Slam the Big Door (21 page)

“To Mary?”

“Her marriage is bitched up beyond all recognition, and you know that as well as I do. What did she lose by what we did? Nothing at all.”

“I keep wondering what she’d think of you.”

“Oh Mike, really. Can’t you guess? If she ever finds out—and I don’t see why she has to—I know just how she’d react. Even if I gave a detailed confession, she wouldn’t listen. It would be her poor baby trying to conceal a case of drunken rape for the sake of the family honor, to avoid scandal. I’ll say to you that it
was
a little sneaky, and mostly my fault—hell, entirely my fault—and probably it shouldn’t have happened, but it did and it’s over and it might happen again and might not, and who can tell? But you don’t have to act as if I’m a criminal or something.”

He frowned at her, studying her. “I guess I don’t understand. You seem more mischievous than vicious. But you can perform a vicious act of seduction, a dangerous, damaging act, and have no more idea of the meaning of that act than a sand flea. You can even defend that act.”

“And why not? It’s a big busy world, Mike. Lots of things go on.”

“I guess it’s because you’re empty,” he said. “Empty in a way you don’t comprehend. It’s like being a psychopath. You have no basis for morality, do you?”

“That has the reek of church talk, doesn’t it?”

“All right. You are Godless. A reincarnation of the same scented bitch that has appeared and reappeared in history. I thought they were evil women. Consciously evil. I didn’t know they were just empty. It’s kind of disappointing in a way. It takes the drama out of it. They weren’t overthrowing kings and princes and kingdoms out of malice after all. They were just satisfying a little clitoral itch, and when things started falling down they probably looked around and said, ‘Who, me?’”

She stared at him with a flat, surprising malevolence.
“Now,
I get it.”

“You get what?”

“All this literate lecture routine. You didn’t make out with McGuire, did you? So you get righteous about the whole thing. I’m real nasty. And if you’d made it, my friend, you wouldn’t have one word to say, would you? I’m so sorry, dolling.”

She laughed, and he sensed she was trying to make her laughter sound completely genuine, but her eyes were not right for laughter. There was a wariness in them. The laughter sounded more artificial after it had stopped.

“We can’t communicate,” he said. “Words don’t mean the same things to us. It makes me scared about my two boys. I don’t want them to get as far away from reality as you are, Debbie Ann.”

“Reality! If anybody is living in a dream world, it isn’t me.”

“You sure of that?”

“Positive.”

He stood up and looked down at her. The sun was bright on the table and on her hair. She looked up at him politely, with an assured half-smile.

“Honey,” he said. “Just you hope nothing happens to wake you up. Because if you ever wake up, you’re going to have to look in a mirror. And you won’t like it. That is my message.”

He sensed that had he been within range, she would have raked his face with her nails. “It must be comforting to be so holy. What has anybody ever done for me? I’ll do any thing I damn please. I’ve got no obligations to anybody.”

“You have to eat scraps and they beat you and beat you. Things are rough everywhere.”

“I can’t understand all this fuss over…”

He didn’t hear the rest of it because he had walked away, feeling sickened. He went to the guest wing and washed his hands. He was annoyed at himself for even trying to talk to her. Something was happening to people. To the young ones. Maybe, he thought, we’ve taken something away from them and haven’t given them anything to replace it. Maybe human nature does change every thousand years or so, and this is the time of change. I don’t like it. They figured out what made the dinosaurs extinct. A batch of fast little mammals sprung up, and they lived off dinosaur eggs. They didn’t give a damn for dinosaurs. They just loved those eggs. Wonder what happened to them when there weren’t any more eggs.

He had alerted Durelda, but it was not until two o’clock that she came out onto the beach and told him Mr. Troy was up. Debbie Ann had gone boiling off somewhere in her car. Somehow the word had been spread that the Sunday routine at the Jamisons’ was finished. There was pedestrian traffic up and down the beach, but nobody stopped at the house for the buffet brunch.

He gave Troy a few minutes and then went up to the house. Troy sat on the patio drinking black coffee. He was clean-shaven, dressed in fresh slacks and a crisp sports shirt. His eyes were bloodshot and he had the shakes so badly it was difficult for him to light a cigarette.

Mike sat at the table and said, “Another nice day.”

“Certainly is.”

“Lot of people on the beach.”

“Are there?”

He made Mike feel uneasy. There was a curious remoteness about him. There was too long a delay before his automatic replies. His eyes had a curious staring look, a look almost of blindness. Mike suddenly realized where he had seen that same remoteness before. He had seen it in cases of shock. Once he had arrived at the scene of an accident after it had happened. A man had skidded into a light pole. It had struck on the passenger side, crushing the man’s wife to death. There had been a stack of folded pamphlets in the car, advertisements for the small business they owned. The pamphlets were widely scattered on the wet street. The man had gotten out of the car. His right wrist was grotesquely broken. With his left hand he was slowly, carefully, picking up the pamphlets, one by one. When Mike had gone to him to stop him he had looked up with much the same expression Troy was wearing.

“I guess we never got around to that therapy you were talking about last night, Troy.” Mike heard his own voice, curiously jolly, elaborately casual.

“… Therapy?”

“You were going to drink yourself back to that moment of truth or whatever you call it.”

“… Was I?”

“Yes. I guess it didn’t work.”

“… No, I guess it didn’t.”

“Are you all right?”

“… Me? I’m all right. Why?”

“I don’t know. You seem listless.”

“… Hung over, I guess.”

“What are the plans for today?”

“… Plans?”

“What are we going to do?”

“… I don’t know.”

“Will you join me on the beach?”

“… On the beach? No. No, I don’t think so. I’m… I’m going away.” Troy got up, turned rather slowly and walked into the living room, toward the master bedroom. There was a jerkiness about his stride, a lack of coordination, a somnambulistic quality.

“Where are you going?” Mike demanded. Troy did not answer. Mike followed him into the bedroom. Troy took a suitcase out of the storage wall and opened it on Mary’s bed. He went to the bureau and began to select things from the top drawer.

“Where are you going?”

“Away from here.”

“Why?”

“It’s time to get away from here.”

“Troy. Troy! Hold it a minute.”

Troy put a pile of shirts into the suitcase and straightened up. “You can’t stop me.”

“What does running away from it solve?”

“You don’t understand, Mike.”

“I think I’ve got more of the picture than you have, maybe. You were drunk. And it was her idea, not yours. She set you up for it.”

Troy stared at him. The immobility was gone from his face. It twisted in a horrid muscular spasm. “What did we do? Mail out invitations?”

“It was an accident. Shirley and I went to look at the boat.”

“Does…
she
know you know?”

“Yes. It doesn’t upset her much. I tried to talk to her about it. I couldn’t reach her.”

Troy looked down at his fist. “I thought Jerranna was as low as you could go. I was using Jerranna as a club to beat Mary with. I don’t know why. Maybe because she’s too damn good. But this—with Debbie Ann—it’s too much. I’ve got to get out of here.”

“You afraid it will happen again?”

“She told me a swim would sober me up. She turned her back. I stripped and went in. I swam out a couple of hundred feet, slow. When I stopped she was right next to me, laughing in that damn tiny little voice. She shoved me under. I chased her and caught her. Lots of laughs. Sure I was drunk. But I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t blacked out. By the time we came out there wasn’t even any attempt to put the clothes back on. We grabbed them up and went right to the boat. I can’t tell you how she looked, Mike, naked, soaking wet, laughing in the moonlight. I knew it was as wrong a thing as a man can do. But I didn’t give a damn. I told myself it couldn’t be a serious thing, the way she kept laughing.”

“Are you going away so it won’t happen again?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“So I won’t kill her. I woke up first, early. I was going to do it then. I put my hand on her throat. It woke her up. I couldn’t do it then. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to do it the second time, but I’d come closer. And then the next time I could probably do it. I’ve got to get out.”

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t know. Over to Jerranna’s, maybe.”

“What am I supposed to tell Mary?”

“Tell her she’s better off. She is. Tell her to get out, like Bunny did.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“She’s my daughter, Mike.”

“Stepdaughter.”

“And it was just fine, Mike. Fine last night. Fine again this morning. She’s real good.” An expression of thoroughly savage mockery changed his face. “Try it any time. It’s free. It’s on the house. Be my guest.”

Mike watched in silence as Troy packed. Maybe it was a good answer. It might be the easiest way for Mary. And of the three of them, she was now the only one worth any consideration.

“How about the land project, Troy?”

“I’ll go to the lawyer’s office tomorrow and sign my stock over to Mary. Maybe she can salvage something. There isn’t anything else… to turn over to her. Not a damn thing.” He took out his wallet and looked into it. “Got any money?”

Mike checked. “Sixty bucks. Want that?”

“You won’t get it back.”

“It doesn’t matter. Here.”

Troy put the money away. He started to shake hands and then pulled his hand back. “There’s no damn sense in that little gesture. It doesn’t mean anything. I don’t want your friendship, Mike. I don’t want the obligation.”

“Okay. So this is the end of that, too.” He hesitated. “Are you going to take a car?”

“No.”

“Can I drive you up to Ravenna?”

“No.”

“Goodby, Troy.”

Troy looked at him and through him and walked out. Mike followed him slowly. Saying he didn’t give a damn. Fighting his feeling of involvement. All my life, nibbled to death by lame ducks. Looking into empty people, looking for something I can’t describe, finding it sometimes. Buttons told me one time what I would have been if I’d come along ahead of the linotype. One of those old boys wandering around, telling stories to the tribes. Anything with a maximum exposure to people.

So there goes Troy Jamison, walking out of life, coat over his arm, suitcase making the other shoulder sag. Too bitched up to be survival-prone. These are the years when the basic, thousand-percent sons of bitches get along nifty. They flourish. And so, thank God, do those rare ones who are both strong and good. Like Mary. But all the Troys are screwed. Because they’re half and half. Oversimplification? The good part can’t live with the son of a bitch. And the price of everything is marked up. No bargain basements. No special clearance sales. You pay top dollar every time, and it stings.

There should be a new operation. A bitchectomy. Scalpel, clamps, sutures, deep sedation. Whichever aspect is dominant, remove the other one. Then everybody survives. Only two kinds of people. The energetic, enthusiastic, functioning son of a bitch. And the tin Jesuses.

Make a dull world. Cancel the research.

He walked out onto the path. When he was fifteen feet from the road he could see, beyond a monster sea grape, Troy walking south in the sunlight. Sunday afternoon. You don’t get tragedy, he thought, without some grotesquerie, some little taint of slapstick. Everybody is his own comedian. The wittle boy packed him wittle bag with him teddy bear and outer-space pistol and runned away.

Through the shimmer of heat he saw the car coming and soon recognized the Porsche, top down, Debbie Ann at the wheel, her hair tamed by a bright scarf.

“Don’t stop,” he said aloud. “Don’t stop, girl!”

He thought for a moment she wouldn’t, but she passed Troy and stopped and backed up very competently, then kept backing up, maintaining his pace, evidently speaking to him. Then she increased the speed and stopped twenty yards beyond him and got out and stood waiting for him.

As Troy reached her and stopped and put the suitcase down, Mike began to run. He couldn’t remember the last time he had tried to run fast. He had about three hundred yards to go, and he didn’t have the build for it. The years had done something to level ground. It all ran uphill. And he felt as if the long fleet stride of youth had shrunk to about eight inches.

He was fifty yards away when Troy hit her. Though sweat had run into his left eye, he saw it clearly. It was not a slap. It was not one of those wild windmill swings of the angry amateur. This had the merciless competence of the professional, despite the fact it was a right-hand lead. Elbow close. Nice timing, starting from heels firmly planted, so the full power of legs and back and shoulders got into it. A straight jolt, upwards, the fist moving maybe ten inches before the point of impact, and with a nice follow-through—happening so quickly she had not the slightest chance to duck or move back or even begin to raise her hands.

It was the noise that made his stomach turn over. You could achieve the same effect if you took a nylon stocking, packed the foot tightly with raw chopped liver, and then swung it three times around your head before slamming it against a brick wall.

Debbie Ann went up and back, a doll slow in the sunlight, landing rump-first across the hood of the Porsche to collapse there, supine, almost motionless for an instant before sliding forward, down the blunt pitch of the hood of the Porsche, making one half turn to thud face down on the sand-and-shell road, in front of the wheels, one arm pinned under her, the other extended over her head, legs sprawled, all of her utterly still.