Mischief

by Charlotte Armstrong

  The toastmaster rose like Fate. Ruth released her glass and patted her cold hands together in tune with the crowd. “I am happy,” the man said, “to be here …” Who cares how happy they are? Always so happy! She could hear every tiny wheeze of the toastmaster’s breathing. Peter had turned slightly in his chair, as if this were fascinating, but no concern of his, of course.…

  “And I am particularly glad,” the man said, “to have this opportunity …” They were always so glad!

  Ruth smiled faintly and let her fingers play with her water glass. She must display the perfect confidence she felt, that under her pounding heart lay so truly sure.…

  Jed fended her off and it was balm to do so. It was sweet revenge on the whole female race who had loused up his evening. He laughed at her. He had her by the elbows, at arm’s length. “It’s not that automatic, toots,” he said. “I know. There’s a school of thought that says it is. But make a note, why don’t you? There is such a thing as being choosy.”

  Her rage made him laugh and he let himself go back against the headboard. “The time, the place, and the girl,” he mocked. ‘I’ll choose them all, and this ain’t any of them, sweetheart.”

  She looked ready to screech. But then her face closed down, took on that sleepy look. She leaned heavily on his grasp, limply, now, with nothing but her weight.

  “So I’ll say so long, Nell,” he snapped, watching her suspiciously. “Understand?”

  The wild thing about her which, he knew now, had attracted him in the first place, and then made him uneasy, was getting entangled with her will. She wasn’t sleepy. Oh, no! Now, he knew that the dreamy look was, on her, a dangerous sign. Maybe a part of her did go to sleep. Maybe it was the part that took into account the future.

  He sat up, thrusting her with stiff forearms. He was a little bit sorry for having indulged himself in that laughter. He wondered just how he was going to get out of here without a row, without, say, too much racket. He said, quietly, “I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to go. Some other time, Nell.”

  She didn’t seem to hear. Then, she did seem to hear, not his voice, but something less loud and less near. Her pupils traveled to the right corners of her eyes.

  He heard it, too. There came a discreet tapping on the door of Room 807.

  Oh-oh! Exit Towers! Jed muttered under his breath, “I’ll get out the other way, through the kid’s room.”

  “No.” She spoke no louder than he, not a whisper, only a movement of the lips that was nearly mute. “You won’t” The words were clear and stubborn on her small mouth.

  “… find me,” he said in the same fashion, “you’ll lose your job.”

  The tapping was gently repeated. It would persist, insist It was patient.

  Nell’s face lit in malice and delight. “No, no. I’ll say … you pushed in here. Say you’re … after me.”

  Jed’s eyes flickered. She would, too. She damn well would! He was quite sure she would. For the hell of it! For the sheer wild mischief of it! And, if she did, the benefit of the doubt rests with the female.

  “You wait,” she said. “I know who it is.”

  Their almost soundless conversation was taking place in a depth of silence that was uncanny. The room pressed silence around them. The city bayed at the feet of the building, but here, high, they spoke without voices in a soundless place. Although someone kept tapping in gentle hope upon the door.

  “Who?” Jed was rigid in alarm. How in hell was he going to get off this spot? What to do?

  “It’s Uncle Eddie. I can get rid of him.”

  “I can get out,” Jed gestured. His eyes were somber.

  “No.” She knew her wild will held him.

  “What, then?” He ground his teeth.

  “In there. Be quiet” She intended him to hide in the bathroom!

  He rose, slowly, letting her go. He could knock her aside. He could get swiftly into the kid’s room.

  And she was opening her mouth.

  Jed stalled, by picking up the bottle and hiding it in his pocket. Quickly, she put his glass into his hand. And then she had him by the elbow. She was pushing, guiding.

  The tapping faltered. “Nell?” someone said softly and a trifle anxiously. “Nell?”

  Nell said, “Who’s there?” Her very voice seemed to stretch and yawn. But her eye was watching Jed and her face rippled. She would just as leave cause trouble … just as leave as not!

  “It’s Uncle Ed. You all right?”

  Nell’s brows spoke to Jed. Twitted him with it. Well? they asked. Am I?

  He growled, voice muted in the bottom of his throat. “O.K. Make it snappy.” He went into the bathroom and pushed the door back behind him, not quite tight.

  “Gee, I’m sorry, Uncle Eddie. I guess I must have been asleep,” he heard her saying … heard her yawning it.

  Towers stood in the bathroom and cursed Towers in his mind. What’d she have, a hex on him? Of all the damned lousy situations. He looked at his watch. He said to himself, Let Uncle Eddie get away and I am gone. Brother, will I be gone. I’ll really fade. Without a word, he’d go. Without a waste motion.

  You picked up dames, sure. Every once in a while. On a train. Maybe in a bar. Sometimes a thing like that turned out not bad. If it was sour, you blew. In cold blood. You got out, fast.

  How come Towers was hiding behind a door?

  He sat on the edge of the tub, to wait, reciting curses, rehearsing in his mind his swift passage out and away.

  Lyn turned away from the phones. No answer.

  I will smoke another cigarette, one more. I will wait until ten more people come in from the street, ten more. I can write a better letter. I know I can. I can try.

  CHAPTER 9

  Eddie looked at his niece in negligee and his eyes were disappointed. He said, “I brought the cokes.” Disappointment made his voice bleak. He had the bottles in his hands and he went toward the desk and stood there looking down at the tray, the bowl of melting ice, and Nell’s glass. “What’s this?” An inch and a half of rye and ginger ale remained in the glass.

  Nell said, “You were a long time, Uncle Eddie. I got thirsty. Let me wash that out.” She took the glass out of his meek hand. “I ordered ginger ale,” she said defiantly to his troubled eyes. “Mrs. Jones said I could.”

  “That was nice of her,” said Eddie.

  “Want a piece of candy?” Nell said brightly over her shoulder. “She said I could help myself.”

  “I don’t believe I care for any,” Eddie said. “Thanks.” His bleak stare went around the room.

  Nell pushed in the bathroom door. She went to the wash basin and rinsed the glass.

  Not even in the mirror did her eye meet Jed’s. There was not a gesture, not a wink, not a sign that she even knew he was there. Jed felt his blood rage. It was an abuse of power. A little grin, a tiny glance, a hint that they conspired to fool this Eddie, would have eased the thing, somehow. But, oh, no! She’d forced him into this ignominy and now she let him stew in it. He could have beaten her. He ground his teeth. Some baby sitter!

  Eddie said, “Little girl sleeping? I see you closed her door.”

  Nell left the bathroom, pulling its door behind her. She would have closed that, but Jed threw his strength on the inner knob and they tugged secretly, silently, and she lost.

  “Could you hear if she cried or anything?” Eddie was saying in worried tones.

  “The light bothered her,” Nell lied calmly.

  “Now she’s sleeping, though, it won’t bother her.” Eddie, gentle on the knob, released the catch. “I think Mrs. Jones would rather it was a little bit open, Nell.”

  “O.K.” she said indifferently. She waited for the coke.

  “And it’s getting later. It would be better if you took Mrs. Jones’s clothes off, Nell. Honest, I thought …” Eddie’s adam’s apple betrayed his hurt, although his voice was careful.

  “Gee, I meant to.” Nell’s fine teeth bit her lip. “I was so kinda comfortable
… I just didn’t hurry …”

  At once, Eddie brightened. “Sure you meant to, Nell. I know that. Uh—” he fiddled with an opener. “Why don’t you do it now, though?”

  “All right, Uncle Eddie.” She sat docilely down on the little bench and slipped her feet out of the mules. Eddie scrambled for her own black pumps and she put them on. Then she took the earrings off, slowly. She put them into the jewel box. Her fingers began to pick up other things, tidying them, putting them away.

  Eddie brightened with his lightening heart. “That’s right! Good girl!”

  She turned her bent head, smiled at him. She rose and her hands worked at the sash of Ruth’s gown. Eddie’s eyes turned primly down. Nell said, sounding modest and shy, “I’ll just step into the closet”

  Her Uncle Eddie took a long relieved pull on his coke bottle.

  She came out of the closet in her own rumpled dark dress. It had been a heap on the closet floor for some time. But now Nell made elaborate motions of finicky care as she hung the negligee on a hanger and arranged its folds. “There,” she said, “that’s just the way it was. Is that O.K., Uncle Eddie?”

  He beamed on her. “That’s fine, Nell. Now!” He sighed. “Mightn’t be so very long before they get back, you know. But you’re all set.”

  “We’d better drink our cokes,” she said mildly. “It might look better if I was alone in here. Do you think?”

  “You’re right,” he said. “Yes, you’re right. I told them I was going to drop in, but it would be better if they find everything quiet and you on the job, eh? Well, here you are. You know,” he blurted, “I want to do everything for you, don’t you, Nell? You know why I want you to take a nice little job like this. I want you to get started.”

  “I know, Uncle Eddie.” She was all meekness. Her lashes were lowered. She showed no sign of impatience at all.

  He took a swig. “Well, it’s because I believe in you, Nell. And Aunt Marie does, too.” His blink was contradicting the courage in his voice. “I think you’d rather be here with us than back in Indiana.”

  “Oh, I would,” she murmured.

  “If the insurance company would have paid on the house and furniture—but as it is, there’s nothing left. You know that. So you’d be on some kind of charity, till you got a job, and I wouldn’t like that for Denny’s girl.”

  “No,” she said.

  “You know I haven’t got much money,” he went on. “I got a steady job. But you can see why it’s a good thing if you can … kinda get over this trouble pretty soon.”

  “I’m O.K.,” she said without force.

  “You’re better. Thafs sure. You certainly are a lot better.”

  She was looking at him with that blind blue abstraction she sometimes had. “But they ought to pay,” she said. “Why can’t we make them pay?”

  “I don’t know how we can,” said Eddie uneasily. “I don’t know if we can ever make them. You see, they claim, because the fire was set …”

  “It was an accident” Her voice went higher. And he cleared his throat nervously. “Wasn’t it?”

  “It was. It was. That’s what they said in the court, yes. It was an accident.”

  Suddenly her face was calm, her glance cold. “So why don’t they pay?”

  “Well, the insurance company, they figure—I tell you, Nell. I think it’s best to kinda forget about that. Might take a lawyer and quite a lot of money and you wouldn’t be sure you could win, you see? I think the best thing is, forget about that and try and get started … There wasn’t so much insurance. How’s the coke?”

  “It’s good,” she said meekly. “Is yours?”

  “Fine.” He took another swig. It might have been wine, for he seemed to mellow. “You just needed somebody to stand back of you,” he said. “Me and Marie knew that, Nell, at the time. And we do stand back of you. We really do. I can understand just why it is you get kinda restless streaks. I don’t blame you.”

  “You’ve been good, Uncle Eddie.” Her lips barely moved.

  But he looked very happy. “It’s just that I can see how it is,” he said eagerly. “After such a terrible experience, a lot of little things seem pretty little. Don’t matter much, eh? That’s the way it is, isn’t it, Nell?” The little man seemed to hold his breath. Every fiber of his worried little being was yearning to make contact, to understand and be understood.

  The girl didn’t look up, but she nodded.

  He swallowed and leaned closer. He said softly, “You want to remember, Nell, your father and mother don’t blame you. You mustn’t ever think that they would. They know you wouldn’t ever have done anything bad, Nell … not to them. You see, wherever they are, they must know that even better than we do. And if they could talk to you …

  “I don’t want to think about them,” she said in a perfect monotone. “I don’t want to think about them.”

  “No, no,” said Eddie quickly. “Nobody wants to make you think … about that. But I been trying to tell you one thing, Nell. The doctor said it would be good if you’d know … and here we’re so quiet and all, maybe I can say it. Me and your Aunt Marie, we stand back of you. We believe in you. We don’t doubt, for one minute, you set the fire walking in your sleep that night …”

  He watched her face. Her lashes flickered. “That’s what the court said,” she remarked lightly.

  “But—but—don’t cry,” he whispered to the tearless blue of her eyes.

  “I’m not going to cry, Uncle Eddie.” She turned her empty glass in her fingers. She put it down.

  Eddie blinked the tears out of his own eyes. He swallowed the sick flutter of his heart. That Julia his brother married, something about her he never had liked. But surely she’d never been mean to Nell. Denny wouldn’t have stood for it. Denny wouldn’t be mean to anybody. No, no. There could be no reason. She was still shocked, poor Nell. She couldn’t cry. She loved them. She’d meant no harm. She’d cry, someday. Sure, she’d cry.

  “Tasted pretty good, didn’t it?” he said cheerily.

  Jed controlled his rage almost immediately. He’d got into this jam by getting senselessly angry and it was about time, he told himself, that Towers used the brains he was born with. He settled coldly to wait this out. He could hear their voices and a part of his brain recorded the words.

  But, in part and at the same time, he was reviewing the way he had come. It had come back to him, the year he was nine. Not the events of that year, so much, as the feel of it. By then, he mused, the boy was all adjusted to the family. He had been trained. He knew what the rules of conduct were in so far as his mother and father had taught them. All that was smooth, so smooth he couldn’t remember much about it.

  But he was also stepping out, newly bold, into the world his parents did not know. He was beginning to test himself more daringly with his contemporaries. School, the gang, society and his personal meeting with it had been the part of life that was filled with interest. Warm security at home and one toe in the cold waters of the outer world, testing to take his weight.

  Pretty soon, he remembered, the boy began to pick up the stuff that isn’t down in the home rules. The ways and the means, the maneuverings, the politics, the exchanges of influences, the worming one’s way, the self-interest of everybody and how to use this for himself. Through high school and a part of college, and then the war, and the final bitter tutoring of the peace. Sharper lessons, all the time. Trial and error. What worked and what didn’t. Lessons in the possible. Knocking home what’s possible and what is not, and what is only a fool’s goal.

  So now, here’s Towers. A young man, out to “make his fortune” as they used to say in the old stories when he was nine. Out to make his fortune without a dream in his eye. Wangled himself a damn good job on the coast. Pulled strings to get it. Young man on the way up, and gangway for him! Old enough to begin to think, if only obliquely, that he might take a wife.

  So Lyn was on his mind, eh? A dream, there? He pushed her image away.

  So
, here was Towers, skipping the whole middle of the country, tomorrow, letting it flow under his plane, not planning to stop and see the family. Why? Oh, business, he’d said. They understood. Not wishing to stop and hear the blind love speaking, pretending he was nine?

  Well, he thought, people probably settled on a pattern that worked, for them, and there they stayed. And if his pattern was shaping up a little differently, why, no use arguing. Dad talked service. Lived it, too, as far as anyone could see. And it worked, for him. Or anyhow, it worked pretty well. It made a kind of guide, a touchstone … Jed could see. And Mother talked love—was love, dammit. He wished, a little wistfully, that the world really was what they seemed, incomprehensibly, able to assume it was. How come they could hang onto that kind of peace, whatever it was, and make it a shell around them?

  Or did they? Were they besieged by disappointments? Were they only huddled in their shell, like people in a fort? He didn’t see much of them, these days. It was the family tradition to exchange only cheerful news, as far as one could. Did their hearts despair?

  He didn’t want to think so. He supposed you battled through, sooner or later, and came out on the other side of struggle, when you accepted something or other and put the blinders on and just kept them on and didn’t look, any more.

  But when you’re young and scrambling in the market place, you have to watch out. Yeah, out. Not in. That is, take a hard look at the way the world operates. You didn’t want to be pushed around.

  Oh, Towers was a wise one, all right, sitting on the bathtub, behind the door. He knew the score.

  His jaw was tight. Definitely, a detour, this little expedition. Get on your way, Towers!

  Still talking, this Uncle Eddie? Still yammering in there?

  “And so, I thought,” Eddie was saying, “the best idea is for you to start out easy. Take a little job once in a while. The thing is, Nell,” he was expounding his creed, “you do something for somebody else and you do a good job. So they’re glad to pay you for it. Then you’re earning. You’re being useful. You got to get into the idea. After a while, you’ll get so you can do a bigger job or a better job. You’ll get into the idea. You’ll get over being so restless.”