The ride to the Arkansas line took no more than a couple of hours. They stopped in some small town just over the border. Edison had the name of a man who would perform the ceremony, though Rebecca could not get it straight whether he was a preacher or a justice of the peace. They stopped at a service station to ask directions to the man’s house. When they found it, they were met by a pack of hounds that sniffed around the car and lifted their legs at the tires. Edison would not get out but sat and blew the horn.
Considering that he was awakened from a sound sleep, the man was cordial enough. He looked hard at Rebecca’s pale face but asked no questions after Edison handed him his fee in advance, a folded wad of cash. When the short ceremony was over, the man stood over them while they signed the marriage certificate. Afterward, his wife offered glasses of Kool-Aid and slices of pound cake. Edison refused, saying they had a long way to go before morning.
On the return trip, Rebecca sat staring at the trees along the road slipping past in the dark. It was over. She was married. There was nothing to be done about it now. She felt drained and cold in spite of the warm night. Finally she slept.
When she woke, dawn was graying the sky. The land was flat and filled with high waving grass as far as the eye could see on either side of the road. It was a moment before Rebecca could think what the grass was; then she knew. Sugarcane.
She sat up with a gasp. “Where are we?”
“Nearly home.”
“What do you mean? This isn’t the road home!”
Edison turned his head, and the grin he gave her was odd-looking in the greenish glow of the dash lights. “I did some thinking while you were asleep. I didn’t want to listen to my uncle rant and rave about us getting married or have your mother crying all over us. It’s too late to go back to Tulane this semester, and I’ve always wanted to live in New Orleans. We’ll go down to the French Quarter, take an apartment, have us some fun. What do you say?”
“I want to go home!”
He scowled. “Your home is with me now.”
“But I have to talk to Mama. She’ll think something awful has happened to me. Margaret will know I didn’t come home last night. She may have called the police already!”
His face changed, she saw that before he covered it up, though she wasn’t sure what it meant. After a moment, he said, “I hadn’t thought about that. You can call them from the next town.”
“I don’t have anything to wear. You don’t, either.”
“I can have some of my stuff packed up and sent. As for you, most of what you owned wasn’t fit to wear, anyway. I’ll buy you a new dress or two.”
“Not fit to wear! It’s as good as anybody else’s.” She jerked around in the seat to stare straight ahead.
“Not anybody who matters.”
“Well, of all the things to say! I suppose you think my family doesn’t matter.”
“Not much.”
There was a horrible feeling inside her as she turned her head to stare at the man behind the wheel. She didn’t know him, she realized. She didn’t know him at all. Tears rose behind her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. The hum of the car engine was loud in the quiet.
Edison flicked a glance in her direction, his gaze lingering on her breasts under the cheap cotton dress as they rose and fell with her rapid breathing. He reached out to squeeze one of the soft globes, and a lascivious sheen appeared in his light blue eyes. “Never mind. I have a feeling you won’t be needing many clothes for a while, anyway.”
He had been right.
They found an apartment on a French Quarter back street. It had not been quite as Edison promised, since rent was higher than he had expected. It was, in fact, one half of the upper floor of what had once been a fine old house before it was divided for rental. The windows shook in their frames, the paint was cracked, and the wallpaper was peeling in places; still, Rebecca rather liked it. By her standards, the rooms were large and airy and the back courtyard, even with its broken bricks and dry and rusty fountain, had charm.
The other tenants were a curious assortment. Next door was the elderly woman who owned the house, a widow who always dressed in black, kept cats, and was only seen after dark when she put out her meager garbage. Downstairs was a mulatto woman who had two alternating visitors, a white man at night and a black man during the day. Across from her on the lower level was a young man who was seldom seen since he slept all day and worked the night shift at one of the Quarter restaurants.
Edison made no effort to work at all. He spent his night hours prowling in and out of the bars of the Quarter and his days sleeping, dragging Rebecca into bed, or yelling into the phone at his lawyers. His uncle, it seemed, objected to footing the bill for the New Orleans escapade and was so furious over his nephew’s failure to continue his education that he wouldn’t even speak to him. Since his uncle was also the major trustee of his estate, Edison’s allowance was cut in half. It would be reinstated in full when he registered at Tulane again. There was only enough money, so Edison said, for a change or two of cheap underwear and a couple of cotton shifts for Rebecca.
She intended to ask Margaret to send her a few things but was given no opportunity. When she called, Margaret screamed at her over the phone.
“You think you’re smart, don’t you, running off like that! You think you’re in high cotton, strutting around like Mrs. Astor in diamonds and furs while I’m stuck back here with Boots! And Mama! I guess you know it nearly killed her when she found out you were gone?”
“I can see why, if you were yelling like you’re doing now.”
“Don’t tell me how to handle Mama, Miss Priss!”
“No, but is she all right? Is she really bad?”
“I thought I was going to have to call the ambulance, I really did. Her lips were so blue they were nearly purple, and I expected every breath to be her last.”
Rebecca bit her own bottom lip. “Let me talk to her.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea. It might upset her again, and she just this minute dropped off for a nap.”
“I won’t say anything to disturb her. You know she would want to talk to me.”
If Margaret heard the pleading note in her voice, she was able to ignore it. “I really don’t think it’s a good idea. I have to take care of Mama now, you know. You might show a little concern for her health, too, instead of thinking of yourself and what you want.”
“I suppose. I—I’ll call again later, to see how she’s doing.”
“You do that,” Margaret answered. She hung up without even asking where Rebecca and Edison were going or how they were going to live.
Somehow, Margaret seemed to think that Rebecca was settling into a life of wealth and ease. She could not have been more wrong. The apartment had a small table fan but no attic fan to alleviate the daytime buildup of the stifling heat of that interminable summer, and certainly not the air-conditioning unit Edison seemed to think necessary. Rebecca’s habit of going out in the cool of twilight to sit on the back stairs leading up to their rooms, he found common.
Edison, who had never had to worry about buying food, begrudged every cent spent at the grocery store. At the same time, he sneered at Rebecca’s pitiful efforts to feed them both for a week on two pounds of fatty hamburger and a couple of packages of noodles. He often flung his full plate into the sink, calling the food garbage, then slammed out of the apartment to eat elsewhere. Since he seldom returned before dawn, however, Rebecca could sit outside as long as she pleased. She at least gained a nodding acquaintance with her neighbors that way. Sometimes they even spoke, especially the widow.
The apartment, which had seemed so full of light when they first took it, had several dark corners in the kitchen and bath that were havens for dampness and insects. The widow next door gave Rebecca a kitten, which she said would help the problem as cats loved to catch roaches. Edison came home to find the kitten curled up on his pillow. Over Rebecca’s tearful protests, he kicked it out the back door.
It rained every afternoon. Rebecca came to dread the rain, for the thunder would wake Edison finally, and he always wanted her then. It didn’t matter that he stank of stale sweat and tasted of stale whiskey. Her protests irritated him, the least show of reluctance enraged him so that she was left with bruises more than once as he forced himself on her. When he bothered to think about her needs at all, he seemed to consider that the harder and faster he rubbed between her thighs, the more likely she was to catch fire. All she did was become so numb and raw that in desperation she urged him to get it over with quickly. That part, at least, was never a problem.
A week faded into two, then three. It was an afternoon in the middle of the fourth when Rebecca heard the cat. It was mewing in plaintive distress. The sound came from the back of the house from the old courtyard that was overlooked by the bedroom windows. Edison lay sprawled in sleep in the bedroom. The droning of the fan he lay under helped to mask the cat’s cries; still, Rebecca grew anxious that the extra noise would wake him.
She let herself out the back door and hurried down the stairs. The mewing was louder outside. It was coming from the pin oak tree that grew in one corner of the courtyard. Rebecca walked under its spreading branches, then looked up.
The cat was on one of the upper limbs. It was the half-grown kitten the widow had given Rebecca. It clung in terror to its perch, too inexperienced and disoriented to find its way down.
The limbs of the old pin oak drooped low over the courtyard, but its trunk was slick and tall, without any low branches. Rebecca looked around for a ladder, a bench, anything to give her a boost up, but there was nothing. She tried talking to the cat, coaxing it to come to her, but its fear was too great for it to listen. Helpless and hating the feeling, she stood staring up at the trapped animal.
Somewhere in the south, thunder rumbled. A stray gust of wind swayed the pin oak, setting its heat-drooped leaves to clattering. The cat clawed its perch, howling.
Thunder, and soon it would rain again. Rebecca, standing there with her anxious gaze on the young cat, felt a suffocating tightness in her chest. It grew, pressing upward until it burned against the back of her nose in acid tears. She ached with it, and with the realization that she was as trapped as the cat and no more able to help herself than she was to help it.
“She’s got herself in a fix, hasn’t she?”
Rebecca whipped around at that half-humorous, half-sympathetic comment behind her. She faced a young man with wildly curling brown hair, olive skin, and the kindest eyes she had ever seen. He wore only a pair of cut-off jeans, and his eyelids were heavy, as if he had been asleep. It gave him a gentle look, yet there was strength in his features and in the well-defined muscles of his square shoulders. Her vision blurred as she stared at him. Concern rose in his face, and he reached out to touch her arm.
“Hey,” he said, his voice soft, “nothing’s that bad, chère.”
Rebecca took a deep breath and brushed a hand over her eyes, forcing a smile. “No, it’s just this stupid cat.”
He lowered his hand. “For smart animals, they can be dumb sometimes. I told her not to climb up there when I let her out.”
It was their downstairs neighbor, the young man who worked nights. She had seen him now and then in the evening as he went off to work and on Sunday going to or returning from mass. He always spoke a quiet and friendly greeting, and he always smiled.
“She’s yours?” Rebecca asked. She almost added “now.”
“I suppose. I found her prowling around my door a while back and made the mistake of feeding her. Now she thinks she belongs or, more likely, that I belong to her.”
As thunder rumbled again, rolling closer, Rebecca turned to glance back up into the tree. “I wish there was some way to get her down.”
Surprise flashed across his face. “Nothing to it. That’s what I came out for.”
He stepped to the tree trunk and put his arms around it, then swarmed up it with the agility of well-worn habit. In a moment he was lying across a thick limb and reaching down to pluck the cat from her perch. He swore under his breath as the cat turned and clawed up his arm and shoulder to his head, where she clung for dear life. Then wearing the cat like a hat, he swung down from limb to limb, hung for an instant from the lowest one by his hands, then dropped to the ground. He firmly detached the cat’s claws from his scalp and cradled her to his chest, stroking her with soft murmurs.
Rebecca reached out to brush her fingers over the cat also. Her hand touched that of the young man, and she looked up. As she met his eyes, her lips curved in a smile of relief.
His gaze held hers for a long moment and a hint of color rose in his face. He swallowed. “My name’s Dante. Dante Romoli.”
The cat in his arms began to purr and rub her chin into the soft-looking curls of his chest hair. A laugh took Rebecca by surprise. She drew her hand back without haste as she gave Dante her own name.
A drop of rain fell on his shoulder. It was followed by another and another, which made fat, wet splotches on the old bricks under their feet. Then abruptly it was pouring down, a warm torrent. They broke and ran, separating as they neared the back stairs. At his own door, Dante halted, watching her. She stopped at the foot of the stairs to flash him a last smile.
“Thanks,” she said, then whirled around and ran up the stairs, back to her apartment.
Edison was awake. “What,” he said as she came through the door, “were you doing down there with that dago?”
Rebecca felt her heart contract in her chest. Edison stood naked in the middle of the floor with his hands on his hips and ice in his blue eyes. “The cat our landlady gave me was up in the tree and couldn’t get down. Dante went up—”
“Oh, so you’re on a first-name basis with him. What else have you two been doing while I was gone nights?”
“Nothing! This was the first time I ever said more than two words to him, honest. It was the cat that—”
“Don’t give me that crap! I saw you pawing him. You’re just like your sister, can’t keep your hands off men.”
“Beth?” she said in shock. “How can you say such a thing when she’s—”
“Her being dead doesn’t make her less of a whore.”
“She wasn’t like that, she wasn’t! You ought to know, you’re the only man she ever went around with besides her husband!”
“Poor jerk overseas, expecting to come back to an innocent bride, and what happens? She gets herself knocked up.”
“By you!”
“It was a trick to get me to marry her, the stupid bitch. She practically threw herself at me.”
Rebecca looked at him, at the defensive belligerence of his stance, the patchy redness of his face, the selfish light in his eyes. Inside her, the fluttery fear died. “You don’t really believe that,” she said. “You’re just saying it to make yourself look better, to make yourself feel better because you know it’s your fault she’s dead.”
He reached her in two strides. The blow caught her on the jaw, sending her reeling backward. She struck the wall, and a cry was jarred out of her. He was upon her then, dragging her up with a hand clamped on the front of her blouse. He shook her viciously, holding her against the wall.
“Don’t ever say that again!” he said, his face twisting in rage. “Never!”
She could taste blood in her mouth. Her breasts ached from the tightness of his grasp on her blouse. But there was a white heat in her brain. From it she cried, “I won’t, because I won’t be here!”
It was almost ludicrous, the change in his face, as if it had never occurred to him that there might be consequences for the things he had said and done to her. Then he laughed. “Oh, sure, go running back home like a baby.”
“It’s better than being here with you.”
Anger leaped into his eyes, then congealed there. He released his hold with a sudden open-handed gesture. “Go ahead, then. Nobody will listen to a word you say. Nobody is going to believe it’s anything except th
e ravings of a little bitch who got her cherry stolen and didn’t get the payoff she expected.”
“Believe what?” Her knees were trembling. She pressed her hands flat against the wall for support.
“Oh, don’t play games with me. I know that you know; I can see it in your eyes when you look at me. Why the hell else are we down here?”
What was she supposed to know? There was only one thing she could think of. “I know you feel guilty about Beth, no matter what you say.”
He was still, his gaze riveted on her blank face. After an instant, he said, “Yeah, that’s it. I’m the one who told her she should get rid of the brat. I even told her how I had read this book that said how to do it. I as good as killed her and the baby.”
“There was no need to run away, no reason to come down here. Nobody’s going to put you in jail for it, though they should.”
His eyes narrowed again. “Nobody’s going to blame me, period, or have the chance to cut off the rest of my allowance over it. You’re the only one who knows, and nobody’s going to believe a word you say about anything.”
“Because I ran off with you and got married?”
The sound that came from his throat was coarse, and his mouth twisted in a sneer. “That’s just it, baby. You didn’t.”
Her head began to throb with a dull ache. Through her mind ran a sense of disaster so strong that she shuddered. Her voice a thread of sound, she said, “What?”
“We’re not married. How does that grab you?”
“But the ceremony, the paper we signed—”
“They don’t matter. I wasn’t a free man. I married the youngest daughter of my dear mother’s best friend last May. We didn’t get along too well. She went back home to Mama and I went to visit my uncle, a temporary arrangement. That means that the ceremony I went through with you is invalid. Null and void. It doesn’t count.”
Crimes of Passion Page 116