The Protégé

by Charlotte Armstrong

  Her grandmother said, “Would you mind, Zan, not going into the affair of the police at midnight?”

  “All right, if you’d rather not.”

  “I’d rather not be asked a million questions, none of which I can answer.” Mrs. Moffat sighed. She did not seem at ease.

  Crystal and Claire lived in an old apartment building where the rooms were spacious but the windows mean and small. Zan privately thought it was a dreadful place, gloomy and airless, all compromise.

  Crystal was aflutter in her elephantine way. She was very broad of beam, was Crystal, especially from the rear. Zan, who tried to feel sorry for her, must forget all that and consider the deep furrows across the broad, pale forehead.

  Claire was like a baby chick when wet—manifest bone. She seemed no more afloat than Zan had found her before.

  Alexandra was looking so pretty! Where in the world had Marguerite been, naughty girl! Wasn’t it a shame that Joe and Flo couldn’t join them! Now, they must have tea.

  So tea was poured with much mention of heirloom china.

  Poor things, thought Zan, remembering her brilliant yesterday, the sea, the salt, the sky, the “fun” people at the marina, and the fine finale at Nicky’s.

  As soon as it was not too soon to mention him, the subject of Simon came up. Had he felt unwell this morning? Everyone in church had been concerned. Crystal and Claire had been asked many questions. But Crystal, who was speaking now, did not really care whether he had been unwell. She went right on to ask what Alexandra thought of him. So extraordinary, his beard. Of course, these days …

  “He seems to be a nice boy,” said Zan, her smile tinged with instruction toward tolerance.

  Claire was the only one who didn’t notice this. “I’ve been trying to remember the Warrens, Marguerite,” she complained, tilting her head, her bony beak aslant. “I must have met them. Of course, it’s been years …”

  “I remember them very well,” said Crystal. “She was a large woman.”

  Zan thought, For God’s sake, how large?

  “Tall,” said her grandmother.

  “And he was on the rabbity side, although I merely glimpsed the man. What did he do, Marguerite?”

  “Insurance,” said Mrs. Moffat.

  “Do you know,” said Claire, “all I can visualize is their cat?”

  “Mercy,” said Mrs. Moffat.

  Zan perceived that her grandmother, who had not wanted to come and did not want to stay, was hard pressed to behave to the contrary and reduced to one word at a time.

  “I remember the cat, of course,” said Crystal, as if she had been accused of forgetting. “An enormous black cat, Alexandra. I am not superstitious, but I must say that animal had a baleful eye. I don’t like slinky creatures anyhow.” Her face shuddered, and she reached for the sugar.

  “He was beautiful,” said Claire dreamily. “His name was Mr. Calico.”

  “Oh, no, dear,” said Crystal, who seemed under a compulsion to contradict her housemate’s statements. “It could not possibly have been calico. He was not a calico cat.”

  “Or a gingham dog,” said Mrs. Moffat glumly.

  The ladies laughed. (Oh, poor old women, thought Zan.)

  “The cat’s name, as I recall,” said Crystal, “was Caliban. Yes. You must remember, Marguerite.”

  “I don’t,” said Mrs. Moffat.

  “What became of the cat, Marguerite?” asked Claire.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea,” said Mrs. Moffat, rousing. “For all I know, she is alive and well and living in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.”

  Zan managed to laugh and yet conquer the giggles. (Oh, darling Gran beat all, she did!)

  “They are still there?” asked Crystal, looking worried. “Simon is going East to see his family soon, didn’t you say?”

  “One of these days,” said Mrs. Moffat, diving into the teacup.

  “Do you know,” said Claire, “it couldn’t have been Caliban if the cat was a girl. Isn’t that a boy’s name?”

  “Nevertheless,” said Crystal, nibbling her lips in an anxiety to have been right. (Claire was maddening when she took a notion to be logical. Obviously Crystal considered this unfair.) “I believe that Caliban was the cat’s name. Marguerite can simply ask the Warren boy, can’t she, and settle the question once and for all?” Crystal laughed gaily.

  Zan spoke up before this childish controversy could proceed further and inquired for the little bird. Crystal sighed voluminously and began to tell about the demise of Quasimodo, the parrakeet, reaching for cake to help her survive the recollection of old sorrow.

  Zan, who knew that Mrs. Moffat was just barely able to sit still and survive this visit, took care to ease into the long ceremony of leave-taking that must drag out, lest somebody think you couldn’t wait to get out of here.

  In the car, Zan said, “They’re just the same.”

  “Yes,” said Mrs. Moffat broodingly, “although you don’t know what that is, Zan. I’m sorry I wasn’t in the mood for them.”

  “You’re worried about Simon, Gran? You really shouldn’t feel so responsible, should you? Have you written to his mother since he’s been here?”

  “I wouldn’t interfere,” snapped Mrs. Moffat. “I’ve lost her address anyway.”

  Zan said no more. A peculiar suspicion had sprung up in her mind. Oh, come on, she chided herself.

  Crystal said to Claire, “Marguerite was on absolute needles and pins to get back to her hippie boyfriend. Tsk! Tsk! I don’t think Alexandra is happy about that situation. She wouldn’t let on, of course.”

  Claire came only halfway out of the clouds. “If Marguerite is making a fool of herself, I’m so glad that somebody is there to see it.”

  Zan drove the car into the garage, stopping it sharply on the mark. “Gran, do you want me to knock on the cottage door and inquire for his health?”

  “No, no,” said Mrs. Moffat. “Just let him be. Let him be.”

  Ah so? thought Zan, trailing her grandmother into the house. She’s not so sure his “illness” was a physical illness either.

  In the kitchen Polly said to Zan, “He was just lolling on the grass while you were gone, Miss Zan. I went out to see. But all he said was he didn’t see much point to working in the garden. ‘Not enough time,’ he said.”

  “Well, well,” said Zan. “He may be coming to the party in his store-bought clothes after all.”

  Simon, in his store-bought clothes, came to Zan’s party.

  He appeared at the door to the porch politely upon the hour of the invitation. But Nicky had not yet arrived, so the party had to wait to begin.

  Mrs. Moffat was rocking easily, beginning to be reassured by Simon’s deportment, when Zan, making small talk, said, “By the way, Simon, there was a bit of argument this afternoon about (of all things!) your cat.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Your family cat,” pressed Zan. “Mrs. Darrell claims that its name was Calico, and Mrs. Adams is just as sure its name was Caliban, and you’re going to have to settle the issue.”

  Simon’s eyes were alert. The pupils wagged in their sockets.

  “It must have been Cal something,” Zan prodded.

  “A cat?”

  “That unfortunate animal,” snorted Mrs. Moffat, giving her chair an angry push, “had to answer to the name of Mrs. Calabash.”

  Zan was laughing. “Now how could anyone forget that! You couldn’t have, Simon?”

  “Small boys don’t always get on with cats,” snapped Mrs. Moffat. “The fact is, that cat got on with nobody.”

  “How did the cat get on when it moved East?” said Zan, still mirthful. “Did it mind very much?”

  Simon was looking at her. His eyes had grown shiny and mirthful, too. “Oh, Mrs. Calabash got married,” he said airily, “and had nine children, one for each life. I can’t say whether she minded.”

  It was Mrs. Moffat who laughed aloud this time.

  “And were all the kittens pure white, too?” purred Zan
.

  Mrs. Moffat jolted her rocking chair. It was as if she were shouting, “Watch out, watch out.”

  Simon looked at her, then away, all animation fading. “I don’t know anything about cats,” he said evenly. He gazed out at the lawns.

  “Treacherous beasts, the lot,” said Mrs. Moffat. “Especially females.” She was furious with Zan.

  Zan had done something with her jaw that caused attractive hollows in her cheeks. She said lightly, “Well, then let’s talk about seacoasts. East is east and west is west, I’ve heard that somewhere, haven’t you? I will admit I was much impressed by the ocean you’ve got out here.”

  “An ocean is an ocean,” said Mrs. Moffat waspishly. “And the fact is, ours is bigger.”

  “Does that make a lot of difference, from the shore?” argued Zan reproachfully. “Ah, I hear a car. Don’t go away,” she cried, and went off through the house to let Nicky in at the front.

  “In the summertime,” Simon said, his eyes half-closed, “we had a place on the shore.”

  “Did you, Simon?”

  “Oh, yes … up near Boothbay.” A wave of sadness seemed to wash over him. “My mother, my father, my sister, and I—”

  “In the summertime?” Mrs. Moffat murmured.

  “It’s summer there.” He turned his face to her, but his eyes were owl eyes. He stared within. “An ocean is an ocean. There’ll be surf and seabirds. They don’t care.”

  Mrs. Moffat kept her rocking in smooth control. What dream was this?

  “Mrs. Moffat,” Simon said, “I have to go away from here.”

  “Where will you go?” she asked lightly. She had said this once before. When he hung his head and didn’t answer, she spoke up in heavy disappointment. “For pity’s sake, Simon, don’t you make me wonder all the rest of my life whatever became of you. That’s what Tommy Moffat did.”

  His head kept hanging. He had his left hand curled into his right palm, the fingers of his right hand were folding and unfolding. “I wish I really was your grandson.”

  “Well, you’re not,” she said crisply. His head came up. “Although I don’t suppose that matters too much,” Mrs. Moffat went on in a moment, thinking aloud. “Zan isn’t really my grandchild. She’s my young person, just the same.”

  Now his head was flung back so that he seemed to be looking down his astrakhan chin at her. He sent his rocker into a tiny complementary rhythm, seeming suddenly content.

  No, he was not her grandson. Neither was he Simon Warren.

  Simon Warren never had a sister.

  Chapter 11

  The moment Nicky Pomerance appeared the party became a success. Mrs. Moffat could not help being pleased with him. He was a man who seemed easy in himself, urbane, adjusted, lacking any compulsion to put his own virtues on anxious display. He paid Mrs. Moffat a proper deference, which was not a hypocritical sweetness or even any deep interest in her, but simply friendly and proper. (This made for easiness.) He was just as casual with Simon, accepting him without apparent curiosity. Mrs. Moffat was somewhat tickled to suspect that Nicky kept the edge of his thumb on Zan.

  Zan had provided cocktails; the food was her choice. She teased Nicky for being an amateur chef; he took teasing well. If he had been warned off asking the “usual” questions of Simon, he didn’t mind answering them about himself and told tales about strange things people had wanted to know and how often the facts had been cast aside for more powerful fictions. The topless ladies of ancient Crete, for instance, had never yet been topless in the movies.

  Mrs. Moffat, enjoying all this very much, kept a sly eye on the others. Zan wore an air of proprietorship. (This man is mine.) It was only a little disturbing to notice that she was showing off her property not so much to her grandmother as to Simon Warren. Simon didn’t seem to notice. He listened. Sometimes he put in a remark that went to show how well he had taken the meaning.

  Who is he? Mrs. Moffat wondered. (She’d worn out shock some time ago.) No rustic, that was obvious. Over and above his manners, his vocabulary when he let it out, his ability to understand whatever words were spoken—there was something more. Something fine drawn. And vulnerable?

  Although they lingered at the table, supper was long over by the time Nicky mentioned his daughter.

  Mrs. Moffat found herself startled. Had she known this? Yes, she had known at least that he was a man who had been divorced. She said, “I didn’t realize that you had a daughter, Nicholas. How old is she?”

  “She is going on fifteen years old, if you can believe it. I see her very seldom, Mrs. Moffat. She lives in Connecticut with her mother.”

  “Connecticut?” said Simon in the tones of one who hears a very familiar word.

  “The last I heard,” said Nicky, “she wants to get married. Such is the ignorance of youth.”

  Zan said, “Look who’s talking. He was a child bridegroom himself, Gran.”

  “So I conclude by arithmetical processes,” said Mrs. Moffat.

  Nicky said, “How old was Tommy Moffat?”

  “A child of twenty,” said his grandmother. “But you must remember that when you are in those perilous years, you really believe that you know everything, and of course, as far as you know, you certainly do.”

  “If you wait quietly,” said Zan in a moment, “and let that go around again, it will begin to mean something.”

  Simon had his head turned toward his right; he seemed to be looking dreamily at Zan’s profile.

  “But don’t let her do anything so stupid, Nicky,” Zan went on.

  “How do I ‘don’t let her’? An absentee father, further handicapped by his own record.”

  “Tell her mine,” Zan said. “A ghastly enough warning.”

  Simon put the eight fingers of his hands flat on the edge of the table. Now he stared straight ahead and sat as still as stone.

  “Perhaps you don’t realize, Simon,” said Zan informatively, “that Tommy left me flat more than seven years ago.”

  He stared at her with owl eyes.

  “Nobody waits forever,” Zan said flippantly. “So I’ve seen to it that in the eyes of the law he is dead, do you see?”

  “No.” Simon pushed his straight chair away from the table; the legs stuttered on the floor, making ugly sounds.

  “You, I take it, have seen him recently?” Zan kept her voice calm.

  “No,” said Simon, cringing. “I can’t. Please, may I leave the table? Excuse me? Excuse me?”

  “I asked you once before about him,” said Zan sharply, “and you didn’t answer. Do you mind answering?”

  The atmosphere had turned ugly and tense.

  Simon raised both trembling hands. “I beg to be excused,” he said in a fainting voice. “I can’t … stay. Please, Mrs. Moffat? May I go, Mrs. Moffat?” He gazed with owl eyes at empty air.

  “But of course, you needn’t stay,” said the old lady, “although I’m sorry.”

  He rose; the chair legs grated harshly on the floor once more. He seemed to try to form another phrase, but then he choked and turned and was gone in an instant.

  After a beat or two of silence Zan said angrily, “Gran, will you now admit that there is something very wrong with that boy?”

  “He may have had a shock.”

  “What shock? He knew I was Tommy’s wife. Why won’t he answer my question?”

  Mrs. Moffat said, “He answered.”

  “He sure didn’t, Gran.”

  “He said No.”

  “But not to the question,” cried Zan. “You must be just a little off your darling old noggin if you think he’s behaving normally. Look at today! He ran out of church this morning. Nobody knows why. We’re not allowed to ask. Now he runs out on the party, in some kind of emotional twit, which is ridiculous! If everybody got up and ran away from a common everyday shock or surprise … Either he answers a few questions, or you are going to have to get rid of him, Gran. Isn’t she, Nicky?”

  Mrs. Moffat pursed her mouth. She said nothing; neither
did Nicky, who was lying low.

  “I haven’t told you this before,” said Zan, “but when your Simon speaks to me without you around, he’s not quite the same fella. Believe me, he isn’t the sweet little naïve neighbor’s boy that you think he is.”

  “I think,” said Mrs. Moffat, “we must apologize to our guest—”

  “Oh, Nicky knows all about it!” said Zan impatiently.

  “Indeed?”

  Nicky said smoothly, “I wouldn’t say I knew all about it, Mrs. Moffat. But I do know that Zan has been worried.”

  “I see.” But Mrs. Moffat felt furious. So Zan had been talking about her grandmother’s private affairs behind her grandmother’s back. Well, Zan didn’t know all about it.

  And how could the old lady explain to them anyway? They both would call her a crazy old fool if she said she hadn’t the slightest idea who he was, but to see him happy was such a great pleasure that she didn’t care. Oh, no, they’d never understand that or what she’d seemed to herself to have been doing. However, it meant something to her. And surely, if there was a risk, it was her risk.

  But there was no risk. Simon had said he was leaving, and he might, but Mrs. Moffat would not be told what she must do by ignorant children.

  Nicky was asking, “Where are his parents, Mrs. Moffat?”

  “Still in Pennsylvania, as far as I know.”

  “You have the address?”

  “I threw it away on an old Christmas card list.”

  “What is his father’s first name?”

  Mrs. Moffat closed her eyes, pretending to search her memory. Nicky was in the business of finding things out, she remembered.

  “I believe he was called Harry. But perhaps Larry. I did not know Mr. Warren very well, at all.”

  “Do they know where Simon is?”

  “I don’t believe they do.”

  “And why not?” cried Zan.

  “Really, Zan,” said her grandmother. “Times have changed. He is not an infant.”

  “But don’t you think,” said Nicky, “he may be a bit of a mama’s boy?”

  “Oh?” Mrs. Moffat inclined her attention toward his judgment.