The Suspect - L R Wright (21 page)

She reached over to pat Cassandra's hand. "But I
love you anyway."

As she left the library, George Wilcox came in.
Cassandra's smile faded. She got up quickly and went to him. "Mr.
Wilcox. What's wrong? What's the matter?"

He looked at her vacantly. He was wearing
earth-stained pants held up by suspenders, a white shirt, soiled and
rumpled, and a shapeless felt hat, gray, with a drooping brim. On his
feet were tattered old running shoes. His face was crumpled and
weary. "I forgot my books," he said, and she saw panic in
his eyes.

She asked the volunteer to take over, grabbed her
purse from under the counter, and ushered George gently out the door,
down the sidewalk, and into a small coffee shop. '

It was lunchtime. Most of the stools at the counter
were filled, and many of the tables. Cassandra stood just inside the
door, her arm around George protectively, and willed the couple at
the table in the corner to leave. George stood quietly, his head
bowed; every once in a while he pounded his chest, almost
tentatively.

"
Do you hurt somewhere?" she said, bending
to speak directly into his ear. "Does your chest hurt?"

He shook his head, slowly.

The people at, the comer table stood up. The man left
a tip while the woman started for the door. Cassandra led George over
and sat him down; she exchanged a nod with the departing customers,
whom she saw sometimes in the library. She and George sat without
speaking as the waitress, who to Cassandra's relief was a stranger to
her, cleared the table and gave them menus. »

"
What have you eaten today?" said
Cassandra.

George lifted his head and pondered this. "Nothing,
I think.”

She ordered for them both: coffee for her, beef
barley soup and a glass of milk for George.

"I've been working in my garden,” said George.
"Forgot to change my clothes. Forgot my books, forgot to
change—I'm getting senile, that's what it is.”

"That's not what it is,” said Cassandra.

"
Oh, yeah? What then?" He seemed genuinely
curious.

"
I don't know. You don't look well. You keep
putting your hand on your chest. Doesn't it feel right, in there?
Should I take you to your doctor?"

"
Doesn't feel right at all, no," George
agreed. "No doctor, though. I don't think so. No."

He looked with interest at his soup, which had just
been placed in front of him. He took a sip of milk. "Don't care
much for milk," he said. "But it's good for you, I admit
it.”

His shaky fingers struggled with the small package of
crackers that had come with the soup. Cassandra took it from him and
opened it. He ate one of the crackers, slowly, and drank some more
milk.

"
Eat some soup,” said Cassandra.

George picked up his spoon. "You and that
Mountie, coming up from my beach like that; it gave me quite a turn."

"
I should have called and asked if it would be
all right. It was thoughtless of me. I'm sorry.”

"
I like showing off my garden, though. It's just
that . . .” He put his hand over his eyes.

Cassandra gripped his other hand, which lay on the
table.

"
Mr. Wilcox," she said. "What is it?
Please, what is it? What can I do for you?” She heard laughter from
the counter, and the waitress taking orders from the table nearest
theirs, a few feet away.

George lowered his hand and put down the soupspoon.
"I remembered on my way here,” he said thickly. "I was
trying and trying to remember when I'd seen it before, his fear. And
on my way here, I remembered.” He looked at Cassandra intently.
"Did I ever tell you about my sister?"

The waitress approached with a coffeepot. Cassandra
waved her away. "No, you didn't," she said to George.

He was straighter in his chair, now, and he'd stopped
touching his chest. His hands were in his lap. Cassandra wondered if
he had any grandchildren, and if he'd ever told them stories.

"Her name was Audrey," he said. "I
won't tell you about her. It would take too long. Maybe another day.
But she got married to Carlyle, do you see, that's the thing, and I
was there, at the wedding. But I couldn't remember it, couldn't
remember anything about it, whether she got married in a church or a
registry office or somebody's house or what." He leaned toward
Cassandra. "I gave her away, for Christ's sake, and I couldn't
remember anything about it." He slumped back in his chair and
looked away from her, over her shoulder, unfocused. "It's
because we were angry with each other about it, I think. And we
stayed angry." He looked again at Cassandra. "I still don't
remember where it happened or what her dress looked like, or Myra's,
or whether there were flowers all around, or what. But just today, on
my way here. . . I remember this, now. When the time came I got up
from where I was sitting and went to stand beside her, to give her
away, and . . . Carlyle was on the other side of her. I turned my
head, very slowly—it was as if the whole thing was happening in
slow motion—and out of the corner of my eye I saw Carlyle's head
turning, too. I wanted to look straight ahead, then, at the minister
or whatever the hell he was, but I couldn't; my head went right on
turning and then we were staring at each other, Carlyle and I, over
the top of Audrey's head; I looked right at his eyes, couldn't help
myself, and I don't know what I expected to see; I probably expected
he'd grin at me or maybe even wink, the son-of-a-bitch—but he
didn't. His face was white as marble and his eyes were full of fear.
Terror. The man was terrified." He looked out toward the window.
"I should have stopped it, do you see," he said dully.
"Right then and there. I should have stopped it regardless."

"
Is the soup all right?" said the waitress,
standing over them.

"It's tine," said Cassandra. "He's
just letting it cool." The waitress left, and Cassandra turned
back to George. "I think everybody gets nervous when they get
married. That's what I've heard, anyway." She was prattling, and
told herself to stop it. "I know my mother was. And my father."

"I couldn't remember when I'd seen it before,"
he said, nodding at his soup. "It bothered me a lot, because it
was the only thing that really shook me up, when the other thing
happened. I shouldn't say it, but it's true, that fear in his eyes,
it was the only thing that shook me up about that whole business the
other day. And I knew I'd seen it before, but I couldn't remember.
But I've got it now. That's when it was, all right. At first when I
was thinking about it I thought maybe it was at the funeral. That
would make sense, I thought. But it wasn't the funeral, Christ, no,
it wasn't the funeral." He grasped the table, as if he were
about to overturn it. "Christ, no, nothing but tears at the
funeral, all the tears you'd care to see, all that I Christly weeping
and grieving, the great big soppy lying tears of a crocodile."
He held on to the table, breathing heavily.

Cassandra sat tense, ready to restrain him, or
comfort him. After a while she saw his hands relax. He fumbled a
paper napkin from the container on the table and wiped his face. Then
he looked up at her, and she was greatly relieved to see that he was
calm.

"
I don't deserve your attention, Cassandra. But
I appreciate it more than I can say."

He'd gotten his dignity back, she didn't know how.

She smiled unsteadily. "You're my friend, Mr.
Wilcox.”

She insisted on driving him home.

Back at the library, she sat by the rest of the books
awaiting reserve labels but did no more work.

She was trying to determine where her duty lay.

She heard it clearly: "that fear in his eyes, it
was the only thing that shook me up about that whole business the
other day. "

What whole business?

She was sure, convinced, that she had misunderstood
him.

Yet her hands, clutched in the lap of her
full-skirted yellow dress, were cold.

Through the window, she saw the cloud-covered sky and
wondered when the rain would begin to fall.
 

CHAPTER 22

He had had no food today, except for a cracker and
half a glass of milk, and he knew food was important to a body his
age. But he didn't want to eat. Even the peas on his kitchen counter,
fresh picked that morning, didn't appeal to him. He shuffled into his
bedroom and got a large manila envelope from the bottom of a drawer.
In the kitchen he closed the curtains so as not to see the search
vessel doggedly combing the bottom of the bay, putting all its gizmos
to work in its relentless search for CarlyIe's shell casings. He
figured the staff sergeant was probably out there on that boat. Maybe
he'd fall overboard and drown.

George sat in his old leather chair and unwound the
red string that secured the flap of the big brown envelope. He turned
it upside down and shook it and the letters tumbled onto his lap,
letters written in a small neat hand on onionskin which the years had
tinged with ocher and caused to become slightly brittle. He arranged
them chronologically, and as he handled them was faintly surprised
that they produced in him no immediate turbulence.

From the day of her marriage in May until August,
when George and his family left for Germany, he spoke not a word to
Carlyle and saw his sister only three times. This upset Myra and
Carol greatly, and he knew they were extremely disapproving of him,
but he couldn't help himself. He couldn't bear to see Audrey and
Carlyle together. It wasn't a great deal easier to see her alone,
either, knowing when they said goodbye she would return to that man.
Besides, on the few occasions they did get together, usually arranged
by Myra, they invariably quarreled.

So it wasn't surprising that in the thirteen months
she lived after George's departure, she wrote them only eight
letters. He looked at them now, such a pitifully small pile, sitting
in his lap, and wondered why he was doing this to himself, torturing
himself in a useless search for affirmation of something he had
believed with all his heart until the moment he had hit Carlyle on
the head, cutting off his vicious ramblings forever.

Her letters were at first filled with bright chatter
about her piano students, her garden, learning to run Carlyle's house
the way he liked it run. She didn't speak about her private thoughts;
for all they knew, she didn't have any. It was frustrating to read
these letters, which to George described a cardboard-cutout world, a
stage set occupied by marionettes. Yet he couldn't blame her for not
stretching her hand across the rift that separated them; it was up to
him to try to repair the damage he had inflicted upon their
relationship.

Eventually, he did so. He wrote to her at Christmas,
when he and Myra and Carol had been away four months, and tried in
his clumsy way to make things right. "Just tell her you love
her,” Myra had said. "That's the most important thing.” And
so he had done that.

She wrote back to him immediately. His letter of
conciliation had obviously made her happy, and he clung to that
thought desperately ten months later, when she was dead. She
continued to avoid mentioning Carlyle, but he understood that. She
talked a great deal about plants, and about books she had read. Her
letters were brief and infrequent, but at least now they were warm
and confidently affectionate. He read them all, now, pored over them
with the greatest possible concentration, and he asked himself the
same questions he asked every time he read them. Why had she stopped
talking about the piano lessons she taught, which had for years given
her so much pleasure? Why did she never mention seeing any movies, or
going to parties, or having people to dinner?

Was it because then she would have had to refer to
"we” and "us"? Did she really believe George would
be enraged by even an oblique reference to the fact that she was
sharing a house, a life, a bed, with Carlyle?

He sat back and closed his eyes. He should have let
Carlyle talk. It wouldn't have done him irreparable damage to hear
Carlyle speak of those things which Audrey had apparently told him.
And if only he'd let him finish, he might finally have had answers to
his questions, answers which, as hard as he looked, he could never
find, incontrovertible, in the letters.

He turned to Audrey's shortest letter. It hurt him
even to look at it, because it was the last one, and because he had
learned later that it must have caused her physical pain to set down
even these few paragraphs. Her handwriting was a clumsy, childish
scrawl. The letter made no reference to this.

Dear George
, she had
written.

I'm addressing this only to you, because I know
there are things you still haven't told Myra.

I've been doing a lot of thinking, these past few
weeks. Carlyle has been away. He's coming back tomorrow.

I know you love me and have tried to protect me,
and I've trusted you all my life. You've been my rock, for as long as
I can remember, and before that, too, I know.

I know you think Carlyle is wrong for me. But I
can do something about it, George, if I've made a mistake. It hurts
me to think you don't believe I can do something about it, on my own.
But times have changed, George, and I can, truly I can.