Mother’s cup rattled in her saucer, and she spoke to Teresa with a cheerfulness that was forced and bright and artificial. Mother, in fact, looked as if she needed a cocktail already, although it was not yet noon; or perhaps she only needed a little longer to recover from those she had had the night before. The flesh was smudged beneath her eyes, and her face, cleaned of makeup, looked drawn and tired and older than it was.
“Good morning, darling.” Mother said. “Have you been up long?
“Oh, yes,” Teresa said. “It’s almost noon.”
“That late? Did Hannah give you your breakfast?”
“Yes. I had an egg and two strips of bacon.”
Mother reacted as if the words were painful to her. Her mouth turned down, becoming for a moment really ugly, and she set her cup and saucer carefully aside on the table between her bed and Father’s.
“What have you been doing?”
“Nothing much. I looked at some magazines.” Teresa hesitated, feeling within her the sudden singing exhilaration of her anticipation. “This afternoon I would like to go across to the park. May I, please?”
“I think it would be all right if you are careful crossing the boulevard. Why do you want to go to the park?”
“I’m going to meet Cousin Kelly there.”
There it was again, that strange blankness in Mother’s eyes, the curious cold hardening of her face.
“I hope you are not going to be difficult, Teresa,” Mother said.
The remark seemed so irrational, so utterly unrelated to anything that had been said or to any intention that Teresa had, that it was quite hopeless to try to respond to it. Teresa in her hopelessness was silent, and after a moment Mother’s shoulders moved slightly in a gesture that was not big enough to be a shrug.
“Well, you have a nice time in the park, darling, and be sure you have your lunch before you go.”
This was clearly a dismissal, and Teresa, relieved, went downstairs and out to the kitchen to keep Hannah company. At one o’clock, Hannah gave her lunch, tomato soup and crackers spread with soft cheese and a green salad and milk. After she had eaten her lunch it was almost one-thirty, and Teresa returned to the living room and sat down on the edge of a chair and deliberately waited and waited while her anticipation of the afternoon grew and grew and became so intense that it could no longer be borne, and then, at last, she left the apartment and went downstairs and out into the golden, sunbathed street. At the curb she paused and looked left for traffic, and then she ran across to a medial strip that divided the boulevard, there pausing again and this time looking right. Safely all the way across, she entered the park, passing between stone pillars, and followed a concrete walk as far as a green wooden bench within sight of the fountain, which tossed into the air a glittering shower that fell, the upward force of the fountain spent, back into the surrounding pool with a sound of summer rain. Sitting there on the bench, watching the fountain, she waited.
Waiting, she tried to remember where and when she had first seen Cousin Kelly, and she couldn’t. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t for the life of her. He had just suddenly come into her life, that was all, and her life, which had been lonely, was filled thereafter with love requited and promises kept. It did not matter where and when he had come. It only mattered that he had come somewhere and sometime, and that he was, having approached quietly in the midst of her pondering, there at this instant.
He stood a step away on the concrete walk and smiled down at her. His hair was thick and pale blond; he never wore a hat, winter or summer, and the sunlight touched the hair and turned it to silver. His eyes were blue, brimming with grave and secret laughter, and below one of the eyes, running down at an angle across his cheek, was the lingering trace of an old scar. “Hello, Tess,” he said.
He was the only one who called her that. Hannah called her missy or Teresa, and Mother called her Teresa or darling, and Father called her Teresa or child, but Cousin Kelly always called her by the warm diminutive, and it was something special between them, another secret shared. Rising, she held out a hand, and he took it and kept it in his.
“Hello, Cousin Kelly. I’ve been waiting: for you.”
“Am I late?”
“Oh, no. I was early.”
“I’m flattered. Shall we walk over to the fountain?”
“I’d like that. And then perhaps we can walk under the trees.”
So they went over to the fountain and laughed at their distorted reflections in the pool, and Cousin Kelly told her about the foolish Grecian boy who had fallen in love with himself when looking at his reflection in another pool long ago. She had heard the story before, but it seemed new and much more exciting the way Cousin Kelly told it. Afterward they began walking on the grass beneath the trees, trying to identify each tree by the size and shape of its leaves, and they held hands all the while. There was only one tiny blemish on the nearly perfect afternoon.
That was when they met Mrs. Carter. Mrs. Carter lived in the apartment building on the fourth floor, and she was walking her poodle in the park on a leash. Teresa and Cousin Kelly had come across the grass, and Mrs. Carter was strolling along the walk, pausing now and again to let the poodle sniff at things and do his duty, and they all just happened to reach a certain point from different directions at the same time. Teresa spoke politely to Mrs. Carter, who pulled up the poodle and stopped to exchange a few words with Teresa, and this was all right except that Mrs. Carter paid absolutely no attention to Cousin Kelly, although he was standing there holding Teresa by the hand all the while. For all the recognition Mrs. Carter gave him, Cousin Kelly might as well have been somewhere else, and Teresa thought it was very rude of Mrs. Carter. Afterward she told Cousin Kelly how rude she thought Mrs. Carter had been, but Cousin Kelly only laughed and said it didn’t matter, and actually, considering all the rest of the wonderful afternoon, it didn’t.
Eventually they came back to the bench from which they had started. They sat down together to rest and talk, and Teresa was beginning to feel sad because it was getting late, almost five o’clock, and soon she would have to leave.
“Will I see you tomorrow?” Teresa asked.
“If you wish.”
“Where shall I meet your”
“If it’s another nice day, we can meet here. Otherwise, wait for me in your room, like last Sunday, and I’ll slip up.”
It had gotten a little cooler, and the shadows of everything lay longer to the east on the grass, and Teresa’s sense of sadness was growing stronger.
“It’s so long from Sunday to Saturday,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, “it is.”
“I wish you could come and live with me all the time.”
“Do you. Tess? So do I.”
“Why don’t Mother and Father like you?”
“It’s an old story, but never mind. You could make them like me if you tried.”
“How could I?”
Fie reached into a pocket of his jacket and brought out a sealed white envelope with something in it. His voice was light, and the grave laughter was in his eyes.
“By putting some of this in something they drink,” he said.
“What is it?”
“It’s a love potion.”
“You mean like in fairy stories?”
“Yes.”
“I thought that was only make-believe.”
“Oh, no. There is more truth than you imagine in fairy stories. When your mother and father drink something with some of this powder in it, they will immediately like me, just as you do, and then they will ask me to come and stay with you all the time.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Try it and see.”
He extended the envelope, and she took it and put it in the pocket of her yellow jumper.
&
nbsp; “I will,” she said.
Then it was time to go. Father would surely be home from the office, and Mother would be getting cross and anxious, and pretty soon, if Teresa didn’t hurry, would be sending Hannah across the boulevard to fetch her. Parting from Cousin Kelly was not so hard on Saturdays as it was on Sundays, anyhow, because the time between parting and meeting was so much shorter. So, saying good-bye, she hurried off down the walk toward the stone gate. Once she stopped and turned and waved, and Cousin Kelly, waiting and watching by the bench, waved back, then turned and went away himself in the opposite direction.
In the apartment. Mother and Father were sitting together in the living room. It was immediately apparent to Teresa from Father’s expression that his day had not gone well, and the atmosphere in the living room was oppressive, but there was, fortunately, imminent hope of relief, for it was time for cocktails. Teresa said hello politely to Father, who grunted, and Mother looked as she invariably did when she was about to be moderately severe about something.
“Where have you been all this time, Teresa?” Mother asked.
“I told you where I was going. Mother. I went to the park. You gave me permission.”
“I didn’t give you permission to stay indefinitely.”
“I’m sorry. It was such a nice afternoon, and I was with Cousin Kelly.”
Father looked up angrily and slapped the arm of his chair with the flat of his hand.
“Cousin Kelly again! However did the child get started on this thing? When did she ever even hear of Kelly?”
Mother must have heard Father’s outburst, but she gave no sign of it. Her expression had changed suddenly to the cold and stony one which warned that she had at last had all of something that she could stand, and had determined to resolve a problem, no matter how unpleasant the resolving might be. Her voice, as if in compensation, was softly fraught with dreadful reasonableness.
“You did not see Cousin Kelly,” she said. “You did not see Cousin Kelly this afternoon or any other afternoon, because Cousin Kelly is dead. He was dead and buried, Teresa, before you were born.” Teresa heard the words, of course, but they had no higher meaning. They did not prick her intelligence or elicit an emotional reaction. How could Cousin Kelly be dead when she had just parted from him in the park?
“I saw him this afternoon,” she said, “and I’ll sec him again tomorrow. I see him every Saturday and Sunday.”
“The child has a morbid imagination, that’s all,” Father said. “She needs professional attention. Tell me, Teresa, what docs Cousin Kelly look like? Describe him for me.”
“He is about as tall as you,” Teresa said, “but much thinner. He has very light hair that looks silver in the sun, and he has blue eyes that laugh. On one cheek he has a scar that sometimes you can hardly see.”
Father looked stunned for a moment, and Mother caught her breath with a sharp gasp.
“She’s seen a picture somewhere;’ Father said. “She’s surely seen a picture.”
“This must stop!” Mother’s voice still held that dreadful reasonableness, her face the expression of grim decision. “Listen to me, Teresa. Cousin Kelly is dead. He is dead because I killed him. It was an accident, a tragic accident, and it happened years ago. We had taken an outing in the country, Kelly and I and our parents. We had gone to a place high on a bluff above a river. Kelly and I had quarreled. I was furious with him. I wanted to be alone, and I walked away from the others to the edge of the bluff, but Kelly followed. He came up beside me and took me by the arm and started to say something. I turned and jerked my arm free. I don’t know what happened exactly. I must have pushed him without thinking or meaning to.” Mother’s voice was silent, the horror of that remote moment invoked again by the telling, and then it went on quietly and quickly, as if to be done as soon as could be. “He was standing at the edge of the bluff, and he fell over. He was killed. He was dead when my father and my uncle reached him. They always blamed me, my aunt and uncle—Kelly’s mother and father. They still do. They thought I pushed him deliberately in a fit of anger. But it was an accident. That’s all it was, Teresa. It was a terrible accident, and Cousin Kelly is dead.”
Teresa turned and walked away to the far end of the living room. Turning again, she looked back at Mother and Father.
“Cousin Kelly is alive,” she said, “and he is coming soon to live with us here.”
She went on into the dining room, passing from view. Ahead of her, beyond the louvered swinging door to the kitchen, she heard Hannah at work. She pushed through the door and saw that Hannah had deserted her cleaning paraphernalia long enough to prepare cocktails. The silver shaker was on a tray on the cabinet, and beside the shaker were two fragile, long-stemmed glasses. Hannah looked hurried and harassed. It was after five, and she was obviously anxious to be away by six.
“Let me take the tray, Hannah,” Teresa said.
“I’m sure I’d be grateful to you for saving me the steps.” Hannah said. “Mind you don’t spill it, missy. Watch where you’re going.” Teresa took the tray and pushed back through the louvered door into the dining room. In the pocket of her yellow jumper, the love potion felt as heavy as gold dust.
It was all over, everything done that needed doing, and everyone gone who had been there except a worn and rather seedy little man and Teresa and Hannah. The man spoke with gentle weariness in a tone of futility.
“Now, Teresa,” he said, “tell me again exactly where you got the pois—the ‘love potion’.”
“Cousin Kelly gave it to me. We were in the park.”
“Why did Cousin Kelly give it to you?”
“It was supposed to make Mother and Father love him. Then he could come and live with us here.”
“Your mother and father didn’t love Cousin Kelly?”
“No.” She paused, a shadow passing across her eyes, as if she were struck for a moment by a presentiment of wonder. “Mother said that Cousin Kelly was dead.”
“I know.”
“She said he died years ago. He fell off a cliff. But he wasn’t. Dead, I mean. I was in the park with him this afternoon.”
“And you met your neighbor there? What is her name?”
“Mrs. Carter. She was rude to Cousin Kelly. He was standing right there, holding my hand, and she ignored him.”
“Are you sure she saw him?”
“How could she have helped? He was standing right there.”
“Mrs. Carter told me that you were alone when she saw you. There was no one with you at all.”
“I don’t understand it.” Again the shadow passed over her eyes. “He was holding my hand, and later he gave me the love potion.”
“All right.” The little policeman stirred uneasily. He was feeling, for some reason, a chill in his bones. “Last Sunday it rained. You couldn’t go to the park, and so Cousin Kelly visited you here. Isn’t that what you told me?”
“Yes. He came right up to my room. He was there all afternoon.”
“Poor little dear.” Hannah reached an arm toward Teresa as if to brush from the child the gathering shadows of evil. “She has been alone too much. She lives in fantasy.”
“You are certain that no one came last Sunday?”
“There was no one here but the family and me. No one. The hall door is kept locked on the inside. No one could have entered without being admitted.”
“Do you think that Mrs. Carter would deliberately lie about not seeing Cousin Kelly in the park?”
“No.”
“Do you think your mother would have lied about his being dead?”
“No.”
“Do you think Hannah would have lied about his not being here last Sunday?”
“No.”
“There you are, then.” Leaning forward, he spoke slowly with a kind of dreadful r
easonableness, and every tired syllable was an echo of his dread and a measure of his futility. “Listen to me, Teresa. You must tell me exactly where you got the love potion. It’s very important.”
And she met his dreadful reasonableness, as he had known she would, with dreadful innocence.
“Cousin Kelly gave it to me. In the park. He was there.”
REFUGE
Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, October 1968.
She had walked all the way to her father’s house, three miles across the town, and now she had been sitting alone in her old room for more than an hour. She knew that it was more than an hour because the clock in the front hall had said almost a quarter to four when she arrived, and the five o’clock whistle had just sounded up north at the roundhouse in the railroad yards. At the first shrill blast of the whistle, she had raised her eyes and cocked her head in an attitude of listening, as if she were hearing something new and strange that only she in all the world could hear, but when the sound had diminished and died away she had lowered her eyes again and sat staring, as before, at her hands folded in her lap. In all the time she had been here, except for the brief interval when the whistle blew, she had hardly moved. She wondered if she should get up and go into the kitchen and begin preparing supper for her father, who would soon be getting home from his job in the yards. No matter. She had burned all her energy in the simple and exhausting ordeal of getting here. She had come, indeed, only because there was no place else to go. Now that she was here, there was nothing else to do.
The First Golden Age of Mystery & Crime MEGAPACK Page 41