The Enchanted Isle

12

We were both up early, and I put on the blue dress, the one I’d left home in, and combed out my hair, and put a blue ribbon around it. Soon as I’d made us some breakfast we began straightening up to kind of get things in order. Then I put on an apron to go out front and sweep off, as we had two cedar trees and that time of year they shed, so brown fuzz was all over the place, ’specially the walk. So then Mrs. Minot was there, the woman who lived next door. She wanted to know where I’d been, and I said, “Oh, I come and go. First I’m here, and then I’m not here.” Then she asked where Mother was, and I said she’d be here directly. She said, “She left yesterday with a man, in a car, and three bags that he carried out. Has she gone away again?” So, of course, what she really meant was, not only about Mother but about me, had I spent the night alone in the house with Steve? I looked at her straight and asked, “Mrs. Minot, do you know what curiosity did to the cat?” And when she didn’t answer I said, “It killed her, that’s what. And I really and truly hope it does not do the same to you.” So on that there was nothing much she could do but go in her house again, which she did.

“What was that about?” asked Steve when I went in again.

“Woman sticking her nose in our business and getting it cut off is all.”

“She’s done nothing but try to find out about you.”

“What she found out wouldn’t choke a gnat.”

I got out the vac, but he said, “Mandy, put it back and put that broom away. The house is OK like it is. Your mother’s seen it worse. We’re in for one God-awful day, so let’s not throw it away working for Mr. Hoover. Let’s take it easy till they get here.”

So I put the things away and we sat in the living room, trying to take it easy. We did, I guess, for ten minutes, just sitting and not saying much. But then I had to talk. I said, “This Vernick now? Why did he say what he did, that I wasn’t his child?”

“I don’t exactly know.”

“‘Don’t exactly’ means you do. So, why?”

“Mandy, it’s none of my business.”

“But it’s my business, Steve. That means it better be yours, ’less you want me to leave you again.”

He got up, went to the window, and stood looking out. He stood there a long time, and I knew he was hoping they’d come. But it was only a quarter to ten, and they didn’t. I repeated it one more time: why did Vernick say what he did? And then at last he said, “OK, if you insist, I’ll tell you what I heard, what I’ve picked up from time to time, what may be true or may not be. Did you hear what I said? It may be true or may not be. But this much I’ll guarantee: when I’ve told it you’ll wish I hadn’t. Because I loved your mother once and think I understand her. I can defend what she did, take the side of a fourteen-year-old, a pretty teenage girl who liked a good time, who lived for a good time then, later, and now. It’s OK with me what she did. I’m not so sure it will be with you.”

“Listen, I have to know!”

“Then: she was playing around with Vernick.”

“That I can’t understand! It’s weird!”

“But not like robbing a bank.”

“OK, OK.”

“She was fourteen years old. Teenagers are weird.”

“I said OK. She was playing around with Vernick.”

“And then kind of ran into trouble.”

“You mean she came up pregnant?”

“Yes, except she wasn’t quite sure yet. She was just a kid and kept hoping and hoping and hoping... and waiting. She was afraid to tell her mother. And then at last she’d waited too long. She had to go in a home and have the child, have you. Then she put the bite on Vernick, and his father backed her up, made him marry her. That was a week before you arrived, and his father, still wanting to do the right thing, went to her father, your grandfather Gorsuch, to pay what the home had cost. But he said, Mr. Gorsuch did, that he hadn’t yet got the bill, but whatever it was there was no hurry about it. But Vernick’s father wanted to lean over backwards and, instead of waiting, went himself to the home to give them a check so no bill would be sent Mr. Gorsuch. But the woman couldn’t say, or wouldn’t say, how much the bill would be, and he thought it was pretty funny. He asked her to please find out. And when she stepped in the next office, he tiptoed over to listen. And what he heard stood his world on its head, and his son’s world, and your mother’s world, and your world.”

“What did he hear?”

“‘But that’s all been taken care of.’”

“Taken care of? By whom?”

“That’s what stood all those worlds on their heads.”

“Steve, I asked you, by whom?”

“I don’t know by whom!”

After a long time I asked, “Does Mother know?”

“I can’t say what she knows.” And then: “Mandy, she was a teenage girl, a kid that liked a good time. Who knows what she knows?”

“But if she doesn’t know, I don’t!”

“I said, if I tell it you’ll wish I hadn’t.”

“And I don’t have any father.”

“You have me... if you want me.”

“Want you? Want you? Steve, I want you as I’ve never wanted anything! Steve, be my father! Be my father always. I’ve... I’ve been hit by too many trucks. I can’t take any more!”

By that time I was crying, and he came over and patted me, taking me in his arms and kneeling beside my chair. He said, “Mandy, I knew it would hurt. I warned you it was going to. I begged you not to make me tell it. But a deal is a deal, and if that’s what you wanted I had to go through. I want to be your father, and I promise never to take advantage. Well? I proved that I wouldn’t, didn’t I? Last night?”

“Yes, Steve, and I was so happy.”

“There’s one other thing, little Mandy.”

“Yes, Steve? What is it?”

“You can count on me, all the way.”

He knelt there some little time, patting me, kissing me, and calming me down. Then we got to laughing, when he got his handkerchief out and let me blow my nose. He said I sounded “like the B&O freight every night blowing for College Park.” Laughing was what I needed, I guess, and I began to feel a lot better. And then when I looked there was Mother, skipping up on the porch in that graceful way she had. Steve jumped up and scrambled out in the hall, opening the door for her. Then she was in, pulling his ear and kissing him, I guess from habit, or maybe forgetting who she was married to. She was all smiles for him but hadn’t any for me. I mean she had hazel eyes, which took up the green she always wore, to contrast with her hair, which was a beautiful dark red. And they could be warm and friendly and gay, and in fact usually were, ’specially for a man. They flashed that way for Steve, but when she saw me they got hard, and when they were hard they were hard. I mean like a couple of marbles. Then she started in letting me have it, taking up right where she left off on the phone the night before. She ran over it, what a pest I had been since the day I was born. She was ’specially bitter about Vernick, about my going to him.

But I cut in on her and asked, “Speaking of him, why would he say what he did? That I wasn’t his child at all?”

“To save himself money is why! He owes me nine thousand six hundred and fifty dollars of the fifty-a-month I was given that the court awarded me for your support, of which he’s never paid me one cent! That’s why he pretends you’re not his. But you are, just the same. And a chip off the old block, I would say. My, how your character resembles his!”

So, of course, that made me feel fine, but she went right on, feeling sorry for herself, “And here now at last, when I thought I might have some peace, a change, a chance to relax, perhaps enjoy myself a little, you have to do this to me!”

But on that Steve got in it. He said, “Sal, maybe to you it’s just an interrupted good time, but to her, to Mandy, it could mean going to prison, years out of her life, and perhaps even worse. So knock it off about your trip. We got real things to worry about.”

“My, my, my! Listen at him!”

She went over and popped a kiss on his cheek, which for some reason ’furiated me. I said, “Whatever the truth about me, between you and this awful rat Vernick, this much seems to be clear, which nobody can deny: last night, Mrs. Wilmer, was the first night in your life that you had the connubial bliss while united in holy wedlock. So I can well understand that you hated to be interrupted by such a crumb as me. Is that what you call it, connubial? Like in nubial? Which means hot in the pants but light in the head?”

That settled her hash but good. She gave a yelp, staggered to the sofa, stretched herself out, and bawled. But even during that all I could really think of wasn’t how I had clobbered her but how pretty she was. She was still a month less than thirty and just about my size, medium verging on small. Her face was good-looking all right, but slightly beat-up, so it seemed. I don’t mean from somebody banging it, but from banging on the inside, like she didn’t sleep good at night. Her eyes, like I said, were hazel, with a friendly, flirty expression, ’specially for men when she looked at them, but at the same time had kind of a hunted expression, like she wasn’t quite sure of the look she’d get in return. Her hair was something to see, dark glossy red, and she combed it out on her shoulders in big, thick curls. But the main thing about her, what you couldn’t take your eyes off of, was her figure. It was slim and soft and willowy, about my size. And did she know how to dress it! Today she had on a bottle-green linen suit to go with her hair in contrast, the skirt short as the law allowed to show off her beautiful legs. She was something to see all right, doing her stagger, but not any stumpy stagger like she was going to fall. It was a slow, sad, and slinky stagger, kind of sexy if you know what I mean, much like her regular walk, except not with the bottom twitch. When she finally got to the sofa, she didn’t flop down kerbam. She kind of melted down till she was all stretched out, one toe touching the floor in a graceful way, the back of her skirt hiked up to show her good-looking bottom. Then, one sob at a time, she commenced doing her stuff, till she was bawling good, with Steve still there saying nothing, and me hollering at her, saying over again what I had said, till he cut me off with a wave of one hand.

That’s when the bell rang and Steve let in Mr. Wilmer, who had been gassing the Caddy up. He waved at me from the hall, and I have to say I was impressed. He’s a blond guy, not much older than Mother, though two or three years I would say, with light curly hair and a nice clean, well-scrubbed look. He’s big and had on a gray summer suit, but with a collar that hugged his neck and a cut like in the ads. He stood there and smiled when I waved back at him. But then came a whoop from Mother, and he stepped into the room and saw her. Real quick he went over and knelt, taking her in his arms and whispering stuff to her. Then she really hooked it up, “Ben, I can’t help it, I have to! It’s not it, it’s her, that dreadful little viper!”

“That what?”

“Viper!” I screamed. “It means rattlesnake... and shows what she thinks of me, exactly what she thinks!”

“Oh! I thought she said diaper.”

“I had to shut her up,” I said.

But at that, he came over to me, put his hand on my head, and asked, “Don’t you know how to shut someone up? The quickest, surest way?” He waited and then went on, “You go over and give them a kiss. You cover their mouth with your mouth, and then they can’t say anything. It shuts them up complete!”

“You think I would? With her?”

“I don’t think. I know.”

His voice was like ice, and Steve said, “You heard him, Mandy. Get going.”

“I’ll think about it.”

But a big hand grabbed my wrist and yanked it, and then there I was beside Mother, my face being pushed against hers. So then I could taste her tears. So then I wanted to kiss her and did. And then, lo and behold, she kissed back, real hard, the first time in her life, in my life that she had. Then we were holding on to each other, crying and kissing and happy.

Pretty soon Mr. Wilmer lifted me up and led to a chair, where he pulled me down in his lap. Then he said, “OK, begin, Mandy. I have to know what happened.” So I told it once more, like to Steve the night before, but maybe quicker this time, so it took no more than two minutes, call it five. When I finished, his face was screwed up like something was hurting him, and to make him feel better I said, “But no one suspicions us. No one has any idea. How could they? No one knows we were there!” But when I tried to go on, he laid his hand on my mouth and asked, “Can I borrow the phone?” And Steve took him to Mother’s extension upstairs. He was back in a couple of minutes, saying, “I just talked to Jim Clawson, my lawyer, and it took a little persuading but he’s agreed to take charge of the case. He may want a trial lawyer later, but as of now he’s it. He wants us over there, at his office in Baltimore, at two o’clock, and as it’s nearly eleven now, and we’ll have to get some lunch, I’d say it’s time we got started.”

He said we could all go in his car, but Steve wanted me with him “so we each have our own transportation.” I would have liked a ride in the Caddy but went with Steve as he said. But before Mr. Wilmer came down, and while we were waiting for him, Mother beckoned me over, made a place for me on the sofa, then pulled me down beside her and went back to kissing me. She said, “You’re such a sweet, pretty thing, Mandy. I’d die before letting them harm you. You’re my own, my wonderful child. Now I feel it at last. Thanks to that wonderful man, my husband.”

“And me,” said Steve.

“And you!”

She got up and went over and kissed him.