They Call Me Patrice

Chapter Seven

She stood there rooted, unable to move. Maybe the ringing would stop if she didn’t go near the phone, maybe he would tire. But then it would ring again some other time.

Mother Hazzard opened the door of her room and looked out.

Patrice had swiftly opened her own door, was at the head of the stairs, before she’d fully emerged.

“I’ll go, dear, if you’re busy.”

“No, never mind, Mother, I’ll see who it is.”

She knew his voice right away. Fear quickens the senses.

“Is this the younger Mrs. Hazzard? Is this Patrice Hazzard?”

“This is she.”

“I suppose you know this is Steve.” She didn’t answer.

“Are you where you can be heard?”

“I’m not in the habit of answering questions like that. I’ll hang up the receiver.”

“Don’t do that, Patrice,” he said calmly. “I’ll ring back again. That’ll make it worse. They’ll begin wondering who it is keeps on calling so repeatedly. Or, eventually, someone else will answer — you can’t stay there by the phone all evening — and I’ll give my name if I have to and ask for you.” He waited a minute for that to sink in. “Don’t you see that it’s much better for you this way, Patrice?”

She sighed in suppressed fury. “We can’t talk very much over the phone. I think it’s better not to, anyway. I’m talking from McClellan’s Drugstore, a few blocks from you. My car’s just around the corner from there, where it can’t be seen. On the left side of Pomeroy Street, just down from the crossing. Can you walk down that far for five or ten minutes? I won’t keep you long.”

She tried to match the brittle formality of his voice with her own. “I most certainly cannot.”

“Of course you can. You need cod-liver oil capsules for your baby, from McClellan’s. Or you feel like having a soda. I’ve seen you stop in there more than once, in the evening.”

He waited.

“Shall I call back? Would you rather think it over awhile?”

He waited again.

“Don’t do that,” she said reluctantly, at last.

She could tell he understood. She hung up and went upstairs.

Mother Hazzard didn’t ask her who had called. They weren’t inquisitive that way, in this house.

She came out of her room again in about ten minutes. Mother Hazzard’s door was closed. She could have gone on down the stairs unquestioned. She couldn’t do it.

She went over and knocked lightly.

“Mother, I’m going to take a walk down to the drugstore. Hughie’s out of his talc. And I’d like a breath of air. I’ll be back in five minutes.”

“Go ahead, dear. I’ll say good night to you now, in case I’m asleep by the time you get back.”

She rested her outstretched hand helplessly against the door for a minute. She felt like saying. Don’t let me go. Keep me here.

She turned away and went down the stairs. It was her own battle, and no proxies were allowed.

She stopped beside the car, on darkened Pomeroy Street.

“Sit in here, Patrice,” he said amiably. He unlatched the door for her, from where he sat, and even patted the leather cushion.

She settled herself on the far side of the seat. Her eyes snapped refusal of the cigarette he proffered.

“We can be seen.”

“Turn this way, toward me. No one’ll notice you. Keep your back to the street.”

“This can’t go on. Now once and for all, for the first time and the last, what is it you want of me? What?”

“Look, Patrice, there doesn’t have to be anything unpleasant about this. You seem to be building it up to yourself that way, in your own mind. It’s all in the way you look at it. I don’t see that there has to be any change in the way things were going along — before last night. You were the only one who knew before. Now you and I are the only ones who know. It ends there. That is, if you want it to.”

“You didn’t bring me out here to tell me that.”

He went off at a tangent. Or what seemed to be a tangent. “Every once in awhile I find myself in difficulties, every now and then I get into a tight squeeze. Little card games with the boys. This and that. You remember. You know how it is.” He laughed deprecatingly. “It’s been going on for years. It’s nothing new. But I was wondering if you’d care to do me a favor — this time.”

“You’re asking me for money.”

She turned her face away.

“I didn’t think there were people like you outside of — outside of penitentiaries.”

He laughed. “You’re in unusual circumstances. That attracts ‘people like me.’ ”

“Suppose I go to them of my own accord right now and tell them of this conversation we’ve just been having? My brother-in-law would go looking for you and beat you within an inch of your life.”

“We’ll let the relationship stand unchallenged. I wonder why women put such undue faith in a beating? Maybe because they’re not used to violence themselves. A beating doesn’t mean much to a man. Half an hour after it’s over, he’s as good as he was before.”

“You should know,” she murmured.

He tapped a finger to the tips of three others. “There are three alternatives. You go to them and tell them. Or I go to them and tell them. Or we remain in status quo. By which I mean, you do me a favor and then we drop the whole thing. But there isn’t any fourth alternative.”

He was too cold about the whole thing, that was the dangerous feature. No heat, no impulse, no emotion to cloud the issue. Everything planned, plotted, graphed, charted. Every step. Even the notes. She knew their purpose now. Not poison-pen letters at all. They had been important to the long-term scheme of the thing. Psychological warfare, nerve warfare, breaking her down ahead of time, toppling her resistance before the main attack had even been made.

“There’s no villain in this. Let’s get rid of the Victorian trappings. It’s just a business transaction. It’s no different from taking out insurance, really.” He turned to her with an assumption of candor that was almost charming for a moment. “Don’t you want to be practical about it?”

“I suppose so. I suppose I should meet you on your own ground.” She didn’t try to project her contempt: it would have failed to reach him.

“If you get rid of these stuffy fetishes of virtue and villainy, of black and white, the whole thing becomes so simple it’s not even worth the quarter of an hour we’re devoting to it now.”

“I have no money of my own, Steve.” Capitulation. Submission.

“They’re one of the wealthiest families in town; that’s common knowledge. Why be technical about it? Get them to open an account for you. You’re not a child.”

“I couldn’t ask them outright to do such a—”

“You don’t ask. There are ways. You’re a woman, aren’t you? It’s easy enough. A woman knows how to go about those things—”

“I’d like to go now,” she said, reaching blindly for the doorhandle.

“Do we understand one another?” He opened it for her. “I’ll give you another ring after awhile,” He paused a moment. The threat was so impalpable there was not even a change of inflection in the lazy drawl. “Don’t neglect it, Patrice.”

She got out. The crack of the door was the slap in the face she would have loved to administer.

“Good night, Patrice,” he drawled after her amiably.

“It was perfectly plain,” she was saying animatedly. “It had a belt of the same material, and then a row of buttons down to about here.”

She was purposely addressing herself to Mother Hazzard, to the exclusion of the two men members of the family. Well, the topic in itself was excuse enough for that.

“For heaven’s sake, why didn’t you take it?”

“I couldn’t do that,” she said reluctantly. She stopped a moment, then added: “Not right — then and there.”

They must have thought the expression on her face was wistful disappointment. It wasn’t. It was self-disgust. How defenseless those who love you are against you, she thought bitterly.

Father Hazzard cut into the conversation. “Why didn’t you just charge it up and have it sent?”

She let her eyes drop. “I wouldn’t have wanted to do that.”

“Nonsense—” He stopped suddenly. Almost as though someone had trodden briefly on his foot under the table.

“I think I hear Hugh crying,” she said, and flung down her napkin and ran out to the stairs to listen.

But in the act of listening upwards, she couldn’t avoid overhearing Mother Hazzard’s guarded voice.

“Donald Hazzard, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Do you men have to be told everything? Haven’t you got a grain of tact in your heads?”

In the morning Father Hazzard lingered on at the breakfast table, instead of leaving early with Bill. He sat quietly reading his newspaper while she finished her coffee. There was just a touch of secretive self-satisfaction in his attitude, she thought.

He rose when she did. “Get your hat and coat, Pat. I want you to come with me in the car. This young lady and I have business downtown,” he announced to Mother Hazzard. The latter tried, not altogether successfully, to look blankly bewildered.

“But what about the baby’s feeding?” Patrice protested.

“You’ll be back in time for that. I’m just borrowing you.”

She got in the car next to him a moment later and they started off.

“Did poor Bill have to walk to the office this morning?” she asked.

“Poor Bill indeed!” he scoffed. “Do him good, the big lug. If I had those long legs of his, I’d walk every morning.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Now just never you mind. No questions. Just wait’ll we get there, and you’ll see.”

They stopped in front of the bank. He motioned her out and led her inside with him.

They went toward a door marked “Manager, Private.” A pleasant-faced, slightly stout male wearing horn-rimmed spectacles was waiting to greet them.

“Come in and meet my old friend Harve Wheelock,” Father Hazzard said to her.

They seated themselves in comfortable leather chairs in the private office, and the two men lit cigars.

“Harve, I’ve got a new customer for you. This is my boy Hugh’s wife.” He off-handedly palmed an oblong of light-blue paper onto the desk, left it there facedown.

“Sign here, honey,” the manager said to her, reversing his pen.

Forger, she thought scathingly. She handed the form back, her eyes downcast. The strip of light-blue was clipped to it and it was sent out. A midget black book came back in its stead.

“Here you are, honey.” The manager tendered it to her across his desk.

She opened it and looked at it, unnoticed, while the two men concluded their friendly chatting. At the top it said “Mrs. Hugh Hazzard.” And there was just one entry, under today’s date.

Five thousand dollars.