The Cocktail Waitress

  Then I found myself dressed and standing at the front door, with no memory of having gotten myself there. I was in a fog and needed badly to clear my head. I didn’t even take the car this time, just headed off on foot, following the path Earl had taken each night and arriving at the Garden around the same time he always had. Jake saw me first, as the hatcheck booth was standing empty when I entered, and he stepped out from behind the bar to put his arms around me, a sure sign of how bad I must have looked. I tipped my head onto his shoulder and wept. Liz came out of the kitchen then, carrying a plate. “Oh, Joanie,” she said. “Let me serve this and then you and I can go back to the locker room for a good talk.” She hurried off to a corner table, the small one at the far end of the room. But when I saw who was sitting there, I knew there would be no talk in the locker room for me, not now.

  I came over when he raised a hand and beckoned, and took the seat across from him as I had done once before. There was a glass on the table, drained. The mint leaves in the bottom told me it had been another smash.

  “I thought I might find you here, job or no. No one likes to be alone after a death.”

  Sergeant Young was in his civilian clothes and looked no more like a policeman at that moment than Jake did—yet following so close on the heels of my encounter with Private Church, I couldn’t help feeling a moment of terror.

  “I’d hoped to warn you you could expect a visit from my partner, but I see from your look it’s too late. I hope he didn’t frighten you too badly.”

  “Only if you find talk of the electric chair frightening.”

  “He didn’t—”

  “Oh yes he did. He made it very clear what his goal is.”

  “You have to understand, he’s young and aggressive. That doesn’t make him right.”

  “It doesn’t matter if he’s right, does it? All that matters is what he can get a judge to believe.”

  “I think what’s right matters. Most judges do, too.”

  “Most. That’s some comfort.”

  “I don’t say don’t take it serious. But if you’re innocent, the storm will pass.”

  “Right now it just looks like it’s gaining steam.”

  “Well, that’s the other reason I’m here—another thing I thought you ought to know. You’ve got someone else working against you, not just Private Church.”

  “Who?”

  “Same as last time,” the sergeant answered. “We got a phone call from a woman, sounded like the same one that called before, though Private Church says she made an effort this time to disguise her voice. She wouldn’t give her name, but had the same package of news.”

  “… Which was?”

  “That it seems funny your first husband died, so you came into a house, and now this second one died, so you came into a fortune.”

  I felt like I’d never stop defending myself, for the rest of my life. It was a sensation like drowning. “My first husband died when he crashed a car, a car lent him by a friend, into a culvert wall,” I said. “My second husband died of angina, which had been diagnosed before I met him.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “He was under a doctor’s care. Two doctors. Whatever chemicals might have been found, I didn’t give them to him.”

  “I’m not saying I believe it. But others might. Did you hear Paul Pry today?”

  “That man on the air?”

  “The same. He dishes up dirt—that’s all his program is, dirt collected around recent news. And you were today’s news. He repeated, almost verbatim, what this woman told us on the phone—meaning, we’re not the only ones she called. A campaign seems to have started. I just thought you should know.”

  “I can’t thank you enough,” I said. I almost wanted to ask him for help, but what could he do to help me, more than he already had? For all that he appeared to be a decent person, and concerned, he was still a police officer. Anyway Ethel was my problem to deal with; I’d known all along she would be.

  I wished then that I’d brought the car, for her house was too far to walk. Instead, I headed for the hatcheck booth, drew shut the curtain, and took the telephone back as far as the cord would reach. Then I dialed the operator and had her connect me to Mrs. Jack Lucas. It rang eight times before Ethel finally answered.

  “I’m sorry, Joan,” she explained, “I was just giving Tad his bath.”

  “Good,” I said. “He might as well be clean before he comes home to me.”

  “… Home to you?”

  “I’m taking my son, Ethel. You know that. It’s why you’re trying so desperately to stop me, no matter how underhanded the method.”

  “Joan!”

  “I know about the calls—to the police, to the radio show. I’m here to say it’s going to stop, and stop now. You want to fight me, fight out in the open, not cowardly, from the shadows.”

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  “That’s O.K., you deny it all you want,” I said. “But you’ll lose either way. A boy should be with his mother, and now that I have the resources to support him, no court will favor your claim over mine.”

  There was silence on the other end, for just a moment. Then: “… As long as you’re not in jail, Joan. I’d focus on that if I were you.” It was a threat, but her tone of voice made it clear that she was scared herself, as if she really believed the story she was peddling about me and thought me dangerous. Well, this was the one time it could work for me.

  “Don’t make another call,” I said, keeping my voice low, “of the sort you’ve been making, or it might just be the last you ever make. Understand me?”

  I could hear her breathing on the other end of the line.

  “O.K.. then, you understand,” I said, and hung up.

  That night I returned to my other house first, the home I’d shared with Ron, to pick up clothes for the funeral. It seemed strange to be in it once more, with everything just as I’d left it, except for a smell that it had—a stuffy, close smell, no more than you’d naturally expect, but for some reason upsetting me. I picked up the same dark suit I’d worn to Ron’s funeral, but not the same hat, as this was fall, and a satin one wouldn’t do. Fortunately, a velvet one was there, and I took that. Also, just in case, I took the veil, folding it into my bag. Then I walked back to the Garden, and from there home.

  The limousines, one for me, two I’d ordered for the servants, and the two others, for Earl’s relatives and friends who showed up and very courteously waited, were due at 11:30, and sure enough, right on the dot, here they came, up the drive, and parked out front. Through the window, I saw the drivers get out and stand by their cars, shoulders back, rear doors open. Someone else I couldn’t see walked to the front door, oyster shells crunching underfoot, and rang the bell. Myra opened, and then she, Leora, Araminta, Jasper, Boyd and the others were there in the hall, ready to go, and they did. Then I picked up my own things and went out, closing the door behind me, and turning to the man who I knew was there to escort me. When I looked up it was Tom. “Surprised?” he asked.

  It was the first I’d seen him since I’d left the note as he slept, in the motel by the airport, and I would be a liar if I said my heart didn’t leap at the sight of him.

  “I asked for the job—the undertaker remembered me from before. But if you want me to blow I can get a replacement …”

  “I don’t want you to blow.”

  He put me in the car and got in beside me, in back. The driver looked surprised, but then touched his cap, got in himself, and started.

  “Is it true,” Tom whispered to me as the road unfurled outside the tinted window, “what Liz told me one night, down there in the Garden, that you never …”

  “That I never what?”

  “Never consummated, with this husband of yours that you’re burying.”

  “That’s none of your goddam business,” I told him, “what I did with my husband. Is that clear?”

  He didn’t answer. “Is it or isn’t it?”

  “… O
.K.”

  Perhaps a hundred people were there in the chapel, and Dr. Fisher read the service. He gave a brief sermon, of no more than five minutes, about Earl’s “exemplary, Christian character.” Then once more I was at a graveside, listening to another service, seeing another man throw earth on a coffin. And once more I was thanking the minister, this time telling him myself, not waiting for Ethel to do it, that he would be getting his donation in the mail. Then I was back in the car with Tom. When we got to the house the servants were already there and opened for me to come in. I turned to Tom, held out my hand and said, “Thanks for coming, Tom.”

  “I thought you might want to be with me, Joan.”

  “I do—but I’m not asking you in. It wouldn’t … it wouldn’t be right. Or at least it wouldn’t feel right to me, which amounts to the same thing.” I was thinking, also, of how it would look to the staff—and to the police, if word got back.

  “Then O.K.,” he said. “I’m off.”

  Suddenly I felt weak, like I had after the incident with Lacey at the airport, and like I had then, I wanted him with me desperately. I said, “Tom, wait a minute. I can’t have you in here. But—hold everything.”

  I went in and called to Myra that I was “going out for a little while.” I hastily threw together a bag, then stepped out the front door again, told Tom to let the car go, and led around to the garage. I got my car out, moved over to the passenger seat so he could get in behind the wheel, and told him to drive.

  “And where am I driving?”

  I closed my eyes and put my head back against the cushion. “Anywhere you choose, Tom. Even take me to the Wigwam again, I won’t mind. Just you decide.”

  The car pulled off onto the highway and we rode along in silence, I with no more sense of where we were than a child being driven by her parents. Once, Tom put his hand on my leg and I shivered beneath it, not from excitement but from relief. It was like a cool cloth on a burn.

  He pulled to a stop and bade me open my eyes. We were outside a small house with shingled roof and a little patch of lawn—nothing lavish or breathtaking, but wholly respectable, and I followed him inside gratefully. He shut the door, and I turned to him. Closing my eyes again, I inhaled. He asked: “Joan? Are you all right?”

  “… Tom, this smell.”

  “I’ll open some windows—”

  “No. I want to smell it. It’s you.”

  Then I was in his arms, and then he was carrying me back, back to his bedroom, sliding my zippers, kissing my neck. And so, the day of my husband’s funeral, I consummated with my lover for the second time.

  32

  Once again it went on until well into the evening, what with “retakes” and a brief break for food, eaten standing in Tom’s kitchen without a stitch on, spooning scrambled eggs straight out of the pan. When we finally sank into sleep, it was not even in each other’s arms, just lying any which way across the mattress.

  I woke, hours later, to the ticking of his clock by my ear. I felt neither happy nor sad, not pleasant or troubled or anything, just empty, like I’d been drained of all the bad things that had been filling me up, but also all the good things; I felt like I could start over, and like I had to.

  I got up quietly and crept out to the front room, where I slipped my dress over my head and my shoes onto my feet. I was afraid the sound of the door opening would wake him, but it didn’t. I stepped outside as briefly as I could, the early morning air raising gooseflesh all over my arms as I retrieved my bag from the back seat of my car. I’d grabbed a change of clothes, a fistful of makeup, a comb and brush, a few other things, and I tucked myself in the half-bath in his front hall to put myself together. The space was cramped and I didn’t dare turn on the light, but with the door half open I could see well enough in the mirror to get myself decent.

  He still hadn’t woken when I was finished, and I stood in the bedroom doorway watching him sleep. The faint light coming through his curtains fell glancingly across his naked torso, and I felt something for him that was a mixture of desire and gratitude. But I knew, too, that I wouldn’t wake in this room with him again. I craved him still—I always would, and some night it might be with the same intensity, like life itself was nothing compared to the touch of his hands on my body and of his body in my hands. Perhaps tonight. Perhaps every night. But he was part of the life I was leaving behind, not the one I was beginning, and a girl has to grow up sometime. You learn, often the hard way, that satisfying a craving is no guarantee you end up satisfied in the long run.

  I didn’t leave a note this time. I just left.

  I put my car away in the garage and came inside in my stocking feet, one shoe in each hand, and found my way upstairs without encountering any of the servants. In my bedroom I undressed and drew myself another bath, and once I’d washed and dried and put on a clean nightgown I lay down and didn’t wake until noon, when Myra came knocking at the door to say I had visitors downstairs.

  I saw them waiting by the couch with their backs to me, examining the bookshelves, and I almost walked the other way, toward the front door. But some sound from me must have alerted them, because they turned, and then I had no choice any longer. I walked into the drawing room to meet them.

  Sergeant Young was in uniform again and wore an unhappy expression, while beside him Private Church looked neutral as ever. Church was the one who spoke: “Joan White … formerly Joan Medford … formerly Joan Woods … you are under arrest, for the crime of murder…”

  After that I heard no more. His voice was just sound, wind howling, as I watched him walk toward me with both hands outstretched, and between them, linked by a short chain, a pair of gleaming metal cuffs.

  33

  Of the drive to the station in their squad car I remember nothing at all, except for the heavy metal grill that separated the front seat, where they were, from the rear, where they’d put me. Sergeant Young helped me out of the car when we arrived, assistance I needed because I couldn’t use my hands, and then kindly stood between me and the flashbulbs exploding as we made our way into the building. Once inside, I was booked and stripped bare and issued a prison outfit of some heavy, uncomfortable fabric softened only slightly, and scented harshly, by a thousand rugged launderings. They didn’t have a brassiere in my size, so I did without, a decision I swiftly regretted as my nipples were soon rubbed raw against the inside of the shirt.

  They stuck me in a cell, and there I waited, alone, with nothing to see or to do, except for taking trips from the bunk that was attached to one wall to the sink that was attached to another. It wasn’t cold, but I was shivering. I wrapped the thin blanket with which the bunk came supplied around my shoulders, and I sat, and I thought about what was in store for me.

  I’d known Private Church was out for blood—he’d made that plain. But what he could possibly have found from Sunday to Tuesday that would have justified arresting me in connection with Earl’s death, I couldn’t imagine. I wished now that I’d used the car ride to ask them. Though probably they wouldn’t have said, they might, and at least then I’d have been less completely in the dark.

  But I hadn’t. I’d been too shocked, too dumbfounded, even to speak in my own defense. I’d sat then as I sat now, staring straight ahead and wondering what my life would be from this point forward. I heard Ethel’s cruel words echo in my head—As long as you’re not in jail, Joan. I’d focus on that if I were you—and wondered whether I would ever see my son again.

  Some time later a guard unlocked the cell door and walked me down a corridor to a gray-walled room. We didn’t pass a window to the outside, so I couldn’t have said if it was day or night. The room held three chairs and the guard guided me to one, where I sat.

  Church and Young came through the door a few minutes later. They each took one of the remaining seats. Church was holding a sheaf of papers in a folder and he launched in without preamble: “Why’d you do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Kill him.”

  “I
already told you, I didn’t touch his medicine—”

  “Not your husband, Mrs. White. Tom Barclay.”

  I’d thought I knew what it was to be stunned, to be staggered— but this was one blow too many and I found myself reeling. “Tom? But Tom’s not dead.”

  They exchanged a glance. “I’d say we know a dead body when we see one.”

  “… What happened?”

  “Why don’t you tell us? You were there this morning.”

  “How—”

  Sergeant Young said: “Your car. It was seen outside his house. We have people going over both right now.”

  “Tom was alive when I left—asleep—”

  “In the bath?” asked Private Church.

  “No, in bed, naturally. Why, was he in the bath when—”

  He got up from his chair and stepped closer to me. I knew somehow that I was supposed to stay seated, and I did, but looking up at him looming over me, clenched fist on one hip, put my heart into my throat—as no doubt it was mean to. “Yes. In the bath, with an empty bottle by him on the floor and both wrists cut.” He turned a black-and-white photograph to face me. It was Tom, beautiful Tom, only not beautiful any longer. I bent double and vomited on the floor.

  Sergeant Young handed me a folded handkerchief so I could wipe my mouth. I think I thanked him. I can’t remember. I know I tried to say something to Private Church, something to push back against his accusations, but all that came out was, “I didn’t—We didn’t—”

  “Mrs. White,” he said, “you were seen together at your husband’s funeral. You were seen driving off with him after. You spent the night with him.”

  “That’s so, but—”

  “In celebration of your husband’s death, you started drinking—”

  “We didn’t! Give me any test you want, you’ll see. I don’t drink. I never drink.”

  “Well, he drank, anyway, and not just whiskey.” He waved another sheet of paper in front of me. “You want to read me what else his body was full of when he died?”