Mary Emerson was sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed. She shook her head. “No. I guess New York. Or I might go back down South. I don’t know. It’s a marvelous feeling, to know that tomorrow, when I leave this house, I don’t really have to go anywhere — or I could go anywhere. I don’t have to go to New York at all. I could go to Africa. Or Teheran. Or Iceland, or Poland, or —” she shrugged. “Charleston, I guess. You know, to be completely free, after so long. It’ll be strange.” She turned to Barbara, who was sitting on the bed behind her. “It’ll be sort of frightening, too.” She wrinkled her nose.
“Do you think you’ll marry again?” Barbara said softly.
“Me?” Mary Emerson croaked. “I can’t see it. But I guess I could. Who knows? Would you?”
Barbara sat, thin and widowed on the big woman’s bed, with signs of departure all around her. She prepared her lips, and they said “No” for her.
Mary Emerson leaned forward and touched a piece of tissue paper that was lying on the carpet. “You’ll be able to have your mother out here to stay in the spring,” she said.
Barbara shook her head. “No, I don’t think she’ll be coming again. I don’t think she’s well enough.”
“I guess I should have asked you before,” Mary Emerson said, “but what would you do if she got sick again, like this summer? I mean, have you thought about that?”
Barbara nodded. “Oh, yes. But don’t worry, I won’t leave Catherine.” She smiled, breathing heavily through her nostrils so Mary Emerson would hear her smiling. “Anyway, my mother’s an old fraud. She won’t get sick again for some time, I’m sure. And, ultimately, if it comes to it, and I know it sounds heartless, but I can’t really let her dictate my life, can I? If I’m going to be doing something I hope will be good for Catherine, I can’t ruin it all, can I?”
Mary Emerson said, doubtfully, “I guess not. Won’t she miss you at Christmas though? I do feel terrible about going off now. It couldn’t possibly be a worse time if I’d tried.”
Barbara pictured her old, fat, poor mother sitting alone eating turkey. Perhaps she’d invite one of her neighbors in — though it wasn’t likely, because her mother didn’t get on well with any of her neighbors. Or perhaps someone would invite her out for the day.
“No,” she said, “she always spends Christmas alone. She’s always disliked Christmas.”
It wasn’t true. They had always spent Christmas together; when Howard had been alive her mother had come to stay with them, and last year Barbara had gone to stay with her, just before she left for Italy. Once the fat old thing had even flown out to spend Christmas with her other daughter, who was ten years older than Barbara, in South America. Her mother had never spent Christmas alone.
She wanted to cry. It was pathetic, and she hated pathos. But she wanted to cry all the same, to put her arms around Mary Emerson and cry on her shoulder; to tell her that of course her mother would be lonely, but there was nothing to be done about it. Her mother was old, had had her life, had chosen, for the supposed good of others, to put up with poverty and hardship. She couldn’t go back and share that with her, or take any responsibility for that choice. She had made her own choice, which her mother in turn had refused to have any part of, and if she didn’t want to end up like her mother, she had to stay here, with Catherine. She had to try, at least, to save Catherine in order to save herself.
“I must go out at four and get Catherine a Christmas present and a birthday present,” Mary Emerson said quietly. “I’m afraid she’s terribly overexcited.”
Catherine was in bed. She was excited, but quietly, and intensely; she had looked feverish when Barbara had arrived at the villa, just after two. She had been wearing a long, dark-gray coat, and her face was red, as if she had been out for a long walk in a cold wind. But it was a beautiful day, and there was no wind. She hadn’t said anything at all as Barbara had got out of the yellow taxi with one small bag, and paid the driver. She had watched for a second, and then wandered to the low sparse hedge, and looked out over the wilderness.
Barbara slipped off the bed and stood up. She went over to the window and looked out. In the spring she would have rose bushes planted in the wilderness, and other flowers.
“Poor Catherine’s been very sweet to me this last week,” Mary Emerson said. “It’s almost as if she were sorry I’m going.” She gave a small, soft laugh.
Ever since Catherine had warned Barbara that her mother didn’t trust her, the girl had gone out of her way to be nice — both to her mother and Barbara. She had said nothing strange, nothing sly, nothing insinuating. She had looked almost pretty, and had seemed to be making an effort to hold herself together — perhaps to show her mother, at the end, how very normal she could pass for.
“I guess I will miss her‚” Mary Emerson said, “but I’ll miss her with relief.”
*
Half an hour later Catherine came to find Barbara, who was lying down on her bed. She’d left Mary Emerson sitting on the floor of her bedroom, contemplating her painted toenails.
“I want to buy some Christmas presents,” Catherine said.
Barbara propped herself up on her elbows. “Your mother’s going in a minute. Why don’t you go with her? It is her last day, you know.”
Catherine nodded. “Yes. I know. But I can’t go with her.” She paused. “I want to get something for her. She mustn’t know.”
“All right. We’ll go together. Do you have any money?”
Catherine nodded. “I told mother I wanted to buy a present for you and Iva. She told me I must buy you a very nice present. She gave me 50,000 lire.”
Barbara smiled. “Where do you want to go? To the center?”
Catherine shook her head. “No. That won’t be necessary.” She looked accusingly at Barbara. “I guess you still can’t use the car till tomorrow.”
Barbara nodded. “I could,” she said. “It’s all in order now. It’s just that —” she smiled.
“Then you must call a taxi for me,” Catherine said. “We must go by taxi.” She suddenly bowed her head. “Please call a taxi for me. I can’t speak on the telephone.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“I want to go around all the supermarkets.”
“Oh,” Barbara said.
“Please‚” Catherine said softly, “I want to go and come back before mother comes back, so I have her present ready for her.”
Barbara got up off her bed. “O.K. I’ll call a taxi right now. Go and put your coat on.”
Catherine was trembling, and trying to say something. But then she turned and ran out of the room. Barbara went to Mary Emerson’s bedroom and knocked lightly on the door, then opened it and leaned around. The big red-headed woman was still sitting on the floor. She turned her face toward Barbara.
“Sorry to disturb you, but we’re just going out.” She was, she heard, whispering. “Catherine’s just told me she wants to do some shopping — she wants to buy you a Christmas present. I’ll phone for a taxi.”
Mary Emerson looked as if she didn’t understand what she’d been told. She nodded and said, “Yes, sure.” Then she said, almost to herself, “I’ll be back around six. I have to wash my hair.”
*
When they reached the Romana Supermarket on the Via Cristoforo Colombo, Catherine said to Barbara, “You wait here with the tzxi. I want to go in on my own.”
“Can you manage?”
Catherine nodded.
“O.K.”
She sat and waited, and five minutes later Catherine came out of the supermarket accompanied by a young man pushing a grocery cart for her, on which were piled three large cardboard boxes. Barbara and the taxi driver got out of the car to help load the boxes, but Catherine said to Barbara, “No, you mustn’t look. You must sit in the car.”
Barbara sat, and watched the young man and the taxi driver load the boxes into the trunk. When Catherine got back into the car she was biting her lower lip, and trembling so much that Barbara th
ought she was going to become hysterical.
“Did you give the boy a tip?” Barbara said gently.
Catherine nodded.
“Are you all right, Catherine?”
Looking straight ahead, with scarlet blotches on her cheeks, the girl nodded. “Please tell the driver to go to the next one,” she whispered.
As the car moved away Barbara looked out of the window and saw that they boy who had pushed the cart was standing, staring at them, looking half amused and half frightened.
They went to the S.M.A. supermarket, in Viale Beethoven, and the same thing happened. Barbara was told to sit in the car, Catherine was gone for five minutes, and when she returned she was accompanied by a boy pushing a cart on which were loaded — Barbara counted them — five plastic bags. The bags were loaded into the trunk of the taxi, the grocery boy was tipped, and as they drove away Barbara turned and saw him through the back window, staring after them, looking half amused and half frightened.
They went to the Standa in Viale Trastevere, to the Romana Supermarket in the Villaggio Olimpico, to the S.M.A. in Piazza Independenza — and everywhere it was the same; Barbara in the taxi, Catherine hurriedly making her secret purchases, and the half-frightened expression on the grocery boy’s face as he watched them drive away.
They arrived back at the villa just after five. The taxi driver piled the cardboard boxes and plastic bags on the brown gravel drive, and Barbara moved to pick one of the boxes up and carry it inside. But Catherine almost shouted at her, “No! You’re not to touch them. They’re your Christmas present, too. Here —” she stuck out her hand with some money in it. “Pay the man, please, because I don’t know how much it is. And then you’re to go to your room and stay there till I call you. Promise.”
“I promise,” Barbara said. She was very uneasy, and had a feeling that her first day with Catherine was going to end, somehow, in disgrace; she was horribly afraid that Catherine had spent her 50,000 lire on something ridiculous. Mary Emerson would not be pleased, or consider it a good omen for the future. But then, Barbara reasoned, it was Christmas and it was Catherine’s money, and her mother was going away, and she was very upset and excited, and even if she had done something absurd with the money, it was only 50,000 lire; and that was nothing to Catherine.
Turning to go into the house, she glanced at the plastic bags lying on the gravel. In one of them she saw what looked like a carton of eggs.
As she went up the stairs to her room, she remembered the half-frightened looks of the boys who had pushed the grocery carts for Catherine.
*
She stayed in her room for more than two hours. She felt that, for some reason, it was very important for her to stay there until Catherine called her — if only to please the girl on their first day together.
She lay on her bed and smoked. She got up and finished unpacking her bags. She turned her radio on. She lay down again and smoked another cigarette. She read a few pages of a book. She looked at the furniture, and at the reproductions of English landscape paintings on the walls.
She heard Mary Emerson’s car on the drive, and waited for a summons. She half expected to be called down by the woman, shouted at, and made to feel thin, for having been weak with Catherine. She waited on her bed, feeling like a young girl waiting for her mother to come and tell her, piteously and angrily, that the money she had spent on a skirt had been the money for the family’s food for a week.
She waited, but no summons came, and she began to relax. Perhaps Catherine had prepared something strange and beautiful, possibly some incredible cake, as a going-away present for her mother. Perhaps at this moment mother and daughter were sitting somewhere in the house, crying onto each other’s shoulders, apologizing to each other for the wasted years they had spent together—all those years they could have redeemed with love.
Still no call came, and still Barbara waited. This, she thought, was her last task as Catherine’s teacher; from tomorrow all would be different. Tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and every day after tomorrow, she would do the calling. This was her last wait. Even if David came back she would not wait for him; he could come to her, or not come at all; he would have to come to her, in her house, with her child.
She wondered whether David would be living at the address Mary Emerson would tell her to send the trunks to, but she thought not. She wondered where, in the world, David was, and wished he could be with her now, in her time of triumph.
At seven-thirty Catherine called her. Her voice came faintly through the house.
Barbara went out of her room, down three steps, along the corridor, past the second guestroom, which from tomorrow would be the only guestroom, past the bathroom, past Catherine’s bedroom, past the box room and the room where Iva did her ironing and mending, past the steps that led up to Iva’s bedroom, onto the landing. She stood for a second and listened, and then called down the stairs, “Catherine, where are you?”
Catherine’s voice, suddenly quite loud, called back, “Here, in mother’s bedroom.”
Barbara crossed over the landing and knocked on the door. As she went into the room she saw, on the far side of the bed, the boxes and plastic bags from the supermarket. Then, as she got closer, she saw, all over the floor, egg cartons. Hundreds and hundreds of egg cartons. Suddenly she felt frightened. The house was very quiet.
Catherine called from Mary Emerson’s bathroom, “I’m in here.”
Barbara walked slowly over to the bathroom. Catherine was sitting on a stool, smiling. All around her, all over the floor, there were eggshells. Hundreds and thousands of eggshells. And in the pink bath, in a brown wool dress, was Mary Emerson, lying face down under a transparent slime full of yellow and with traces of red; Mary Emerson lying face down in a bath half full of eggs. Mary Emerson, dead.
Barbara looked from the bath, to the floor, to Catherine; she thought she should faint, but couldn’t. She couldn’t think what to do, what to say. She just stared, and shook her head. Finally, because she had to say something and it didn’t really matter what, she said, “Catherine, what have you done?” Her voice was tiny, and she heard that the question was ridiculous, because it was quite obvious what Catherine had done.
“What have you done?” she repeated. She took a step nearer the bath and heard eggshells cracking under her feet. Mary Emerson’s hair was supported, rather than floating, in the slime. There were wisps of what looked like blood around her head. Some of the egg yolks were intact, and some were broken, and there were eggshells in the bath. Then she did begin to feel faint; she became conscious of her body, of where she was, of what had happened. She tried to tell herself that she was hypnotized by the horror. But she wasn’t. She was hypnotized merely by the fact of Mary Emerson lying dead in her bath, drowned in eggs. The fact repeated itself to her. Mary Emerson had been drowned in eggs. She swayed forward toward the bath and vomited, and her vomit lay on the surface of the slime, over Mary Emerson’s stockinged feet. She stepped back, and wiped her mouth with her hand. She stepped back, trying to get out of sight of the contents of the bath.
Catherine was looking at her with faint distaste, as if her vomiting had ruined a carefully planned scene. Then she shook her head and smiled weakly. “She didn’t deserve to go away. It wouldn’t have been fair.”
Barbara shook her head.
“What shall we do with her?” Catherine said.
“What do you mean?” Barbara whispered.
“What shall we do with her? We can’t leave her here, can we?”
“Well, we must —” She didn’t know. What did one do? Call the police, she supposed. She looked at Catherine. She seemed so normal, sitting there. But she was quite mad. She would be locked up somewhere, Barbara thought, and never let out again. So her mother and Marcello had been right to warn her against the girl. But none of that mattered now. This was the end of Catherine. This was her end, lying in the bath. Her beginning and her end.
Barbara shook her head. There was a body in the bat
h. Half an hour ago, an hour ago, Mary Emerson had been alive and planning her new life. Now Mary Emerson didn’t exist, and there was a body in the bath that had drowned in eggs.
“What did you do?” Barbara said. “Did you hold her down?”
Catherine shook her head. “When she came in I hit her very hard on the head.”
“What with?”
“A piece of wood I found outside. Then I pulled her up here and when she started to move I pushed her in here.” She pointed at the bath.
Barbara stared at the body, and asked softly, almost tenderly, “Did she make a noise? Did she struggle at all?”
Catherine nodded, and Barbara imagined going under the slime of a thousand eggs, imagined her mouth, her eyes, her nose, full of eggs. She imagined choking, suffocating in them, the thick slime, and that smell, and those round yellow yolks, being forced down her windpipe…
She swung around to Catherine and said, though it came out almost as a shout, “How did you do it?” The girl was pale, and weak. “How did you pull her upstairs? How long—” her voice dropped — “did it take to put all those eggs in?”
Catherine shrugged, and said, “Oh, I don’t know. Not long. But what are we going to do with her?”
Barbara shook her head. She felt that she wanted to laugh. She was suddenly very interested to know exactly how the girl had done it.
“How did you pull her upstairs?”
“I pulled.”
Barbara smiled. It wasn’t real. “But she must have been so heavy. What would you have done if I’d come out of my room and —”
Catherine smiled. “I knew you wouldn’t.”
“How did you know?”
Catherine lowered her head. “Because you knew what I was doing.”
“I did!” It was no longer even remotely funny. The girl was mad. She had murdered her mother. It was real.
“Yes.” Catherine nodded.
“Catherine, I went to my room because you said you had a Christmas present —”
Catherine smiled. “That’s my Christmas present.” She glanced toward the bath. Then she said sulkily, “But you knew what you were getting.”
The Girl Who Passed for Normal Page 13