by Peter Straub
She turned her head from side to side in emphatic contradiction. “I didn’t believe it at the time, and I don’t believe it now, though I’m sorry to say it to her own son. She was looking for someone. Or she saw someone walk up.”
May said, “According to Joy—”
Nettie glanced at her sister before looking back at me. “I asked her, ‘What’s happening, sweetheart? You can tell me,’ and she said, ‘Aunt Nettie, I’m afraid something bad is going to happen.’ Then she asked if I called you. ‘Your boy’s on the way,’ I said, and she closed her eyes and let herself go to sleep. I sat with her a while, and then I went back into the kitchen.”
Sensing an opening, Clark leaned forward again. “I come downstairs and see a woman holed up on my davenport! What in tarnation is this, I wonder, and come up slow and easy and bend over to get a good look. ‘Hello, Clark,’ she said, and just like that she was out again.”
“May came over, and I made all of us a nice breakfast. After a while, in she comes, putting on a nice smile. She told Clark, ‘I thought I saw your handsome face, Uncle Clark, but I thought I was dreaming.’ She sat at the table, but wouldn’t take any nourishment.”
“Those two took it for her,” Clark said. “Eat like a couple of tobacco farmers.”
“Not me,” May said. “It’s all I can do to eat enough to stay alive.”
“She looked better, but she didn’t look right. Her skin had a gray cast, and there wasn’t any shine to her eyes. The worst thing was, I could see she was so fearful.”
“That girl was never afraid of anything,” Clark announced. “She knew she was sick, that’s what you saw.”
“She knew she was sick, but she was afraid for Neddie.”
“For me?” I said.
“That’s right,” May put in.
“Clark heard her, too, but he paid no attention because it wasn’t about his handsome face.”
“What did she say?” I thought my mother had already given me a clue.
“ ‘A terrible thing could happen to my son, and I have to stop it.’ That’s what she said.”
“I ain’t deef,” Clark said.
20
A few minutes later, I jumped into a brief, uncharacteristic lull to ask if my mother had said anything more about the terrible thing from which she wanted to protect me.
“It wasn’t much,” Nettie said. “I don’t suppose she could have explained.”
May said, “She asked how I was getting on without James. Star was here for his funeral, you know.” A dark glance reminded me that I had been absent. “She didn’t seem lively and full of fun, the way she used to be. I remember she asked Nettie to get in touch with some of her old friends. Then she started toward the counter and made this funny surprised sound. That’s when she fell smack down on the floor. I swear, I thought she had left us. Lickety-split, Clark was on the phone.”
“Superman never moved faster,” Clark said.
I drew in a large breath and let it out. “This is going to sound funny, but did she mention anything about my father?”
May and Nettie stared at me, and Clark’s mouth dropped open, momentarily making him look witless.
“I think she wants me to know who he was.” An irresistible idea soared into my mind, and I hitched forward in my chair. “She wanted me to get here before it was too late. She didn’t want me to spend the rest of my life wondering about him.”
Clark seemed baffled. “Why in heaven would you wonder about that?”
“Star never said a word about your father from the day you were born,” Nettie said.
“Probably she kept putting it off and putting it off until she realized that time was running out.”
The aunts exchanged a glance I could not interpret. “You must have felt that my mother brought shame on your family. You took her in, and you gave me a home. Aunt Nettie and Aunt May, I’m grateful for everything you did. But I’m not ashamed that Star wasn’t married when I was born.”
“What the dickens are you talking about?” Clark said.
Nettie said, “Star never brought shame on our family.”
“At the time, you must have thought you had to conceal …” The sentence trailed off before their absolute incomprehension.
May seemed to try to get me into better focus. “Neddie, Star was married when she had you.”
“No, she wasn’t,” I said. “This is exactly what I’m talking about.”
“She most certainly was,” Nettie insisted. “She took off, the way she did, and when she came back she was a married woman about a week before delivery. Her husband had left her, but I saw the papers.”
All three regarded me with varying degrees of disapproval, even indignation.
“How come she never told me?”
“Women don’t have to tell their children they were born on the right side of the blanket.”
A myriad of odd sensations, like the flares of tiny fireworks, sparkled through my chest. “Why did she give me her name instead of his?”
“You were more a Dunstan than whatever he was. His name didn’t count for anything.”
“Do you still have the papers?”
“They’d be long gone, by now.”
I silently agreed. With the exception of her driver’s license, my mother’s attitude toward official documents tended toward a relaxation well past the point of carelessness.
“Let me see if I have this right,” I said. “She left home with a man you didn’t know, married him, and became pregnant. Her husband abandoned her shortly before I was born.”
“It was something like that,” Nettie said.
“What did I get wrong?”
Nettie pursed her lips and folded her hands in her lap. Either she was trying to remember, or she was editing the story into acceptable form. “I recall her telling me that the fellow took off a couple months after she learned she was carrying. She could have come back here, but she bought a ticket somewhere…. I can’t remember, but she had a girlfriend in school there. At the time she left town, Star wasn’t living with me. She was in with a crowd from Albertus, doing God knows what.”
The women got to their feet. A second later, I joined them. “Didn’t Star want us to call her friends?”
Nettie rammed the pickle jar into her bag. “Most of those people didn’t know how to conduct themselves in a decent home. Besides, they probably moved out a long time ago.”
“She must have had someone in mind.”
“If you want to waste your time, here’s her address book.” She groped through the contents of her bag and brought out a worn, black leather book like a pocket diary.
From the door of the lounge, Clark was casting irritated glances at May’s efforts to unhook her cane from a chair. Nettie moved grandly away. I knelt down to free the cane and placed it in May’s outstretched hand.
“Aunt May,” I asked, “what did Joy say to you this morning?”
“Oh. We straightened that out. Joy made a mistake.”
“About what?”
“I said to her, ‘Joy, you’ll never guess, Star’s over at Nettie’s.’ ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I saw her with my own eyes, standing out front and talking to her boy. He’s an extremely handsome young man!’ ”
“I guess that proves it wasn’t me,” I said.
“No, it doesn’t,” she said, “but I know what does. If Star met you outside the house, she wouldn’t ask Nettie to call you on the telephone.”
21
Star’s address book was a palimpsest of the comings and goings of herself and her acquaintances over what looked like a great many years. I stood beside the bank of telephones on the ground floor and leafed through the chaos, looking for the Edgerton area code. I came up with three names, one of them that of a person in deep disfavor with Nettie and May.
I dialed his number first. A sandpaper voice said, “Pawnshop.” When I spoke his name, he said, “Who were you expecting, Harry Truman?” The impression that Nettie and May were right to d
espise their late sister’s husband vanished as soon as I had explained myself. “Ned, that’s terrible news. How is she doing?”
I told him what I could.
“Look,” Toby Kraft said, “I got some people in from out of town on a big estate deal, and I’m trying to expand my business, understand? I’ll be there quick as I can. Hey, I want to get a look at you, too, kid, it’s been a long time.”
Before he could hang up, I said, “Toby, Star wanted us to call her old friends, and I wondered if you knew two people who were in her book.”
“Make it fast,” he said.
I turned to the first of the Edgerton names. “Rachel Milton?”
“Forget it. Way back when, she used to be Rachel Newborn. Used to go to Albertus. Nice knockers. Rachel was okay until she married this prick, Grennie Milton, and moved out to Ellendale.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and said something I could not hear. “Kid, I have to go.”
“One more. Suki Teeter.”
“Yeah, call Suki. Talk about jugs, she was the champ. She and your mom, they liked each other. Bye.”
The former jug champ’s telephone rang six times, then twice more without the intervention of an answering machine. I was about to hang up when she answered on the tenth ring. Suki Teeter was no more given to conventional greetings than Toby Kraft.
“Sweetheart, if you’re looking for money, too bad, this is the wrong number.” The underlying buoyancy in her voice made a little self-contained comedy of the time she had taken to answer, the unknown caller, her financial condition, and anyone straitlaced enough to take offense.
I told her who I was.
“Ned Dunstan? I can’t believe it. Where are you, in town? Did Star give you my number?”
“In a way,” I said. “I’m calling from St. Ann’s Community.”
“Star’s in the hospital.”
I described what had happened that morning. “Before the stroke, she said to call her friends and let them know if there was an emergency. Maybe you’d like to come here. It might do her some good.” Without warning, sorrow blasted through my defenses and clutched my chest. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to do this to you.”
“I don’t mind if you cry,” she said. “Is she conscious?”
The question helped me climb back into control. “When she isn’t asleep.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I put myself together. Who else did you call?”
“Toby Kraft. And I have one other name. Rachel Milton.”
“Really? I’m surprised. Maybe they stayed friends, I don’t know. Rachel sure as hell dropped everybody else. Ned? I hope we can spend some time together.”
In a voice made of honey and molasses, the woman who answered the Miltons’ telephone told me that she would inform Mrs. Rachel she had a call, and who was it from? I gave her my name and added that I was the son of an old friend. The line went dead for a couple of minutes. When Rachel Milton finally picked up, she sounded nervous, impatient, and bored.
“Please let me apologize for the time you’ve been waiting. Lulu went wandering all around the house trying to find me when all she had to do was use the intercom.”
I was almost certain that she had spent two minutes deciding whether or not to take my call.
“Is there something I should know?”
After I explained, Rachel Milton clicked her tongue against her teeth. I could practically see the wheels going around in her head. “I hope you won’t think I’m terrible, but I won’t be able to get there today. I’m due at the Sesquicentennial Committee in about five minutes, but please give your mother my love. Tell her I’ll see her just as soon as I can.” The wish not to be unnecessarily brusque led her to say, “Thank you for calling, and I hope Star has a speedy recovery. The way I’m going, I’ll probably wind up in the hospital, too!”
“I could reserve you a room at St. Ann’s,” I said.
“Grenville, my husband, would kill me. He’s on the board of Lawndale. You ought to hear him get going on the federal funds pouring into St. Ann’s Community. They should be able to raise King Tut from his tomb, is all I can say.”
After Rachel Milton hung up, I shoved my hands in my pockets and followed the corridor past the glass wall of the gift shop. A few men and women in bathrobes sat on the padded benches on the side of the immense, gray lobby, and half a dozen people stood in a line before the reception desk.
A small, fair-haired boy with gleeful blue eyes took in my approach from a stroller. His T-shirt bore the image of a pink dinosaur. Babies and small children charm me right out of my socks. I can’t help it, I love that moment when they look inside you and spot a fellow spirit. I waggled my fingers and pulled an idiotic face that had been a big hit with the toddler set on previous occasions. The little boy whooped with delight. The tall, sturdy-looking woman beside him glanced down, looked up at me, then back to the child, who was crying “Bill! Bill!” and trying to propel himself out of the stroller. “Honey,” she said, “this isn’t Bill.”
My first impression, that she looked like the female half of a local anchor team, vanished before the acknowledgment of the intelligence that irradiated her striking, even strikingly beautiful, presence. Her beauty and her intelligence were inextricable, and my second impression, standing before her lithe, tawny gaze and smiling at the efforts of her son to escape the stroller and hurl himself at me, was that if she resembled anything at all, it was a blond, particularly conscious female panther. Some quick recognition flashed in her eyes, and I thought she had seen everything that had just passed through my mind.
I would probably have blushed—my admiration was that naked—if she had not almost deliberately released me by attending to her son, allowing me the psychic space to register the perfection with which her dark blond hair had been cut to fall like a veil across her face and the expensive simplicity of her blue silk blouse and white linen skirt. Lined up before the information desk with a dozen shapeless Edgertonians in T-shirts and shorts, she seemed unreasonably exotic. She smiled up at me, and again I saw that at least half of her smooth, shieldlike beauty was the intelligence that flowed through it.
“He’s a beautiful boy,” I said, unable to avoid the word.
The beautiful boy was struggling to pull his feet through the straps of the stroller, in the process levering off a blue sneaker with a Velcro strap. “Thanks,” she said. “This man is very nice, Cobbie, but he isn’t Bill.”
I put my hands on my knees, and the boy swiveled and stared at my face. His eyes darkened in confusion, then cleared again. He chortled.
She said, “Good, this line is finally starting to move.”
I straightened up and waved goodbye. Cobbie ecstatically waved back, and she met my eyes with a glance that warmed me all across the lobby and outside into the sunlight. Beyond the low stone wall at the far end of the parking lot, the land dropped away to the bank of the slow, brown-gray Mississippi. It struck me that the river crawled along the city’s western flank like an unhappy secret. I wondered if the aunts had old stories from the days when Edgerton had been a river town. Then, foolishly, I started to wonder if I would see the woman I had met in the lobby ever again. What was supposed to happen if I did? She had a child, therefore a husband, and what she represented to me was no more than a convenient distraction from my fears for my mother. It was enough to have been reminded that such people actually existed.
22
Thinking of the nights ahead, I ducked into the gift shop and picked up a couple of paperback mystery novels and some candy. The white-haired volunteer behind the cash register searched the books’ covers for the prices and dowsed a finger over the keys.
Behind me, a childish voice said, “You’re—not—Bill,” and burst into giggles. I turned around to see a familiar pair of dancing blue eyes. He was holding a sneaker in one hand and a new teddy bear in the other.
“I’m not?” I smiled at his mother. Her attractiveness seemed more than ever like a shield behind which she coul
d come to her private conclusions about the responses it evoked.
“We meet again,” she said.
“The way this hospital is designed, sooner or later you see everybody twice.”
“Do you know how to find the intensive care unit? I’ve never been here before.”
“Third floor,” I said. “Follow me.”
The woman behind the counter counted out my change and slid the paperbacks and the candy into a bag. I moved aside, and the boy’s mother came up to the counter. “How much are the teddy bears?”
The woman peered at the child. In high hilarity, the child peered back. “Our ICU patients can’t receive gifts or flowers.”
“It’s for him.” She groped into her bag. “A reward for behaving himself. Or maybe a bribe, I don’t know. Our otherwise completely adorable baby-sitter abandoned us this afternoon.”
The boy pointed at me and said, “You’re—not—not—not—Bill!”
“I am too,” I said.
The boy clapped the sneaker and the teddy bear to his chest and roared with laughter. Ah, appreciation. I tried to remember his name but could not. He fixed his eyes on mine and said, “Bill rides a lawn mower!”
“No, you ride a lawn mower,” I said, contradiction being the first principle of four-year-old humor. We left the shop and turned toward the elevators.
“Your new best friend is my son Cobbie, and I’m Laurie Hatch,” she said. “My cleaning woman had an operation yesterday, and I wanted to say hello. You’re seeing someone in intensive care, too?”
“My mother.” We came to the rank of closed doors, and I pushed the button. “Ned Dunstan. Hello.”
“Hello, Ned Dunstan,” she said with a feathery brush of irony, and then looked at me more thoughtfully, almost impersonally. “I’ve heard that name before. Do you live here in town?”