He was all at once captive of a powerful emotion, one that was in effect anti-Ellie, but he could not help it; it was natural enough. He decided to go downstairs and give the drawing to his mother, after all these years, even though it was unframed. She would understand and be touched. It was a positive act on an otherwise negative day that had begun with a funeral. Nevertheless, he felt guilty as he prepared to pass Ellie’s room, taking pains to keep the drawing on his far side, though it was too large to be concealed entirely. But his sister’s door proved to be, uncharacteristically in daytime, closed so firmly as to give the impression it was locked.
When he was opposite the open door to his own room he saw Erie inside and was instantly almost asphyxiated with rage on the assumption that the bastard was already moved in.
Erie’s face had shown a desolate expression in repose, but he assumed the usual smile when he recognized Orrie. “Hi, fella!” he said, waving though they were so near each other. “I just came looking for you.”
Orrie advanced on him by instinct, as if to protect the room against further pollution though he had already completed his personal removal and had neither obligation nor, technically speaking, current license to perform such duty.
“Look,” Erie said, “I understand from your mom you got the wrong idea about me coming to live in the house. I’m not going to take your room away from you, for gosh sakes!” Trying to be charming, he was at his most obnoxious. “I wouldn’t ever try to do anything like that.”
Orrie at last managed to speak, but his throat was still constricted. “No, no!” He coughed. “It’s all yours.”
“Why, I won’t —”
Orrie shouted, “I’ve moved Out! If you don’t want it, it will be empty!”
Erie continued to smile, but he was obviously under tension. “It’s good news you’ve decided to go back to school. That’s what we wanted. But you’ll certainly need your room for when you come home weekends and holidays, which I sure hope you will, because I’m looking forward to us getting acquainted on a new kind of basis now. All these years we’ve known each other, and yet we really don’t know each other, as I bet you too would agree.” The look in his eye that Orrie had always hated most—the one that was always begging for something was worse than the know-it-all—was now more exaggerated than ever. There was not anything about the man that he did not despise. He detested the eternal five-o’clock shadow, which looked worst of all when Erie’s cheeks were newly shaven and powdered, the curve of his nose, his one crooked eyebrow, and the long simian upper lip.
“I’m not going back to school, at least not for a while, I can assure you of that. I’m staying here. I moved into the attic.”
Erie grinned at him. “Come on. Don’t try to kid a kidder.” He looked as though he wanted to deliver a joking finger to the bellybutton, as had been his practice when Orrie was younger.
“I’m living up there for the moment,” he said levelly. “I’ll be on hand.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Erie said, with what seemed an effort at enthusiasm. “But maybe you’ll reconsider after a day or so, before you get too far behind in your studies. That’s all that concerns me. I mean, I really like you being close by. Maybe we can have some good long talks one of these days. I mean, with Augie gone —”
“The sheets are in the bathroom cupboard,” Orrie said, in a louder voice than necessary. He had stripped his own off the bed and transferred them to the attic, but left the blanket and spread.
“You know,” Erie said. “This is a good big room. Plenty of space over there by the window for an extra bed and even a bureau. Supposing I buy those pieces: we could share the room. I wouldn’t be here much at all, and no matter what you say, I know you’ll want to go back to college soon, you’re too levelheaded to do otherwise. The last time I shared a room was with your dad, many years ago. Our grandpa—your great-grandfather—had a place down at the shore. Sometimes Augie and I would double up in one of the rooms for a week at a time. We got along all right. If one of us snored, it didn’t bother the other!” He acted as if this was a funny comment and grinned smugly. “How about you? How’re you getting along with that roommate? I wasn’t fortunate enough to go to college myself. On the other hand, I guess I was lucky in not having to go into the service. Though Augie seemed to make a go of it there, didn’t he, with those medals and all?”
It did not seem right that he used a father’s first name when speaking to the son. But he was anyway babbling. There was really nothing to the man. Molesting young girls was his speed. “My dad was a hero,” Orrie said. “I wish he could have lived longer.” Tears might have come to him at this point, had he not refused to show any weakness to this inferior creature.
Erie’s importunate look grew excruciating. “What’s that you have there?” he asked, indicating the charcoal drawing, which Orrie had momentarily forgotten he still held. “Is it that terrific dog picture you did in school?”
Orrie felt outraged. “How do you know about that?”
“I sometimes glance in your room,” Erie said sheepishly. “I don’t mean I’m snooping or anything. I’m always interested in how you’re getting along. We’re relatives, after all, and I’ve been close to your parents since before you were born.” He gestured at the drawing. “I want to buy that picture. There are people I’d like to show it to, people who are art collectors. Of course, we still think you should keep heading for medical school. But having artistic talent on the side can’t hurt.”
Orrie simply could not listen to any more of that without reacting in some extreme fashion, so he made his exit. The idea of giving the drawing to his mother now had been ruined. He went into the bathroom, closed the door, tore the picture into bits small enough for the drain, and flushed them down the toilet.
He stopped at Ellie’s door, tapped on it, and identified himself. She threw the bolt open and let him in.
“I need a pillow and blanket. It’ll begin to get cold soon, even up there. I thought of Gena’s.”
“Oh, sure,” said Ellie. “I’ll bring them up and make your bed for you.”
“I’ll do it.”
“You’re a boy.”
“I’m sure Dad had to do it for himself in the Army.”
She lowered her eyes and began to take away what was probably four years of her junk from Gena’s bedspread. The room was in another kind of mess than in her sister’s day, when dirty underwear was always in evidence and the dressertop laden with cosmetics. Ellie’s clutter was largely one of books and papers. He helped her now, transferring to the top of the desk several stout volumes, the uppermost of which was a work on the reptiles of North America.
“Since when are interested in snakes? I thought you were scared of them.”
“I am,” she said. “But I thought that might be only because I didn’t know much about them. You know, there are only a very few types of poisonous reptiles in the country. They’re the only ones to fear. The other types really do a lot of good for mankind in keeping down the rodent population.”
Ellie was certainly brainy, but that would never get her far with the boys—which however, in view of Gena’s lamentable ways, might not be the worst fate. At least one of the zoology professors at college was a woman, and there was an instructor in English who was so young and attractive that at first he took her for a coed.
“So I’ve heard,” he said. “But I guess it takes a special sort of girl to think about that when she sees a snake.” He hoped she would take that as the approbation he intended it to be.
“You know what might make a lot of sense?” she asked brightly. “There isn’t any good reason why we couldn’t share this room. If you wanted your privacy we could hang a blanket on a rope from there to there. You’d have a real bed to sleep in and if I moved her clothes out of the closet and took them up to the attic, there’d be loads of room for your stuff.”
Orrie shook his head reprovingly. “Come on, Ellie, you know that wouldn’t be right.”
“You mean just because of the ideas of other people,” she said with scorn. “So what do we care? We’re nothing like other people anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do you know anyone else like our family?” she asked bitterly. “Everybody looks down on us as it is.”
“That’s not true! Didn’t the Terwillens just invite us to move in with them?”
“Because they pity us! That’s not respect.”
He moved past her and, having peeled the bedspread off, claimed the underlying pink blanket and the caseless pillow in its striped ticking. After all these years Gena’s scent could still be detected, though what as a younger boy he had found nauseating was no longer blatant.
“I’m not saying you’re right,” he said, adjusting his armload of soft stuffs. “But let me tell you something: if you are, then the way to fight back is not to do anything weird, but to be as normal as possible, to do every single thing in the regular way approved by all. Not to throw away all standards and just do what you feel like! Can’t you see that?”
“I suppose it’s normal to sleep on the floor in the attic of your own home?”
He smiled in pride. “In certain circumstances, yes.” He might have added that she would understand such matters only when she was older, but was restrained by the thought that she might not. He was aware they had different approaches to life, but could not have said whether that was due to their opposing sexes or altogether to a natural variation in individuals even of the same blood.
He had not closed the door after Ellie had admitted him. Now their mother came into the doorway, though no farther.
She seemed to be speaking under a strain. As always, when he was in Ellie’s company, she addressed him only. “Erie came back to take us all out to dinner. He wants to save me the labor of cooking on a day like this.” She made a little quick mechanical smile. “He wants you to name the restaurant.”
“I’m not hungry,” Orrie said. He expected Ellie to chime in with the same message, as she had always done in the past, but she remained silent.
“Well, I wish you’d do me the favor of going,” his mother said.
“I don’t look at it that way.”
She took note of his burden. “I’m told you have moved up to the attic. That’s really foolish of you. I don’t want you up there. It embarrasses me.”
He sullenly avoided her eyes.
“He’s not moving in right away!” She continued to stand in the doorway. Was what she was saying largely for the benefit of a listening Erie?
Ellie had sat down at her desk and opened the book about reptiles.
“He can move in whenever he wants,” Orrie said at high volume. “The house belongs to him, doesn’t it?”
His mother winced. “You won’t even honor my request that you come to dinner?”
“It’s not the kind of thing you should be asking. There’s no honor in it.” Orrie was immediately sorry he had added the final phrase, but was too proud to withdraw or even soften it.
After a long pause, she left.
His sister rushed to the door, closed and locked it. She came to Orrie’s side. Her voice was lowered. “It’s not smart to be antagonistic. How can we get anything on them if we avoid them one hundred percent?”.
Orrie wished that honor would have allowed him to escape from the entire matter. He remained essentially alone, even with regard to Ellie.
“When they leave,” he said, “we’ll go down and have some fried eggs.”
“If there are any eggs,” Ellie said, looking skeptically from the tops of her glasses. “I think I forgot to get any.”
He climbed to his lair and dropped the blanket and spread on the wadded sheets from his old bedroom. When they moved out of their former house, the one he had known since birth, his mother discarded or gave to the Goodwill a lot of extra stuff that might have made this attic more comfortable. Empty as it was, it could scarcely be called cozy. But how long was he going to live there? The question made him uneasy and he dismissed it, for the main purpose of moving up was to find a place of refuge in which he could establish a relative peace of mind in which to formulate his plans. He did not need still another question. He would stay as long as he had to: he was not taking anything away from anyone else.
Ordinarily he left beds unmade. At home, his mother took care of that when it occurred to her or ignored it, but at college he had been chided so much by Paul that he had already got into the habit of emulating his roommate and stretching sheets and blankets taut, then folding the corners into a crisp arrangement that Paul had been forced to learn at the military academy he had been sent to at one unruly stage of his life. Such established practices were therapeutic for the troubled spirit, providing standards to live up to without added moral effort. Orrie now made up the floorbound mattress as if it were a complete bed. He would lie only a couple of inches above the rough attic floor and such vermin as coursed there when night fell: a thought that in other situations would have been even more unpleasant than here, where it was merely a distraction and even welcome enough as such. If rats and roaches were his only problem, how sweet an existence it would be!
When the bed was made, clothes hung from the rafters, and the books and other possessions on or under the card table, he had established residence and could find no further excuse for avoiding the issue of why he was here at all: not why the attic, which was self-evident, but why was he staying home from college? To protect Ellie. But how long would that job go on, and how much of his life could he afford to spend on it? It was degrading for him even to think that perhaps he was foolish to discourage her from running away from home. The proposal of the Terwillens was useless, however generous, for even if Ellie agreed to it and his mother consented—two impossibilities—it would violate all standards of decent conduct for his mother scandalously to live alone in the house with Erie while her daughter was taken elsewhere as an ophan.
Furthermore, what would “protecting” Ellie consist of, in practical measures, if he was in the attic? Surely locking her door, which she could do herself, would be effective absolutely. Erie would hardly break in by force in the wee hours. But supposing one night she forgot to turn the key, or, improbably, Erie could pick locks, or intended to waylay her on her way to or from the bathroom? But to make the last-named at all likely would mean Erie had the capacity to predict when she might feel the call of nature in the middle of the night. Orrie had no sense of that himself, and he had known his sister all her life.
But supposing anyway that Erie got his dirty hands on or too near the girl, and Orrie caught him. What to do then? Call the police? … Mother must be kept out of it. It would be too shocking for her. If she found out at all, it must be by degrees, after much preparation. Whatever the exact nature of her own association with Erie, she had a regard for him, which might be misguided, but it was genuine enough. Orrie must protect both his women, each in another way.
His father’s shotgun was propped vertically against the trunk, where he had left it. He wondered whether, if he revealed to Erie he had the goods on him, the man might want to do the right thing and commit suicide. If so, the means were at hand!
It was an asinine fantasy, and Orrie sneered at himself for having had it. When would he grow up?… The fact was that the shotgun could provide the answer, if he had the courage to use it, not of course actually to fire at Erie but to threaten him. Let Ellie alone or get shot! … But that too was ridiculous, which he realized as soon as he tried to imagine actually doing it, pointing a gun at this person he had known all his life. While never liking him, he certainly had not dreamed of threatening him with a lethal weapon.
Orrie lifted the gun, pointed it towards the rear window, and, feeling like a fool, lowered the barrel. A sensible idea came to him: how about writing an unsigned letter to Erie, saying that the writer had evidence he had been in the criminal habit of molesting female minors and could turn it over to the police but decided it would be be
tter for all involved, especially the bereaved family of the late Captain August Mencken, if a warning would suffice. Cease this vicious behavior at once or go to jail! There would be no second warning.
But he had no implements or materials with which to write such a letter, and did not want so soon again to apply to Ellie, believing that his presence tended to influence her emotions towards extravagance. He would not go downstairs until his mother and Erie left for dinner. He lay down on his new bed, through which, compressed as it was, he could feel the hard floor against his back. It was even harder on his hip and shoulder, when he turned. The mattress would not have been relegated to the attic had it been in serviceable condition. Perhaps the same thing could be said of himself.
14
“Nobody’s hungry,” Esther said. “They don’t want to go out to eat, and neither do I.”
She expected an angry reaction from E.G. but no longer cared about such things. He however surprised her with a lack of response. He was preoccupied.
“I can’t get over Orrie thinking I wanted to take his room away from him. I couldn’t seem to talk him out of it.”
Though Esther herself was dismayed by Orrie’s move to the attic, she now felt pride. “He’s always been independent. There’s his way and then the wrong one. No compromise.”
She was disappointed to see that the statement had sweetened E.G.’s mood. He began to smile faintly. “Yeah. Well, I can see the similarity at that. I was the same myself at his age. I guess I should keep in mind how young he is.”
Esther remembered Augie’s telling her more than once that his cousin as a boy had already got a good start at becoming the master manipulator he proved to be later on, and of course she had her own memories of a younger Erie. Orrie resembled him in no way. As to who was Orrie’s father, she could not have said. By now the matter was of no concern: it was exclusively herself whom she saw in her son and nothing of either of the two weaklings who could have provided the seed.