The Listening Walls

5.

Gill Brandon came downstairs wearing his composite morning expression: anticipation over what the day would bring and suspicion that something was bound to spoil it.

He was a short, stocky, vigorous man with a forceful manner of speaking that made even his most innocuous remark seem compelling, and his most far-fetched theory sound like a self-evident truth. To heighten this effect he also used his hands when he talked, not in any dramatically loose European style, but severely, geometrically, to indicate an exact angle of thought, a precise degree of emotion. He liked to think of himself as mathematical and meticulous. He was neither.

Gill kissed his wife, who was already at the table with the morning paper in front of her opened to the lovelorn column. “Any phone calls?”

“No.”

“It’s damned peculiar.”

“What is?” Helene said, knowing perfectly well what was, since Gill had talked of nothing else for a week. Thank God it was Monday and he had to go into the city to work. If the stock market was fluttery, so much the better. It would take his mind off other things. “Here’s a terribly funny letter from some woman in Atherton. I wonder if it’s anyone we know. It could be Betty Spears. Listen. ‘Dear Abby: My problem is my husband is so stingy that he even snitches my green stamps.’ I know for a fact Johnny Spears saves green stamps...”

“Will you listen to me?”

“Of course, dear. I didn’t know you were saying anything.”

“Rupert’s been down there for a week now and I haven’t heard a word since that first phone call from his secretary. Not a word about how Amy is and what’s going on, when they’ll be back, nothing.”

“He may be busy.”

Gill scowled at her across the table. “Busy doing what, may I ask?”

“How should I know?”

“Then stop making up nonsensical excuses for him. Nobody’s too busy to pick up a phone. He’s damned inconsiderate. And what Amy ever saw in him I’ll never know.”

“He’s very good-looking. And very nice.”

“Good-looking. Nice. Great Scott, is that what women marry men for?”

“You’re hungry, dear. I’ll ring for breakfast.”

Helene pressed the buzzer under the table, feeling a mild surge of power. She had been born and raised in an Oakland slum, and never, in all her twenty years of marriage, had she become accustomed to the miracle of ringing for anything she wanted. Breakfast, martinis, chocolate creams, tea, magazines, cigarettes — you pressed a button, and bingo, whatever you wanted, there it was. Sometimes Helene just sat and thought of things to want so she would have the pleasure of pulling the tasseled bell cord or pressing the buzzer underneath the table.

Occasionally she visited Oakland but more frequently her parents came down the Peninsula to see her, Mrs. Maloney wearing her teeth and Sunday clothes, Mr. Maloney sober as a judge and dry as a herring. After the initial greetings of genuine pleasure, both parents stiffened into silence, too stunned by the luxurious surroundings to do much of anything except sit and stare. Back home they were affectionately voluble about their daughter Helene, who had gone to Mills College on a scholarship and lived in a fine house in Atherton with her wealthy husband and three beautiful children.

Face to face with her, they became mute and embarrassed, and their visits were a nightmare, especially to Gill, who tried harder than Helene did to make the Maloneys feel at home. His tactics were peculiar: he sought to minimize his wealth by calling attention to some of his economies, by talking forcefully of having his thirteen- year-old son take a paper route and his seventeen-year-old daughter work her way through college. The result of this stratagem was more confusion on the part of the Maloneys and complete frustration for Gill, who meant, as usual, only to do the right thing. No one had ever been able to figure out why such good intentions as Gill’s often had such disturbing consequences.

“Amy’s association with the Wyatt woman,” Gill said, “has meant nothing but trouble. She was obviously unbalanced. Anyone but Amy would have seen that and avoided her.”

Helene mentally crossed herself. “Now Gill. De mortuis... Besides, they were friends. You don’t go back on a friend because she’s having, well, a few emotional problems. Wilma could be a very charming and entertaining person when she wanted to. That’s the way I prefer to remember her.”

“You have a very simple and convenient memory.”

“And I intend to keep it that way. Eat your breakfast.”

“I’m not hungry,” Gill said irritably. “Personally, I’m inclined to blame Rupert for this whole business. He should have vetoed the trip as soon as the subject was broached. Two women wandering alone around a foreign, uncivilized country — why, it’s preposterous.”

It sounded rather pleasant to Helene whose traveling was confined to shopping trips to the city and summers at Tahoe. She munched on a piece of crisp bacon, listening to Gill the way one listens to waves breaking on a beach, knowing the noise will always be the same, only varying in volume now and then with the tides and the weather.

So often the noise was about Amy, and Helene listened out of habit, without interest. In her opinion, Amy was a dull little creature, invested with wit by her brother and beauty by her husband, and having, in fact, neither. Helene, too, had often wondered about the relationship between Amy and Wilma, but she wondered from quite a different point of view from Gill’s: why should such an intense and energetic person as Wilma have wasted so much time on a mouse like Amy?

Gill turned up his volume. “I still think the American Embassy should have called me about this unfortunate affair.”

“Why?”

“Amy’s my kid sister.”

“She is also a grown woman with a husband. If she needs looking after, let Rupert do it.”

“Rupert is incapable of handling certain situations.”

“What’s to handle?” Helene said blandly.

“There are probably decisions to be made, actions to be taken. Rupert’s too soft. Now if I were down there I’d be firm with those foreigners.”

“If you were down there, dear, you’d be the foreigner.”

“I suppose you think that’s terribly clever?”

“It’s just the truth.”

“You seem,” he said with a dry little smile, “to be hitting on a great many truths these days.”

“Oh, I am. Some large, some small.”

“Tell me a few of them.”

“Another time. You’d better hurry if you’re going to take El Camino instead of Bayshore.” She smiled at her husband across the table. In spite of his manner of talking she knew him for a gentle man, more like Amy than he would ever realize. “You’ll drive carefully, won’t you, Gilly?”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that. It sounds absurd.”

“You don’t object when Amy calls you...”

“It was my nickname when we were children. She uses it unconsciously. And I do object. Remind me to speak to her about it when she comes home.”

Helene’s expression didn’t change, but she felt a sudden sick feeling in her stomach and the coffee she was drinking seemed to have turned sour. I don’t want her to come home. She is two thousand miles away. I like it this way.

David, the thirteen-year-old, bounced into the room, wearing the uniform of the military day school he attended. “Morning, all.”

“What on earth,” Helene asked, “is the matter with your face?”

“Poison oak,” he said cheerfully. “Roger and Bill got it, too, when we were out on maneuvers. Boy, the sergeant was mad. He said the Russians could have landed while the whole bloody bunch of us were chasing around after poison oak.”

“I’ll call for you after school and take you to the doctor.”

“I don’t want to go to any bloody doctor.”

“Stop saying that word. It’s not very nice.”

“The sergeant uses it all the time. He’s an Englishman. They always say bloody. Oh, I forgot to tell you, Uncle Rupert’s home. He phoned last night when you were out.”

“You might,” his father said, “have told me before.”

“How could I, when you were out?”

“Is Amy all right?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say anything about her.”

“Well, what did he say?”

“Just that he was going to be home all day today and would like to see you about something important.”

“I’ll call right...”

“He said not to call. It’s a very private matter. He wants to talk to you in person.”

Gill was already on his feet.

The two men shook hands and Gill said immediately, “Amy’s all right?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she? Still in bed?”

“She’s — we can’t talk out here. You’d better come in.”

The house was dark and quiet and musty, as if the people who lived there had been away for a long time. No sun filtered through the drawn blinds, no sound crept past the closed windows. Only in the den, at the end of the long, narrow hall, had the drapes been pulled open, and the morning sun hung dusty in the air. On the tiled coffee table was a half-empty highball glass smudged with lipstick, and beside it, an unstamped envelope with the name “Gilly” written across the front in Amy’s boarding-school script.

Gill stared at it. The letter was wrong; the silent man at the window, the too-quiet house, the half-empty glass, all seemed ominous. He cleared his throat. “The letter — it’s from Amy, of course.”

“Yes.”

“Why? Why a letter, I mean.”

“She preferred to do it that way,” Rupert said, without turning.

“Do what?”

“Explain why she went away.”

“Went away? Where?”

“I don’t know where. She refused to tell me.”

“But this is preposterous, it’s impossible.”

Rupert turned to face him. “All right, have it your way. It’s preposterous and impossible. It happened, though. Some things can happen without your knowledge or permission.”

They glared at each other across the sunny room. When Amy was around to smooth things over, the two men had been civil to each other and observed the amenities. Now, without her presence, the unspoken gibes and unvoiced criticisms that had accumulated through the years seemed to hang between them, ready to be plucked out of the air and used as strings to either bow.

“She took her clothes,” Rupert said, “and her dog, and left.”

“The dog, too?”

“It was hers. She had a right to.”

“Taking the dog, that means...”

“I know what it means.”

They both knew. If Amy had intended to come back, she wouldn’t have taken the dog with her.

“You’d better read your letter,” Rupert said.

Gill picked it up and held it in his hands for a moment, very carefully, as if it were a bomb that might detonate at any sudden movement. “Do you know — what’s in it?”

“It’s sealed and addressed to you. How should I know?” He did know, though. He remembered every word in the letter. He’d gone over it a dozen times looking for flaws. He’d found some, but only after it was too late.

Gill read slowly, mouthing the words like a beginning reader.

“She’d been drinking,” Gill said in surprise. “How much?”

“A lot.”

“That doesn’t sound like the Amy I know.”

“Perhaps there’s another one. She was not only drinking, she was drinking in the company of an American barfly named O’Donnell.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“That’s your privilege.”

Gill returned the letter to its envelope, slowly and methodically, as if it were a bill he was thinking twice about paying. “Has she been doing much talking along these lines the past week?”

“Quite a bit.”

“Then she had planned on leaving even before she came home?”

“She came home to pick up Mack.”

“You should have warned me ahead of time, sent me a wire or something. I might have prevented this.”

“How?”

“By telling her not to go.”

“That’s the pattern she’s trying to break out of,” Rupert said, “being told what to do.”

“Have you any idea where she went?”

“No. I’m not even sure she had a definite place in mind.”

“Well, how did she leave?”

“She called a cab, but I persuaded her to cancel it and let me drive her to the station.”

“What time?”

“About eight.”

“Is there any possibility she was coming down to Atherton to see me?”

“None,” Rupert said. “She wrote you the letter, for one thing. For another, she had Mack with her. There are no baggage cars on the commuters’ trains to accommodate animals.”

“There are on the Lark. It leaves for Los Angeles around nine o’clock. By God, that’s it, that’s where she is, Los Angeles.”

“There are trains leaving as well as arriving at Los Angeles.”

“Even so, she shouldn’t be too difficult to trace, a young woman traveling by train with a bad-tempered Scottie.”

“Mack’s not bad-temp — Oh, for heaven’s sake, get it through your head, Gill. Amy doesn’t want to be traced.”

“She’s a woman. Half the time women don’t know what they want. They have to be told, guided. I’ve always thought you should have kept a firmer hand on the reins.”

“Funny, I thought you were holding them.”

Gill colored. “What do you mean by a remark like that?”

“Just what I said. The reins were never in my hands. Nor have I ever considered my wife in the same category as a horse.”

“Horses and women have a lot in common. Put them in an open field and they run to hell and gone.”

“Where did you learn so much about women, Gill?”

“I don’t want to quarrel with you,” Gill said firmly. “The situation is too serious. What are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing. What do you suggest I do?”

“Call the police. Tell them to locate her and bring her back.”

“On what grounds? Amy’s of age, considerably overage, in fact.”

“We’ll be able to think of some reason.”

“Oh, for... All right. Suppose we do and suppose they find her. What then?”

“They’ll bring her home and we’ll have an opportunity to talk some sense into her head.”

“By ‘we’ I presume you mean ‘you’?”

“Well, I’ve always been able to handle her, make her see reason.”

“Perhaps she is seeing reason,” Rupert said. “Her own. Not yours.”

Gill struck the arm of the davenport with his fist. Particles of dust scurried up and away in alarm. “You’re being pretty damn cool and collected for a man whose wife has disappeared.”

“ ‘Disappeared’ isn’t quite the word.”

“It is to me.”

A sudden draft rippled the moted shafts of sunlight, and a woman’s voice called out from the back door, “Mack. Here, Mack. Come on, boy. Time for your run.”

At the first word Gill had risen expectantly, but as the woman continued to call the dog he sat down again heavily as if he’d been pushed in the chest by Rupert’s fist. Rupert had not moved.

“Here, Mack. Come on, now. If you’re on that bed again I’m going to tell on you! Mack? Boy?”

Miss Burton appeared in the doorway, her cheeks pink with cold, her hair bleached to the color and texture of straw. “Why, Mr. Kellogg. My goodness. Why I had no idea you were home. Barging in like this, what must you think of me?”

“It’s all right, Miss Burton,” Rupert said. “I should have given you advance notice. You know Mr. Brandon, of course?”

“Why yes. Good morning, Mr. Brandon.”

Gill rose and nodded briefly. He’d seen Miss Burton at least a dozen times but he would never have recognized her meeting her casually on the street. She seemed to assume different faces and personalities with each new hair color. Only her voice remained the same, brisk brunette, no matter how blond her inanities.

Miss Burton fondled Rupert with her eyes. “This is such a nice surprise finding you home. I just came by to give Mack his breakfast and take him for a run, and lo and behold, here you are instead. My goodness. How is Mrs. Kellogg?”

“She’s fine, thank you,” Rupert said.

“Where’s Mack? Now that I’m here I might as well...”

“You run along to the office, Miss Burton. I’ll — take care of Mack.”

“All rightie, whatever you say.”

“I’ll be down this afternoon sometime.”

“Good. Things are getting a mite behind. Borowitz has a new girlfriend and can’t concentrate. She’s absolutely nothing to look at, just young.”

“Yes. Well. You’d better run along now, Miss Burton.”

“I’ll do that. Good-bye, Mr. Brandon. It was real nice seeing you again. And you’ll be along later then, Mr. Kellogg?”

“Yes.”

“My, I’m glad you’re back. Borowitz is making a real fool of himself.”

After she’d gone Gill said heavily, “What are you going to do about Amy?”

“Wait.”

“Just sit on your rear and wait?”

“That’s right.”

“You’re a fool.”

“That’s your opinion.”

“You’re damned right it is,” Gill said and stamped furiously out of the room and down the hall to the front door.

I handled him wrong, Rupert thought. He may do something crazy, like go to the police.