The Fiend (24 page)

“Come off it, Louise. Why, I'll bet after you've been married a few weeks you'll meet me on the street and think,
that guy looks familiar, I must have seen him before some place.”

“That could never happen.”

“A lot of things are going to happen. Good things, I mean, the kind you and Charlie deserve.”

She took a sip of coffee. It was so strong and bitter she could hardly swallow it. “Did—did Charlie come home after work?”

“No. But don't worry about it. He had to go on an errand for the boss. It was an important errand, too—making a de­livery to the Forest Service up the mountain. It shows the boss is beginning to trust him with bigger things. Charlie told me on the phone not to expect him before seven o'clock.”

“It's nearly nine.”

“He may have had some trouble with his car. I've had trouble up there myself on hot days. The engine started to boil—”

“He was at the library about an hour ago.”

“There's more to this, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

Ben's face didn't change expression but suddenly he pushed his chair away from the table with such violence that his coffee cup fell into the saucer. Brown fluid oozed across the green plastic cloth like a muddy stream through a meadow. “Well, don't bother telling me. I won't listen. I want one night, just this one night, to think about my own future, maybe even dream a little. Or don't I deserve a dream because I happen to be Charlie's older brother?”

“I'm sorry, Ben. I guess I shouldn't have come running to you.” She rose, pulling her coat tightly around her body as if the room had turned cold. “I must learn to deal with situations like this on my own. Don't come with me, Ben. I can let myself out.”

“Situations like what?”

“You don't want to hear.”

“No, but you'd better tell me.”

“I think I can handle it myself.”

“By crying?”

“I'm not crying. My eyes always water when—when I'm under a strain. There's a certain nerve that runs from the back of the ear to the tear ducts and—”

“We'll discuss the structure of the nervous system some other time. Where is Charlie?”

“I don't know,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of one hand. “I've been looking for him ever since Miss Albert called to tell me he'd been at the library.”

“You've been looking where?”

“Up and down Jacaranda Road.”

“Why Jacaranda Road? You must have had a reason. What is it?”

She took a step back, as if dodging a blow.

“You've got to answer me, Louise.”

“Yes. I'm trying—trying to say it in the right way.”

“If it's a wrong thing, there's no right way to say it.”

“I'm not sure that it's wrong. There may be nothing to it except in Charlie's imagination and now mine. I mean, he gets so full of worry that I start to worry, too.”

“What about?”

She hesitated for a long time, then she spoke quickly, slur­ring her words as if to make them less real. “There's a child living at 319 Jacaranda Road, a little girl named Mary Martha Oakley. Charlie swears he's never even talked to her and I believe him, but he's afraid. So am I. I think he's been watching her and—well, fantasying about her. I know this isn't good be­cause a fantasy that gets out of control can become a fact.”

“How long have you known about the girl?”

“Two days.”

“And you didn't level with me.”

“Charlie asked me not to.”

“But you're leveling now, in spite of that. Why?”

“I want you to tell me how it was the—the other time. I've got to know all about it, how he acted beforehand, if he was quiet or moody or restless, if he stayed away from the house on nights like this without telling anyone. Did he talk about the girl a lot, or didn't he mention her? How old was she? What did she look like? How did Charlie meet her?”

Ben went over to the sink and tore off a couple of sheets of paper toweling. Then he wiped the coffee off the table, slowly and methodically. His face was blank, as if he hadn't heard a word she'd said.

“Aren't you listening, Ben?”

“Yes. But I won't do what you're asking me to. It would serve no purpose.”

“It might. Everybody has a pattern, Ben. Even strange and difficult people have one if you can find it. Suppose I learned Charlie's pattern so I could be alert to the danger signals—”

“It happened a long time ago. I don't remember the details, the fine points.” Ben threw the used towel in the wastebasket and sat down again, his hands pressed out flat on the table in front of him, palms down. “If there were danger signals, I didn't see them. Charlie was just a nice, quiet young man, easy to have around, never asking much or getting much. He'd had two years of college. The first year he did well; the second, he had trouble concentrating—my mother suspected a love affair but it turned out she was wrong. He didn't go back for the third year because my father died. At least that was the ac­cepted reason. After that he went to work. He held a succession of unimportant jobs. One of them was at a veterinary hospital and boarding kennels on Quila Street near the railroad tracks. Every day the girl walked along the tracks on her way to and from school. Charlie used to chase her away because he was afraid she'd get hurt by a train or by one of the winos who hung around the area. That's how it began, with Charlie trying to protect her.”

Louise listened, remembering the reason Charlie had given her for wanting to find out the name of the people who lived at 319 Jacaranda Road:
“I must tell those people they've got to take better care of their little dog unless they want it to be killed by a car or something.”

She said, “How old was the girl?”

“Ten. But she looked younger because she was so small and skinny.”

“Was she pretty?”

“No.”

“What color was her hair, and was it short or long?”

“Dark and short, I think. I only saw her once, but I re­member one of her front teeth was chipped from a fall.”

“Though it may seem like a terrible thing to say, Ben, all this sounds very promising.”

“Promising?”

“Yes. You see, I've met Mary Martha. She's a plump, pretty child with a long blond ponytail, quite mature-looking for her age. She's not a bit like that other girl. Isn't that a good sign? She doesn't fit the pattern at all, Ben.” Louise's pale cheeks had taken on a flush of excitement. “Now tell me about Charlie, how he acted beforehand, everything you can think of.”

“I saw no difference in him,” Ben said heavily. “But then I wasn't looking very hard, I'd just gotten married to Ann. Charlie could have grown another head and I might not have noticed.”

“You'd just gotten married,” Louise repeated. “Now Charlie's about to get married. Is this just a coincidence or is it part of the pattern?”

“Stop thinking about patterns, Louise. A whole battery of experts tried to figure out Charlie's and got nowhere.”

“Then it's my turn to try. Where did you live after the wedding?”

“Here in this house. It was only supposed to be a temporary arrangement, we were going to buy a place of our own. Then Charlie was arrested and everything blew up in our faces. I didn't have enough money left to buy a tent, but by that time it didn't matter because I had no wife either.”

“And now Charlie and I will be living in this house, too.” Louise was looking around the room as if she were seeing it for the first time as a place she would have to call her home. “You still don't notice any pattern, Ben?”

“What if I say yes? What do I do then?”

“You mean, what do
we
do? I'm in it with you this time.”

“Don't say this time. There isn't going to be a this time. It happened once, and it's not going to happen again, by God, if I have to keep him in sight twenty-four hours a day, if I have to handcuff him to me.”

“That won't be much of a life for Charlie. He'd be better off dead.”

“Do you suppose I haven't thought of that?” he said roughly. “A hundred times, five hundred, I've looked at him and seen him suffering, and I've thought, this is my kid brother. I love him, I'd cut off an arm for him, but maybe the best thing I could do for him is to end it all.”

“You mean, kill him.”

“Yes, kill him. And don't look at me with such horror. You may be thinking the same thing yourself before long.”

“If you feel like that, your problems may be worse than Charlie's.” She looked a little surprised at her own words as if they had come out unplanned. “Perhaps yours are much worse because you're not aware of them. When something happens to you, or inside yourself, you've always had Charlie to blame. It's made you look pretty good in the eyes of the world but it hasn't helped Charlie. He's already had more blame than he can handle. What he needs now is confidence in himself, a feeling that he'll do the right thing on his own and not because you'll force him to. You spoke a minute ago of handcuffing him to you. That might work, up to a point. Perhaps it would prevent him from doing the wrong thing but it wouldn't help him to do the right one.”

“Well, that was quite a speech, Louise.”

“There's more.”

“I'm not sure I want to hear it.”

“Listen anyway, will you, Ben?”

“Since when have you become an authority on the Gowen brothers?”

She ignored the sarcasm. “I've been trying to do some figuring, out, that's all.”

“And you've decided what?”

“Charlie's problem wasn't born inside him. It doesn't belong only to him, it's a family affair. Some event, some relationship, or several of both, made him not want to grow up. He let you assume the grown-up role. He remained a child, the kid brother, the baby of the family. He merely went through the motions of manhood by imitating you and doing what you told him to.”

She lapsed into silence, and Ben said, “I hope you've fin­ished.”

“Almost. Did you and Ann go on a honeymoon?”

“We went to San Francisco for a week. I can't see what that—”

“How soon after you got back did the trouble happen be­tween Charlie and the girl?”

“A few days. Why?”

“Perhaps,” she said slowly, “Charlie was only trying, in his mixed-up way, to imitate you by ‘marrying' the girl.”

Jessie had turned off her light and closed her door tightly to give her parents the impression that she'd gone to sleep. But both her side and back windows were wide open and she missed very little of what was going on.

She heard Virginia and Howard quarreling in the patio, and later, the gate opening and slamming shut again, and Howard's car racing out of the driveway and down the street. Virginia started to cry and Dave took her home and then set out in his car to look for Howard. Jessie lay in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling and wondering how adults could get away with doing such puzzling things without any reason. She herself had to have at least one good reason, and sometimes two, for everything she did.

Shortly before ten o'clock Ellen paused outside Jessie's door for a few seconds, then continued on down the hall.

Jessie called out, “I'm thirsty.”

“All right, get up and pour yourself a glass of water.”

“I'd rather you brought me one.”

“All
right.”
Ellen's voice was cross, and when she came into the bedroom with the glass of water she looked tired and tense. “Why aren't you ever thirsty during the day?”

“I don't have time then to think about it.”

“Well, drink up. And if you need anything else get it
now.
I have a headache, I'm going to take a sleeping capsule and go to bed.”

“May I take one, too?”

“Of course not. Little girls don't need sleeping capsules.”

“Mrs. Oakley gives Mary Martha one sometimes.”

“Mrs. Oakley is a—Well, anyway, you close your eyes and think pleasant thoughts.”

“Why did Howard and Virginia have a fight?”

“That's a good question,” Ellen said dryly. “If, within the next fifty years, I come up with a good answer, I'll tell it to you. Have you finished with the water?”

“Yes.”

Ellen reached for the glass, still nearly full. “Now this is the final good night, Jessie. You understand that? Absolutely
final
.”
When she went out she shut the door in a way that indicated she meant business.

Jessie closed her eyes and thought of butterscotch sundaes and Christmas morning and flying the box kite with her name printed in big letters on all sides. Her name was away up in the air and she was flying up in the air to join it, carried effortlessly by the wind, higher and higher. She had almost reached her name when she heard a car in the driveway. She came to earth with a bang. The descent was so real and sudden and shocking that her arms and legs ached and she lay huddled in her bed like the sur­vivor of a plane wreck.