The Three Roads

by Ross Macdonald

  “You think he doesn’t want to get well? He said something like that today.”

  “Why do you think he became ill in the first place?”

  “Isn’t it fairly obvious? He had two terrible shocks in rapid succession. The bombing and then his wife’s death—”

  “Nothing about the human mind is obvious.” There was a trace of professional pomposity in his tone, which shortly became more apparent. “As a matter of fact the healthy mind is quite as mysterious as the unhealthy mind. I’ve often wondered, for instance, why a woman like you—”

  His hand, like a fat and hairy spider, was gently approaching hers along the arm of the chair. She withdrew her own hand into her lap. “Since Lieutenant Taylor and I are going to be married—”

  The hairy spider stopped in its tracks.

  “—I have to ask you whether his brain could have been damaged by the explosion. Physically damaged?”

  “Not a chance. It’s a purely psychological problem, Miss West. It’s hardly oversimplifying it to say that he lost his memory because he wanted to.”

  “But you’ve said yourself that the shocks had a great deal to do with it.”

  “They precipitated his condition, but they’re not the basic explanation. Taylor’s mind was vulnerable, you see. Other men have endured similar shocks without resorting to mental blackout.”

  “Resorting?” She picked out the word and threw it back like an insult. She was beginning to hate him again; and she had an impulse to brush the inert and hairy hand from the arm of her chair.

  “You’re letting words bother you again. I used that word advisedly and without prejudice. He had several years of arduous sea duty, much of it under combat conditions. He took it standing up, like thousands of others. Then he was bombed into the water at Kerama. No doubt that weakened his resistance, both mentally and physically. But he came out of it without any overt mental condition. It was the second shock, coming on top of years of strain, that broke the camel’s back.”

  “You mean her death?”

  “Evidently. The murder coincided with his final breakdown. That camel’s back isn’t a good metaphor. Really his whole image of the world and of himself was strained by a series of hard blows. He finally withdrew from a situation that was too much for him. I can’t help feeling that he wanted to escape from it even before she was killed. There’s his complete refusal to remember her at all.” He looked sideways at her from under his thick brows. “He wasn’t happy with her, was he?”

  “He hardly knew her. He married her on a three-day furlough and went to sea immediately afterward. He married her in the fall of 1944 and never saw her alive again.”

  “How on earth did he come to do that?”

  She paused to take charge of her feelings. This memory was as painful to her as it must have been to Bret. “He married her when he was drunk. He picked her up in a bar in San Francisco and married her the next day.”

  “Good Lord, what kind of a girl was she?”

  “That kind,” she said.

  “You knew Taylor at that time, did you?”

  “Oh, yes, I knew him.” She lit a cigarette in a series of quick, nervous movements and said: “I suppose I’d better tell you about it if you think it might have any bearing. Perhaps I should have told you long ago.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “It’s not an anecdote I tell around for laughs,” she said harshly. “When his ship came in to San Francisco I thought he was going to marry me. So did he, I think. I flew up from Hollywood to meet him. He’d been at sea for nearly a year that time, and in spite of his letters it was almost as if he’d risen from the dead. Does that sound romantic? I am a romantic, I suppose, or I was. I was crazy with happiness when he came back. But it turned out that he wasn’t. He quarreled with me on the first night and left me flat. The next I heard of him he was married to this girl Lorraine. I thought I was going to be the object of a whirlwind courtship, but it turned out to be somebody else.”

  “It seems strange that you should quarrel so suddenly and finally. Had you known him long?”

  “Less than a year, but it seemed longer. I’d met him in La Jolla the winter before, the winter of ’43, when he was on leave. We spent nineteen days together before his ship went out, and then there were his letters. He was my personal stake in the war, and I had the feeling that I was his stake in the future. I counted too heavily on that, I guess.”

  “What was your quarrel about?”

  “It was his quarrel, not mine. He resented my having more money than he had, but it wasn’t money that made the trouble. He was looking for an occasion for a fight, and that happened to be it. He called me a few names and walked out. It’s occurred to me since that his actions, even then, were a little—a little abnormal. I suppose that’s nothing but hindsight.”

  “Is that why you’ve forgiven him?”

  “Did I say I’d forgiven him?” She threw away her cigarette with a gesture that was unnecessarily fierce. It curved over the veranda railing in a steep parabola and lay smoldering in the grass.

  “You evidently have, Miss West. Is it because you feel he was not, shall we say, quite master of himself when he left you?”

  She noticed the change in the doctor’s tone from the personal to the professional, and it pleased her. His hands had forgotten her and were busy filling his pipe. She lit a new cigarette before she answered, and blew out a cloud of smoke as if to veil the clarity of her thoughts.

  “Oh, he was master of himself, all right. He carried on his naval duties for another six months. He even won a commendation off Iwo. My head was bloody but his head was unbowed.”

  “But you yourself suggested that his conduct was abnormal.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t for him,” she said quickly. “I knew from the first that he was terribly shy. He was shy of love, and I may have tried to rush him.”

  “You must love him very much.”

  “Because I tried to throw myself at his head?”

  “Because you’re being so honest,” he answered soberly, “telling me of your humiliation because you think it might help him.”

  “I do seem to be a bear for punishment, don’t I? Do you suppose I’m a masochist?”

  “I doubt it.” His answering smile withdrew his eyes far under the thicket of his eyebrows. “About your theory that he was afraid of love—how does it fit in with this whirlwind courtship of his and his marriage to this girl?”

  “I don’t pretend to have a theory, doctor. But don’t forget he went on a binge when he left me. It may be that alcohol put his inhibitions to sleep. His natural sexual impulses broke through and fastened on the first object that was handy. He didn’t come right out with it, but that’s what I read between the lines of his letter.”

  “You corresponded with him afterwards?”

  “He wrote me one letter. It came about a month after he left San Francisco again.”

  “I’d like to see that letter.”

  “I can tell you what it said. He was too proud to admit that he’d acted like a fool, but that was the general idea. He was sticking with the marriage and doing his best to convince himself that he liked the setup, but he didn’t like it at all. There was a false, brittle cheerfulness in the letter that really got me down. He was so obviously unhappy and remorseful and apologetically defiant, if you know what I mean.”

  “I think I do—one of those letters it’s hard to answer.”

  “I didn’t try to answer it. He asked me not to, so I didn’t. It was pretty hard for a while. I’d got into the habit of writing him everything I did and thought. Then suddenly he belonged to another woman, and I wasn’t even hearing from him any more. I finally broke down and went to see her.”

  “All the way to San Francisco?”

  “She’d bought a house in Los Angeles, and I found her in the phone book. It gave me a queer feeling to see that name in print: ‘Mrs. Bret Taylor.’ ” She paused and lit another cigarette from the butt of the one she had
been smoking. When she spoke again, her voice had lost its emotional depth:

  “It wasn’t curiosity about her so much, but I had to know what was happening to him, and she was the only one who could tell me. He’d been gone for nearly four months, and I hadn’t heard from him for three, not since the letter I told you about. I’d taken to lying awake nights. And I suppose one of the things I wondered about was the kind of girl that he’d preferred to me.”

  “I’ve been wondering about that myself.” He accompanied the indirect compliment with a slow and calculated look that slid from her bosom down her body to her naked legs.

  She was too preoccupied to notice. “I had a mean sort of triumph when I saw the girl for the first time. She was pretty enough—I’ve got to acknowledge that—but she used too much make-up, she didn’t know how to dress, she didn’t know how to wear her hair. Those are trivial things, but they can mean a good deal to a jilted woman. She wasn’t even a good housekeeper. There were used glasses and full ashtrays on the tables and chairs. I shouldn’t be catty like this, should I? Nil nisi bonum.”

  “A touch of the feline is natural enough under the circumstances.”

  “Anyway I suffered for my little moment of false triumph. She showed me the bundle of letters Bret has sent her, and even insisted that I read one of them. Bret had told her about me, you see, and she was perfectly willing to see me suffer. She was quite sweet to me, but in a deadly way. I didn’t want to read the letter, but I’m afraid I did. I felt compelled to.

  “It was the sort of thing you write to a child, still and reassuring. He was at sea again; he couldn’t tell her where, but it was exciting; he loved her and looked forward to seeing her. It was painful to read but it gave me a certain consolation. He had nothing really to say to her, and she didn’t have brains or feeling enough to know the difference.”

  “I gather she was pretty young.” There was in his voice an elegiac undertone that Paula resented in spite of herself.

  “Nineteen or twenty, I’d say. She had nearly ten years on me, and that didn’t help. But she was no child bride. She went out of her way to let me know she’d been around. Frankly I had the feeling that Bret had been seduced.”

  “It’s fairly evident that someone had to,” Wright said quietly.

  “I know. I tried to, our last night together, but it didn’t take. He was a virgin, and I’d been married before. Yet I’m sure he loved me.”

  “That may have been precisely the trouble. He’s a bit of an idealist, isn’t he?”

  “You know him.”

  “He’s an idealist all right. And that’s all very well, but when idealists break down, and they nearly always do, they tend to go to the opposite extreme. This girl, for instance. I presume his interest in her was primarily sexual. How did she feel about him?”

  “I don’t believe she had any strong feeling one way or the other, but then I’m not an unbiased witness. She seemed to be proud of being married to a full lieutenant in the Navy, and having a little house of her own, though she wasn’t doing much to keep it up. She was a little tight when I got there, quite early in the afternoon. She offered me a bottle of beer, and I tried to get her to talk, but it was heavy going. I’m no giant intellect, but she was a featherbrain. Our only common ground was the movies.”

  “And Lieutenant Taylor?”

  “No, not even Bret. Our conceptions of him were so different I found I couldn’t talk with her about him. Not without getting angry, at least, and I certainly wasn’t going to do that. To her he was an acquisition, a meal ticket garnished with gold braid. She mentioned twice that he had bought her the house and was sending her an allotment of two hundred dollars a month. In spite of those things I invited her to return my visit, but she never did. I guess I didn’t do a very good job of covering my feelings, and she resented me quite as much as I resented her. I called on her about two months before she was murdered, and I didn’t see her alive after that.”

  Wright hammered his pipe on his heel with flagellant intensity. “You didn’t see her alive?” he said with his face averted.

  “I saw her dead. I was with Bret when he found her body.”

  He glanced up into her face and was embarrassed by the pain he saw there. “Oh, yes. Of course.”

  “I told you about it when you took charge of Bret’s case. I hope I don’t have to go through it again.”

  “There’s no need to,” he answered quickly. “We have a complete record.”

  “As a matter of fact I do have to go through it again,” she said. “I’ve got an appointment with Dr. Klifter tonight.”

  “Klifter?”

  “The psychoanalyst. I assumed that Captain Kelvie had told you about him. He’s agreed to interview Bret tomorrow. With your permission,” she added coldly.

  “Of course the captain talked to me about it. The name slipped my mind for a moment.”

  “A Freudian error, Commander?”

  “Not at all. I’ve read Klifter’s monographs, and I think they’re fine. But it’s hard to get used to the idea that he’s in California. He’s always been a sort of European myth to me.”

  “He’s a very charming and unpretentious man,” Paula said. “He acted as technical adviser on a script I rewrote—that’s how I happen to know him. I’ll be very glad if he consents to take the case. I take it you have no objections to his interviewing Bret?”

  “None at all. Since you have the captain’s permission, mine’s only a formality anyway. Actually I’ll be glad of the chance to discuss the case with Klifter. I do want to warn you though not to expect too much.”

  “I expect very little.”

  “I don’t mean that Taylor won’t recover, and I don’t mean that psychoanalysis mightn’t be useful. Our pentothal interview is a variation of psychoanalytic technique, as a matter of fact.”

  “I know that.” She rose to go, holding her purse before her body like a shield. She had worn, for Bret’s eyes, a woolen dress that clung to the outlines of her shoulders and breasts. “I’ll miss my train.”

  “Let me take you down in the station wagon.”

  “Thank you, I have a cab waiting.”

  “All I meant,” he repeated as she offered him her hand, “was that you mustn’t look for a sudden miracle. These things take time. Nothing can take the place of time.”

  She heard his final sentence two ways. The meaning that echoed in her mind all the way to the station was the one he had not intended. Time was running away like a river, and she and Bret were lodged on opposite banks. Nothing could take the place of the time that had already run out or the time that was yet to run.

  chapter 3

  Although she had passed between them uncounted times, Paula was always struck by the contrast between the Santa Fe station and the San Diego gas company building. The latter was an ugly huge cube of a building, surrounded by towering steel chimneys like candles on a birthday cake. Across the streetcar tracks was the archaic and sentimental incongruity of the station tower. It seemed to her that the two buildings were symbols of historic forces. On the one hand was the giant mass of the power and utility companies that actually dominated the life of the state; on the other, the Spanish past that California plutocracy used to stucco its façade.

  The shining metal streamliner waiting beside the station added the final touch to her allegory. It was the impossible future superimposed upon the ugly present in the presence of the regretted past. There was no continuity between the tenses, she thought. You passed from one to the other as a ghost passed through a wall, at the risk of your own reality. The spotless interior of this streamlined future was crowded with unreal passengers waiting to be transported, appropriately enough, to Los Angeles.

  She moved like a sleepwalker along the platform and found the chair she had reserved in the parlor car. Even the train’s starting, one of her oldest excitements, and the blue glimpses of the sea as they passed outside the city, failed to lift her out of her mood of vague resignation. After her five
years in California there was still something false and garish about summer weather in February. She’d have preferred an unsmiling sky and a gray sea to that steady yellow sun and those glittering waves. She wondered if there was anything in the idea she’d heard somewhere that too much fair weather could make people hard-hearted and self-indulgent.

  On an afternoon like this, and with a parlor car to observe it from, it was hard to believe in sin and madness and death. That cotton-batting surf didn’t look much like cruel, crawling foam. But of course it was, and people suffered in California just as they did in other places—suffered a little more, perhaps, because they didn’t get much sympathy from the weather.

  She forced blankness on her mind, smiled as an act of faith, and watched the belt of orange trees that had appeared between the railroad and the sea. A sailor passing in the aisle, willing and eager to accept her blind smile as a personal tribute, paused beside her chair.

  “Good afternoon,” he said with the assurance of extreme youth and a double row of ribbons. “A lovely afternoon, isn’t it?”

  As if he were appraising an object on which he intended to enter a bid, he stood and frankly examined her polished-copper hair, her smooth skin, the promise of the figure revealed by her blue wool dress. She couldn’t bring herself to feel angry. She was on the brink of thirty, and she’d never been quite beautiful enough to be smug about her looks. On the other hand she wasn’t going to listen to wolfish chatter all the way to Los Angeles.

  “Blow, swabbie,” she whispered hoarsely. “My husband’s an officer.”

  “Certainly, certainly.” He tipped his white hat forward onto the bridge of his nose, and said before he strolled away: “No hard feelings.”

  She turned back to the orange groves rushing by like a dark green river on which thousands of tiny oranges floated dizzily away. She was worried about the lie she had told, not because it was a lie, but because she had claimed Bret Taylor as her husband. He wasn’t, and she was afraid he never would be. He’d turned her down in San Francisco in no uncertain terms, and if she’d had any pride she’d have given up when he married the other girl. Yet here she was, nearly two years later, still camping on his trail and beginning to tell strangers on trains that she was his wife. She’d have to watch herself or she’d be going around making all sorts of extravagant claims, like the old woman in Monterey who said she was Mary the Mother of God.