13 French Street (8 page)

Once I tore Petra’s blouse off. Once I fastened my fingers in her hair and told her I wouldn’t let her get away.

“I’ll scream, Alex. She’s only in the next room. I’ll scream!”

And, of course, she would have screamed, I think. I thought so then. We did not leave the house after Wednesday. The old woman wanted to take rides. Petra refused.

She seemed to be trying to work Verne’s mother into a rage, also.

She was succeeding. No matter what I said now, she would only smile and say, “Wait, my friend.”

I felt cowardly. I told myself I should take her.

I didn’t. I waited. And I couldn’t stand being alone any more. I searched her out wherever she was. I was in love with her. As much in love as a man can get.

“I think you’re weak, Alex. You’ll never leave now, and you can’t leave, of course.”

“No. I won’t leave now.” I looked at her. “I don’t want to hurt you, Petra. But I’m going to.”

“It’s only been a few days. You said so yourself.”

“It’s been too long. Something’s happened inside me.”

“You must want me as much as I want you.”

I grabbed her close and breathed the warmth of her hair, felt her hot red lips, and most of the time I was with her, I didn’t know what I was saying. I watched her like a cat, and the old woman watched us both.

• • •

Verne came home at six o’clock on Saturday evening.

He was a changed man. He showed vitality, and some of the color had returned to his face. He would never be the man I had once known, but he didn’t look wrecked now. He showed energy. His eyes were bright.

“Things went good?” I asked.

“Terrible, Alex. I only came home because you were here. Got to leave again Sunday night.”

A kind of hot rage of triumphant satisfaction hit me.

We went into the living room and Petra fixed drinks. She smiled at me from behind his back and touched me whenever she passed. I wanted to hit her, smash her. But I knew I wouldn’t. To me she was becoming a woman who had been denied the things she wanted; a woman of great life and laughter who had been cooped up here, where she didn’t want to be. Some of this feeling gradually died as I talked with Verne.

“The whisky’s good,” he said. “I want a lot of it tonight. And a good dinner.”

“I’m going to fix it myself,” Petra said. “Steak. You like that?”

“How come?” Verne asked. He seemed slightly suspicious, and his eyes looked queer.

I said, “Petra gave Jenny and the cook some time off.”

“Oh,” he said. “Why, Petra? Did you pay them?”

“I paid them Monday morning.”

“They haven’t been here since?”

“No.” She became defiant; her eyes darkened. “If you must know, Verne, I fired them. Both of them.”

He said nothing. But from that moment on I watched him sag again. Inside of an hour he was a shell again, gray-faced and forlorn.

I tried to talk with him after we ate.

“I’m bushed,” he said finally. “We’ll make a day of it tomorrow.”

Tomorrow …

He went to bed, a tired, unhappy man.

“Why did you fire the help?” I asked Petra. We were in the hallway.

She put her arms around my waist. “Why do you think?” she said.

Tomorrow …

V
ERNE
wasn’t up yet at ten-thirty Sunday morning. I had spent another night thinking of Petra. After breakfast I went into his study and began hitting his bottle of whisky. I got a little drunk, I think.

“Alex, come here. She’s out in the kitchen.”

Petra stood in the study doorway. She wore white rayon shorts and a flimsy halter and her red sandals.

“You’ve been drinking,” she said softly as I took her in my arms. “He’s leaving tonight.”

“Did he come near you last night?”

She laughed. “No. Goodness, no.”

My hands strayed along her hips; I held her tightly against me. Then she whirled away and ran up the stairs. I knew this was it. I started after her, the whisky pounding in my head. It was all right now. I’d found an escape. I would tell Verne the truth, tell him I was in love with his wife. That she no longer wanted him. It had to be that way.

She moved into her room along the upstairs hallway. I followed, and closed the door. The windows were open and a cool breeze blew in, billowing the curtains.

As she looked at me, something like fright came into her eyes. “Go ahead and scream,” I said, as I came up to her. The whisky swarmed in my blood.

“I don’t want to scream, Alex. Alex!”

Reaching out, I ripped the halter away from her breasts, baring them. She backed away, tripped on the leather couch, and sat down. I pulled her up against me. At first she tried to yank away, twisting in my arms. Then abruptly she was with me, helping me. We went wild.

“You see!” she gasped. “The waiting. It’s best!”

Her lips were against mine she was talking around a kiss, and I didn’t hear the door open, I heard nothing, wanted to hear nothing until the old woman said, “I caught you! I knew I would!”

We sprang apart. Petra didn’t try to cover her breasts.

“I’m going to tell my son,” the old woman said in her dry voice. “Harlot—sinners!” She came farther into the room, and shook her cane in the air. I wondered crazily how she managed to hold such a heavy cane in her vine-like arm.

“No, you won’t!” Petra whispered. She rushed from my side across the room.

I watched, rooted to the floor—feet sunk in the thick, soft rug.

Petra grabbed the old woman by the front of her dress and they scrambled at each other. Verne’s mother beat at Petra with the cane, her sly face twisted, eager. They tore at each other before the open casement window, then the old woman’s body sprawled out toward the screen.

“Damn you, damn you!” Petra whispered savagely, striking at her again.

Verne’s mother moaned and moaned. The cane fell, drummed against the rug. I moved then, fast, but I moved too late.

“Catch her!” I said. Petra’s moving figure was between me and the old woman. The screen ripped, sang out. I heard Petra’s breath indrawn on a gasp. A dry noise, almost like wind in an alley, reached us, followed by a faint thud.

Petra whirled and leaned against the window, wide-eyed, her breasts heaving. “Alex!” she said. “Alex!”

I grabbed her arm, hurled her across the room, looked out and down through the torn hole in the screen. The screen was rusted, old. Verne’s mother was sprawled out in a mass of gray on the flagstones of the patio, two stories below.

A quiet wind rustled in the curtains.

“She’s surely dead,” I said.

As I turned, Petra began to scream. She screamed three times. Then she stopped and looked at me.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and … tomorrow.

“W
HAT
’
S
the matter?” It was Verne. I heard him running down the hall, his bare feet pounding.

“Quick,” I said to Petra. “Cover yourself!” I started for the door. Verne burst into the room in his pajamas, white ones. I whirled toward Petra. She was on the other side of her unmade bed with a flame-colored robe wrapped about her.

“What’s the matter?” Verne repeated. “Who screamed?” His hair was mussed, his face haggard.

I started to say something, but Petra interrupted.

She pointed toward the window. “I was just getting up when she came in,” she lied. Her hands went to her head. “Oh, God, Verne! She reeled against the window. Alex beat you here.”

“What? What window? Who?” He stepped farther into the room and his mother’s cane rolled beneath his foot. He stared at it, slowly awakening. His gaze moved to the window to his left, to the torn screen. He leaped over, stuck his head through the rent. I saw his shoulders shake.

Petra looked at me with genuine fright in her eyes.

Verne kept on looking down at the patio.

Petra said, “She just went all of a sudden, Verne. She just fell, she just reeled toward the window. I don’t know what she wanted. She didn’t say anything. She just—she just—she just—”

It was a great act. She sat on the bed and began sobbing uncontrollably.

Verne turned slowly, stared at me, then at Petra. He suddenly ran from the room. I heard his feet pounding on the stairs.

Petra wheeled on the bed. “Go with him, Alex!” she whispered. “Hurry! It will look bad if you don’t!”

“You pushed her,” I said. “You murdered her.”

“No, no, no, don’t be a fool. Hurry downstairs with him, Alex. Hurry, I say!”

I stared a moment longer at her beautiful face and felt the flames creeping up around my legs. Then I went after Verne.

He stood in the patio staring down at his mother. It took but a glance to know she was dead. Her head was shattered like an orange. She had landed flat on her back. Her face was in repose. Her right leg had flapped beneath her, and the toe of her right shoe projected over her right shoulder.

Neither of us spoke. Verne seemed unable to tear his gaze away, then finally he went over and sat at the round luncheon table and bit his lower lip. He ceased biting, looked up at the torn screen. Then he commenced biting his lip again.

I heard Petra behind me. She walked past me, without glancing toward the body, and stood by Verne. He didn’t look at her, either.

“Verne,” she said. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say it, then.”

I hadn’t moved. She glanced at me, her face still, her eyes jetty and unamazed.

A fly came from nowhere, lit on the old woman’s nose, crawled across her half-opened left eye on to her cheek. It stopped then. Faint wind fingered the gray dress. The fly did not move.

Verne rose, stepped around the body, started toward the front door of the house. “Phone,” he said. “Phone.” He looked very forlorn in his bare feet and his haggard hair and his wrinkled white pajamas.

When I glanced down again the fly was gone.

I closed my eyes. The red tail light of a taxi winked around the corner.

“You killed her.”

She watched me.

“You killed her. You pushed her out of that window.”

She held her hair bunched at the back of her neck and watched me, unblinking, serene. She had on a soft black dress now, and a cloud-thin white scarf was tied around her throat. “Don’t be silly, Alex,” she said. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

She was denying it. “You saw your chance,” I said. “A natural. You took that chance.”

We talked across the corpse. The old woman’s body was between us. I was numb inside; rigid, like a plank, like a sheet of cast iron. Then somebody struck the iron with a maul. I stepped over the body toward Petra.

She whirled, pushed through some hedges, and retreated around the side of the house. I followed her, caught up, flung her against the side of the house.

“You’re a bitch!” I said. “A murderous bitch!”

I held her back against the red brick side of the house. Her feet were in a flower bed, but this was fall, and things were dying. Flowers crisped beneath her feet.

“He mustn’t catch us out here, Alex. Not like this.”

I tightened my grip on her arms. She didn’t wince. That old bold quality was there in her eyes and the turn of her lips, and it seemed then that nothing could destroy it.

“I’m going to tell him,” I said. “I’ll have him phone the police instead of just the doctor. What good will a doctor do? She’s dead, and you killed her.”

Her tongue tipped her lips and for an instant her eyes dropped. But then she looked at me more strongly than before. “No, you won’t, Alex. You want me too much.”

“A proud bitch, too.”

“Yes, Alex. And not only that. If you started anything by telling such a story, what would they think? What would the police think?”

“You black beautiful bitch, you!”

“You love it!” She brought her hands up to my arms. I flung them down. She said, “You’re as implicated as I am in this. Don’t you see that? She’s better off dead. But if you say anything, you’ll go where I go. If it could be proved. Which I doubt. And we’ve waited too long already. We’ve told Verne one thing—we can’t change it.”

“Where do you get this ‘we’ stuff?”

“Alex, if you don’t let go of me and stop acting like a fool, I’ll tell Verne something. I’ll tell him you did it. Because she caught you trying to attack me.”

I grinned at her. Then I let go and stepped away. I started laughing. Bitter laughter. There was a defenseless old woman lying dead out there just because I’d decided to pay a visit to an old Army pal. I ceased laughing and stared at her.

Petra’s fingers closed over my arm and she said, “Use your head, lover.” Then she turned and walked rapidly toward the rear of the house.

I stood there and stared at the woodpecker-notched trunk of a tall pine tree in the yard. I knew I should leave now. Madge was waiting; a life that was becoming very remote was waiting. I’d been here a week, I should be planning to leave anyway. Only anyway I couldn’t leave now, and I felt the stir of that inside me, too. Excuses. Reasons. Somethings. Put it off. It was easy.

I went on around toward the front again. Petra was all I’d called her and she had been right in everything she’d told me.

Verne was sitting on a chair by the circular luncheon table staring at the body of his mother. As I broke through the hedge, he glanced up, then stood and started toward the house. I followed. On the doorstep he paused and turned.

“I phoned the doctor,” he said. “A hell of a lot of good it’ll do to have a doctor.”

“Yes. Of course….”

“God,” he said. “This is great for you, isn’t it?”

“Good Lord, man, don’t think of me.” The wind blew. “I’m sorry.”

The dry leaves skittered about our feet. A maple leaf crawled humpbacked with burry noise across the flagstone walk and tipped over in the grass. It reminded me of a crab scuttling.

“Did you see her fall?”

“No,” I lied. He was still in his pajamas. This lie would pile on top of everything else.

“Do you think we should bring her in?” He meant his mother’s body.

I didn’t answer.

“I guess not. They’ll—” He paused. “Alex, will you do something for me? We’ll need some help out here. Take the car and run into town. Pick up Jenny, will you? She was our maid. Jenny Carson. In Allayne.” He told me her address. “Will you do that, Alex? Then hurry back?”