The Perfect Host (16 page)

There was a red squirrel arcing across the thick green lawn, and a man with balloons far down the block. I looked at him. Nobody would call me mister. Nobody ever had, yet. I was too young.

“Mister!”

It was a woman’s voice, but rough; rough and nasty. It was strong, and horrible for the pleading in it. No strong thing should beg. The sun was warm, too. The squirrel was not afraid.

The grass was as green and smooth as a jelly bean.

Mother was all right, dad said, and dad felt fine. We would go to the movies, dad and I, close together with a closeness that never happened when things were regular, meals at home, mother up making breakfast every morning, and all that. This week it would be raids on the icebox and staying up late sometimes, because dad forgot about bedtime and anyway wanted to talk.

“Mister!”

Her voice was like a dirty mark on a new collar. I looked up.

She was hanging out of a window on the second floor of a near
ell of the hospital. Her hair was dank and stringy, her eyes had mud in them, and her teeth were beautiful.

She was naked, at least to the waist. She was saying “Mister!” and she was saying it to me.

I was afraid, then. I got in the car and slammed the door.

“Mister! Mister! Mister!”

They were syllables that meant nothing. A “mis,” a “ter”—sounds that rasped across the very wound they opened. I put my hands over my ears, but by then the sounds were inside my head, and my hands just seemed to keep them there. I think I sobbed. I jumped out of the car and screamed, “What? What?”

“I got to get out of here,” she moaned.

I thought, why tell me? I thought, what can I do? I had heard of crazy people, but I had never seen one. Grown-up people were sensible, mostly. It was only kids who did crazy things, without caring how much sense they made. I was only fourteen.

“Mister,” she said. “Go to—to.… Let me think, now.… Where I live. Where I live.”

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“In Homeland,” she said.

She sank down with her forehead on the sill, slowly, as if some big slow weight were on her shoulderblades. I could see only the top of her head, the two dank feathers of her hair, and the point of an elbow. Homeland was a new residential suburb.

“Where in Homeland?” It seemed to be important. To me, I mean, as much as to her.

“Twenty,” she mumbled. “I have to remember it …” and her voice trailed off. Suddenly she stood bolt upright, looking back into the room as if something had happened there. Then she leaned far out.

“Twenty sixty-five,” she snarled. “You hear? Twenty sixty-five. That’s the one.”

“Ron! Ronnie!”

It was dad, coming down the path, looking at me, looking at the woman.

“That’s the one,” said the woman again.

There was a flurry of white behind her. She put one foot on the sill and sprang out at me. I closed my eyes. I heard her hit the pavement.

When I opened my eyes they were still looking up at the window. There was a starched white nurse up there with her fingers in her mouth, all of them, and eyes as round and blank as a trout’s. I looked down.

I felt dad’s hand on my upper arm. “Ronnie!”

I looked down. There was blood, just a little, on the cuff of my trousers. There was nothing else.

“Dad.…”

Dad looked all around, on the ground.

He looked up at the window and at the nurse. The nurse looked at dad and at me, and then put her hands on the sill and leaned out and looked all around on the ground. I could see, in the sunlight, where her fingers were wet from being in her mouth.

Dad looked at me and again at the nurse, and I heard him draw a deep quivering breath as if he’d forgotten to breathe for a while and had only just realized it. The nurse straightened up, put her hands over her eyes and twisted back into the room.

Dad and I looked at each other. He said, “Ronnie—what was—what …” and then licked his lips.

I was not as tall as my father, though he was not a tall man. He had thin, fine obedient hair, straight and starting high. He had blue eyes and a big nose and his mouth was quiet. He was broad and gentle and close to the ground, close to the earth.

I said, “How’s mother?”

Dad gestured at the ground where something should be, and looked at me. Then he said, “We’d better go, Ron.”

I got into the car. He walked around it and got in and started it, and then sat holding the wheel, looking back at where we had been standing. There was still nothing there. The red squirrel, with one cheek puffed out, came bounding and freezing across the path.

I asked again how mother was.

“She’s fine. Just fine. Be out soon. And the baby. Just fine.” He looked back carefully for traffic, shifted and let in the clutch. “Good as new,” he said.

I looked back again. The squirrel hopped and arched and stopped, sitting on something. It sat on something so that it was perhaps ten inches off the ground, but the thing it sat on couldn’t be seen. The squirrel put up its paws and popped a chestnut into them from its cheek, and put its tail along its back with the big tip curled over like a fern front, and began to nibble. Then I couldn’t see any more.

After a time dad said, “What happened there just as I came up?”

I said, “What happened? Nothing. There was a squirrel.”

“I mean, uh, up at the window.”

“Oh, I saw a nurse up there.”

“Yes, the nurse.” He thought for a minute. “Anything else?”

“No. What are you going to call the baby?”

He looked at me strangely. I had to ask him again about the baby’s name.

“I don’t know yet,” he said distantly. “Any ideas?”

“No, Dad.”

We rode along for quite a while without saying anything. A little frown came and went between dad’s eyes, the way it did when he was figuring something out, whether it was a definition at charades, or an income tax report, or a problem of my school algebra.

“Dad. You know Homeland pretty well, don’t you?”

“I should. Our outfit agented most of those sites. Why?”

“Is there a Homeland Street, or a Homeland Avenue out there?”

“Not a one. The north and south ones are streets, and are named after trees. The east and west ones are avenues, and are named after flowers. All alphabetical. Why?”

“I just wondered. Is there a number as high as twenty sixty-five?”

“Not yet, though I hope there will be some day … unless it’s a telephone number. Why, Ron? Where did you get that number?”

“I dunno. Just thought of it. Just wondered. Where are we going to eat?”

We went to the Bluebird.

I suppose I knew then what had gotten into me when the woman jumped; but I didn’t think of it, any more than a redhead goes around thinking to himself “I have red hair” or a taxi-driver says to himself “I drive a cab.”

I knew, that’s all. I just knew. I knew the
purpose
, too, but didn’t think of it, any more than a man thinks and thinks of the place where he works, when he’s on his way to work in the morning.

II
As Told By
Benton Daniels

R
ONNIE’S NOT AN
unusual boy. Oh, maybe a little quieter than most, but it takes all kinds. He’s good in school, but not brilliant; averages in the low eighties, good in music and English and history, weak in math, worse in science than he could be if he cared a little bit more about it.

That day when we left the hospital grounds, though, there was something unusual going on. Yes, sir. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it, and I must say I still can’t.

Sometimes I think it’s Ronnie, and sometimes I think it was something temporarily wrong with me. I’m trying to get it all straight in my mind, right from the start.

I had just seen Clee and the baby. Clee looked a little tired, but her color was wonderful. The baby looked like a baby—that is, like a little pink old man, but I told Clee she was beautiful and takes after her mother, which she will be and do, of course, when she gets some meat on her bones.

I came along the side path from the main entrance, toward where the car was parked. Ronnie was waiting for me there. I saw him as I turned toward the road, just by the north building.

Ronnie was standing by the car, with one foot on the running board, and he seemed to be talking with somebody in the second-floor window. I called out to him, but he didn’t hear. Or he paid no attention. I looked up, and saw someone in the window. It was a woman, with a crazy face. I remember an impression of very regular white teeth, and scraggly hair. I don’t think she had any clothes on.

I was shocked, and then I was very angry. I thought, here’s some poor sick person gone out of her mind, and she’ll maybe mark Ronnie
for life, standing up there like that and maybe saying all sorts of things.

I ran to the boy, and just as I reached him, the woman jumped. I think someone came into the room behind her.

Now, look. I distinctly heard that woman’s body hit. It was a terrible sound. And I remember feeling a wave of nausea just then, but for some reason I was sure then, and I’m sure now, that it had nothing to do with the thing I saw. That kind of shock-nausea only hits a person after the shock, not before or during. I don’t even know why I think of this at all. It’s just something I feel sure about, that’s all.

I heard her body hit. I don’t know whether I followed her body down with my eyes or not. There wasn’t much time for that; she didn’t fall more than twenty-five, maybe twenty-eight feet.

I heard the noise, and I when I looked down—
there wasn’t anything there!

I don’t know what I thought then. I don’t know if a man does actually
think
at a time like that. I know I looked all around, looking for a hole in the ground or maybe a sheet of camouflage or something which might be covering the body. It was too hard to accept that disappearance. They say that a dog doesn’t bother with its reflection in a mirror because he can’t smell it, and he believes his nose rather than his eyes. Humans aren’t like that, I guess. When your brain tells you one thing and your eyes another, you just don’t know what to believe.

I looked back up at the window, perhaps thinking I’d been mistaken, that the woman would still be up there.

She was gone, all right. There was a nurse up there instead, looking down, terrified.

I returned to Ronnie and started to ask him what had happened. I stopped when I saw his face. It wasn’t shocked, or surprised, or anything. Just relaxed. He asked me how his mother was.

I said she was fine. I looked at his face and marveled that it showed nothing of the horrible thing that had happened. It wasn’t blank, mind you. It was just as if nothing had occurred at all, or as if the thing had been wiped clean out of his memory.

I thought at the moment that that was a blessing, and, with one more glance at the window—the nurse had gone—I went to the car and got in. Ronnie sat next to me. I started the car, then looked back at the path. There was nothing there.

I suppose the reaction hit me then—that, or the thought that I had had a hallucination. If I had, I was naturally worried. If I had not, what had happened to Ronnie?

I drove off, finally. Ronnie made some casual small talk; I questioned him about the thing, carefully, but he seemed honestly to know nothing about it. I decided to let well enough alone, at least for the time being.…

We had a quick dinner at the Bluebird, and then went home. I suppose I was poor company for the boy, because I kept finding myself mulling over the thing. We went to the Criterion, and I don’t believe I heard or saw a bit of it. Then we picked up an evening paper and went home. He went to bed while I sat up with the headlines.

I found it at the bottom of the third page. This is the item:

The newspaper said Mrs. Stoye was found under her window. Whoever found her must have been able to see her.

I wonder what the nurse saw?

I went into the kitchen and heated some coffee, poured it, sweetened it, stirred it, and then left it untasted while I put on my hat and got my car keys.

I had to see that nurse. First I tore out the newspaper article—I didn’t want Ronnie ever to see it.

III
As Told By
Lucille Holder

I
HAVE SEEN
a lot of ugly things as a trainee and as a nurse, but they don’t bother me very much. It’s not that the familiarity hardens one; it rather that one learns the knack of channeling one’s emotions around the ugly thing.

When I was a child in England I learned how to use this knack. I lived in Coventry, and though Herr Hitler’s treatment of the city seems to have faded from the news and from fiction, the story is still vividly written on the memories of us who were there, and is read and reread more often than we care to say.