Edna looked at the child with a strange, intense look. She said, “Mamma hated cats. She was afraid of them all her life. All the kittens in Baltimore could have been on the landing mewing and she wouldn’t have gone near them.”
Rhoda’s eyes opened wide in surprise. “But she did, though, Miss Edna. She went out there to look for the little kitten just like I said.”
“Where’s the kitten now?” asked Edna.
“It ran away,” said Rhoda earnestly. “I saw it running down the steps. It was a little gray kitten with white feet.”
Then, in sudden alarm, she tugged at Edna’s sleeve and said, “She promised me the little glass ball when she died. It’s mine now, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Penmark said, “Rhoda! Rhoda! How can you say such a thing?”
“But she did, Mother,” said Rhoda patiently. “She promised it to me. Miss Edna heard her do it.”
Edna looked strangely at the child and said, “Yes, she promised it to you. It’s yours now. I’ll go get it for you at once.”
Mrs. Penmark remembered these things with painful clarity, and now, looking back, she also remembered that neither she nor her husband had been asked to the funeral, although the other neighbors had gone. She also recalled that, later on, when she’d met Edna in the elevator, and had spoken to her, the daughter, who had always been so pleasant and friendly, had turned her back and pretended not to hear.… For a time Rhoda had worn the ball each night when she went to bed; for a time she would rest against her pillow, her lips pursed, her eyes narrowed in an expression reminiscent of the old woman, and peer down into the shifting opals, as though she had not only taken the old woman’s pendant, but her personality as well.
Upon impulse, Christine went quickly to her child’s room. She saw the opal ball looped over one post of the little girl’s bed, as though it were a charm. She lifted the ornament in her hand a moment; but she let it fall at once, as though it were somehow evil, as though it had burned her hand.
When Rhoda came back from the park, Christine said abruptly, even before the child had put her book away, “Were the things you told the Fern sisters about Claude Daigle the truth?”
“Yes, Mother. They were all the truth. You know I don’t tell lies anymore, after you said I mustn’t.”
Christine waited a moment, and then went on. “Did you have anything to do—anything at all, no matter how little it was—with Claude getting drowned?”
Rhoda stared at her, an expression of surprise on her face, and then said cautiously, “What makes you want to know that, Mother?”
“I want you to tell me the truth, no matter what it is. We can manage things some way, but if we’re to do it, I must know the truth.” She put her hand on the child’s shoulder, and said impulsively, “I want you to look me in the eyes, and tell me. I must know the absolute truth.”
The child gazed at her with bright, candid eyes, and said, “No, Mother. I didn’t.”
“You’re not going back to the Fern School next year,” said Mrs. Penmark presently. “They don’t want you there anymore.”
An expression of wariness came over the child’s face. She waited, but since her mother did not go on with the subject, she moved away slowly, and said, “Okay. Okay.” She went immediately to her own room, sat at her table, and began working on her jigsaw puzzle.
Later Christine got out her typewriter and began a letter to her husband, a much longer one than she usually wrote him. She dated the letter June 16, 1952, and began: My darling, my darling!… She typed on and on, as though it were only thus she could rid herself of the things that troubled her. She gave him the details of the penmanship medal which Rhoda had not won, after all; she wrote of the Daigle boy’s death; she told him of the Fern School’s unwillingness to accept Rhoda for the coming term; she spoke of the death of the old lady in Baltimore.
She said, I don’t know why these things frighten me so. I was always considered the calm one. It was one of the things you said you admired in me when we met that first time at your aunt’s apartment, with all those others trying to talk one another down. Do you remember that now? Do you remember the things you said to me the next evening when we went dancing together? I remember them, my darling! I remember them all! I remember the moment I first knew I loved you, and would love you forever. Don’t smile at my silliness, but it was when you picked up your change, looked up sideways, and smiled at me.
That was such a happy evening. But I feel now as though I’d been caught up in some dreadful trap I’d not expected at all, one I can’t escape from. I feel as though I have something to face which I haven’t the strength to face. There are so many things, so many intangible things, I can’t explain to you, or even put into logical, everyday thought for myself.
You must not jump to any conclusion based on the things I’ve told you in this long letter, because these things, as you can see, are susceptible of more than one interpretation. But I keep seeing old Mrs. Post after she fell while Rhoda was visiting her; and I keep seeing, in my mind’s eye, at least, the bruises on the Daigle boy’s forehead and hands. I do not know. I tell you, I simply do not know.
I wish you were here at this moment. Then you could hold me in your arms and laugh at my silliness; you could laugh your soft, wonderful laugh and rub your cheek against mine and tell me not to worry so. And yet if I had some magical power to bring you back, I would not use it. I swear to you, I would not use it, my dearest one.
My darling! My darling! I am deeply worried. What shall I do? Write and tell me what I must do now. Write at once—I did not know I was so vulnerable.
She finished her letter, but long before she had done so, she knew she would not send it, for she realized how important the work he was doing was for her husband at this point in his career. She felt its success or failure would be the turning point in his career in this new place, and, of course, the turning point in hers, too, since her life was forever tied to his own. No! Kenneth must go on with his work untroubled and unhindered, and she must go on with hers as best she could. The problem of Rhoda was basically her problem, and she must solve it. She must manage somehow.
She addressed the envelope, sealed it, and put it in the drawer of her desk, the drawer she always kept locked, aligning it evenly with the pistol she also kept there. She felt better afterward: perhaps she was making too much of imponderables. Perhaps.…
FIVE
Toward the end of the week, Mrs. Breedlove telephoned and said, “I’m truly ashamed of myself for neglecting Rhoda’s locket the way I have; but I must go to town this morning, and this will be a good time to get it fixed. If you’ll ask Rhoda for it, I’ll pick it up on my way out.”
Her daughter, Christine said, was playing under the Kunkels’ big scuppernong arbor, but she was confident she could find the locket without help; Rhoda kept her valued possessions in a Swiss chocolate tin in her top dresser drawer, and the locket should be there, too.
The locket was where she thought it would be, and returning the box to its original place, Mrs. Penmark felt something flat and metallic under the oilcloth that covered the drawer. She outlined the object with her forefinger, wondering what it could be, and then, lifting the covering in sudden, intuitive panic, she found the lost penmanship medal.
For an instant, the occurrence had little meaning for her, her mind refusing to accept the implications of its discovery; it seemed merely part of a thing she’d read once in a book, a thing with neither value nor application for herself; then, as the inevitable significance of the discovery of the medal in this particular place came to her, she returned it to its place under the oilcloth, her palms pressed against her cheeks, and stood perplexed in the room. Everything she told me about the medal is a lie, she thought. Everything. She had it all the time.
She walked to the window and stood there, hearing the voices of her daughter and the Kunkel children raised in shrillness across the street. A sense of petulant sadness came over her, a feeling that she was being most unjustly
treated, was being wrongfully punished for things she had not done.…
What was the matter with Rhoda, anyway? Why couldn’t she behave like other girls of her age? What was the basis of her strange, unsocial conduct? She looked back, reviewing the little girl’s life from its beginning, in an effort to see how she had gone wrong in training or affection, to find the mistakes she had made—for it was plain, now, that she had made many mistakes—eager to blame herself, in this moment of self-abasement, for any omission, any error in judgment, no matter how tiny, no matter how innocently done; but she could find nothing of any true importance.
She was still standing there by the window, undecided as to what she must do now, her hands opening and closing in little spasms of anxiety and doubt, when Monica rang the bell. At once she opened the door and gave Monica the locket. Monica was in one of her more jovial moods; she talked about the locket and the memories it had once held for her, as though she were still on the couch of Dr. Kettlebaum, and associated freely for him.
Christine smiled, listened, and nodded, but her mind took in little that was said. She thought: Rhoda has been given love and security from the beginning. She was never neglected, and she was never spoiled. She was never unjustly treated. Kenneth and I always made it a point to see that she felt important to us, and wanted. I don’t understand her mind or her character. I do not understand it.
Mrs. Breedlove said, “My own monogram was never on the locket, but I think I’ll have Rhoda’s engraved on the reverse side, if you’re agreeable.”
Whatever the trouble is, thought Christine, nodding and saying absently, “Yes, yes, of course,” and then half turning and resting her forehead against the panel of the door: I don’t believe environment had much to do with it. It must be something deeper than that. She sighed, raised her head, and looked at Mrs. Breedlove once more, thinking: It was something dark. Something dark and unexplainable.
“Has Rhoda a middle initial?” asked Monica gaily. “It’s odd, but I never thought to inquire before.”
Christine came back to reality and said the child’s full name was Rhoda Howe Penmark. She’d been named for Kenneth’s mother, a formal woman of unbridled respectability. The elder Mrs. Penmark had opposed her son’s marriage into the Bravo family with considerable heat. They were, she said, a family of international vagabonds who had never taken root anywhere; they were dissident Bohemians, or at least Richard Bravo, the father, seemed to be, if one could judge from his writings, and it was only fair to assume his family would be like him, forever taking issue with the fundamental and established order of things, the things that more stable people revered and perpetuated from generation to generation. She had predicted the direst consequences if her son persisted in “this mad folly”; she wanted to be put on record that she, at least, had seen clearly, and had done her duty—had warned him in advance, no matter how painful the issuance of the warning had been to her, no matter how deeply her forced disapprobation had hurt her mother’s heart. Rhoda had been named for the jealous old lady as a sop to her vanity, in an effort to win her tolerance and good will—an effort which had never been entirely successful.
Monica took the locket, dropped it in her bag, and said, “Oh, that New England type. I know it so well, my dear.”
When she had gone, Christine sat by her window that overlooked the park, her forefinger absently moving along the arm of the chair. She thought about her child, and wondered what course she must take now. Then, all at once, she had a sense of weary familiarity, as though she’d been over these things before, and had got nowhere, just as she would get nowhere this time, too. Again she felt self-pity. Her husband had never said so, but she knew the death of the old woman in Baltimore, and the subsequent expulsion of the child for theft from the progressive school, had been the true reasons he’d asked for a transfer from his position there, to this, in a way, lesser position, where he would be among complete strangers.… But when she had pitied herself enough, when she had exhausted the possibilities of how unjustly she was treated, when compared with happier women, women whose children were ordinary and predictable, her sense of proportion returned to her, and with it, hope and something of her normal good nature.
She would no longer jump to unsupported conclusions. Perhaps Rhoda had a truthful and logical explanation for having the penmanship medal. Perhaps she’d been too frightened to admit its possession, with the Fern sisters badgering her in a body, and asking her all those shaped, pointed questions. At least, she had not lied this time, except indirectly, of course, for nobody, so far as she now knew, had thought to ask the child if she had the medal herself, or knew where it was.
She washed her face in cold water, put on new lipstick, and sat for ten minutes to compose herself; then, crossing the street, she went to the Kunkels’ backyard and told Rhoda to come with her. When they were home again, she got the medal from its hiding place and put it on the table before them. Rhoda’s eyes opened wide in alarm, and then, glancing from side to side, she closed them warily.
“How did the penmanship medal happen to be in your dresser drawer?” said Christine. “Tell me the truth, Rhoda.”
Rhoda took off one of her shoes, examined it slowly, and put it on again, but she did not answer at once. Then, smiling a little, dancing away from her mother in a gesture which others had always found so charming, she said, to gain time, “When we move into our new house, can we have a scuppernong arbor, too? Can we? Can we, Mother?”
“Answer my question, Rhoda! But remember I’m not as innocent about what went on at the picnic as you think. Miss Octavia Fern told me a great deal when I went to see her. So please don’t bother to make up a story for my benefit this time.”
But the child remained silent, her mind working, waiting shrewdly for her mother to continue talking, and betray the answer she expected; but Christine, as though aware of her child’s intention, and repelled by her calculated but clumsy efforts at evasion, only said, “How did Claude Daigle’s medal get in your dresser drawer? It certainly didn’t get there by itself. I’m waiting for your answer, Rhoda.”
She got up from her chair and walked about the room, a sense of anger suddenly burning in her. The child should be thoroughly spanked, she felt. She’d never been spanked in her life, and perhaps that was the real trouble with her now. She should be thoroughly and efficiently spanked; she should be taught, without further delay, a lesson in kindness and consideration for other people. But her anger died quickly, and she knew she could never bring herself to hurt the child, no matter what she’d done. Perhaps Rhoda knew that, too. Perhaps it was really the strength of her polite, unyielding stubbornness.
“I don’t know how the medal got there, Mother,” said Rhoda, her eyes wide with innocence. “How should I know how the medal got there?”
“You know. You know quite well how it got there.”
She seated herself again, and, continuing in a softer voice, she said, “The first thing I want to know is this: did you go out on the wharf at any time—any time at all—during the picnic?”
“Yes, Mother,” said the child hesitantly. “I went there once.”
“Was it before or after you were bothering Claude?”
“I didn’t bother Claude, Mother. What makes you think that?”
“When did you go out on the wharf, Rhoda?”
“It was real early. It was when we first got there.”
“You knew you were forbidden to go on the wharf, didn’t you? Why did you do it?”
“One of the big boys said there were little shells that grew on the pilings. I didn’t believe that shells grew on wood, and I wanted to see if they did or not.”
Christine nodded, and said, “I’m glad you admit being on the wharf, at least. Miss Fern told me one of the guards saw you coming off the wharf. He said it was much later than you claim, though. He said it wasn’t long before lunchtime.”
“He’s wrong, though. I told Miss Fern that, too. It happened like I said it did.” Then, as thou
gh feeling she’d won the initial point, she said, “The man hollered at me, and told me to come off, and I did what he said. I went back to the lawn, and that’s where I saw Claude. But I wasn’t bothering Claude. I was just talking to him.”
“What did you say to Claude?”
“I said that if I didn’t win the medal, I was glad he won it. So Claude said I was sure to win it next year, as the medal wasn’t ever given twice to the same pupil.”
Christine shook her head wearily. “Please! Please, Rhoda! This isn’t a game. I want the truth.”
“But it’s all true, Mother,” said Rhoda earnestly. “Every word I tell you is true.”
Christine was silent for a short time, and then she said, “Miss Fern told me about one of the monitors who saw you try to take the medal off Claude’s shirt. Did the girl really see what she said she did?”
“That big girl was Mary Beth Musgrove,” said Rhoda. “She told everybody she saw me; even Leroy Jessup knows she saw me.” She paused, and then went on, her bright eyes opened wide, as though complete candor were now the only course open to her. “Claude and I were playing a game we made up. He said if I could catch him in ten minutes, and touch the medal with my hand—it was like prisoners’ base, or something—he’d let me wear the medal for an hour. How can Mary Beth say I took the medal? I didn’t.”
“Mary Beth didn’t say you took the medal. She said you grabbed at it, and tried to take it. She said Claude ran away down the beach when she called to you. Did you have the medal even then?”
“No, Mother. Not then.”
She was becoming more sure of herself under the questioning, and convinced at last that her mother knew little, or nothing at all, she came to her, put her arms about her neck, and kissed her cheek with such ardor that her mother was now the passive, patient one.
At last Christine said, “How did you get the medal, Rhoda?”
“Oh, I got it later on.”
“I want to know how you got possession of the medal, Rhoda.”
The Bad Seed Page 9