The Fiend

(18)

Ellen had expected a dull evening because the Arlingtons were usually tense and quiet the night before Howard was to leave on another business trip. She was pleasantly surprised by Virginia’s show of vivacity and by the sudden interest Howard was taking in Jessie.

While the others ate at the redwood picnic table, Howard sat with Jessie on the lawn swing, asking her all about school and what she was doing during the holidays. Jessie, who’d been taught to answer adults’ questions but not to speak with her mouth full, compromised by keeping her answers as brief as possible. School was O.K. Natural history was best. During the holidays she played. With Mary Martha. On the jungle gym. Also climbing trees. Sometimes they went swimming.

“Oh, come now,” Howard said. “Aren’t you forgetting Aunt Virginia? You visit her every day, don’t you?”

“I guess.”

“Do you like to visit her?”

“Yes.”

“You go downtown shopping with her and to the movies and things like that, eh?”

“Not often.”

“Once or twice a week?”

“Maybe.”

Howard took a bite of hamburger and chewed it as if his teeth hurt. Then he put his plate down on the grass, shoving it almost out of sight under the swing. “Does anyone else go along on these excursions of yours?”

“No.”

“Just the two of you, eh?”

Jessie nodded uncomfortably. She didn’t know why Howard was asking so many questions. They made her feel peculiar, as if she and Virginia had been doing wrong things.

“It’s nice of you to keep Virginia company,” Howard said pleasantly. “She’s a very lonely woman. You eat quite a few meals with her, don’t you?”

“Not so many.”

“When you’ve finished eating, what then? She reads to you, perhaps, or tells you stories?”

“Yes.”

“She tells me some, too. Do you believe her stories?”

“Yes, unless they’re fairy tales.”

“How can you be sure when they’re fairy tales?”

“They begin ‘Once upon a time.’“

“Always?”

“They have to. It’s a rule.”

“Is it now,” Howard said with a dry little laugh. “I’ll remember that. The ones that begin ‘Once upon a time,’ I won’t believe. Do I have to believe all the others?”

“You should. Otherwise—”

“Otherwise, she’d be telling fibs, eh?”

“I don’t think so. Grownups aren’t supposed to tell fibs.”

“Some of them do, though. It’s as natural to them as breathing.”

Although Virginia was talking to Dave and Ellen and hadn’t even glanced in Howard’s direction, she seemed to be aware of trouble. She rose and came toward the swing, her stole trailing behind her like some pink wisp of the past.

“Have you finished eating, Jessie?”

“Yes.”

“It’s getting close to your bedtime, isn’t it?”

“The kid has parents,” Howard said. “Let them tell her when to go to bed. It’s none of your business.”

“I don’t have to be told,” Jessie said with dignity, and slid off the swing, glad for once to be getting away from the company of adults. She wished Michael were at home so she could ask him why Howard and Virginia were acting so peculiar lately.

“Well,” Howard said, “I suppose now the party’s over for you, Virginia. Not much use sticking around after the kid goes to bed. Shall we leave?”

“I’m warning you. Don’t make a scene or you’ll regret it.”

“Your threats are as empty as your promises. Try another approach.”

“Such as begging? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? The only time you ever feel good any more is when I come crawling to you for something. Well, you’re going to have to think of other ways to feel good because from now on I’m not crawling and I’m not begging.”

“Three days,” Howard said bitterly, “I’ve been home three days and not for one minute have I felt welcome. I’m just a nuisance who appears every two or three weeks and disrupts your real life. The hell of it is that I don’t understand what your real life is, so I can’t try to fit into it or go along with it. I can only fight it because it doesn’t include me. I want, I need, a place in it. I used to have one. What went wrong, Virginia?”

Dave and Ellen exchanged embarrassed glances like two characters in a play who found themselves on stage at the wrong time. Then Ellen put some dishes on a tray and started toward the house and after a second’s hesitation Dave followed her. Their leaving made no more difference to the Arlingtons than their presence had.

“What’s the matter, Virginia? If it’s my job, I can change it. If it’s the fact that we have no family, we can change that, too.”

“No,” she said sharply. “I no longer want a family.”

“Why not? You’ve wept for one often enough.”

“We no longer have anything to offer a child.” She stared out beyond the patio walls to the horizon. The wall of fog had begun to expand. Pretty soon the city would disappear, streets would be separated from streets and people from people and everyone would be alone. “Yes, Howard, I wept, I wept buckets. I was young then. I didn’t realize how cruel it would be to pass along such an ugly thing as life. Poor Jessie.”

He frowned. “Why? Why poor Jessie?”

“She’s only nine, she’s still full of innocence and high hopes and dreams. She will lose her innocence and high hopes and dreams; she will lose them all. By the time she’s my age she will have wished a thousand times that she were dead.”

Twice Louise covered the entire length of Jacaranda Road, driving in second gear, looking at every parked car and every person walking along the street or waiting at bus stops. There was no sign of Charlie or his car, and the Oakley house at 319 was dark as if no one lived in it any more. She was encouraged by the dark house. If anything had happened, there would be light and noise and excitement. Nothing’s happened. Nothing whatever—

She drove to Miria Street. Ben let her in the front door. “Hello, Louise. I thought you were working tonight.”

“I was.”

“Charlie’s not here but come in anyway. I’m making a fresh pot of coffee. Would you like some?”

“Please.” She followed him down the hall to the kitchen. He walked slowly as though his back ached, and for the first time she thought of him not as one of the Gowen brothers but as a middle-aged man.

She accepted the cup of coffee he poured her and sat down at the table. “Are you tired, Ben?”

“A little. It was Dollar Day in most of the stores downtown. What the ladies saved on hats and dresses they came in and spent on food.” He sat down opposite her. “I think I’ve found the right place.”

“Place?”

“The apartment I wanted down near the breakwater. It’s furnished, so I wouldn’t have to take a thing out of the house here, and the landlord told me I could keep a dog if it wasn’t too big. I’ll sign the lease as soon as you and Charlie name the wedding day... You don’t look very pleased. What’s the matter?”

“I was trying to imagine this house without you in it. It’s very — difficult.”

“This house has seen enough of me. And vice versa.”

“Charlie would like you to stay with us.”

“He’d soon get over that idea. He’s nervous, that’s all. He’s like a kid, dreading any change even if it’s a good one.”

“Maybe I’m a little like that, too.”

“Come off it, Louise. Why, I’ll bet after you’ve been married a few weeks you’ll meet me on the street and think, that guy looks familiar, I must have seen him before some place.”

“That could never happen.”

“A lot of things are going to happen. Good things, I mean, the kind you and Charlie deserve.”

She took a sip of coffee. It was so strong and bitter she could hardly swallow it. “Did — did Charlie come home after work?”

“No. But don’t worry about it. He had to go on an errand for the boss. It was an important errand, too — making a delivery to the Forest Service up the mountain. It shows the boss is beginning to trust him with bigger things. Charlie told me on the phone not to expect him before seven o’clock.”

“It’s nearly nine.”

“He may have had some trouble with his car. I’ve had trouble up there myself on hot days. The engine started to boil—”

“He was at the library about an hour ago.”

“There’s more to this, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

Ben’s face didn’t change expression but suddenly he pushed his chair away from the table with such violence that his coffee cup fell into the saucer. Brown fluid oozed across the green plastic cloth like a muddy stream through a meadow. “Well, don’t bother telling me. I won’t listen. I want one night, just this one night, to think about my own future, maybe even dream a little. Or don’t I deserve a dream because I happen to be Charlie’s older brother?”

“I’m sorry, Ben. I guess I shouldn’t have come running to you.” She rose, pulling her coat tightly around her body as if the room had turned cold. “I must learn to deal with situations like this on my own. Don’t come with me, Ben. I can let myself out.”

“Situations like what?”

“You don’t want to hear.”

“No, but you’d better tell me.”

“I think I can handle it myself.”

“By crying?”

“I’m not crying. My eyes always water when — when I’m under a strain. There’s a certain nerve that runs from the back of the ear to the tear ducts and—”

“We’ll discuss the structure of the nervous system some other time. Where is Charlie?”

“I don’t know,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of one hand. “I’ve been looking for him ever since Miss Albert called to tell me he’d been at the library.”

“You’ve been looking where?”

“Up and down Jacaranda Road.”

“Why Jacaranda Road? You must have had a reason. What is it?”

She took a step back, as if dodging a blow.

“You’ve got to answer me, Louise.”

“Yes. I’m trying — trying to say it in the right way.”

“If it’s a wrong thing, there’s no right way to say it.”

“I’m not sure that it’s wrong. There may be nothing to it except in Charlie’s imagination and now mine. I mean, he gets so full of worry that I start to worry, too.”

“What about?”

She hesitated for a long time, then she spoke quickly, slurring her words as if to make them less real. “There’s a child living at 319 Jacaranda Road, a little girl named Mary Martha Oakley. Charlie swears he’s never even talked to her and I believe him, but he’s afraid. So am I. I think he’s been watching her and... well, fantasying about her. I know this isn’t good because a fantasy that gets out of control can become a fact.”

“How long have you known about the girl?”

“Two days.”

“And you didn’t level with me.”

“Charlie asked me not to.”

“But you’re leveling now, in spite of that. Why?”

“I want you to tell me how it was the... the other time. I’ve got to know all about it, how he acted beforehand, if he was quiet or moody or restless, if he stayed away from the house on nights like this without telling anyone. Did he talk about the girl a lot, or didn’t he mention her? How old was she? What did she look like? How did Charlie meet her?”

Ben went over to the sink and tore off a couple of sheets of paper toweling. Then he wiped the coffee off the table, slowly and methodically. His face was blank, as if he hadn’t heard a word she’d said.

“Aren’t you listening, Ben?”

“Yes. But I won’t do what you’re asking me to. It would serve no purpose.”

“It might. Everybody has a pattern, Ben. Even strange and difficult people have one if you can find it. Suppose I learned Charlie’s pattern so I could be alert to the danger signals—”

“It happened a long time ago. I don’t remember the details, the fine points.” Ben threw the used towel in the wastebasket and sat down again, his hands pressed out flat on the table in front of him, palms down. “If there were danger signals, I didn’t see them. Charlie was just a nice, quiet young man, easy to have around, never asking much or getting much. He’d had two years of college. The first year he did well; the second, he had trouble concentrating — my mother suspected a love affair but it turned out she was wrong. He didn’t go back for the third year because my father died. At least that was the accepted reason. After that he went to work. He held a succession of unimportant jobs. One of them was at a veterinary hospital and boarding kennels on Quila Street near the railroad tracks. Every day the girl walked along the tracks on her way to and from school. Charlie used to chase her away because he was afraid she’d get hurt by a train or by one of the winos who hung around the area. That’s how it began, with Charlie trying to protect her.”

Louise listened, remembering the reason Charlie had given her for wanting to find out the name of the people who lived at 319 Jacaranda Road: “I must tell those people they’ve got to take better care of their little dog unless they want it to be killed by a car or something.”

She said, “How old was the girl?”

“Ten. But she looked younger because she was so small and skinny.”

“Was she pretty?”

“No.”

“What color was her hair, and was it short or long?”

“Dark and short, I think. I only saw her once, but I remember one of her front teeth was chipped from a fall.”

“Though it may seem like a terrible thing to say, Ben, all this sounds very promising.”

“Promising?”

“Yes. You see, I’ve met Mary Martha. She’s a plump, pretty child with a long blond ponytail, quite mature-looking for her age. She’s not a bit like that other girl. Isn’t that a good sign? She doesn’t fit the pattern at all, Ben.” Louise’s pale cheeks had taken on a flush of excitement. “Now tell me about Charlie, how he acted beforehand, everything you can think of.”

“I saw no difference in him,” Ben said heavily. “But then I wasn’t looking very hard, I’d just gotten married to Ann. Charlie could have grown another head and I might not have noticed.”

“You’d just gotten married,” Louise repeated. “Now Charlie’s about to get married. Is this just a coincidence or is it part of the pattern?”

“Stop thinking about patterns, Louise. A whole battery of experts tried to figure out Charlie’s and got nowhere.”

“Then it’s my turn to try. Where did you live after the wedding?”

“Here in this house. It was only supposed to be a temporary arrangement, we were going to buy a place of our own. Then Charlie was arrested and everything blew up in our faces. I didn’t have enough money left to buy a tent, but by that time it didn’t matter because I had no wife either.”

“And now Charlie and I will be living in this house, too.” Louise was looking around the room as if she were seeing it for the first time as a place she would have to call her home. “You still don’t notice any pattern, Ben?”

“What if I say yes? What do I do then?”

“You mean, what do we do? I’m in it with you this time.”

“Don’t say this time. There isn’t going to be a this time. It happened once, and it’s not going to happen again, by God, if I have to keep him in sight twenty-four hours a day, if I have to handcuff him to me.”

“That won’t be much of a life for Charlie. He’d be better off dead.”

“Do you suppose I haven’t thought of that?” he said roughly. “A hundred times, five hundred, I’ve looked at him and seen him suffering, and I’ve thought, this is my kid brother. I love him, I’d cut off an arm for him, but maybe the best thing I could do for him is to end it all.”

“You mean, kill him.”

“Yes, kill him. And don’t look at me with such horror. You may be thinking the same thing yourself before long.”

“If you feel like that, your problems may be worse than Charlie’s.” She looked a little surprised at her own words as if they had come out unplanned. “Perhaps yours are much worse because you’re not aware of them. When something happens to you, or inside yourself, you’ve always had Charlie to blame. It’s made you look pretty good in the eyes of the world but it hasn’t helped Charlie. He’s already had more blame than he can handle. What he needs now is confidence in himself, a feeling that he’ll do the right thing on his own and not because you’ll force him to. You spoke a minute ago of handcuffing him to you. That might work, up to a point. Perhaps it would prevent him from doing the wrong thing but it wouldn’t help him to do the right one.”

“Well, that was quite a speech, Louise.”

“There’s more.”

“I’m not sure I want to hear it.”

“Listen anyway, will you, Ben?”

“Since when have you become an authority on the Gowen brothers?”

She ignored the sarcasm. “I’ve been trying to do some figuring, out, that’s all.”

“And you’ve decided what?”

“Charlie’s problem wasn’t born inside him. It doesn’t belong only to him, it’s a family affair. Some event, some relationship, or several of both, made him not want to grow up. He let you assume the grown-up role. He remained a child, the kid brother, the baby of the family. He merely went through the motions of manhood by imitating you and doing what you told him to.”

She lapsed into silence, and Ben said, “I hope you’ve finished.”

“Almost. Did you and Ann go on a honeymoon?”

“We went to San Francisco for a week. I can’t see what that—”

“How soon after you got back did the trouble happen between Charlie and the girl?”

“A few days. Why?”

“Perhaps,” she said slowly, “Charlie was only trying, in his mixed-up way, to imitate you by ‘marrying’ the girl.”

Jessie had turned off her light and closed her door tightly to give her parents the impression that she’d gone to sleep. But both her side and back windows were wide open and she missed very little of what was going on.

She heard Virginia and Howard quarreling in the patio, and later, the gate opening and slamming shut again, and Howard’s car racing out of the driveway and down the street. Virginia started to cry and Dave took her home and then set out in his car to look for Howard. Jessie lay in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling and wondering how adults could get away with doing such puzzling things without any reason. She herself had to have at least one good reason, and sometimes two, for everything she did.

Shortly before ten o’clock Ellen paused outside Jessie’s door for a few seconds, then continued on down the hall.

Jessie called out, “I’m thirsty.”

“All right, get up and pour yourself a glass of water.”

“I’d rather you brought me one.”

“All right.” Ellen’s voice was cross, and when she came into the bedroom with the glass of water she looked tired and tense. “Why aren’t you ever thirsty during the day?”

“I don’t have time then to think about it.”

“Well, drink up. And if you need anything else get it now. I have a headache, I’m going to take a sleeping capsule and go to bed.”

“May I take one, too?”

“Of course not. Little girls don’t need sleeping capsules.”

“Mrs. Oakley gives Mary Martha one sometimes.”

“Mrs. Oakley is a— Well, anyway, you close your eyes and think pleasant thoughts.”

“Why did Howard and Virginia have a fight?”

“That’s a good question,” Ellen said dryly. “If, within the next fifty years, I come up with a good answer, I’ll tell it to you. Have you finished with the water?”

“Yes.”

Ellen reached for the glass, still nearly full. “Now this is the final good night, Jessie. You understand that? Absolutely final.” When she went out she shut the door in a way that indicated she meant business.

Jessie closed her eyes and thought of butterscotch sundaes and Christmas morning and flying the box kite with her name printed in big letters on all sides. Her name was away up in the air and she was flying up in the air to join it, carried effortlessly by the wind, higher and higher. She had almost reached her name when she heard a car in the driveway. She came to earth with a bang. The descent was so real and sudden and shocking that her arms and legs ached and she lay huddled in her bed like the survivor of a plane wreck.

She heard a man’s footsteps across the driveway, then Virginia’s voice, sounding so cold and hard that Jessie wouldn’t have recognized it if it hadn’t been coming from Virginia’s back porch.

“You didn’t find him, I suppose.”

“No,” Dave said.

“Well, that suits me. Good riddance to bad rubbish, as we used to say in my youth, long since gone, long since wasted on a—”

“Talk like that will get you nowhere. Be practical. You need Howard, you can’t support yourself.”

“That’s a wonderful attitude to take.”

“It’s a fact, not an attitude,” Dave said. “You seem ready to quarrel with anyone tonight. I’d better go home.”

“Do that.”

“Virginia, listen to me—”

The voices stopped abruptly. Jessie went over to the window and peered out through the slats of the Venetian blinds. The Arlingtons’ porch was empty and the door into the house was closed.

Jessie returned to bed. Lying on her back with her hands clasped behind her head, she thought about Virginia and how she needed Howard because she couldn’t support herself. She wondered how much money Virginia would require if Howard never came back. Virginia had a car and a house with furniture and enough clothes to last for years and years. All she’d really have to buy would be food.

Without moving her head Jessie could see the half-open door of her clothes closet. In the closet, in the toe of one of her party shoes, were the two ten-dollar bills Howard had pressed into her hand. Although she would miss the money if she gave it back to Virginia, it would be a kind of relief to get rid of it and to be doing Virginia a favor at the same time. Twenty dollars would buy tons of food, even the butterscotch sundaes Virginia liked so much.

Once the decision was made, Jessie wasted no time. She put on a bathrobe and slippers, fished the two bills from the toe of her party shoe and tiptoed down the hall, through the kitchen and out the back door.

Moving through the darkness in her long white flowing robe, she looked like the ghost of a bride.