The Specialty of the House

by Stanley Ellin

  Julie whispered, ‘If you had told me it was you. If you had only told me. But you didn’t.’

  ‘Because I love you!’

  ‘No, but you knew how I felt, and you turned that against me. You made me say it was Brunner. Everything you’ve been doing to me – it was just so I’d say it and say it, until I killed him. You never tried to kill him, at all. You knew I would do it for you. And I would have!’

  ‘Julie, Julie, what does Brunner matter to anybody? You’ve seen what he’s like. He’s a degenerate. He’s no good. Everybody is better off without people like that around.’

  She shook her head violently. ‘But you knew he didn’t do it! Why couldn’t you just let it be one of those times where they never find out who did it?’

  ‘Because I wasn’t sure! Everybody kept saying it was only the shock that let you blank it out of your mind. They kept saying if you tried hard enough to remember, it might all come back. So if Brunner— I mean, this way the record was all straight! You wouldn’t have to think about it again!’

  She saw that if he leaned forward enough he could touch her, and she backed away a step, surprised she had the strength to do it.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Tom said. ‘Don’t be a fool, Julie. Nobody’ll believe you. Think of everything that’s been said and done, and you’ll see nobody would even want to believe you. They’ll say you’re out of your mind!’

  She wavered, then realized with horror that she was wavering. ‘They will believe me!’ she cried, and ran blindly out of the house, sobbing as she ran, stumbling when she reached the sidewalk so that she fell on her hands and knees, feeling the sting of the scraped knee as she rose and staggered farther down the dark and empty street. It was only when she was at a distance that she stopped, her heart hammering, her legs barely able to support her, to look at the house. Not hers any more. Just his.

  He – all of them – had made her a liar and an accomplice. Each of them for his own reason had done that, and she, because of the weakness in her, had let them. It was a terrible weakness, she thought with anguish – the need to have them always approve, the willingness to always say yes to them. It was like hiding yourself behind the dark glasses all the time, not caring that the world you saw through them was never the world you would see through the naked eye.

  She turned and fled toward lights and people. The glasses lay in the street where she had flung them, and the night wind swept dust through their shattered frames.

  Robert

  The windows of the Sixth Grade classroom were wide open to the June afternoon, and through them came all the sounds of the departing school: the thunder of bus motors warming up, the hiss of gravel under running feet, the voices raised in cynical fervor.

  ‘So we sing all hail to thee,

  District Schoo-wull Number Three …’

  Miss Gildea flinched a little at the last high, shrill note, and pressed her fingers to her aching forehead. She was tired, more tired than she could ever recall being in her thirty-eight years of teaching, and, as she told herself, she had reason to be. It had not been a good term, not good at all, what with the size of the class, and the Principal’s insistence on new methods, and then her mother’s shocking death coming right in the middle of everything.

  Perhaps she had been too close to her mother, Miss Gildea thought; perhaps she had been wrong, never taking into account that some day the old lady would have to pass on and leave her alone in the world. Well, thinking about it all the time didn’t make it any easier. She should try to forget.

  And, of course, to add to her troubles, there had been during the past few weeks this maddening business of Robert. He had been a perfectly nice boy, and then, out of a clear sky, had become impossible. Not bothersome or noisy really, but sunk into an endless daydream from which Miss Gildea had to sharply jar him a dozen times a day.

  She turned her attention to Robert, who sat alone in the room at the desk immediately before her, a thin boy with neatly combed, colorless hair bracketed between large ears; mild blue eyes in a pale face fixed solemnly on hers.

  ‘Robert.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Gildea.’

  ‘Do you know why I told you to remain after school, Robert?’

  He frowned thoughtfully at this, as if it were some lesson he was being called on for, but had failed to memorize properly.

  ‘I suppose for being bad,’ he said, at last.

  Miss Gildea sighed.

  ‘No, Robert, that’s not it at all. I know a bad boy when I see one, Robert, and you aren’t like that. But I do know there’s something troubling you, something on your mind, and I think I can help you.’

  ‘There’s nothing bothering me, Miss Gildea. Honest, there isn’t.’

  Miss Gildea found the silver pencil thrust into her hair and tapped it in a nervous rhythm on her desk.

  ‘Oh, come, Robert. During the last month every time I looked at you your mind was a million miles away. Now, what is it? Just making plans for vacation, or, perhaps, some trouble with the boys?’

  ‘I’m not having trouble with anybody, Miss Gildea.’

  ‘You don’t seem to understand, Robert, that I’m not trying to punish you for anything. Your homework is good. You’ve managed to keep up with the class, but I do think your inattentiveness should be explained. What, for example, were you thinking this afternoon when I spoke to you directly for five minutes, and you didn’t hear a word I said?’

  ‘Nothing, Miss Gildea.’

  She brought the pencil down sharply on the desk. ‘There must have been something, Robert. Now, I must insist that you think back, and try to explain yourself.’

  Looking at his impassive face she knew that somehow she herself had been put on the defensive, that if any means of graceful retreat were offered now she would gladly take it. Thirty-eight years, she thought grimly, and I’m still trying to play mother hen to ducklings. Thirty-eight years passed meant only two more to go before retirement, the half-salary pension, the chance to putter around the house, tend to the garden properly. The pension wouldn’t buy furs and diamonds, sure enough, but it could buy the right to enjoy your own home for the rest of your days instead of a dismal room in the County Home for Old Ladies. Miss Gildea had visited the County Home once, on an instructional visit, and preferred not to think about it.

  ‘Well, Robert,’ she said wearily, ‘have you remembered what you were thinking?’

  ‘Yes, Miss Gildea.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘I’d rather not tell, Miss Gildea.’

  ‘I insist!’

  ‘Well,’ Robert said gently, ‘I was thinking I wished you were dead, Miss Gildea. I was thinking I wished I could kill you.’

  Her first reaction was simply blank incomprehension. She had been standing not ten feet away when that car had skidded up on the sidewalk and crushed her mother’s life from her, and Miss Gildea had neither screamed nor fainted. She had stood there dumbly, because of the very unreality of the thing. Just the way she stood in court where they explained that the man got a year in jail, but didn’t have a dime to pay for the tragedy he had brought about. And now the orderly ranks of desks before her, the expanse of blackboard around her, and Robert’s face in the midst of it all were no more real. She found herself rising from her chair, walking toward Robert, who shrank back, his eyes wide and panicky, his elbow half lifted as if to ward off a blow.

  ‘Do you understand what you’ve just said?’ Miss Gildea demanded hoarsely.

  ‘No, Miss Gildea! Honest, I didn’t mean anything.’

  She shook her head unbelievingly. ‘Whatever made you say it? Whatever in the world could make a boy say a thing like that, such a wicked, terrible thing!’

  ‘You wanted to know! You kept asking me!’

  The sight of that protective elbow raised against her cut as deep as the incredible words had.

  ‘Put that arm down!’ Miss Gildea said shrilly, and then struggled to get her voice under control. ‘In all my years I’ve nev
er struck a child, and I don’t intend to start now!’

  Robert dropped his arm and clasped his hands together on his desk, and Miss Gildea, looking at the pinched white knuckles, realized with surprise that her own hands were shaking uncontrollably. ‘But if you think this little matter ends here, young-feller-me-lad,’ she said, ‘you’ve got another thought coming. You get your things together, and we’re marching right up to Mr Harkness. He’ll be very much interested in all this.’

  Mr Harkness was the Principal. He had arrived only the term before, and but for his taste in eyeglasses (the large, black-rimmed kind which, Miss Gildea privately thought, looked actorish) and his predilection for the phrase ‘modern pedagogical methods’ was, in her opinion, a rather engaging young man.

  He looked at Robert’s frightened face and then at Miss Gildea’s pursed lips. ‘Well,’ he said pleasantly, ‘what seems to be the trouble here?’

  ‘That,’ said Miss Gildea, ‘is something I think Robert should tell you.’

  She placed a hand on Robert’s shoulder, but he pulled away and backed slowly toward Mr Harkness, his breath coming in loud, shuddering sobs, his eyes riveted on Miss Gildea as if she were the only thing in the room beside himself. Mr Harkness put an arm around Robert and frowned at Miss Gildea.

  ‘Now, what’s behind all this, Miss Gildea? The boy seems frightened to death.’

  Miss Gildea found herself sick of it all, anxious to get out of the room, away from Robert. ‘That’s enough, Robert,’ she commanded. ‘Just tell Mr Harkness exactly what happened.’

  ‘I said the boy was frightened to death, Miss Gildea,’ Mr Harkness said brusquely. ‘We’ll talk about it as soon as he understands we’re his friends. Won’t we, Robert?’

  Robert shook his head vehemently. ‘I didn’t do anything bad! Miss Gildea said I didn’t do anything bad!’

  ‘Well, then!’ said Mr Harkness triumphantly. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of, is there?’

  Robert shook his head again. ‘She said I had to stay after school.’

  Mr Harkness glanced sharply at Miss Gildea. ‘I suppose he missed the morning bus, is that it? And after I said in a directive that the staff was to make allowances—’

  ‘Robert doesn’t use a bus,’ Miss Gildea protested. ‘Perhaps I’d better explain all this, Mr Harkness. You see—’

  ‘I think Robert’s doing very well,’ Mr Harkness said, and tightened his arm around Robert, who nodded shakily.

  ‘She kept me in,’ he said, ‘and then when we were alone she came up close to me and she said, “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking you’d like to see me dead! You’re thinking you’d like to kill me, aren’t you?” ’

  Robert’s voice had dropped to an eerie whisper that bound Miss Gildea like a spell. It was broken only when she saw the expression on Mr Harkness’s face.

  ‘Why, that’s a lie!’ she cried. ‘That’s the most dreadful lie I ever heard any boy dare—’

  Mr Harkness cut in abruptly. ‘Miss Gildea! I insist you let the boy finish what he has to say.’

  Miss Gildea’s voice fluttered. ‘It seems to me, Mr Harkness, that he has been allowed to say quite enough already!’

  ‘Has he?’ Mr Harkness asked.

  ‘Robert has been inattentive lately, especially so this afternoon. After class I asked him what he had been thinking about, and he dared to say he was thinking how he wished I were dead! How he wanted to kill me!’

  ‘Robert said that?’

  ‘In almost those exact words. And I can tell you, Mr Harkness, that I was shocked, terribly shocked, especially since Robert always seemed like such a nice boy.’

  ‘His record—?’

  ‘His record is quite good. It’s just—’

  ‘And his social conduct?’ asked Mr Harkness in the same level voice.

  ‘As far as I know, he gets along with the other children well enough.’

  ‘But for some reason,’ persisted Mr Harkness, ‘you found him annoying you.’

  Robert raised his voice. ‘I didn’t! Miss Gildea said I didn’t do anything bad. And I always liked her. I like her better than any teacher!’

  Miss Gildea fumbled blindly in her hair for the silver pencil, and failed to find it. She looked around the floor distractedly.

  ‘Yes?’ said Mr Harkness.

  ‘My pencil,’ said Miss Gildea on the verge of tears. ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘Surely, Miss Gildea,’ said Mr Harkness in a tone of mild exasperation, ‘this is not quite the moment—’

  ‘It was very valuable,’ Miss Gildea tried to explain hopelessly. ‘It was my mother’s.’ In the face of Mr Harkness’s stony surveillance she knew she must look a complete mess. Hems crooked, nose red, hair all disheveled. ‘I’m all upset, Mr Harkness. It’s been a long term and now all this right at the end of it. I don’t know what to say.’

  Mr Harkness’s face fell into sympathetic lines.

  ‘That’s quite all right, Miss Gildea. I know how you feel. Now, if you want to leave, I think Robert and I should have a long, friendly talk.’

  ‘If you don’t mind—’

  ‘No, no,’ Mr Harkness said heartily. ‘As a matter of fact, I think that would be the best thing all round.’

  After he had seen her out he closed the door abruptly behind her, and Miss Gildea walked heavily up the stairway and down the corridor to the Sixth Grade room. The silver pencil was there on the floor at Robert’s desk, and she picked it up and carefully polished it with her handkerchief. Then she sat down at her desk with the handkerchief to her nose and wept soundlessly for ten minutes.

  That night, when the bitter taste of humiliation had grown faint enough to permit it, Miss Gildea reviewed the episode with all the honesty at her command. Honesty with oneself had always been a major point in her credo, had, in fact, been passed on through succeeding classes during the required lesson on The Duties of an American Citizen, when Miss Gildea, to sum up the lesson, would recite: ‘This above all, To thine ownself be true …’ while thumping her fist on her desk as an accompaniment to each syllable.

  Hamlet, of course, was not in the syllabus of the Sixth Grade, whose reactions over the years never deviated from a mixed bewilderment and indifference. But Miss Gildea, after some prodding of the better minds into a discussion of the lines, would rest content with the knowledge that she had sown good seed on what, she prayed, was fertile ground.

  Reviewing the case of Robert now, with her emotions under control, she came to the unhappy conclusion that it was she who had committed the injustice. The child had been ordered to stay after school, something that to him could mean only a punishment. He had been ordered to disclose some shadowy, childlike thoughts that had drifted through his mind hours before, and, unable to do so, either had to make up something out of the whole cloth, or blurt out the immediate thought in his immature mind.

  It was hardly unusual, reflected Miss Gildea sadly, for a child badgered by a teacher to think what Robert had; she could well remember her own feelings toward a certain pompadoured harridan who still haunted her dreams. And the only conclusion to be drawn, unpleasant though it was, was that Robert, and not she, had truly put into practice those beautiful words from Shakespeare.

  It was this, as well as the sight of his pale accusing face before her while she led the class through the morning session next day, which prompted her to put Robert in charge of refilling the water pitcher during recess. The duties of the water pitcher monitor were to leave the playground a little before the rest of the class and clean and refill the pitcher on her desk, but since the task was regarded as an honor by the class, her gesture, Miss Gildea felt with some self-approval, carried exactly the right note of conciliation.

  She was erasing the blackboard at the front of the room near the end of the recess when she heard Robert approaching her desk, but much as she wanted to she could not summon up courage to turn and face him. As if, she thought, he were the teacher, and I were afraid of him. And she could feel her c
heeks grow warm at the thought.

  He re-entered the room on the sound of the bell that marked end of recess, and this time Miss Gildea plopped the eraser firmly into its place beneath the blackboard and turned to look at him. ‘Thank you very much, Robert,’ she said as he set the pitcher down and neatly capped it with her drinking class.

  ‘You’re welcome, Miss Gildea,’ Robert said politely. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his hands with it, then smiled gently at Miss Gildea. ‘I bet you think I put poison or something into that water,’ he said gravely, ‘but I wouldn’t do anything like that, Miss Gildea. Honest, I wouldn’t.’

  Miss Gildea gasped, then reached out a hand toward Robert’s shoulder. She withdrew it hastily when he shrank away with the familiar panicky look in his eyes.

  ‘Why did you say that, Robert?’ Miss Gildea demanded in a terrible voice. ‘That was plain impudence, wasn’t it? You thought you were being smart, didn’t you?’

  At that moment the rest of the class surged noisily into the room, but Miss Gildea froze them into silence with a commanding wave of the hand. Out of the corner of her eye she noted the cluster of shocked and righteous faces allied with her in condemnation, and she felt a quick little sense of triumph in her position.

  ‘I was talking to you, Robert,’ she said. ‘What do you have to say for yourself?’

  Robert took another step backward and almost tumbled over a schoolbag left carelessly in the aisle. He caught himself, then stood there helplessly, his eyes never leaving Miss Gildea’s.

  ‘Well, Robert?’

  He shook his head wildly. ‘I didn’t do it!’ he cried. ‘I didn’t put anything in your water, Miss Gildea! I told you I didn’t!’

  Without looking, Miss Gildea knew that the cluster of accusing faces had swung toward her now, felt her triumph turn to a sick bewilderment inside her. It was as if Robert, with his teary eyes and pale, frightened face and too-large ears, had turned into a strange jellylike creature that could not be pinned down and put in its place. As if he were retreating further and further down some dark, twisting path, and leading her on with him. And, she thought desperately, she had to pull herself free before she did something dreadful, something unforgivable.