“Oh, you’re a policeman!” the feminine voice half-shouted in terror.
“Miss Wiggins?” he asked.
“Yes,” the voice said.
He could see her now. It was Marie herself. He stopped just short of her and he looked down into her upturned face—a face twisted with fear, a face whose mouth was hanging open.
“I’m Tommy’s father,” he told her. “Ruddy Turner.”
“Oh!” Her voice came low and relieved.
“Could I speak to you a moment?”
“Oh, yes,” Marie said, backing through the opened door and into a dim room.
He advanced after her, sorry now that he had come. Never had he seen a girl in so cringing a posture.
“Don’t be afraid,” he told her.
“You’re not coming to arrest me?” she asked, shaking her head from side to side.
“God, no,” he told her.
She switched on a light. She wore a housedress, bedroom slippers; her hair was in curls. She was much thinner than he remembered her having been, and there were lines from her nose to her lips. They stared at each other for a few seconds, then she burst into loud weeping.
“Don’t be afraid,” he consoled her. “I’m not here to hurt you. I came to see how you were.”
His voice only increased her sobbing. It was as though now she knew that she was not going to be arrested—for what, she had not said!—her feelings were free to give way to sorrow and the consequences of disappointment. He reached out his right hand to take her shoulder to lead her to a chair, but she quickly twisted out of his reach.
“No,” she sobbed.
“Sit down,” he said.
“I know…I know that you think I’m poisoned. You’re just like all the others,” she wailed.
He understood now why she had shied away from him. She had felt that had he touched her, he would have afterward regretted it. Oh, God, she must have been through the mill. Yes, poor Tommy had had his share in making her feel this way.
“Do you feel well enough to talk?” he asked her softly.
“I-I g-guess so,” she stammered, her sobbing letting up a bit.
“Sit down,” he said.
She sat in an old chair and he edged himself upon the side of a bed.
“Are you here alone?” he asked.
“Yes. My family is upstairs. I didn’t want to stay with them. Papa rented this kitchenette for me,” she related in a sigh.
“How are you?” he asked.
There was a momentary pause, and then she whispered: “I’m alone…”
He had asked about her physical state, and she had answered in terms of what mattered most to her, that is, her state of emotional abandonment.
“Are you seeing the doctor?”
“Yes, yes…the police told me to…I…”
“I understand.”
She had thought that he was an officer coming to check on whether she was having the prescribed treatments for syphilis. Goddamn…He had not wanted to do that to her.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I was not sent here by the police. I came on my own.”
She lifted startled, disbelieving eyes to him and a tiny relaxation came into her face.
“Everybody hounds me,” she complained in a hopeless voice.
“I’m not here for that,” he said. “You’ve suffered enough, God knows.”
“It was not my fault,” she whimpered. “I swear. I didn’t know I had anything. I-I only s-slept with T-tommy…”
“He told me,” he said.
There was a long silence. Ruddy could hear a rumble of an El train in the distance.
“D-did he g-get it from me?” she asked.
“No, no,” he assured her.
“Aw, I’m glad.” She sighed.
“It was not contagious,” he told her.
“The doctor told me,” she said. “But I was not sure. I’m not sure of anything anymore.”
“You know, you must not let this break you down.” He tried to put some courage into her.
“It already has,” she said, sobbing again.
His instincts told him that she was already beyond any emotional help that he could give her. Never in all of his police work had he seen a criminal more abject than this girl, more claimed by a sense of guilt, more ready to accept all that could be said against her.
“I’m bad,” she moaned. “Rotten…”
“No, no,” he spoke vehemently.
“I am! I am! It’s all written down in the medical reports,” she wailed. “I want to kill myself.”
“None of that,” he rasped at her. “Your life has been shattered, but you must now try to rebuild it. You are taking treatments?”
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“I see a doctor three times a week.”
“Is it expensive?”
“Y-yes…you see, they won’t let me work. It’s charity. And what my father can do. My mother…” Her voice trailed off.
“How is she?”
“All right. You see, she is convinced that I caught it running around with boys…men…drinking. I can’t make her realize that that’s not true. Then she thinks that Tommy ought to have married me. I told her that it was only with him, you see? She can’t believe that he didn’t give it to me. Oh, God, it’s all mixed up, Mr. Turner. Nobody believes me.”
“I do,” he said.
“D-did Tommy send you?” she asked timidly.
“No.”
Another long silence. “How is he?”
“Oh, all right,” he informed her. “Marie, you must realize that I didn’t come here to hurt you any more than you are already hurt. But I must tell you that Tommy was hurt too. Terribly. That is why he has never been to see you. He too was caught up in awful emotional reactions. He didn’t blame you. You see, Marie, something happened to both of you that was too big for both of you, and you could not really react to it. You were both hit, you harder than he. And he was just cold and numb. He too felt awfully guilty. He didn’t know what to do.”
“I don’t blame what he did,” she whimpered. “He did what anybody else would have done, I guess.”
Aw, there was a tiny bit of doubt in her voice. She still felt deep down that Tommy should have stood by her. Yet she knew that she could make no claim on him. God, where was the right and wrong in this? Could a boy be blamed for doing something that his most powerful feelings had prompted him to do? The boy had run and the girl knew that it had been her physical state that had set him fleeing. And the girl knew that the world would have sided with the boy had all the facts been publicly known. How much could one ask of another in the act of love? Could one be demanded to embrace exactly that which turned the impulse of love into loathing?
“Are you still at the university?” he asked her.
“No, no,” she said quickly, shaking her head. “They told me to stay away…”
“Oh, God.” He sighed.
Her life had been shattered, all right. And whose fault had it been?
“What did the doctor say, Marie?”
“I inherited it,” she said, picking nervously at her dress.
She had said it in a strange tone of voice; she had told him that she was not really guilty at all, and yet she had all the stigma of guilt.
“I’m crucified,” she moaned.
“Oh, no,” he objected feebly.
Yes, she had been. And she still was. His mind leaped toward the future, and he could see no way out for her. Maybe she would be cured and then she could flee to another city, change her name. But even then maybe her past would catch up with her—like the past of criminals caught up with them. And how could she ever really know that all the contamination had been cleaned out of her blood? Maybe she would never know, not until she had had children.
Ruddy rose and walked nervously about. Yes, Marie’s life had been poisoned at the very springs of it. The past had cast its black shadow upon her, and that shadow might well throw itself
into the future and fall across the lives of whatever children she might bear.
“Don’t you go out?” he asked.
“No,” she mumbled.
“Oh, you must, you know,” he said. “You look pale.”
Indeed, she looked like those prisoners who spent a lifetime behind bars; there was a greenish pallor about her skin.
“I don’t want to,” she said. She was staring off into space, then began biting her lips. “I hope Tommy’s all right. I hope that he’s not too bitter toward me. After all, it was not my fault. Yet I can’t and don’t blame ’im. For a month I felt dead. I could feel nothing. I tried drinking, but I couldn’t get drunk. I can’t read anymore. I don’t like movies now. I used to play tennis, but I dare not now show up where I used to go. I just stay here.” A sob caught in her throat. “Blind people are not shunned like I am. When I walk down the street, I feel that people are shying away from me. I—”
“People you know?”
“No. Just all of them.”
“Marie. That’s not true. It can’t be true.”
“I know, but I can’t help it.”
The chief of police sat stumped. What could he do? A burning compassion for this girl came over him, yet he could not still in him a raging revulsion. Goddamn! He knew now why Tommy had fled. To flee was natural, and Tommy’s feelings had been natural. As natural as his were.
“Marie.”
She did not answer; he could see the muscles quivering in her throat.
“Marie, listen to me.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“I want to help you,” he told her.
“No. Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.”
“No. Listen. I’ve just been appointed chief of police in Brentwood Park,” he told her. “And I’ll have extra money. I want to give you twenty dollars a week, money enough for your treatments, see?”
“No.”
“Yes. Don’t be foolish.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I want to help,” he declared.
“Did Tommy send you?”
“No. He doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Does his mother know?”
“No. No one knows but me.”
She sat silent.
“I’m no good,” she breathed.
“You are. We must save you,” he swore.
“Just leave me alone. When I see those I used to know, I feel that I’m being unjustly judged,” she whimpered. “Oh, why did this have to happen to me? What have I ever done? This hurt fell on me for nothing?”
“Marie, did you ever try to trace with your father and his father how you could have caught this?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“My father’s father had it. My father has it.”
“Your mother?”
“Strangely, no.”
“Is your father being treated?”
“Yes. But maybe it is too late for him.”
“What did the doctor say about you?”
“I’m being cured,” she said.
“There. You see. Everything will come out all right.” He tried to encourage her. “Now, look, I’m”—he ran his hand into his pocket and pulled forth some money—“I’m giving you this now. Two hundred dollars. Enough for twenty weeks. After that—”
“You shouldn’t do this, Mr. Turner,” she objected. “You make me feel even worse.”
“I want to do this.”
“Is Tommy getting married?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Has Tommy told anybody about this?”
“No. Not even his mother. And he told me only yesterday, when I forced him to.”
“Oh.” She sighed.
Ruddy understood. Marie was thinking that his offer of help was a bribe for her to remain silent for the sake of Tommy’s future. A stab of pain stitched at his heart. Dirt bred dirt. Jesus Christ. Yet, in her sense of abandoment and degradation, it was a natural thing for her to think. It was as natural for her to think that as it had been for Tommy to flee from her presence.
“I’m giving you this because I want to help you,” he spoke simply. “I know it’s hard for you to believe that, but it’s true.”
“If I thought otherwise, I’d hate you for the rest of my life,” she said with sudden, hard bitterness.
“You’d be right,” he said. “But this money is clean. It’s from my heart.”
“All right,” she said.
He laid the roll on the bed, not daring to wish to put it into her hand.
“Oh, Marie, life is hard,” he half moaned, feeling hot tears stinging his eyes.
“I wanted to kill, just to kill anybody, everybody, when I knew what had happened to me,” she said.
“Medicine now can cure you.” He tried to encourage her. “It is not like in the old days when illnesses like that were thought of as horrible. It is a moral feeling—”
“It is horrible,” she insisted. “I saw it in Tommy’s eyes. I see it in yours. And in my mother’s eyes. Everybody’s eyes.”
What could he say to her? She was right. No matter how quickly she was healed, she was poisoned in the minds of others and, above all, in her own mind. Never in one lifetime could it be gotten rid of. And how contagious was the feeling that she had in her. That feeling was composed of germs more powerful than the ones that flowed in her veins. It made one shrink, in spite of one’s self. Hovering in Ruddy’s mind was an allusion that Marie had made to crime. She had said that what had happened to her had made her want to kill. God, no. But, maybe, yes. When you were unjustly condemned by those around you, you wanted to hit out at everybody, at a world that held and nourished and poisoned your life. Yes, but that was only a temporary reaction, he told himself. How lucky Tommy escaped. Suppose he had married the girl and had then found it out? That boy would have gone crazy, he thought.
“Thank you, Mr. Turner,” he heard Marie whispering.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “I only knew about it today. Or I would have come sooner. You and Tommy are children. You were hurt, through no fault of your own. I’d have been here sooner, had I known. You must learn to trust life again, Marie. All is not over for you. You’ll be cured. I’m certain of that. Then I want to see you and try to help you figure out a life.”
“Thank you,” she said, her eyes lowered.
“And if you ever want anything, call me at my office in Brentwood Park,” Ruddy told her.
He stretched out his hand to her. He saw her staring at it, then she took it, without rising, and pressed it, then let it fall.
“Good-bye, Marie,” he said.
She did not answer. He went out, and when he reached the dark, lamp-lit streets, he seemed to be entering a world filled with bright sunshine. He knew that this illusion was caused by the deep sense of oppressive suffocation that he had had when talking to Marie. He seated himself behind the wheel of his car, and for a reason he did not know, he lifted from the glove compartment an insignia of the police department and affixed it to the windshield. Why had he done that now? He was frightened and he wanted the protection of the power of his office. He drove slowly on, not in any particular direction. What a goddamn rotten world, he muttered between his teeth. It’d make you kill, for sure. Kill like that killer in the woods of Brentwood Park. He slowed the car and pulled to a curb. Why in the name of God had he thought of that? I’m nervous, he said. I’m acting now as though I was sick. He shook his head and swallowed. Never, since he had been in the service of the department of the police, had anything like this even remotely touched his life. And he admittedly did not know how to react. Until now he had always found some way to convince himself that those who were caught in the meshes of the law or who were in trouble, had only themselves at bottom to blame. But how could he blame Marie? Or Tommy? No, he could not. Goddamnit, life is tough sometimes.
CHAPTER 11
Chief Turner’s usually unruffled feelings had been swept by a dark storm of
emotion that left him wondering and half afraid. His traditionally rigid view of the world, a view outlined and buttressed by the law, had been shattered in a manner that did not allow him to set it right again. Here was no simple question of man against the law but of suffering inflicted by vast and mysterious powers outside of and above the law. It was not a question of the so-called unwritten law that was bothering him but maybe of a higher law that overruled or could overrule the law he knew and executed. Who or what was responsible for what had happened to Tommy and Marie? Ruddy understood the so-called acts of God, such as storms, tidal waves, earthquakes, and he knew that most people were prepared, however reluctantly, to accept them, to bow their heads before them, to mumble a silent yes with teary-eyed sorrow. He now remembered something that Tommy had years ago said to him; he had asked Tommy some question about how a man could suffer so silently and Tommy had said, quoting an English poet—what had been his name? Black, Burke, Blake, or what?—that “a hurt worm forgives the plow.” That was true. But in the give and take of human life, what on earth was a plow? A storm? Something that came from outside human life and society? Or could it be something that flowed with the blood in human veins and was transmitted in the act of life, the defenseless act of giving with arms wrapped about a desired body? It was that “love” aspect that presented the problem! The hurt that had come had descended not with violence, not with assault, not with theft, but when all human defenses were down and the heart was open. A man who had dealt unfairly with you, had caused you suffering, loss, and pain, could perhaps be understood and maybe, under some circumstances, be forgiven. Insurance companies indemnified you for damages sustained when storms struck you or fire wiped out your home. But who was to blame for the hurt sustained by the Maries and Tommys who innocently and buoyed by love were made victims of forces beyond their control? “It’s the goddamnest thing I ever heard of,” he spoke aloud. “Glad Tommy escaped being infected…” His throat tightened. But Tommy had not escaped. He had walked around the physical disease, but he had undoubtedly been touched and tainted by the aura of evil that wafted that disease along. Tommy had not been ill and Tommy had not married the girl. Tommy had left the girl alone to fend for herself, and he had been too ashamed to tell even his father what had happened. No, Tommy had not escaped, not really. “Tommy would have done wrong no matter what he did,” he muttered. “It’s goddamn unfair.” His unblinking eyes roved unseeingly upon the passersby thronging the sidewalks. Well, he had done what he could for poor Marie, and he could and would do more. When she was cured and able to mingle again with people, he would help her to get a job somewhere. She was bright, and a good job with good pay would help her to become emotionally fit and would help her to forget. Forget? Could she ever forget that? Never heard of an accident like that. Tommy did not deserve that. It must have made him burn inside…or freeze.
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