The Girl Who Passed for Normal (3 page)

She had tried not to mention his week’s absence, but she couldn’t help it; and when she did mention it she said the wrong thing. “Why do you live with me if you don’t like me?” she had asked.

David had looked at her angrily and said, “Did I say I didn’t like you? And anyway, where am I supposed to live? This is my apartment, isn’t it?”

She had said no more, and slowly they had resumed their old relationship, had started talking to each other again, and laughing with each other.

*

Perhaps he had gone off again like that, for a week. Perhaps he didn’t really mean to hurt her, and it was his way of maintaining his independence. Perhaps he did it to prove to himself that he was free. It was silly, of course; she had always insisted that he was as free as he liked. He didn’t have to prove anything, either to himself or to her. But then he wasn’t always logical, and sometimes wanted to
demonstrate
that the relationship they had agreed — or at least understood — to have with each other was valid. Barbara loved David, and David liked Barbara. That was it, that had always been it. But perhaps, she thought, there were times when he felt that he loved her, or that she was trying to hold him with her love; and then he did something deliberately, inexplicably hurtful, to restore the balance.

She had never dared to suggest this to David. It would have outraged him. He would have said, “That’s your
perfect-secretary’s
mind.” He had told her once, when she had claimed that their relationship was ideal, “For you the ideal relationship is that between a perfect secretary and her boss.”

She was right, nevertheless; she was convinced of that. She understood David. She loved him. So perhaps he was testing her now. Well, she would try to stand up to it. She tightened her lips, as if she were about to be injected with a pain-killer.

She left the study and went into the living room. She sat down on the sofa and wondered who, if not Marcello, David could have gone away with.

She wondered if Marcello was lying. Perhaps David was with him. Perhaps any moment he would come through the door, and say with a grin, “I was at Marcello’s.” If he wasn’t with her he must be with Marcello, because she and Marcello were the only two people in the world David was close to. Perhaps any moment …

But no one came through the door, and the apartment was very quiet, and outside it was dark and cold and November.

She rang everyone she knew, everyone that David knew. No one had any idea where David was.

Finally she rang Mary Emerson.

Iva, the housekeeper, answered, and said,
“Ben
tornata.”
Barbara wanted to ask her if she knew anything about David, but she didn’t feel capable of speaking Italian, so she closed her eyes and held the receiver tight against her ear until she heard Mary Emerson’s deep drawl.

“Barbara, my dear, welcome back. How’re you? And how’s your mother?”

“I’m fine. Mother’s much better. How’s Catherine?”

“Oh, Catherine’s all right. She says she’s missing you.”

“Look,” Barbara said, “I’m terribly sorry to bother you like this, but do you know where David is? I got in this
afternoon
and he’s not here.”

“No, my dear.” Mrs. Emerson paused, and then went on. “I’ve been wondering myself.”

“What do you mean?” Barbara said. “Hasn’t he been
coming
?”

“Oh, yes. He came every day. It was all going very well, and Catherine loved him. But the funny thing is, Barbara, David hasn’t come at all this last week. I haven’t even heard from him. I thought — you see, I got your letter saying you were coming back, and then the next day — no, I got it on a Saturday, so it must have been Monday, last Monday, David didn’t show up. I thought he must have gone to England to pick you up, hired a car and driven up or something.”

“David can’t drive.”

“Oh. Well, anyway, I thought it was a little strange he hadn’t said anything, or called, or left a message with Iva, but I said to myself, oh, well, there’s bound to be some logical explanation, and in any case Barbara’s coming back next week, and I just left it at that. I guess it was very wicked of me. I —” she stopped, and cleared her throat. “I don’t know anything else, my dear. I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

“Perhaps —” Barbara gave a little laugh — “he thought he’d have a week off before I got back.”

Mrs. Emerson laughed.

There was silence, until the deep Southern voice said, “I don’t know what I can suggest, Barbara dear.”

Barbara felt tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry I troubled you,” she whispered. “I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.”

“Well, don’t worry, please. I’m sure there’ll be some
simple
explanation. But do call again if — you know.”

Barbara nodded and said, “Yes, thank you. Good-bye.”

“Good-bye, my dear.”

She put the phone down. She had lost David. She was tired and she wanted to sleep, but she couldn’t sleep until she knew where David was. She couldn’t do anything until she knew where David was.

She decided to go to see Marcello. He must be in, if he had told her that she could call back at ten. She put on her coat, and was about to leave when a thought occurred to her. She wrote on a piece of paper, “am at Marcello’s,” and stuck the piece of paper on the door of the living room. Then she turned on every light in the apartment, and left.

*

Marcello lived quite near. Barbara wondered, as she walked up the stairs to his apartment, whether she should have telephoned instead of coming; but she wanted to get out of her empty house, and she wanted to talk to someone.

At first, when he saw her standing at the door, Marcello frowned. Then he smiled and said, “Hello. Have you found him?”

Barbara didn’t like Marcello. He overacted the role of an intellectual, with his unbrushed hair and his droopy
moustache
and his serious smiles; and he betrayed his convictions — or so it seemed to Barbara — by wearing expensive, if dirty, clothes, and expensive, if trodden-down, shoes. He was too rich for his convictions to be other than pretentions, and he was too intelligent not to realize this. But he was not
intelligent
enough to do anything about it. Once she had said this to David, and David had said, “What do you expect him to do about it? What can he do about it?”

“I don’t know,” she had said.

David had accused her of viewing Marcello through
puritan
Anglo-Saxon eyes — through her mother’s eyes — and of resenting Marcello’s wealth.

“That’s not true,” she had said. She loved Marcello’s wealth, just as she loved Mary Emerson’s wealth. But she couldn’t understand why Marcello didn’t make use of its
possibilities
, acknowledge its origins, or accept the contradictions of his having it in view of the political opinions he held.

Now she looked at him, smiling confidently at her, and said, “No, I haven’t found him. I don’t know where he is.”

“Come in.”

She walked in and heard voices.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ve got people here.”

Marcello shrugged and smiled at her again. He made her feel tight and barren. She wanted to go. She looked round the hall with its peeling red paint and old Venetian furniture, its political posters and copies of old masters — or possibly genuine old masters. She didn’t know, and had never dared ask, in case she should sound bitter.

“Marcello,” she said. Then she whispered, “Are you sure you don’t know here he is? He didn’t say anything? Anything at all?”

Marcello said “No,” and smiled again. He took her arm and led her into a large peach-colored room with too much furniture and too many paintings; his living room. The air was smoky, and there were five or six young men sitting around with pipes and cigarettes and glasses, with full ash trays at their feet, and, like Marcello, with carefully unbrushed hair. She sat down in a modern and uncomfortable armchair and nodded when Marcello said “Whiskey?” She wanted to
go. She didn’t want to sit here with these ridiculous
frightening
people. She didn’t want to sit there with her beige sweater and beige skirt, with her brown shoes and handbag, with her hard, brown, dyed hair, with her pale face and living red lips that she’d repainted as she walked over to Marcello’s. She looked down at her bright-red fingernails. She didn’t want to stay. She just wanted to find out where David was, and then go.

Marcello brought her a glass of whiskey and she drank it quickly, hoping it would do something to make her less tall, less thin, and to take the look of disapproval from her face.

The young men talked among themselves, ignoring her. Marcello sat on the arm of her chair and said, “Don’t look so frightened. David must have gone away. He’ll be back.”

It was absurd to be frightened of these young, stupid
intellectuals
. “I’m not frightened,” she said loudly. “I just don’t understand it. I wrote David that I was coming back, and he got the letter, because it was in his desk. So he knew. He wouldn’t do anything mean like this. Something must have happened to him.”

Marcello nodded. “Would you like to call round the
hospitals
— see if there’s been an accident or something?”

“But he’s been gone a week. Someone would have heard something by now if anything like that had happened.”

“A week?”

“Yes. I rang up the Emersons. Apparently he didn’t turn up last Monday when they were expecting him, and they haven’t seen or heard from him since.”

Marcello looked down into his glass, and Barbara lit a
cigarette. She knew what he was thinking. David had gone. He had left her. Soon he would write her and say he wasn’t coming back.

“But he wouldn’t have left me like that, would he?” she said. “I mean he would have said something to you, wouldn’t he? He —” she stopped, and Marcello took her arm. She stood up and they left the room together.

“I’ll walk you home,” Marcello said. “Come on.”

She held his arm and they walked back to her apartment; he helped her up the stairs and when they were inside he said, “I suppose you don’t have any milk or anything? I’ll make you something to drink.”

Barbara went into the living room and sat down. She could hear Marcello in the kitchen, opening the fridge, closing it, opening drawers.

When he came back he had two glasses of whiskey with ice. He gave one to her and sat down. “There was some milk but it had gone bad,” he said. “It must have been there quite a long time.”

They finished their drinks in silence and Barbara said, “You’d better go back to your friends.”

Marcello stood up. “Are you going to be all right?”

She looked up at him and nodded, and as she did so, tears came into her eyes. She whispered, “Yes, I’ll be all right. Please go, Marcello. And thank you for —” she stood up, and took Marcello to the door. She said “Thank you” again, and after he had gone she closed the door. She wished she hadn’t gone to see him, because she hated him.

She undressed and lay on her bed and thought how pleased her mother would be if she knew; her plan had
worked perfectly. Her mother had thought that if she could get her away from David for a certain amount of time, David would realize that he preferred his freedom. She had had her away for three months, and David had gone. So it seemed she had been right.

But, Barbara told herself as she lay on her bed, it only seemed that way. For David had always been free, and now he had not gone to be free. He had disappeared. There was a difference. She lay on her bed and cursed her mother. It was her fault. But she would get her revenge somehow. She would get her revenge on all the people she hated; and she hated almost everyone except David and Catherine. It was strange. Nearly everyone who knew her liked her. They liked her because she was always pleasant, amusing, intelligent — and, above all, because she was never a burden; she never appeared to have any problems. She was like a perfect
secretary
. Yet no one really loved her. Whereas she liked almost nobody. She loved David and Catherine, and she hated everyone else. She started crying, then stopped abruptly. There was no point in feeling sorry for herself. She’d be all right in the morning. And one day she’d get her revenge on them all. She grinned, alone in the bedroom, and told herself that she sounded like some silly, spiteful adolescent. She wiped her eyes and started to fall asleep.

*

The next morning she was awakened by the telephone. She sat up in her bed, thinking it must be David. She said “Hello” quickly, and with a smile. There was a moment’s silence, and then a voice, that sounded as if it were trudging through melting snow, said “Hello.”

Her eyes stung for a second, and then she said warmly, “Hello, Catherine. How are you?”

Another silence. Then the voice said, “Hello, I’m very well, thank you.”

“I’m coming this afternoon. How did you get on with your reading?”

The voice, with difficulty, said “Yes.” There was a pause, and Barbara was about to say something when the voice went on, quite clear suddenly. “Barbara — Mother told me last night that Mr. Jacks — David — had gone away. Dis —” the voice slid back into a drift. “Dis —”

“Disappeared,” suggested Barbara.

“Yes,” the voice said. “Barbara. I know where Mr. Jacks is. I’ll tell you this afternoon. I can’t —” the voice faltered — “talk very well on the phone, you know. Good-bye.”

Barbara had met Mary Emerson at a party in London, the first party she had gone to after her husband’s death.

She had heard her before she had seen her; the deep
Southern
voice from the middle of a group of people. Then, as she approached the group, she had heard someone she knew say, “You should ask Barbara.”

“Ask Barbara what?” she said.

The people around the Southern voice stood back to reveal a handsome red-headed woman in an expensive, white silk dress.

“Are you Barbara?”

Barbara nodded, and the woman said, “I’m Mary Emerson. Someone —” she turned and vaguely indicated one of the people she had been talking to, the man Barbara knew — “said something about your looking after children.”

Mrs. Emerson was attractive, Barbara decided, even if she did play the role of a Southern lady a bit too self-consciously. She was big, and soft, and ripe.

“No,” Barbara said. “I’ve never looked after children in my life.”

“Oh,” Mary Emerson said.

Barbara went on, as if she hadn’t heard the interruption. “I trained as a dancer, but I thought I should do something more useful than just dance, so I used to give movement
training
, a type of therapy, to retarded children. But I don’t really know anything about looking after children.”

Mary Emerson looked as if she found Barbara noble.

“But I haven’t worked for about six years now,” Barbara added. “I was married.”

“You’re not thinking of taking up your old job?”

“Yes, actually, I am.”

“Have you ever been to Rome?” Mary Emerson asked.

*

They had made an appointment for the following day, and soon afterward Mary Emerson had left the party.

Before leaving she had said to Barbara, “If you would come and teach my daughter I’d be delighted. She’s not very retarded, but she is retarded. She’s twenty and as educated as she’s ever going to be, but she’s fat and her mouth hangs open all the time and she cries when she sees a stranger. If you could just make her move — preferably not in my
direction
— I’d pay you anything, my dear. But we’ll talk about that tomorrow.”

Later at the party Barbara had met a young American man; he was standing with the group that had previously been surrounding Mary Emerson. The same man who had
mentioned
her name before now said to the American, “You just missed a compatriot of yours who lives in Rome.”

“Thank God. What’s her name?”

“Emerson.”

“Never heard of her. What does she do?”

“She’s rich.”

“Do you live in Rome?” Barbara said.

The American looked at her nervously. “Yes.”

“I might be coming to Rome soon.”

“What are you going to be doing in Rome?”

Barbara smiled. “I don’t know. But possibly teaching this Mrs. Emerson’s daughter.”

“She has an idiot child,” someone said.

“My name’s David Jacks,” the American said. “Look me up if you come to Rome.” He wrote his name and address and telephone number on a piece of paper and gave it to Barbara, then more or less turned his back on her and started talking to someone else.

“Thank you,” said Barbara and moved away.

Mrs. Emerson had booked her a room at a hotel, and after checking in she took a taxi to the address on the Appia Antica that she’d been given. The city, as she drove through it, was cold and decorated. She had been to Rome for the first time for her not very successful honeymoon. She had been back twice since then, though always in the summer. Now, five days after Christmas, the city looked more serious, less
monumental
, and more shabby than before.

Nevertheless, she was excited. She was abroad. She was free. She had spent a terrible, sad Christmas with her mother in a cold flat in London; and that had been the end. Now she was starting something new.

The taxi stopped by the tomb of Cecilia Metella. On the other side of the road there was a small pine wood with a gravel drive running through it to a high red-brown wall with
a green metal gate. Above the wall she could see the roof of a villa that seemed to be long and, from where she stood, windowless.

She walked up the drive and rang a bell by the side of the green gate. She shivered as she waited, feeling nervous and young. The gate opened.

Mary Emerson, in a brown mink coat, smiled and said, “Welcome to Rome, Barbara, and do
come in quickly. It’s freezing out here.”

Inside the gate the gravel drive continued; to the left there was a garage with a station wagon parked in it, and to the right, the long villa.

“It’s like the country here,” Barbara said. No other houses were visible; behind the garage there was a high wall, which ran along the left-hand side of the property; and beyond the house, on the right, a row of cypress trees stretched into the distance. The land behind the house seemed endless.

Mary Emerson made a face and said, “It is the country.”

“It’s beautiful.”

Inside the house, it was warm. It was also, as Barbara was to describe it later, decorated in a style that she could only call Southern Colonial.

In the hall there were empty white bookshelves from floor to ceiling, white cane chairs, and inside a large white bird cage a myna bird, which screamed when Barbara walked past, “My name’s George,” and laughed a deep laugh when Mary Emerson said, “Oh, shut up.” Turning to Barbara, Mary Emerson said, “That’s Catherine’s bird.”

In the living room were heavy, dark pieces of Victorian furniture, white rugs, and plants everywhere. They sat down on a sofa and Mary Emerson called languidly, “Iva!” She
hummed, smiling at the floor, until a plump, gray-haired woman in a white apron came in.

“Iva, this is Barbara Michaels. She’s going to look after Catherine. Barbara, this is Iva, who looks after us all.”

Barbara stood up, and the two women shook hands and smiled.

When Iva had gone and Barbara was sitting down again, she said, “Does Iva speak English?”

Mary Emerson shook her head. “No, not a word. But she understands everything. She’s like me and Italian. Can’t speak it, but understand—” she laughed — “enough.”

“What about Catherine?”

“Oh Catherine understands and speaks it. She makes it sound like gibberish, but then I guess she thinks it is — she thinks English is, too. I honestly don’t think she realizes there’s any difference. Everything’s a foreign language to her. So, anyway, my dear, how are you?”

They had agreed on terms in London. Barbara was to come five days a week, for two hours a day — from four to six. She could do exactly as she pleased with Catherine. She was to be paid ten dollars an hour. If she couldn’t live on that money, Mary Emerson would see if she could find her similar work with someone else — but Barbara said she would try, in the beginning at least, to live on what she earned with Catherine.

Sitting side by side on the sofa, Mary Emerson asked
Barbara
if she planned to stay on at the hotel or find an apartment.

Barbara said she would move to a pensione near the
Colosseum
, which would be cheaper, and more convenient for the bus.

Mary Emerson lay back on the sofa and lit a cigarette. The
big woman smoked as if smoking were the most voluptuous thing in the world.

“Do you take Catherine out much?” Barbara asked. She realized that Mary Emerson made her feel prim.

“No.” Mary Emerson shook her head and smiled. “Never. I was thinking that perhaps, when you’ve settled in, you might take Catherine to the ballet or the cinema or
something
.” Then she added quickly, “Of course I’d pay you for your time, but I really can’t take her out myself.” She pulled herself up on the sofa and leaned toward Barbara. “Catherine depresses me.”

Barbara felt embarrassed. “Who was here before me?”

“Another English girl. But she didn’t actually do anything with Catherine, if you know what I mean. She just took care of her.”

“Did she live in?”

“No. I don’t like people living here. It makes me feel I have something between a nurse and a guard around. She used to come in every day, but she would just hang around, sitting with Catherine.” The woman laughed. “It was like having two mad girls in the house. So I got rid of her — oh, just before I went to London. I left Iva to look after Catherine then. But I do think that two hours of actually doing something will be better for Catherine.” She looked at Barbara and said, “Besides, Deborah was such a dull creature, even Catherine was bored by her. And silly. She used to thumb through
Vogue
and all these fashion magazines all day, saying to Catherine, “Oh, you’d look nice in that.” Catherine knew perfectly well that she wouldn’t, but it didn’t make life any easier when we came to buying clothes.” She laughed. “That’s the one thing that Catherine and I do together — I really quite
enjoy it. I have to use my imagination, you see. It’s not easy to get her something that doesn’t make her look too hideous around the house all day, but at the same time that won’t get her stared at, or get her pinched by any of these wretched boys or old men here if she ever does go out. Not that Catherine would mind, I don’t think, but I would. I mean — it just wouldn’t be very nice.” She wrinkled her nose and laughed again. “I’m not really to
blame
if Catherine depresses me, am I?”

She didn’t expect an answer, so Barbara said, “What does Catherine do the rest of the day?”

“She gets up about ten. Then — oh, I don’t know. She doesn’t actually read, I guess, because she generally holds the book upside down. Let’s just say she spends part of most mornings with a book in her hands. Then sometimes she goes outside and prays to the goldfish in the fountain.” Another laugh. “And she goes to bed around eight.”

“How big is the garden,” Barbara asked.

Mary Emerson waved her hand. “As endless as it looks.” She stood, lazily, and walked over to the window. Barbara followed.

“We keep up this little bit of gravel and rock here, and there are a few flowers and things in the spring. Oh, and lilies in the fountain, besides the fish. But all that beyond the little hedge is ours — it stretches right over to Via San Sebastian. It’s pretty useless. No one’s allowed to build on it, of course, and we couldn’t possibly keep up a garden a mile long. So you see it’s just a sort of wasteland. We call it the wilderness. It’s full of vipers and scorpions and things.” She wrinkled her nose. “I never go in there.”

“Does Catherine keep out of it?”

“No. Sometimes she gets tired of praying to the fish, so she takes herself off in there to pray to the grass and the nettles and the snakes, but —” she turned to Barbara and smiled, “I really think she goes because the local boys climb over the wall at the other end and Catherine goes out to meet them. But boys or snakes, I wouldn’t go out there if I were you.”

“Do you have any serum in the house, in case anyone gets bitten?”

Mary Emerson looked surprised. “No,” she said. “Do you think I ought to?” But before Barbara could reply, she took her arm and led her back to the sofa. “Do tell me something about yourself,” she said. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Barbara did mind. “There’s not that much to tell,” she said. “I think I told you more or less everything in London.”

“Oh, no! You didn’t tell me anything in London. What about your marriage? You said you were married, didn’t you?”

“I was. My husband died.”

“Recently?”

“About three months ago.”

“Mine died about eight years ago,” Mary Emerson said with a smile. “What did your husband do?”

“He was a professor of history at Oxford.”

Mary Emerson looked shocked. “Good heavens,” she drawled. Then, quite abruptly, she said, “What made you come to Rome?”

Barbara heard a noise in the hall and thought it must be the myna, or someone about to come in. But no one appeared, so she went on, with a frown, “You asked me to.”

“I know I did, my dear, but that’s — incidental, isn’t it? You could have found a job in London.”

“Yes, I know. But —” she paused. She didn’t want to explain to this woman, but she felt helpless, “I wanted to get away.” Mary Emerson was looking at her, unconvinced. “And then my mother is getting old, and when my husband died she wanted me to go home and live with her and — oh, I don’t know. I thought it was better to get away. And then, when I met you — I’m just thirty-four,” she said quickly. “I was sure that if I went home to live with my mother I’d never have another chance.”

“Of what? Getting married again?” Mary Emerson stood up as she asked the question, and began to walk, very slowly, across the room toward the door to the hall.

“No. I don’t know if I ever want to get married again.”

Mary Emerson, in the middle of the room, laughed. “Why, didn’t you like it the first time?”

Barbara blushed. “Oh, yes. I was very happy. But — I don’t know. I suppose that now, afterward, it seems it wasn’t really quite enough. But then I suppose it’s too soon to say, isn’t it?”

“I agree with you,” Mary Emerson said. She pulled the hall door open, and behind it there was a pale girl with short fair hair, with her head bent and her mouth open. She had a brace on her teeth, and she was crying.

Mary Emerson laughed, a loud, almost coarse laugh, and taking the girl by the arm she led her into the room. “This is Catherine,” she said. “Catherine, this is Mrs. Michaels.” She looked at Barbara with a frown and said, “Are you Mrs. Michaels?”

Barbara shook her head. “No. I’m Miss Michaels. I was Mrs. — something else.”

“This is Miss Michaels, Catherine.”

The pale girl didn’t look up. She was still crying, and
wiping
her eyes and her nose with the back of her hand.

“Hello, Catherine,” Barbara said.

Mary Emerson touched her head and said, “I must go and wash my hair. I’ll let you two get to know each other.”

After she had left the room Catherine looked up at Barbara and said, “I hate it when mother washes her hair. She uses raw eggs.”

Barbara didn’t know what to say. She had imagined that Catherine was almost unable to speak. But she said her two sentences quite clearly, even if with difficulty and without color. It sounded as if her voice were trudging, on a gray winter’s day, through snow.