Wicked Stepmother

by Michael McDowell

  “Barbara, I thought you had gone off to Nepal for a year.” There was no masking the accusatory style of the inquiry.

  “It was Senegal. And it was awful. So now I’m back.”

  “Oh,” said Louise. “I knew you gave up your apartment when you went away—have you found another place to live yet?”

  “Here’s Eric now, Mrs. Larner,” said Barbara quickly. “It was nice to talk to you.”

  Louise pursed her lips and waited for her son to come on. She listened intently, hearing muffled voices for a moment, then nothing, as the receiver was covered up. The silence lengthened. Louise tapped the heel of her shoe on the polished oaken floor.

  “Yeah, Ma?” said Eric unenthusiastically.

  “The word is yes and I am your mother,” said Louise.

  “Yes, Mother,” replied Eric distinctly and sarcastically. “What’s up? Why’d you call?”

  “Verity’s back.”

  “She wasn’t at the funeral.”

  “She didn’t even know Richard was dead until she walked in the house this afternoon. You should have been at the house too.”

  “I was at the funeral,” he returned mildly. “Besides, Richard hated my guts. You told Verity I was broke, didn’t you? You told her I had lost my job and didn’t have any money?”

  “I told her that you went right from the funeral to an important interview. How did it go?”

  “How did what go?”

  “Your interview! Though I don’t know who gives job interviews on Sundays.”

  “I didn’t have an interview today.”

  “Eric, you told me you had to ‘see a man about a deal’ you were working on. I assumed you meant something about a new job.”

  After a moment, Eric replied, “Oh, that’s right. I met with him. Maybe something’ll come through.”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  “Ma, is there some particular reason you called? Barbara and I were just on our way out—”

  “I called to talk about your marriage, that’s why I called.”

  “Why? Has that bitch finally decided that she wants a divorce?”

  “You better hope she doesn’t!”

  “Why not? I don’t want to be tied to her for the rest of my life.”

  “You listen to me, Eric.” Her voice was brittle. “You’ve got a rich wife. Her mother left her a fortune in that trust fund, and next year sometime Verity comes into the whole thing. I know she walked out on you, but now she’s back and I think she’s going to be here for a while. Take advantage of the fact. After the will’s read, this house will be mine.”

  “Are you sure about that?” asked Eric.

  “Of course I’m sure! I was Richard’s wife. This was Richard’s house, so the house comes to me. And when the time comes—and the time will come pretty soon, I can tell you—I shall very politely ask Cassandra and Verity to pack up their old kit bags and get out. That’s the perfect opportunity for you to step forward and offer Verity the hospitality of your apartment.”

  “Verity hates my guts.”

  “She fell in love with you once, she can fall in love with you again. Put on a little charm for once.”

  “I don’t think my charm works on Verity, Ma—Mother.”

  “Think of something that will.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “You’ll do it!”

  “All right, all right. Did you tell them yet? About your having married Richard?”

  “Yes.”

  Eric laughed sharply. “I’ll bet three jaws hit the floor.”

  “It was a surprise,” Louise admitted. “Don’t try to change the subject. We were talking about you and Verity.”

  After a pause Eric said, “Why are you so interested in Verity and me all of a sudden, Ma? I’d have thought you would still be playing the bereaved widow.”

  “I am bereaved,” snapped Louise. “But Richard is dead and there’s nothing I can do about it. There is something that can be done about you and Verity. And one more thing.”

  “What?”

  “Get rid of Barbara. Tonight.”

  “She doesn’t have anywhere to go! She just got back from Senegal­.”

  “Get rid of her, Eric. She’s very pretty. She’ll find a place to sleep. Drop her off in front of a bar.”

  “I can’t just toss her out tonight. . . .” He whispered this last; evidently Barbara was not in the same room, but nearby.

  “Tomorrow then.”

  “Tomorrow,” Eric sighed.

  “Right after you do that, call Verity. Ask her out to dinner at a nice restaurant. I’ll pay. Do you understand?”

  “I guess.”

  “You do or you don’t!”

  “I understand.”

  “Good-bye, darling,” she said, and hung up the telephone.

  For the next half hour Louise wandered through the darkened house, peering into rooms she already considered to be her

  own.

  4

  Betsy’s Pit was located on the edge of a desolate field of stiff grass and broken bottles in East Cambridge, in the basement of a vast and mostly empty warehouse. For several decades—the decor was original thirties mahogany and cast iron—it had been the hangout for blue-collar workers and truck drivers in Cambridge’s small bleak industrial sector. They drank beer, ate sandwiches prepared by the waitresses in a tiny back room, and played on the cheapest pinball games in Cambridge—still three games for a quarter. In more recent times, the management of Betsy’s Pit, realizing that no matter how good their weekday business was, their evening and weekend business stank, decided to establish an additional clientele. They built a small stage, and began to bring in bands—the rawest sort of local band, that would play for nothing but the exposure. But even the rawest bands have their followings—there being a fair segment of the sophisticated Boston pop-music crowd who will go to hear anyone in order to be able to say, “Oh, yes, I heard them when they were nothing, and playing—God, can you believe it?—Betsy’s Pit.” Soon the Pits, as it was affectionately called, became the place to try out a first band; the management turned no one away, and some sort of crowd gathered there every night. There was even a legend that a scout from EMI Records, visiting Betsy’s Pit incognito, had signed a band on the evening of its first and only public performance. On the weekends, the better bands played. Even for those groups that had attained a certain position in the Boston hierarchy of new music, the exposure was still good, the audience knowledgeable and enthusiastic; more often than not, Betsy’s Pit deserved their sincerest gratitude.

  The Pits had a vast floor covered in linoleum tile. The paneled walls were painted black once a year; the ceiling was of patterned tin. Along one wall was a long mahogany bar with mirrors, and a tiny stage was jammed in the opposite corner between the doors of the bathrooms. Two waitresses patrolled the entire floor: bleached blondes in their early forties, they wore shiny black uniforms stretched over their corpulent figures. Their hospital shoes had been painted black with shoe polish, and year in and year out they wore corsages of plastic Christmas poinsettias. Darlene was a very good waitress; Susan couldn’t get an order straight for two pitchers of draft beer.

  Verity loved the place immediately. When Jonathan stated his preference for a table well back and in a shadowed corner, she protested, and led him and Cassandra to a tiny table disconcertingly near the stage. One band had just finished its set; the players were putting away their instruments.

  “That was Boys Say Go,” said Jonathan.

  Verity looked at her brother in surprise. “You’ve been here before,” she said. He nodded. Darlene came to the table and took orders.

  When she went away, Jonathan said, “I’ve got a surprise. Apple’s band is playing here tonight.”

  “Oh,” cried Verity, “then I get to meet her! I suppose she’ll be kicking her spiked-heel boots right in my face.” She reached out and touched the stage; she didn’t even have to lean forward. “I can hardly wait—Apple and the Corps, h
uh?”

  “No,” said Cassandra, “that was the old group. They broke up.”

  “I can’t begin to guess what they’re called now,” said Verity, and speculated: “The Slaves of Fashion? The Self-Inflicted Wounds?”

  “People Buying Things,” said Jonathan.

  “Not bad,” Verity considered. Darlene appeared and distributed their drinks. Cassandra handed the woman a ten-dollar bill.

  Jonathan checked his watch. “They’ll be on in about twenty minutes . . .”

  “Good,” said Verity, rising with her drink. “That gives me time to look this crowd over.”

  She went straight to the bar, and planted herself next to a tall, slender, black-bearded man who had just walked in the door and was ordering his first drink. Verity adjusted her dark glasses, smiled, and said, “Hi, I’ve never been here before. . . .”

  “Did you know,” said Cassandra slowly, as she turned in her chair to watch her sister at the bar, “that Verity lost her virginity on the day that Fluellen was run over?”

  Fluellen had been the Hawkes’ Welsh terrier; he died when Verity was fourteen.

  “So?”

  “They say that sex and death are intertwined,” said Cassandra, rather mysteriously.

  Jonathan considered this a moment. “I think you’re having to read too much poetry at Iphigenia.”

  Boys Say Go had gotten its instruments off the stage, and, after a few minutes’ pause in which nothing at all transpired, two tall, slender, clean-shaven men came out and stood together whispering, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were standing on a spotlit stage in front of a hundred and fifty people. Desultorily, and with many pauses between their many whispered and quite relaxed exchanges, they set up the band’s equipment. Finally, one of them slid the strap of his electric guitar over his shoulder and dropped his fingers across the strings. His friend idly experimented with volume and vibrato on the electric keyboard.

  A third man came onto the stage. He was short and well built, with a swarthy complexion. His curly chestnut hair fell softly about a face displaying distinctly Italian features—large, thickly lashed eyes a shade darker than his hair, and a full mustache above a sensual full mouth. He wore a light blue tank top and white painter’s pants. Out of a back pocket jutted a set of drumsticks. He crossed the stage, pausing first to speak to the keyboard man and then to the guitarist. He looked over the crowd, then nodded and smiled at Jonathan.

  Then Cassandra felt the man’s eyes upon her. His broad smile narrowed and faded for a moment.

  Cassandra flinched from his stare.

  He winked solemnly, then returned his attention to the other musicians.

  Cassandra laughed nervously. “That’s the new drummer?”

  Jonathan nodded.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Rocco. Rocco DiRico.”

  “Sounds like a gangster,” said Verity, suddenly appearing at tableside and sitting down again. “Is that his real name?”

  “What happened to your new friend?” asked Jonathan.

  “He wasn’t as good-looking as the gentleman in question.” She lifted her glasses, leaned slightly forward toward the stage, and stared unabashedly at the man who had winked at Cassandra. “He’s beautiful,” she pronounced. “However,” she went on, “now that I see him up close, I find he’s a bit too hairy for my taste. Cassandra, what’s your opinion?”

  “I think he’s very good-looking.”

  “He’s just your type,” said Verity flatly. “Or don’t you still fantasize about being ravaged into oblivion by a dusky, handsome Mediterranean man?”

  “You’ve had too much to drink.”

  “Actually, I’ve had very little to drink. My shamelessness is entirely a result of some cocaine I snorted with my new friend over there. I just came over for a few minutes so that he could engineer a little purchase for me from that bartender.”

  “I take it,” said Cassandra, “that you don’t intend to end up in Brookline tonight?”

  “I told him I wanted to hear this next set, and then I’d go back with him to Porter Square.”

  “You should have asked him to join us,” said Jonathan politely.

  “Not on your life. He’s sweet, but not the type you introduce to your family. Besides, I don’t want him to find out that Father was buried today—it might inhibit him. By the way, Cassandra, what’s cab fare from Porter Square to our house?”

  “At least fifteen, probably twenty.”

  “Lend me forty, will you? I’m full of plastic, but I gave my last cash for the coke.”

  Cassandra opened her wallet and took out two bills, folding them up and handing them to her sister beneath the table. Verity passed the back of her hand beneath her nose, inhaling sharply. “Oh that’s better,” she murmured. “I never get it quite right the first time. So,” she went on, “the band is called People Buying Things. The lead singer’s name is Apple, and the drummer is Rocco DiRico. Who’s the red-and-yellow afro on guitar? And the platinum whiffle on keyboard?”

  “Bert and Ian,” said Jonathan. “I’m not sure which is which. I don’t think they have separate personalities. Apple just always says, ‘Bert and Ian this’ and ‘Bert and Ian that.’ They’re lovers, and very jealous. Besides each other, all they care about is music and speed.”

  “So where’s this fruitful fiancée of yours? Are we supposed to bang on the table and demand Apples?”

  “No,” said Jonathan. “Here she is.” He pointed to the door of the ladies’ room, from which Miriam Apple was just emerging. She was tall, with a pretty and intelligent face framed in a mass of hennaed ringlets. She wore bright ruby lipstick, pale pearl-gray eye shadow, and four tiny hoops piercing her left ear. Her blouse was of fitted gold lamé, gathered at the wrists and tucked into a pair of wine-colored harem pants. Her gold lamé slippers curled upward from the toes.

  Apple carried a cordless microphone in her left hand. She stood at the edge of the stage and extended her right arm expectantly. The guitarist reached down and pulled her up onto the platform in one sure motion. The lights lowered by quick degrees. A drum roll sounded. With a flourish, the keyboardist punched a violently dissonant chord just as Apple, feet spread, back arched, and head thrown dramatically back, screamed directly into the microphone.

  Verity, unprepared for the violence of the noise, choked on her Scotch. Jonathan smiled with pride. Cassandra stared at the drummer.

  The guitar brought up and replaced Apple’s scream. The drums came in full force, and Apple jumped high into the air. When she came down again, she belted:

  I don’t want your bread,

  I don’t want your pity.

  I just wanna string myself

  From the roofs of Psycho City.

  Gonna slash my fucking mom.

  Get your knife and hold it steady.

  Wanna spill my daddy’s blood

  From the walls of Psycho City.

  We’re gonna waste the halt and blind,

  So guess you better be ready

  To see a million corpses piled

  On the streets of Psycho City.

  At the song’s finish, beneath the wild applause, Jonathan leaned over and shouted in Verity’s ear: “Apple wrote the lyrics—isn’t she great!”

  During the day Miriam Apple was an assistant editor for a prestigious publishing house in Boston, where she made herself invaluable in three principal ways. She was an exhaustive line editor who could knock into shape a piece of narrative trash that made the senior editors of the firm shudder. She handled difficult authors no one else in the firm would even shake hands with. And she could make any book sound good on its back cover or jacket flaps. Moreover, and of equal if not greater importance to her superiors, Miriam Apple had no particular regard for credit being given where credit was due. She was perfectly willing for someone else to be congratulated for a job she had done superbly; this was not because Miriam Apple was timid, or naturally self-effacing, but only because she had, when it ca
me down to it, no interest at all in the publishing industry. She cared about her music, and the job at the publishing house was no more than that—a job. As far as she was concerned, it was simply easier to perform her duties very well than it was to shirk them. She had started out woefully underpaid, as was the case with every female employed by a Boston publishing house, but now she commanded quite a respectable salary. She was given a raise every time she received an offer from another firm—for her publishing house lived in intermittent terror that Miriam Apple would be snatched away, and that her onerous duties would have to be divided among the remainder of the staff.

  Her co-workers were aware that Apple had some interest in music but were wholly ignorant of the fact that she was lead singer with her own band, a band that—marginally—made money, a band whose name was advertised—about every other week—in the Arts section of the Phoenix. Apple’s energy was apparently inexhaustible; but, of late, she had turned over to Rocco DiRico a number of the duties she had formerly assumed herself. It was now Rocco who dealt with Lenny Able, the manager of People Buying Things and of a number of other bands just starting up in the Boston area. Rocco argued less with Lenny than Apple did, but this was probably because Rocco hadn’t know Lenny as long as she had.

  It wasn’t entirely clear to those who knew them what Apple and Jonathan saw in one another. They didn’t seem at all alike. It had at first been conjectured that Apple was after Jonathan’s money; but Jonathan, though of a rich family, had no idea of personal finances and was always borrowing ten- and twenty-dollar bills from Apple, and never remembering to pay them back. Apple had great affection for Jonathan and he for her.

  Between her music and her work at the publishing house, Apple had very little time to spare. What time she and Jonathan did have together was spent at carefully selected films or plays, gallery exhibits, and their favorite restaurants, making love, and casually planning their future together. The congruence of taste and desire, they had decided nearly six months before, warranted an engagement.