Wicked Angel

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  Mark, three years younger than Kathy, felt a passionate regret and sorrow for her, and he did not quite know why. And then it suddenly occurred to him that never, in all their married life, had he asked her what she really thought about their son. In earlier years he had taken it for granted that he knew; but he understood, tonight, that he did not know.

  “Kathy,” he said, as he put on his coat, “you’re with Angelo most of the day, when he comes home from school, and you spend a lot of time at night going over his lessons with him. Kathy, what do you think about Angelo?”

  Kathy was combing her auburn curls into a becoming swirl. She paused, the comb in her hand, and regarded her husband with wide eyes in the mirror. “Angel?” she said. “My Angel? What a funny question. He’s just my Angel.”

  She put down her comb, and her face took on its usual ethereal expression when she thought of her son. She clasped her hands on the top of her mirrored dressing table. She began to smile.

  “Kathy!” cried Mark, and there was a harsh grating in his voice. “I mean honestly. Not what you think you should think. Not what you believe you should feel. But simply, truthfully.”

  The smile left her face, leaving it sagging and middle-aged and bleak. “I don’t know what you mean! Mark, what’s the matter with you? What can I, Angel’s mother, think about him, except what others think too, that he’s utterly adorable, well-adjusted, brilliant, well-bred, a leader, a boy full of authority and charm? No child could be more delightful than Angel. I thank God every day for being blessed with such a boy, especially when I look at other children his age, so nondescript, so average, so dull, so faceless. Just you wait! Just talk with the headmistress tonight, your great pal, Miss Simmons! She can tell you!”

  “I don’t care about Miss Simmons.” Mark sat down with a feeling of collapse on his bed. “You’re his mother. What do you think about him at night, when you’re alone, Kathy? Kathy, for God’s sake, look at me! I’m your husband; I love you. Angelo’s my child, too. Why can’t we talk about him without hyperboles? Why can’t he be discussed just like any other kid, without extravagance, just soberly and thoughtfully, as other parents discuss their kids?”

  Kathy became very quiet. She looked down at her newly manicured nails. “You forget, Mark. Angel’s not like other boys.”

  “In what way?” There was such a constriction in his chest. He looked at the bedroom door. Was Angelo listening there, as he quite often listened?

  “He’s so superior—”

  “Kathy. I’ll never ask you again, so help me God, unless you answer me this time, with truth and openness.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Kathy. “You aren’t well, are you, Mark? You’ve been working too hard. Oh, please, don’t look so tight! You can be so emotional.” She paused, and studied her nails again, and slowly shook her head. “Mark, I don’t know. He is so lovely, he’s so perfect. Sometimes I wonder if it’s right! He should have some faults, I suppose.”

  “He has them,” said Mark grimly. “He has the most awful and uncontrollable temper, flaring up about nothing, and really devastating. You thought it cute when he was younger, when he would angrily sweep the dinner plates and glasses off the table when he flew into one of his rages. He doesn’t do that now. I mean, not that childishly. But he becomes uncontrollable, and you know it. He becomes—wild. Almost savage.”

  “All children have their faults!” said Kathy, coming at once to the rescue of her son. “Angel has his rages; he’ll get over them in time. And you know he doesn’t go off into them too frequently—hardly once a month now.”

  “When he did. the last time, you had bruises on your arms, Kathy.” Mark’s voice was low, but his eyes remained on hers and held them. “Bad bruises.”

  She laughed prettily. “Oh, he’s so strong! He just took hold of my arms and insisted!”

  Mark got up and went to his wife and put his hand on her shoulder. She stopped laughing. “Dear,” he said, “he’s the only child we have. We’re responsible for him. Kathy, I think, sometimes, there is something wrong with Angelo, and that perhaps—”

  A strange white look of terror swent across her face, wiping away the youthfulness, leaving her features stark. She flung away Mark’s hand. “How can you talk that way! Mark, you must be insane, or something! What in God’s name do you mean?”

  So, thought Mark, with a taste of sickness in his mouth, she thinks so, too. Perhaps she really doesn’t actually think it, but her normal instincts stir, and they frighten her and she puts them out of her mind and consciousness.

  Then he said, in a very low voice, “He lies, Kathy. You know he does. He doesn’t lie to get out of punishment, or in fear, as normal kids do. He lies without reason.”

  “That’s because he has such an intense imagination!” Kathy’s voice fluttered; she clenched her hands on her dressing table. “You know very well, Mark, that all children imagine things; they make up the wildest stories, and actually believe them! Why—don’t you remember, when he was four, he shouted that there was a tiger in the garden, a real tiger, with stripes and big teeth, and he really believed it!”

  “He isn’t four now, Kathy. He’s ten. He isn’t a baby with an uncontrolled imagination. But he lies. He makes up fantastic stories; he doesn’t even expect us to believe them. He lies, and looks us right in the face, grinning and challenging us to refute the lies. You never do. You think it’s a sort of ‘game,’ and you girlishly enter into it with him, and all the time he’s making fun of you. Sit down, Kathy, please, and listen to me. This is deadly serious. He is older, mentally and physically, than his age. Why won’t you sit down? He isn’t deceived by his stories; he isn’t just exercising his imagination. He’s waiting to see how far he can go, and the further he goes the less he respects you—me.”

  “You don’t understand, Mark! I enter into it, as you call it so meanly, because his stories are so fantastic and so original; he doesn’t fool me and he doesn’t intend to fool me. It is all such a game, honest it is.”

  “Such as when he told you that that tiny Miss Jane Whythe, his new English teacher, hates him and persecutes him, and tries to belittle him, and won’t let him orate in class as the other children do? And that she torments him? You’ll remember that he wanted you to write Miss Simmons and complain about Miss Whythe, who is young and uncertain, and try to get her fired? Do you call that a babyish story?”

  “You’re making something of nothing! All children dislike some of their teachers and complain about them. It doesn’t mean a thing. And I don’t care for Jane Whythe much myself. She’s hardly more than a mite, and if she weighs eighty pounds soaking wet I’d be surprised. She’s trying to compensate for her lack of stature by picking on the tallest and biggest boy in the class, Angel, even if he is at least two years younger than the others.”

  “Angelo wrote out the letter he wanted you to copy and send to Miss Simmons. It wasn’t a child’s letter; it was the letter of a vengeful and hating adult.”

  Kathy’s face broke out into a luminous smile. “It was, wasn’t it! So mature! Even though I refused to copy it, I had to admire it! You’d think a college boy wrote it!”

  But Mark did not smile. He said, “Kathy, please. You’ve met Miss Whythe. She’s anxious and dedicated, and she’s only about twenty, and deadly serious about ‘her children,’ and concerned with them. Do you think she’s capable of persecuting any child, and hating any child, or deliberately frustrating any child? Angelo lied, Kathy.”

  “Well, he doesn’t like her. Look at the time! If you’re going with me, Mark, we must really go now.” Her face was set, and closed to him, and he sighed and stood up and knew it was no use at all. But still he remembered that moment when her face had whitened and looked afraid and stark, and he remembered how her eyes had widened as if she were seeing something frightful which she would not acknowledge even to herself. Love overcame normal instincts of self-preservation and awareness, sometimes to its own destruction. No wonder it preferred to be blind, to accept
all things, to endure all things, in order that it might exist, that it might not be dashed into oblivion.

  They paused in the breakfast room where Angelo was working on his homework. Betty, with her red cheeks, was contentedly knitting near him, and she smiled at Mark, but not at Kathy. Why she had remained so long was somewhat of a mystery to Mark, except that he had induced Kathy to pay her thirty-five dollars a week to which he surreptitiously added twelve. Yet, he had done the same with others and they had not stayed. She was a very intelligent girl, and she was fond of Angelo, and played games with him, and he repeatedly declared that he liked her, too. Mark believed this. In Betty’s comfortable and acquiescent company Angelo was at ease. She demanded nothing from him; she did not ask him to be virtuous, to be kind or considerate, to be honest, to be patient; she did not ask him to love her. Was this the one and only way to deal with people like Angelo, to live with them only on the surface and never to ask of them any love, and responsibility, or any respect? But what do I mean by “people like Angelo”? Mark asked himself. He’s not like other kids—what is he like? I think I should see a doctor myself!

  Kathy, as usual, began to fuss impatiently as soon as she entered the breakfast room. She was jealous, unconsciously. “Betty, you won’t forget Angel’s cocoa, will you? Not too much cream; just a little floated on the surface, whipped, with the tiniest smidgen of vanilla—”

  “I’ve been making it every night, Mrs. Saint,” said the girl imperturbably. Angelo lifted his incredibly handsome head and grinned at her.

  “You don’t have to be impudent!” said Kathy sharply. “I was just reminding you. And be sure and take any skin off his rice pudding.”

  Mark looked at his large and muscular son, who appeared to be at least twelve. “Does he eat every night before he goes to bed?” he asked Kathy.

  “Why certainly. He’s a growing baby and needs all the nourishment he can absorb,” said Kathy, bridling.

  The adult and unchildish face now looked smoothly and blandly at Mark. The light brown eyes were as candid as brook water. And all at once Mark thought: He despises me, he laughs at me, he derides me!

  The thought was shattering, and it came from nowhere, like a blaze of lightning. Mark took Kathy’s arm and said, “Let’s go. We’re late.”

  Kathy chattered all the way to the school, where the teachers and parents were to have what Kathy called “their monthly cozy meeting and discussions about The Children.” This was a special occasion. The teachers were to entertain the parents not with the usual coffee and little cakes, but a light buffet dinner. The school was a small and private one, and the teachers were unusually capable and well-versed in their subject matter, and the fees were expensive. Mark’s plea for a public school had been overridden by Kathy. Now he was not displeased; Angelo, in the fifth grade, was studying French and elementary Latin, and the courses were far in advance of the usual public school’s. Miss Simmons, the head of this very exclusive school, was independently wealthy, and would accept no boy, no matter what his background or advantages, who was not at least slightly above the average in intelligence. Even then, the dullest fourth were weeded out of the school during the first year, to make room for those more worthy of education. “Let the public schools practice their democracy,” she would say with tartness. “But America needs its best minds.” She had what she called her “spies” in the neighboring public schools—teachers who reported to her on the superior intelligence of boys in their classes. In some manner, thereafter, these boys would suddenly find themselves in possession of scholarships to Miss Simmons’ Boys Academy.

  Miss Simmons was a tall and very old lady, but very erect, very commanding, and very thin. Her white hair crowned her head in the style of her youth, and her clear blue eyes had a girllike freshness and directness. Mark thought of her as he was driving through the haunting sweetness and lonely but urgent quiet of the spring evening. She, above all, would never be deceived, not even by a boy as clever as Angelo. He, Mark, would find an opportunity to talk with her alone tonight, tactfully. Unless Kathy tried to monopolize her as usual, with constant eager chatter about her son.

  The other parents, already assembled in the special meeting room, greeted Mark in a friendly fashion, but expended their beaming affection on Kathy, who immediately began to trill, to ask, effusively, about The Boys, to listen with sympathy, with birdlike brightness, with gurglings of pleasure, with little soft sounds, with smiles and head-cockings, as the occasions demanded. Mark knew she was not in the least interested in the sons of other parents, that, in fact, she disliked other children and was jealous if they displayed any superiority to Angelo, but she hid this wonderfully well and all were deceived, except her husband. Behind the shine of her intent eyes was a wandering expression which no one discerned; she glanced about her eagerly, to be recognized. She responded to questions about Angelo with a glow. Her billowing skirts kept up a constant little twirl and sway; she clapped her hands lightly, laughed like a child, coquetted innocently, leaned forward not to miss the slightest word. Mark felt so tired that he thought he could lie right there on the polished floor and sleep in spite of the shrill voices and laughter of the mothers, and the subdued chuckles of the fathers. He looked about for Miss Simmons; she was directing the buffet supper over which some of the teachers were so anxious and busy and careful. She began to fill small glasses with sherry. Mark disliked sherry; it gave him heartburn. I could use, he thought, a giant highball, with bourbon, and then I could go to sleep forever. As usual, there were three mothers to every father, and the fathers were yawning and glancing with disfavor, across the room, at the impending sherry. Mark knew only a few of them, and he was in no mood for talk about business or golf or fishing, or even the stock market.

  He became aware at last that little Miss Whythe, for whom he had a tender spot as he had for all small young things whether human or animal, was not present. He had met her but once, a shy little creature with dark brown eyes and a mass of lighter brown curls, a pointed, elfin face and a smile that was too serious for her twenty or so years. She was the youngest teacher in the school, and had appeared only last September, and Miss Simmons had remarked that even at her early age she had her master’s in English and English literature, and would, next year, have her PhD. Miss Simmons considered her school fortunate to have Miss Whythe on its staff, and, as she herself was old enough, and older, to be the girl’s grandmother, she was unusually fond of her.

  Mark went over to the table and smiled at Miss Simmons, and her stern, uncompromising face relaxed, and she smiled in return. “How nice to see you, Mr. Saint,” she said. She handed him the large sherry bottle; to his regret, he saw it was domestic and not of excellent quality. But Miss Simmons was not one to spend money lavishly except on her school. He began to help with the pouring of the murky brown liquid. “Not very good,” said Miss Simmons cheerfully, “but how many people know a good sherry from a poor one these days? It wasn’t like that when I was young, but, ah me! the uses of democracy and what the politicians call ‘our constantly expanding and dynamic standard of living’!”

  Mark laughed a little. He poured carefully. He said, “Where’s Miss Whythe tonight? I particularly wanted to ask her how Angelo is coming along in her class.”

  “Oh, the poor child. She fell and broke her arm two weeks ago. That doesn’t prevent her from coming to class, but she isn’t up to parties. Besides, she lives with her old grandmother, and the dear child thinks she mustn’t leave the old lady alone in the evenings very often. She supports her, you know. Girls like Jane can’t be found very often these days.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about her arm,” said Mark, with true sympathy. “How did it happen?”

  “Really, I am sometimes very vexed when I think about it,” said Miss Simmons. “She saw all those big boys practicing football and racing and yelling around the schoolyard, and diving and tackling and all the other things they do at that time. They’re like wild horses, especially in the spring. I had just
had a load of special, porous stones delivered for a rock garden in a spot near the wall where nothing else would grow, and the fool of a man dumped them, not at the spot near the mound of waiting soil, but about fifteen feet away. Jane always takes a shortcut across the schoolyard, to get home faster and catch the bus, but the other teachers are more discreet when they see the bigger boys running and yelling and kicking at practice, or playing baseball. They avoid the schoolyard then and so do the younger children. Of course, it was after four o’clock, and all the other teachers had gone, but Jane had remained behind to talk with a boy.” Miss Simmons’ face changed subtly. “The boy was leaving the school—at his own request—and he was heartbroken and so was Jane, and she was trying to change his mind.

  “Really,” continued Miss Simmons, slapping down a plate, “it was the most stupid thing. I’ve forbidden the boys to practice so roughly like that at long after four in the afternoon after this, and have put the football team out of bounds for two weeks as a punishment. Poor little Jane was hurrying; she doesn’t know, herself, just what happened, except that she was just crossing in front of that big heap of stones, which are odd-shaped and some of which have sharp edges to fit into the soil, when all at once the team stampeded in her direction like wild ponies. The boys weren’t looking of course; they didn’t see Jane until they were almost on her, and they were pummeling each other, as well as running, and diving at each other’s legs, heads bent, and tackling, and heaven knows what else, and shouting like mad. It had been a rainy day, and the light was not very clear. Jane stopped, thinking that the big heap of rocks would give her some protection as she stood in front of them, for naturally the boys would see them and swerve in time. And so they did, barely missing her. But one or two were pounding ahead like mad, wild animals, and they didn’t swerve fast enough, and either one or two hurled into Jane. You know, she’s so very small, not as tall as many of her own students, and she was just thrown like a feather onto the stones.”