The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape

12

ANNE CHESSERSON HAD grave reservations about allowing Becky and the child to move in with her. She had never been close to Caroline, even when they were children, for reasons her younger sister wouldn’t have understood. Now she was already sorry she’d let Caroline manipulate her into letting Becky and the little girl live there. What had possessed her? She wasn’t comfortable with children, she had never wanted a family, she liked her life as it was. She didn’t like changes in her routine. She didn’t care much for houseguests, though she had room for them, and of course she had Mariol to wait on the few visitors she did invite.

Anne was a handsome woman, meticulously turned out, her black hair coiffed in a sleek French twist, her dresses custom made of pale silks which, on anyone else, might become quickly spotted or watermarked. Her winter coats were confections of beautifully draped cashmere. Her couturière, in Morningside, was so well situated that she had an unlisted phone. Anne had invested wisely the money John had settled on her when he left. While Caroline, with much lower goals, ran a bakery business that couldn’t be very profitable. Anne couldn’t find much sympathy for Caroline or her niece in this present situation. Becky knew, when she married Morgan Blake, that he ran with a troublemaker in high school. Caroline should never have allowed her to marry the boy—Morgan had been only a boy when they married. Then when Morgan came out of the navy all he wanted to do with his life was become an auto mechanic. No one could support a wife as a simple mechanic; no wonder he’d resorted to theft. The Atlanta papers had been full of the robbery and murder, it was an ugly business that she would prefer to keep at a distance. She could hardly do that if Becky was staying with her. But the decision had been made, so she wouldn’t back out.

At least Becky and the child would have the basement suite, downstairs where Becky’s early rising to go to work, and the child’s noisy play, might not disturb her. Mariol lived on the main floor in the back bedroom; Anne’s own bedroom suite took up the smaller, second floor where she could look out over the rooftops of Atlanta. Anne believed in stairs; the exercise kept her waist and legs trim. She liked to cook, and on the nights she was home she prepared their meals, though Mariol did the shopping. Anne had been a temperamental, nervous child, and had been treated with extra care. Their mother had kept her perfectly groomed, immaculately dressed, not a wrinkle allowed nor a hair out of place, while she let Caroline run as she pleased in ragged dresses or boy’s jeans. Caroline had been a sturdy child, Anne had not. Anne’s interest in perfecting her outer self had helped to build a wall of protection, hiding her inner fears; that was the best shelter their mother could provide for her.

BECKY AND SAMMIE moved into the basement suite on a Friday afternoon, slipping almost subserviently down the carpeted stairs from the foyer carrying their tattered suitcases. The Tudor house was built all of pale stone, with sharply peaked slate roofs and diamond leaded windows. From the basement sitting area one could step out onto a stone patio surrounded by an expanse of velvet lawn and carefully shaped azalea and rhododendron bushes. The downstairs suite seemed as big as Becky’s whole house, occupying three fourths of the large basement, with a laundry off to one side. The bedroom wing had twin beds done up with elegant satin spreads. This room could be hidden by cream velvet draperies drawn across. The other wing of the guest suite, the sitting area, featured a Louis XV–style desk and a rose marble fireplace. The rooms were carpeted in off-white wool carved in a Chinese pattern, the cost per square yard a sum that would have kept Becky and Sammie in luxury for months. The storage chests and dressing table were finished in hand-laid gold leaf. The room terrified Becky. She couldn’t feel comfortable here; she was afraid that either she or Sammie would mar the furniture or leave a stain on the carpet, on the velvet settee or on the two brocade chairs, would mar this perfect grouping arranged before the marble mantel and gas log. Even now with the chill nights of early fall she wouldn’t dare light a fire.

There was no kitchenette and no possible place to comfortably open a can of tuna and a package of crackers except the bathroom. That room was done in mauve marble and mauve tile with both a shower and a tub, the shower protected by three layers of shower curtains, the outer, mauve one deeply ruffled. Stepping in the shower made Becky feel as if she was slipping into a closet filled with lacy ball gowns. The one new addition to the bedroom was the phone with a private line that Anne had had installed for her. Whether this was added out of thoughtfulness or to keep Becky from interrupting Anne’s own calls, the phone was welcome and made her feel more accepted.

She had brought half a dozen of her own bedsheets to spread over the carpet where they would walk the most and to cover a six-foot square between Sammie’s bed and the wall so Sammie would have a play area. She had not allowed Sammie to bring paints or crayons, only a drawing pad and pencils. Sammie had specific instructions about keeping the carpet clean—Becky gave her more instructions than either of them wanted to deal with. Sammie was a good child, she was never intentionally destructive, but children were children and Becky worried obsessively about damaging Anne’s perfect house.

For the first few days she made their breakfasts and dinners from cans, she and Sammie sitting on the bathroom floor on a folded sheet pretending they were having a picnic. Maybe she was making too much of trying to keep the rooms clean, but she hadn’t been invited here, she couldn’t help feeling like an intruder.

She had turned the bedspreads wrong side up to keep them clean and now, after her third day of job hunting, she lay across her bed, exhausted. Her feet ached from walking the streets, her head ached from filling out countless job applications, answering the same probing questions over and over, and dealing with countless interviews. The questions always included the same inquiry about her marital status and her husband’s occupation. In the last week and a half she had applied for eighteen jobs and had been told eighteen times, after filling out all the applications, that there were no openings or that she didn’t fit the qualifications or that they would call her if something came up. What did she expect when she told the truth, that Morgan was in the Atlanta pen for a robbery and murder that he hadn’t committed, that she was working with an attorney on an appeal?

On the nineteenth application, where she must check either married, single, divorced, or widowed, she marked widowed, and she used her maiden name, Tanner. She had to find a job, and soon, and then a small apartment near a school for Sammie. The problem of after-school weighed heavily, she hadn’t solved that one yet. Now, when she was out job hunting, Sammie stayed quietly in their room but she couldn’t leave Sammie alone in an apartment.

On their visits to Morgan she found it increasingly hard to hide her despair at the lack of a job. When she was with him she talked hopefully about their request for an appeal, but too often he would simply hug her and change the subject, knowing she was holding back her stress and doubts. She worried, too, because Sammie wasn’t sleeping well. And now Sammie wouldn’t talk about her dreams, though she had never before been secretive. Sammie had started to make a picture book of small pencil drawings in a plain, unlined tablet, but she didn’t want to show Becky, she made her promise not to look.

But soon, when Anne was out at one or another of her club meetings, Becky would come home to find Sammie upstairs in the kitchen with Mariol; at first that disturbed her, but Mariol herself put Becky at ease. The housekeeper was a handsome Negro woman to whom Becky had warmed at once. She had been with Anne since before John left, before the divorce. Soon Mariol was giving Sammie a hot lunch, and then she had them both coming upstairs to a hot breakfast. Anne was quiet during those meals but she seemed to tolerate the arrangement. Mariol would hug and cuddle Sammie, but of course Anne didn’t put aside her own reserve, Becky knew she never would.

One thing was certain—Anne didn’t want to talk about Morgan or the trial. If Becky mentioned Morgan, Anne grew ill at ease. Becky wanted her to understand that Morgan was innocent, but after three awkward attempts she gave up. Anne would think what she pleased. Becky was surprised when after only a few days, Mariol’s kindness to Sammie seemed to stir a subtle change in Anne. Several times Becky found her watching Sammie with a puzzled frown and once, when Becky was tucking Sammie in bed and hearing her prayers, Sammie said, “Bless Aunt Anne and please make her less lonely.”

But then came the night when Sammie woke screaming, “Look out! Look out! Get away from him! Get away!” Becky lunged for the lamp switch, turned it on to find Sammie sitting up in bed still half asleep but trembling and terrified. Becky crawled into bed with her, holding her close. “What was it?” she said softly. “What did you dream?”

“I don’t remember,” Sammie said, clearly lying. “It’s gone now. I want to go to sleep now.” What were these new dreams, that she wouldn’t talk about them? Prison dreams? Ugly prison incidents that no child should see and that Becky couldn’t stop her from seeing?

“Whatever you dreamed,” Becky said, “there’s more good in life than ugliness. We have to hold on to the bright part, so we’ll be stronger.” They lay holding each other until at last Sammie slept—leaving Becky wakeful, certain that Sammie had seen Morgan hurt. No matter what she told Sammie, she couldn’t shake her own fear. She had no notion that across the room brightness did touch them; that the yellow tomcat sat on the mantel watching them, reaching out an invisible paw to ease them as he, too, considered Sammie’s dream.

MISTO HAD SEEN the child’s drawings, had looked carefully at the little sketches. In one a man was falling a great distance tied to a rope, and that puzzled him. The tomcat had been in and out of the Chesserson house ever since Becky and Sammie had arrived; he had prowled the opulent rooms getting to know Anne and Mariol, seeing how each interacted with Sammie. He had rolled luxuriously on the fine upholstered furniture and the dense imported carpets, leaving no mark; he had sampled Mariol’s good cooking, licking his whiskers; he had stalked the neighborhood rooftops. Galloping along the steep angles of the Tudor’s slate roof, leaping into the high foliage of the great oaks and across the roofs of the big Morningside homes, he had spied down through mullioned windows, and peered down into lush, shaded gardens; but always he returned to Sammie. He was shocked to a rigid stillness when Anne Chesserson realized that something unseen wandered the house.

If Misto drifted into the room with her, she would turn in his direction with a puzzled frown. If he stood on the kitchen table licking a plate or peering down at Sammie’s drawings, Anne would look around the room, frowning. She never seemed afraid. When she became too intently aware of him Misto would vacate the house, would return to prowl the prison beside Lee, abandoning the luxury of Morningside, watching for the shadow that, too often, followed his cellmate.