“Jim says I might not even have to go through a trial,” she said excitedly. “Isn’t that wonderful?” I smiled and patted her hand.
“That is,” I said. “I’m glad, Peggy.”
“I’m so happy,” she said. “I’ve dreaded it. I couldn’t sleep at night thinking about it.”
I nodded. “That’s wonderful, Peggy,” I said.
It was a beautiful day as the car buzzed along Sunset. A day to make a guy forget there is violence in the world. To make a guy forget that double murder had been a part of his life. To make him forget everything except that he was going on a picnic with his girl. It’s amazing how little can change a fellow’s attitude. Sun in the sky, a car driving along at a fast clip, breeze on you, the car radio playing Der Rosenkavalier Waltzes and her hand holding my arm.
I glanced over at her. She had a bright red ribbon in her hair, a tight red sweater, a pair of jeans, loafers. I noticed she kept pulling the sweater as loose as she could but it insisted on clinging to her curves.
“You look good enough to eat,” I said.
She leaned over and pressed her forehead against my arm. She sighed happily.
“I’m so lucky,” she said.
I kissed her hair. And felt the first sense of peace in weeks. It was almost as if we were escaping. To a sunlit day, away from every dismaying thing.
“It’s been a long time,” she said and her hands tightened on my arm.
We drove about fifty minutes to reach the park. We talked about inconsequential subjects mostly. I didn’t tell her I’d been to see her father. I wasn’t sure how she’d take it and I didn’t want to spoil anything.
The park was as Peggy said, just like going out into the hills. Wild overgrown hills, not at all like the Prospect Park in my home town, Brooklyn.
Griffith Park was a park. In size alone it made Prospect Park look like a corner lot. And for sheer beauty and clean wilderness it far surpassed the Brooklyn spot. Deer run loose in Griffith Park. Only teen-age gangs run loose in Prospect.
When we got out of the car and locked it up and got the two brown paper bags with our lunch, I looked around. Far up a winding path, on the crest of a hill stood a white-domed building. It looked like a fortress. The country around it looked like Scottish wilds. It was fascinating.
We left the path after a little while and plunged into the thick brush. Overhead the sun grew very hot. The blunt waves of heat seemed to cling to the ground as we climbed. Peggy pulled up the sleeves of her sweater and kept plucking at the wool to loosen it from her flesh. The sun on my head didn’t help toward cool detachment. Great drops of sweat rolled over my temples and cheeks. I watched her ahead of me as she climbed. If I could touch her, I thought.
And thought something else.
Was it possible that, unconsciously, Peggy dressed and behaved in a manner calculated to draw desire out of the men she was with? Ostensibly she feared men and their aggression. Why, then, did the very thing she claimed to fear always happen to her? That boy, her husband, Albert, and all the men she had driven half-mad with desire for her. Include me. What was it about her? Was that shy withdrawal part of her calculation? Was it all intended to gather to herself what she claimed to fear but actually desired intensely? They talk about accident-prone men. Well maybe there are rape-prone women, too.
I shook my head under the hot sun and felt dizzy. Partly with heat. Mostly with the confusion that a human mind can evoke when it begins to exist on different levels.
She stopped and sat down in the shade of a tree. I plopped down beside her.
“Phew, it’s hot,” she said.
“Am I out of shape,” I said.
“We both are,” she answered.
“Typing doesn’t give me much muscle,” I said.
“Neither does loafing.”
“Your brother said you were getting a job. Are y…?”
“My brother?”
Give me a scissors and I’ll snip off my tongue.
She was looking at me intently.
“When did you see my brother?” she asked.
At first I hesitated. Then I told her. Her face hovered undecided between acceptance and anger.
“Why did you have to go there?” she asked.
“I wanted to meet your father,” I told her. “I wanted to find out what sort of man had raised you.”
She looked at me a little sullenly. I noticed the halo of sunshine around her golden hair, the way the breeze flicked the delicate hairs against her forehead.
“Well, did you find out?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You couldn’t have asked me to take you, could you?”
“When did you ever offer to? I’ve asked you four or five times if I could go with you.”
“I don’t like to be investigated, Davie.”
“I wasn’t investigating.”
“What do you call it?”
“Listen, Peggy, isn’t it…”
“Oh, don’t start,” she said. “I’ve had enough lectures this week.”
She leaned back against the gnarled tree trunk with a sigh. She stared at her lap, then closed her eyes as if to shut me out.
“Everybody wants to investigate me,” she said.
I reached out and took her hand but she drew it back.
“Peggy, I’m sorry if I… offended you. But I think I have a little right to know something about you. Apparently you don’t care to tell me anything about yourself. I have to find out some way.”
“You don’t believe what I’ve told you, do you?”
“You’ve told me practically nothing.”
“Maybe I thought it was better.”
“Maybe I didn’t,” I said.
She opened her eyes.
“What would you like to know?” she asked, bitterly. “How I killed Albert? How I took an icepick and…”
“That’s enough, Peggy.”
“Let me tell you all about it,” she said.
“You did kill your husband, Peggy.”
“Yes, and I’d kill him again! You hear that, I’d kill him again. He was a pig, an animal!”
“And would you go through everything else again. The trial, the accusations, Jim?”
“Why do you always keep harping on Jim? He’s always been good to me.”
“Good! He threatens to have you executed for a crime you’ve already been acquitted on! Is that what you call being good to you?”
“Maybe he’s…”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
“I guess not. Well, Jim hasn’t been exactly good to me.”
“He’s your friend.”
“Does a friend have you beaten senseless?”
“That was a mistake and you know it,” she said. “He thought you were with his wife.”
“He doesn’t give a damn about his wife!”
“She’s an alcoholic and a nymphomaniac, why should he?”
“What? Is that what the son of a bitch told you? God damn it, Peggy, when the hell are you going to get some sense in your head. Oh, stop looking so goddamn petulant! That man has been shooting lies into you until you’re poisoned! He’s the one who made Audrey into an alcoholic. And you’re as much of a nymphomaniac as she is! She’s so faithful to him, it’s pathetic.”
“Jim told me…”
I slammed a palm against my forehead.
“Jesus! Jim told you, Jim told you! Horse manure! Let me tell you what he told me. He said he’d do anything to win you. He said he’d lie and cheat and connive and consider it all justified if he won your affections. He said he’d lie about me. He said I could keep refuting his lies but he’d keep lying until you didn’t know whether you were coming or going. He said you killed three men! He said you were deranged! Is that the man you want to marry?”
Her face was pale as she looked at me. She shuddered with caught breaths. And I kept thinking of how many troubles would be avoided if people would only tell each other the truth.
/> “Is all this true?” she said, her voice shaking.
“Uh!”
I lurched to my feet and started sliding, stumbling down the hill in a blind rage.
“Davie!”
I stopped but didn’t turn. I heard her shoes on the hill. Then she came heavily against me and moved around to face me.
“Don’t leave me!” she said. Almost angrily, as if I were betraying her.
I held her in my arms without spirit.
“Why can’t we get away from all this?” she said unhappily. “Why does it follow us wherever we go?”
“Murder has a way of following people.”
We stood there a few silent moments, then went back to the tree and sat down on its roots. I took two apples out of one of the bags and we ate without speaking.
“I can’t believe it,” she said after a while.
I looked at her sharply.
“Davie, I don’t… mean I don’t believe you. I mean that it’s so incredible to me. Why hasn’t he ever told me about his wife, told me the truth?”
“Because he only tells lies or that segment of the truth which serves his advantage. Like the way he told me how you cut open Dennis’s arm but neglected to tell me also that Dennis threatened to expose his crooked practice to the police.”
“He told you…”
“Peggy, don’t deny this. It’s been verified.”
“I… I cut him. He tried to… to make love to me.”
“Why should that frighten you so?”
“Davie, if you went through what I did, you couldn’t stand having anyone’s hands on your body. Can’t you see that?”
“I… suppose.”
“He… touched me. He tried to make me take my blouse off. I…” She shuddered. “I don’t know what happens when… men try that. It just makes me…” She couldn’t find the words but could only express it by the clenched fist she held shakingly before her.
“All right, Peggy,” I said, “I’ve understood that a long time. You’ve never seen me try it, although God knows I’ve wanted to.”
She looked at me sadly.
“Oh Davie,” she said, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to tease you. You know I don’t. It’s just that…”
“All right.”
“What did you say about Jim’s practice?”
“You mean you don’t know that either?” I said wearily.
“No, I…”
“He’s connected with the crime syndicate here, Peggy. He’s a criminal.”
“Oh, no…”
“Is there anything else you need?” I asked. “He’s lied to you, he’s cheated you, he’s threatened you. He’s a criminal, he’s had two men killed, he’s turned his own wife into a drunk. Is there anything else you need?”
She glanced at me, then back. She sat there silently, looking at the ground.
“I’m so… confused,” she said.
“It’s been his most effective weapon against you,” I said. “Confusion.”
“It’s so hard to believe. All at once.”
“Take your time,” I said. “He’ll be the same for years to come.”
“Jim,” she said, shaking her head.
After awhile, we got up and climbed the rest of the way. At the peak of the hill we stood panting and looking down at Los Angeles, which was spread like a carpet at our feet. The climb had been exhausting. At least it had worn away our tempers.
“You should see it at night from here,” Peggy said.
“I bet it’s nice.”
“It is.”
She turned to me. She looked into my eyes, then lowered them. She looked up again, and her hand stole into mine.
“Davie.”
“Yes.”
“I’m… sorry. I mean. I’m sorry. That I keep… fighting the only thing that ever meant anything to me.”
She looked up and smiled.
And I don’t know what happened. Words came over me suddenly. I don’t know from where. But suddenly they were in my mouth and I was speaking them.
“Peggy, marry me.”
She looked startled.
“Marry?” she said.
“Why not? Don’t you love me?”
“Davie. Davie, you know I do.” Her eyes on mine, the way they were that first night. “Oh, Davie.”
“Will you?”
“You want to marry me?”
“Yes, Peggy.”
“You love me enough to marry me after all this?”
“Peggy!”
The moment seemed huge. Maybe it was the moment that overwhelmed me more than a love for Peggy. High on a hill as if we stood above the world. The hot sun on our heads, the wind on us, the white-domed castle waiting for its prince and princess.
“I love you enough for that,” I said.
“I want to tell you,” she said, “I want you to know.”
I felt myself shiver.
“Know what?”
“I’m going to tell you… about myself. Then when… when it’s over you can decide. If you want me or not. If you even want to see me again after today.”
“Peggy, stop…”
“Don’t say anything,” she said. “Listen.
“I killed my husband,” she said. “You already know that. But you don’t know why. Not really,” she said, as I was about to speak. “You can’t know how it was.”
She clasped her hands in front of her. She didn’t look at me. She looked out at the darkening hills.
“My mother was dead a long time,” she said. “And the woman I stayed with when my father was away had too many troubles to spend any time with me. No one ever told me about… men. I didn’t know anything. Oh God, I was so ignorant. Once I… once I thought you could have a baby if a man kissed you. I was afraid to let any boy kiss me. Once a boy kissed me at a party in grade school. I was paralyzed. I was so afraid. I thought they all hated me and were making me have a baby. I was in torture for three months, Davie. Until a girl I knew found out and told me the facts.”
I heard her throat move and I knew how much it must have embarrassed and hurt her to tell me these things. I could feel it. I was probably the only one she’d ever told in her whole life.
“I was forced to get married,” she went on. “You know about that. I was barely seventeen but I got married. Graduated from high school one day and the next day I got married. Because my father accused me of…”
“I know,” I said.
“Married without knowing the slightest thing about sex,” she said. “My wedding night was a nightmare. You can’t know how hideous it was. He was like an animal. I know you don’t like me to use the word but it’s the only one that describes him. He chased me around the hotel room. Maybe that sounds funny but…” Her voice broke. “It wasn’t funny. I was so afraid I couldn’t even think. All I could do was run and the more I ran and the more I cried, the more excited he got. He trapped me in a corner and he… ripped my nightgown off my body. Into shreds! I hit him, I scratched him, but it didn’t do any good. It just excited him.
“I was raped by my own husband.”
She sat there in silence, a shiver wracking her frame. Breath quivered in her throat.
“It was like that all the time,” she continued, “all through my married life. Me with no knowledge of anything, just fright. And him… brutalizing me. Night after night until I thought I’d go out of my mind and commit suicide. You don’t know what it’s like to lie awake at night and plan on committing suicide. I kept trying to make myself do it. But I didn’t have the courage. So instead I just went deeper and deeper until I… I lost my head.”
She drew in a quick breath and bit her lower lip to keep it from trembling.
“I was pregnant,” she said. “I was sick. I couldn’t hold down any food. Nights I used to just stay in the bathroom on my knees on the cold tile floor… just waiting to throw up.
“But that didn’t matter to him. No, he wanted his flesh, his… his toy! I killed him and I swear I’d do it again,
I would, I would!”
“I understand,” I said. But did I?
“No,” she said, “I haven’t told you yet.”
She hesitated a moment. Then she said, “Once I went to a movie and… and the person I was with put his arm around me and tried to put his hand inside my blouse.”
“Peggy.”
“No, you have to know sooner or later, Davie. This isn’t just another story I’m telling you.
“That same person… attacked me later in the car.”
“Peggy, don’t. Stop torturing yourself.”
“Do you know who it was?”
“Peggy.”
“Do you?”
Her hands were shaking uncontrollably in her lap.
“Peggy, please.”
“It was him!” she said, her voice shaking with the memory. “Him! My own father!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
As we entered he looked up from the couch. He was dressed informally in a brown suede jacket with a lightly patterned sport shirt under it.
“I’ve been looking for you all day, Peg,” he said firmly. He didn’t even glance me.
“Jim,” I said.
“Will you get dressed as quickly as possible,” he said to Peggy. “We’re to go to a barbecue at Lamar Brandeis’ beach house. We’re late already.”
I held my temper. The axe would fall on him soon enough. I glanced at Peggy.
“Jim, I…” she started.
“Peggy, I wish you’d hurry.”
She took a deep breath.
“I can’t, Jim,” she said.
His eyebrows drew together and I felt inclined to utter a mocking “Bravo” at this splendid bit of facial business. But facetiousness didn’t have much of a hold on me. I was thinking of what he might do to me or have done to me when he found out. More particularly of what he might order Steig to do.
Jim was looking at her gravely.
“And why, may I ask?” he said, still ignoring me.
She couldn’t finish. She seemed halted by those eyes. Those grey-blue eyes on her, probing, demanding, almost hypnotizing.
“Peggy is staying here,” I said.
“No one is speaking to you!”
Anger at last! And anger in Peggy’s sight. I almost reveled at it. Something ugly that had been veiled too long from her eyes. Now at last, revealing itself.