Crying Child (2 page)

“But Ran, surely—”

“Jo, you are a bright, intelligent girl, but you don’t know the answer to every damned problem in the world. Don’t tell me what to do until you hear what I’ve done.”

There was a brief silence; I could hear him breathing. It was uncanny, hearing those puffs of restrained anger from three thousand miles away. Then he said briefly,

“Sorry.”

“I don’t mind.”

I didn’t. I was glad that he was just as concerned as I was, under his seemingly careless laughter.

“Psychiatry is helpless, Jo, without cooperation from the patient. What am I supposed to do, drag her in there kicking and screaming? I tell you she won’t go!”

“I see your point. I suppose it was the miscarriage that brought this on?”

“Brought it on, but fails to explain it. Look, Jo, let’s not tear the thing apart now. In lieu of analysis, which she isn’t ready to accept, the doctors think peace and quiet and a complete change of scene might help. I’ve got a house, on an island off the coast of Maine, and we’re going up there for the summer. Can you join us? As soon as possible, and for as long as you can stay?”

“An island? Why an island?”

“Because that’s where the houseis, ” Ran said.

“Of all the stupid questions…Will you come or not?”

“There is the little matter of my job.”

“Quit.”

“I love fresh air, but it’s low in calories.”

“For God’s sake, Jo, you know I can get you a job any time you say. So far as that goes—”

“We went through this before, Ran.”

“Yes, and I came around, didn’t I? I admire your independence—even if I do call it pigheadedness when you aren’t around. But there are more important things than pride, Jo.”

He fell silent, then, and all at once I could almost see him—his tall, lean body slouched in the big leather chair, his thick dark hair standing up on end because he had been running his fingers through it the way he did when he was annoyed. And he was always annoyed when some lesser human specimen intimated that his plans were less than perfect. I got to be pretty familiar with his moods in the years when I lived with him and Mary; so I knew, now, what the silence meant. He was trying another approach. In my mind I saw his heavy dark brows lift and an ingratiating smile lighten a mouth that was, in repose, rather too thin and too long for geniality. The voice that finally spoke was just the voice I expected.

“Honey, I’m sorry. I’m in a lousy mood, or I wouldn’t be so overbearing. I’m not ordering you;

I’m begging you. Mary wants you. And you are just about the only thing she does want.”

It might have been calculated—it almost certainly was—but that statement broke through my defenses. Not because he admitted that Mary wanted me, but because of his admission that she didn’t want him. He was not a humble man.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, I’ll come. It’ll take a while, there are so many things…But I’ll be there.”

I was still sitting by the phone, trying to sort things out, when the doorbell rang. It was the special-delivery mail man, with a letter from Ran. It contained a plane ticket and detailed instructions for reaching the island. All I had to do was call Ran’s office when I had made my reservations, and everything would be taken care of.

Fifteen minutes between New York and San Francisco is good time, even for air-mail special. I didn’t have to look at the postmark to know that Ran had sent the letter that morning, before he even bothered to ask me to come.

II

The next two weeks were filled with furious activity and with an increasing anxiety that made all activity more difficult. I took the time, though, because this way there was a slight chance that I
might be able to get a job when I came back to the West Coast. I didn’t expect the agency to offer to hold my job for me, and they didn’t. But at least, by offering to stay long enough to train my successor in my peculiar ways, I avoided serious hard feelings. Of course, by the time they heard my excuses they couldn’t have blackballed me without making like Scrooge. I have an unfortunate habit—not of embroidering a story, exactly—but of bringing out its more dramatic features. And in the process I tell more than I should. I don’t do it for effect, I don’t even approve of it; I just can’t seem to help it. Mary used to say that I could bump into a lady at the grocery store and by the time I was through apologizing I would have told her I was breaking up with my boyfriend and described the dream I had the night before.

Anyhow, I managed it somehow—left the job on good terms with all concerned, sublet my apartment, and packed three suitcases. It sounds simple, but I’ve left out all the little things, the details that sound so insignificant and take so much time. By the time I got on the plane I was so tired I slept most of the way across the country. And when I reached Boston, the plane Ran had hired was waiting for me.

We landed on the island. I’m sure I don’t know how we did. Of course I knew that the island really was large enough to allow a small plane to land;
I knew it in my brain, anyhow, even if I didn’t know it in my insides. But as we came down, my interested eyes failed to find a flat space bigger than a front yard anywhere among the acres of fir trees and the miles of rough cliffline. I did see the field finally—if you could call it that—it looked like somebody’s corn field. So I chickened out and closed my eyes. The landing was what I can only call exuberant; we bounced a couple of times more than necessary.

Ran had said I would be met. I guess I expected him, or Mary, or both; I was conscious of a pang of disappointment when I scanned the faces of the people near the small building that served as a terminal, and failed to see a familiar one. I started walking toward the building, and as I did so a lounger removed himself from the wall against which he had been leaning and came toward me.

It’s hard for me to remember my first impressions of William Graham. I must have been struck by his height; he’s really tall, six feet four or five. He has one of those long, weatherbeaten New England faces that change very little between the ages of twenty-five and sixty. The features seem to be all sharp angles and the skin is tanned—not just sun-browned, tanned like old leather. Will has sandy hair and light-brown eyes. They look like amber in the sunlight. And in direct sunlight,
and only then, you notice his freckles, just a scattering of them, across the bridge of his nose.

Then he smiled. I didn’t exactly stagger, but I felt like doing so. It was the most amazing transformation I’ve seen outside of an old Lon Chaney movie. His face got rounder and years younger; his pale amber eyes glowed as if a light had been switched on behind them.

“Will Graham,” he said, and put out his hand.

“Joanne McMullen,” I said. I let him have my hand with some trepidation; it was the first time my not-so-dainty digits had been swallowed up by a man’s hand. But I needn’t have worried. His handclasp was firm, but gentle and businesslike. His eyes were fixed on my face, and I fancied I could hear the facts clicking into place in his brain. Female, early twenties, five-nine, one hundred and twenty-five pounds (approximate), brown hair, blue eyes, no visible scars or deformities….

“You must be a friend of Ran’s,” I said inanely. The clinical stare was making me nervous.

He didn’t bother answering, but turned away to greet the pilot, who was coming up with my bags. They were apparently old buddies.

“Hi, Vic,” said Will Graham.

“Haw’rya, Doc,” said Vic.

He hadn’t mentioned that he was a doctor. I was beginning to feel like a subnormal child; nobody was telling me anything. Ran had sent a perfect
stranger to meet me, without warning me, and the stranger seemed to feel that the mere mention of his name was sufficient identification. Finally Graham took my suitcases and started walking off with them. The pilot gave me a grin and a flip of the hand and went off in another direction. I stood there, looking from one retreating back to the other. There was nothing else to do but follow the doctor. I didn’t exactly have to run, but I had to walk faster than I normally do. I caught up with him at the door of the terminal, and I remarked moderately,

“You could at least say, ‘Heel.’”

He glanced down at me.

“Huh? Oh. Sorry.”

He didn’t sound sorry.

We got into his car. It was a blue station wagon, the saddest, most battered specimen of automobile I had ever seen. It started with a scream and settled into a series of agonized grunts. Clearly the doctor was one of those rare men who regard a car as a means of transportation rather than a love object. That should have raised him in my estimation, but I was feeling sulky.

“I don’t even know who you are,” I said.

He gave me an amused glance.

“You shouldn’t get into cars with strange men.”

“Just what I was thinking.”

“Ran asked me to apologize. He meant to meet you himself. When he had to go away, he asked me to take over.”

“But who are you? Do you live here? How long have you known Ran? How is he? How is Mary?”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Yes, I live here. I’ve known Ran since…Must be about fourth grade.”

“Fourth grade!” I don’t know why that fact, and its obvious corollaries, surprised me so, but they did. “You’re a native? Lived here all your life?”

“Yes.”

“Then—Ran used to live here too.”

He glanced at me in surprise.

“It’s his grandfather’s house. His grandfather’s island, you could say.”

“I don’t know that. I wonder why he didn’t tell me.”

“Maybe you never asked.”

“Maybe I didn’t get around to asking,” I admitted. “I have had other things on my mind. Oh, why beat around the bush? You’re a doctor and an old friend of Ran’s. You must know why I’m concerned about Mary.”

By then we were driving down the main street of the village, and the doctor, concentrating on a traffic jam which consisted of two motorcycles and a jeep, was ostentatiously silent. It was a pretty lit
tle town, with old houses and a few blocks of new but discreetly designed modern shops. Down the side streets I caught glimpses of the harbor, with white-sailed boats and a few larger motor craft. A charming town…But I was in no mood for charm. The good doctor could communicate more with silence than another man could in a long speech.

“How is Mary?” I asked.

Instead of answering, he asked me a question.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-one,” I said, without thinking; and then, annoyed, I snapped back, “How old are you?”

It worked.

“Twenty-nine,” he said; and turned red—with anger, not embarrassment.

“Then perhaps I have as much right to doubt your qualifications as you do to question mine.”

“On the defensive, aren’t you?”

“Am I?”

We had left the town—what there was of it—and were on a road that skirted the shore. Inland, the island was wooded and green, but this terrain was sandy, with sparse vegetation. To the left the sea shone amethyst and aquamarine in the sunlight. I took several deep breaths.

“This is silly,” I said. “Why don’t we stop picking at each other? I gather I am going to see something of you in the next few months. It will
certainly be better for Mary, not to mention the general social situation, if we try to get along.”

“Fine with me.”

“Then can’t we talk about Mary without one of us getting mad?”

“I’m not mad,” he said calmly.

“But you’re not talking.”

He made a funny noise which, I learned later, was a laugh. He turned the car, so abruptly that I fell up against his arm. He fended me off, without prejudice, and completed the turn, onto a narrow gravel road which led up toward the center of the island. There was a gate, which stood open, and a “Private Property—No Trespassing” sign.

The change in terrain was extraordinarily abrupt. Within a minute we were driving in a green gloom, under trees whose massive branches interlaced above. Graham brought the car to a stop. He turned to face me, one arm resting on the steering wheel, and produced a pack of cigarettes, which he offered me.

“And you an M.D.,” I said, taking one.

“I’m one of the twenty percent that hasn’t quit.”

He lit my cigarette; and I turned too, sitting sideways on the seat so that I could see his face.

“Conference?” I said.

“We’re not far from the house. I think it will
be easier to talk candidly without Ran or Mary around.”