“Oh, Darling, don’t spoil it for Ben. It means so much to him. I promise you it’ll be big, and I think you’re going to like it.”
“Then, OK.”
“At ten? You’ll call?”
“Yes, Mother. I love you.”
And those were the last words I said to her, God rest her pretty, sweet soul.
It said in the afternoon papers that Esther was out on $1,000 bail, and I called her, after looking the Davises up, fortunately remembering their name, John P., from the piece that came out in the paper. I wanted to tell her I had no hard feelings, that I understood she’d been put, made to do what she did by Rick. But once again I was calling one person and another came on the line. It was a boy’s voice kind of muffled, the way people speak when they don’t want to say who they are. But all of a sudden I knew who it was. I said, “Rick, what are you doing there?”
Then he commenced cussing me out, saying awful things to me, so filthy and mean and obscene I can’t write them down. I couldn’t make myself. I said, “Rick, you stop talking like that! Stop saying such things to me.”
“Listen, bitch, saying’s just the beginning. The rest of it’s what I do! I’m going to get you if it’s the last thing I do on this earth! Do you hear me? Are you listening?”
“Rick, you listen to me! You give yourself up, do you hear? Or someone’s going to get you in a way you don’t expect!”
Those were the last words I said to him, and I hope he remembered them when he died that night on our lawn.
He hung up on me, and, of course, I told Mr. O’Brien. He went into action fast, calling the Hyattsville police, not waiting to go out to the car and use his radio phone but doing it right there in the theater, to tip them that Rick was home. So they closed in in a couple of minutes, but Rick gave them the slip. And how he gave them the slip, it turned out later, was to put his mother’s dress on, run a ribbon through his hair, and walk out of the house, right in front of their eyes. He was wearing shorts, and with the dress down to his knees they didn’t show at all. So with that long hair of his and the sissy walk that he had, no one suspicioned him. That sissy walk, if you ask me, was part of the trouble with him. And all that took plenty of time, what with Mr. O’Brien standing by, there in the theater lobby, after giving the number in of the pay station there for the callback he asked them for. It was going on eight when he finally got word that they didn’t have Rick, so at last we could go to the car and think about dinner. So I suggested the Bladensburg place and we went there, and I found out about an officer, that he doesn’t stint himself when it’s at somebody else’s expense. He had shrimp salad to start, then steak, baked potato, salad, and pie a la mode to wind up. So I had the same, and the check was $15.75. I left a $4.25 tip, and we went out and got in the car.
We crossed the bridge and drove past the house. At the corner a flashlight came on and waved, and Mr. O’Brien stopped. An officer, one in uniform, stepped to the window and whispered a while. Then Mr. O’Brien drove on, first taking a right to turn the corner. “I’m circling the block,” he said. “They want me to park out front, so if we’re needed we’ll be on call.”
“If I’m needed, you mean?”
“Something like that, I would say.”
“Why don’t you rig up a bullhorn? Set it up so I can talk into it? If Rick’s here he’ll know where I am, that he hasn’t a chance to get me and will perhaps listen to me.
“It’s an idea, at that. I’ll call it in.”
He took three more rights, then pulled in to the curb a few steps down from the house. It was dark, with the front light not yet on, as, of course, it had been broad daylight when Mother and Steve went out. He commenced talking into his radio phone, unhooking the receiver from the dashboard and pressing buttons and stuff. Then he hung his receiver up, or mike, or whatever it’s called, and said, “They’re sending the bullhorn over, be here in a couple of minutes. Now, what are you going to say?”
“Well, I don’t know. I hadn’t thought.”
“I want to hear it.”
“You mean now?”
“That’s it.”
“Can’t I just start to talk and act natural?”
“And louse it? No.”
“Well, what do you want me to do?”
“Pretend I’m him. Talk to me.”
So I commenced with the pretending, getting off stuff like, “Rick, this is Mandy. Rick, are you there, do you hear me? Rick, they have the money, they found the car, and there’s no use you holding out. Rick, they’re going to get you, so why not give yourself up now?” Stuff like that, but then Mr. O’Brien cut in, “What are you scared of? What’s bugging you?”
“Who says I’m scared of anything?”
“Well, your mouth’s trembling.”
“My mouth always trembles when I have to say something by heart. And who says I should learn it by heart? Listen, Mr. O’Brien, suppose you attend to the copping, while I do the talking my own self, and in my own way; you don’t mind? I’ll make it plain, don’t worry.”
“Then, OK.”
There may have been more, I don’t know. We jawed at each other quite some little time. But during while it went on, a car passed up the street, stopped up near the corner, and backed into the curb. Then it pulled ahead, and backed up again, to park. As the lights went out, a man and a woman got out and started walking toward us. They had come some little ways before I realized they were Mother and Steve. They started toward the house but then stopped and turned back, as though hearing somebody speak. Steve stepped to the curb, where a car was parked, and I heard him say, “OK.” Then the two of them started back, to the car, not to the house. She took Steve’s arm real friendly, and it crossed my mind how pretty she looked from behind, just walking along. It crossed my mind to wonder if I was as pretty as that, as she sometimes said I was. Then I was screaming all of a sudden, without even knowing why. And then I did know why—it was to warn her, but I was too late. A shadow had moved out from the cedar tree, the one on the left-hand side of the walk. Then it moved fast, as though to cut her off. Then it darted, and I heard Rick speak my name. By that time she had stopped, and Steve had stepped in between. Then fire cut the night, from the shadow, and Steve went down. Then fire cut the night again, and Mother went down. Then fire cut the night from all sides, and Rick went down.
Then I was running up the sidewalk, not knowing how I got there, or how I’d got out of the car. Hands reached out to grab me, but I shook loose and went running on. Then, by the flashlights the police were holding, there was my darling mother, dead. And there was Steve, his drawn gun still in his hand. And there was Rick, still in his mother’s dress, the red ribbon still in his hair.
18
THEN I WAS ON the sidewalk beside Mother, sitting there holding her hand, while the officers went around making notes and taking flashlight pictures. Then a guy was there, asking who called for a bullhorn. “I did,” said Mr. O’Brien, appearing from somewhere, “but it won’t be needed now. Take it back.” I began kissing Mother’s hand, and then began kissing her, on the mouth, I mean, but it was so cold I was terrified and started to wail. I wailed louder and louder and louder, like some kind of a banshee, and heard Mr. O’Brien say, “This girl is in pretty bad shape, and I’m taking her to Prince George’s General.” But I kept right on wailing while he stretched me out on my back and tried to get me quiet. Not that he did, at all. Then an ambulance was there, and two guys lifted me onto a stretcher and tucked a blanket around me. Then I was inside the ambulance, and then in some kind of a room with women and kids and guys with bandaged heads—the accident ward, I guess. But Mr. O’Brien was there and got action on me pretty quick. An intern bent over me, where I was still on the stretcher, and then had me carried away by orderlies in green smocks.
Then I was in bed, in a room, with my clothes all taken off, and he was jabbing me in the backside with a needle. Then he said to Mr. O’Brien, “That ought to do it for a while.”
Next thing I knew, I was lying
under a sheet, with a hospital gown on that barely came to my waist, and I was sobbing into my hands, which I was holding over my eyes. And I heard some woman say, “That girl in the other bed is driving me insane. All she does is whoop and holler and bawl. I can’t read, I can’t sew, I can’t sleep, I can’t think!” Then another woman said, “It’s OK, I’ve arranged to move you out, into another room. Now!” When I looked a nurse was there, helping a woman get up from the other bed, put her kimono on, and leave. I was alone for a minute, but the crying kept right on. Then another nurse came in, carrying a bottle, and she threw back the sheet and took off my hospital gown, so I was naked. She said, “Now you have the room to yourself, and I’m going to give you a massage—that ought to quiet you down. But if it doesn’t, if you still can’t get control, then I have to slap you. Do you hear?”
“Yes, Miss, I hear.”
“Not as punishment. It’s the indicated treatment.”
“I’ll do my best, I’ll try.”
“You can if you make yourself.”
So she started the massage, slobbing the lotion on, which was what she had in the bottle, witch hazel I think. And I tried to hold in, but pretty soon the sobs broke out once more. Then pow, here came the slap, and then another and another. But I didn’t like it too much and started to scream. She slapped me still harder, but then suddenly she stopped. Then I heard a man’s voice say, “Perhaps if you leave me with her, I can get her quiet. It’s all right, I’m her father.”
When I twisted around to see, she was leaving and Mr. Wilmer was there. “What do you mean you’re my father?” I yelled at him. “You’re nothing but my stepfather, the guy that married my mother...and she’s dead!”
I really came out with it, but he took me under the arms, the way you take a child, lifted me up, and carried me to a chair, where he sat down with me in his lap. Then he reached for the sheet and pulled it over me, for warmness, but the part next to him was naked. Then he whispered, “If you want to cry, little Mandy, OK, let it come, nobody’s going to slap you. But don’t be surprised if I start crying too. I’ve had about all I can take, and I loved her too, you know.”
“When did you get back?”
“This morning.”
“What time is it now?”
“Just after two o’clock.”
“And what day is it?”
“Wednesday.”
“Then, it was last night that it happened?”
“That’s right. I was so glad, coming off the plane, that I’d be seeing her soon, and you, and then I was paged at the airport. When I went to the office, Clawson’s wire was waiting for me.”
Suddenly I realized I wasn’t crying anymore, and asked, “Why did you say you’re my father?”
“Mandy, I am.”
“We fixed it that Steve was my father.”
“I know about that. But I am.”
“I asked you why you say so.”
“It started when I was eighteen, gassing up in a filling station, when a girl ran in off the street, a teenage girl in slacks, to get a Coke from the machine. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and as she started out I said, ‘Hey.’
“‘Well, hey your own self,’ she answered.
“‘Where you think you’re going?’
“‘Well, it’s Saturday, isn’t it?’
“‘And what does that have to do with it?’
“‘On Saturday you wouldn’t know where you’re going.’
“‘Then, that means you’re coming with me?’
“By that time she was at the door of the car looking me over and held the Coke bottle at me for me to take a swig. About that time the guy came with my change, and she helped herself to a dime. She put in a call, then came and got in beside me. She said, ‘I told Mother I’d run into friends, and she gave me till six o’clock.’ I swore to have her back on time and ran her down to our beach house, one that my family had on the Bay, between the bridge and Annapolis Harbor. But it was late September, and we had it all to ourselves, the happiest day of my life—completely silly and mad, with that mad, wonderful girl. We went swimming, she in my mother’s bikini, I in my own trunks, and then we came back to the beach house. I got her home at six sharp, and her mother came out to shake hands and congratulate her on having ‘punctual, dependable friends.’”
“OK, and what happened then?”
“I had to go off to college. Yale.”
“Well? And what happened then?”
“Mandy, you know, don’t you?”
“Steve told me a little.”
“Then there’s no need for me to say more. I was stunned when she married Vernick. But, say this for her: she’d been going with him and honestly thought he was the one.”
“And when did you find out that you were?”
“The second I laid eyes on you.”
“Last week, you mean?”
“You’re the image of my little sister, whom your mother never knew, as she died before that day at the beach. And that same day I proved it by watching your lips, how they trembled, like hers used to do, when I made you recite that day. Remember? ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’? You looked like a cute little bunny, a rabbit eating lettuce. That night I convinced your mother, and we were going to tell you as soon as that mess was over.”
“Is that the surprise you had?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I went nuts trying to guess.”
“Mandy, you also look like your mother, and that’s what cost her her life. That boy mistook her for you. She died that you might live.”
“It’s what makes it so hard for me.”
He held me close, and I knew, of course, it was true, that I’d found my father at last, and was glad, but not very much. Actually, I didn’t feel anything, perhaps on account of what I’d been through. He began talking some more, about Steve, and the “glory-hole scapula he wore around his neck, a card with that title, which directed that he be cremated if he got killed in a crash and his ashes scattered on Number One. So his family are doing that.” And he also mentioned Rick, “whose family claimed his body and are burying him in the plot that they have in one of the cemeteries. I don’t know which one and really don’t much care.” I said I didn’t either and to please not talk about it. But he said, “I’m leading to something, Mandy: her I want near us, where we’ll be living now—at the house on the lake, our home, the one I had with her, that she helped build and lived in just one night. I want to bury her on our island.”
“Your...what did you say?”
“We had an island, she and I.”
“I want to hear about it!”
I popped out with that pretty loud, and pulled away from him so the sheet slid off and I was naked again. He looked at me very strange but got the sheet from the floor, put it over me again, and went on, “When the water was analyzed, of Dickinson’s Run on my place, it was right for fermenting grain, but to pump it I had to dam up the stream. So, of course, that made a lake, but when the water rose an island was made out there, a beautiful green knoll, full of laurel and pine and oak, just out from the shore. They opened the sluiceway at sunrise, and by noon when we got there, your mother and I in the car, with the picnic lunch she had made, the island was already formed, with the lake rising fast. We sat there talking about it, how it would be our place, our love nest that we would have, where we’d hold hands and be happy. I said, ‘We’re starting tomorrow, soon as the bridge is put in. The lumber is being delivered today, construction will take no more than two hours, and then romance can begin. It won’t be anything fancy, just a footbridge two boards wide. But it’ll have a handrail on it, in case the lady gets stewed.’” He explained, “That was a gag we had, that occasionally she got stewed. She didn’t, but she liked a glass of champagne.”
“Two glasses, Mr. Wilmer.”
“So OK, she liked a whole bottle!”
“And then had to go wee-wee.”
On that we both burst out crying, holding each other clos
e. Then, like with her that day, I could taste the salt of his tears. I said, “Go on about the island. Are we going to go there too? Is it going to be our island?”
“Don’t you want to be near her, Mandy?”
“Oh yes! And near you, too.”
“So we were kidding alone when trouble appeared or what looked like trouble to her. Five deer—a stag, three does, and a fawn—stepped out of the brush over there, walked to the edge of a lake they’d never seen before, and started looking unhappy. And she started looking unhappy. I said, ‘Hey! Quit screwing your face up like that! And besides, what are they glawming about? In the first place, there’s plenty to eat over there, laurel and dogwood and grass, and plenty of water to drink. In the second place, the bridge will be built tomorrow, and if it’s good enough for you it’s good enough for them—and they don’t even drink champagne!’ And more of the same. She said, ‘Well, I haven’t said anything?’ Unfortunately, Mandy, she could talk louder saying nothing than anyone else can whooping. And then, anticlimax, here came the deer, swimming. Or at least four of them did, the stag and the three does. But the fawn was afraid and hung back. So, of course, his mother had to go back. The three others paid no attention, but when they reached our side they went on to the salt lick that was down the hill from us. But on the far bank it kind of tore your heart, the doe’s efforts to lead Junior in, and his fear of the water. I chimed in with more of the same, ‘No reason, no reason at all, that he can’t stay right where he is. Tomorrow he’ll cross in style.’
“And then, Mandy, disaster struck.
“On our side, a dog appeared on the shore, just a cur, just a wild dog. They’re a feature you don’t think much about, but they’re murder just the same to all wild things in the woods. He didn’t bark, a very bad sign, just pricked up his ears and plunged in. It took him no more than half a minute to swim those twenty yards, but when he walked out and shook himself, Mama was waiting for him. A deer’s no match for a dog, and all she could do was strike at him with her front hooves, but he had to deal with her before he could kill the fawn, which he at once proceeded to do, charging at her, growling, and snapping. So then he got a surprise. Do you know what it was, Mandy?”