Pin (14 page)

Then I thought, poor Pin, lying there in his bed, unaware that Ursula had turned against us. She was mocking us with a stranger. It's going to kill him when he finds out all the rest. He always had the
deepest regard for Ursula, many times taking her side against me, in fact. He won't believe she's betrayed him, betrayed us. It's going to upset him for quite a while; he's going to just sulk. But then, he's going to get angry. I've seen it happen before. He's going to want to punish her in some way.

Pin and I will have to discuss it, I thought. We'll have to have an intelligent discussion. Firstly, I'm going to have to figure a way to end this romance. I was glad that I hadn't made a mistake about her soldier boy. Pin's going to be upset about that too. He doesn't like being wrong about people.

So he would have slipped away the first chance he got, huh? I said to myself. Well, he's going to wish he had. Yessir, I said, slapping my fist into the palm of my hand, he's going to wish that he had. I crawled under the covers, muttering threats, and I was still lying there awake, my eyes open, staring up into the darkness, when Ursula came quietly up the stairs and went to bed.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I
SAID NOTHING TO
U
RSULA ABOUT
what I had overheard. My decision was not to confront her directly with it. That, I thought, might only make her more secretive in the future. She was her usual pleasant self at breakfast, maybe a little more so. I figured that she was trying to show me how much happier she had become since meeting and going out with Stan. She hummed and flitted around the kitchen with this big smile on her face. It was hard for me to keep composed and put aside my angry feelings. Pin wasn't awake yet. He would have sensed something wrong with me right away. He was always good at that, especially when it came to me.

“I suppose,” I said, “Stan will be coming to the library today.”

“Only at the end of the day. He's taking me to see his mother. He wants me to meet her.”

“What happened to his great study of Far Eastern religion?”

“Nothing,” she said, but she didn't elaborate.

“Are you sure he wasn't just using that as an excuse to get to know you?”

“What if he was?” She didn't look at me.

“So. And now he wants you to meet his mother before she kicks off.”

“Don't be so crude, Leon. No, not before she dies. That's not why. He just wants me to meet her and her to meet me.”

“Sounds serious.”

“It could become serious,” she said, pausing and thinking for a moment. “When I'm with him, I feel very relaxed, very good.”

“Do you? That's interesting. I would imagine he would be the type to make you nervous. I mean, considering all that he's been through and all that's happened to him.”

“No, he's not that way. He's … well, he's just a very sincere individual,” she said. I was quiet for the rest of the time. I was burning up inside, containing all the anger. After she left, I broke the dish she had eaten off. I smashed it into pieces by slamming it hard into the sink. That noise woke Pin. I heard him call for me.

I helped him dress and wheeled him out to the kitchen. I could see from the way he was staring at me that he realized something was very wrong, but he waited for a while. I served him his coffee and
poured myself another cup. Then we made some small talk for a while. He complained about his legs again. I complained about my hand. The joints of his knees always ached in the morning.

“I had the heating pads on all night,” he said. “I had a hard time falling asleep.”

“Then maybe you heard some of what went on in the living room last night, huh?”

“Went on? What went on?”

“Ursula and her soldier boy returned a little after one o'clock. They sat on the couch talking. I overheard them.”

“Not again.”

“Yes, again. This time I heard Ursula.”

“What do you mean?”

“She connived against us. She told him about you, prepared him in a way. Gave him information how he should react and behave in our presence.”

“She didn't.”

“I heard him say so. They talked about us both as if we were lunatics. She told him some very private things about us. I know, I know, it's hard to believe, but she did.”

“She must really like him.”

“That doesn't justify it.”

“I didn't say it did. Wow. I thought he was a bit too cool.”

“Oh, he's cool all right. He probably figures on eventually taking things over around here. He's got her convinced that we're sick, mentally sick. I know just what he's planning to do.”

“What?”

“Marry Ursula and get us committed somewhere.”

“She wouldn't go for that. She wouldn't…”

“She ridicules you. She talks about you as if you … as if you didn't really exist, had no mind. I don't know what to think about her. I've been wondering, though, Pin. Could she have felt this way for a long time? Has she been humoring us with her attention and concern? Tell the truth, did Ursula ever talk to you like I do?”

“Sure, what do you mean?”

“I mean, lately, has she acted the same way she used to act with you?”

“Well, you're always around. Well, I…”

“That's what I thought. She tells me she talks to you, comes down to see you, spends time with you in your room, but she's just been saying that to humor me and keep me believing she still cares about us. She's been lying.”

“I can't believe it. You actually heard her say these things?”

“With my own ears. How do you think I felt?”

“I'd never think of Ursula being false to us.”

“I know how you feel. How did we lose her, Pin?”

“I don't know. When I think of some of those long conversations we used to have when she was younger … it makes me mad. It really does.”

“I've been trying not to hate her, but it's hard.”

“It's hard,” he said. We were both quiet for a while. I drank my coffee and sat there thinking. I could tell that he was very upset. He glared ahead. Not a muscle moved in his face.

“So?” I said finally. “What do we do now?”

“We must punish her, punish her for being unfaithful, and we must restore her faith in us.”

“Yes. I agree.”

“This man is taking up all her time and energy now. He's commanding her full attention. Whatever he says about us, she's going to accept.”

“That's just what I thought.”

“We've got to get her to challenge him and see what he truly is.”

“I knew you'd know what to do, Pin. I knew it.”

“She's got to feel my full presence again, become dependent upon me and believe in me the way she used to.”

“Right. So where do we start?” I asked. His determination was giving me new confidence.

“We begin immediately. We begin right here at home,” he added, and I pulled my chair closer to him and listened as he began to unravel his plan to win back Ursula.

He was full of ideas. What he suggested called for some equipment and materials. I had to go out and make some purchases, but every one of his plans was good. He was a very creative person and very inventive. I don't know how Ursula could have lost faith in him to the extent that she would betray him. There was no one like him, no one as intelligent, as charming, or as interesting. She was a fool. His idea now was to shock her and punish her. She deserved it. I couldn't wait to get started.

Stan dropped her off about nine-thirty that night. I was in the living room with Pin watching television. We looked at each other when she opened the front door and entered. “Now it begins,” I whispered. He nodded.

“Hi,” she said from the doorway. I turned to her.

“Hi. Come on in and tell us about your visit.”

“Oh, it was very bad. She's terribly sick. She could die any day, any minute, actually.”

“Is that so?” Pin said. I could see in his face and hear in his tone of voice that he was having the same difficulty I was having in controlling his anger.

“Is that why he brought you home so early?”

“Yes. I don't feel so well either. I think I'll just go up and soak in a hot tub for a while.”

“Good idea,” I said. I turned back to the television. She went upstairs. A moment later I heard her call down to me. “What is it?” I yelled. I had been waiting. Pin smiled.

“What's this box on the wall outside of your bedroom and mine?”

“It's an intercom.”

“Intercom? What for?”

“It's for Pin,” I said, walking to the foot of the stairs. “It'll make it easier for him to call if he needs us.”

“Oh. How come you never thought of it before?”

“He never needed us as much before,” I said, but she didn't get my subtle meaning.

“Very clever,” she sang out and went to her bath. When I walked back to the living room, Pin was still smiling. She didn't know how clever he really was. There was the one intercom she saw on the wall and there was the one in Pin's room, right by his bed. But there was also one in my room, right under my bed.

“Let's do the recording now,” I said. “She's taking a bath.”

“Fine. You sure that little machine will have enough volume?”

“Positive. I tried it out in the store first,” I said, taking the pocket tape recorder out of my pants pocket. It was just a little bigger than the palm of my hand. “We won't need that much volume anyway.
The intercoms have a volume control too and I've got the one outside of her room turned way up.”

“Good. Let's get on with it.”

He recorded the message in his voice, a voice remarkably like my father's. It was a simple message. He continually called for Ursula to come down to him. I recorded about six or seven minutes of it. I didn't think we needed much more. If she didn't hear it the first time, I would simply rewind and play it over and over until she did. When we were finished, I put the machine back into my pocket.

“I'll wait until she's just about to fall asleep and then I'll begin. I'd let you do it right through the intercom, but like you said, you wouldn't know when to begin, and it will look a lot better for us if I'm upstairs when it happens.”

“No question about it. We've got to do this right. That man's planted doubts, and he will continue to do so. She'll get to the point where she's completely dependent upon him and free of us. We've got to do this, even though it's unpleasant for all of us.”

“And what if she does come down to you?”

“I'll be waiting on the couch. You've got the luminous paint?”

“Right.”

“OK. On my fingers and around my eyes.”

“Sure it won't do you any harm?”

“Positive,” he said, so I painted it on just the way he wanted me to. Before I went up, I put out the lights and looked at him. It was terrific, just like he said it would be. His fingers seemed like they were resting in midair and his eyes were deep holes of darkness, accented by the luminous circles around them. I laughed.

“This is just the beginning,” he said. “We've got a lot more to do.”

“I know. See you later.”

“See you later,” he said. I walked upstairs slowly, encouraged by my vision of Ursula's panic. She would come running to me in her desperate need to be comforted. She was still in the bathtub. I tried the door, but it was locked. She hadn't done that before. I knocked.

“You all right in there?”

“Yes. I'm just about finished drying off,” she added. “I'll be right out.”

“Need any help? Want me to dry your back?”

“No, it's all right. Thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” I said and went to my room. I sat at my desk and tried rewriting some lines of the poem that didn't please me, but I couldn't concentrate. I kept touching the pocket tape recorder and thinking about the plan. Pin was waiting patiently downstairs. That's one thing about him, I thought; he has great patience. He never loses his cool. I sat back and took a deep breath. “Try to be like Pin,” I told myself. “Try to be like Pin.”