by Luanne Rice
“You wouldn’t have felt any satisfaction to see the court convict him of murder and sentence him to prison?”
“No. The best thing I ever did was pull the trigger. You know, I never expected to get past the guards. But the metal detector was broken. Can you believe that? They had a little handheld thing that they waved over all the visitors, but I snuck through in a crowd of patrolmen. I told them my name was Cathy Lake, and they let me see him.”
“An eye for an eye?”
She shook her head, and for the first time since I’d met her, Caroline Orne started to cry. “I don’t see it that way at all. An eye for an eye? I found out that he had killed another woman twelve years ago. I’ll bet her kids are happy about what I did.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, and then I walked away. On my way out I told the nurse that she should look in on Caroline, because when I left her she was sitting in her chair, gripping her ankles, head dropped down, rocking back and forth.
I HAD A HYPOTHESIS I wanted to test: did everyone who lost someone in a terrible way, through treachery or violence—someone they loved, a member of their family—want revenge? I returned to my hotel and searched my meager two-day supply of newspapers for any reference to Warren Castile’s family. Two papers ran the same picture of him, his mug shot; it showed a gaunt, hollow-eyed man, staring blankly at the camera. It might have been a photo of his ghost. The accompanying article mentioned his wife, Dora, and their two children. The Chicago telephone directory listed one Warren Castile, and I dialed the number. A woman answered.
“Mrs. Castile?” I asked.
“Yes?” she answered suspiciously.
“Are you the widow of Warren Castile?”
“I’m his mother. She doesn’t live here. You’ve got the wrong number.”
“Could you please tell me her number? I don’t see any other listings for Warren Castile.”
“That’s because they don’t have a phone. Are you a reporter?”
“No,” I said, feeling vaguely like a liar because I wanted the same information a reporter would.
“Then give me your name and number, and I’ll have her call you. I’ll be seeing her around suppertime.”
“Thank you,” I said, gave her the information, and hung up.
I could have asked his mother about the desire for vengeance, but that question belonged to his wife. Why did every situation, no matter how far off the path of normal life, make me think of me and Nick? I thought of the revenge I would seek if someone hurt him. If someone tracked him down with her father’s gun, the way Caroline Orne had done, I could imagine wanting to kill that person. But of course Nick was no murderer; the two men were not comparable. But perhaps the feelings of their wives could be.
Many hours passed; I spent that sunny afternoon in the air-conditioned hotel room, afraid that if I went out I would miss a telephone call. I told myself the call I feared missing was from Mrs. Castile, but in fact I hoped to hear from Nick. Sitting at the blond wood desk, I wrote pages about Caroline Orne on my portable typewriter. My trip to Chicago, and the discoveries I made about Caroline Orne and Dora Castile, would comprise my second quarterly report. I actually looked forward to submitting it to the Avery Foundation. I especially wanted Helen to see it. Although it wasn’t due until September, I would send it as soon as possible.
At five o’clock, eleven o’clock Greenwich Mean Time, my telephone rang, and it was Nick. I sighed at the sound of his voice. Why? With the relief of knowing that he was alive? Knowing that at that instant he belonged to me? I lay on the bed, my head against two soft pillows, and closed my eyes.
“I miss you so much,” he said. “Last night was terrible. The meeting broke up earlier than we expected, and everyone went to Simpson’s for dinner.”
“Did you have roast beef?”
“Of course. I kept looking over at the table we had last time, but there was another couple sitting there. It made me jealous to look at them.”
“Did everyone go?”
“Just John, Jean, and I. Tonight, if we ever get out of the office, we’re having Italian food at some place John knows in Chelsea. I feel like ordering a sandwich from room service, to tell you the truth.”
“I miss you like crazy,” I said.
“But everything is fine? You’re enjoying yourself in Chicago?”
“I’m not sure ‘enjoying’ is the right word,” I said, and told him about my sad session with Caroline Orne. “She really seemed around the bend, Nick. I felt so sorry for her.”
“Maybe you should treat yourself to a really nice dinner and a movie tonight,” he said.
“Maybe,” I said, thinking of how characteristic it was of Nick to say that, of how cheered he always was by small pleasures.
“Do you know when you’ll be in Black Hall?” he asked.
I had planned to stay in Chicago another night, to spend tonight listening to music under the stars at Ravinia, to see tomorrow’s game between the White Sox and Boston, then make a quick visit to the Art Institute and the Chagall mosaic, but talking to Nick across half the continent and an ocean made me want to go home.
“I wish I were there now, Nick,” I said. “With you.” I hesitated, then said what was on my mind. “I hate thinking of you in London with Jean.”
“Why did you have to say that, Georgie? God.” He sounded disgusted or discouraged. “Do you trust me or don’t you?”
“I do,” I said, but then there was a commotion in the background, someone calling his name, and he had to get back to work. We hung up. I was frowning at my reflection in the mirror when the phone rang again.
“Hello, this is Dora Castile,” came the tired voice, and I nearly told her I had to go, had to catch a plane. But instead I sat on the edge of the bed, facing my reflection in the mirror.
“This is Georgie Symonds,” I said, needing to link myself with Nick, if only by name. I explained my work for the Swift Observatory, and she listened without interrupting. “Will you talk to me?” I asked.
“What do you want to know?”
“Anything you want to tell me,” I said, thinking that her choice of topic would be interesting.
“Warren was bad news. Everyone knows that, everyone tells me that. My mother-in-law feeds my kids every night because Warren put no food on their plates. Ever. From day one. But there’s no saying what makes you love a man.”
“You loved Warren?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re sad he’s dead?” I asked, knowing the question was abrupt and rude, but I was thinking about getting to the airport.
“Yes, very sad.”
“Even though he killed the mother of the woman who shot him?”
“Oh, you’ve been appointed Judge of the Land? I didn’t hear one word about a trial. I didn’t hear one word about that.”
“How do you feel about his assailant, Caroline Orne?”
“I’ll tell you how I feel. I feel like she’s a murderer. That’s because she is one. She confessed, but she didn’t even have to do that, because the jail has every second of her crime on videotape. Warren never got a chance to confess, and there’s no one except the dead lady’s friend to say he did it.”
“What about the gun he fired? I’ve read he had it in his pocket. I’ve read he shot Dr. Orne with no provocation whatsoever.”
“Maybe he found that gun in the garage. I don’t know about that.”
“Mrs. Castile,” I said, feeling nothing good for the woman on the other end of the line, “do you want revenge against Caroline Orne? Do you want harm to come to her?”
“Yes, I do. I want that spoiled brat to rot in the nuthouse, and I want to sue the living shit out of her for the pain and suffering she has caused me and my children.” She delivered her speech with grace and emphasis.
“Thank you, Mrs. Castile,” I said. I hung up the phone, thinking of how she was proving a point I had never set out to make. Probably no one, even the wife of a murderer, could help hating the person who
hurt their beloved. Did it matter to Dora Castile that Warren Castile was a criminal and Dr. Orne a loving mother, wife, and healer?
I lay down for a second, and I fell into a deep sleep. When I wakened it was dark, and I lay there for a moment, reliving my dream. Caroline Orne and her entire family were in a prison, and some of us—me, Nick, Honora, Pem, maybe Eugene and Casey—were in the next cell. Our jailors, Jean Snizort and Warren Castile, laughed maliciously. My father was nearby, in solitary confinement. Clare and Donald were nowhere close, and that made me uneasy, because I was unsure of whether I should be happy because they had escaped or scared because they were facing worse punishment.
Slowly I sat up. I faced my reflection in the mirror. My posture straight, I looked very young, like a child quite frightened of being alone. I wore one of Nick’s cast-off oxford shirts over khaki shorts. My legs looked bony, and I identified scratches I had gotten while playing wiffle ball with Eugene and Casey, the bruise from bumping into the stove one night while rushing around the kitchen, and my scar. It was the only scar I had. When I was small I had jumped into a pile of leaves my father had been raking, and gashed my leg on the rake he had left buried there. I remembered that day exactly: the blue October sky, the smell of burning branches, the happiness I felt when my father lifted me out of the leaves and hugged me close to him. “Oh, honey, oh, honey,” he kept saying. My blood stained his wool jacket as he ran with me to the car, Clare following as fast as she could, calling, “Will she be all right?” At the hospital the doctor numbed my leg with novocaine, and my father held my hand, telling me a story about the time he and my mother hiked to the top of Mount Hawk one Thanksgiving Day when the weather was warm as August and the air so clear they could see five states. Staring at my scar in the mirror brought back happy memories and made me sad for the Ornes. Everything, even a scar, brought me back to the family. It would be the same for Caroline Orne. All through her life she would see a baby and think of the babies her mother had healed, see a horn and hear the symphonies her father had played. I felt tired enough for more sleep, but first I dialed Nick at the Savoy.
“Hello?” came his sleepy voice after the fifth ring.
“Hi, Nick. I’m sorry about what I said before.”
“What’s wrong, Georgie? Why do you have to sound so suspicious?”
“It was thinking about you in London with Jean.”
He was silent for so long, I thought he had fallen asleep. “It’s late here,” he said finally. “We’ve been working all day and most of the night, and I’m jet-lagged. It’s hard to talk about this over the phone.”
“That’s it,” I said, desperately wanting to end the conversation on a normal note, as if nothing were or ever had been wrong. “You’d better sleep now. Sweet dreams, I love you.”
“And I love you, if you’d only believe me.”
Nick hung up before I could say I do I do I do I do believe you. I do.
THE NIGHTS GREW COOLER than usual for August, and the first scarlet leaves had begun to appear in the trees of Black Hall. When I was a child those leaves had been heralds of the end of summer, the beginning of school, and I had always felt sad to see them. Now, sitting on my porch, typing the last pages of my report, I felt excited by the change in seasons. Like birds changing their plumage and migrating to southern marshes, I felt as if something fine were about to happen to me. Perhaps it was the pleasure of work progressing well. Clare and Honora left me alone most of the time; when we did meet, we would talk about my interviews, and they would tell me their impressions and try to place themselves in the situations of my subjects. Nick had returned from London and, although his workload remained heavy, he flew home to Black Hall every night. But his eyes were sad, and since those hotel-room conversations between Chicago and London, there were long silences between us.
One morning I rode my bicycle to the post office to mail my second quarterly report to the Averys. Under the hard blue sky, cloudless, reflecting the calm sea, I pedaled slowly home. I felt as though I had earned the right to leisure. Perhaps I would take a long swim with my mother, if she was in the mood. I wheeled into her driveway, propped my bike against the stone wall, and entered the house. Bloodcurdling screams greeted me. Grabbing a brass candlestick, I ran upstairs, at least three at a time.
“You’re scalding me, you’re scalding me,” cried Pem from behind the closed bathroom door.
“Honora? Are you in there?” I asked.
“Yes, I’m giving her a bath,” Honora said. “Mother, hold still.”
“Can I come in?” I asked.
“If you dare,” my mother answered.
I entered feeling nervous and shy. I had never seen Pem naked, much less in a bathtub. I worried that she would feel embarrassed by my presence, and I was afraid of seeing her body. She sat in the claw-footed tub; her head bent, she didn’t notice me at first. Ah, Pem. Her skin was white and smooth, pulled tight over her humpback. The pillowy breasts I remembered from childhood had stretched, long counterweights to the humpback, flat as empty hot-water bottles. Her white hair, now wet, looked touchingly sparse, and crusty red sores covered her scalp. She had a few wisps of pubic hair, dark as her brows, but her legs were hairless; I remember her telling me that if I started shaving my legs I’d soon “have a regular beard down there,” that she had never shaved hers, and after a while all the hair had rubbed off or fallen out. She glanced up, saw me, and smiled. “Hi! What’s this, a party?”
“Should I go?” I asked Honora, who shook her head. She stood beside the tub, wet patches covering her white blouse. She looked old, as if the battle to bathe Pem had defeated her.
“Having a bath, Pem?” I asked.
“I’ll be damned if I have a bath!”
“But you’re already having one—you’re all wet.”
She blushed, realizing I was right, then turned haughtily to stare at the towel bar.
“I’m trying to wash her hair,” Honora said. “The doctor says that’s psoriasis on her scalp. Doesn’t it look terrible?”
We both bent down for a closer look and stood peering at the ugly sores. Pem splashed some water at us. “Heh, heh,” she laughed.
“That’s not funny, Mother,” my mother said.
“Want me to shampoo her?” I asked, not really wanting to touch her head.
“I hate to say yes, Georgie, but I’m about to lose my mind.”
I held the spray nozzle in one hand, then turned on the water to adjust the pressure. Spraying it gently against the inside of my arm, I tested the temperature. It felt perfect.
“Ooooh, freezing! You’re freezing me!” Pem wailed. I made the water a little warmer.
“You’re burning me! Ouch! Where’s your mother? Honora, she’s burning me.”
Without adjusting the temperature again, I directed the stream at Pem’s head, lathered up the medicated tar prescribed by the doctor, and began to massage her scalp.
“There, there, dear,” I said, in my best hairdresser voice. “What’ll it be today? Shampoo and a curl? Maybe a manicure?”
“You’re freezing me! You’re burning me!” Pem cried.
“How about we change that hair color of yours, you’ve had it for years. Want to go platinum? Or maybe auburn? Your hair’s been white too long. Maybe we should darken it, match your brows . . .”
But Pem’s distress was so great that even the chance to tell the brow story refused to cheer her up. She hunched even further, trying to hide her face, and wept. I heard Honora crying behind me. Pem’s eyes were closed tight as a child’s, and great, round tears rolled down her withered cheeks.
“There, I think all the soap’s out,” I said after I had finished rinsing. Pem tried to stand on her own, but the tub was too slippery. Honora and I each reached under one arm and hoisted her up. She stepped out of the tub like a cowboy climbing over the corral fence after falling off a bronco. Honora wrapped a pink towel around her.
“Thank you,” Pem said. Then, with enormous dignity, she arranged
the towel around her, the mantle of a queen, and strode toward her bedroom.
“My God,” I said. “How often—”
“Once a week,” Honora said. “She makes me feel like I’m her torturer. I always wait till a sunny day, so the house will be warm, and I try to get her into the tub before she changes out of her nightgown. One curse of my meteorology background is that I usually know the night before whether it will be warm enough or not, and I dread it all night.”
“You can’t continue to bathe her alone,” I said. “She’s too heavy. Both of you could fall. From now on you have to call me or Clare.”
“Thank you for offering, sweetie. I know you’re right, but I didn’t want you to have to see her that way. Isn’t it sad?” Unconsciously, or perhaps not, Honora cupped her own breasts as she spoke. I felt like doing the same to myself, to make sure they were still full, that whatever had drained out of Pem’s remained in mine.
We walked downstairs, onto the porch. Leaning back in wicker rockers we were silent, watching swans and cygnets fish the shallows. Just two months ago we had sat in the same places, watching fireworks, eating the Fourth of July cake. I wondered how long Pem would be in our midst. She was only eighty-six; she had a long way to go to reach the venerable ages of ninety-five and one hundred that her family regularly lived to, but that day on Honora’s porch I felt something sliding away. Things couldn’t go on forever, Pem and Honora taking care of each other, looking after the rest of us. I glanced at my mother; her face looked set and old, vaguely angry, as she stared at the swans feeding with their babies. Perhaps she was thinking that she had taken care of me and Clare, and now she was taking care of Pem. When would someone ever take care of her?
“Are you mad at Pem?” I asked.
She laughed. “Mad at her? You saw her—how can I be mad at her? I feel sorry for her. Do you remember when she was with it?”
“Yes.”