The Fiend (10 page)

He knew she wasn't sleeping because she stirred and blinked her eyes, though she still didn't speak.

“Louise?”

“Is—this what you wanted to talk to me about, Charlie?”

“Why, yes. It may not seem important to you, but I love dogs. I couldn't bear to hurt one, see it all mangled and bloody.”

She looked down at her blue dress. It was spotless, unwrinkled. It bore no sign that she had run out into the street after Charlie's car and been dragged under the wheels and lacerated; and Charlie, unaware that anything had happened, had driven on alone. He had seen nothing and felt little more.
Maybe I felt a slight bump but I thought it was a hole in the road, I certainly didn't know it was you, Louise. What were you doing out on the road chasing cars like a dog?

“Oakley,” she said in a high, thin voice. “Mrs. Cathryn Oak­ley.”

“The little dog has no father?”

“I guess not.”

“Do you spell her first name with a
C
or a
K?”

“C-a-t-h-r-y-n.”

“You must have looked it up in the city directory?”

“Yes. Mrs. Oakley is listed as head of the household, with one minor child.”

Charlie's face was flushed, as if he'd come out of the cold into some warm place. “It's funny she'd want to live alone in that big house with just a little girl.”

He knew, as soon as the words left his mouth, that he'd made a mistake. But Louise didn't seem to notice. She had stood up and was brushing off her dress with both hands. He could see the outline of her thighs, thin, delicate-boned, with hardly any solid flesh to protect them from being crushed under a man's weight. She wasn't wearing any garters and he would have liked to ask her how she kept her stockings up. It was a perfectly in­nocent question on his part, but he was afraid she would react the way Ben would, as if such thoughts didn't occur to normal men, only to him, Charlie.
“Why do you ask that, Charlie?” “Because 1 want to know.” “But why do you want to know?” “Because it's interesting.” “Why is it interesting?” “Because gravity is pulling her stockings down and she must be doing something to counteract it.”

Louise had taken her gloves out of her handbag and was put­ting them on, holding her fingers stiff and smoothing the fabric down over each one very carefully. Charlie looked away as if she were doing something private that he had no right to watch.

She said, “I'd better be going now.”

“But you just got here. I thought you and I were going to have a talk.”

“We already have, haven't we?”

“Not real—”

“I think we've covered the important thing, anyway—Mrs. Oakley and her dog and her child. That was the main item on tonight's agenda, wasn't it? Perhaps the only one, eh, Charlie?”

She sounded friendly and she was smiling, but he was sud­denly and terribly afraid of her. He backed away from her, until his buttocks and shoulders touched the wall. It was a cool wall with hot red roses climbing all over it.

“Don't,” he whispered. “Don't hurt me, Louise.”

Her face didn't alter except that one end of her smile began to twitch a little.

“Louise, if I've done anything wrong, I'm sorry. I try to do what you and Ben tell me to because my own thinking isn't too good sometimes. But tonight nobody told me.”

“That's right. Nobody told you.”

“Then how was I to know? I saw you and Ben looking at each other in the hall and I could sense, I could feel, you were expect­ing me to do something, but I didn't understand what it was.

You and Ben, you're my only friends. I'd do anything for you if you'd just tell me what you want.”

“I won't do that.”

“Why not?”

“You must figure it out for yourself, apart from Ben and me.”

“I can't. I
can't.
Help me, Louise. Hold out your hand to me.”

She walked toward him, her arms outstretched stiffly like a robot obeying an order. He took both her hands and pressed them hard against his chest. She could feel the fast, fearful beat­ing of his heart and she wished it would stop suddenly and for­ever, and hers would stop with it.

“Oh God, Louise, don't leave me here alone in this cold dark.”

“I can't make it any lighter for you,” she said quietly. “Warmer, yes, because there would be two of us. I've had fool­ish dreams about you, Charlie, but I've never kidded myself that I could turn on any lights for you when other people, even pro­fessionals, have failed. I can share your darkness, though, when you need me. I know what darkness is, I have some of my own.”

“For me to share?”

“Yes.”

“And I can help you, too?”

“You already have.”

He held her body close against his own. “It's warmer already, isn't it, Louise? Don't you feel it?”

“Yes.”

“Imagine me helping anybody, that's a switch. I could laugh. I could laugh out loud.”

“Don't.”

She put one hand gently over his mouth, staring into his eyes as she would twin pools of water. On the surface she saw her own reflection, but underneath there were live creatures of every shape and size, moving mysteriously in and out, toward and past each other; arriving, departing, colliding, unconcerned with time or joy or grief. At the bottom of the cold, dark water lay the stones of death, but small green creatures clung to them and survived, unafraid. There was enough light to live by, even down there, and they had each other for comfort.

Charlie said, “Why—are you looking at me like that?”

“Because I love you.”

“That's not a reason.”

“It's reason enough for anything.”

“You talk sillier than I do,” he said, touching her hair and the ribbon in it. “I like silly girls.”

“I've never been called a silly girl before. I'm not sure I ap­prove.”

“You do, though. I can tell.”

He laughed, softly and contentedly, then he swooped her up in his arms and carried her over to the davenport. She sat on his lap with her face pressed against the warm moist skin of his neck.

“Louise,” he said in a whisper, “I want you and me to be married in a church and everything, like big shots.”

“I want that too.”

“You in a long fluffy dress, me in striped trousers and a morn­ing coat. I can rent an outfit like that down at Cosgrave's. One of the fellows at work rented one for his sister's wedding and he said it made him feel like an ambassador. He hated to take it back because actually he's just a truck driver. I wouldn't mind feeling like an ambassador, for a few hours anyway.”

“An ambassador to where?”

“Anywhere. I guess they all feel pretty much the same.”

“I suppose I could stand being an ambassador's wife for a few hours,” Louise said dreamily, “as long as I could have you back again exactly the way you are now.”

“Exactly?”

“Yes.”

“Now you're talking silly again. I mean, it's not sensible to want me just as I am, with all my—my difficulties.”

“Shhh, Charlie. Don't think about the difficulties, think about us. We must start planning. First, we'll have to decide on a church and a date and make a reservation. Someone told me that autumn weddings are starting to outnumber June weddings.”

“Autumn,” he repeated. “It's August already.”

“If that's too soon for you,” she said quickly, “we'll postpone it. Is it too soon, Charlie?”

She knew the answer before she asked the question. The mus­cles of his arms had gone rigid and the pulse in his neck was beating fast and irregularly. It was as if he could picture her in a long fluffy dress and himself in a morning coat, looking like an ambassador, but he couldn't put the two of them together, at one time and in one place.

“Actually,” she said, “when I consider it, it does seem like rushing things. There are so many plans to make, and as you said, it's August already.”

“Yes.”

“I've always thought Christmas would be a good time for a wedding. Things are so gay then, with all the pretty parcels and people singing carols. And the weather's usually good here at Christmas too. Sometimes it's the very best weather of the year. You wouldn't have to worry about rain getting your striped trousers wet. You couldn't very well feel like an ambassador with your trousers wet, could you?”

“I guess not.”

“You like Christmas, don't you, Charlie? Opening packages and everything? Of course I don't want to rush you. If you'd rather wait until early spring or even June—”

“No,” he said, touched by her desire to please him and want­ing to please her in return. “I don't want to wait even until Christmas. I think we should be married right away. Maybe the first week of September, if you can be ready by then.”

“I've been ready for a year.”

“But we just met a year ago.”

“I know.”

“You mean you fell in love with me right away, just looking at me, not knowing a thing about me? That's funny.”

“Not to me. Oh, Charlie, I'm so happy.”

“Imagine me making anyone happy,” Charlie said. “Ben will certainly be surprised.”

Ben wouldn't be able to say
I don't know
any more. He'd have to admit that the frog turned into a prince and lived happily ever after with his princess.

“Louise, I just thought, what if your parents don't approve? Your father doesn't seem to like me very much.”

“Yes, he
does.
He told me tonight as I was leaving that you were a fine young man.”

“Did he really?”

“It wouldn't matter anyway, Charlie.”

“Yes, it would. I want everything to be right, everyone to be —well, on our side.”

“Everything will be right,” she said. “Everyone is on our side.”

She thought of the small green creatures clinging to the stones at the bottom of the cold dark water. They survived, with noth­ing on their side but each other.

(8)

It was the
following noon that Kate Oakley received the letter. She was alone in the house; Mary Martha had gone to the play­ground with Jessie and Jessie's brother, Mike, who was supposed to see to it that the girls stayed off the jungle gym and kept their clothes clean. Kate had promised to drive them to the Museum of Natural History right after lunch.

She liked to take the girls places and let people assume they were both her daughters, but she was dreading this particular excursion. The museum used to be—and perhaps still was—one of Sheridan's favorite hangouts. He hadn't seen Mary Martha for four months and Kate was afraid that if he ran into her now there would be a scene in front of everybody, quiet and sarcastic if he was sober, loud and weepy if he wasn't. Still, she had to risk it. There weren't many places she could take Mary Martha without having to pay, and money was very short.

She had received no check from Sheridan for temporary support for nearly two months. She knew it was Sheridan's way of punishing her for keeping him away from Mary Martha but she was determined not to give in. She was strong—stronger than he was—and in the end she would win, she would get the money she needed to bring Mary Martha up in the manner she de­served. Things would be as they were before. She would have a woman to do the cleaning and laundering, a seamstress to make Mary Martha's school clothes, a gardener to mow the vast lawn and cut the hedges and spray the poison oak. The groceries would be delivered and she would sign the bill without bothering to check it and tip the delivery boy with real money, not a smile, the way she had to tip everyone now.

These smile tips didn't cost her anything but they were expen­sive. They came out of her most private account, her personal capital. Nothing had been added to this capital for a long time; she had been neither loved nor loving, she offered no mercy and accepted none; hungry, she refused to eat; weary, she couldn't rest; alone, she reached out to no one. Sometimes at night, when Mary Martha was in bed asleep and the house seemed like a huge empty cave, Kate could feel her impending bankruptcy but she didn't realize that it had very little connection with lack of money.

She was vacuuming the main living room when she saw the postman coming up the flagstone walk. She went out into the hall but she didn't open the door to exchange greetings with him. She waited until he dropped the mail in the slot, then she scooped it up greedily from the floor. There was no check from Sheridan, only a couple of bills and a white envelope with her name and address printed on it. The contents of the envelope were squeezed into one corner like a coin wrapped in paper and her first thought was that Sheridan was playing another trick on her, sending her a dime or a quarter to imply she was worth no more than that. She ripped open the envelope with her thumb­nail. There was no coin inside. A piece of notepaper had simply been folded and refolded many times, the way a child might fold a note to be secretly passed during class