her own handkerchief. It had been one of the little things about her that amused him when they were first married, and it still did, if he was in the right mood. But the right moods were becoming more infrequent.

“Did you ever sing that when you were a kid?” he said.

“I suppose. I can’t remember.”

“You must have been a funny kid. Did you ever have anything to say for yourself?”

“I’ll go up and get your sweater.”

“No, sit down. I don’t need it.”

“I hope we’re not going to quarrel,” Evelyn said.

“Why should we?”

“I don’t know, but it seems that every time Jessie has a problem, it always turns into our problem, into an argument between you and me.”

“I don’t feel like arguing,” Mark said. “Do you?”

“Then why start something?”

“I wasn’t,” she said patiently. “I was only pointing out what’s happened so often, so it wouldn’t happen again, so we’d be on guard.”

“It sounds more as if you meant en garde.”

“No.”

“You’re not jealous, are you?” Mark said. “There’s no one around here to be jealous of except Luisa, and she’s a little on the young side.”

“Don’t be silly. You know I’ve only been jealous once in my whole life.”

“By God,” he said bitterly. “You’d think I’d have lived that Patty business down by now.”

“Patty’s a ridiculous name for a woman her age. Patty. It sounds more like a cocker spaniel, or one of those hounds with awfully long ears.”

“A basset.”

“That’s it.” She crossed the room and put her arms around his neck and clung there. She was so small and light he barely felt her weight. “We mustn’t quarrel, darling!”

“We’re not quarreling.”

“Especially with that woman coming, and Jessie in one of her moods.”

He bent down and kissed her lightly on the forehead, but he felt that little surge of rebellion pass through him again. Whether there had been a quarrel or not, she had won.

He wanted suddenly, like Jessie, to stamp his feet and shout at the top of his lungs, I’m the king of the castle.