The Black House

by Patricia Highsmith

  “Here we are,” said Win, pulling in at the curb.

  Lee fished for a coin, and dropped it in the meter before Win could insert his. Doug Graham had no secretary, and came out of the office himself in response to the bell they had rung on entering his waiting room.

  “Well, Lee—and Win. How are you, Lee? You’re looking well.” Doug Graham gave Lee a warm handshake. Doug was heavier than he had been ten years ago, in his late sixties now, a big man in a baggy beige suit that showed no sign of a proper crease.

  “Quite all right, Doug. And you?” Lee wished he could have said friendlier words, but they didn’t come for some reason. Doug had done many a service for Lee and his mother over the years. Lee remembered with embarrassment that Doug had talked his mother out of making a will some twenty years ago, which would have cut Lee out as only offspring and nearest of kin, and bestowed all on a young black woman who cleaned the house and who had talked her way into Edna’s affections.

  Doug Graham quietly and calmly arranged the few papers on his desk, and pointed out where Lee was to sign. “After you’ve read the agreement, of course, Lee,” said Doug with a smile.

  Lee glanced through. It was a bill of sale for the Barrett Avenue house, pretty plain and simple. Lee signed. The deed was there too, with Lee’s father’s signature, also that of Lee’s grandfather, but before that a name that was not of the family. Ralph David Varick was the last name. Lee did not have to sign this.

  “Hope you’re not too sentimental about it, Lee,” said Doug in his slow, deep voice. “After all, you’re not here much of late—in the last years. We’ve missed you.”

  Lee shook his head. “Not sentimental, no.”

  The pen was handed to Winston Greeves, who got up to sign the purchase paper as witness.

  “Sorry it has to be, though,” said Doug, “somehow. And sorry about your mother.”

  Again Lee felt a twinge of shame, because Doug knew, everyone knew, that his mother was not merely senile but quietly insane. “Well—these things happen. At least she’s not in pain,” Lee said awkwardly.

  “That is true. . . . Thank you, Win. And that about winds it up, I think. . . . How long’re you here for, Lee?”

  Lee told him just till tomorrow, because he had to get back to his shop in Chicago. He asked what he owed Doug, and Doug said nothing at all, and again Lee felt shame, because Doug must know that he had sold the house because he couldn’t otherwise meet expenses.

  “We need a little drink on this,” said Doug, pulling out a whiskey bottle from a lower drawer in his desk. “It’s just about quitting time anyway, so we deserve it.”

  They each had small, neat drinks, standing up. But the atmosphere remained sad and a little strained, Lee felt.

  Ten minutes later, they were at the Greeveses’ house—bigger than the house Lee had just signed away, with a bigger lawn and more expensive trees. Kate Greeves welcomed Lee as if he were one of the family, pressing his hand in both hers, kissing his cheek.

  “Lee, I’m so glad Win persuaded you to stay! Come, I’ll show you your room, then we can relax.” She took him upstairs.

  There was a smell of baking and of warm cinnamon from the kitchen. His room was neat and clean, furnished with factory-made dressing table and chairs and bed, but Lee had seen worse. The Greeveses were doing their best to be nice to him.

  “I’d love to take a little walk,” Lee said when he went back downstairs. “Hardly six. Still a lot of daylight—”

  “Oh, no! Stay and talk, Lee. Or I’ll drive you around, if you’d like to see the old town.” Win seemed willing.

  But that idea didn’t appeal to Lee. He wanted to stretch his legs on his own, but he knew Win would protest that he’d have to walk fifteen minutes to get out of Rosedale, the residential section, and so on and so on. Lee found himself sitting in the living room with a strong scotch in his hands. Kate brought in a bowl of hot buttered popcorn.

  The telephone rang, and the Greeveses exchanged a look, then Win went to get it in the hall.

  Lee picked up an old glass paperweight with a spread blue butterfly in it. The paperweight was the size of a cake of soap and very pretty. He was about to ask Kate where she had got it from, when Win’s voice saying “No!” made Lee keep his silence.

  “No, I said,” Win said softly but in a tone of repressed wrath. “And don’t phone again tonight. I mean what I say.” There was a click as Win put the telephone down. When he returned to the living room, his hands were shaking slightly. He reached for his glass. “Sorry about that,” he said to Lee with a nervous smile.

  Something to do with Mort, Lee supposed. Maybe Mort himself. Lee thought it best not to ask questions. Kate also looked tense. Mort must be at least forty now, Lee thought. He was a weak type, and Lee remembered one adolescent scrape after another—a wrecked car, Mort picked up by the police for drunkenness somewhere, Mort marrying a girl because she was pregnant, the same wife Mort had just divorced, Win had said. Such troubles seemed silly to Lee, because they were so avoidable—compared to a deranged mother who lingered on and on.

  “Not coming over, is he?” Kate whispered to Win as she bent to offer Win the popcorn bowl.

  Win shook his head slowly and grimly.

  Lee had barely heard Kate speak. They talked of other things during dinner, and only a little bit about Lee’s mother. Her health was all right, she took walks in the garden there, came down to the dining room for every meal. Once a month there was a “birthday party” for everyone whose birthday fell during that month. There was TV, not in every room, but in the communal hall downstairs.

  “She still reads the Bible, I suppose,” said Lee, smiling a little.

  “Oh, I suppose. There’s one in every room there, I know,” Win replied, and glanced at his wife, who responded by asking Lee how his shop in Chicago was doing.

  As Lee replied, he thought about his mother, grim-lipped and gruesome without her false teeth which she didn’t always care to wear, reading her Bible. What did she get out of it? Certainly not the milk of human kindness, but of course that phrase was Shakespeare’s. Or had Jesus said it first? The Old Testament was bloodthirsty, vengeful, even barbaric in places. His mother had always, or frequently enough, said to him, “Read your Bible, Lee,” when he was depressed, discouraged, or when he had been “tempted” maybe to buy a nice looking secondhand car on the installment plan, when he had been seventeen or eighteen. How innocent, buying a car on the installment plan, compared to what his mother had done when he was twenty-two! He had been engaged to Louisa Watts, madly in love with her, in love in a way, however, that could have lasted, that would have resulted in a good marriage, Lee believed. His mother had told Louisa that Lee had girls everywhere, prostitute favorites too, that in his car he drove to other towns for his fun. And so on. And Louisa had been only nineteen. She had believed that, and she had been hurt. Goddamn my mother, Lee thought. And what had his mother gained by her lies? Keeping him at home, for herself? She hadn’t. Louisa had married another man in less than a year, moved somewhere, maybe New York, and Lee had left home and gone to San Francisco for a while, worked as a longshoreman, gone to New Orleans and done the same. If Louisa only hadn’t been married, he would have tried again with her, because she was the only girl in the world for him. Yes, he had met other girls, four or five. He had wanted to marry, but had never been able to convince himself (and maybe not the other girls either) that marriage would work. Then he had gone to Chicago when he had been nearly thirty.

  “You don’t like the pie, Lee?” asked Kate.

  Lee realized that he had barely touched the hot apple pie, that he was squeezing his napkin in his left hand as if it were someone’s neck. “I do like the pie,” Lee said calmly, and proceeded to finish it.

  That night, Lee slept badly. Thoughts turned in his head, yet when he tried to devote a few minutes to thinking
something out, he got nowhere. It was a pleasure for him to get out of bed at dawn, dress quietly, and sneak down the stairs for a walk before anyone else was up. He hadn’t bothered shaving. Lee was out of the Rosedale area in less than ten minutes. The air was sweet and clear, coolish for May. The town was awakening. There were milk trucks making deliveries, mailmen of course, and a few workmen boarding early buses.

  “Lee?—It’s Lee Mandeville, isn’t it?”

  Lee looked into the face of a young man in his twenties with brown wavy hair, in a tweed suit with shirt and tie. Vaguely Lee remembered the face, but couldn’t have come up with the name if his life had depended on it.

  “Charles Ritchie!” said the young man, laughing. “Remember? I used to deliver groceries for your mother!”

  “Oh, sure. Charlie.” Lee smiled, remembering a skinny twelve-year-old who sometimes drank a soda pop in their kitchen. “Hey, aren’t you missing your bus, Charlie?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said the young man, barely glancing at the bus that was pulling away. “What brings you here, Lee?”

  “Selling the house. You remember the old house?”

  “I sure do!—I’m sorry you’re selling. I had the idea you might move back some time—for retirement or something.”

  Lee smiled. “I need the money, frankly. My mother’s still alive, you know, and that costs a little. Not that I begrudge it, of course.” He saw Charlie’s face grow suddenly earnest.

  Frowning, Charlie said, “I don’t understand. Mrs. Mandeville died fo—yes, about five years ago. Yes, I—I went to her funeral, Lee.” His eyes stared into Lee’s.

  Lee realized that it was true. He realized that this was why Win had insisted upon Lee’s spending the night with him, so he wouldn’t run into citizens of the town who might tell him the truth.

  “What’s the matter, sir? I’m sorry I brought it up. But you said—”

  Lee gently took his elbow from the young man’s grip, and smiled. “Sorry. I suppose I looked about to faint! Yes.” Lee took a breath and made an effort to pull himself together. “Yes, of course she’s dead. I don’t know what I was talking about, Charlie.”

  “Oh, that’s okay, Lee . . . You’re really all right?”

  “Sure I’m all right. And that’s another bus coming, isn’t it?”

  Through a haze of pale yellow morning sunlight and pale green leaves, the bus approached. Lee moved away, waved good-bye, ignoring Charlie’s parting words. Lee walked slowly for several minutes, not caring in what direction his steps took him.

  Now Lee realized that the Hearthside people, the accountant there, or someone, must be in league with Win Greeves, because Lee had seen real bills from the Hearthside in the last five years. Lee felt himself physically weak, as if he were walking in mud instead of on a cement pavement. And what the hell was he going to do about it? Five years. And in dollars? Twenty or twenty-four thousand dollars a year times five were—Lee smiled wryly, and stopped trying to calculate. He looked up at a street marker, and saw that he stood on a corner at which Elmhurst intersected South Billingham. He took Elmhurst, which he thought led, eastward, back to Rosedale. All he really wanted from the Greeveses’ house was his suitcase.

  When Lee got back to the house, he found the door unlocked, and noticed an aroma of coffee and bacon. Win came at once down the hall.

  “Lee! We were a little worried! Thought maybe you’d sleepwalked right out of the house!” Win was grinning.

  “No, no, just taking a walk—as I wanted to do last night.” Win was staring at him. Was he pale, Lee wondered. Probably. Lee realized that he could still be polite. That was easy. It was also safe and natural to him. “Hope I didn’t hold you up, Win?” Lee looked at his wristwatch. “Ten of eight now.”

  “Not—one—bit!” Win assured him. “Come and have some breakfast.”

  Now the food really refused to go down, but Lee kept his polite manner, sipped coffee and poked at his scrambled eggs. He saw Win and Kate exchange glances again, glances that Win tried to avoid, though his eyes kept being drawn back to his wife’s as if he were hypnotized.

  “Did you—uh—have a nice walk, Lee?” Win asked.

  “Very nice, thanks. I ran into—Charles Ritchie,” Lee said carefully and with some respect, as if Charles had been lifted from a grocer’s delivery boy to the status of one of the disciples bearing a message of truth. “He used to deliver groceries for my mother.” Lee noticed that Win was not doing much better than he with his breakfast.

  The tension grew a few degrees tighter, then Kate said:

  “Win said you wanted to leave today, Lee. Can’t you change your mind?”

  That remark was so false, Lee suddenly blew up, inwardly. But outwardly he kept his cool, except that he tossed his napkin down. “Sorry, but I can’t. No.” His voice was hollow and hoarse. Lee stood up. “If you’ll excuse me.” He left the table and went up to his room.

  Just as he was closing his suitcase, Win came in. Now Win looked white in the face, and ten years older.

  Lee felt almost sorry for him. “Yes, I heard about my mother. I think that’s what’s on your mind. Isn’t it, Win?” Now Lee had his small suitcase in his hand, and he was ready to leave the room.

  Win tiptoed to the door and closed it. His hand that he drew away from the doorknob was shaking, and he lifted it and his other hand and covered his face. “Lee, I want you to know I’m ashamed of myself.”

  Lee nodded once, impatiently, unseen by Win.

  “Morton was in such trouble. That damned wife of his . . . She hasn’t turned loose, there’s no divorce, and it’s a damned mess. The girl—I mean the wife’s pregnant again and she’s accusing Mort now, but I doubt if that’s true, I really do. But she keeps asking for money and legally—”

  “Who the hell cares?” Lee interrupted. He squeezed the suitcase handle, eager to leave, but Win blocked him like an ugly mountain. Win’s eyes, wide and scared, met Lee’s.

  He reminded Lee of an animal, sure that it was going to be slaughtered in the next seconds, but in fact Lee had never seen an animal in such circumstances. “I suppose,” Lee said, “the nursing home had some kind of understanding with you. I remember the bills, anyway—recent ones.”

  Win said miserably, “Yes, yes.”

  Now Lee recalled Doug Graham’s words to him, when Lee had said that at least his mother wasn’t in pain now, and Doug had replied that that was true. Doug knew that his mother was dead, but their conversation wouldn’t have caused him to repeat that fact, and of course he had assumed Lee knew it. Lee made a start for the door.

  “Lee!” Win nearly caught him by the sleeve, but he drew his hand back, as if he didn’t dare touch Lee. “What’re you going to do, Lee?”

  “I don’t know . . . I think I’m in a state of shock.”

  “I know I’m to blame. Just me. But if you only knew the straits I was in, am in. Blackmail—first from Mort’s wife, blackmailing him, I mean, and now—”

  Lee understood: Mort the son was now blackmailing his father about this business. How low could human beings sink? For some bizarre reason, Lee wanted to smile. “How did she die?” He asked in a courteous tone. “Stroke, I suppose?”

  “Died in her sleep,” Win murmured. “Hardly anybody came to the funeral. She’d made such enemies, y’know, with her sharp tongue . . . The man—”

  “What man?” Lee asked, because Win had stopped.

  “The man at the Hearthside. His name is Victor Malloway. He’s—you could say he’s every bit as guilty as I am. But he’s the only one—else.” Again Win looked pitiably at Lee. “What’re you going to do, Lee?”

  Lee took a breath. “Well—what, for instance?” Win did not reply to that question, and Lee opened the door. “Bye-bye, Win, and thanks.”

  Downstairs, Lee said the same thanks and good-bye to Kate. Th
e words she said did not register on Lee. Something about taking him to the bus terminal, or calling a taxi. “. . . quite all right,” Lee heard himself saying. “I’ll make it by myself.”

  He was gone, free, alone, walking with the suitcase in the direction of town, of the bus terminal. He walked all the way at an easy and regular pace, arrived at the terminal around ten, and waited patiently for the bus to the bigger town with the airport. He still felt dazed, but thoughts came anyway. They were bitter, unhappy thoughts that flowed through his mind like a polluted stream. He detested his thoughts.

  And even on the moving bus, his thoughts went on, memories of his mother’s odious vanity when she had been younger, her henpecking of his father (dead in his late fifties of cancer), of his mother’s unremitting dislike and criticism of every girl he had ever brought to the house. Also his mother’s backbiting at her own friends and neighbors, even at the ones who tried to be friendly and kind to her. His mother had always found something “wrong” with them. And now, the truly awful thing, the terrifying fact that her life had wound up like a classic tragedy played rather behind the scenes instead of on a stage in view of lots of people. His mother had been finished off, as it were, by a few shabby crooks like Win Greeves and son, and the fellow called Victor—Mallory, was it? Indeed, they had been feeding like vultures on her rotting corpse for the past five years.

  Lee did not relax until he had opened the front door of his antique shop, and surveyed the familiar interior of shining furniture, the warm glint of copper, the soft curves of polished cherrywood. He left the CLOSED sign hanging in the door, and relocked it from the inside. He must return to normal, he told himself, must carry on as usual and forget Arlington Hills, or he would become ill himself—polluted, like his river of ugly memories on the bus and on the plane. Lee bathed and shaved and by five in the afternoon removed his CLOSED sign. He had one visitor after that, a man who drifted around looking, and didn’t buy anything, but that was no matter.