The Deceivers (26 page)

“You could have been killed! Wasn’t anybody around to help you?”

“Not a soul.”

“You must have landed right on your face, poor old honey!”

“All this and a hangover too.”

“Are you sure he found all the damage?”

“He took X-rays.”

“You’ll feel miserable for days. Let me get a closer look at you. It’s strange the rocks didn’t break the skin, dear. I’d think they’d have split you wide open.”

“I broke the fall a little, I guess.”

“I’m glad it wasn’t worse, darling. Well, there’s certainly no need of you hanging around here. I’ll bet you feel much worse than I do. You should go right on home and get to bed. You certainly won’t try to go to the office tomorrow?”

“I wasn’t going to anyway, remember? It’s your first day home.”

“That’s right. Bernie said you should come and get me at about eleven o’clock in the morning. You know, dear, you look just as though you were in a barroom brawl. They’re going to kid you something awful down at the office, I know.”

“I can’t smile. It hurts the stitches.”

“You run along. Oh, Carl, is anything wrong with Cindy?”

“Not that I know of.”

“She wasn’t in yesterday and she hasn’t been in today. See if she’s all right, will you, dear?”

“All right.”

“I think Bucky was supposed to come back today. Have you seen him?”

“Not yet.”

“Was it a good party last night?”

“Except that I got clobbered, it was about the same as usual, I guess.”

“It isn’t like you to drink too much. And … fall off bridges.”

He touched his swollen lips to her forehead. “See you at eleven, honey.”

“Come a little earlier and get the bill stuff straightened out downstairs. Then Miss Calhoun will wheel me down to the front door and out to the car. Park right in front, dear.”

The intense strain of the ten minutes with Joan had exhausted him. When he was back in the car in the hospital lot he sat behind the wheel for several minutes, too drained to go through the motions of starting the car. The lie had been accepted, but it was only a temporary relief. Too many other things would add up. Eunice Stockland would make certain they added up, in a manner shrill enough to be heard by all of Crescent Ridge.

The last of the summer dusk was gone by the time he drove into the car port. The phone was ringing as he entered the house. He hurried to it but caught it just as the caller hung up. He stood in the dark house with the phone at his ear and felt lost and alone as never before in his life.

He had seen the lights in the Cable house. He turned on the wall light over the phone table, sat down and dialed the Cable number. Though the houses were next door, they were not on the same standard eight-party line.

In the middle of the third ring the phone was lifted and Cindy said, “Hello.”

“This is Carl. I’ve got … something of yours. Can I bring it over?”

“I’m alone.”

“I’ll be right over.”

She pushed the screen door open for him and he carried the suitcase into the kitchen and set it down, turned toward her. When she saw his face clearly her lips tightened and her eyes narrowed. She reached out and touched his left cheek very lightly with her fingertips.

“How ugly,” she said.

“In every possible way. And I wasn’t much opposition.”

“Bucky is very powerful. And you were very brave, Carl. You kept getting up and trying. I tried to stop him. I thought he would kill you. I didn’t know whether he had or not. So after he left here, I phoned the motel. That manager person was horrid to me, but at least I found out you’d gone off in
some doctor’s car. Won’t you sit down? Would you like a drink?”

“When do you expect Bucky?”

“I don’t.”

“Oh?”

“He’s gone home to his mother, I imagine.”

“If coffee wouldn’t be too much trouble,” he said, and sat at the breakfast booth.

“Is instant all right?”

“Fine.”

“It will only take a minute.”

“What happened to you after … I was out of the picture?”

“I shall never in my whole life spend a fifteen minutes in more terror and humiliation than that time I spent under the bed. It was so damn grotesque. After he got you against the wall and kept hitting you, I was screaming and somebody was hammering at the door and I caught his arm and pulled him away. You slipped down in a heap and you didn’t move. Bucky looked at you for a few seconds, then he grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me out of there. There was a man at the door and he pushed him out of the way. Bucky was almost running, and I was stumbling along behind him trying to stay on my feet all the way down the road. He practically threw me into the car. The only time he spoke all the way back was when I would try to say something. Then he would shut me up by calling me a foul word. I was blubbering by the time we got here. He told me to go into the bedroom. I didn’t know whether he was going to kill me. He acted like a crazy man. I didn’t much care.”

The pot began to steam. She filled the cup, stirred in the powdered coffee and brought it to him. “I’m sorry I won’t be able to sit down with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can stand. And I can lie down on my side or my tummy, but I won’t be doing any sitting for a while.”

“I don’t …”

“I went into the bedroom. He came in in a few minutes and he had a putter in his hand, his old one that was out in the closet in the car port with his fish poles and the croquet set. He had hold of it by the end you putt with. He told me to take off my clothes. I didn’t think he was serious, that he could be serious. I told him that I certainly wasn’t going to let him whip me. Then he caught me by the waist and ripped my good skirt right off. So I decided I would play
his stupid game and if I didn’t make a sound he’d stop when he began feeling silly. So I took everything off and asked him if there was any special position he favored. He grabbed my wrist and turned me sideways and whacked me across the bottom with the steel shaft of that putter. He swung it so hard it whistled, and it made a horrible cracking sound when it hit me. I had no idea it was going to hurt that badly. I was able to stand still and make no sound for about three whacks. And then I couldn’t stop myself from dancing around, trying to get away from it. And that made it worse because it made his aim bad and sometimes he’d hit me way up near the small of the back and sometimes as far down as the backs of my knees. And pretty soon I started howling and yelping and bellowing. It … it took away every scrap and atom of dignity I’ve been able to acquire in my whole life. I’ll never get it all back. I’ll always have that memory with me—of leaping around, blubbering and begging, trying to get away from that horrible hurting, going around and around in a crazy dance, blinded by my tears, hooting and shrilling like a soul in hell. Finally—I guess his arm got tired—he let me go and I staggered to the bed and fell across it and bit the pillow. I felt as if my backside from my waist to my knees was afire. I heard him breathing heavily and I knew he was standing beside the bed looking down at me. I think he got some twisted kind of sexual satisfaction out of it. Then he went away and closed the bedroom door behind him. And I began to cry a different kind of tears. Humiliation and shame.”

She smiled in a way that turned the corners of her wide mouth down, and said, “Don’t you think it has a sort of delightful T. S. Eliot touch? The errant wife beaten with a putter. It sort of goes with that thousand lost golf balls thing in
The Wasteland
. For a Victorian motif the man could use a buggy whip or a piece of kindling. But this made it very modrun, don’t you think?”

“I’m sorry, Cindy. I’m terribly sorry about … the way it all came out.”

“I’m a mess,” she said. “I’m all swollen and streaky and bruised. I’ve got as many colors as those funny kind of monkeys. I do wish I could sit down, dammit. Anyway, I didn’t finish. After the tears were sort of dwindling away and I was having those funny sobs like hiccups, I heard his voice but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I thought somebody had stopped by, but I could only hear his voice. Then I
picked up the bedside phone. He was talking to his mother, and it was all very gooey. They were both crying. It was very emotional. I knew right away he’d told her he’d caught me in flagrante delicto. She said, over and over, ‘My poor boy, my poor boy. Your father and I could have told you that something like this would happen sooner or later. No normal wife and mother sends her darling little babies away for the whole summer. I could have told you she was no good, but you wouldn’t have listened. And now you know. But I’m sorry it had to happen this way.’

“Then I heard him tell her his plans. Pack and move out. He said he had some appointments next week, but he’d get out to their place by Thursday to talk to them and see the kids. He said it was remotely possible I might come after the kids. Don’t turn them over to me. He would be seeing a lawyer at the first opportunity, and it was pretty damn certain that I wouldn’t contest it and neither would I get any rights at all in the children. He said, actually said, that I didn’t have a leg to stand on. I hung up but he kept on talking to her for a long time.

“Then he came to the bedroom and packed. I’d covered myself up and I kept my face to the wall. It didn’t take him very long. He stood by the bed and said, ‘I’m leaving.’ I didn’t answer him. ‘For good.’ I still didn’t answer. So he slammed the door hard and a little while later I heard the car drive out, with him gunning it like a hot-rod kid.”

“I’m sorry, Cindy.”

“Don’t try to take it on yourself. I was the one who made the final fatal move that got us into this. How was your delightful day?”

He told her about Kacharian and the officers and the bill for damages and the lie he had told Joan. And he told her what Kacharian had said about Joan and what this might do to her, and told her he had come over to plead with Bucky to keep up the pretense of friendship for a couple of weeks just for Joan’s sake. And he told her that Joan wondered why she hadn’t come in the last two days.

“I’ll come over tomorrow and be there when you bring her home, Carl. I’ll have to wear slacks because he got me a couple of mean ones across the right calf. See?” She half turned and pulled up the skirt of her long yellow robe. There were two raised welts, of a dark and painful red, the adjacent area blue as a result of the bruising.

“We’re a great pair,” he said.

“The uncalculated risks of adultery. Let’s not go on this way, because if I ever start to laugh it’s going to turn into the most God-awful case of hysterics ever seen by man. More coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

   She walked him to the rear door and out into the sultry night. He felt it curious that there was no strain or tension between them. They were like enemies who, after being wounded in the same battle, feel more of kinship than animosity.

“What are you going to do?” he asked her.

“I don’t know. Just wait.”

“What do you think you want to do?”

“Oh, Carl, I know what I want to do. I know what I want so badly it makes me feel all empty and aching. What I want more than anything in the world is to be here in my house with my husband and my kids. That’s what I want.”

“If you want that badly enough …”

“Please skip the homely philosophies, Carl. Do me that favor. Now that it’s gone for good, I learn, with my usual discernment, how good it was for me. Now I find out I was putting on a big act. I love the guy. But because I’m exactly what he labeled me, a bitch, I got all petulant and discontented and reckless. And plowed up the pretty pea patch. And sowed it with salt. It isn’t your fault. I fell into your lap. And right now I feel honest enough to take you all the way off the hook. Honest enough and generous enough.”

“What do you mean?”

“That first night, the ankle was uninjured. I just wanted your arm around me. And when I came over to your house the next day, I told myself I was being sensible, but all along I knew I was coming over to be kissed again.”

“Cindy, I …”

“Hush, now. Just trot on home. Let’s stop thinking about what a pair of damn fools we are and start thinking about Joan for a change. Good night, Carl.” She kissed him on the cheek. Her lips were cool. It was the kiss of affection of a sister. “If somebody has to be messed up, I hope it’s just one of us, my dear.”

   On Monday morning, after he had paid his portion of the bill and received his hospitalization policy back, he went up to give the patient release form to the floor nurse. After his
breakfast he had purchased a pair of very large and very darkly tinted sun glasses, and had covered the white tape across his nose with flesh-colored adhesive tape. His lips were down almost to normal dimension, but he ached in every joint and muscle, and every movement brought a twinge of pain. He told himself that he had merely been knocked around a little. He felt as if he had fallen down forty flights of concrete stairs.

Joan was dressed and radiantly ready to be taken home. Her suitcase was packed and the nurse had made a package of the books and cards. Joan rode in the wheel chair with the package on her lap. The nurse pushed the chair and carried the suitcase. Carl carried two potted plants.

“I feel like I was graduating or something,” Joan said. “You really look much less terrifying than you did yesterday, darling. Is the car right out in front? Have you paid the bill and everything? Is Marie alerted to start tomorrow working full time for us?”

“Everything is under control.”

She got from the chair into the car with more agility than he anticipated. They said good-by to the nurse. He drove away from the hospital.

“Go real slow, darling, because I want to look at every single thing. I feel as if I’d been shut up for years. And please don’t hit any bumps because I feel as if the incision would pop open. I mean I don’t feel bad, but just sort of … skeptical, you know. Are the plants where they won’t fall over? Darn it, listen to me! Jabber, jabber, jabber. I guess I’m excited.”

“There’s going to be a storm, I think.”

“I saw those clouds. When they get that funny brassy look it means trouble. Did you leave windows open?”