Christine put her hand impulsively on Miss Octavia’s forearm. “Is she popular?” she asked. “Do the others like her?”
But before Miss Octavia could reply, before she was faced with the choice of telling an untruth or admitting that the other pupils both feared and detested Rhoda, her sister Claudia, on watch at the sidewalk, called out that the last of the children had come, and had been checked off the roster. The busses were now ready to start, the picnic to begin, and Miss Fern and her sisters, their arms loaded with those last-minute things which somebody might, after all, find a use for, walked with Mrs. Penmark down the long, flag-paved path to the gate.
For a time there was milling about, laughter, and awkward movement; then, at length, the Fern sisters, their assistants, and their pupils were all stowed safely away, and the first bus pulled out from the curb, the driver turning his head, listening, and turning his head again, with the quick movement of a suspicious bird. The lead bus had been parked in the driveway beneath the low-hanging limbs of the camphor tree, and as the driver moved his bus forward, it scraped the green branches of the tree, causing a rain of fluttering, aromatic leaves to fall to the pavement below.
At the first movement of the lead bus, at the first holiday note of departure, two Airedales who had lain contentedly with muzzles resting on their outthrust paws sprang up from the lawn of the house across the street and barked hysterically, springing into the air in frenzy, whirling, and running along the fence. The cap of one little boy blew off and rolled into the street, and the lead bus stopped while Monica Breedlove, flushed and laughing, ran forward and restored the cap to its owner; a little girl in the following bus dropped her slate—which for reasons of her own she had thought appropriate to bring along on a picnic—out of the window; and the driver of that bus, to the accompaniment of shouts, catcalls, and piercing finger-whistles, stopped his bus, went back, and retrieved it. In that interval, Mrs. Daigle rushed to the bus side for a final clutch at her son. She caressed the damp, unresisting hand he held out to her, and said, “Has your headache gone? Have you got a clean handkerchief?”
The driver, returning with the slate, said with exaggerated patience, “Watch it! Watch that window, lady!”
“You must not overexert yourself,” said Mrs. Daigle in a tense, anxious voice. “And keep out of the sun as much as you can.”
Slowly the busses moved forward again, and people came to their doors to smile and call out to the travelers; then the drivers turned the corner, but cautiously, remembering Miss Octavia’s repeated admonitions, and the street was calm once more; the picnic had begun in earnest. It was then that Rhoda moved from her seat and took possession of one nearer the little Daigle boy. Her eyes were fixed steadily on the penmanship medal, but she did not speak at all; then a moment later, when she felt more sure of herself, she stood in the aisle beside the boy, stretched out her hand and touched the medal, but Claude pulled away petulantly and said, “Why don’t you go someplace else? Why don’t you leave me alone?”
After the busses had disappeared, Mrs. Penmark moved in the direction of Mrs. Breedlove’s automobile. She turned her head to look for her friend, and saw that Monica was, as usual, the center of a group of people—old acquaintances, plainly, whom she’d not seen in a long time; and, as usual, she was talking with animation, moving her hands and her shoulders, tossing her neck wildly for emphasis. When she saw this, Mrs. Penmark moved to the strip of lawn that was between the sidewalk and the street to wait until her friend had finished her story. Two men came up and stood under the crepe-myrtle tree behind her, both looking at their watches at the same instant.
“I was reading the other day,” said the taller of the two, “that the age we live in is an age of anxiety. You know what? I thought that was pretty good—a pretty fair judgment. I told Ruth about it when I got home, and she said, ‘You can say that again!’ ”
“Every age that people live in is an age of anxiety,” said the other man. “If anybody asks me, I’d say the age we live in is an age of violence. It looks to me like violence is in everybody’s mind these days. It looks like we’re just going to keep on until there’s nothing left to ruin. If you stop and think about it, it scares you.”
“Well, maybe we live in an age of anxiety and violence.”
“Now, that sounds more like it. Come to think about it, I guess that’s what our age is really like.”
They shook hands, made a date to meet for lunch the following week, and walked toward their beckoning wives, while Mrs. Penmark stood quietly, turning over in her mind the things she had heard. It seemed to her suddenly that violence was an inescapable factor of the heart, perhaps the most important factor of all—an ineradicable thing that lay, like a bad seed, behind kindness, behind compassion, behind the embrace of love itself. Sometimes it lay deeply hidden, sometimes it lay close to the surface; but always it was there, ready to appear, under the right conditions, in all its irrational dreadfulness.
Mrs. Breedlove came up a little later and joined Christine on the grass, then, moving majestically toward her parked car, she said, “The incident of Claudia Fern’s lost train is loaded with symbolism, so I’m not surprised she remembered it all these years, and spoke of it to you. When I was in analysis, Claudia’s train kept coming up again and again; in fact, it became one of the key situations in my anxiety neurosis.” She tossed her head, waved vaguely to passers-by, and went on. “My incestuous fixation on poor Emory is so obvious that it doesn’t need elaboration; so I won’t attempt any, incest being so trite. What was more interesting in the eyes of my analyst was that the detaching of the train revealed latent penis hostility and penis envy; and it showed, besides, my impulse to mar and castrate men and women both.”
She talked with animation, nodding her head for emphasis; there was much she’d like to say, but she knew how circumspect one must be in discussing, even with the completest scientific detachment, even with those as objective and intelligent as Christine had proved herself to be, these emotionally charged matters—these primitive taboos of the half-civilized tribe—if one were not to be considered depraved, or, at best, a bit on the peculiar side; but just the same, there were many associations, many implications, some of them quite amusing, in the simple, seemingly innocent, rupture of poor Claudia’s train. But she’d restrain herself; she’d button up her big lip and omit these other things, although they were plain enough, heaven knew, to the unbiased and perceptive listener.…
But Christine heard little that she said, for her mind was still concerned with the conversation she had listened to, still fixed on the theme of violence. Her father, whom she’d loved so deeply, had himself died through the uncaring violence of others, and, remembering again, she thought: He was much too young; there should have been many years before him. If that had not happened, he might be alive today to comfort me as he did when I was a child, and frightened. She remembered the last time she had seen him; it was a week before the plane that carried him was brought down by enemy fire somewhere in the South Pacific. She had gone alone to the airport with him, her mother being ill at the time, where he was to embark on the initial leg of what was to be his final journey, and while she was seeing about his luggage, an unnecessary task which she had always insisted on doing for him, he put his arms about her and held her cheek tightly against his own. It seemed to her now that he must have had some precognition of his own end, some knowledge that this was the journey from which he would never return, for he had kissed her and had said softly in her ear, “You are the bright thing in my life. You were the thing I loved more than all others. I want you to remember that, no matter what happens. I want you to remember that always. And never change from what you are at this moment.”
Remembering now, Christine turned her head away, so that Monica’s discerning eye could not detect her emotion, and said under her breath, “I remember, Father. I remember.”
Mrs. Breedlove parked her car under the live oak, and, raising her eyes, she caught sight of Ler
oy polishing brass at the back of the house. She made a rueful gesture with her lips and said, “I’m sorry I made an issue about the hose, but Leroy can try the patience of a saint. I remind myself that he hasn’t had our opportunities or advantages, and that I have no right to expect too much from him, but, of course, I go on losing my temper and forgetting my fine sentiments.”
Hearing Mrs. Breedlove’s voice, Leroy looked up and caught her eye. She nodded and waved gaily to him, to show that their misunderstanding was a thing of the past, that she no longer cherished hard feelings, nor bore him malice; that she had found it in herself to pardon his rude behavior. But Leroy was not to be placated so easily, now that victory so plainly was his. He did not return the greeting; he only stared at her, shrugged his shoulders, and disappeared around the side of the building, in the direction of the courtyard where the new garages, once the old carriage houses, were. He rested against the building and spat on the cement, his mouth twisting with the sourness of his discontent.
That know-it-all, that Monica Breedlove; that loud-mouthed bitch. She didn’t think nobody knew anything, but her. Going around insulting people; going around looking down on people just as good as she was, and thinking she knew it all. Well, he’d show her a thing or two one of these days. He’d show that bitch plenty—and good. It wouldn’t surprise him none if she turned out to be one of them lady-lovers you read about these days.… His mind flooded with the obscenities his lips shaped under his breath; then he walked away, his eyes darting from side to side, his hands making little slashing gestures against the air. He heard the door of Mrs. Breedlove’s car close, and the two women coming up the walk, chatting together. He stood concealed behind the big japonica bush, peering at them through the leaves.
Now, that dizzy blonde—that trough-fed Christine Penmark—was something else again. He’d like to get her down in the basement some day. He’d let her have it, all right. He’d turn her every way but loose. He’d put it to her all the ways there were in the book, and he’d think up some extra ways besides. He’d make her holler calf-rope. And when he got done with her, she’d follow him about like a begging bitch. He’d make her cry and beg him for it again, that’s what. And sometimes he’d give it to her, and sometimes he wouldn’t, depending on how he felt.
Mrs. Breedlove, her hand on the door, glanced at her watch and cried out, “Heaven and earth—it’s eight-fifteen already!” She sped upstairs to get her brother out of bed, and off to work. Christine, once in her apartment, made herself a pot of coffee and brought it into the living-room, where she sipped it, and skimmed the morning paper; but her mind accepted little that she read, for her thoughts kept turning to her past.
She had met her husband in New York, the year she was twenty-four, at a time when she had come to the conclusion that she would never marry at all. She had been living with her mother on Gramercy Park that year. Her mother had been ill with a heart condition, and she had devoted herself to her as best she could. She was glad now that she had had this opportunity to return, even in so small a fashion, some of the things her mother had done for her; but her mother, although she knew she was dying, refused to become an invalid, or to make nagging demands upon others, and as a result, Christine had taken a job in an art gallery where the hours were not too long, and where her mother could get in touch with her quickly if she were needed.
That winter a Mrs. Bogardus, one of her mother’s old friends, asked Christine to a dinner party she was giving for her nephew Kenneth Penmark, a young naval lieutenant, and she had accepted more to please her mother, who felt she was too serious, that she did not go out often enough, than for any other reason. She had liked the lieutenant at once, and for a little while, before they were overwhelmed by the boisterous wholesomeness of the other guests, they had sat before the fire and discussed the painters of the Paris School. She had left early, thinking she’d made no impression on him at all, but the next afternoon he came to the gallery and said, “I want to see the Modigliani drawing you were admiring so much last night.” She showed it to him, and he said, “I’m thinking about getting it for the girl I’m going to marry. Do you suppose she’d like it?” Christine was positive the girl would like it; but if, incredibly, she did not, then she’d advise the lieutenant to waste no more time on a creature so dull. He bought the drawing and took it away with him.
That night before dinner he telephoned her at home. He was devoting the evening to Aunt Clara and family reminiscences, he said, so he wouldn’t be able to see her, as he’d hoped; but at eleven he telephoned again to say he’d got his aunt to bed at last, and that the remainder of the evening was his own. He suggested that they go dancing somewhere. She came home tired and contented, knowing that Kenneth Penmark was the one man in the world for her. The next day was Sunday, and when he telephoned, she asked him to tea, to meet her mother; later they went to the Museum of Natural History, of all places.
On Monday he sent her mother roses and herself an orchid.
His leave was up on Tuesday, and that morning he came by the gallery to tell her good-by. He gave her the Modigliani, and said, “I hope you understand the implications, my lass!” Then, in front of all those people, he took her in his arms and kissed her, turned, and went calmly through the door. Her mother died that same winter; the following spring Lieutenant Penmark came to see her, and they were married. Hers had been a most successful marriage, she thought. If she had not married Kenneth, she would not have married at all.
She put away the paper, and went about cleaning her apartment. Already she missed her husband, and although she had become reconciled to these necessary absences, she had never become used to them; and standing quietly in her living-room she thought that all her life she had waited for someone—first her father, and now her husband.
This time, since the trip was to be a long one, they had considered the idea of her accompanying her husband; but regretfully they had abandoned the notion. They told each other it was merely a question of additional expense, that the money could be better used toward the house they planned to build later on. The true reason had been deeper and had been concerned with their daughter. They felt that they could not take the child with them, and they knew that leaving her with another, even another as tolerant and doting as Mrs. Breedlove, was out of the question.
There had always been something strange about the child, but they had ignored her oddities, hoping she would become more like other children in time, although this had not happened; then, when she was six and they were living in Baltimore, they entered her in a progressive school which was widely recommended; but a year later the principal of the school asked that the child be removed. Mrs. Penmark called for an explanation, and the principal, her eyes fixed steadily on the decorative, gold-and-silver sea horse her visitor wore on the lapel of her pale-gray coat, said abruptly, as though both tact and patience had long since been exhausted, that Rhoda was a cold, self-sufficient, difficult child who lived by rules of her own, and not by the rules of others. She was a fluent and a most convincing liar, as they’d soon discovered. In some ways, she was far more mature than average; in others, she was hardly developed at all. But these things had only slightly affected the school’s decision; the real reason for the child’s expulsion was the fact that she had turned out to be an ordinary, but quite accomplished, little thief.
Mrs. Penmark closed her eyes, and then said quietly, “Has it occurred to you that you could be wrong—that your judgment isn’t necessarily infallible?”
The principal admitted that the thought of her fallibility had occurred to her not once, but many times. It bothered her, in fact, at this precise moment, but not in reference to the thefts, for there was no doubt on that point at all; they had set a trap for the thief and had caught Rhoda red-handed. Her reaction to the child’s acts had not been one of condemnation, but one of sympathy. “We’ve had similar problems in the school before,” she finished, “and so I took Rhoda at once to the school psychiatrist for his opinion.”
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Christine sighed, covered her face with her hands, and said in a weak voice, “What was his opinion? What did he suggest?”
The principal waited, and then went on to say that in many respects the psychiatrist considered Rhoda the most precocious child he’d ever seen; her quality of shrewd, mature calculation was remarkable indeed; she had none of the guilts and none of the anxieties of childhood; and of course she had no capacity of affection, either, being concerned only with herself. But perhaps the thing that was most remarkable about her was her unending acquisitiveness. She was like a charming little animal that can never be trained to fit into the conventional patterns of existence.…
At ten o’clock the postman came. There was a letter from her husband, and as Christine read the closely written pages, she said, “Oh, Kenneth! Oh, Kenneth!” in the soft, deprecating voice with which the pleased accept their flattery. Resolutely she dismissed from her mind the things that troubled her. She felt a wave of irrational happiness, for it seemed to her at that moment that she had everything a woman could desire. She seated herself at her desk to answer the letter, but first she rested her hands against her cheeks, and looked out at the soft, green street, holding on to her happiness, which was wise, for it was the last she was ever to feel.
THREE
Mrs. Breedlove lived with her brother on the floor above the Penmarks. There had been a great event in her life, one which she had not been able to forget. In the middle twenties, her husband, not knowing what else to do with her, acceded to her wish that she go to Vienna and be psychoanalyzed by Professor Freud. The story of her analysis was one which she never tired of telling—one whose possibilities she never succeeded in exhausting. It seemed that after her intense initial session with the professor, he had said frankly that her particular temperament was beyond his skill, and had suggested that she go to London and seek the aid of his pupil Dr. Aaron Kettlebaum. This she had done.
The Bad Seed Page 4