“Don’t drink any more coffee, Mom. Go and take a nap. I can make dinner—start it before I go off at seven-fifteen for Grandma.—Don’t worry about anything.”
“I don’t think we have to send a telegram to Richard’s brother Stephen, do you? I’ll write to him. They weren’t—close.”
“No, Mom.” Arthur hardly remembered his uncle Stephen whom he had met when he was about ten and who lived in Washington State. Suddenly Arthur thought of the Herald, which must have been dropped in the mailbox as usual around 2 p.m.
Just then, the telephone rang, and Arthur answered. It was a woman whose name he vaguely knew, offering her sympathies. Arthur said that his mother was resting now and thanked her on behalf of his mother. Then he went to the mailbox beside the front door, which held two letters and the Chalmerston Herald.
His father’s picture was on the front page, in a single column at the bottom, an old picture of him looking about thirty-five in a white shirt and tie and dark suit, square-faced, sturdy, faintly smiling. Where had they got that picture from?
. . . insurance and retirement benefit representative of Heritage Life was fatally shot Sunday afternoon by his son Robert, 15, according to police, in his home on West Maple Street . . .
From the way it was written, it might have been an accident. Arthur took the newspaper to his room, hoping his mother wouldn’t miss it and ask for it. His mother had gone into the bedroom to rest, but when he looked through the half-open door, he saw his mother stooped by the chest of drawers.
“I wanted to put away some more of Richard’s things before Mama comes.”
“Mom, you put away enough this morning!—Now stop, so you won’t feel tired later.” Arthur watched her drift toward the double bed and wilt. She lay on it face down, and Arthur closed the door gently.
The living room already looked slightly different: His mother had removed his father’s old tweed jacket, which so often hung on a straight chair near the study, and his pipe-rack, which he seldom used. Arthur set the table in the kitchen. The telephone rang as he was peeling potatoes.
“Damn,” he said, and went to answer it.
“Hello. It’s Irene,” said a wailing voice. “I just wanted—”
“We’re busy here just now. Sorry, I’ve—”
“Can I speak with your mother? I’d—”
Arthur hung up. Then he lifted the telephone off the hook, so his mother’s nap wouldn’t be disturbed. It was time he left the house for Indi Airport.
“I MOST CERTAINLY WILL GO and see Robbie,” his grandmother said as they were driving toward Chalmerston.
“I hope he’s pleasant to you,” Arthur said.
“To me? What do you mean?”
“He’s all clammed up now.” Arthur frowned at the road as he drove.
“What were they quarreling about? Do you know?”
“I don’t know,” Arthur said. “I wasn’t there.”
At home, the scene was almost convincingly cheerful for several minutes. Hugs and kisses, his grandmother opening her suitcase in the spare room, then drinks in the living room while Arthur carried on making dinner.
“. . . quarreling. This was Sunday afternoon,” his mother’s voice said. “Well, I may as well tell you now, because Robbie will. Do you remember Irene Langley? Christmas with her sister?”
Arthur tried not to hear it and deliberately tossed a big cooking spoon into the sink, making a clatter.
“Oh, no, Lois!” said his grandmother.
Arthur put the steaks on, looked at his watch, then went into the living room.
“But what did Richard say?” His grandmother was sitting on the sofa, upright with attention.
“I found him vague,” his mother replied. “I know I—I don’t want to believe it.”
His grandmother shook her head. “And how much is she going to talk around town?—That’s a very unpleasant side of it.”
Arthur gave his grandmother a sign that dinner was ready.
Joan got up and put an arm around Lois’s shoulder, kissed her cheek. “Lois, darling, what a time for you! Arthur says dinner’s ready. Let’s forget all about this for a few minutes.”
After dinner, though it was rather late, his grandmother proposed coffee in the living room, as usual.
“You’ve got to turn in early, haven’t you, Arthur?” his grandmother asked. “Exam tomorrow?”
“Yes, two of ’em.”
“Happy to be home?”
“Oh—am I!”
Then his grandmother frowned as she sipped her coffee. “I can see Robbie before eleven, don’t you think. Loey? No difficulties about seeing him, are there?”
“Shouldn’t think so.”
“Maybe he’ll want to come with us to the funeral? Would that be allowed?”
Lois hesitated. “Hadn’t thought about it. I’m sure it would be allowed—”
The telephone rang. Arthur let his mother answer, because it was probably one of his mother’s friends. Arthur didn’t even listen as his mother said a few phrases. Then she said:
“Arthur? It’s Maggie.” His mother extended the telephone toward him.
“Maggie?” Arthur took the telephone. “H’lo?”
“Hello, Arthur.” Maggie seemed to sigh. “My mother just phoned me. She said your father—well, that—”
“Yes.” Arthur shut his eyes and was glad his mother and grandmother had drifted off to the kitchen.
“She said it was in the paper that Robbie shot him. How awful, Arthur! It was an accident?”
“No.”
“My gosh!—I won’t ask why just now, but I wanted to say that I’m very sorry.—You’re home now? Staying?”
“Yep.” Arthur wanted to cut through the rubbish and say, I love you, Maggie, the same as always, even though she might reply, I’m sorry about that. “Y-you’re not coming home this summer, I heard.”
“Probably not, that’s true. Maybe very late this summer, the way things look . . . Will you give my love to your mother and your grandmother, too? Your mother said she’s there.”
When they hung up, he had still not said I love you, for which he reproached himself, then in the next instant he wondered if it hadn’t been wiser that he hadn’t said it? Mightn’t it have bored her? Girls always knew anyway, he had read somewhere. His grandmother did not come in to see him at bedtime. She and his mother were talking quietly in the living room until very late.
The next morning, Arthur left the house before 9 for the microbio exam, which began at 9:30. His mother and grandmother had already gone, on their way to Robbie’s present place of detention, and this was to be followed by the funeral at 11. Arthur was glad that his grandmother hadn’t brought up his attending the funeral, maybe by trying to postpone his exam, which might not have been possible anyway. Arthur simply didn’t want to go to his father’s funeral and listen to a lot of phony words from Bob Cole. He thought it more than likely that Irene Langley would turn up at the service in the First Church of Christ Gospel, then ride in one of the limousines to the cemetery called Greenhills on the west side of town. Arthur spat into a hedge before he leapt up the steps of Everett Hall.
When he returned home at nearly noon, his mother and grandmother were not back. They would have had to linger and talk after the funeral, he supposed. Arthur dearly wanted a beer and there were plenty in the fridge, but he was afraid of being sleepy or muddleheaded for the French exam at 2 if he drank one, so he took a shower instead. Under the shower, he thought, while he had been writing a paragraph on DNA at 11:30, his father had been lowered into the grave, the clods of earth had begun to fall on the coffin top. His father had talked so much about a soul, yet his body of course had to be disposed of like anyone’s else’s, like a dog’s or a cat’s, and eventually the worms would get at it, despite the qualit
y of the coffin. But that wasn’t the important thing: His father had died in disgrace, or at least for a disgraceful reason. Even his mother must have been thinking, as his coffin sank into the ground, that Richard’s death needn’t have been, except for Robbie’s anger and the reason for that anger.
By the time Arthur had dressed in the bathroom, the two had returned. And it occurred to him suddenly that there was usually food and drink after a funeral at the house of the deceased. Wasn’t there? But not in his father’s case.
“Hello, Arthur.—And how was the exam?” His mother asked in a tired voice.
“Went okay.”
His grandmother was silent. She wore a purple summer dress and a black shawl around her shoulders, which she had probably put over her head in church and at the funeral. She removed the shawl and folded it twice.
“And the funeral—did you take Robbie?” Arthur asked.
“He could’ve gone. He didn’t want to go,” said his mother.
There were a few seconds of silence.
“Well—shall I do something about lunch, Mom? I have to take off just after one. French this afternoon.”
“I know, dear. I’ll fix something for us.—Just want to get out of these shoes first.” She went to the bedroom.
Arthur set the table for three, not caring if he ate a bite standing up. “Hope Irene wasn’t at the funeral,” Arthur said softly to his grandmother.
“She was. Weeping. Real tears, I saw them. Still—as I said to your mother, I had the feeling she hadn’t talked all over town. Didn’t you think that, too, Lois?” she asked as his mother came back.
“You wouldn’t be able to tell. People wouldn’t let on—not at the funeral.”
“You saw Robbie, too, Mom?” Arthur asked.
“For a minute. Then Mama talked with him in his room. I think Mama’s a little surprised.”
“He was so cold,” said his grandmother. “He’s like a changed boy. And then maybe he isn’t.”
“Just said, ‘I don’t want to go to the funeral’? Something like that?” Arthur asked.
“Yes,” said his grandmother. “And he said he thought—what he had done was right. Was right. He is a changed boy.”
Arthur sipped a glass of milk and glanced at his wristwatch. He felt sorry for his grandmother.
“And he doesn’t seem to mind at all being where he is,” his grandmother said. “He talked about joining the Marines later.” She tried to smile.
“How long’s he going to be where he is, Mom?”
“Couple of days, I gathered. Something about a psychiatrist talking to him; then there’s a hearing.” His mother was putting some warm corned beef hash on the table.
“He told me,” said Joan, “that your father made a confession to him about Irene. And then he knew what he ought to do.”
Arthur felt a shock, as if he had not known this before. “Sunday?”
“Yes, after midday dinner. Robbie told me Irene spoke to him on the telephone Saturday, but she’d told Richard long before.”
Arthur looked at his mother. “Robbie didn’t say anything to you Saturday?”
“No!” said his mother. “I remember now, Richard and I were out for a couple of hours shopping Saturday afternoon.”
“And he went to church on Sunday?” Arthur asked, amazed, but only for an instant, because his brother of course would go to church, no matter what.
“Yes,” said his mother, “and I didn’t notice any difference at all the—in the way he acted with Richard.”
Arthur slid around the bench seat, past the place where Robbie usually sat. “Better be going, Mom—if you’ll excuse me.” Arthur tapped his pants pocket to make sure he had his car keys.
“Yes, and you know Robbie told me, Arthur,” said his grandmother, looking at him, “that what his father had said was so awful, he didn’t want to tell his mother. So he just gave him the correct punishment, he said.” Then she crumpled, or her face did, and she closed her eyes to stop the tears.
In his grandmother’s chin, illuminated by the sunshine that came through the kitchen window, Arthur saw little hatchlike wrinkles that he had never noticed before. He ached for her, because there was nothing he could do, no words he could say that would make the facts any easier to bear.
“I feel that I’ve lost a grandson, that’s all,” said his grandmother. “And it’s very sad.”
28
The Reverend Cole was due to arrive at half past 5, his mother told Arthur, when he got home after the French exam.
“Bob said he was going to see Robbie this afternoon, too. And Gus phoned as soon as you’d left. Really the phone’s been ringing all afternoon.”
Arthur had seen Gus and talked with him just a few minutes ago.
“And Robbie’s hearing is on Friday morning. I’m allowed to be present, which they implied was unusual, but nobody else is—of the family.”
“I see.” Arthur’s last exam was on Friday morning. “Where’s Grandma?”
“Having a nap. She wants to go back to Kansas City Friday afternoon, then come back next week to help me out with things. She came here on such short notice, you know—she has to do a few things at her school before she’s free.”
Arthur knew there was paperwork for his mother, though she had said something about a woman from his father’s office coming to do that. He went to his room, put on old Levi’s and a T-shirt, and went out into the backyard. The light of the declining sun struck his face and felt delicious. He took the spade from the toolshed.
When his mother called to him, nearly an hour later, he was grimy and sweaty. He walked toward her, swinging the spade by its handle. “Mom, I don’t want to see that guy,” he said softly and firmly.
“Please, Arthur.—Five minutes? He knows you’ve been busy with exams. He gave a very nice speech at Richard’s—before the funeral, in the church.” His mother wore a fresh summer dress.
He knew he had to put in an appearance if his mother had told Bob Cole he was here. “Okay, Mom. In a minute.”
Then Arthur took his time, lazily washed his hands, wet his head, and spat out water from the backyard faucet whose handle was hot to the touch. He was hoping the minister would be on his feet and on the way out when he went in.
Not so. The minister sat solemn-faced with a full glass of iced tea in his hand when Arthur entered the living room. Arthur accepted a glass of iced tea from his mother, but declined to sit, saying his Levi’s were too dirty.
“Arthur, we’re all of us extremely sad and shocked by what has happened,” said Bob Cole, sadly smiling. “I’m just here to say a few words of friendship and sympathy.”
Arthur waited. Was he going to mention Irene? Had he already?
“. . . hard for us all to realize that a quiet boy like Robbie could’ve done such a thing. It’s a time when we all need all the inner strength we can muster. But that can come with love, forgiveness and neighborliness.” His dark eyes moved past Arthur’s grandmother, who was sitting on the sofa, past his mother sitting on the edge of an armchair, and returned to Arthur.
“Have a coconut cookie, Arthur, they’re very good,” said his mother.
Arthur took one to please his mother. He was remembering when the Reverend Cole had spoke to his father about him and Maggie. Now the minister was extending sympathy to his family about his father? “Robbie thought he was doing the right thing, you know.”
“Arthur, I don’t think we need to go into that,” said his mother gently.
Arthur could see in Bob Cole’s suddenly more alert expression that he knew Irene’s part in this story. “If you talked with Robbie, he probably said the same thing to you.”
“Ye-es, he did,” said the minister.
“And you’ve probably talked to Irene,” Arthur said.
�
�Now, Arthur,” said his grandmother, “we all—Do sit down. Your jeans aren’t all that dirty.”
Bob Cole looked into the distance and cleared his throat. “It’s not appropriate for me, Arthur, to talk about what members of our congregation tell me in confidence.”
“But she talked with you, I suppose. So you know why my brother was angry.”
The Reverend took a deep breath. “But she’s not always to be believed.—She’s still rather disturbed mentally,” he informed Joan, “though a lot calmer than she used to be.”
“But my brother believed her story,” Arthur went on, “and according to Robbie, my father said it was true.—That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Arthur—” His mother seemed not to know how to go on. “Arthur’s had a trying day today, Bob. Two exams, morning and afternoon.”
Bob Cole nodded calmly, as if he understood. “No matter what Irene told me, Arthur, I cannot tell you—or the general public. That would be a breach of confidence, unfair to everyone and to myself, my vocation.”
This brought Arthur back to what he had been thinking seconds before. “This reminds me of last year—the abortion.” He moistened his lips nervously. “I remember you heard it from someone and spoke to my father and evidently to a few other people such as Eddie Howell. Anyway—it seems to me that was making it sort of public—I think.”
Bob Cole looked at his grandmother with a faint smile, as if to say that they had to be patient with the young. “That was for your own good, Arthur—in the long run.”
A platitude and an evasion, Arthur thought. “The whole fuss last year was over whether my f-friend should have an abortion or not, though she wanted one and got one. Now that something’s really happened—you sort of back out. You’re not interfering.”
“How so?” the Reverend asked earnestly. “We are all most concerned. And—we are concerned about abortion, yes. We all know that Irene is not married, but abortion was always out of the question and she will have that child and—our church is going to help financially. And that’s something.”
People Who Knock on the Door Page 30