Wicked Stepmother

by Michael McDowell

  Verity glanced at the lawyer sharply. Without makeup and with her hair combed back from her face, she appeared a young girl. Her lower lip was swollen a purplish red where Eric had struck her. “I think you must know.”

  “How could I know? You just called me.”

  “Well, if you don’t know, then it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that I’ve decided to file for a divorce. Today. I’m going to start this new year off right.”

  “Verity . . .”

  “I feel certain,” said Verity coldly, “that you’ve talked to Louise. So you know what happened. Or at any rate you heard Louise’s version of what happened.”

  “Yes, we spoke this morning.”

  “I don’t care what Louise said. I don’t care what story she made up. I don’t even want to hear it. I called you over here to find out whether you will start divorce proceedings today.”

  “This is too sudden, you’re—”

  “I know that you’re close to Louise,” Verity went on with an ironic smile, “and perhaps I really should have some other lawyer handle this. But I thought you would be the ideal person to convince Louise to let all this go through as quickly as possible. And Eric will do exactly what she tells him to. But if you don’t want to bother with it,” she concluded grimly, “I will get someone who will.”

  “It’s impossible to—”

  “I don’t want to hear it!” shouted Verity. “If you don’t have something back here for me to sign by three o’clock, I’m calling another lawyer. Do you understand?”

  Strable looked around the room. He went to the window and glanced out at the scant early-morning traffic on Brookline Avenue. Most everyone was at home recovering from the previous night’s excesses. Strable turned and said, “On what grounds?”

  “I don’t care. Whatever’s easiest. Incompatibility. Mental cruelty. That’s your business, not mine.”

  “Eric could fight you.”

  “He won’t. I guarantee it.”

  “Are you sure? He might very well—”

  “He won’t.” Verity was determined not to allow the lawyer to argue with her.

  “What about settlements?”

  Verity snorted. “What’s he got that I would want?”

  Strable shook his head. “Eric may want a settlement from you.”

  “We’ll work that out later. I just want you to start today.”

  “These things take time. I mean, just my secretary—”

  “Today,” repeated Verity. “By three o’clock. Or I find another lawyer. For good.”

  Strable nodded. “I suppose the details could be put off until you’re feeling a little better.”

  “I’ll feel better when I’ve signed some papers,” snapped Verity.

  Strable looked around the room again. “Well,” he said helplessly, “is there anything I can get for you while you’re here?”

  “You’d better get going,” said Verity. “If you’re going to get back here by three. There are a couple of other things I want done, but we’ll talk about them when you come back.”

  He looked at her with a kind of melancholy reproof for the course she was taking, and said, “Good-bye, Verity.” He walked toward the door.

  “Good-bye,” said Verity, “and you might as well send Louise on in.”

  Strable looked back in surprise at the young woman in the hospital bed, but he said nothing.

  He pushed open the door, and Verity caught a flashing glimpse of fur and black beads. A moment later the door was jerked open, and Louise Hawke swept inside the private room. Beneath her open sable she wore a black silk dress with a half-dozen strands of seed pearls about her neck. They rattled in her excitement. In one hand she convulsively clutched a shiny black bugle-beaded bag.

  “I hope you were eavesdropping,” said Verity, “so that I don’t have to repeat everything.”

  “I heard enough,” said Louise, with set lips. She dropped her beaded bag on the rumpled sheets of Verity’s bed. “You can’t divorce Eric.”

  “I can,” replied Verity simply.

  “You have no grounds.”

  “Eric raped me last night,” said Verity. “On the stairs. You ought to know—you heard it. You were in your room, and you heard me cry out.”

  “I didn’t hear anything!”

  “He ruptured my vaginal wall.”

  “It wasn’t a rape. You two had a date. You went out together, and you got stinking drunk. You were so drunk you couldn’t even wait until you got to your bedroom before you threw yourself on him.”

  “Eric raped me on the stairs,” said Verity. “I have bruises all up and down my back and my legs, not to mention this swollen lip, to prove it.”

  “You can’t prove it,” said Louise savagely, “because it didn’t happen. You seduced him. Besides, you’re still married to him. You were both drunk, and you decided to do it on the stairs, and you cut your lip yourself—that’s all it was. You’ll never get a divorce out of that.”

  Verity shook her head, and began to grin. But she winced at the pain in her swollen lip. She said, “Louise, sit down.”

  A crease of puzzlement crossed Louise’s brow. She looked behind her for a chair, and silently seated herself. She waited impatiently for Verity to speak, and looked as if she were preparing herself to accept a compromise or, better yet, a capitulation.

  Verity spoke slowly because of her swollen lip. “I want to explain something to you. And for two minutes, I don’t want you to interrupt.” Louise opened her mouth, as if to speak, but then shut it again. Verity began, “I’m going to sue him for divorce on account of incompatibility or mental cruelty or some other innocuous charge.”

  “You’ll never get it,” whispered Louise, under her breath.

  “If Eric chooses to contest the divorce on those grounds, then I will bring into evidence the fact that I was raped, and that I was hospitalized because of the injuries I suffered in that rape. I will also testify that you, his mother, heard my cries for help, and did nothing to interfere.”

  “That’s a lie!”

  Verity shook her head slowly. “You were in your room, ten feet away from the top step. You were out in the hallway when I came out of the bathroom bleeding.”

  “I didn’t hear anything!”

  “Still,” said Verity, “you were right there. I was raped right outside your bedroom door, and you didn’t do anything to stop it.”

  “No one will believe it,” said Louise with a solemn shake of her head.

  “Perhaps not,” said Verity, “but I’ll testify to it, and you’ll get your name in all the papers. And all of Boston can think what it wants to think about you and your son.”

  “It won’t work,” Louise warned.

  “Maybe not,” repeated Verity. “But if it doesn’t, then I will simply testify that Eric is a dealer, and has been selling drugs for the past seven years.”

  Louise rose up out of her chair in anger.

  “And just who is it that buys it? Who keeps him in business?” she cried accusingly. “You’re the one who buys it.”

  Verity shrugged. “I’ll tell the court he got me hooked on it. I’ll get the divorce, and Eric will go to jail. If I were you, Louise, I’d tell Eric to go along with ‘mental cruelty.’ ”

  “This is blackmail! This whole mess is your fault, nobody else’s!”

  “It is my fault,” mused Verity. “You’re right. And you know why? Because I never took you seriously. I always thought, Oh, God, here’s Louise, this piece of hopped-up trash that Father works with, what’s she going to try next? But I never took you seriously. I never really thought you could do any harm—until Father died. And then, there you were, torching your own apartment so you could move into our house. Fucking Eugene Strable because Eugene Strable is executor of Mother’s will. And I’m sure it was you who put Eric up to getting me drunk and raping me on the staircase, while you knelt with your ear pressed against your bedroom door, listening.”

  “I was not, I—” Louise
began.

  Verity took a deep breath, and said in a low, contemptuous voice, “Shut up, Louise, just shut up. What Eric did is only part of the reason I’m divorcing him.” She looked at Louise and smiled. “As you know—or as you may not know—a wife can’t testify against her husband in a murder trial. At least not in Massachusetts.”

  Louise stiffened. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Jonathan,” said Verity slowly. “And I’m also talking about Father. As soon as I sign the divorce papers, I’m going to find a criminal lawyer. And to begin with, I’m going to have Father and Jonathan’s bodies exhumed.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” said Louise in a low voice. “You’re a lunatic.”

  Verity smiled. “Did you know that Jonathan hired a detective? About a month before he was killed. The detective found out something, and Jonathan was about to tell us what it was, when he had that boating . . . she paused and smiled again, “. . . accident with Eric. So we didn’t find out what the detective told him, and we didn’t even know the detective’s name. But guess what?”

  “What?” asked Louise.

  “Last night I found out that detective’s name, and his tele­phone number. I called last night but he wasn’t in. I called first thing this morning, and I woke him up with a hangover. But he still told me what I wanted to know.”

  “What?” said Louise.

  “I found out you bought supplies at a hobby shop in Atlantic City—supplies for a chemistry set. Supplies that—mixed together—make a pretty lethal poison. Now of course I’m not saying you did mix the supplies together, or anything like that, but I think we really ought to have Father’s body exhumed. This is all very unpleasant, of course, and there’s bound to be publicity, and of course it’s going to cost me a great deal of money—but I don’t care. What else is money for?”

  Louise was livid. She convulsively grasped the arms of the chair.

  “Not one word you say is true!” she said at last, in a strangled voice.

  “I have no interest in arguing about all this with you. I’ve made up my mind,” returned Verity calmly.

  Louise got weakly to her feet, shaking with anger and terror.

  Verity smiled. “I’m going to drag you and Eric through every gutter in this city,” she said blandly. “Now get out. Visiting hours are over.”

  Louise signed her name, threw down the pen, and ripped the check out of the book. She held it up and waved it at her son. Eric sat across the desk from her in the study of the Hawke mansion in Brookline. He reached forward and snatched the check away. His eyes widened when he saw the amount his mother had filled in.

  “Take that to the bank tomorrow morning first thing, and get it converted to traveler’s checks, and then catch the ten o’clock shuttle at Logan.”

  “I can’t leave tomorrow, I’ve got to meet some people—”

  “I want you out of town tomorrow by noon, do you understand?”

  “How long do I have to stay?” Eric asked meekly.

  “Until I tell you it’s all right to come back. Call me at the office, person-to-person. Never call me here.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She is not all right. You ruptured the walls of her vagina, gave her a fat lip, and left bruises over her entire body. Not to mention that’s she’s probably suffering from cocaine withdrawal in that hospital.”

  “You don’t get addicted to coke,” protested Eric. “And that’s the only thing Verity ever did. Just coke.”

  “She looks like hell. Even Eugene was shocked, and I’d warned him what to expect.”

  “Make him talk her out of it,” said Eric.

  “It’s beyond that now,” said Louise sourly. “I don’t think you realize just how much trouble you have gotten us

  into.”

  “Tell Strable to try some more.”

  “He won’t do it. Besides, he’s got to stay on her good side.”

  “Verity doesn’t have a good side,” complained Eric.

  “I wouldn’t either,” said Louise, “if I had just been raped on a staircase.”

  “You told me—” he began, anger twisting his voice.

  “I told you to seduce her!” cried Louise. “I did not tell you to rip her clothes off and throw her down the stairs and jump on top of her!”

  “That’s not what happened! We were both drunk. It was New Year’s Eve. We—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. It doesn’t matter anyway. There’s never going to be a reconciliation. The only important thing is for you to get out of town. I don’t even want her to see you.”

  “She’s going to beg to see me, Ma. When she runs out of coke and she doesn’t know anybody who can supply her.”

  Louise snapped her checkbook shut, but her expression was thoughtful.

  “Verity’s not going to go through with the divorce, Ma. She needs me too much.”

  “She doesn’t need you, Eric, she needs what you sell her. How much of that awful stuff do you have?”

  “Coke?” Eric shifted uncomfortably in the chair. “Some. Not much.”

  “How much?” demanded Louise again.

  “Maybe twenty grams of coke, and a couple of grams of angel dust.”

  “Give all of it to me,” said Louise. “If Verity wants her cocaine, then she can damn well come to me for it.”

  Later that afternoon, Eric delivered the cocaine and the angel dust to his mother at the Brookline house. “Which is which?” she asked, and he explained.

  “But Ma,” he cautioned, “angel dust is real bad news. Even just a little.”

  “And the other stuff is not?” Louise demanded caustically. “And what do you mean exactly: bad news?”

  “Unpredictable. You never know how much it takes to get you off, or to kill you. And it doesn’t mix well, either. Doesn’t mix with anything, in fact. It’s mostly for teenagers whose bodies can take anything.”

  Louise considered this a moment. Then she said to Eric, “Write a note.”

  He sat down at the desk in the study, and waited for Louise to dictate.

  “I’m really sorry about last night. I’m going to get out of your way for a few days. I hope this will tide you over while I’m gone. It’s the best.”

  “That’s all?” he asked, writing the words.

  “Apologies, Eric,” Louise added, then watched closely as he signed.

  Eric looked at his mother for further instructions.

  “Now get out,” said Louise. “And make damned sure you call me once a day.” She took his place behind the desk, and lined up the vials of cocaine and angel dust before her. Eric closed the door softly behind him as he left, and Louise didn’t even look up.

  24

  Eugene Strable returned to the hospital shortly after two that afternoon, with papers for Verity to sign. She had the lawyer sit beside the bed while she read over each of the pages carefully, asking questions when she came across something she did not understand. Once or twice he spoke, as if to make a plea on Eric’s behalf, but one glance from Verity shut him up. At last Verity held out her hand for a pen. He gave her one, and she signed wherever her signature was required. She handed the papers to the lawyer. “Mr. Strable,” she said, “I want this to go through as quickly as possible. I don’t want any delays.”

  “You know what the Massachusetts court system is like, Verity. You know how long it could—”

  “Then use some pull,” she said sharply. “I don’t care how you do it or what it costs, I just want it done.”

  “Sometimes,” said the lawyer, “pull is of no use. Divorce court . . .”

  Verity smiled. “I know. You’re getting a divorce from Jeannette too, aren’t you?”

  “How did you know that?”

  Verity shrugged, and went on, as if she were talking about something else altogether. “The strangest thing happened to me a few weeks ago.”

  “What?” the lawyer asked mechanically.

  “I lost my tape reco
rder. I couldn’t find it anywhere. I had to look all over the house. And you know where I found it?”

  “I don’t know, Verity. What has this got to do with—”

  “It was the strangest thing. I found it under Louise’s bed.” She stopped to take a breath. “God knows how it got there. Somebody had even turned it on the night before. That tape ran for ninety minutes.”

  The lawyer stared at the young woman in the hospital bed as if he had never seen her before.

  “What’s on the tape?” asked Strable. “Did you play it?”

  Verity nodded, and then said, “Eugene,” calling him by his first name for the first time in her life. “I want that divorce.”

  “But Louise—” he began to protest.

  “I don’t care about Louise!” snapped Verity. “And you’d better not either. You don’t rake three percent off the top of her income, do you? Administrator of the Hawke family trust—it’s a cushy position, and if I were you, I’d try to hold on to it. I would not hesitate five minutes to petition the court to have you removed.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Moral turpitude. Engaging in illicit sexual relations with the stepmother of the parties involved.”

  Eugene Strable looked at Verity closely. “There’s no need to threaten me, Verity. I would have pushed the divorce through. Eric is no good, I know that as well as anybody.”

  Verity smiled. “As long as we understand one another, Eugene.”

  “I just want you to know, as a real friend, that this whole business is going to cause everybody a vast amount of trouble and unhappiness.”

  “Believe me, Eugene,” said Verity with a grim smile, “this divorce is just the beginning of the trouble and unhappiness I’m going to cause Louise.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did she tell you what we talked about this morning?”

  “You talked about the divorce. What else?”

  “She didn’t tell you then,” said Verity thoughtfully. She looked up at the lawyer. “If I were you, Eugene, I’d watch out. Louise has really been playing with fire—and she’s liable to end up burned to a crisp.”

  Verity was released from the hospital at six o’clock that evening. She drove back to the house herself, and was pleased to find it dark and empty. Louise was nowhere about, and the servants had been given New Year’s Day off. She went to the kitchen and prepared a large salad for herself, which she accompanied with a glass of Scotch and ice, and two of the painkillers her doctor had prescribed for her. She still felt discomfort and her thighs ached, but soon the liquor and the pills and the comfort of being at home took over and she felt much better. She poured more Scotch and went upstairs. She paused on the stairs, staring at the place where Eric had raped her. She could see, on the runner, a dark stain of her own blood. She set her mouth in anger, and went on up to her room. She removed her clothes, and, ignoring the advice of her physician, climbed into the bathtub. Placing the drink on the tiles beside her, she soaked in hot water to wash away the smell of hospital soaps and disinfectants. Half an hour later, she got out, put on a robe, and went downstairs to replenish her drink. She started to pour, reconsidered, and then brought the whole bottle upstairs with her.