by Jones, Craig
For a while none of us said anything. My only reaction was numbness. There was a hazy pattern forming in my head, but as it began to grow clearer, I drew back from it. Perhaps I was frightened of arriving at it by myself and needed it told to me.
“And what about Regina?” I said.
“They want her,” he answered, almost whispering. “They’re using Virgil. I’m almost sure he’s one of them.”
“But you’re not completely sure.”
Dear God, let the pattern get hazy again, let it disappear! Let every word he’s said be a lie! Let him be insane, just let him be wrong!
“He’s never lived in Fort Lauderdale. There’s no record of his birth there, if that’s his right name. There’s no aunt living in that house, just him. Irene, it’s not crazy—there’s something in his face when he defies me with that smile: he looks at me the same way Vivian used to. His eyes, his teeth . . . From the beginning I suspected . . . Remember that day they were supposed to have gone to Detroit? I checked the mileage, remember? They’d only gone a hundred and fifty-five miles. Ridgeway is seventy-five miles one way, round trip is a hundred and fifty! Suppose he’s been taking her up there already!”
The expressway ramp, the day she was skipping school with Virgil. They had come from the north, the same direction Vivian had come from the day we met at the restaurant. I had that picture in my mind, but I couldn’t speak it. I could only speak against it.
“That couldn’t be,” I said. “He couldn’t have taken her to Ridgeway. She would have known who Vivian was.”
“Why would she? She’s never seen her.”
What about today, I thought, when Vivian picked her up at school? What about last night—wouldn’t she have recognized Vivian’s voice on the phone if Virgil had been taking her to Ridgeway? It didn’t jell. It was preposterous, as fantastic as the story he had told me about Vivian.
“Frank, I’ve seen your birth certificate. I saw it when we got married. Vivian’s name was not on it.”
“No, it wasn’t. There was no doctor. They didn’t register the birth until later. Naturally they didn’t put her name on it.”
“Then you have no proof.”
“No, Irene, I have no proof. I have no proof that I love you, either, or that I’ve never looked at Regina the way you think I have.” He moved forward in his chair. “I know I’m a selfish man, Irene, and a coward. I lost my sister because I was selfish and cowardly, and I lied to you because I was selfish. I couldn’t risk losing you that way. But now I don’t want to lose you or Regina! You’ve got to tell me where she is!”
I couldn’t answer. If all this was some elaborate lie just to get Regina back home . . .
“You’d better tell him,” said Gloria.
She looked at me and there was pity in her eyes. Pity where there had once been blind adoration. I wanted that adoration back, I wanted to be the rock again, I wanted to return to Irene Rutledge and start all over again.
“Tell him.”
“She’s at Vivian’s.”
“Irene, you can’t joke about this. This is ser—”
“She’s at Vivian’s. Vivian picked her up at school today.”
His face registered nothing. Until he looked at Gloria.
“My God! How!”
“I sent her. Vivian called me yesterday and told me you were up there raving.”
“But why did she call you?”
“Because she was afraid for Regina. She offered to take her. And she was concerned about me.” Defensive now. “That’s something I haven’t had the past six months—someone being concerned about me.”
He leaped from the chair. “I have to go get her!”
“You’re not going without me. I’ll call her and tell her we’re coming together.”
“No; they’ll hide her someplace. They’ll keep her from me!”
“Don’t call,” said Gloria. “We’ll just drive up there.”
“No,” said Frank. “I’ll go alone. I don’t want you to see them. I don’t want them to dirty you with their looks.”
“You’re not going alone.”
“We’ll all go,” said Gloria.
He started for the door.
“Frank, if you leave this house without me, I’ll call Vivian the minute you’re gone.” He stopped. “I’m going to get some answers tonight all the way around. I’ll be back down in a minute.”
I started for the stairs.
“Irene, we can’t wait!”
“I’ll be down in a minute.”
Upstairs, I pulled out the bottom drawer and found the gun. I emptied my purse on the bed and stuck the gun in it. Just as I was about to switch off the light, I looked at the philodendron I had bought for Frank back in college. I wanted to shoot it to pieces and reclaim myself.
As I started downstairs, I tried dismissing everything he had told me as a fantastic, convoluted lie. He himself had implied that he had betrayed his sister Regina and, in a way, Wanda Hoople too. Perhaps the story he had told me was manufactured to betray Vivian. I almost grinned at the thought that maybe betrayals, like death, came in threes.
On the expressway, I had to tell him three times to slow down. The third time I spoke sharply, and Gloria pressed my arm ad-monishingly. Sitting in the middle, I sensed a bent-forward rigidity in the two of them, as if their bodies were accelerating the engine. But I didn’t want speed. I wanted the car to stop and time to stop so I could think. My mind was filled with fragments, all of them terrifying yet unconnected. My body was limp and there were intervals when I had to think to breathe. For reassurance I slipped my fingers under the flap of my purse. The dull, cold metal of the gun calmed me until we reached the sign that said RIDGEWAY CITY LIMIT.
We crept along the main street, the only moving car. With the exception of two bars, everything was closed. The shadowy mannequins in a dress shop window, a night light burning in a hardware store, the darkened movie-house marquee—they all gave the one message small towns give when they lock up for the night: You Belong at Home. We stopped at a light, a ridiculous ritual on this empty street, and I looked at Frank. His eyes were fixed on the pavement ahead and they would remain there all the way to Vivian’s. The word “hometown” struck a sardonic note in my head.
Within two blocks, the main street became residential, then gave way to overgrown empty lots, a trailer court, and finally a woods. Frank turned right onto a gravel road. There were no streetlights and there was no moon. The countryside was a blur; the road was all that was left of the world.
Then the headlights went out.
“What are you doing?” The darkness made me whisper.
“I don’t want them to see us,” he answered.
“Is that it?” asked Gloria.
I turned to where she was looking and saw the lighted windows of the house, which was set back a good hundred yards from the road. The light was splintered by a profusion of trees, most of them pines and evergreens. Very slowly, the car moved forward and gradually I could make out the driveway. Frank pulled into it, then angled the car so we were blocking it. He took out a handkerchief.
“Hold this over the light when I get out. Gloria, you cover up the one by your door.”
“I’m not holding anything,” I said. “I’m going with you.”
“Irene—”
“I said I’m going with you.”
“I am too,” said Gloria. “I’m not staying out here alone.”
He hesitated, then told us to get out on his side. We started up the blacktop driveway.
“We could be shot,” I said, “sneaking up like this.”
“Quiet.”
The closer we got, the more impressive the house became. It was a large two-story affair with cathedral peaks and redwood siding. On one side of it was a swimming pool
and bathhouse, on the other a four-car garage. The garage doors were closed, with two cars parked in front of them, neither one Vivian’s. The back end of another car protruded from the other side of the garage. At first it was a mere outline in the darkness, but as we neared the front door of the house, there was just enough light from the drape-covered window to indicate its color. The recognition went through me in a tremor. The car was Virgil’s.
“I’ll stand to the side of the door. You and Gloria ring.”
“Why? What are you going to do?”
“I don’t want them to see me first.”
We were too close now for me to protest. I thought: Thank God he hasn’t got the gun.
I looked through the little diamond-shaped window in the door as I rang the bell, but all I could see was a hallway that ran into darkness. There was a large archway and a glow of light on the left, undoubtedly the living room. I rang again. I turned to Frank and Gloria and said maybe everyone was in bed. When I turned back to the window, it was filled with a man’s face, and I let out a gasp. The man was Leo.
He opened the door and looked at me quizzically, then managed a small smile.
“This is a surprise,” he said, eyeing Gloria.
He stepped back, Gloria and I stepped forward, and then I saw his face darken as Frank came into view.
“Hello, Frank. We didn’t expect you . . . in our home. Vivian will be surprised.”
Frank pushed past him. Leo made a slight gesture to block him, then checked himself. Gloria and I followed Frank to the archway, which overlooked the sunken living room. Everyone’s eyes were on the archway as we moved into it. The initial silence must have lasted only a few seconds, but it seemed painfully long as Vivian looked first at Frank, then at Gloria, and finally at me. Her face seemed to flicker like a jewel held up to the light: surprise gave way to amusement, amusement to satisfaction. Her head began to nod slowly, knowingly, and her mouth formed a faint, faraway smile. I looked away, at the room and the others in it. Vivian was seated in a white overstuffed chair next to the round metal fireplace. On the sofa opposite her were two women, a chubby brunette and a rather regal-looking redhead. In the two chairs flanking the sofa were an innocuous-looking man in his early fifties and Virgil. Virgil did not look at me; he was watching Frank. The only light in the room came from the logs burning in the fireplace and from a small lamp on the table near the window. The dark redwood paneling muted the light before reflecting it, softening the shadows in its glow. It was partly the lighting, partly the open spiral staircase which climbed to a second-floor hallway, and partly the three steps that separated the room from where we were standing, that gave me the feeling this was a room you sank into. There were no ornaments, no pictures on the walls, and all the furniture was large and modern and comfortable. It was a room designed for the body, not the eye: there was nothing to look at except the fire and each other. I looked at the fire first, then at Vivian.
“Hello, Irene,” she said, still smiling. “I hadn’t expected this from you. I hadn’t expected this at all.” She closed her eyes and opened them on Frank. “Did you threaten her too?” she said to him.
“How about a drink?” Leo said from behind. The rest of them had drinks. The man and the two women on the sofa looked as if they had had several. Even Vivian was glassy-eyed.
“Where is she?” said Frank.
“Just a minute,” I said. “I have a few things to say and I don’t want Regina to hear them.”
“Then come in and sit down.” Vivian motioned us to another sofa, against the wall nearest us but outside the center circle. Gloria and I sat on it, but Frank sat on the steps. “This is my brother Tom, his wife, Alice, and my brother Jack’s wife, Helen.”
We all nodded. “This is a friend of mine, Gloria Malone.” I turned to Virgil. “What are you doing here?”
“I was waiting for Regina outside the school,” he said sheepishly. “She said I could come.”
“And where is she now?”
“Upstairs, sleeping,” said Vivian.
“Have you ever been here before?” I asked Virgil.
“Here? Why would I have been here?”
“What about the day you were supposed to have gone to Detroit?”
“That’s where we went.”
“Frank says the mileage on your car showed you couldn’t have gone that far.”
“I told you before, he must have gotten the numbers wrong.”
Leo freshened all their drinks at the bar near the staircase. He seemed genuinely amused by me.
“What about those days Regina skipped school with you? Where did you go?”
“We rode around. Out in the country.”
Frank jumped up. “What days? When was she skipping school?”
“Sit down, Frank,” I said.
“When did this happen? I want to know—”
“Sit down.”
“You didn’t tell me?” There was hurt and disbelief in his face, but something else too. Repugnance. It chilled me, but I was not about to be distracted. Nineteen years ago, I had let my emotions snuff out my reasoning and common sense. I had married him and accepted his conditions on faith. Now, as I faced him and Vivian together, there could be no emotions, only hard and brittle logic. Gloria was with me; once again, I could be the rock. If Frank was lying, she and I would take Regina without him.
“Vivian, Frank says there’s an error on his birth certificate.”
“What kind of error?”
“An error in the parenthood.”
“Well”—she chuckled—“he wasn’t adopted. I hope he hasn’t gone so far as to deny us.”
“Then you’re saying there’s no mistake on the certificate?”
“I don’t know. I’d have to see it.”
I blurted it out. “Frank says you’re his mother!”
Her eyes slid from me to Frank. “You told her that?” He didn’t answer. “Well, well, well. What else have you told her?”
“That Virgil is—belongs to you,” I said.
“I see. Anything more?”
“That Regina was your daughter, that your father and he”—I nodded toward Tom—“took advantage of her repeatedly until she couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“And what do you think of such a story?”
“I want to know the truth!”
“Irene,” said Frank, “let’s get Regina and go. She’s not going to tell you anything.”
“What do you say, Vivian?”
“What do I say? I say how is it possible you’ve lived with a man for almost twenty years without knowing him? You’ve lived with him, slept with him, paid the bills with him, had a child by him, and now, all of a sudden, you want the ‘truth.’ You’ve seen him around Regina, you’ve seen her reaction to him. Don’t you trust what you see, Irene? Don’t you trust yourself?”
The question hung in front of me like a distorted mirror. You are the rock! Answer her! Gloria, say something!
“You don’t trust yourself,” she went on. “The day you asked me to meet you, I knew that.” Frank turned to me, blinking incredulously. “That’s right, Frank. She’s already come to me for answers. And her questions told me more than I told her.”
Wait a minute, I’m running this! You’re supposed to be helping me!
Frank and Vivian and the rest of them stared at me and nobody said a word. I watched Virgil get up and go to the bar for more ice and return to his chair. The movement was too casual for a first-time guest. And sitting there in the circle with the rest of them, he looked just a bit too snug.
“Did you tell me the truth, Vivian?” My voice sounded tiny. Her eyes seemed to diminish it.
“What would you like to hear? What would ease your mind the most? Which story, Frank’s or mine, would be easier to
adjust to?” She waited, but I couldn’t answer. “Can’t make up your mind?” She turned to Gloria. “What about you? I assumed you were brought along to help her. Two little peas from the same pod. You almost look alike.”
Gloria spoke up, acidly. “You’re a great one to be talking about peas and pods, with the festoon you’ve got here.” She nodded in the direction of the group. “I happen to believe Frank.”
Vivian smiled, “Well, then, Irene, there’s your answer.”
Frank stood up again. “That’s enough. Where’s Regina?”
Vivian brushed him off with a glance and looked at me. “Shall I let him go upstairs?”
“I—” I looked at Frank. His face was flushed, his eyes wild. He took a few steps across the living room in the direction of the spiral staircase. Immediately, Leo and Tom and Virgil stood up.
“You stay put,” Vivian snapped at Frank. “This is my house and Regina is here with Irene’s sanction. It’s up to her whether or not you’ll go up there.”
There it was, there was the proof. She said it was up to me. They weren’t holding Regina, there was no design on her, she would be delivered to me when I said so. It was up to me.
“Well?” said Vivian. “Shall I send him up?”
I couldn’t look at Frank. I couldn’t look at any of them. “No, I . . . no.”
“Irene, for God’s sake,” Gloria whispered.
For God’s sake, what? Nineteen years ago you saw something wrong. And you haven’t seen him when he’s around her! You haven’t seen him when he’s crazed! I can’t stand any more of it and if he has lied to me—
Frank made a forward lunge. Tom rushed him with his arms up while Leo moved in from the side. The three of them toppled the chair as they fell to the floor. Virgil picked up a heavy glass ashtray and held it in front of him like a tambourine.
“Put that down!” said Vivian.
They grappled on the floor behind the sofa the women were sitting on. The women didn’t move. I jumped up and ran to the sofa. Leo had Frank pinned down, with his knee in Frank’s back, while Tom twisted Frank’s arm.