The Fiend (17 page)

She called again and a minute later her father appeared in the doorway. He had on his bathrobe and he looked sleepy and cross. “You're getting away with murder, young one. Do you realize it's after ten?”

“I can't help it if time passes. I couldn't stop it if I wanted to.”

“No, but you might make its passing a little more peaceful for the rest of us. Mike's asleep, and I hope to be soon.”

She knew from his tone that he wasn't really angry with her. He even sounded a little relieved that his conversation with Ellen had been interrupted.

“You could sit on the side of my bed for a minute.”

“I think I will,” he said, smiling slightly. “It's the best offer I've had today.”

“Now we can talk.”

“What about?”

“Oh, everything. People can always find something to talk about.”

“They can if one of the people happens to be you. What's on your mind, Jess?”

She leaned against the headboard and gazed up at the ceiling. “Are Ellen and Virginia best friends?”

“If you're referring to your mother and your Aunt Virginia, yes, I suppose you'd call them best friends.”

“Do they tell each other everything?”

“I don't know. I hope not.”

“I mean, like Mary Martha and me, we exchange our most innermost secrets. Did you ever have a friend like that?”

“Not since I was old enough to have any secrets worth mentioning,” he said dryly. “Is something worrying you, Jessie?”

She said, “No,” but she couldn't prevent her eyes from wandering to the closed door of her closet. A whole night and day had passed since she'd taken back the book Virginia had given her and Howard had pressed the twenty dollars into her hand. The money was out of sight now, hidden in the toe of a shoe, but she might as well have been still carrying it around in her hand. She thought about it a good deal, and always with the same mixture of power and guilt; she had money, she could buy things now, but she had also been bought. She wondered what grownups did with children they bought. Did they keep them? Or did they sell them again, and to whom? Perhaps if she returned the twenty dollars to Howard and Virginia, they would give her back to her father and everything would be normal again. She hadn't wanted the money in the first place, Howard had forced it on her; and she had a strong feeling that he would refuse to take it back.

She said in a rather shaky voice, “Am I
your
little girl?”

“That's an odd question. Whose else would you be?”

“Howard and Virginia's.”

He frowned slightly. “Where'd you pick up this idea of calling adults by their first names?”

“All the other kids do it.”

“Well, you don't happen to be all the other kids. You're my special gal.” He added casually, “Were you over at the Arlingtons' today?”

“No.”

“You seem to be doing a lot of thinking about them.”

“I was wondering why they don't have children of their own.”

“I'm afraid you'll have to go on wondering,” he said. “It's not the kind of question people like being asked.”

“They could
buy
some of their own, couldn't they? They have lots of money. I heard Ellen say—”

“Your mother.”

“—my mother say that if she had a fraction of Virginia's money, she'd join a health club and get rid of some of that fat Virginia carries around. Do you think Virginia's too fat? Howard doesn't. He likes to kiss her, he kisses her all the time when he's not mad at her. Boy, he was mad at her last night, he—”

“All right, that's enough,” Dave said brusquely. “I don't want to hear any gossip about the Arlingtons from a nine-year-old.”

“It's not gossip. It really happened. I wanted to tell you about the twenty dollars he—”

“I don't want to listen, is that clear? Their private life isn't my business or yours. Now you'd better settle down and go to sleep before your mother comes charging in here and shows you how mad someone can really get.”

“I'm not afraid of her. She never
does
anything.”

“Well,
I
might do something, kiddo, so watch it. No more drinks of water, no more tucking in, and no more gossip. Under­stand?”

“Yes.”

“Lie down and I'll turn out your light”

“I haven't said my prayers.”

“Oh, for heaven's sa— O.K. O.K., say your prayers.”

She closed her eyes and folded her hands.

 

“Dear Jesus up in heaven,

Like a star so bright,

I thank you for the lovely day,

Please bless me for the night.

 

“Amen. I don't really think it's been such a lovely day,” she added candidly. “But that's in the prayer so I have to say it. I hope God won't consider me a liar.”

“I hope not,” her father said. His hand moved toward the light switch but he didn't turn it off. Instead, ‘‘What was the matter with your day, Jessie?”

“Lots of things.”

“Such as?”

“I was treated just like a child. Mike even went to the school with me and Mary Martha to make sure I didn't play on the jungle gym because of my hands. He acted real mean. I'm thinking of divorcing him.”

“Then you'd better think again,” Dave said. “You can't divorce a brother or any blood relative.”

“Mary Martha did. She divorced Sheridan.”

“That's silly.”

“Well, she never ever sees him, so it's practically the same thing as divorce.”

“Why doesn't she ever see him?”

Jessie looked carefully around the room as if she were check­ing for spies. “Can you keep a secret even from Ellen?”

Although he smiled, the question seemed to annoy him. “It may be difficult but I could try.”

“Cross your heart.”

“Consider it crossed.”

“Sheridan went to live with another woman,” Jessie whis­pered, “so he can't see Mary Martha ever again. Not ever in his whole life.”

“That seems a little unreasonable to me.”

“Oh no. She's a very bad woman, Mary Martha told me this morning. She looked up a certain word in the dictionary. It took her a long time because she didn't know how to spell it but she figured it out.”

“She figured it out,” Dave repeated. “Yes, that's Mary Martha all right.”

“Naturally. She's the best speller in the school.”

“And you, my little friend, are about to become the best gossip.”

“Why is it gossip if I'm only telling the truth?”

“You don't know it's the truth, for one thing.” He paused, rubbing the side of his neck as if the muscles there had stiffened and turned painful. “The woman involved might not be so bad. Certainly Mrs. Oakley's opinion of her is bound to be biased.” He paused again. “How on earth I get dragged into discussions like this, I don't know. Now you settle down and close your eyes and start thinking about your own affairs for a change.”

She lay back on the pillow but her eyes wouldn't close. They were fixed on Dave's face as if she were trying to memorize it. “If you and Ellen got divorced, would I ever see you again?”

“Of course you would,” he said roughly and turned out the light. “I want no more nonsense out of you tonight, do you hear? And kindly refer to your mother as your mother. This first-name business is going to be nipped in the bud.”

“I wish the morning would hurry up and come.”

“Stop wishing and start sleeping and it will.”

“I hate the night, I just hate it.” She struck the side of the pillow with her fist. “Nothing to do but just lie here and sleep. When I'm sleeping I don't feel like me, myself.”

“You're not supposed to feel like anything when you're sleep­ing.”

“I mean, when I'm sleeping and wake up real suddenly, I don't feel like me. It's different with you. When you wake up and turn on the light, you see Ellen in the other bed and you think, that's Ellen over there so I must be Dave. You know right away you're Dave.”

“Do I?” His voice was grave and he didn't rebuke her for using first names. “Suppose I woke up and Ellen wasn't in the other bed?”

“Then you'd know she was just in the kitchen getting a snack or making a cup of tea. Ellen's always around some place. I never worry about her.”

“That sounds as if you worry about me, Jess. Do you?”

“I guess not.”

“But you're not sure?”

She put one hand over her eyes to shade them from the hall light coming through the door. “Well, fathers are different. They can just move out, like Sheridan, and you never see them anymore.”

“That's nonsense,” he said sharply. “The Oakley case is a very special one.”

“Mary Martha says it always happens the same way.”

“If it makes Mary Martha feel better to believe that, let her. But you don't have to.” He leaned over and smoothed her hair back from her forehead. “I'll always be around, see? In fact, I'll be around for such a long time that you'll get mighty sick of me eventually.”

“No, I won't.”

“Wait until the young men start calling on you and you want the living room to entertain them in. You'll be wishing dear old Dad would take a one-way trip to the moon.”

She let out a faint sound which he interpreted as a giggle.

“There now,” he added. “You're feeling better, aren't you? No more worrying about me and no more thinking about the Oakleys. They're in a class by themselves.”

“No, there are others.”

“Now what do you mean by that, if anything? Or are you just trying to prolong the conversation by dreaming up—”

“No.
I heard with my own ears.”

“Heard what?”

“You might call it gossip if I tell you.”

“I might. Try me.”

She spoke in a whisper as if the Arlingtons might be listening at the window. “Howard is moving out, exactly the way Sheri­dan did. He told Virginia last night, right in front of me. ‘I'm leaving,' he said, and then he stomped away.”

“He didn't stomp very far,” Dave said dryly. “I saw him out­side helping the gardener this morning. Look, Jessie, married people often say things to each other that they don't mean. Your mother and I do it sometimes, although we shouldn't. So do you and Mike, for that matter. You get mad at each other or your feelings are hurt and you start making threats. You both know very well they won't be carried out.”

“Howard
meant
it.”

“Perhaps he did at the time. But he obviously changed his mind.”

“He could change it back again, couldn't he?”

“It's possible.” He stared down at her but he could tell noth­ing from her face. She had averted it from the shaft of light coming from the hall. “You sound almost as if you wanted Howard to leave, Jessie.”

“I don't care.”

“The Arlingtons have always been very nice to you, haven't they?”

“I guess so. Only it would be more fun if somebody else lived next door, a family with children of their own.”

“What makes you think the Arlingtons are going to sell their house?”

“If Howard leaves, Virginia will have to because she'll be without money like Mrs. Oakley.”

He stood up straight and crossed his arms on his chest in a gesture of suppressed anger. “I'm getting pretty damned tired of the Oakleys. Best friend or no best friend, I may have to insist that you see less of Mary Martha if you're going to let her situation dominate your thinking.”

She sensed that his anger was directed not against the Oakleys, whom he didn't even know except for Mary Martha, but against the Arlingtons and perhaps even Ellen and himself. One night she had overheard him telling Ellen he wanted to move back to San Francisco and Ellen had appeared at breakfast the next morning with her eyes swollen. Nobody questioned her story about an eye allergy but nobody believed it either. For a whole week afterward Dave had acted very quiet and allowed Mike and Jessie to get away with being late for meals and fighting over television programs.

“Did you hear me, Jessie?”

“Yes. But I'm getting sleepy.”

“Well, it's about time,” Dave said and went out and shut the door very quickly as if he were afraid she might start getting unsleepy again.

Left alone, Jessie closed her eyes because there was nothing to see anyway. But her ears wouldn't close. She heard the Arlingtons arriving home in Howard's car—it was noisier than Virginia's—the barking of their dog Chap, the squawk of the garage door, the quick, impatient rhythm of Howard's step, the slow one of Virginia's that sounded as if she were being dragged some place she didn't want to go.