The Innocent (21 page)

“He won't suspect a thing if you call and tell him that. He'll probably say, ‘I told you so,' Margie. Will you do that? Will you do it for me?” Charles put both his hands of Marjorie's shoulders; they were light on her shoulders.

They were taking the pulse of her shoulders. “Yes, I'll do that. Why not?”

“You won't tell anyone I—”

You breathed in. You breathed out. “I won't tell anyone you killed the baby.” Why had she said “the baby” and not “your baby”? Because Charles was not little Pete's father. Little Pete never had a father. Someone else had told her that, that Pete never had a father.

But Marjorie still didn't understand Charles. She simply realized that Charles wasn't little Pete's father because a man who could kill a child could not be a father. It was not real understanding yet. Marjorie thought, when she kept Charles and the baby apart, that she was protecting Charles from a nuisance, but actually she had been protecting her baby. Yes, Marjorie was the mother type; she had always known that it is dangerous to leave a helpless infant with his jealous older brother. She had been a good intuitive mother until this once, when primitive fear for her own survival had jolted her out of motherliness and made her an animal in peril, cunning only in its own defense, its own safety. Until now, Marjorie had always kept the siblings apart. As she herself had said, this had been the first and last time. She had done a terrible thing, made a terrible mistake, but she still did not know her mistake. She told Charles, “Very well, I'll call Dr. Larker.”

Charles took his hands from her shoulders and she walked through the bedroom, through the study, very slowly, looking hard at everything, the books on the shelves, the way the cushion had slipped sidewise on the desk chair, noticing that the elastic was worn and should be replaced. Marjorie forced these details into her mind to force out what was there. She proceeded slowly, focusing on each object in turn. She touched them, too, the books, the desk, the cushion on the chair with one hand, while between the fingers of the other she fondled the soft ragged edge of the desk blotter. She wanted her hands to feel something besides ice, but they were too cold to feel. Going downstairs, she leaned against the wall because she was very tired.

Marjorie rubbed her frozen hands together briskly. Her engagement ring twisted and hurt her palm. She turned it so the small diamond faced out, then pulled it off, then pulled off her wedding ring, too, as if both rings were constricting her finger. She put the rings on the telephone table and began to dial Dr. Larker's number. Marjorie dialed B—U—and then stopped, putting her hand to her forehead, waiting for her head to clear, because it now seemed to her there was someone else she must call before calling Dr. Larker. Marjorie did not notice that Charles was standing in back of her and paid no attention to his start of alarm when she put the receiver back in its cradle and bent under the table to take up the directory from its shelf.

“Why don't you call?” Charles asked. He took the two rings from the table and handed them to her. She put them on again. “Call. Go on.”

“I will, later. First I've got to find—” She lifted the directory to the table and opened it.

“You know his number. You've called it often enough.”

“Not that number.”

“What number?”

His voice had become shrill; it hurt her throbbing head. “Oh, please, please!” She turned over the pages, hunting for H.

“What number?”

“Bellevue Hospital.”

“What's that? What did you say?”

“Bellevue Hospital.” He took the directory away. Marjorie extended her hand for it. “I want to call Doctor—Doctor—it will come to me. G3, Ward G3, the Psychiatric Ward. The name will come back to me.”

“Why do you want to call Bellevue Hospital?”

“What was his name? Oh, what was it? There's this girl there, Charles, this colored girl who used to work for Claire.”

“I know all about her.” He set the directory down on the table again but put his hand down on it, leaning oh it with all his weight. Under pressure his hand grew redder and redder; larger, it seemed to Marjorie. Bigger. Stronger. She turned her eyes from his hand. “Why do you want to call him? Answer me!”

Without looking at the hand Marjorie tried to pry it off the directory.

“Answer me, I say!”

“There's this girl there. Edna. If we don't do something for her, she'll die, too. Little Pete is dead, so he can wait. She can't wait. That's why I must call that number first, Charles. Do you see what I mean? Little Pete can wait, but she can't.”

“What did you want to call him for?”

She controlled her impatience, feeling that she must tell him although she couldn't understand why. It wasn't like Charles to want to know how she managed. She could manage better by herself. “I am going to tell this Doctor What's-his-name to put her in a private place, right away. That's all. We can pay for it, Charles, you needn't worry about that. We have four hundred dollars and now that little Pete—After the funeral I can go right back to work and we'll have plenty of money for it. We've got to do it, Charles. You can see that we've got to do it, on account of Claire.”

“What do you mean, ‘on account of Claire'?”

She said with great, stale weariness, “You know, Charles. I read those papers this morning, the papers in the closet. Those papers of Claire's that you put in the closet.”

“How do you know I put those papers in the closet?”

“Oh, Charles! Never mind. It doesn't matter. I know. I guess I know the whole thing now, Charles.”

“You know the whole thing now,” Charles repeated, telling this to himself, taking it in. He pulled himself together. “What whole thing? I don't know what the hell you're talking about.”

“You know, Charles. Of course you know. And now I know about Claire and Edna and everything.”

“What whole thing? What are you talking about?”

“I guess I really knew before, but I wouldn't let myself know. I just wouldn't let myself. Oh, I really knew before, but I wouldn't admit it, Charles. I didn't have to admit it until I read those papers. But I always knew.”

Charles protested no longer. He staggered back, his glance became rudderless, wild. Here again, for the second time, Marjorie's intuitive understanding of her husband failed her. It is a bad mistake for a mother to admit knowledge of her child's misdeeds which she has left unpunished. The child loses his moorings when this happens; if his mother doesn't stand for the right, then there is no right; if there is no right, then there is no wrong.

Marjorie kept tugging at the telephone directory. “I knew but I kept telling myself I was worried because it was too good to be true, my having you and little—And it
was
too good to be true, wasn't it? After all.”

“Don't cry,” Charles said. He banged his hand down on the telephone directory. “Don't cry.”

“I won't. I musn't. Not yet. I've got to call that doctor first and then Dr. Larker. Please let me find that number, Charles.”

He moistened his lips. His hand balled into a fist. He shook his head.

“Why not? Oh, you think they'll find out about you?” Why wouldn't he let her manage things? “They won't find out, Charles. I've figured it out carefully. I went through all that earlier this afternoon, Charles, when I wasn't so upset. As far as the hospital is concerned, we're just sorry for that girl, do you see? We just want her put into a private institution where she'll be safe.”

“Where
she'll
be safe! What about me?”

“But you'll be safe, too, Charles.” She was still trying for patience and still quite uncomprehending. “Please let me find the number and get it over with. This way they'll just go on thinking she's crazy, but I can't have her killing herself, Charles. I can't do that. I couldn't stand that. We must keep her from killing herself or else I can't go on.”

Charles took a deep breath. “What do you mean, or else you can't go on?”

“It's the only condition I'll stay with you on, Charles. Otherwise I'll go away. I'll go home.”

She heard the deep suck of another breath. Now Charles was having trouble with his lungs. “You couldn't go away. You promised!”

But this is incredible, she thought, incredible. “I'll have to break my promise unless you let me do this. If we can't do this much for Edna, I'll have to go away.”

“From me? Go away from me? You couldn't.”

“I could.” She smiled. “I could.”

Charles saw the smile. “You hate me.”

“No, I don't hate you.” Hate. Love. There were a thousand complicated emotions in between these two. “I don't hate you, Charles. I don't hate you or blame you. I told you. This is different.”

“You told me you'd stay with me, Margie.”

“I'll stay with you if you let me call. I'll have to stay with you.” When she thought of what it would be like with Charles, she threw her hands up over her eyes again and he pulled them away again frantically.

“Margie, you mustn't say that!”

She let him hold her hands but she was so still, her whole body was so still, that Charles gasped, his face became red and distended, his eyes bulged. He dropped Marjorie's hands as if they were loathsome. Charles was not at all handsome now. For the first time, the first and last time, he resembled his child. Little Pete had looked like that when he had cried and Marjorie hadn't come to him soon enough, when he believed that she had deserted him. Marjorie, staring quietly at her husband, knew that this was what he had looked like when he killed Claire. As if her thought of Claire had been transmitted to Charles, he began to talk of her.

“You're as bad as she was. Claire. All you do is talk. When it comes right down to it, you're no better than she was. I trusted her and I trusted you, and neither of you stood up to it. I found out when it came to a test that I couldn't trust her, and now it seems I can't trust you, either. What will I do?” he asked someone, no one. “What the hell will I do now?” He rubbed his hand over his face. “What will I do now? Wanting to call them up, worrying about some damn girl at a time like this. Margie, what are you trying to do to me? Say you changed your mind. Say you won't call them!”

Something warned her, some inner wisdom urged her to agree with him. You better agree with him, the something, the mind, the intellect Warned. She was warned to tell him she would do as he wished, to call later secretly, to call without telling Charles. Margie couldn't make the wise words come out. “I must call them, Charles. I must do that much.” Stubbornly, fatally, she reached out her hand for the directory.

Charles snatched it away and threw it against the far wall. “Oh, no, you don't!” Charles said, speaking between his teeth. “No, you don't. Now I'm beginning to see. What did you really go out for? Why was it so important that you left me when I begged you not to? Where's the medicine you had to go for? Where is it? You didn't bring back any bottle.”

She said, “I—I—” staring at the telephone directory, which looked as if its back had been broken.

“You see! It was a lie. You lied to me about that. What else have you lied to me about? Where did you go? You didn't go to the doctor, did you?” He had his hands on her shoulders now; he was shaking her. “Where?”

“Oh, don't, Charles!”

“Don't ‘Charles' me, not any more! To the other doctor? Did you go down to Bellevue Hospital to the other doctor?”

“No. I didn't go down there.”

“Did you tell anybody?”

“Nobody, Charles. I didn't.”

“That friend of yours? How about that friend of yours you were so chummy with last night?”

“Eve? No. She's out of town. No, I haven't told anybody, nobody.”

“And you're not going to,” he said. Charles gave one agonized glance around the foyer, as if this were a dangerous place for him to be now, as if everywhere was dangerous now; then, in one swift movement he released Marjorie's shoulders and lifted her in his arms.

She was very small in his arms. She was almost as small in his arms as little Pete had been in hers. He carried her upstairs into the study with as little effort as she had carried little Pete. As he passed the chair where they were lying, he snatched up several of little Pete's crib sheets from the freshly laundered pile of them. He put Marjorie down in what had been Claire's desk chair, held her with one hand while, with the other and his strong teeth, he tore the sheets into strips. Charles tied Marjorie's ankles to the rung of the chair, her hands to the arms. He bound her upper body to the back of the chair by winding the sheets around and around.

Marjorie didn't struggle; she appeared to be engaged in watching the sure movements of the hands she had so loved and which she no longer loved. She tried to pull herself together so she could remind those hands that they loved her. “Charles, what are you doing? Why are you doing this to me?”

“Don't you worry about what I'm doing.”

“But I haven't done anything to you, Charles. Charles, I haven't hurt you, Charles.” She repeated his name often.

He tugged at the strips of sheet, trying them out for strength, to see if they would hold. To see if they would hold for what?

It was then Marjorie screamed. “What are you going to do?”

He was quite willing to tell her. He hadn't yet broken the habit of telling her what she wanted to know. Charles said, pointing with his thumb at the next room, “I've got it figured out. Don't worry. I can take care of myself. It's dead in there.” Charles didn't bother to say “he” now. “It's been a godawful pest, a nuisance. Everyone but you admits that.”

“Charles! Don't! Don't!”

His mouth puckered. He pulled it straight. “Dr. Larker, the nurse, everyone knows but you. You haven't had enough sleep for weeks. Last night your own friend mentioned that you looked lousy, like you'd been under a terrible strain. Do you get it? That's all to the good. Everyone knows you've been doing too much for your own good. So you snapped under the strain.” He snapped his fingers. “In a state of temporary insanity you did it. You smothered it.”