The Innocent (17 page)

“Crap,” Charles croaked. “Crap. Crap.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“My first wife died of natural causes. What possible connection could this maid have with that? My wife died of illness and this whoever she is couldn't possibly have anything to do with it.”

“Mr. Carter—”

“Could she? Could she?”

“Well, the point is, not could she have but why does she think she has? We're not a court of law, Mr. Carter, we're an institution. This is a ward we've got here for the mentally deranged. We're dealing with what looks like guilt feelings here, not legal guilt, if you understand me.”

“I can't help what the hell guilt feelings she has.”

“I see.” Without his being aware of it Dr. Gresham's voice had become the one he used for patients, very even, most conciliatory. “Well, just one more thing before I hang up, Mr. Carter, there's a matter of some papers she talks about. Would you know anything of any papers which accuse Smith, or conversely, which clear her? We're not quite sure which; the girl isn't completely rational, of course.”

“No, I don't know of any papers.” Charles took a deep breath. “Of all the goddamn fool things to ask me! You people seem to be taking the raving of a lunatic much too seriously. She says papers, so you ask me if there are papers. I suppose if she told you there was a body in the basement, you'd get a warrant and dig up the cement.”

“Well, not quite, not quite,” Dr. Gresham said soothingly. “Not quite. I'm sorry I troubled you, Carter.”

“That's O.K.” Charles banged down the receiver and repeated, “Of all the goddamn fool things!” He felt his bluster leak out, felt the balloon of false, inflated anger collapse, leaving only fear. As was customary with Charles, he believed that all the bent heads of the other men in the large room were against him. He felt that their hidden lips were sneering; if they lifted their eyes they would be cold and hostile. Charles shoved the papers he had been working on into his top drawer. He turned off his desk light. He fled.

Mr. Evans, who was aware that he had been rather rough on Carter that morning, glanced at his wrist-watch and saw that it was five twenty-five. The office closed at five-thirty. He had caught sight of Charles' expression as he dashed past and something in it made him decide not to report Carter's abrupt departure. For the first time Evans felt ashamed of his persecution of Carter, felt he had been a heel and a bully, for, although he did not so designate it, Carter rushing out like that had looked like a scared kid. Like his own freckled Annie Laurie, who was eight and a half. For the time being Evans could not feel that Carter was in any way a hazard to his happy home. He felt without pinning it down that if Gloria could see Carter now, she wouldn't have made that play for him she had made at the B & B Christmas shindig. Evans made a mental note to smooth Carter down at the first opportunity and to bring some posies home to Gloria that evening.

Charles wasn't pinning himself down, either. He stood in the elevator with his hat against his chest like a gentleman; he pulled his dime out of his man's overcoat, pushing the subway turnstiles like a man, sat down in an empty seat like the father of a family coming home in the rain after a hard day at business. He didn't feel he was eight years old and certainly didn't look it, but he was a frightened child threatened with punishment by authority for some mischief and rushing home to Mama. As the subway train swerved and jolted from Thirty-fourth to Seventy-second Street, he kept before his mind's eye a picture of Marjorie. She would be in the living room of their apartment, sitting in the blue wing chair near the window. She would be darning his socks or putting back the buttons on a shirt the laundry had removed them from. He would throw his man's hat and coat on another chair. He would get down on his knees. He would bury his face in Marjorie's lap, and she would put her arms around him and comfort and reassure him. He would hide against her skirt and, above his bowed head, Marjorie would face whatever there was to be faced, as his mother had faced Mr. Schultz the butcher on the occasion when Charles had been caught stealing liverwurst, or Mrs. Carmody when Charles had hit her Pomeranian with a BB. Marjorie would be as fierce against whatever threatened him as Aunt Alice had been when there was that trouble about him and the Christie girl. “It was all the girl's fault,” Aunt Alice had insisted. “You cannot hold poor Charlie responsible.”

“It was all Claire's fault,” Marjorie would say. “She shouldn't have promised to take care of Charles and then threatened him with those bonds. She shouldn't have allowed him to trust her and then turned on him. When Charles trusts somebody he trusts them completely. Charles isn't cagey like other men. Charles isn't wily. When Charles gives himself to someone he doesn't hold anything back. Charles isn't responsible when someone he trusts turns on him.”

His hand was scraping his trouser leg, where the coat had fallen back. He dug his nails into his leg—like a cat, just like that cat of Aunt Alice's, lying on his lap and purring to put him off guard, then digging into him for all she was worth. Charles thought about the cat for a moment, with some satisfaction.

Claire had become another person. She sat up in bed and screamed at him, and her voice filled the room and she filled the room and the threat of her filled and choked the world. She said, “You'll be sorry, Charles Carter! You can't make a fool of me and get away with it.”

“I couldn't help it,” Charles whined.

“Charles couldn't help it,” Marjorie would say. “I will not let you punish Charles. I will protect him. I love him.”

Sitting there in the subway, making two high-school girls' chewing gum rattle as quickly as their hearts beat at the sight of his handsome face, Charles could almost feel Marjorie's soft warm body, the smell of her was in his nostrils. Inside, underneath the beautiful shell of a man who sat under the ad for nosedrops and made the middle-aged woman opposite him hate her ugly body and the hairy moles on her face, Charles whimpered softly with expectation of relief, of sanctuary to be reached soon.

Charles fully expected when he got down on his knees and buried his head in Marjorie's lap that, after she had reassured him somewhat, she would question him. His mother had done so when he had been seen stealing the liverwurst. After Mrs. Carmody had heard her Pomeranian scream with pain and discovered Charles and the BB gun crouching behind the laurel bushes, his mother had questioned him. His mother and his Aunt Alice had tried to avoid knowledge of his misdeeds, but when this was impossible they had questioned him. They couldn't help him unless they found out what had happened. When Margie questioned him, he would tell her about Claire. If she had to know to help him, she should know. When Marjorie knew she would say, “It's all right, darling. Don't worry, you can trust me.”

“Just tell Mother, Charlie.”

“Just tell Marjorie, Charles.”

He rose when the train stopped at the Seventy-second Street station. The high-school girls went back to the movie magazine they had been reading before Charles came in; the middle-aged woman began to plan how to cut the flowered rayon she had picked up so cheaply at Macy's. Charles walked up the subway stairs. It was still raining but that didn't bother him; the rain fell softly on him, like Marjorie's tears would fall when she heard about that doctor telephoning him, putting him through it. He walked with long strides down Central Park West and up Sixty-seventh Street, but then he ran. The elevator seemed so slow tonight that he pushed it while standing in one corner in back of an elderly woman who smelled of Chanel No. 5. He was out of breath from pushing up the slow elevator.

Marjorie, as he had visualized her, was sitting in the blue wing chair near the window, but she wasn't darning his socks or putting buttons on his shirts. Her hands, with the fingers stretched, were clutching the arms of the chair, digging into the upholstery fabric like a cat. No, the cat was Claire, not Marjorie. Her eyes were fixed and dilated. She was breathing as rapidly as Charles was. When Charles threw off his hat and coat and ran toward the blue chair, Marjorie squealed and pushed herself up. Full of his blind need of her, Charles ignored this and simply came closer whereupon she jumped off the chair and backed against the window. Charles merely took her hand to lead her from the window back to the chair so that he might get on with flinging himself on his knees, but she unexpectedly resisted him. She would not be led. She tried to cling to the window sill. This baffled Charles and he let go Marjorie's hand and pushed her by the shoulders and plumped her into the chair she had abandoned, the chair she should be sitting in, the blue wing chair he needed her to sit in. Then he got down on his knees and holding her to the seat (what the devil was the matter with her, she was trying to get up again?) he put his head on her lap. He began, “Oh, Marjorie, oh, Marjorie!” Then he waited, turning his head from side to side because her lap was not welcoming him as it should. He could not rest against her thighs, which were hard and taut instead of soft and receptive. Marjorie even smelled differently to Charles. It was the smell of her fear, but he didn't know that. He moved up a bit further so that his head rested against her belly which could not, by its nature, contract to stone as her thighs had done but remained curved and soft and fitting to receive his bowed head; then safe, home, in sanctuary at last, he waited patiently for Marjorie to comfort, to question, and finally to protect.

She didn't say a word. She couldn't talk or, after the first two times, squeal. As her thighs became rigid, as the veins stood out in her small plump hands changing their character dramatically, so her vocal cords stiffened. She was dumb with terror, petrified with apprehension. This is how the body first reacts to contact with the object feared. Charles was the object feared, not the being she loved. She was not a woman grateful to the depths of personality for a man's love for her, but an animal in peril. Then, as Charles made no further move against her, her flesh relaxed, her heart pumped more regularly and more quietly, her vocal cords slackened, and her brain could go beyond its previous command, to resist, to escape, to flee the enemy. She could not stroke Charles' springy hair or be moved by his beauty and his dependence, but she could think.

“I love you, Margie,” he murmured into her belly. “I love you so. I need you so.”

She could think, Do you love me? Did you love me?

“I need you so much,” Charles whispered. “You're everything to me.” I give myself to you, Mother. Take care of me.

She could think, If he loves me, I am safe. I am safe only if he loves me. She could decide, I must find out. There is a way, her mind suggested, coming back to itself. There is a way to find out. Her mind urged her to find out, to make sure. If he loves you, her mind promised, then it is all right. If he loves you, nothing else matters. If he loves you, then he is Charles and not a monster. He is this man with his head pressed against your belly. It is necessary, her mind warned, that this be settled once and for all.

“Help me, Margie.”

“Charles—”

Now she would question him, like Mother, like Aunt Alice. Now he would tell her, then he need not worry any more. “Yes, Margie?”

“Charles, you know those drops Petey has to have in his formula?”

What had drops to do with Claire?

“You must know those drops, Charles. I've been putting two of them into every bottle since he was born, adding them to his formula. Drisdol. Just before you came, Charles, I dropped the bottle and smashed it, that was why I was so upset when you came in. You noticed that I was upset, didn't you, Charles?”

She had been upset. That was the trouble with her. “Yes.” Something about the baby. She must forget the baby now.

“Well, I broke the bottle, the bottle with the stuff in it, the drops. I called the druggist on Central Park West and he's all out of it. I called all the druggists I could find in the Red Book from here to Broadway. It's not something everybody carries in stock; it's special stuff and not one of them had it. Well, then I telephoned Dr. Larker and he has some right in his office. Isn't that lucky? Isn't that lucky, Charles?”

He stared up at Marjorie with complete incomprehension.

Marjorie did not notice the incomprehension; all she thought was that there was no suspicion on his face. That was all that counted. “I can't tell you how relieved I was when he told me he had a bottle right there, but of course I'll have to go and get it.” She gave Charles a timid push so that she could stand up. “We can't expect Dr. Larker to bring it to us, can we, Charles?”

He didn't give way under her push; instead his hands tightened on her, gripped her even more firmly.

“Charles, I have to go to Dr. Larker and get the drops. Dear,” she added.

“Don't leave me, Margie.”

“I have to, Charles.” She had to fight the panic out of her voice. He was holding her so fast. He wouldn't release her. She was trapped, after all. “Charles, please let me get up. Please.”

“Margie, you mustn't leave me now. You don't understand.” Ask me and I'll tell you. Ask me and I'll 'fess up. Mother, I stole the liverwurst. I aimed at the Pomeranian. The Christie girl and I did bad things in the back seat of her father's car. I killed Claire. “You can't leave me now, you don't understand.”

“Charles, please let go of me. You're hurting me.”

You're hurting me, Marjorie. You're frightening me. You're not behaving the way you should be behaving. But Charles released his hold and Marjorie sprang out of the chair. She moved away, toward the door, but he followed her. “I'll come with you, then. Let's go together. We haven't gone anywhere together for so long.” He was afraid to stay here without her. He hadn't been able to stay here alone after Claire—he had never been able to be alone. Some people were like that. His mother understood, Marjorie should understand. “I'll come with you, then.”