Jessie tipped the water out of the bowl. It oozed out slowly, thick with the soggy bread crumbs and the slimy sea lettuce and the sowbugs that floated like little black boats down a sluggish river. She picked up the starfish, pretending it was only a flower she’d found unexpectedly on the ground.
She put it into the hole Mr. Roma had dug, and he covered it up very quickly and neatly. To mark the grave he pressed into the ground with his heel a white pebble with grey stripes; and beside the pebble he laid an oleander blossom, no longer fresh but still showing signs of pink under its sun seared edges.
“You feel better now,” Mr. Roma stated. “I know how it is. The starfish is buried and already it has become part of the past. Maybe you’re already planning how you will tell your friends about it, eh? ‘Once I had a little starfish,’ you will say. ‘He was a pretty little fellow but he died, and it was nobody’s fault.’ ”
“I’ll tell them he drowned.”
“Oh, no. Now that isn’t right. No, a starfish cannot drown. He died for lack of air.”
“It looked like he was drowned, like Billy.”
Mr. Roma glanced at her quickly. “Who said that Billy was drowned?”
“Mrs. Wakefield.”
“No, no, I’m quite sure you’re mistaken, Jessie. Maybe you didn’t understand her. Maybe she said, Billy is dead.”
“She told me herself that he had a bad accident, he was drowned.”
“Well.” He stood for a moment, scuffing the ground with the toe of his shoe like a hesitant child. Then he turned and picked up the empty bowl. “Come along now. It’s getting late.”
She took his free hand and walked along beside him with her nightgown flapping around her legs and pushing her along like a sail in the wind.
Carmelita was waiting for them at the kitchen door. She had taken the scarf off her head for the night and her hair bristled with bobby pins like a porcupine. Her voice bristled, too, with sharp staccato Spanish:
“Leave the casserole on the steps. I will not have it in the house.”
“Is she mad?” Jessie said anxiously to Mr. Roma.
“No, no. She wants me to leave the bowl outside.”
“Why?”
“It smells a little.” He put the bowl on the steps and opened the screen door.
The kitchen was warm and alive with lights. The lights splashed like acid into Jessie’s eyes and they watered feebly and wouldn’t stay open.
“The little one’s tired,” Carmelita said reprovingly. “All this play-acting, all this night air. What will her mother and father have to say about this?”
“We will be very quiet,” Mr. Roma said. “Eh, Jessie? Can we go upstairs very, very quiet?”
“I can go up by myself. You have squeaky shoes on.”
“You’re a sensible girl.”
“Good night, Mr. Roma.”
“Good night, Jessie.”
She slipped out through the swinging door, through the dining room and into the hall. As she ducked past the doorway of the living room she had a glimpse of Mrs. Wakefield sitting at the piano. Her right arm hung straight down at her side, as if it was broken, and with her left hand she was playing soft, low chords, humming the melody absentmindedly, her eyes half-closed. Her voice brushed softly against the air, like spider webs.
When she reached her room again Jessie closed the door tight. The wet patch on her nightgown had dried, and there was nothing to show that she’d been downstairs at all except the empty spot on the bureau where the casserole had been.
She tried to keep from looking at it as she switched off the lamp, but the gap was there even in the dark. She couldn’t escape from it any more than she could escape from the gap in her mouth when she lost a tooth. A new tooth always grew in its place, but the period of loss, of ugliness, was never quite forgotten.
Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow.
It was like a present under the tree at Christmas. It couldn’t be actually opened ahead of time, but it could be wondered about, shaken, smelled, touched on the outside, the ribbons loosened a little, the paper pierced with peepholes.
She went to bed hugging the box of tomorrow with its new starfish, not yet found, and the piece of chocolate cake waiting in the cake box, and the swim in the sea with Mrs. Wakefield. She had a transient feeling of contempt for the boy Billy who couldn’t even swim.
7
Mrs. Wakefield turned from the piano, rubbing her hands as if to restore their warmth and flexibility. “I’m badly out of practice. I haven’t touched a piano for over a year.”
“I don’t play at all,” Mark said. “It sounds wonderful to me.”
Mrs. Wakefield got up, making a funny little grimace of protest. “I could never play very well, just enough to be able to read notes if I looked at them long and hard enough. I didn’t start to learn, actually, until after my son was born and we came here to live. My son was very fond of music.”
“Jessie isn’t. She can’t sing two notes.”
“Oh, Billy didn’t sing. He liked to listen though, he would listen for hours while I played—I hope I’m not keeping you up? Am I?”
“Of course not.” Mark was faintly annoyed at Evelyn, curled up on the davenport and looking so uncompromisingly sleepy.
“I shouldn’t have said Billy didn’t sing,” Mrs. Wakefield corrected. “Actually he did, only they were his own songs. Some of them were very unusual.” She added with a laugh, “I’m talking my head off tonight, I haven’t talked so much for a long time.”
It was true that she had talked a lot but it seemed to Mark that she had deliberately said nothing. The trivialities, the vague references to Billy and her husband slipped off the surface of her mind leaving the rest undisturbed. Mark did not share Evelyn’s unreserved curiosity—with perfect guilelessness Evelyn bartered secrets with the elevator boy, the butcher, the news vendor—but he was intrigued by Mrs. Wakefield’s intentional deviousness. He felt that it was not natural to her, that she was, in fact, a rather candid woman who was afraid of indulging her candor.
She was his own age, but he felt awkward and inexperienced in her presence. Even when she gazed directly at him, her eyes were disinterested, as if they had seen a little of everything in this world and had already looked across a dreary space into the next.
“It’s been a year now since I’ve really talked to anyone,” she said. “Billy and I were traveling, you know. We went here and there, all over, but we never met anyone we knew, so all the talking we did was to each other.”
Traveling, Mark thought, where and how? Train, plane, rocket ship? Argentina, Trinidad, Manila, Siberia, Little America? And why take an eight- or nine-year-old boy out of school for a year to go traveling? Mark thought of the noisy nerve-racking trip across the country with Jessie tearing through the train like a tornado, picking up and laying down an endless debris of people, discarded magazines and newspapers, Pepsi-Cola treasure tops, and small nomadic and anonymous children over whom she assumed a position of benevolent tyranny.
“It must have been hard traveling with a child,” he said.
“Sometimes. But Billy was usually very patient. And we had things to do, like lessons. I used to teach school.”
“Luisa told me.”
“Luisa loves to give out information,” she said wryly. “Sometimes, I warn you, it isn’t accurate. She has all kinds of fancies, superstitions, like her mother. Carmelita is one of these half-Catholics, you know. She was brought up very strictly but she no longer goes to church except on Easter. It is terrible around here at Eastertime with Carmelita teetering on the brink of hell. I’m often tempted to push her over, but no, I can’t. She is a good woman—” She broke off suddenly as if she realized she had stepped over the invisible line she’d drawn for herself. When her foot touched the line a bell rang a warning. “I mustn’t keep you up any longer.”
“I’m not a bit tired,” Evelyn said, suddenly opening her eyes very wide as proof. “Let me make some more martinis.”
“No, thanks. No, really. You’ve been awfully kind to bother about me at all. I’d almost forgotten I’m supposed to be here on business. I’ve never taken an inventory before, but I bought a notebook at the dime store and a pencil. I guess that’s all the equipment I need.” She turned to Mark with a frank smile. “The object of it, I suppose, is to make sure you don’t walk out with something when you leave.”
“I assure you we won’t.”
“It’s all very silly. I have nothing of value, here or anywhere.”
She shook hands with them both. Her touch was firm, the skin of her hand cold and dry.
When she had left the room Mark experienced a vague let-down. He looked at Evelyn, straightening the cushions on the davenport and gathering up the ashtrays, and she seemed quite commonplace, an ordinary pretty little housewife performing her ordinary duties after the departure of a guest.
“Don’t fuss around,” he said. “Carmelita can do that in the morning.”
“I’m not fussing. I always do this.”
“That’s the point. Let’s vary it a little.”
“All right.” She put down the ashtray she had just picked up, jarring some of the ashes out on the coffee table. “I seem to have annoyed you in some way. God knows I’m getting to be quite an expert at it.”
“You didn’t have to droop around all evening like a dying violet.”
“Mrs. Wakefield doesn’t have the same adrenalin effect on me that she has on you.”
“What does that mean, exactly?”
“Nothing,” Evelyn said. “It’s just a reply to the dying violet theme.”
“If you’re hinting that I paid too much attention to her, kindly remember that you were the one who wanted to have her around. I like her,” he said, as if surprised at himself. “I think she’s had some tough breaks.”
“But you wouldn’t feel quite so sorry for her if she had three eyes.”
“So you’re jealous again, are you?”
“Observant, not jealous. Obviously she’s an attractive woman, even if she is old enough to be your mother.”
The statement was so ridiculous that Mark smiled in spite of himself. “Aren’t you exaggerating a little?”
“Maybe.”
“Come here a minute.”
“No.” She shook her head obstinately. “I don’t want any of your conciliatory pecks on the forehead. The hell with it.”
“I hadn’t the slightest intention—”
“Yes, you had. We’re always having these pat little kiss-and-make-up scenes. I’m tired of them, they don’t settle anything.”
“What does?”
“I don’t know. A heart-to-heart talk maybe.”
“If all the heart-to-heart talks we’ve had were laid end to end—”
“Oh, I know.” She frowned and then smoothed away the frown with the tips of her fingers. “Well,” she said finally, “you don’t mind if I stagger upstairs now like a dying violet?”
“For God’s sake, stop repeating that.”
“Why? I like it. It suits me. I feel like one, sort of shriveled and limp and curled in at the toes.”
“I’m sorry I had to pick the one phrase in the English language that got your goat.”
“You can have my goat,” Evelyn said. “Keep it. There’s plenty more where that came from.”
Mark looked at her in surprise. “Why all this sudden cynicism?”
“You started it. You said, stop fussing around.”
“There’s nothing so awful about that.”
“I know, but it’s a sign.”
“Certainly it’s a sign. It’s a sign that I didn’t want you fussing around.”
“No,” she said. “It’s more than that. You’re bored with me. Maybe you always have been, but it didn’t show so much until we came here. I’ve gotten the feeling lately that you expect me to be a lot of things I’m not—you know, very clever and sharp and terribly, terribly amusing.”
“I didn’t marry you for laughs.”
She said quietly, “We can’t discuss the problem if you won’t even admit there is one.”
“I’ll be damned if I’ll admit something that isn’t so.” His denial sounded convincing though he knew that she was at least partly right. “You seem to think the problem is that I’ve lost interest in you and you consequently get jealous when I show an interest in any other woman. Is that it?”
“That’s close enough.”
“Since you have it all figured out, tell me why I’ve suddenly lost interest in you.”
“I’m beginning to think you never had any. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been jealous of you. No, don’t interrupt. I don’t blame you. I suppose the real trouble is that I’m not very interesting. Nothing much has ever happened to me. I can’t go around being dark and mysterious and fascinating like her.” She raised her voice, in a crude imitation of Mrs. Wakefield’s. “My dear, I haven’t touched a piano since the time I played ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ for those headhunters in Borneo, yackity, yackity, yackity.” She turned away, abruptly. “Sorry. I guess I’ve been hitting the catnip too hard lately.”
“Evelyn . . .”
“I’m going to bed.”
“Wait just a minute. You’re not actually jealous of her anymore, now that we’ve talked the matter over. Are you?”
“Oh, Lord. You and your simple faith in words. It’s touching. Why shouldn’t I be jealous of her?”
“Because I’ve told you you have no reason to be.”
“All right then. I’m not jealous. Does that ease your mind any?”
“Not a damn bit, thanks.”
“You know, I’m such a simple-minded creature that things look simple to me. Like this, for instance. I love you and you don’t love me, and Jessie is caught in the middle, somewhere in the middle where she hasn’t anything to hang on to. We’re not a family—you know what I mean?—and sometimes I think, I can’t help thinking, that Jessie knows that, and that she hates us both.” She rubbed her eyes. They were a little pink, a little too bright. “Good night, Mark. You might think it over.”
“I’ll try. Good night.”
While he was getting ready for bed he thought about Evelyn and Jessie for a little while but he couldn’t keep his mind on them. Mrs. Wakefield’s image kept looming up, and he found himself remembering, and puzzling over, some of her odd, half- restrained gestures—like those of an actress, he thought, whose freedom of movement and expression was being constantly controlled by an unseen director.
Yet he realized that it was unfair to judge her by normal standards. She had recently lost a child, and to make it worse, the child had been her only son. My son was very fond of music . . . Billy and I were traveling here and there . . . Billy was usually very patient . . . He was drowned.
In fact, Mark thought, she talked quite freely about Billy, but the more she said the more elusive he became, like an old photograph, faded and faceless.
He switched off the light and groped his way to the bed.
It was nearly morning when he was awakened by the sharp yelping of a sea lion. The sound was like one of Jessie’s wild cries of excitement, but there was a note of hysteria in it, a wild regret.
After a minute the sea lion stopped abruptly and Mark went back to sleep. But the noise crept into his dreams, changing identity—it was Jessie shouting, a dog howling, a woman sobbing; it was a faceless little boy barking from a rock in the sea, half-hidden in the slimy eel grass.
Later in the morning, after breakfast, Mark remembered the sea lion and asked Mr. Roma if he had heard it.
“Sea lion?” Mr. Roma said. “Oh, no, we don’t have sea lions along here. Over at the island, yes, there are hundreds of
them.”
“I heard one.”
Mr. Roma shrugged. “If you heard one, then that is very unusual.”
He went off down the path, lurching slightly under the weight of the pails of chicken mash.
8
Slowly the pages were being covered with Mrs. Wakefield’s untidy printing.
Contents of Dining Room: one bleached- mahogany dining set, table, buffet, eight chairs, value about $800? Two pairs damask drapes and rods—value perhaps $200, but this may be too high. One 12x18 Sultana-land rug, value, I’ve had it for years and it’s worn in spots. Couldn’t be worth more than $400, not that perhaps. . . .
She couldn’t write down even the contents of a room without stamping each article with her personality.
“For the rug, five hundred,” Mr. Roma said. “And you must not write little notes like that. It isn’t businesslike.”
“How else can I show that I don’t know the actual value?”
“Put little question marks. For example, if you are quite uncertain put one question mark, and if you are very uncertain put two or three question marks.”
“That doesn’t sound so businesslike either.”
“Still, it is more so, eh?”
“I guess.”
“Now. Six pictures.”
“They’re only reproductions, forty dollars at the most.”
“Fifty,” he said briskly. “Consider the frames. Myself, I would demand a hundred, considering the frames.”
Mrs. Wakefield pushed her hair back off her forehead and printed: $50???
“Two silver candelabra,” Mr. Roma said. “You had a bad dream last night?”
“Yes.”
“Like in the old days.”
“Did I—make a noise?”
“Mr. Banner heard you. He thought it was a sea lion.”
“A sea lion.” She looked up at him with a queer little laugh. “That’s rather funny. I hope I didn’t disturb anyone else.”
“I didn’t hear you myself, but I remembered your old nightmares.”
“I woke up crying. It’s a strange thing to wake up, thinking you’ve been sleeping soundly, and find tears still wet on your cheeks and your throat aching . . . They aren’t nightmares,” she added quietly. “They are things that really happened. I live them over again.”
The Cannibal Heart Page 6