The Mackerel Plaza: A Novel

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The Mackerel Plaza: A Novel Page 16

by De Vries, Peter


  “Hear! hear!” shouted a voice in the gallery. It was a bull-necked man in a red mackinaw. “National sovereignty must go! Only world government will save us!”

  Junior rapped him out of order, not, however, till he had let him finish his piece, to point up the type who might be expected to rally to my banner. Old Meesum improved the occasion by consulting some notes he had taken from his pocket. Evidently he had come prepared for this cross-questioning.

  “You also once said—correct me if I misquote you—‘It is the final proof of God’s omnipotence that he need not exist in order to save us.’” I acknowledged the accuracy of the quotation with a nod. “Doesn’t that sound a lot like Voltaire?”

  “Voltaire said something quite different. You’re probably thinking of his aphorism, ‘If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.’ I go beyond that. I take the final step whereby theology, annihilating itself, sets religion free.”

  “Oh, you think you’re smarter than Voltaire.”

  “Why, are you a fan of his?”

  Meesum raised his cards above his head and slammed them down on the table. “I will not stand here and argue with a man who won’t stick to the point!” he said, and sat down with almost as violent a contact with his chair as the cards had had with the table.

  There was another silence. Mayor Junior looked miserably around. They looked at me with reproving, hangdog glances. The meeting seemed to have foundered. “Why didn’t you bring all this up at the luncheon at the Stilton that time?” the mayor asked. “You were there.”

  “I didn’t know at the time that it would take on this mythos-ethos opposition,” I said. “How could I know that then?”

  Sponsible raised his hand again and said a few words.

  “Well, I just want to say that I appreciate Reverend Mackerel’s objections. About the Plaza, the way it was gone at,” he remarked. “But that’s natural in a big enterprise. Mistakes will be made, excesses be guilty of. Sure it’s a splash. Sure its ballyhoo. But why shouldn’t we remember on as big a scale as possible somebody who gave herself on as big a scale as possible? After all, didn’t she make the supreme sacrifice?”

  He sat down to a round of applause and pats on the back. This was the moment, for me. He had stated the specific myth. It was up to me whether I was going to let it pass, or challenge it. Speak now or forever hold your peace. Are you ready, Prometheus?

  I had an idea. Maybe I could get across by indirection what I had never been able to blurt out directly. Didn’t I owe to Turnbull, even more than to them, this deliverance from the marshes of myth to the dry land of reality? I could put them one step from the truth, and let them take the last one by inference.

  “Yes, I have always thought her deed a noble one,” I said. “All the more so because she couldn’t swim a stroke.”

  This was followed by a complete and absolute silence. In it, you could sense speculation like a soundless seething going on all around you. They seemed suspended in a vacuum for a moment. Then one of the heads turned slowly to Sprackling. Then another, then a third. They were making inferences all right.

  Sprackling rose. He had come really only to relinquish his legal duties for the Plaza, having just been appointed an assistant prosecuting attorney, and had not expected to participate on these lines.

  “If the late Mrs. Mackerel couldn’t swim,” he said, “how was it you could run the risk of taking her out in a canoe?”

  I followed the trajectory of this notion with a kind of dreamy detachment, turning my head in a looping glance to the left, as if in pursuit of an object describing an arc.

  “Risk?” I said, driving the word through a bung in my throat.

  “Yes. I should consider it so. Canoes tip over.”

  “Now you’re doing it!” I told them. “Oppressing me. Now you’re getting the hang of it. This is what I meant. Well might you ask, ‘To what green altar, O mysterious priest, lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies?’ Might it not be, my lord, the altar of Mammon himself?”

  “I should like to remind you that this is a serious hearing, despite its apparent informality, and not an exercise in this Machiavellian mumbo jumbo you seem to have on the brain,” Sprackling said. “Now, I was asking you if it wasn’t dangerous to go out in a canoe under the circumstances. They tip over.”

  “It never would have if she hadn’t stood up and rocked it, which in turn wouldn’t have happened if the crisis hadn’t arisen that did. So from that point of view she did give her life for another, and the monument is in perfect order,” I said. “Well then. Does that bring the questions to an end? If so, I think we can call it an evening and get on to Ed Murrow—”

  “Not so fast,” Sprackling said. “Aspects of this thing do arouse one’s curiosity, which I hope you don’t mind satisfying. Whose idea was it to go out in a canoe—rather than rent one of the numerous rowboats available?”

  “Oh, hers. I was against it at first, my lord, but she won me over. We had quite an argument about it, but she won me over. She always won the arguments. Everything in order there, eh, my lord?”

  I spoke, despite the witticism, with my head somewhat atilt and with that high assurance that distinguishes the true martyr from the sullen scapegoat. The vocative was a kind of arm offered to help them up a step onto this higher plane, too, while also supplying a dash of irony we all needed, a bit of the garlic of parody rubbed on the strong meat of these proceedings.

  “Did you and Mrs. Mackerel argue often? Quarrel bitterly, perhaps?”

  I executed a series of gestures in the air in front of me, as though directing traffic of great size and complexity. “Happiness is no laughing matter, as the Irishman said.”

  At this point a minor disturbance broke out in the gallery. Some, including the internationalist who had been furtively distributing pamphlets on behalf of his own cause, began debating the propriety of this line of questioning, and their words became a free-for-all which also divided the committee around the table. “You have no right to ask him things like that here,” one of my defenders called out. “Wait till you get him in court.” The commotion subsided when Turnbull’s tall figure rose in the front of the gallery. He asked for the floor and got it.

  “I think it’s time I spoke up here,” he said. “Andy Mackerel is my friend and so was Ida May. I’m not as embarrassed by this as you might think. She deserves this memorial because of her life anyway, so the way she died doesn’t make that much difference. But it does for Andrew’s peace of mind and future welfare in this community. So we ought to go into the facts of that accident a little more fully for his sake, and settle them if we can. Now can anybody shed any light on it?”

  In the silence their expressions asked him what he meant.

  “I mean there must have been eye witnesses to the event. On that crowded beach. You were all there,” he said, spreading his rangy arms. “You were all eye witnesses to the scene in general. But did anybody see that particular part of what happened in the cove?”

  Another silence followed this query. It lasted fifteen seconds, half a minute. No one volunteered.

  “I guess that’s that then,” Turnbull said. “Obviously I can’t settle it. I was bobbing around on an inner tube.”

  A small figure rose behind him and spoke up in a high-pitched voice. It was young Shively, the druggist’s son.

  “I don’t know if this’ll be any help,” he said, “but there was somebody there who was taking pictures from the dock at the time. Movies, I mean. It was Waldo Hale. He had that movie camera of his along and started shooting when the motor launch got loose. That was all fun, of course, and he got some footage of it, but then the other happened. That was probably in it, so his mother said he hadn’t oughta have the reel developed. In fact she wanted him to burn it, I remember. Whether he did or not, or ever got it developed, I can’t say. I don’t know.”

  Sprackling, who had momentarily sat down, rose again, fingering his Phi Beta Kappa key. “Is Waldo Hale here
?” he asked.

  “No,” said the Shively youth, “and he ain’t in town either. He’s in the Army. Fort Bliss, down in Texas.”

  “Mrs. Hale?”

  “His mother passed away last fall, sir. Neither of his parents is alive and the house is shut up. Waldo and I exchange letters once in a while, so maybe I could write to him and ask him about the film. I mean if I could be of any …”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Sprackling, hurriedly gathering up some papers and thrusting them into his briefcase. “We’ll telephone Fort Bliss tonight.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “WELL, they think I killed her.”

  Hester had been waiting up for me in the living room, to hear how the meeting had gone. I set aside the dregs of the drink whose consumption had attended my narrative of the events of the night. I spoke as one relishing a hard-earned vindication while giving another his just deserts.

  “They think I took advantage of the confusion to tip the canoe over, see. Something along that line. They’ll never find the pictures and I’ll live out the rest of my life under suspicion, here or in like Escanaba, Michigan, or in Athens, either Georgia or Greece, it makes no difference which, because everywhere I go the story’ll catch up with me—or they’ll find the pictures and there’ll be some fluke in the photography that looks funny and I’ll end up with a rope around my neck. I hope you’re satisfied now. You’ve had this coming to you for some time.”

  Hester was doing her needle point. She drew a thread through and reached for a highball she had asked me to fix her. She drank half of it like one quenching a literal thirst rather than imbibing liquor. “You romanticize things,” she declared.

  “I warn you not to nag. Persecutions, slander, character assassination, and, finally, death by execution I don’t mind—they’re part of the game. I expect them. But henpecking I will not have.”

  She set her glass down after looking in surprise at its contents, as though sobered by the realization of the effect alcohol had on you. “Have you phoned von Pantz yet?”

  “Then you’re willing? Good, I’ll make a date for you.”

  “Not me, Andrew—you.” She drew a deep breath and held it for a prolonged interval in her lungs, as though she had momentarily forgotten what to do with air. She let it out with the same careful study of me with which she had taken it in. “The way you think people are after you and all, it alarms me. I don’t mean you should go off to him in a panic and settle down to a long siege of treatments—I don’t mean that. I only say this to show you that I’m worried.”

  “I wish I was dead and out of it,” I said listlessly, to the wall. “I want to lie beside the ever-murmuring sea, on the hot sand, till all the flesh is bleached from my bones, and I can rest in peace. Or maybe I’ll just stick my head in the oven.”

  “What good will that do? The stove is electric.”

  I must pull myself together, I thought, pouring myself a stiffer drink than usual. I padded back to the chair in stocking feet, for I had removed my shoes, which were tight. After sitting down, I tapped the arm of the chair with a forefinger. “I’ve spent a lifetime hacking out a coherent position, and I say they’re out to get me. I’ll stake my professional reputation on that.”

  She coughed into her fist and asked, “As an anthropologist, Andrew?”

  “It can’t be anything else. It fits. It’s got to. It’s just the way things are.”

  “You’ve got a theory and you’ll prove it if it kills you. Is that it?”

  I wedged my feet back into my shoes and rose without lacing them. I was going to bed. The metallic tips of the laces tinkled as I gained bare floor between parlor and vestibule, carrying my drink. “I’ll tell you this, young lady. You read the papers tomorrow, and I’ll bet my bottom dollar the whole story will be slanted their way. The hunt is on!”

  “Andrew, do you ever have feelings that people are following you?”

  “I’m not going to stay here and listen to crazy talk.” I started on up.

  “Wait.” I paused halfway up the stairs. Her tone was an argumentative version of serenity. “When I was a little girl, we had a wonderful aunt. She lived in Seekonk, did this aunt,” she went on, plying her needle and thread, “and we loved to visit her because she had nine children of her own. Well, she had a sound word for every occasion. Nothing threw her. One time when somebody was worried about something, anxious, she said, ‘I’ve had lots of troubles in my life, but most of ’em never happened.’”

  “A philosopher.”

  “She was a woman of breeding.”

  “Breeding! With nine children? No woman of breeding has nine children. It’s a contradiction in terms.”

  “About this film. When will they get it?” We were shouting at one another now.

  “As soon as possible. You’ll read all about it in the paper tomorrow. Read all about it heah, wuxtry, read all about it! Lady killer nabbed for questioning …”

  I settled down in bed with a book. I read a page and let it drop. Knopf had been asked to resign by his board of directors, who, as individuals, however, got together a small purse to help set him up in a bookstore, to see if maybe he couldn’t do a little better on that end of the production of literature. But the same lack of judgment that had vitiated his choice of unpublished manuscripts vexed his selection of published, and that venture failed too. He was last known trying to get a job as a clerk, in a store that also sold greeting cards and small gifts along with books …

  I reached for my bedside phone and called Molly. The third ring was answered by Tabitha Twitchet, past whom I got by asking for her precious daughter in a voice imitating Robert Morley. Twitching my mouth and sniffing, I said, “Is Molly theah-ahm?” Through Molly’s own dramatically hissed protests, when I identified myself, I said, “I thought you might care to know how the meeting turned out.”

  “Yes, I’ve been meaning to call you. How did it?”

  “Why, they’re circling for the kill,” I said, picking up the phone from the table and setting it on my stomach. “All according to pattern. Look, can you meet me in Chickenfoot tomorrow night? I’ve got to talk to you.” The next day would be Saturday, so we wouldn’t meet at the office.

  “Yes. As a matter of fact that’s what I was going to call you about too. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “That you love me?”

  “Fine, Hilary. I’ll meet you there then.”

  “Good. Shall we say eightish, at that place next to the tannery that says ‘Eats’?”

  My fork struck an object in the hash which seemed immune to penetration. This left only the alternatives of circumvention or removal. I poured large gouts of ketchup on the hash, muddled the result together and shoved the plate to one side. Molly did the same with her hamburger, remarking, “I’ve always been a good judge of horseflesh and this is horseflesh.” I ordered ice cream for both of us, and coffee. A sign on the wall advertised their “bottomless cup,” which meant you could ask for all the refills you wanted; a managerial risk which became clear the instant you tasted the stuff. The ice cream was full of rock salt.

  “Andy?” said Molly, stirring her coffee and addressing a point in space just above my head. “There’s really too much secretarial stuff for one girl to handle. And now with these long letters you’re writing to Knopf. I mean it’s too much.”

  “Of course. I’ll look for an extra girl the first thing next week. P.L. is growing, isn’t it?”

  She sucked thoughtfully on a spoonful of ice cream.

  “So we lose our little haven,” she said. “Somebody else in the office there with us.”

  “Yes.”

  “That being the case, there’s no point in my staying on. So you might as well get two new girls right away.”

  I saw the whole farce being dismantled and reconstructed in reverse: Molly would quit. Then she would quit being seen with me. Then she would quit going to P.L. and go back to M.E.—or become one of those millions of unfortunate Americans
with no spiritual affiliations.

  “What a time we do have of it,” I said, “but of course it’ll all seem that much sweeter to look back on. Chickenfoot, places like this, the night we spent at the Coker.” I reached for her hand. “Oh, my dearest, we didn’t spend that night—we put it in the bank.”

  She had both her hands in her lap, where her bag was. She reached into it and I caught a wink of something glittering.

  “In the bank of our love, our future, our faith in one another … Molly, what is this you seem to be giving me?”

  “I can’t wear it anyway, so you’d better keep it till—and—well, I might lose it.”

  I put the ring in my pocket. I took a suck of my own ice cream, and a sip of my coffee.

  “We must meet again sometime,” she said.

  “Fine. Shall we say lunch a year from Tuesday?”

  She sat stiffly with bowed head, about to burst into something, whether tears or words being still the question. I imagined that I was a dog and that my ears hung in my food, as an alternative to throwing back my head and baying like one. Lifting my cup to drink my coffee I noticed what I seemed to have the previous time, a hot trickle of sorts onto the knee of my trousers. It was the beverage all right, dribbling through a leak in the vessel.

  “Is this your bottomless cup then, woman?” I said to the waitress. “Is that what the term means?”

  “Please don’t be angry with me,” Molly said. “You—I—it’s all so impossible. Not just the original situation but what’s arising out of it. No, not what’s arising out of it so much as what you’re determined shall arise out of it. It’s going to fit your theories or bust.”

  “Will you please explain what you’re talking about?”

  “This hearing and all—I heard about it today from somebody who knows Scanlon. You set their backs up so they’d act the way they were supposed to. Now there’s nothing about it in the Bridgeport papers today and you’re sore about that. So you’ll pull out another stop.”

  “Putting the squeeze on the editorial department through the advertising takes time, as you may know.”

 

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