The Magician's Wife

13

But before the bath came calls that she had to make. The first was to her mother, to whom she explained that she was calling “from some friends’ apartment — you know, I gave you their number before.” Then she repeated what she’d told Clay, about her release, the autopsy report, and so on. Then she got on to what apparently was the real reason for the call, the question of a dress she could wear to the funeral, “something black and fairly quiet.” Apparently Grace had it in stock and would get it to her next day. Then once more, answering questions from the other end of the line, she got back to the day’s events, though annoyed at Grace’s questions and also at her concern. “Well, Mother,” she said sharply, “I don’t know why you’re upset. His number was up, that was all, from the way he always ate nuts — as who knows better than you? After all, you protested enough, and straight to his face in my hearing, about what could easily happen if he persisted in slapping them into his mouth in that perfectly hoggish way. So, it did happen, that’s all.” That pretty well wound up this call, and then she rang Bunny, at Cape May, to know “how my lambkin is and how he stood the trip.” The lambkin, it seemed, was asleep and had stood the trip fine. She repeated to Bunny what she had said to Clay and then said to her mother, but with more personal details: “It was pretty horrible, Bunny, to go running in there and find him flat on his back, banging his heels on the floor. An old man, dying, is not a pretty sight — I’m still not over that.”

During all this, Clay changed to T shirt and shorts, put out soap, brush, and towel, and started the water running. At last she fluttered past him, down the hall to the bedroom, and then prettily reappeared, dressed as September Morn, a clean dish towel pinned around her head. She felt the bath with her toe, then climbed in. He soaped her, slowly, carefully, tenderly, and she scrubbed herself with the brush. Then, as the tub filled she stretched out. Occasionally she washed water over her breasts, but mostly she just lay there, her eyes closed, saying nothing. He said nothing, either, being content to drink her in with his eyes as he sat beside the tub on the little bath stool. Presently, though, her face twisted, as though in pain, and she covered it with her hands. “Now!” he admonished her, kindly but peremptorily. “No more of that! It’s over, that’s the main thing! It’s all that matters.”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s over.”

She opened her eyes, let them wander vacantly. Then, closing them, she recited, in a ritualistic way: “It’s over, it’s over, it’s over — I keep telling myself that. It’s over.”

Then, in a different voice, opening her eyes again and staring at her hands: “If it is... If it is!”

“If it is? Of course it is!”

“... Clay, I haven’t told you all.”

“You mean you’re going to be held?”

“Well, I hope not — but I could have been. Clay, do you know why they took me? To that beachhouse? At two A.M.? It was to check out a tip from Alec.”

“You mean he informed? Against you?”

“Nice, wasn’t it?”

“But he wasn’t there! How could he know anything?”

“By psychology, Clay — or something. At the hospital he smelled ether on the corpse and knew the answer at once. I did take the ether—”

“For mosquitoes, the paper said.”

“That’s right — but as he figured it out, I swabbed the gum off with it from four-inch bandage I used to smother his father to death. So he brought the cops to the house to look for bandage and ether. Oh, yes, that’s what he did — I could hear him talking to them, a long time, out in the drive. So then, when neither one was found, we had to go down to the beachhouse, to talk with MacReady, they said, that nurse the old man had, but actually to keep up the search. So the ether they found at once, right on the living-room table, where Mr. El had put it — he had to use it, too, and of course smeared on plenty, greedy as he was. All that was proved by his fingerprints right on the bottle. They never found any bandage — though I’ll say for them, they looked. All day long their scuba divers were out combing the bay, trying to find it there. Well, who knows where it is? Alec had four-inch bandage that he used on wicker baskets, patching them up inside where the sword would cut the strands — so he wouldn’t have to buy new ones every week and a half. But that was back in the spring, and who knows what happened to it? The cleaning woman comes, and she could have thrown it out. Or I could have and not remembered about it. Or Elly, God bless him, could have put it somewhere. It wasn’t there, that’s all we know — but did he have to talk with the cops? Before he talked with me?”

“I wouldn’t call it friendly.”

“Friendly? Friendly?”

She slapped the side of the tub, to indicate how she regarded it, and then after some moments said: “So, that’s why this is good-by, Clay.”

“... Good-by?” he whispered, stunned.

“That’s it, much as I hate it.”

“But why?”

“Well, Clay, you made yourself clear, and I accept what you said: I come with you now, or don’t come. So I can’t come with you now, so — good-by.”

“But why can’t you come with me now?”

“There’s something I have to do.”

“Yes, but what?”

“Nothing that — concerns you.”

“If it concerns you it has to concern me.”

After popping herself back and forth, first by pressing a toe to the spigot, then by bumping with her head, she said: “I shouldn’t be like this — but it’s how I am, and I can’t help myself. Clay, when someone does something to me, I can’t let it pass, that’s all. I have to do something back. And I’m going to. But it may take some little time, and so — I can’t come with you now.”

She said it with brisk decision, suddenly standing up, tweaking the drain, and starting to towel off. Then, stepping out on the mat and slipping the cloth from her head, she led the way to the living room, still without a stitch on, and curled up in the chair by the window. He followed, tramping around uneasily, trying to readjust to this new development — or old development, now almost in the open. Presently, in a somewhat different tone, she went on: “And there’s something I mustn’t forget. Clay, in justice to those cops, hands and slobber and all, they didn’t really believe him — they did their stuff, of course, but when they didn’t find anything, they tried to get through his head I was not the girl he thought. And of course, he had to shut up. But he thought what he thought, and he’s not going to unthink it, regardless of what they said, and regardless of time passing by. Twenty years can go by and he’ll still think that’s what I did — and where do I go from there? Suppose I did come with you. My life would never be safe. And yours wouldn’t, darling! I can’t forget you for one minute. He could be crazy enough to move against you too — as being in on it, maybe, and helping to raise his boy. He might even move against Elly. I tell you, in some ways he’s not all there in the head.”

“Who mentioned something like that?”

“You did, Clay. You warned me.”

She whispered it reverently, and he went over and kissed her. She pressed his hand and then in a moment went on: “And there’s still another angle. Clay, I know you hate it whenever I talk about money, and I glory in you for it. But money figures in this and can’t be disregarded. He’s a millionaire now — the picture has changed overnight. And from where he sits, to get rid of me he’ll have to pay me, plenty. Well? Wouldn’t burying me be cheaper? Especially when all it takes is magic.”

“Magic? Hey, there are limits to everything!”

“Clay, what do you know about magic?”

“Not much. Just the same—?”

“It’s based on illusion, isn’t it?”

“I — suppose so. And?”

“If he can make hundreds of people think they saw me floating through the air when it’s really just a dummy, he can make a dozen think they saw me around the house, after he drove off to work, and before my body was found, curled up in my car, a rubber hose running in from the exhaust. By magic is how it can be done!”

“If you mean what I think you mean, they burn you for it in Maryland — and I don’t like it one bit.”

“Nobody’s asking you to.”

He had hoped, perhaps, that she didn’t mean what he thought, and her answer unsettled him badly, so he didn’t speak for some minutes. At last he asked: “Do you mean to do it by magic?”

“I’m not a magician, Clay.”

“But you must have something in mind.”

“Yes — you sit on the porch of a beachhouse, watching divers at work, looking for stuff to bum you, you think of all kinds of things.”

“Then you do have something in mind?”

“It’s my lookout; it doesn’t concern you.”

“If I love you, it has to.”

“That touches me, but if this is good-by, why do we louse it with stuff that has no meaning? Why can’t we have our evening, kiss, and part? I’ve already told you too much.”

“But why must this be good-by?”

“You said so! You said it had to be!”

“Sally, when did I say such a thing?”

“You said come with you now or — don’t come.”

“But that was before! We’ve been all over that!”

“We have, but I can’t come with you till—!”

“... Yes? Till?”

“I started to say, ‘till it’s done’ — but of course that’s out of the question. You’re not with it, you don’t like it — Clay, will you leave me alone!”

She was suddenly emotional, and seemed to be verging on crack-up. He calmed her, then said: “I’m not trying to plague you, Sally — I know the hell you’ve been through. But I’ve been through hell, too — and I love you. And I’m entitled to know more than you’re telling me.”

“Such as what?”

“Such as what you’re fixing to do!”

“I’ve told you it’s none of your damned business.”

“O.K., we skip that part — just forget it. But I am entitled to know, and it’s plenty of my damned business, why this must be the end. Will you kindly explain that to me? If you can?”

“All right, then, I’ll try.”

She stared out at the stars, breathed deeply a few times, and presently had control. Then: “First of all,” she began, “what I have to do, I have to.” But “have to” came out hafta, sounding much more intense that way. Pausing to let it sink in, she went on: “So, let’s suppose it’s been done. It was an accident, say the reports, but you have a different idea. O.K., then what?”

“... Well, I don’t quite know.”

“That’s why it’s good-by.”

“Hey, Sally! Not so fast, not so fast!”

“Take your time, Clay. Think it over. Then what?”

“... You don’t hafta do this thing!”

“I’m sorry, I do. And I’m gonna.”

“God, but you make things tough!”

“I’m trying not to. I’m saying good-by.”

He walked around in agony, rubbing his hands on his T shirt to dry his damp palms. Then, in a weary, moaning tone, he wailed: “Sally, I may as well tell the truth — we’re up tight, why fiddle and foodle and faddle? I could tell myself I couldn’t stand for it — I could swear up and down before God I’d never see you again — but two weeks after it happened I’d be calling you up. We’ve been all over that — I love you! Does that answer you, Sally? I’d break!”

“The question is, would I?”

“Now, what do you mean by that?”

“All right, Clay, so it’s done. But it won’t do itself — I did it. Walked into the Valley of the Shadow and then walked out again — as we hope. But then lo and behold, who’s there, galumphing up real fast? Why, it’s you, chortling in your joy! ‘And has thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish girl! Oh, frabjous day, calloo, callay’ — and whatever the rest of it is! Well, my handsome young friend, when Jabberwocks get slew, someone who just took a walk, who did not even hold the horses, watch for the Bandersnatch, or do anything at all for his beamish girl, may not please her as much as she thought he did before. If she’s still going to love him, I really couldn’t say — all girls are dumb, especially beamish ones, and she could eat her heart out. I wouldn’t say she had more sense. But if she hasta, she hasta — and will.”

“You’re saying I have to help.”

“Can’t you understand English? I’m saying good-by.”

“It’s not all you’re saying, Sally.”

“I know what I’m saying, I think.”

“Maybe — but I know the insinuendo.”

“Which is, Clay?”

“That I’ve mock-orange juice in my veins.”

“Oh, that. I’m glad you brought it up.” She reflected, or appeared to, then told him: “I shouldn’t have said it, and I apologize. For the rest of what happened that night, perhaps I ought to apologize too, but I don’t. When I’m put upon, I have to do something back — I can’t help it, it’s how I am. I was grievously hurt that night, horribly disappointed — and so I wrecked your place, and ought to regret it, but don’t. I’m even glad, if you have to know. I might be glad of what I said except that I can’t be, and for a very good, simple reason: it wasn’t true. You don’t have mock-orange juice in your veins or anything like it. You’re a fine, upstanding guy, and brave, according to your way of doing. Unfortunately my way of doing is different, and that’s what it comes down to. So, I not only apologize for all that I said, but take it back. It was mean and did me no credit. And — I might as well say it all. I don’t like saying good-by — I mortally hate it. And my heart will start getting eaten the second I go out that door. So now you know, but what has to be, hasta.”

He tramped around some moments, then went to the arch, leaning his elbows on it, and dropping his face in his arms. Then he faced her and said: “I’m in.”

“You’re— What did you say, Clay?”

“You heard me.”

“... This room is spinning around.”

“You’re mistaken. It’s standing on its head.”

“And things are happening inside of me. Thrills and—”

“Sally, you do have a scheme?”

“I have — and it’s going to work!”

“O.K. What is it?”

“Do we have to go into it now?”

She got up and turned on the floor lamp back of her chair, standing before him naked. “Can’t we just have our beautiful hour?” she asked softly. But her eyes did not correspond with her voice or, for that matter, with her white, childish loveliness. They were cold, hard, and crafty.

He went over and gathered her into his arms.

“What in the hell has she got you into? Why did you let her do it? Lockwood, she didn’t — you did it yourself, single-handed. You’re a noble volunteer. And with your eyes open yet — you’ve known all along what she meant. On top of that, however she fooled the cops, you know she killed that old man. You know everything, and yet you dealt yourself in. So cut out the whats and whys — you are in and that’s all that matters. You know you have to have her, and this is the way you get her — and the only way. So get going. So do it. And see that you do it right.”

That vanity was his trouble, inflamed by obsessive desire; that his great source of strength, the element in his nature that drove him ahead in business, riding all obstacles down, could also be his weakness; that this giddy twin sister of pride could have a soft underbelly, loving praise above everything else, especially this girl’s praise, and dreading her phony scorn — none of this could he have thought of or believed if he had thought of it. To him, it centered on love and a Jabberwock to be slain — a quarry as unreal, as queer, as insubstantial as something in a dream, but a Jabberwock, just the same, to be slain.