The Fiend

(4)

Mary Martha Oakley was on the window seat in the front room, playing with her cat, Pudding. Her feelings toward the cat were ambivalent. Sometimes she loved him as only a solitary child can love an animal. At other times she didn’t want to see him because he symbolized all the changes that had taken place in her life during the last two years. Her mother had brought the cat home from the pet shop on the same day her father had moved out of the house.

“See, lamb? It’s a real live kitten, just what you’ve always wanted.”

Where had her father gone?

“Look at his adorable eyes and his silly little nose. Isn’t he adorable?”

Was he coming back?

“Let’s think of a real yummy name for him. How about Pudding?”

After the cat there were other changes: new locks on the doors and the downstairs windows and the garage, a private phone with an unlisted number that Mary Martha wasn’t allowed to tell anyone, even her teachers at school or her best friend, Jessie. Furniture began to disappear from the upstairs rooms, silver and china from the dining room, pictures from the walls, and all the pretty bottles from the wine cellar. The cook and the gardener stopped coming, then the cleaning woman, the grocery boy, the once-a-month seamstress, the milkman. Kate managed everything herself, and did her own shopping at a cash-and-carry supermarket.

Pudding was the only one of these changes that Mary Martha liked. Into his furry and uncritical ear she whispered her confidences and her troubled questions, and if Pudding couldn’t give her any answers or reassurance, he at least listened, blinking his eyes and now and then twitching his tail.

“Mary Martha, I’ve been calling you.”

The child raised her head and saw her mother standing in the doorway looking hot and fretful as she always did when she worked in the kitchen. “I didn’t hear you.”

“It’s all right, it’s not important. I just—” I just wanted to talk to somebody. “I just wanted to tell you that dinner will be a little late. It’s taking the hamburgers longer to thaw than I reckoned it would... Stop letting the cat bite your ponytail. It’s not sanitary.”

“He’s as clean as I am.”

“No, he isn’t. Besides, he should go outside now. He doesn’t get enough fresh air and sunshine.”

Mrs. Oakley leaned over to pick up the cat and it was then that she saw the old green coupé parked at the curb across the street. At noon when she’d unlatched the front screen door to let the girls in, she’d seen it too, but this time she knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. She knew who was behind the wheel, who was staring out through the closed, dirty window and what was going on in his closed, dirty mind.

Her hands tightened around the cat’s body so hard that he let out a meow of pain, but she kept her voice very casual. “Mary Martha, I’ve been concerned about those book reports that were assigned to you for summer work. How many do you have to write?”

“Ten. But I’ve got a whole month left.”

“A month isn’t as long as you think, lamb. I suggest you go up to your room right now and start working on one. After all, you want to make a good first impression on your new teacher.”

“She already knows me. It’s just Mrs. Valdez.”

“Are you going to argue with me, lamb?”

“I guess not.”

“That’s my angel. You may take Pudding up with you if you like.”

Mary Martha went toward the hallway with the cat at her heels. Though she couldn’t have put her awareness into words, she realized that the more pet names her mother called her, the more remote from her she actually was. Behind every lamb and angel lurked a black sheep and a devil.

“Mother—”

“Yes, sweetikins?”

“Nothing,” Mary Martha said. “Nothing.”

As soon as Kate Oakley heard Mary Martha’s bedroom door slam shut, she rushed out to the telephone in the front hall. With the child out of the way she no longer had to exercise such rigid control over her body. It was almost a relief to let her hands tremble and her shoulders sag as they wanted to.

She dialed a number. It rang ten, twelve, fifteen times and no one answered. She was sure, then, that her suspicions were correct.

She dialed another number, her mouth moving in a silent prayer that Mac would still be in his office, detained by a client or finishing a brief. She thought of how many times she had been the one who detained him, and how many tears she had shed sitting across the desk from him. If they had been allowed to collect, Mac’s office would be knee-deep in brine, yet they had all been in vain. She had been weeping for yesterday as though it were a person and would be moved to pity by her tears and would promise to return... Don’t cry, Kate. You will be loved and cherished forever, and forever young. Nothing will change for you.

Mac’s secretary answered, sounding as she always did, cool on the hottest day, dry on the wettest. “Rhodes and MacPherson. Miss Edgeworth speaking.”

“This is Mrs. Oakley. Is Mr. MacPherson in?”

“He’s just going out the door now, Mrs. Oakley.”

“Call him back, will you? Please.”

“I’ll try. Hold on.”

A minute later Mac came on the line, speaking in the brisk, confident voice that had been familiar to her since she was Mary Martha’s age and her father had died. “Hello, Kate. Anything the matter?”

“Sheridan’s here.”

“In the house? That’s a violation of the injunction.”

“Not in the house. He’s parked across the street, in an old green car he probably borrowed from one of his so-called pals. He won’t use his own, naturally.”

“How do you know it’s Sheridan? Did you see him?”

“No, he’s got the windows closed. But it couldn’t be anyone else. There’s nothing across the street except a vacant lot. Also, I called his apartment and he wasn’t home. When you add two and two, you get four.”

“Let’s just add one and one first,” Mac said. “Do you see anybody in the car?”

“No. I told you, the windows are closed—”

“So you’re not sure that there’s even anyone in it?”

“I am sure. I know—”

“It’s possible the car stalled or ran out of gas and was simply abandoned there.”

“No. I saw it at noon, too.” Her voice broke, and when she spoke again, it sounded as if it had been pasted together by an amateur and the pieces didn’t fit. “He’s spying on me again, trying to get something on me. What does he hope to gain by all this?”

“You know as well as I do,” Mac said. “Mary Martha.”

“He can’t possibly prove I’m an unfit mother.”

“I’m aware of that, but apparently he’s not. Divorces can get pretty dirty, Kate, especially if there’s a child involved. When money enters the picture too, even nice civilized people often forget every rule of decency they ever knew.”

Kate said coldly, “You’re speaking, I hope, of Sheridan.”

“I’m speaking of what happens when people refuse to admit their own mistakes and take cover behind self-righteousness.”

“You’ve never talked to me like this before.”

“It’s been a long day and I’m tired. Perhaps fatigue works on me like wine. You and Sheridan have been separated for two years and you’re still bickering over a financial settlement, you haven’t come to an agreement about Mary Martha, there have been suits, countersuits—”

“Please, Mac. Don’t be unkind to me. I’m distracted, I’m truly distracted.”

“Yes, I guess you truly are,” Mac said slowly. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“Tell Sheridan to get out of town and I’ll settle for eight hundred dollars a month.”

“What about Mary Martha? He insists on seeing her.”

“He’ll see her over my dead body and no sooner. I won’t change my mind about that.”

“Look, Kate, I can’t tell a man that simply because his wife no longer loves him he has to quit his job, leave the city he was born and brought up in and give up all rights to his only child.”

“He’s always loathed this town and said so. As for that silly little job, he only took it to get out of the house. He has enough money from his mother’s trust fund. He can well afford to pay me a thousand dollars—”

“His lawyer says he can’t.”

“Naturally. His lawyer’s on his side.” She added bitterly, “I only wish to God my lawyer were on mine.”

“I can be on your side without believing everything you do is right.”

“You don’t know, you don’t know what I’ve gone through with that man. He’s tried everything — hounding me, holding back on support money so I’ve had to sell half the things in the house to keep from starving, following me around town, standing outside the door and ringing the bell until my nerves were shattered—”

“That’s all over now. He’s under a court order not to harass you.”

“Then what’s he doing parked outside right this minute? Waiting to see one of my dozens of lovers arrive?”

“Now don’t work yourself up, Kate.”

“Why can’t he leave us alone? He’s got what he wanted, that fat old gin-swilling whore who treats him like little Jesus. Does he actually expect me to allow Mary Martha to associate with that?”

Lying on her stomach on the floor of the upstairs hall, Mary Martha suddenly pressed her hands against her ears. She had eavesdropped on dozens of her mother’s conversations with Mac and this was no different from the others. She knew from experience that it was going to last a long time and she didn’t want to hear any more.

She thought of slipping down the back stairs and going over to Jessie’s house, but the steps creaked very badly. She got to her feet and tiptoed down the hall to her mother’s room.

To Mary Martha it was a beautiful room, all white and pink and frilly, with French doors opening onto a little balcony. Beside the balcony grew a sycamore tree where she had once found a hummingbird’s tiny nest lined with down gathered from the underside of the leaves and filled with eggs smaller than jelly beans.

It was the cat, Pudding, who had alerted Mary Martha to the possibilities of the sycamore tree. Frightened by a stray dog, he had leaped to the first limb, climbed right up on the balcony and sat on the railing, looking smugly down on his enemy. Mary Martha wasn’t as fearless and adept a climber as either Pudding or Jessie, but in emergencies she used the tree and so far her mother hadn’t caught her at it.

She stepped out on the balcony and began the slow difficult descent, trying not to look at the ground. The gray mottled bark of the tree, which appeared so smooth from a distance, scratched her hands and arms like sandpaper. She passed the kitchen window. The hamburger was thawing on the sink and the sight of it made her aware of her hunger but she kept on going.

She dropped onto the grass in the backyard and crossed the dry creek bed, being careful to avoid the reddening runners of poison oak. A scrub jay squawked in protest at her intrusion. Mary Martha had learned from her father how to imitate the bird, and ordinarily she would have squawked back at him and there would have been a lively contest between the two of them. But this time she didn’t even hear the jay. Her ears were still filled with her mother’s voice: “He’s got what he wanted, that fat old gin-swilling whore who treats him like little Jesus.” The sentence bewildered her. Little Jesus was a baby in a manger and her father was a grown-up man with a mustache. She didn’t know what a whore was, but she assumed, since her father was interested in birds, that it was an owl. Owls said, “Whoo,” and were fat and lived to be quite old.

Mr. and Mrs. Brant were in the little fenced-in patio at the back of their house, preparing a barbecue. Mr. Brant was trying to get the charcoal lit and Mrs. Brant was wrapping ears of corn in aluminum foil. They both wore shorts and cotton shirts and sandals.

“Why, it’s Mary Martha,” Ellen Brant said, sounding pleased and surprised, as though Mary Martha lived a hundred miles away and hadn’t seen her for a year. “Come in, dear. Jessie will be out in a few minutes. She’s taking a bath.”

“I’m glad she didn’t get blood poisoning and convulsions,” Mary Martha said gravely.

“So am I. Very.”

“Jessie is my best friend.”

“I know that, and I think it’s splendid. Don’t you, Dave?”

“You bet I do,” Dave said, turning to give Mary Martha a slow, shy smile. He was a big man with a low-pitched, quiet voice, and a slight stoop to his shoulders that seemed like an apology for his size.

It was his size and his quietness that Mary Martha especially admired. Her own father was short in stature and short of temper. His movements were quick and impatient and no matter what he was doing he always seemed anxious to get started on the next thing. It was restful and reassuring to stand beside Mr. Brant and watch him lighting the charcoal.

He said, “Careful, Mary Martha. Don’t get burned.”

“I won’t. I often do the cooking at home. Also, I iron.”

“Do you now. In ten years or so you’ll be making some young man a fine wife, won’t you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not going to get married.”

“You’re pretty young to reach such a drastic decision.”

Mary Martha was staring into the glowing coals as if reading her future. “I’m going to be an animal doctor and adopt ten children and support them all by myself so I don’t have to sit around waiting for a check in the mail.”

Over her head the Brants exchanged glances, then Ellen said in a firm, decisive voice, “No loafing on the job, you two. Put the corn on and I’ll get the hot dogs. Would you like to stay and eat with us, Mary Martha?”

“No, thank you. I would like to but my mother will be alone.” And she will have a headache and a rash on her face and her eyes will be swollen, and she’ll call me sweetie-pie and lambikins.

“Perhaps your mother would like to join us,” Ellen said. “Why don’t you call her on the phone and ask her?”

“I can’t. The line’s busy.”

“How do you know that? You haven’t tried to—”

“She wouldn’t come, anyway. She has a headache and things.”

“Well,” Ellen said, spreading her hands helplessly. “Well, I’d better get the hot dogs.”

She went inside and Dave was left alone with Mary Martha. He felt uneasy in her presence, as if, in spite of her friendliness and politeness, she was secretly accusing him of being a man and a villain and he was secretly agreeing with her. He felt heavy with guilt and he wished someone would appear to help him carry it, Jessie or Ellen from the house, Michael from the football field, Virginia and Howard Arlington from next door. But no one came. There was only Mary Martha, small and pale and mute as marble.

For a long time the only sound was an occasional drop of butter oozing from between the folds of the aluminum foil and sputtering on the coals. Then Mary Martha said, “Do you know anything about birds, Mr. Brant?”

“No, I’m afraid not. I used to keep a few homing pigeons when I was a boy but that’s about all.”

“You didn’t keep any owls?”

“No. I don’t suppose anyone does.”

“My ex-father has one.”

“Does he now,” Dave said. “That’s very interesting. What does he feed it?”

“Gin.”

“Are you sure? Gin doesn’t sound like a suitable diet for an owl or for anything else, for that matter. Don’t owls usually eat small rodents and birds and things like that?”

“Yes, but not this one.”

“Well,” Dave said, with a shrug, “I don’t know much either about owls or about your fath — your ex-father, so I’ll just have to take your word for it. Gin it is.”

Twin spots of color appeared on Mary Martha’s cheeks, as if she’d been stung by bees or doubts. “I heard my mother telling Mac about it on the telephone. My ex-father has a fat old whore that drinks gin.”

There was a brief silence. Then Dave said carefully, “I don’t believe your mother was referring to an owl, Mary Martha. The word you used doesn’t mean that.”

“What does it mean?”

“It’s an insulting term, and not one young ladies are supposed to repeat.”

Mary Martha was aware that he had replied but hadn’t answered. The word must mean something so terrible that she could never ask anyone about it. Why had her mother used it then, and what was her father doing with one? She felt a surge of anger against them all, her mother and father, the whore, David, and even Jessie who wasn’t there but who had a real father.

Inside the kitchen the phone rang and through the open door and windows Ellen’s voice came, clear and distinct: “Hello. Why yes, Mrs. Oakley, she’s here... Of course I had no idea she didn’t have your permission... She’s perfectly all right, there’s no need to become upset over it. Mary Martha isn’t the kind of girl who’d be likely to get in trouble... I’ll have Dave bring her right home... Very well, I’ll tell her to wait here until you arrive. Good-bye.”

Ellen came outside, carrying a tray of buttered rolls and hot dogs stuffed with cheese and wrapped in bacon. “Your mother just called, Mary Martha.”

Mary Martha merely nodded. Her mother’s excitement had an almost soothing effect on her. There would be a scene, naturally, but it would be like a lot of others, nothing she couldn’t handle, nothing that hadn’t been said a hundred times. “If you truly love me, Mary Martha, you’ll promise never to do such a thing again.” “I truly love you, Mother. I never will.”

“She’s driving over to get you,” Ellen added. “You’re to be waiting on the front porch.”

“All right.”

“Jessie will wait with you. She’s just putting her pajamas on.”

“I can wait alone.”

“Of course you can, you’re a responsible girl. But you came over here to see Jessie, didn’t you?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Why did you come, then?”

Mary Martha blinked, as if the question hurt her eyes. Then she turned and walked into the house, closing the screen door carefully and quietly behind her.

Dave Brant watched his wife as she began arranging the hot dogs on the grill. “Maybe you shouldn’t question her like that, Ellen.”

“Why not?”

“She might think you’re prying.”

“She might be right.”

“I hope not.”

“Oh, come on, Dave. Admit it — you’re just as curious as I am about what goes on in that household.”

“Perhaps. But I think I’m better off not knowing.” He thought of telling Ellen about the fat old whore but he couldn’t predict her reaction. She might be either quite amused by the story or else shocked into doing something tactless like repeating it to Mrs. Oakley. Although he’d been married to Ellen for eighteen years, her insensitivity to certain situations still surprised him.

“Dave—”

“Yes?”

“We’ll never let it happen to our children, will we?”

“What?”

“Divorce,” Ellen said, with a gesture, “and all the mess that goes with it. It would kill Michael, he’s so terribly sensitive, like me.”

“He’s going to have plenty of reason to be sensitive if he’s not home by 6:30 as he promised.”

“Now, Dave, you wouldn’t actually punish him simply for losing track of the time.”

“He has 20–20 vision and a wrist watch,” Dave said. But he wasn’t even interested in Michael at the moment. He merely wanted to change the subject because he couldn’t bear to talk or even think about a divorce. The idea of Jessie being in Mary Martha’s place appalled him, Michael was sixteen, almost a man, but Jessie was still a child, full of trust and innocence, and the only person in the world who sincerely believed in him. She wouldn’t always. Inevitably, the time would come when she’d have to question his wisdom and courage, perhaps even his love for her. But right now she was nine, her world was small, no more than a tiny moon, and he was the king of it.

The two girls sat outside the front door on the single concrete step which they called a porch. Jessie was picking at the loose skin on the palm of one hand, and Mary Martha was watching her as if she wished she had something equally interesting to do.

Jessie said, “You’ll probably catch it when your mother comes.”

“I don’t care.”

“Do you suppose you’ll cry?”

“I may have to,” Mary Martha said thoughtfully. “It’s lucky I’m such a good crier.”

Jessie agreed. “Maybe you should start in right now and be crying when she arrives. It might wring her heart.”

“I don’t feel like it right now.”

“I could make up a real sad story for you.”

“No. I know lots of real sad stories. My ex-father used to tell them to me when he was you-know-what.”

“Drunk?”

“Yes.”

It had been two years now since she’d heard any of these stories but she remembered them because they were all about the same little boy. He lived in a big redwood house which had an attic to play in and trees around it to climb and a creek at the back of it to hunt frogs in. At the end of every story the little boy died, sometimes heroically, while rescuing an animal or a bird, sometimes by accident or disease. These endings left Mary Martha in a state of confusion: she recognized the house the little boy lived in and she knew he must be her father, yet her father was still alive. Why had the little boy died? “He was better off that way, shweetheart, much better off.”

“I wish you could stay at my house for a while,” Jessie said. “We could look at the big new book my Aunt Virginia gave me. It’s all about nature, mountains and rivers and glaciers and animals.”

“We could look at it tomorrow, maybe.”

“No. I have to give it back as soon as she gets home from the beach.”

“Why?”

“It was too expensive, twenty dollars. My mother was so mad about it she made my father mad too, and then they both got mad at me.”

Mary Martha nodded sympathetically. She knew all about such situations. “My father sends me presents at Christmas and on my birthday, but my mother won’t even let me open the packages. She says he’s trying to buy me. Is your Aunt Virginia trying to buy you?”

“That’s silly. Nobody can buy children.”

“If my mother says they can, they can.” Mary Martha paused. “Haven’t you even heard about nasty old men offering you money to go for a ride? Don’t you even know about them?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then.”

She saw her mother’s little Volkswagen rounding the corner. Running out to the curb to meet it she tried to make tears come to her eyes by thinking of the little boy who always died in her father’s stories. But the tears wouldn’t come. Perhaps her father was right and the little boy was better off dead.

Kate Oakley sat, pale and rigid, her hands gripping the steering wheel as if she were trying to rein in a wild horse with a will of its own. Cars passed on the road, people strolled along the sidewalk with children and dogs and packages of groceries, others watered lawns, weeded flower beds, washed off driveways and raked leaves. But to the woman and child in the car, all the moving creatures were unreal. Even the birds in the trees seemed made of plastic and suspended on strings and only pretending to fly free.

Mary Martha said in a whisper, “I’m sorry, Momma.”

“Why did you do it?”

“I thought you’d be talking on the telephone for a long time and that I’d be back before you even missed me.”

“You heard me talking on the telephone?”

“Yes.”

“And you listened, deliberately?”

“Yes. But I couldn’t help it. I wanted to know about my father, I just wanted to know, Momma.”

Real tears came to her eyes then, she didn’t have to think of the little dead boy.

“God forgive me,” her mother said as if she didn’t believe in God or forgiving. “I’ve tried, I’m still trying to protect you from all this ugliness. But how can I? It surrounds us like a lot of dirty water, we’re in it right up to our necks. How can I pretend we’re standing on dry land, safe and secure?”

“We could buy a boat,” Mary Martha suggested, wiping her eyes.

There was a silence, then her mother said in a bright, brittle voice, “Why, lamb, that’s a perfectly splendid idea. Why didn’t I think of it? We’ll buy a boat just big enough for the two of us, and we’ll float right out of Sheridan’s life. Won’t that be lovely, sweetikins?”

“Yes, ma’am.”