I am such a fool, she thought. Her fingers were aching from gripping her purse. “You mean that the patient, the man who sent me here …”
“I’m positive he’s Mel. He had to come here. First Ralph, then Mel.” His voice trailed away, his blue eyes glowed strangely; he reached out and took hold of the white material of her uniform. She felt only wonderment at the touch of his fingers, so unlike those of his brother.
“But wasn’t it Kitty who sent you?”
“It was your brother. And I thought you were Kitty’s husband!”
“What was his message?”
Laura hesitated. “I don’t believe he intended it for you. He said Mr. Land. He must have meant—” She stopped short; now she knew what he had meant too.
The boy removed his hand from her skirt, stiffly, almost as though she had asked him to. “Just the same, you must tell me.”
“I never should have started this.”
“That’s like saying you shouldn’t have been born.”
So she told him, in an instant, without moving her hands from her lap. His head was lowered and she looked down into his tense tangle of black curls; she had almost physically to restrain herself from reaching out with her fingers to touch the curls just beyond her knee.
“When I go back, what shall I tell him?”
He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. “Tell him nothing. He doesn’t expect an answer. He expects a visit.”
“Then you’ll come?”
He shook his head. Almost apologetically he declared, “There’s nothing between him and me. It’s between Ralph and me. When Ralph and I have settled matters, we can see Mel together and arrange everything.”
This was so outrageous that she could not keep the tremor from her voice. “Then you’re afraid. You talk a lot, but you’re still afraid.”
Ray Land arose as if he had been uncoiled—he was as graceful as a snake—and turned away from her. Don’t take it back, she said to herself, don’t take it back.
He said over his shoulder, “I didn’t think of it that way. It’s probably true, what you say.”
Freed at last from the demand of those dazzling eyes, she got up too. “Forgive me. I think I’d better go now.”
At that he lurched around with uncharacteristic awkwardness and grasped her by the left wrist.
“Oh!” she cried out in pain. “Oh! My watch, my wrist!”
“I’m sorry.” He released her at once. “I’m not used … You had every right, there’s nothing to forgive.”
“Then tell me what I should say when I go back.”
“Say that you delivered the message. I swear to you that when Ralph shows up I’ll tell it to him, just as you told it to me.” With hope in his voice he added, “Then we’ll all be on an even footing, won’t we?”
“No. You and Ralph will be way ahead. But the other—he’s flat on his back, he still won’t know about you two what you both know about him.”
He smiled faintly. “You don’t know the Lands. You’re learning, but you don’t know us yet. Mel wouldn’t have turned up without an ace in the hole. He’s aware that the police are bound to find out who he is. Or that Ralph himself might decide to tell them. You think Mel will quit that easy? Watch and see.”
“Just the same …”
“Ah, just the same. You’re right, that’s no reason to take advantage of him. The point is, you’ve done what he asked you to. And now maybe I can persuade Ralph. I pleaded with him, all this time, not to be vengeful.” He shuddered. “But he said just what you’re thinking. That I’m afraid, that I’m weak.”
Laura’s heart was thumping. She moved to the boy’s side and put her hand on his wrist to restrain him, as he had done to her, but gently.
“It’s not true. I believe you. You want the best for everybody.”
“I never knew how to go about it. I sat up in the attic, telling myself that I was preparing, while you stood out there, offering yourself with those crazy papers. But believe me, believe me, this is the moment. Don’t think I’m simply afraid to go to the hospital. I did come down to let you in today, didn’t I? I did say, Yes, I’m Mr. Land, didn’t I?”
The silence was close about them. They stood together, holding hands, their mutual warmth flowing between them thick as blood.
He said, “Ralph is shocked, he’s afraid Kitty will lose the baby he didn’t want. He’s afraid he would have killed Mel if he hadn’t been stopped. Isn’t this the time to bring them together?”
Who am I to say? she asked herself in terror. She was astonished to hear herself reply, “Yes.”
“If I go to the hospital alone Ralph may get suspicious again. He’ll think Mel’s making a deal with me. Maybe I can get Ralph to go with me.”
“Ray—” It was the first time she had said his name. It was exciting. She said it again: “Ray, why do you need me?”
“Better ask, Why should I let you go? You must come if I call you.”
He held her with his eyes as she held him by the hand, his pulse thudding against her fingers. Blue, blue, his eyes searched her as she had never been searched, they demanded what had never been demanded of her.
“Yes,” she said at last, “of course I will.”
Now he was jubilant. “I knew it! Ever since I used to watch you, so obstinate and forlorn with your papers, like a wild flower that no one pauses to admire, I knew it. I called to you without daring to open my mouth: Look up! Look up here! And now you have.”
He had her by the waist, holding her close to him, so close that the pulse was no longer at her finger tips, but beating against her breasts. She looked up, as he had predicted and commanded, and was surprised at how well she already knew his features. His lips were red as raspberries in the wild thicket of untrimmed beard; between them his small teeth, hard and white like his body, gleamed as his flesh gleamed between his oddments of clothing. Through the length of her body she could feel the tension of this obdurate youth who had said no to a bad world and set himself to await a better one, staring down at her from his high sanctuary; he was the same boy who yearned for her.
He wants to kiss me, she thought vaguely, wonderingly, no longer in the least astonished at herself; and she put her hands to his head and drew his red lips down to hers, drinking from his warmth as she felt everything grow dark and heavy about her, borne down by the fine fixity of his purpose.
When at last she opened her eyes she discovered that he was gazing at her, marveling at what had happened. He continued to hold her by the waist. She drew back her head and smiled at him, slightly. She wanted to say nothing, only to feel forever what she felt now.
“We’re practically strangers. I don’t even know you, in the ordinary way. Isn’t that what they’d say?”
“Who?”
“Ordinary people.”
But that’s what I might have said too, Laura thought confusedly. Does that mean that I am only ordinary? She shook her head, frightened, and just then felt Ray Land shudder against her.
He bent forward, his face averted, and put his lips to her ear.
“I’m trembling,” he muttered. “Can you feel me trembling?”
She was afraid that her own voice would sound coarse and ordinary, no matter what she was to reply. She nodded silently.
“It’s because I’m not used to being with anyone.” He clenched his teeth. “It’s because I’m a virgin. I don’t really know anything about anything.”
Laura experienced a sudden surge of strength. It was as if she had been swimming beyond her depth, exhausted, panicky, but then with the sudden appearance of her objective had gained her second wind, and plunged ahead rejoicing in the power of her lungs and limbs to take her forward as far as need be. She hugged the boy to her, running her fingers through his dense upspringing curly hair.
“You know a lot. You know how to be kind. And wise. Besides, you might as well know, I’m a virgin too. They don’t believe me at the hospital, but it’s true. I’ve had other concerns.”
“But now me,” he blurted.
“Oh yes!” she cried exultantly. “And now you!”
Finally she released herself. “Now I’m going to go.” She rummaged in her purse. “I want to write down my address and telephone number. And the number at the hospital.”
“You do trust me then, even though I’m half crazy?”
“After this afternoon, we must both be crazy. When I think how I used to stand out there blowing my nose, telling myself that the Lord would number me among the sheep—and all the time you were watching me from up there!”
Actually she was close to tears, and she had to blink to write down the information legibly. As she handed him the paper, she said matter-of-factly, “I did see your sister-in-law this morning, you know. I had to ask her to leave your brother’s room; he’s not supposed to have visitors.”
Ray stared. “Kitty was with Mel?”
“For quite a while. But she may not have known who he was—I didn’t.”
“Believe me, if Kitty was there, she knew. So she must have told Ralph.”
“Not necessarily. There are things some women don’t tell their husbands.”
“You’re right, there are.” Ray was suddenly pale.
“Did I say something wrong?”
He started. “No, I’m glad you told me. But I must talk to Ralph as soon as possible.”
“You won’t go back to the attic?”
“Not to stay. Not any more. Soon everyone will know I’ve been up there. For myself, I don’t care, but what have I gotten you into? Laura, if you threw yourself into the world when you threw away your Watchtowers, that was nothing compared with what you did when you rang this bell. If I had it in me to urge you to stay away, I would.”
“It wouldn’t do you any good. Good-by, Ray, good-by for a while.”
Outdoors, on the porch steps, on the spongy lawn, on the dappled sidewalk, the entire day had altered. Had the sun been shining so when she had entered the Land house? It did not seem possible. From its hiding place in the lilac bush by the carriageway, a bird sang. Laura wanted to sing back at it.
Across the street, a lineman, straps wound round his pants, lounged at the base of a telephone pole. Who could blame him for not wanting to work on such a day? When he saw that he had her eye, he winked boldly. Half tempted to wink back, to run across the street and share her secret with him, the first person she had seen since it happened, Laura laughed to herself and walked on. I have changed, she thought. Here’s proof. They never used to wink at me when I stood there crying to myself with the Watchtower. Only Ray knew, in his watchtower, only Ray.
On through the brightness of the June afternoon she hurried, not frightened, despite Ray’s warnings. Hastening home to her parents, whom she loved in their own way, she felt now that she had only the slenderest of ties to them, ties she was about to sever with hardly a pang. Leaving the mysterious house of the Lands, she sensed that she had entered their life for good, how fully only the passage of time could prove. She accepted all, all, her heart thumping gaily, wildly, as she quickened her pace through the afternoon dazzle.
11: RALPH
ONLY NOW, WHEN IT was too late, and everything was crashing down around him, could Ralph assess the depth of his attachment to one abiding belief: that planning, executed with reason, constituted an exact science, unlimited in its potential. Until now he had experienced nothing that could shake this belief. Not the brute unreason of war (itself susceptible of explanation if you took the trouble), nor his own years of disillusionment in New York (where if no doors had opened it was because he had lacked the key), had in any way weakened his conviction that those who planned succeeded. So there had been no reason why the behavior of either Ray or Kitty should have sapped the roots of that conviction.
Ray was trying and tiresome, it was true; he was even a menace, as long as he persisted in hiding in the attic like a time bomb; but behind his pleas for recognition of the importance of the spontaneous and the wayward, he too was a man who planned. Ray detested the word, but what else had he been doing in the attic, if not mapping out a campaign? Therefore you could counterattack, you could devise a series of alternate courses of action, with a reasonable expectation that within a limited period, more or less defined in advance, you would succeed in neutralizing him, in frustrating his schemes, in making yours prevail.
Kitty, on the other hand, was vehemently female and moon-driven behind her businesslike and pragmatic manner, swept more than she commonly revealed or even realized by subterranean currents and tides. But that didn’t mean that you couldn’t plan for her and with her, or that you couldn’t count on her as an integral part of your own expectations. Even when she had gone ahead on her own and committed him to parenthood, it had been at least partially a result of his own lack of foresight; when he had finally overcome his panic, after those hours of erratic driving about the countryside, he had been able to improvise a speeded-up timetable based on what she had done. What was more, after constructing an imaginary dialogue with her, he had persuaded himself that Kitty—although she never said so—might in actuality have been using extreme means to force him to confront a new reality.
Why, even Mel, considered in the abstract, had been understandable—no, that was a little ludicrous. Better to say that the emotions Mel had aroused in you—first the admiration and love, then the uneasiness so readily transmuted into hatred—were susceptible of being understood. And mastered. That very hatred, the basis of which seemed quite clear, and hence reasonable, had appeared to Ralph as the motor force of his ambitious conception of what should be done with the fortune of the Lands.
All very fine. Until the moment when, pulled by main force from his murderous position astride his smashed and gasping brother, he had had to face the truth: that he too was dominated by base passions beyond realism, beyond practicality, beyond planning—passions such as Mel had personified in his flight from respectability, such as Ray had pleaded underlay their irreconcilability, such as Kitty had simply demonstrated, coursed beneath the frail raft of human planning and maybe even provided its essential current.
Ever since, he had wandered around the city, planless, aimless, trying to exhaust himself, wondering—beyond all the wondering about the collapse of the bridge he had built to the future, with himself midway across it—what kind of life he could go on living once the rationale of his existence was gone. It did him no good to think about those brought up in a faith who had suddenly discovered themselves bereft of belief in the tenets of their church; the only names that would come to mind were of those who had switched from one faith to another.
He dared not visit Kitty, much less discuss this with her, because he could not yet face her, no matter which of two suppositions was correct. Either she had almost lost the baby as a result of the struggle, in which case the responsibility was doubly his. Or she had not, but in a moment of inspiration had faked the onset of miscarriage. The idea of her pitying him was unbearable, when she had seen with her own eyes how his cool self-mastery had turned to wild and bloody despair at its first real collision with fraternal implacability. She had won them both a brief respite, yes. But for what? What difference did it make at this point whether the cops left them alone a little while longer? When they knew who Mel was, when they wanted the whole story, they’d come for it.
Meanwhile, the respite provided only space for himself to chase his tail; he was unable to confront himself in a hopeless situation. For if he could not visit Kitty, no more could he bring himself to visit Mel and look upon the wreckage of his brother’s face, of his own pride, of their common code: privacy, secrecy, victory.
Ray he had seen, more than once, over the wandering weekend; but each time he had come in—never for more than a moment, only for long enough to show that at least he could do this, enter his own house without flinching—Ray had tried to waylay him, to cajole him into conversation. From Ray too, from this brother who could not conceal the satisfaction of the man proven r
ight, he had fled.
Finally, as it had to, it wore itself out. Ever since the fight with Mel he had been cringing like a child away from a confrontation of his situation. But neither booze nor NoDoz pills, swallowed during his dull miserable drifting from bar to gas station to bar, to phone the hospital or the doctor, could obliterate the memory of what he had done to someone he once had loved. Mel, blood streaming from his nose onto his neck and the floor beneath his battered head, one eye smashed closed, the other rolling about horribly like an agate or a ball of quicksilver, unrecognizable and recognizing nothing. He had repeated it to himself so many times that, while losing none of its truth, it had become boring, as even cancer can become boring for its moaning victim and those who love him: I would have killed him if they hadn’t pulled me off him.
Supposing a palmist, or even someone who knew not just the lines of his hand but the metallic grinding of his teeth in his sleep, had predicted to him: Ralph Land, someday you will try to kill your own brother with your own hands, and the memory of it will haunt you. He would have laughed aloud. There were times when men had to die violently. He knew that, he had been in a war. He had fired at distant fleeing figures stumbling through the snow, but that had never troubled his nights afterward, any more than does the memory of a maddeningly painful illness that has run its course. After all, if it were otherwise, the world would be one vast congress of hysterics, unable to screw their wives or to make a living because their endless nightmares persisted through their waking lives as well. Then why was he so horribly certain that the vision of Mel bleeding beneath him would never fade, not as long as he lived?
Was it because of the physical pain he had inflicted, the capacity for behaving as Cain that he had suddenly demonstrated, or the bloody ineradicable proof in the deed itself that he was as much a creature of his glands as the most wretched death camp sadist? No matter why. Worse than a war, worse than a wasting disease, it weighed on him, this crushing memory which he would never find the means to lift from him, any more than Mel had been able to summon the strength to push him from his chest.
The Will Page 24