Crying Child

by Barbara Michaels

  “Hi, Vic,” said Will Graham.

  “Haw’rya, Doc,” said Vic.

  He hadn’t mentioned that he was a doctor. I was beginning to feel like a subnormal child; nobody was telling me anything. Ran had sent a perfect stranger to meet me, without warning me, and the stranger seemed to feel that the mere mention of his name was sufficient identification. Finally Graham took my suitcases and started walking off with them. The pilot gave me a grin and a flip of the hand and went off in another direction. I stood there, looking from one retreating back to the other. There was nothing else to do but follow the doctor. I didn’t exactly have to run, but I had to walk faster than I normally do. I caught up with him at the door of the terminal, and I remarked moderately.

  “You could at least say, ”Heel.“ ”

  He glanced down at me.

  “Huh? Oh. Sorry.”

  He didn’t sound sorry.

  We got into his car. It was a blue station wagon, the oldest, most battered specimen of automobile I had ever seen. It started with a scream and settled into a series of agonized grunts. Clearly the doctor was one of those rare men who regard a car as a means of transportation rather than a love object. That should have raised him in my estimation, but I was feeling sulky.

  “I don’t even know who you are,” I said.

  He gave me an amused glance.

  “You shouldn’t get into cars with strange men.”

  “Just what I was thinking.”

  “Ran asked me to apologize. He meant to meet you himself. When he had to go away, he asked me to take over.”

  “But who are you? Do you live here? How long have you known Ran? How is he? How is Mary?”

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Yes, I live here. I’ve known Ran since… Must be about fourth grade.”

  “Fourth grade!” I don’t know why that fact, and its obvious corollaries, surprised me so, but they did. “You’re a native? Lived here all your life?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then—Ran used to live here too.”

  He glanced at me in surprise.

  “It’s his grandfather’s house. His grandfather’s island, you could say.”

  “I don’t know that. I wonder why he didn’t tell me.”

  “Maybe you never asked.”

  “Maybe I didn’t get around to asking,” I admitted. “I have had other things on my mind. Oh, why beat around the bush? You’re a doctor and an old friend of Ran’s. You must know why I’m concerned about Mary.”

  By then we were driving down the main street of the village, and the doctor, concentrating on a traffic jam which consisted of two motorcycles and a jeep, was ostentatiously silent. It was a pretty little town, with old houses and a few blocks of new but discreetly designed modern shops. Down the side streets I caught glimpses of the harbor, with white-sailed boats and a few larger motor craft. A charming town… But I was in no mood for charm. The good doctor could communicate more with silence than .another man could in a long speech.

  “How is Mary?” I asked.

  Instead of answering, he asked me a question.

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-one,” I said, without thinking; and then, annoyed, I snapped back, “How old are you?”

  It worked.

  “Twenty-nine,” he said; and turned red—with anger, notembarrassment.

  “Then perhaps I have as much right to doubt your qualifications as you do to question mine.”

  “On the defensive, aren’t you?”

  “Am I?”

  We had left the town—what there was of it—and were on a road that skirted the shore. Inland, the island was wooded and green, but this terrain was sandy, with sparse vegetation. To the left the sea shone amethyst and aquamarine in the sunlight. I took several deep breaths.

  “This is silly,” I said. “Why don’t we stop picking at each other? I gather I am going to see something of you in the next few months. It will certainly be better for Mary, not to mention the general social situation, if we try to get along.”

  “Fine with me.”

  “Then can’t we talk about Mary without one of us getting mad?”

  “I’m not mad,” he said calmly.

  “But you’re not talking.”

  He made a funny noise which, I learned later, was a laugh. He turned the car, so abruptly that I fell up against his arm. He fended me off, without prejudice, and completed the turn, onto a narrow gravel road which led up toward the center of the island. There was a gate, which stood open, and a “Private Property—No Trespassing” sign.

  The change in terrain was extraordinarily abrupt. Within a minute we were driving in a green gloom, under trees whose massive branches interlaced above. Graham brought the car to a stop. He turned to face me, one arm resting on the steering wheel, and produced a pack of cigarettes, which he offered me.

  “And you an M.D.,” I said, taking one.

  “I’m one of the twenty percent that hasn’t quit.”

  He lit my cigarette; and I turned too, sitting sideways on the seat so that I could see his face.

  “Conference?” I said.

  “We’re not far from the house. I think it will be easier to talk candidly without Ran or Mary around.”

  “Where shall we start?”

  And that was the last question I asked. I still don’t know how he did it, but from then on, he had complete control of the conversation. He would have made a first-class district attorney. And of course he was talking to me —old blabbermouth. I described our childhood days, Mary’s and mine, and told him about our private jokes and our battles; Mary’s tantrums and the way she had walked the floor, night after night, when our parents were killed. There is something very seductive about being allowed to talk about yourself, by someone who really listens. That’s why it took me so long to see what he was doing.

  When he referred for the third time to those temper fits of Mary’s, I began to wonder. I stopped talking, the flood of my eloquence dammed by suspicion, and the slow, thoughtful nod of his head told me those suspicions were justified.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.

  “Confirming a hunch,” he said calmly. “I couldn’t get this from Ran, naturally.”

  “Naturally. Only from a stupid, loose-lipped—”

  “Only figuratively.” His eyes focused on my mouth and I felt the color rise in my cheeks.

  “You didn’t want information. You only wanted confirmation. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong! Mary is—”

  “A spoiled, pampered neurotic who can’t endure the lightest frustration.”

  A cold, final appraisal.

  And it was false. I tried to remember what I had said, how I had failed in showing him the Mary I knew—the girl who had comforted a bereaved, hysterical child, confining her own desperate sense of loss and inadequacy to the four walls of her room; the woman who had handled my confused adolescent failings with wisdom and humor. but I knew the failure wasn’t all mine. He had made up his mind about Mary before he even met me.

  “You are wrong,” I said.

  “I wish I were.”

  “Just tell me one thing. Are you Mary’s medical adviser?”

  It sounded even nastier than I had meant it to, and he flushed angrily, up to and including his ears. They were big ears.

  “I’m the only medical man on the island,” he snapped. “Mary has no adviser, medical or otherwise. She won’t talk to me. That’s why I have to sneak behind her back like this.”

  “I didn’t know you had a degree in psychiatry.”

  He took a deep breath. His eyes were as hard and as dull as pebbles.

  “I know enough about the usual psychoses to know that Mary is not that sick. Believe me, I’ve made it my business to find out. The symptoms just aren’t consistent. They don’t make sense. The obvious conclusion is that she’s deliberately provoking her own—”

  “I won’t listen to this!”

  I shouted; bu
t my voice was drowned, subdued to an insect’s croak by the twilight greenness that crowded in on the car. The forest was old, untended. I could smell the damp, fecund scent of rich black mold and growing plants. Usually I like the woods, but this forest was different. It was pressing in on me. The trees were too close together and the sunlight couldn’t get through.

  “We can’t talk,” I said. “Let’s go on, please. I’m anxious to see Mary.”

  It was a relief to. come out of the trees onto an open windswept clearing with gusty clouds hurrying across the great unhindered expanse of blue sky. In the middle of a wide stretch of green lawn the house was waiting.

  I never believed in haunted houses, but I won’t deny that very house has its own atmosphere. Some make you welcome the moment you walk in the door. Others repel. It’s is a purely physical thing, of course—a question of proportions and light and the repetition of forms that soothe some personality types while they create in others a subtle distress. I know that must be the explanation, because I’ve been in brand new houses, still smelling of paint and plaster, that made me so uncomfortable I wanted to turn and run out. So it can’t be ghosts. Unless the troubled spirits are already there, bound to the land on which the house was built…

  Ran’s house had no such atmosphere. It was a big, sprawling place, altered and added on to over the years; and, as the unstudied grace of flowers growing wild in a field surpasses any artificial flower arrangement, this house was more beautiful than many architect-designed structures. The original central portion must have been two hundred years old; its elegant severe lines still showed through the Gothic embellishments added by a later owner. There was a tower. There was a cupola at the very top of the house, with a domed roof. There were gables galore, and wooden fretwork along every roof and window edge. The wide veranda that swung across the front and side of the main section was curved, and the supporting pillars were turned, and the porch eaves carried a row of wooden “icicles.” Oddly enough, the effect was attractive. For one thing, the house was big enough to carry the ornamentation without becoming overburdened. It was freshly painted—a glistening sugary white—with very dark gray shutters. The chimneys were of lighter gray stone. In winter, under a lowering sky, the place may have had its eerie qualities, but now, framed by a freshly mown lawn, with flowers and shrubs in blossom, it was as sunny and inviting as a house could be.

  The doctor swung the car around the curved drive and stopped in front of the porch steps. Mary must have been watching for us. The engine had scarcely died before the door opened and she came running out.

  My first sight of her, in her bright linen dress, her face flushed and smiling with welcome, was such a relief that I shed a few tears as I flung my arms around her. Mary is so tiny, compared to my stalwart five-nine, that she always felt fragile when I hugged her. So it took me several seconds to realize that her ribs were almost standing out under her skin and that the arms that circled my waist had no more strength than a child’s.

  I held her off at arm’s length. I kept the smile on my face; but it wasn’t easy.

  Thin—good heavens, she was thin! There were gray hairs in her short dark curls. The flush wasn’t healthy red blood, it was makeup, skillfully applied, but discernible. But it was her eyes that shocked me most. Mary always had circles under her eyes, even when she was in the pink of health; the dark circles and the petite body gave her that air of fragility which so many men found so appealing—and which was completely deceptive, because she was as strong as a horse. But the marks weren’t circles now, they were purple stains. Her eyes burned with a feverish glitter.

  “You look great,” I said, with such palpable untruth thatMary’s face took on a faint mocking smile.

  “I look like hell.” She linked arms with me and turned me toward the steps. “But you should have seen me a month ago.”

  “Where’s Ran?”

  “Boston. He had to go down this morning on business. That’s why he couldn’t meet you.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. The doctor—whose existence Mary had not acknowledged by so much as a nod— was taking my bags out of the car.

  “Sorry I can’t say that the substitute was an improvement.”

  “Sssh.” Mary’s hand tightened convulsively on my arm. “He’ll hear you.”

  Her voice was so strained I glanced at her in surprise. Before I could reply she turned away from me and addressed the doctor.

  “Just leave them, Will. Jed will bring them up later. Unless you can stop for a minute—”

  “And spoil your reunion? Thanks, Mary, but I’ve got things to do. Ask Ran to call me, will you?”

  When the car drove off, Mary seemed to sag.

  “Well,” she said brightly. “What are we doing standing out here? Come in.”

  The inside of the house was as charming as the outside. The hall was shaped like welcoming arms, circular, with white-painted panels around the lower half and a bright, flowered wallpaper above. The staircase rose up at the back.

  “Did you have any lunch?”

  “Stop acting like a hostess,” I said. “I had lunch at least twice; I lost count over Des Moines or thereabouts.”

  “Coffee, then. I know you can always drink coffee.”

  “Later. What I’d like now is a shower and a nice long talk.”

  “Of course. You must be tired after that long trip. I’ll get Jed to bring up your bags.”

  As I followed her slight form up the stairs, I wondered why Ran had talked of apathy and withdrawal. Mary was changed, very much changed; but I found her high-strung and nervous rather than apathetic. Was this a recent development, or was she different with me? I could hardly wait to talk to her, in one of those confidential sessions we used to enjoy. And I didn’t intend to pull any punches. Something was bothering her, and I meant to force it out into the open, even if I had to be brutal.

  My room was lovely—a great high-ceilinged chamber on the corner of a wing, so that it had windows on two sides. There was a fireplace on one wall, and the furniture consisted solely of early American antiques, or expensive reproductions thereof. A rocking chair sat in front of the fireplace, and the bed had a blue-and-white quilt.

  But after the first glance of approval and pleasure I forgot the room. Mary was standing by the fireplace. Her hands were twisted together. Her head was tilted and her eyes had the blank look of someone who is listening to a sound beyond the range of normal hearing.

  “Mary,” I said sharply.

  She gave a little start, and smiled.

  “I’ll call Mrs. Willard about some coffee—”

  I went to her and took her by the shoulders. She was so small, looking up at me with an odd, birdlike tilt of the head. It was an unfamiliar gesture to me. It reminded me of a child ducking its head in anticipation of a blow. How the devil had she learned that look? Ran wouldn’t strike her, not physically… Perhaps it was not a physical blow that she feared.

  “What are they doing to you?” I asked.

  The words surprised me as much as they did her; I hadn’t even realized I was thinking along those lines. But, as is often true of unpremeditated comments, this was the right thing to say. Her look of surprise turned into one of pitiful relief.

  “I knew you’d help me,” she whispered. “You won’t let them take me away, Jo? They want to.”

  “Not Ran?”

  “Ran and that Graham. He’s a doctor. He watches me all the time. They think I don’t know it, but I do. It takes two doctors. But if one says so, they can always find another one. They help each other.”

  “Nobody is going to take you away,” I said.

  Her hands clutched at mine.

  “You promise?”

  “Not while I’m on my feet and capable of speech.”

  I got her to sit down in the rocking chair and I squatted beside her. There were tears on her cheeks, but she was smiling.

  “It’s such a joy to have you, Jo.”

  “I’ve missed you too,” I
said, and took her hands. “I’m so sorry, my dear—about the baby.”

  She looked down at me.

  “You don’t understand, Jo.”

  “I want to understand. That’s why I came. Mary, what’s the matter? It can’t be the baby, not only that… What is it, Mary? Something to do with Ran?”

  “What is it,” she repeated dreamily.

  “Is it Ran?” I repeated. “Some trouble between you?”

  She shook her head.