On the Run (14 page)

“Wisdom out of the night?”

“Even with old eyes and a tiny light, you’re beautiful tonight, Paula.”

“Flattery will get you somewhere, sir.”

“Flushed and tousled and beautiful and in a sweet daze of love, ever since you got back.”

“Oh
come
now!”

“Protestations ring strangely false, my dear. When you were both in here this afternoon, your awareness of each other was almost tangible. I should be glad, you know. He is my grandson. I am very fond of you.”

“Then be glad.”

“I’m a sick old man, but I’m not a foolish old man.”

“That’s a strange thing to say!”

Sid reached to turn the intercom speaker off, touched the knob, pulled his hand back. If she wanted it off, certainly there was some way she could disconnect it at that end.

“Strange? That is a very guarded young man. That is a very secret and private and controlled and watchful young man.”

“I love him, Tom.”

“Ah, that solves everything, of course. You lean out of your bower and sprinkle him with rose petals, and a thousand violins play.”

“Why are you being so nasty?”

“If he did not have to run, everything would be totally wonderful. Is that what you think? Your love flows one way and mends all. Yes, I’m being nasty. I’m trying to make you think. Sidney is considerably more complex than you care to believe. Is he capable of love? Can he accept love? Can he believe himself worth love? What makes you so certain he is not an emotional cripple, Paula, incapable of love because it was never given to him? If he cannot, in his heart of hearts, truly believe that anyone can love him, then he can not
give
love. He can only imitate.”

“What makes you so damned certain of everything?”

“My dear, a man running will try to find a hiding place where he can fulfill his own needs. And this man,
this grandson of mine, has not only been hiding from the Florida villain, he has hidden from any significant demand on his abilities or upon his emotions.”

“He couldn’t afford that!”

“It would be a drive he couldn’t avoid, if he was a whole man. Do you know how I know these things, really? Because I was never a whole man. I could not love. I could never put enough value on myself to be able to give love. I drove my daughter away. I substituted pride and coldness and intelligence for a warm heart. And would rather have had the warm heart than anything in the world. You have the warm heart, my dear. You have all the giving. You accept life. He rejects it. As he has been rejected. His mother rejected him by dying. I rejected him by letting him be taken away from here. His father rejected him by not loving him. His brother rejected him. His wife rejected him, brutally. And no matter how hard he tries to believe in your love, in the back of his mind he is preparing himself for you to reject him too.”

“No!”

“So he will try to save the hurt by rejecting you first. He’ll tell himself it’s to keep from hurting you. But hurt you in that way.”

“I’m making no claim on him, Tom. None.”

“You fool girl, love is the only claim worth adult attention. Your man is lean and decorative. Your man is dramatic. Your man is intelligent. But he is emotionally immature. Incurably. Root him out from behind the wall where he now hides, and he’ll dodge behind the next one. And then the next. Your love, unreturned, will not be reinforced, and cannot grow. Now don’t argue with me. Talk to him. Question him. Observe him. All I’ve done is open your eyes. Now you may give me one of those little pills. Thank you, my dear.”

“Why should you try to …”

“Goodnight, my dear.”

The speaker was silent. He turned the volume up until he could hear the sound of the heart and the soft rasp of the breath, at the same volume that she kept it. The door latch made a small sound. There was a hiss of fabric, the thud of a slipper, a tilt of the bed, and she slipped close to him and he took the warm length
of her into his arms. But somehow it seemed an imitation of closeness, the ineptness of puppets.

“You heard,” she whispered against his throat.

“Yes.”

“What does he know about anything?” she whispered fiercely. “What could he possibly know about us?”

“He’s a wise man.”

She kissed him. She gave him an irritable little shake. “We feel all dull together. What has he done to us?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where are you? Where have you gone?” He could not answer her. He could not speak. She rolled up onto her elbows and looked down into his face, so close her dark hair tickled his cheek. He put his hands on her and they felt like wooden hands. “Listen to me,” she said. “Listen to me and believe me. I love you. You are worth loving. You are worthy of love.”

“No,” he whispered.

“You are good!”

“I am nothing.”

She lay upon his chest and began to cry. He held her and felt the heat of her tears and could not comfort her. He had wooden arms, quartz eyes and a paper heart, and no creature could find comfort in him. Her tears stopped. She sighed, and it was a sound to tear a paper heart. He looked down into himself, into the cave of echoes that was Sidney Shanley and he found something under the floor of the cave. He brushed the sand away with greatest care, and found a membranous thing there, a toughened, leathery, forgotten thing. It pulsed slightly and imperceptibly, and he pulled at it with every effort of his will. Nothing changed for a long time. And then he saw that it had begun to bulge a little more with each pulsation. With jaw and fists clenched and eyes rolled inward, he stretched the leathery carapace until it was so swollen it filled the cave. He held the woman, and called upon God, and took a deep breath, and the dark and hardened thing burst within him. His jaw creaked, and acid spurted into his eyes, and he shifted the woman and rocked his iron face against her breasts and gave a great strangling guffaw of his agony. It was all there at once—a room that smelled sick and her face like candles—she’s gone boy—Jane crying as the man
knocked her down—and the dazing chunk of fist against his head—Thelma’s eyes rolling, and the sound she made—We get fifty bucks a month for giving you board and room, kid, and keeping you busy—rolling in the wet rainy grass in the stink of his own scorched flesh. Child, boy and man, all at once, taking the agonies all at once. He held the woman and sobbed against her breasts and called to her. “Help me! My God, help me!”

She held him and rocked him and murmured, and put her tears with his, and said, “Let it all come, my darling. All of it. All there is.”

And after a long time he was still. The emptiness was filled with images and with things learned, but they were tangled, and it would be a long time sorting them, if ever they could be.

His breath caught from time to time, an echo of a sob. He felt drained and weak and strangely placid. She lay beside him, her head pillowed on his shoulder. He touched her brows and her lips with his fingertips. “I love you,” he said in a harsh and effortful whisper.

“Yes.”

“I can love you. I won’t be so good at it. But I do. I can. I can make it good. I can stay with it. I’ll want to run.”

“I won’t let you.”

“Whatever happens, you’ll be a part of it. Whatever my life is, it will be with you.”

“I know.”

“And you might regret …”

“Hush!” she said. “I am part of you. You are part of me. I’m worth only as much as you are.”

He kissed her hair. “That old man,” he said.

“Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

“Right and wrong.”

She stretched luxuriantly against him. “But look at us now. No more dull. All the little nerves reaching. Alive but weary, huh? Let’s sleep, my love.”

“Yes indeed.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Paula.”

The goodnight kiss was a caress. And in the process of settling themselves for sleep there were further small caresses. And small excuses for just one more. And another.
And it became, in a drowsy way, interrogation and response. A reply and a new question. Another settling, an effort of will, a few innocent slynesses, until finally she laughed softly and turned toward her acceptance of an obviousness and said, “This time sweet and soft and slow and lazy, with time for jokes and wise sayings and protestations of love, and let me be in charge. Like so. And thus. Because you are my man, and I adore you.”

The old man in the gas station told George Shanley how to find the Brower house. It was two o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. He drove slowly east in the big yellow convertible with the top down, through a tunnel of elm trees, the car radio loud. He wore big dark glasses, and he looked at the tall frame houses of earlier times. A dead place, he thought. A hick operation. The big action is bingo in the church basement.

The Brower place was the one with the iron fence across the front. He turned into the driveway and stopped by the side, near the walk. He turned the car off and got out and stared at the house, feeling disappointed. The yard was in good shape, but the house needed work. It looked as if you could shake it and carved pieces would fall off. The ride up had blown away the last symptoms of mild hangover, but he still felt depressed. Big deal, to inherit the old barn. Who’d buy anything this far from anyplace? If the old bastard had any real money, he wouldn’t live like this. He shrugged and divided his minimum expectation by ten. So even ten grand wouldn’t be a total loss. It would be worth the trip.

As he took his first slow steps along the walk, a woman came down the porch steps to meet him, wearing a rather formal smile. Dark-haired woman with a strong face, looking a little bit foreign somehow, lean, moving well, built pretty good, looking like class, more than you’d expect from the town and the house, wearing a light green skirt, a white sleeveless blouse, flat heels.

“George Shanley?” she asked.

“That’s me.”

“I’m Paula Lettinger. We were expecting you a little sooner.”

“I couldn’t get away as soon as I expected, then I got hung up in Syracuse. A business deal. Two birds with one stone. Did the old guy die?”

She looked startled. “Of course not.”

“So a little late doesn’t matter. Where do you fit the picture?”

“I’m Mr. Brower’s special nurse.”

“Off duty?”

“I’m on duty. Mr. Brower is asleep right now. He prefers I don’t wear a uniform.”

“So what’s the routine, honey? He wants to talk to me. So here I am. When can he talk, and how long, and where do I stay?”

“You can stay down at the Inn. It’s quite comfortable. Or you can stay here.”

George took his dark glasses off. “What’s your suggestion, honey?”

She shrugged. “It’s up to you. Your brother is staying here in the house.”

She saw his curious reaction. His half smile remained fixed. His hand, moving to slip the sun glasses into his shirt pocket, stopped its motion. He seemed to stop breathing. Until that moment she had thought him an absurd caricature of her lover, had seen him as Sidney would be were he made shorter and much heavier and older, half bald, if all the perception and awareness were erased from his face and replaced with a coarse, meaty, animal blankness. But something about his few seconds of an absolute stillness chilled her.

Then the hand moved and the glasses went into the pocket. The smile changed. “Sid the kid, eh? When’d he get in?”

“Early yesterday.”

“Lots of time to butter old grandpop, huh?”

“I really don’t believe that’s why he came here.”

“Why should you get sore, baby? You should stick to the pill business. I guess what I’ll do, I’ll stay here. Okay with you?”

“Mr. Brower said you could stay here or at the Inn.”

“So it’s okay with him and I guess that’s what counts. Do I eat here?”

“If you wish.”

“You do the cooking?”

“No.”

“Can you show me where I sleep, maybe?”

“Your car is blocking the drive, Mr. Shanley. Suppose you leave your luggage on the walk and put the car out in the back. When you’re ready, I’ll tell you where your bedroom is.”

But when he walked into the front hallway with his suitcase, a heavy old woman was waiting for him. “I’m Mrs. Weese,” she said. “You go up the stairs and it’s the room right opposite the top of the stairs. Lunch is over, so if you ain’t et, you’ll have to go into town.”

“How do I get some ice?”

“Through that door to the kitchen and I’ll give you some if I can spare any.”

“Real service around here, mom.”

“You get the same as anybody else,” she said and turned away.

“Where’s my brother?”

“I ain’t kept track.”

George Shanley had just finished unpacking when Sid rapped on the open door and walked into the bedroom. George straightened and stared at him. “Well, well, well. My little old burr-headed brother. You look great, kid. Just great.”

Sid sat on the foot of the bed. “The gathering of the clan. It warms my heart.”

“Let’s don’t crap each other, kid brother. Since I was sixteen I seen you one time, and I haven’t exactly missed you.”

“So you found other targets for your natural sadistic tendencies.”

George leaned against the bureau and stared at him. “Just like in the airport. The big words. You want to be class, Sid? You and me, we came out of the same cellar. You got more school, maybe. What difference does it make? How much did you ever pay for a shirt? This here is an import. Twenny-fi’ bucks. I didn’t need big words to buy it. Just money. You were a soft, sissy, dreamy little kid, and you’re still dreaming. It’s my world, kid, not yours.”

“What are you so defensive about, George?”

“Stop trying to crap me, kid. What shape is the old man in?”

“Dying.”

“How long is it going to take him?”

“Nobody seems to know.”

“Not even that snotty nurse? Just who the hell does she think she is?”

“The old man likes her.”

“So she’s after the loot. It figures. If we didn’t show up, she’d make out better. How much loot is there, kid?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t seem to know much of anything. Has he decided how to split it up?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“Anybody else here beside you, me, the old man, the nurse and that fat housekeeper?”