The Reincarnation of Peter Proud

by Max Ehrlich

  “That’s all right.”

  “Please forgive me. I know I’ve been boring you,”

  “Not at all.”

  She continued to apologize. “Really, I’m surprised at myself. I don’t normally do this with anyone. I guess I wasn’t thinking.” She tried to smile. “It’s like talking about your operation.” She reached for his glass. “Another martini?”

  “No, thanks.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “I’m sorry you have to wait. I don’t know what’s keeping Ann. She tells me you’ll be here for a while.”

  “Yes. Several weeks, at least.”

  “I see.”

  Vaguely he had the feeling that this news bothered her. But her voice was impassive.

  “I suppose you’ll be busy researching your book—on the American Indian, isn’t it?”

  “Oh. Ann told you?”

  She smiled. “She told me quite a lot about you. But it’s interesting that you’re doing a book on Indians. My husband was part Indian, you know. One-sixteenth Pequot, and very proud of it, too. People having any Indian blood at all around here are pretty rare. It’s much more common in the western states, I understand.”

  He was about to tell her about his own Seneca heritage. But he decided against it. At that moment Ann came in. She was wearing a shirt-top jacket in a red and white print over white pants. “Well, I see you two have met,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry I made you wait.”

  “That’s all right. I’ve been enjoying myself.”

  “We’ve been having a good talk,” Marcia said, smiling. “He’s very nice, Ann.”

  “I told you he was, Mother. Pete, we’d better go.”

  “But, dear,” said Marcia. “You can sit down and have a drink.”

  “Sorry, we can’t. We have a reservation, and we’re late already. Ola’s cooking dinner, and she’ll be staying overnight, as usual.” Then, a little anxiously: “You’ll be all right?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “In case you need me, we’ll be at Mario’s. The number’s in the telephone index.”

  “I won’t need you,” said Marcia.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sure. Now you run along and have a good time.”

  As they drove away from the house, he wondered why Ann had been so solicitous. But he said nothing about it. He pointed the car up Vista Drive, and then Ann said, “Well, what do you think of her?”

  “I like her.”

  She smiled. “The true gentleman and diplomat. Still, you wouldn’t dare say anything else.”

  “Should I?”

  “I don’t know. I had an idea you two didn’t really hit it off so well.”

  “Now, what gives you that idea?”

  “Call it intuition. Certain vibrations tickling my very sensitive antennae.”

  “When I came in, you were both sitting there like a couple of stiff manikins watching each other. Sort of guarded. You know?”

  “Well”—he grinned—“maybe. But we’d just met. How did I know I wasn’t meeting my future mother-in-law, or something?”

  She laughed. “I assume you’re just being funny.”

  “Not really. Actually, the thought crossed my mind. Maybe it crossed your mother’s, too. Don’t mothers always see gentlemen callers as prospective sons-in-law for their daughters?”

  “I guess they do, but only in Tennessee Williams plays. Anyway, you’re both a little premature, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “But I love you for thinking about it at all. What did Mother and you talk about?”

  “Some small talk. But mostly about your father.”

  She stared at him. “My father?”

  “I don’t quite know how she got on the subject. All those pictures on the wall, I guess. But she told me the whole story about what happened at the lake. How he died.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “Is it? Why?”

  “She never talks about that particular incident to anybody. Not even to me.” She stared at him. “Why you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She shook her head, puzzled. “That’s really funny. I don’t understand it.”

  “I got the idea she’s still in mourning over him.”

  “She is.”

  “But after all this time, isn’t that a little—”

  “Sick?”

  “Look, I didn’t say that …”

  “I know you didn’t. I did. The answer is yes. In that sense, she is a little sick. His death hit her hard. She never really got over it. I guess she must have loved him very much. Now and then she gets these vast depressions. It isn’t normal, I know. I’ve never understood it …”

  I do, he thought. It’s guilt, baby. Guilt is a monkey on your back. The biggest and heaviest monkey in the world. Guilt can drive you crazy.

  “You take that room you were in,” Ann was saying. “It’s a kind of sanctuary. I almost never go in it myself; it’s too depressing. And all those photographs of my father. She’ll go in alone and simply stare at them for hours, reliving memories. I’m used to it, I suppose. But it’s still a little frightening when I see her do it. I wish she’d take them all down someday and put them away. She’s reasonably attractive for her age, you know. She could still find another man. You’d be surprised how gay and charming and lovely Mother can be when she wants to be.”

  “Then she never remarried?”

  “No.”

  “But there must have been other men. Afterward …”

  “I don’t know. When I was very young, I guess—at least I was told there were a few. They didn’t last very long, and I don’t blame them. I’d be turned off, too, if I had to compete with a ghost. The past few years, Mother’s sort of withdrawn from everything, stays in the house most of the time. She used to go to the club now and then to mix with friends. Now she sees hardly anybody. Unless you count my grandmother.”

  “Her mother?”

  “No. My father’s mother.”

  “Oh? She’s still alive, then?”

  “If you want to call it that. Half alive would be a lot more accurate. She’s old and completely senile. Lost her memory and doesn’t recognize anybody, Just sits in a wheelchair and babbles. She’s in an institution outside of town here. I haven’t visited her for a year. I just can’t stand it; it depresses me so, watching a human being wither away like that. But Mother’s very devoted to her. She takes care of all the expenses there—housing, nursing, medical supplies—and it isn’t cheap. Not only that, she visits Grandmother at least once a week, sometimes twice. She’ll sit around with the old lady half an afternoon, just to keep her company.”

  “But if the old lady doesn’t even know who she is …”

  “That’s the funny part of it. Mother goes on visiting her anyway. She’s made Grandmother her total responsibility. I suppose there’s some emotional involvement with my father …” Suddenly she stopped. “Here we go again. Now you’ve got me doing it.”

  “What?”

  “Talking about my father.” She stared at him. “I don’t know what’s going on here. All of a sudden, he’s become a prime topic of conversation. You come to town, and both my mother and I start to babble about him to a perfect stranger. After being dead for thirty years, he comes up stage front, as far as you’re concerned. Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, it doesn’t make any sense. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to drop the subject of my family. We’ve been hacking away at it long enough, and it’s really a bore. Why don’t we talk about ourselves?”

  “Why not indeed? Where shall we start for openers?”

  “Well, I know you’re a bachelor, and I know what you do. You know I’m a maiden lady, and you know what I do.”

  “So?”

  “I have a question for you.”

  “Proceed.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “When will you
be twenty-eight?”

  “On the tenth of October.”

  “My God,” she said. “That makes me what they call an older woman.”

  Then she laughed. “I feel like a character out of Colette. You know, the older woman with infinite experience who seduces the naive young man.”

  “A three-months’ edge isn’t going to make you that good.”

  “How’d you know that?”

  “How’d I know what?”

  “That I was three months older than you.”

  She was staring at him in surprise. The violet eyes were puzzled. They wanted an answer. He cursed himself for not thinking. “Just guessing.” he said lamely.

  “No,” she said. “You knew. How? I never told you.”

  Suddenly he remembered something. He could have shouted with relief.

  “One of those photographs on the wall.”

  “Yes?”

  “It was a picture of your father and mother taken in the backyard, or somewhere. Your mother was holding what appeared to be a very newborn baby. Obviously, it was you. There was a date written across it, sometime in July, I think.”

  “Oh. Yes. July twentieth.”

  He’d have to be careful from now on, he thought. Think before he spoke. Know only what he was supposed to know.

  “July twentieth,” he said. “What’s your sign?”

  “Sign?”

  “Horoscope sign.”

  “Oh. I’m a Cancer.”

  “Well, what do you know,” he said, smiling. “I’m a Libra.”

  “Is that good?”

  “It’s perfect. Libras and Cancers mix well together. Muy sympatico. They often fall in love with each other and go through life together. They’re particularly close right now, when Jupiter is in the solar seventh house and Mercury ends its retrograde period.”

  She stared at him a moment, then laughed.

  Chapter 25

  After they had gone, Marcia Chapin turned on the television set. A news program was on, but she found she could not concentrate. She turned off the set and opened another bottle of club soda.

  She felt nervous, edgy. The club soda was worthless. It was supposed to help if you simply held a glass in your hand, but it did nothing for her. She watched her hand tremble as she held the glass. What I need now, she thought, is a drink.

  She had felt fine an hour ago. But that was before he had walked into the house. Peter Proud.

  When she had taken her first good look at him, something extraordinary had happened. She had suddenly felt tense. Somewhere a nerve had begun to jangle. She had taken an instant dislike to him. Something about him repelled her. What was it? His face? His voice? It made absolutely no sense. He was good-looking, well-dressed; his smile was warm; he had been very polite. Nothing he had said or done had in any way been out of line.

  Then why?

  She put it down as one of those mysterious things that sometimes happen between people. You meet a total stranger, and your reaction is automatically hostile. He has said nothing to you, he has done no harm to you, yet you cannot stand the sight of him. Sometimes you walked down a crowded street, and hundreds of people were swirling around you, and then you saw one face, a face that bothered you. Sometimes it even haunted you.

  She had been so sure she had met him before, seen him somewhere. Yet she knew this couldn’t be so; otherwise, she would have remembered.

  She began to shake a little. She stared at the bottles lined up neatly on the glass shelf behind the bar. Ten little Indians, she thought. Ten little Indians, all in a row, and if from them one should go …

  And that little trick of his—tapping the edge of his martini glass with his fingernail. That had really given her a shock. Coincidence? Yes. What else could it be? But, my God, what a coincidence. Jeff had done it all the time. It was a habit he could never break, and after a while it had driven her crazy. “Jeff, darling, you’re doing it again. Tap, tap. Will you stop it, please?” And then he would smile, saying, “I’m sorry, papoose, I wasn’t thinking.” Papoose. He’d call her that every once in a while. And then she would say, “It’s very annoying, you know.” And he would laugh and say, “Maybe I ought to learn to drink my booze from paper cups.”

  She thought of that night at the lake now, as she had thought of it a million times. They had been drinking martinis—Beefeaters, very dry, the way he liked them. She saw him now, so clearly, standing in front of her stark naked, laughing at her accusations, laughing at them, holding his glass and tapping it with his fingernail and that big thing of his, the swollen red-tipped penis standing straight out from his groin; she remembered his face, the eyes cold and evil over the smile, remembered his putting down the glass and beginning to walk toward her …

  Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod, I need a drink.

  How long has it been? A month? How many Cokes and club sodas and ginger ales since she had had the last one? How many cases of Tab and Diet-Rite had she consumed? How many cups of coffee? And still that endless craving. Day upon day, letting her imagination go, thinking of the taste, the feel of it as it slid down her throat and warmed her insides and her soul itself with comfort and strength, and, above all, release. Numbing her memory, so that she could forget, even for a little while.

  But I promised Ann. I promised Dr. Harvey. I promised Ola. I promised myself. And I don’t want to go back to that place. I never want to see that damned room again, and walk in the gardens with some nurse, and drink all that fruit juice, and take all those pills, and sweat in that steam room. I don’t want to go back there, ever….

  She thought of what lay in the bottom of her bureau drawer upstairs. The gun Jeff had brought back from the war long ago. He had loved guns. They had walked into the fields, and he had taught her how it worked. She hated the sight and feel of it, but she had gone along to please him. She had watched him shoot a small animal with it. She didn’t remember what kind of animal it was now. She did remember the hole in the head, the mass of dripping blood and brains.

  No, she thought with a shudder. Oh, no, no.

  The bottle beckoned to her. Curiously, it was one particular bottle. There were others on the shelf, but it was the bottle of Beefeater gin, the one she had just used to make Peter Proud’s martini, that pulled her. The same gin she and Jeff had used that night in their martinis.

  She held the bottle in her hand, caressed it. She loved the feel of it. It was sensuous, phallic, almost sexy. She unscrewed the cap. From this opening pours strength and power and calm and comfort and oblivion. Here in this bottle, if for only a little while, you can hide yourself. You can hide yourself where nobody can touch you, or even find you.

  “Mrs. Chapin.”

  She turned. Ola, her colored maid, was standing in the doorway, staring accusingly. “You don’t want to do that.

  “I have to, Ola,”

  “But you promised Ann …

  “I know, I know. But I need one. Just one …”

  “Mrs. Chapin, why don’t you just put it away? Dinner’s ready. Got a roast beef rare, just the way you like it. I’ll make you some black coffee. After that, you can take your pill and watch some television and …”

  “Goddamn it, Ola!” She almost wept. “I need it. Don’t you understand? I need it!”

  “You don’t need it at all, Mrs. Chapin. It’s just in the mind. You been off it for a long time now. Why start it all over again?”

  “Get out of here, Ola. Will you get the hell out of here?”

  “What about dinner?”

  “I’ll be in for dinner. I’m just going to have one. Only one. I swear it. Now, please. Get out of here!”

  Ola shrugged and left. Marcia Chapin tilted the bottle and poured the gin into the glass. She did not even bother with the vermouth, or with the ice. She drank it down straight, her eyes closed in ecstasy.

  When she opened them again, she saw Jeff. He was in every picture on the wall. Jeff laughing at her, Jeff with his arm around her waist, Jeff and she running into the sea. Sudd
enly she began to weep a little and filled her glass again.

  Jeff, Jeff, you beautiful, sexy son of a bitch, why did you do what you did?

  And, dear God, why did I do what I did?

  They had dinner at an Italian restaurant in the center of town. Later, when he took her home, they stood in the doorway for a moment. She turned her face toward him, inviting him with her mouth. He put his arm around her. He felt her body strain against him. For a moment he blended tightly with her. Her red, moist, half-open mouth was close to his. He knew that the touch of it, the taste of it, would make it impossible not to go further. Or at least not to try.

  Then the same guilty, queasy feeling came to him suddenly. Thinking of who she was, and who he really was. Taboo. He put his hand gently on her face, turned it, and kissed her on the cheek. When he released her, he could see that she was surprised. The violet eyes were puzzled. Not hurt, just confused.

  “Thank you, darling,” she said. “That was very sweet. Goodnight.”

  She closed the door. He stood there, hating himself, feeling like a fool.

  When he got back to the hotel, there was a message from Hall Bentley. Please call back.

  He knew he couldn’t put Bentley off forever. Sooner or later he’d have to break it to the parapsychologist. He decided he might as well do it now.

  When he’d finished, there was a long silence at the other end. Then:

  “My God, you’ve done it. You’ve found out.”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Scared?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I don’t blame you. I’m just as scared as you are. I never believed it would come as far as this. I never really believed it. So X equals Jeff Chapin, and Jeff Chapin equals Peter Proud.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know that, and I know that. Now the job is to prove it to everyone else. So, let’s get down to tactics and strategy. First things first. Suppose I fly to Riverside tomorrow. We’ll set up an appointment with Marcia Chapin, get what she says on tape. I’ve already told you the procedure we’ll use. I’ll bring copies of the tapes I already have. They’re duplicates, of course, of the originals in the vaults. I’m keeping those for the die-hard skeptics. We won’t make the mistake Morey Bernstein made with Bridey Murphy. He released the story first to a single newspaper. We’ll want a much wider impact from the beginning, a worldwide impact. Maybe we ought to hire a public relations firm. They’ll know how to arrange everything—television, press interviews….”