Death in The Life

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “But you didn’t think this sick friend excuse might be another woman.”

  “You sound like a Victorian spinster!”

  “Why are you angry?”

  “Because that’s what I am. A Victorian spinster. I’m an oddball, an anachronism. I don’t even love my husband and I’m as faithful as a seeing-eye dog.”

  “So you fantasize a homosexual.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “That’s probably what it is, shit.”

  “You don’t let up, do you, Doctor?”

  “Are you in mourning?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Do you feel pain or do you pretend?”

  “I don’t pretend. I’m not going to pretend anything anymore. When my mother died, I pretended all over the place. And I didn’t feel a goddamn thing. I don’t know what I feel about Pete. Why did I masturbate? I was lying there doubled up thinking of him. What is it? Necro… necro-something. The whole feeling of rottenness, dead, decaying… But why did I feel that way? I wanted to go back, back, deep back… that look at myself, my behind with an eye, what looked like an eye staring back at me from the mirror, one, homo… I don’t know! Death, birth, one eye, Father, one church, immaculate conception, one, one… But I’m two! Jeff wants me to come to Paris for a month in June if you say it’s all right.”

  “What do you say?”

  “He didn’t ask me what I say.”

  “What do you say?”

  “The honeymoon part turns me off, a second honeymoon. I never thought I’d get through the first. He should’ve taken my mother. The way she flirted with him. I was ashamed for her. Christ! She was too much. Too much for Jeff. He took me. I’ll bet she was too much for my father. Maybe that’s why he took off. She was a whore!”

  The realization of what she had said blocked out everything for the moment. That she said it had to mean something. It had just come out.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Angry.” That just came out too. But angry at whom, herself? Her mother?

  “Magdalene’s daughter,” Doctor said.

  “Oh, boy. I’ve got to sit up. I want to think. I don’t want to just lie here kicking it around. I can’t.” She sat up and put her feet on the floor.

  The doctor did not try to direct her. She sat with her eyes averted.

  “I don’t mean she was on the streets or anything like that, but there were men I pretended not to know about, even to myself. Like once when all the plumbing broke down at school and we were sent home early. She was supposed to be at work at the bookstore, but she wasn’t. I heard them thumping in the bedroom and I went out again like lightning. I locked the door and went to a movie. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Oh, boy, was I a mess. I didn’t ever want to go home so I went to the zoo. Those goddamn monkeys… It was like the whole cage was in heat. It wasn’t just sex. All the kids at school were making out, and when I went on that peace march, it was great. It just happened and I hardly knew the boy. How many times have I told you this?”

  “It comes up,” Doctor said.

  “One day we wouldn’t have enough money to pay my tuition or the rent or something, and the next day it was okay. I was going to come out like a Vanderbilt. And I knew. I know what it was I hated most of all: she’d say to me, ‘You know, it’s all for you, my little darling. Everything I do…’ And inside I’d be screaming. Outside I just said, Okay, Mother. I believe you… Hey, that little child upstairs. Juanita… a little Puerto Rican me.” She told the doctor about Mrs. Rodriguez, then about Mack coming to look for Rita. “I told the police everything I knew about her except the part about you. I didn’t mention you.”

  Doctor Callahan sat back in her chair, her feet elevated. The New York Times was on her side table. She touched her hand to it. “According to this, no one has seen her since Wednesday night. I saw her here Wednesday at six P.M.”

  “Good,” Julie said. “I mean it’s good that somebody saw her after you did.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’m very sorry, Doctor.”

  “Why?”

  “I shouldn’t have involved you.”

  The doctor looked at her quizzically. “Why don’t we talk about that?” she said, and made that famous gesture with her hand that had the effect of toppling Julie over on the couch.

  “I did ask myself why I was doing it—if it was because I really cared about her, or if it was a way of getting back to you. I think I was sincere when I said to you about a human being asking for help, you had to help them. But I did feel good about you and being able to tell her you would see her. It got me off the hook. Ah. All right. But why was I on the hook? What was she to me? I saw her take off her jacket… I went out of the shop and watched her go up the street toward Eighth Avenue. She took off her jacket and slung it over her shoulder. The way she walked was different, I felt she was turning back into a whore. No, I felt I’d been had. Put on. That’s what I felt at first. Then she threw the jacket into the face of some guy”—Julie imitated the motion—“as though she was saying, No! I won’t do it! And then she ran, and I couldn’t see her. But you can bet I was cheering for her all the way. He dumped her jacket in a wastebasket and I thought for a minute I’d go and get it for her, but an old beggar woman got it before I’d even made up my mind. That’s when I decided to call you. I believed her then. That’s the main thing, and I thought, Even if I’m wrong, if she is a phony, Doctor will know it in ten minutes. And if she is a phony she still needs help.”

  “How do you feel now?”

  “I want to believe in her. I do believe in her. By which I mean I don’t think she killed Pete. But if I believe what I’m saying, then I’ve betrayed her all over the place. I’ve probably spoiled her chance of ever getting out.”

  “Isn’t it possible you exaggerate your contribution?”

  “I don’t see how I could have done anything else. If she is innocent, maybe I can help prove that.”

  “What can you do?”

  “A lot. I know things now about Pete I didn’t know before.”

  “Was she the sick friend he mentioned in the note to you?”

  “She could have been. She could have told him the same story she told me, about wanting to go home, et cetera, and he could have tried to help her.”

  “Was it through him you met her?”

  “No, that was Mr. Bourke.”

  “Who is Mr. Bourke?”

  “Well, Doctor, that’s another story. Let’s just say he’s an all-around mutual Mend.”

  “You have certainly acquired an odd assortment of friends in two weeks’ time.”

  “There are lots more I haven’t told you about—Detective Russo and Mrs. Ryan…”

  “Will you continue in this shop? What do you call it?”

  “Friend Julie’s. Pete suggested Sister Julie.” She sat up, remembering something that seemed important. “Mack called me Sister Julie. He did. ‘Look, Sister Julie…’”

  “Mack is the procurer?”

  “Yes… It could be coincidence, his calling me Sister Julie. It sounds commoner than Friend Julie. But what if he got it from Pete?”

  “We can stop there. I want you here Wednesday as usual.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be here.”

  “Don’t worry? Is that what you mean, don’t worry?”

  “I guess I mean do worry.”

  “Why do you always guess?” Doctor let her chair up with a jolt. It was obviously a question for which she did not expect an answer at the moment.

  Julie was halfway to the door when she remembered what had pressed most on her mind, coming in that day. “Doctor, did Rita tell you the same things she said to me?”

  Doctor Callahan looked as though she was not going to answer at all. Then she said, “She talked about herself. Wednesday at two.”

  Julie dared to persist. “Did you believe her?”

  “It’s never a matter of belief here. Patients often lie for a variety of reasons. Many times t
hey don’t even know they’re lying. We can take that up sometime.”

  “What about Jeff? Am I to go to Paris?”

  “Are you?” Doctor Callahan got to her feet and changed the paper towel on the pillow: a fresh towel for every patient.

  “But what am I going to write to him?”

  “You might send him the clippings from today’s paper before his friends do.”

  16

  “HAVE A GOOD DAY,” THE doorman said as Julie left Dr. Callahan’s building. Like old times. Not quite. She’d never got Mother out in the open before. If she was out in the open. She kept disappearing. And why did she feel so angry? Doctor hadn’t commented. Why are you angry? Because that’s what I am, a Victorian spinster… That sure as hell wasn’t Mother—that was Julie Hayes—“Dearest Jeff, a funny thing happened to me a couple of weeks ago when I left Dr. Callahan’s office…” There was no point now in telling him of the interruption in therapy, unless his accountant called it to his attention, paying Doctor’s bill. But where to begin? “In my last letter, I told you I was reading about Zoroaster…” Or: “Do you remember the revival of Streetcar we saw last year? The designer…” It seemed like a crazy patchwork of coincidences, and maybe it was in the beginning. The Tarot would say no, no accidents. If the Tarot had anything to do with it. She half-believed it did. Magdalene’s daughter: that’s where it began in earnest, when she wrote those words. Daddy, you bastard… Mother, you whore. It came up from the bowels of the couch like hidden treasure she had finally dug out. But that was not for Jeff, nor of Jeff. Or was it? “Dearest Jeff. I remember the talk you gave when I graduated and you got your honorary degree. You said, ‘Get the facts, all the facts, and write them down before you start the story. Because if you don’t, you’ll find yourself making up facts as you need them. Your copy may be richer, but your reader will be ill informed, and you will have begun the corruption of history.’ Aren’t you impressed that I can recite that whole speech? I thought it was the most important speech I ever heard or read. I was in love!” What? Oh, boy. Watch it, Julie… “The reason I mention it now, I want to give you the facts about the story in this morning’s paper. I also know things which may not be facts, only feelings. I’d appreciate it if you would challenge me where you think I’m making up…” Hey? I mean it. I do mean it. Mrs. Julie Hayes of West Forty-fourth Street had identified the victim, according to the morning Times. No connection with Mrs. Geoffrey Hayes of West Seventeenth Street. But there is a connection. Make it or break it, Julie. Paris or bust.

  A fine rain was falling. The park was a yellow mist, forsythia and pollution.

  She took a bus, fetching a token out of her raincoat pocket. She kept a handful of tokens and loose change ready for transport, musical beggars, and Orange Julius, a beverage on which she often breakfasted at a stand on Fiftieth Street and Broadway.

  On Forty-fourth Street she met Fritzie at one end of his leash with Juanita at the other, neither one of them doing what the other wanted. Outside the shop, Mrs. Ryan was standing under an umbrella, talking with the man from the telephone company, Mrs. Rodriguez counseling from her window.

  “I said I’d be here by eleven-thirty,” Julie said to the phone man. “Hi, Mrs. Ryan. Mrs. Rodriguez.”

  “Detective Russo told me ten sharp. You should get together. What kind of a telephone do you want?”

  “The cheapest.”

  “Not if the city is paying for it, Julie,” Mrs. Ryan advised.

  “That’ll be the day,” Julie said and unlocked the door. She had to put her shoulder to it, stuck as it was, presumably with the dampness.

  Mrs. Ryan gave a little cry. “Don’t! Maybe there’s a bomb.”

  “Come off it,” Julie turned and used her backside and her heel. She supposed Mrs. Ryan and Mrs. Rodriguez had had quite a talk.

  The door yielded and revealed a scattering of messages on the floor beneath the mail slot. She gathered them and took them to the card table in the back room. She told the phone installer that it would be all right to put the instrument where the last customer’s phone had been connected.

  “How long will it take?” Mrs. Ryan wanted to know.

  “Ten, twenty minutes unless the rats have chewed up the wires.”

  “I’ll come back,” she said to Julie. “I waited till after twelve o’clock at McGowan’s on Saturday night.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m not reprimanding you, only saying I felt terrible because I didn’t stay with you. Mrs. Russo says you’ve been a great help to the police.”

  Julie made a noise of agreement and looked at the messages. One was from Amy Ross, saying to call her at the Forum. A note on Daily News stationery was from a columnist, wanting an interview before two P.M. There were several throwaways. Another note, this one in a plain envelope addressed to “Friend Julie” and on stationery from which the letterhead had been torn away, read, “Please call me about Rita. 321-9270.”

  Mrs. Ryan was watching her from the inside doorway, hoping to be confided in. Julie put the messages beneath the crystal ball. Mrs. Ryan sniffed in disappointment and then made the best of the situation. “I’ll bring us a little lunch… unless you want me to stay.”

  “That would be just fine—the lunch, thank you.”

  When Mrs. Ryan was gone, Julie read the note again, a heavy, childish hand which had taken great care. Somebody who did not want to go to the police? Mack?

  She told the phone man she would be back in ten minutes and went out to ask Mrs. Rodriguez if she could come up and talk with her. Juanita was trying to tie a string around the neck of one of her dolls. She held it up to Julie for help. “Good dog.” Julie couldn’t remember her having put two words together before.

  The Daily News was open on the table alongside the Rodriguez family photograph. Julie hadn’t seen the morning edition. It carried a picture of Pete. He’d been wearing his hair longer when it was posed and his features were more delicate. You’d look twice to decide, male or female. Beautiful, but she didn’t like it. To have got it into print so soon, the reporter probably dug it out of the paper’s own morgue. There would have been a story with it when it first appeared.

  “Your boy friend,” Mrs. Rodriguez said and patted Julie’s hand.

  Julie let it stand that way. The more sympathy, the more information.

  “The lady with the dog told me. He put up your curtains like a decorator. He don’t look like that picture now.”

  He sure as hell didn’t, but Julie knew what she meant. “Could I have the paper when you’re through with it, Mrs. Rodriguez?”

  “Here.” She tore out the page and gave it to Julie. “The rest I keep. I don’t read so quick in English.”

  Julie folded the paper and put it in her raincoat pocket. “Do you remember the young girl who came to see me last week? You said she was on the street. She didn’t look it to me. How could you tell?”

  “I could tell!” She was exasperated at being asked to explain something she couldn’t explain. She gave a great wiggle to her ample body. “Something.”

  “Yeah. I thought maybe she’d been around before. Or since. Have you seen her again?”

  “I don’t see her, but I don’t always look.”

  Not always. Just often.

  “Was there anyone at all looking for me over the weekend?”

  “Every once in a while somebody stops and looks in the window. I don’t say anything. Yesterday I took Juanita on a ride on the ferry boat with her father.”

  “Nice. How about Mack?”

  “Mack?” She made it sound like “Mock” and a total stranger.

  “The guy with red hair, a dude, a pimp. You called him a gangster.”

  “I remember.”

  “Is he a gangster?”

  “I don’t know. He looks like a gangster, like she is a whore.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” Julie said, and then chanced to catch the faintest look of satisfaction in Mrs. Rodriguez’s eye. Satisfaction or relief? She stem
med her own impatience. It would get her nowhere. “Please, neighbor, my friend is dead. You don’t like this Mack character any better than I do. Tell me what you can about him. I need to know.”

  Mrs. Rodriguez made a sour face. “It don’t concern you.”

  “Please. I just want to know what he’s like.”

  “No good. All right! I pay him money.”

  In her mind’s eye Julie saw the child offering to give Mack back the coins he had thrown to her. But the mother? Then she caught on. “Blackmail?”

  “Si. He finds out about me and Señora. He’s trying to steal girls from Goldie, and so by accident he finds out.” She rubbed her fingers against her thumb, the traditional sign of the payoff. “He comes for his percentage every week. So he don’t tell Goldie.”

  “Oh, boy. Talk about a petty crook.”

  When Julie got downstairs again Juanita was whacking the make-believe dog on the sidewalk. Bad dog.

  She watched the repairman dial and then hang up. The phone bell went off like a burglar alarm.

  “It works,” he said as though he had wrought a miracle.

  Julie’s first call was to Detective Russo, to tell him the phone had been installed. It was the pretext under which she could then ask him if anything new had developed.

  “We’re putting out an ‘all points’ on her and Mack. No sign of him in his usual haunts, and he has to be one of the last people in that apartment of hers. The one clean set of fingerprints in the place. That gal’d make somebody a good housekeeper.”

  Julie decided she’d better tell him about the note.

  “Let me have it,” Russo said. “I’ll send somebody around to pick it up.”

  “Shall I try the number and see what happens?”

  “Not till I say so.”

  Julie set up the typewriter, an old Underwood portable of Jeff’s that had finished the major work of its lifetime before she had reached puberty. She sat a moment, her fingers on the keys, and in her fashion, vaguely Yoga, prayed that the energy Jeff transmitted through them would pass into her. A beginning, a middle, and an end, connecting all the way.