Nightmare Alley (16 page)

Through the closed door came the soft clink of a perfume bottle being set down on the dressing table and then there was the scrape of chair legs. The chair creaked ever so little; it scraped the floor again; the bottle clinked as the stopper was put in.

When she came out she would be dressed up and ready to go downtown and she would have a lot of jobs for him to do while she was gone—like cleaning up the closet in his room or cutting the grass on the terrace.

He moved stealthily along the hall and eased open the door to the attic stairs, closed it behind him gently and went up. He knew the creaky steps and skipped them. The attic was hot and heavy with the smell of wood and old silk.

Stan stretched out on an iron bed covered with a silk patchwork quilt. It was made of strips of silk sewn in squares, different colors on each side and a single square of black silk in the center of each. Grandma Stanton made it the winter before she died.

The boy lay face down. The sounds of the house filtered up to him from far away. The whining scrape of Gyp, banished to the back porch. Jennie in the cellar and the chug of the new washing machine. The brisk clatter of Mother’s door opening and the tap of her high heels on the stairs. She called his name once sharply and then called something down to Jennie.

Jennie’s voice came out the cellar window, mournful and rich. “Yes, Mis’ Carlisle. If I see him I tell him.”

For a moment Stan was afraid Mother would go out the back door and that Gyp would Jump Up and make her cross and then she would start talking about getting rid of him. But she went out the front door instead. Stan heard the mail box rattle. Then she went down the steps.

He leaped up and ran over to the attic window where he could see the front lawn through the maple tops below him.

Mother was walking quickly away toward the car line.

She would be going downtown to Mr. Humphries for her singing lesson. And she would not be back for a long time. Once she paused before the glass signboard on the lawn of the church. It told what Dr. Parkman would preach about next Sunday, but it was so black, and with the glass in front of it, it was like looking into a mirror. Mother stopped, as if reading about next Sunday’s sermon; turning her head first one way and then another, she pulled her hat a little more forward and touched her hair.

She went on then, walking slower. The boy watched her until she was out of sight.

On every hilltop and rise Stan turned and gazed back across the fields. He could spy the roof of his own house rising among the bright green of the maples.

The sun beat down.

The air was sweet with the smell of summer grasses. Gyp bounded through the hummocks, chasing away almost out of sight and bouncing back again.

Stan climbed a fence, crossed a pasture, and then mounted a stone wall, boosting Gyp over. On the other side of the wall the fields were thicker with brush and little oak bushes and pines and beyond it the woods began.

When he stepped into their dark coolness he felt again that involuntary shudder, which was part pleasure and part apprehension, rise between his shoulder blades. The woods were a place to kill enemies in. You fought them with a battle-ax and you were naked and nobody dared say anything about it because you had the ax always hanging from your wrist by a piece of leather. Then there was an old castle deep in the forest. It had green moss in the cracks between the stones and there was a moat around it full of water and it stood there deep and still as death and from the castle there was never a sound or a sign of life.

Stan trod softly now and held his breath, listening to the green silence. The leaves were tender under his feet. He stepped over a fallen tree and then looked up through the branches to where the sun made them bright.

He began to dream. He and Lady Cynthia rode through the forest. Cynthia was Mother’s name, only Lady Cynthia was not like Mother except that she looked like her. She was just a beautiful lady on a white palfrey and the bridle was set with gems and jewels that winked in the dappled light through the branches. Stan was in armor and his hair was long and cut straight across and his face was tanned dark and with no freckles. His horse was a powerful charger as black as midnight. That was its name—Midnight. He and Lady Cynthia had come to the forest to seek an adventure, for in the forest was a powerful old magician.

Stan came out on a long-disused timber road where he slipped out of the dream, for he remembered that they had been here on the picnic. That was the time they had come out with Mr. and Mrs. Morris and Mark Humphries had driven Mother and Dad and Stan in his car with the top down. They brought the food in baskets.

Sudden anger rose up in him when he thought how his dad had had to spoil the day by having a fuss with Mother about something. He had spoken in low tones but then Mother had said, “Stan and I are going for a walk all by ourselves, aren’t we, Stan?” She was smiling at the others the way she did when something was wrong. Stan had felt that delicious shudder go up between his shoulders.

That was the time they found the Glade.

It was a deep cleft in a ridge and you would never know it was there unless you stumbled on it. He had been back since but on that day Mother had been there and all of a sudden, as if she had felt the magic of the place, she had knelt and kissed him. He remembered the perfume she had on. She had held him off at arm’s length and she was really smiling this time, as if at something deep inside herself, and she said, “Don’t tell anybody. This place is a secret just between us.”

He had been happy all the way back to the others.

That night when they were back home and he was in bed, the sound of his father’s voice, rasping and rumbling through the walls, had made him sick with rebellion. What did he have to always be fussing with Mother for? Then the thought of the Glade, and of how she looked when she kissed him, made him wriggle with delight.

But the next day it was all gone and she spoke sharp to him about everything and kept finding jobs for him to do.

Stan started down the loggers’ road. In a damp spot he stooped and then knelt like a tracker examining a spoor. The spot was fed by a trickle of spring. Across it were the tracks of auto tires, their clear and sacrilegious imprints just beginning to fill with water.

Stan hated them—the grownups were everywhere. He hated their voices most of all.

Cautiously he crossed the road, calling Gyp to him to keep him from rustling through the brush. He held the dog’s collar and went on, taking care not to tread on any dead twigs. The Glade had to be approached with the reverence of silence. He climbed the last bank on his hands and knees and then on looking over the crest he froze.

Voices were coming from the Glade.

He peered further over. Two people were lying on an Indian blanket and with a hot rush Stan knew that one was a man and the other was a woman and this was what men and women did secretly together that everybody stopped talking about when he came around, only some grownups never talked about it at all. Curiosity leaped inside of him at the thought of spying on them when they didn’t know he was there. He was seeing it all—all of it—the thing that made babies grow inside of women. He could hardly breathe.

The woman’s face was hidden by the man’s shoulder, and only her hands could be seen pressing against his back. After a while they were still. Stan wondered if they were dead—if they ever died doing it and if it hurt them but they had to do it even so.

At last they stirred and the man rolled over on his back. The woman sat up, holding her hands to her hair. Her laughter rang up the side of the Glade, a little harsh but still silvery.

Stan’s fingers tightened on the grass hummock under his hand. Then he spun around, dragging Gyp by the collar, and stumbled, sliding and bumping, down the slope to the road. He ran with his breath scorching his throat, his eyes burning with tears. He ran all the way back and then went up in the attic and lay on the iron bed and tried to cry, but then he couldn’t.

He heard Mother come in after a while. The light outside began to darken and shadows got longer.

Then he heard the car drive up. Dad got out. Stan could tell by the way he slammed the car door that he was mad. Downstairs he heard his father’s voice, rasping through the floors, and his mother’s raised, the way she spoke when she was exasperated.

Stan came downstairs, one step at a time, listening.

His father’s voice came from the living room. “… I don’t care for any more of your lies. I tell you, Mrs. Carpenter saw the two of you turning up the road into Mills’ Woods. She recognized you and she saw Mark and she recognized the car.”

Mother’s tone was brittle. “Charles, I should think you would have a little more—
pride
, shall we say?—than to take the word of anyone as malicious and as common as your
friend
, Mrs. Carpenter.”

Dad was hammering on the mantelpiece with his fist; Stan could hear the metal thing that covered the fireplace rattle. “New York hats! A nigger to clean up the house! Washing machines! Music lessons! After all I’ve given you, you turn around and hand me something like this. You! I ought to horsewhip that snake-in-the-grass within an inch of his life!”

Mother spoke slowly. “I rather think Mark Humphries can take care of himself. In fact, I should dearly love to see you walk right up to him on the street and tell him the things you’ve been saying to me. Because he would tell you that you are a liar. And you would get just what you’re asking for; just what you’re asking for. Besides that, Charles, you have a filthy mind. You mustn’t judge others by yourself, dear. After all, it is quite possible for a person with some breeding to enjoy an hour’s motoring in friendship and nothing more. But I realize that if you and—Clara Carpenter, shall we say? …”

Dad let out a noise that was something like a roar and something like a sob. “By the Eternal, I’ve sworn never to take the Lord’s name in vain, but you’re enough to try the patience of a saint. God
damn
you! D’you hear?
God damn you and all
—”

Stan had reached the ground floor and stood with his fingers running up and down the newel post of the stairs, looking in through the wide double doors of the living room. Mother was sitting very straight on the sofa without leaning back. Dad was standing by the mantel, one hand in his pocket and the other beating against the wood. When he looked up and saw Stan he stopped short.

Stan wanted to turn and run out the front door but his father’s eyes kept him fastened to the floor. Mother turned her head and saw him and smiled.

The telephone rang then.

Dad started and plunged down the hall to answer it, his savage “Hello!” bursting like a firecracker in the narrow hallway.

Stan moved painfully, like walking through molasses. He crossed the room and came near his mother whose smile had hardened and grown sick-looking. She whispered, “Stan, Dad is upset because I went riding with Mr. Humphries. We wanted to take you riding with us but Jennie said you weren’t here. But —Stan—let’s make believe you did go with us. You’ll go next time. I think it would make Dad feel better if he thought you were along.”

From the hall his father’s voice thundered, “By the Eternal, why did the fool have to be told in the first place? I was against telling him. It’s the Council’s business to vote on the committee’s recommendation. We had it in the bag, sewed up tight. Now every idiot in town will know just where the streets will be cut and that property will shoot sky-high by tomorrow morning….”

As Mother leaned close to Stan he smelled the perfume she had on her hair. She always put it on when she went downtown to take her singing lesson. Stan felt cold inside and empty. Even when she kissed him. “Whose boy are you, Stan? You’re Mother’s boy, aren’t you, dear?”

He nodded and walked clumsily to the double doors. Dad was coming back. He took Stan roughly by the shoulder and shoved him toward the front door. “Run along, now. Your mother and I are talking.”

Mother was beside them. “Let him stay, Charles. Why don’t you ask Stanton what—what he did this afternoon?”

Dad stood looking at her with his mouth shut tight. He still had Stan by the shoulder. Slowly he turned his head. “Stan, what’s your mother talking about?”

Stan swallowed. He hated that slack mouth and the stubble of pale yellow on the chin that came out when Dad hadn’t shaved for several hours. Mark Humphries did a trick with four little wads of newspaper and a hat and had showed Stan how to do it. And he used to ask riddles.

Stan said, “We went riding with Mr. Humphries in his automobile.” Over his father’s arm, still holding him, Stan saw Mother’s face make a little motion at him as if she were kissing the air.

Dad went on, his voice quiet and dangerous. “Where did you go with Mr. Humphries, son?”

Stan’s tongue felt thick. Mother’s face had gotten white, even her mouth. “We—we went out where we had the picnic that time.”

Dad’s fingers loosened and Stan turned and ran out into the falling dusk. He heard the front door close behind him.

Someone switched on the living-room lamp. After a while Dad came out, got in his car and went downtown. Mother had left some cold meat and bread and butter on the kitchen table and Stan ate it alone, reading the catalog. Only it had lost its flavor and there seemed to be something terribly sad about the blue willow-pattern plate and the old knife and fork. Gyp whined under the table. Stan handed him all his own meat and got some jelly and ate it on the bread. Mother was upstairs in the spare bedroom with the door locked.