The Fiend (2 page)

Kate Oakley hated the place and was afraid to live in it, but she was even more afraid that, if she sold it, Mr. Oakley would be able by some legal maneuver to get his hands on half of the money. So she had stayed on. By day she stared out at the live oak trees wishing they would die and let a little light into the house, and by night she lay awake listening to the squawk­ing and creaking of eucalyptus boughs, and hoping the next wind would blow them down.

Mary Martha knew how her mother felt about the house and she couldn't understand it. She herself had never lived any other place and never wanted to. When Jessie came over to play, the two girls tried on old clothes in the attic, put on shows in the big garage, rummaged through the cellar for hidden treasure, and, when Mrs. Oakley wasn't looking, climbed the trees or hunted frogs in the creek, pretending the frogs were handsome princes in disguise. None of the princes ever had a chance to become undisguised since Mrs. Oakley always made the girls return the frogs to the creek:
“The poor little creatures. . . . I'm ashamed of you, Mary Martha, wrenching them away from their homes and families. How would you like it if some enor­mous giant picked you up and carried you away?”

The front door of the Oakley house was open but the screen was latched and Mary Martha had to press the door chime. The sound was very faint. Mrs. Oakley had had it muted shortly after Mr. Oakley moved out because sometimes he used to come and stand at the door and keep pressing the chime, demanding admittance.

“If she's not home,” Jessie said hopefully, “we could climb the sycamore tree at the back and get over on the balcony of her bedroom and just walk in. . . . What's the matter with your doorbell?”

“Nothing.”

“Ours is real loud.”

“My mother and I don't like loud noises.”

Mrs. Oakley appeared, blinking her eyes in the light as if she'd been taking a nap or watching television in a darkened room.

She was small and pretty and very neat in a blue cotton dress she had made herself. Her fair hair was softly waved and hung down to her shoulders and she wore high-heeled shoes without any backs to them. Sometimes, when Jessie was angry at her mother, she compared her unfavorably with Mrs. Oakley: her mother liked to wear sneakers and jeans or shorts, and she often forgot to comb her hair, which was as dark and straight as Jessie's own.

Mrs. Oakley kissed Mary Martha on the forehead. “Hello, lamb.” Then she patted Jessie on the shoulder. “Hello, Jessie. My goodness, you're getting big. Each time I see you, I truly swear you've grown another inch.”

Whenever Mrs. Oakley said this to her, which was at least once a week, Jessie felt highly complimented. Her own mother said, “Good Lord, do I have to buy you another pair of shoes
already
?” And her brother called her beanpole or toothpick or canary legs.

“I eat a lot,” Jessie said modestly. “So does my brother, Mike. My father says he should get double tax exemptions for us.”

As soon as she'd made the remark Jessie realized it was a mistake. Mary Martha nudged her in the side with her elbow, and Mrs. Oakley turned and walked away, her sharp heels leaving little dents in the waxed linoleum.

“You shouldn't talk about fathers or taxes,” Mary Martha whispered. “But it's O.K., because now we won't have to tell her about your hands. She hates the sight of blood.”

“I'm not bleeding.”

“You might start.”

Charlie wrote the name and address on the inside cover of a book of matches: Jessie, 319 Jacaranda Road. He wasn't sure yet what he intended to do with the information; it just seemed an important thing to have, like money in the bank. Perhaps he would find out Jessie's last name and write a letter to her parents, warning them. Dear Mr. and Mrs. X: I have never written an anonymous letter before, but I cannot stand by and watch your daughter take such risks with her delicate bones. Children must be cherished, guarded against the terrible hazards of life, fed good nourishing meals so their bones will be padded and will not break coming into contact with the hard cruel earth. In the name of God, I beg you to protect your little girl….

(2)

For many years
the Oakley house had stood by itself, a few miles west of the small city of San Félice, surrounded by lemon and walnut groves. Most of the groves were gone now, their places taken by subdivisions with fanciful names and low down payments. Into one of these tract houses, a few blocks away from the Oakleys, Jessie had moved a year ago with her fam
ily. The Brants had been living in an apartment in San Francisco and they were all delighted by the freedom of having their own private house and plot of land. Like most freedoms, it had its price. David Brant had been forced to renew his ac­quaintance with pliers and wrenches and fuse boxes, the children were expected to help with the housework, and Ellen Brant had taken over the garden. She bought a book on landscaping and another on Southern California flowers and shrubs, and set out to show the neighbors a thing or two.

Ellen Brant was inexperienced but obstinate. Some of the shrubs had been moved six or seven times and were half dead from too much attention and overfeeding. The creeping fig vine, intended to cover the chimney of the fireplace, refused to creep. The leaves of the jasmine yellowed and dropped from excess dampness, and Ellen, assuming their wilting was due to lack of water, turned on the sprinkling system. Bills from the nursery and the water department ran high but when Dave Brant com­plained about them Ellen pointed out that she was actually in­creasing the value of the property. In fact, she didn't know or care much about property values; she simply enjoyed being out-of-doors with the sun warm on her face and the wind smelling mysteriously of the sea.

She was busy snipping dead blossoms off the rosebushes when Jessie arrived home at one o'clock.

Ellen stood up, squinting against the sun and brushing dirt off her denim shorts and bare knees. She was slim and very tanned, like Jessie, and her eyes were the same unusual shade of grayish green.

“What are you doing home so early?” she said, pushing a strand of moist hair off her forehead with the pruning shears. “By the way, you didn't straighten up your room before you left. You know the rules, you helped us write them.”

It seemed to Jessie a good time to change the subject as dramatically as possible. “Mary Martha says I may be dying.”

“Really? Well, you wouldn't want to be caught dead in a messy room, so up you go. Start moving, kiddo.”

“You don't even believe me.”

“No.”

“I bet if Mary Martha went home and told
her
mother she was dying, there'd be a terrible fuss. I bet there'd be ambulances and doctors and nurses and people screaming—”

“If it will make you feel any better I'll begin screaming right now.”

“No! I mean, somebody might hear you.”

“That's the general purpose of screaming, isn't it?” Ellen said with a smile. “Come on, let's have it, old girl—what's the matter?”

Jessie exhibited her hands. A dusting of cinnamon hadn't improved their appearance but Ellen Brant showed neither surprise nor dismay. She'd been through the same thing with Jessie's older brother, Mike, a dozen times or more.

She said, “I have the world's climbingest children. Where'd you do this?”

“The jungle gym.”

“Well, you go in and fill the washbasin with warm water and start soaking your hands. I'll be with you in a minute. I want to check my record book and see when you had your last tetanus booster shot.”

“It was the Fourth of July when I stepped on the stingray at East Beach.”

“I hope to heaven you're not going to turn out to be accident-prone.”

“What's that?”

“There were at least a thousand people on the beach that afternoon. Only you stepped on a stingray.”

Although Jessie knew this was not intended as a compliment, she couldn't help taking it as such. Being the only one of a thousand people to step on a stingray seemed to her quite dis­tinctive, the sort of thing that could never happen to someone like Mary Martha.

Half an hour later she was ensconced on the davenport in the living room, watching a television program and drinking chocolate milk. On her hands she wore a pair of her mother's white gloves, which made her feel very sophisticated if she didn't look too closely at the way they fitted.

The sliding glass door was partly open and she could see her mother out on the lawn talking to Virginia Arlington, who lived next door. Jessie was quite fond of Mrs. Arlington and called her Aunt Virginia, but she hoped both women would stay out­side and not interrupt the television movie.

Virginia Arlington's round pink face and plump white arms were moist with perspiration. As she talked she fanned herself with an advertisement she'd just picked up from the mailbox.

Even her voice sounded warm. “I saw Jessie coming home early and I was worried. Is anything the matter?”

“Not really. Her hands are sore from playing too long on the jungle gym.”

“Poor baby. She has so much energy she never knows when to stop. She's like you, Ellen. You drive yourself too hard sometimes.”

“I manage to survive.” She dropped on her knees beside the rosebush again, hoping Virginia would take the hint and leave. She liked Virginia Arlington and appreciated her kindness and generosity, but there were times when Ellen preferred to work undisturbed and without someone reminding her she was driving herself too hard. Virginia had no children, and her husband, Howard, was away on business a great deal; she had a part- time gardener and a cleaning woman twice a week, and to open a can or the garage doors or the car windows, all she had to do was press a button. Ellen didn't envy her neighbors. She knew that if their positions were reversed, she would be doing just as much as she did now and Virginia would be doing as little.

Virginia lingered on, in spite of the sun which she hated and usually managed to avoid. Even five minutes of it made her nose turn pink and her neck break out in a rash. “I have an idea. Why don't I slip downtown and buy Jessie a couple of games?—you know, something absorbing that will keep her quiet.”

“I thought Howard was home today.”

“He is, but he's still asleep. I could be back by the time he wakes up.”

“I appreciate your offer, naturally,” Ellen said, “but you've already bought Jessie so many toys and books and games—”

“That won't spoil her. I was reading in a magazine just this morning that buying things for children doesn't spoil them un­less those things are a substitute for something else.”

Ellen had read the same magazine. “Love.”

“Yes.”

“Jessie gets plenty of love.”

“I know. That's my whole point. If she's already loved, the little items I buy her can't harm her.”

Ellen hesitated. Some of the items hadn't been so little—a ten-gear Italian bicycle, a cashmere sweater, a wrist watch—but she didn't want to seem ungrateful. “All right, go ahead if you like. But please don't spend too much money. Jessie might get the idea that she deserves an expensive gift every time some­thing happens to her. Life doesn't work out that way.”

There was a minute of strained silence between the two women, like the kind that comes after a quarrel over an im­portant issue. It bothered Ellen. There had been no quarrel, not even a real disagreement, and the issue was hardly im­portant, a two-dollar game for Jessie.

Virginia said softly, “I haven't offended you, have I, El? I mean, maybe you think I was implying that Jessie didn't have enough toys and things.” Virginia's pale blue eyes were anxious and the tip of her nose was already starting to turn red. “I'd feel terrible if you thought that.”

“Well, I don't.”

“You're absolutely sure?”

“Don't go
on
about it, Virginia. You want to buy Jess a game, so buy it.”

“We could pretend it was from you and Dave.”

“I don't believe in pretending to my children. They're sub­jected to enough phoniness in the ordinary course of events.”

From one of the back windows of the Arlington house a man's voice shouted, “Virgie! Virgie!”

“Howard's awake,” Virginia said hastily. “I'll go and make his breakfast and maybe slip downtown while he's eating. Tell Jessie I'll be over later on.”

“All right.”

Virginia walked across the lawn and down her own driveway. It was bordered on each side with a low privet hedge and small round clumps of French marigolds. Everything in the yard, as in the house, was so neat and orderly that Virginia felt none of it belonged to her. The house was Howard's and the cleaning woman's, and the yard was the gardener's. Virginia was a guest and she had to act like a guest, polite and uncritical.

Only the dog, a large golden retriever named Chap, was Virginia's. She had wanted a small dog, one she could cuddle and hold on her lap, and when Howard brought Chap home from one of his trips she had felt cheated. Chap was already full-grown then and weighed ninety pounds, and the first time she was left alone with him she was frightened. His bark was loud and ferocious; when she fed him he nearly gobbled her hand; when she took him out on a leash he'd dragged her around the block like a horse pulling a wheelless carriage. She had gradually come to realize that his bark was a bluff, and that he had been underfed by his previous owners and never taught to obey any orders.