by Packer, Vin
“I saw the prowler walk up the hill,” she said, “and I decided to do a little investigating. I took Kendal and we followed him. We didn’t get too close to him, but I saw him looking in your windows. He was standing on your porch.”
Neal said, “Why didn’t you call the police, Miss Nickerson?”
“Because of what they think of Mother and me. They think we’re a pair of old women who imagine things.”
“Then you should have called me,” Neal said. He decided that either the police were right in their estimate of the Nickersons or some neighborhood kid had been poking around. One night last summer Neal had caught three of them skinny-dipping in the pool near midnight.
“I wanted to call you,” said she, “but Mother said he might come down to our place then.”
“Thank you for telling me about it,” said Neal. “Can I give you and Kendal a lift down the hill?”
“No thanks. Kendal needs exercise. We’ll walk down.”
Neal got in behind the wheel. He said, “If you see him again, call me. I’ll see that he doesn’t bother you.”
“There’s been a car driving slow by your turn-off down on the road, too.”
“Next time when you see something like that, just call me,” Neal said. He put the key in the ignition.
“This car’s black. It drives real slow, like someone was looking up at your place.” Then she added, “I don’t know what there is funny about it.”
“I was just smiling at Kendal,” said Neal. “She’s a good dog, isn’t she?”
• • •
Neal chuckled as he rode along River Road, deciding to tell the Gambles about Minnie and her mother and Kendal tomorrow night when he had dinner with them. Archie and Dru had made a quick decision and moved into the Cages’ house yesterday. Just before Neal arrived in Piermont, he gave a glance up at the house. No signs of life. They were probably sleeping late. Neal had dropped in on them last night after work and found them fairly well settled, except for the unpacking of Archie’s dozen crates of books. They had invited him to have a drink, but though he felt the same early evening loneliness which was plaguing him since Margaret’s death, he refused. He was not going to take advantage of their propinquity and lead them to believe that now they were near, he would always be underfoot.
He had had a taste of loneliness three years before when Margaret had been in Bucks County. That was bad enough, but he had tolerated it by believing that she would return. It was that same temporary loneliness which overtakes a man when his wife and children are at the beach in the summer and he’s in the city. He had heard his colleague, Cliff Bates, complain about it often enough. Cliff’s wife took winter vacations as well. There was a period some years back when Cliff had all but lived with Neal and Margaret. Neal had complained bitterly after a while; Cliff had even taken to staying overnight. Neal would wake up first thing in the morning and hear Cliff and Margaret disporting themselves out in the pool. Then Cliff would sit across from him at breakfast, return in the evening for cocktails and dinner, drinking sufficiently after dinner for Margaret to suggest it was unsafe for him to drive.
Neal had not been able to understand it. Was the man a complete jellyfish without his wife and daughter? Were they all there was to his life away from Rock-Or? Didn’t he have other interests, or other friends besides Neal and Margaret?
Now he understood all too clearly. Nineteen years of marriage was an island. You visited and were visited by the mainland as a couple. The three friends who had called since Margaret’s death had all expressed their desire to “get together when Margaret returns.”
He had imagined that he would mourn more for Margaret, but again, because this time he knew she was not returning, her absence affected him much differently. He did not miss her. It was himself he missed, and having some sort of identity after five o’clock. He drank alone, ate alone, listened to music alone, and began slowly developing the unresilient, knotty little habits of a person living alone. He cleaned the house too often, began checking the evening’s television fare in the morning when he read the Times (finding pathetic gratification when a good movie would be listed), and he jammed the freezer with Swanson’s four-course frozen dinners and the cupboard with S.S. Pierce canned roast beef and chili, soups and puddings. He worked in the yard every night until it was dark; he installed “quiet” switches on all the light fixtures, as Margaret had begged him to do for years; he scraped and repainted furniture, fixed leaks, repaired screens, removed old window caulking and rearranged his library alphabetically.
He put off nothing that he could accomplish physically, but he became a mental procrastinator. He put off explaining to anyone any more than the fact that Margaret was “away"; he put off going to the police to report her absence. He put off planning or plotting his way out of it, and he put off Penny. Even his unconscious mind cooperated with him, for he had no dreams of Margaret that he could remember, nor any of Penny. The only woman to appear in a dream since Margaret’s death had been Druscilla Gamble. She had run toward him in slow motion through the elephant grass, called him “Joe,” as Margaret used to, and presented him with an apple.
• • •
At the clinic there was a letter from Doubleday waiting on Neal’s desk. The editor was impressed with the outline; he wondered if Neal was free for lunch one day next week.
In the midst of Neal’s elation, the telephone rang. Penny.
“I have a wonderful idea, Neal. I’ll fix you a birthday lunch today.”
“I can’t come there.”
“No one has to know. Leave your car in the Grand Union lot. Go in the back entrance of Woolworth’s and use the underground passage to our building. You just have to walk up one flight.”
“What about your father?”
“He’s not here, Neal. He took the bus to Spring Valley to see my aunt.”
“Penny, it’s too big a chance to take.” Last week, Cliff Bates had laughed when Neal had remarked that the switchboard girl listened in on his conversations. Neal had been testing to see if it were possible, and Cliff had relieved his mind by saying there wasn’t a chance. “But aren’t you getting a little paranoid, old man?” he had added.
Still, Neal didn’t like these phone conversations.
Penny said, “Daddy’s going to be gone until after dinner. He’s going to call me before he leaves Spring Valley so I can meet his bus. It’s safe, Neal. I won’t get another chance to have you here for months!”
“I just can’t see it. It’s too risky.”
“Neal, I have to see you. I haven’t seen you since—” She couldn’t finish the sentence.
“I know. Be patient. Pen, I’m doing everything I can to speed things up. But we need time.”
“What are you doing?”
“What?”
“What are you doing to speed things up?” “I can’t go into it on the phone.”
“It’s too big a strain on me, Neal! I have to see you, Neal! I’ll crack! I have things to tell you! I have to see you!” “Listen, Pen—”
“You listen for a change. Do you know I drive by your house nights? I do, Neal! Hoping to get a glimpse of you, or hoping maybe you’ll drive down the hill, or walk down to get your newspaper out of the mailbox.”
“How can you get a glimpse of me from down on the road?” “I could. Maybe see you up in your yard.” “Penny? You’ve never walked up the hill, have you?” “No. I’ve wanted to, though.”
“And you don’t call and listen to me say ‘Hello?’ without saying anything?”
“No. I told you I wasn’t doing that.”
Neal didn’t believe her; if Penny wasn’t making the calls, who was? And if Penny had been wearing slacks that Saturday night, would Minnie Nickerson know from a distance whether it was a man or a woman?
Now Neal was concerned. What if she were like her brother, who made such obvious errors when he committed his petty thefts, that even the police observed he was more interested in the punishment than the
crime? Penny repeated, “I’ll crack, Neal.”
“What time shall I come?” he said.
“You’re coming?”
“Yes. About one?”
“Any time. Any time, Neal! Come before one if you want.” “I can’t come before one.”
“Oh, Neal! I feel like the world’s off my shoulders.” “Just calm down. Everything’s going to be okay, Pen.” “Neal? What do you want to eat?” “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does! It’s the first meal I’ve ever fixed you! I don’t know what you want.” “A sandwich.”
“No, Neal! I want to fix you something good. It’s your birthday next Tuesday!” “I don’t care, Pen.” “Meat? What kind of meat?” “Hamburger. Something simple.”
“Neal, I’m so relieved! It’s been a terrible strain. I have something to tell you. Oh, Neal, I’m dying to talk to you! Can you stay for a while? I mean, you won’t run in and out in an hour, will you? Can you stay long?”
“Not too long,” said Neal, who knew that as soon as he was there it would seem too long.
• • •
Neal’s secretary brought him the BISSEL, FORREST file.
Neal needed to refresh his memory on certain points. When he came to the relevancies, he ran his finger under the words slowly, as though he were underlining them in his thoughts.
Both parents were needlessly punitive and seldom touched or handled the boy except to punish him. His delinquent behavior was a way for him to attract their attention. As an adult he repeated this pattern, seeking the reprimand of authority by his larcenies. He invited punishment.
The puritanical attitude his parents had toward sex compelled him to rebel and repent simultaneously. He was promiscuous from an early age. Guilt forced him to end his relationships soon after they had begun, and near the end of each one he would invariably go on a shoplifting spree, hoping to be caught and punished for the larger crime of having indulged in sexual intercourse.
An interview with his only sister revealed that she also suffered the same treatment from the parents. More stable than he, with no record of delinquency nor any conscious antisocial impulses, she did confess she had an uncontrollable temper, and sometimes burst into violent rages during which she feared she might hurt someone “without even knowing it.”
“Busy, Neal?” Cliff Bates’ voice.
Neal looked up, closed the manila folder and waved Cliff to the armchair near Neal’s desk. “No. Have a seat.”
Cliff was one of these boyish fellows in his late forties who looked and behaved as though he were an aging relic of the Now generation. He tooled around in a red Mustang, bought his clothes at the University Shop at Saks Fifth Avenue, accompanied himself on the guitar while he sang Dylan and Donovan, and seasoned his conversation with generous references to his own amazing sexual prowess. Back in the time when he was so often at the Danas’, Margaret had nicknamed him “Diable,” and Neal would hear them giggling over their Scrabble games nights when he retired ahead of them, and hear Margaret call out, “Diable à quatre!” as she lost a game to him and had to pay the dollar.
“Carla and I haven’t seen you and Margaret in a dog’s age,” he said, lighting his pipe. “How about coming by for Sunday brunch?”
Neal regarded him thoughtfully; he was going to have to start somewhere, with someone, and Cliff had known all about the thing three years ago. Margaret had left, in fact, shortly after Cliff had begun cutting down his visits to them. Cliff had kept her preoccupied; without him to take morning swims with her, without the nightly jokes and games and guitar sessions, she had begun to flounder. Neal’s pleasure in Cliff’s absence had soon faded and he had found himself actually asking Cliff when he was dropping in again, but Carla had returned by then from her European tour; Carla wasn’t that mad about the Danas.
Neal said, “Cliff, I’m afraid Margaret’s left me again.”
Cliff removed the pipe from his mouth and grimaced. “What?”
“It looks that way,” said Neal.
Then Neal gave Cliff the same version of Margaret’s disappearance that he had given Margaret’s mother. Cliff listened, too embarrassed to meet Neal’s eyes, and when Neal was finished, Cliff’s first reaction was a heavy sigh.
Neal said, “I think I’m going to the police about it, Cliff. She’s been gone over two weeks now.”
Cliff Bates’ adamantine response surprised Neal. “Absolutely not, Neal,” he said. “I agree with her mother. Margaret always lands on her feet. She’s just giving you the business.”
“It isn’t like her, though, not to let me know where she is,” said Neal.
“Isn’t it?” Cliff said. “No. It isn’t.”
Cliff got to his feet. “She’ll be back,” he said. “You’ll see, she’ll turn up.” He gave Neal a reassuring punch in the arm. “And when she does,” he added, “you have a date with the Bateses.”
CHAPTER 13
You pushed Margaret, didn’t you?, he thought. “Neal?” “What, Pen?”
Margaret didn’t step back accidentally; she knew her own house too well for that.
“You’re so quiet. What are you thinking?”
Was it true that Penny had wanted the showdown with Margaret? She had seen Margaret’s car in the yard; why had she gone on in, and then remained after she saw Margaret? … remained to provoke her. What other reason would there be for her to stay there?
“I was wondering,” he said, “where you ever found the recipe for this?” It must have been concocted by the makers of Gelusil, Bromo-Seltzer, Amitone, and Brioschi; chicken, underdone, swimming in a sour-cream, chicken-broth sauce, liberally treated with curry powder.
At one-fifteen in the afternoon!
She said, “I clipped it out of a magazine.”
Served over noodles with creamed onions, white bread already buttered, and chunks of iceburg lettuce bathed in a bottled French dressing.
“You’re awfully quiet, Neal.”
“I’m eating, Penny.”
“You’re not eating very much.”
“I don’t eat a lot at noon.”
“You ate a whole steak that day we went to ‘76 House.”
“I hadn’t had breakfast that day.”
“Have some bread, Neal.”
“No thanks.”
“I buttered it for you.”
“I really don’t want any.”
“Would you rather have rye bread, Neal? I’ve got rye bread, too.”
“No bread, thanks.”
“I should have bought rolls instead.”
“Everything’s fine.”
“You ate a lot of rolls that day at ‘76.”
“I hadn’t had breakfast that day.”
“Did you have breakfast today?”
“Yes.”
“What’d you have?” “Hmmm?”
“What’d you have for breakfast?” “Bacon and eggs.” “Did you fix them yourself?”
“I stopped at the diner.”
• • •
She wore light pink fingernail polish; it was chipped, her nails were chewed.
Margaret’s hands had always been so impeccably manicured, graceful hands with long fingers which performed gracefully. Would she have used those hands to slap such an inconsequential face as the one Neal saw across the table from him?
Penny’s lipstick was too dark; she wore mascara on both her upper and lower eyelashes. It was black mascara, applied so thickly that the lashes were glued together. She wore eyeliner; she had made wings at the corner of her eyes.
Had her makeup always been so garish?
In his memory she had seemed so young and wholesome and vulnerable that day on Bear Mountain when she had run toward him in the field of elephant grass.
“Save room for dessert, Neal.”
“I won’t be able to eat dessert, Penny.”
“You have to, Neal. I bought it for you.”
“I’ll try.”
“Neal?”
“What?”
<
br /> “We’re strange together. Can you feel it?” “Feel what?”
“Like the way we act together. Like strangers.” “It’s natural, under the circumstances.” “Is it?” “Yes.”
“Like you’re the psychologist, you ought to know.” “In time everything will be all right.” “Will it?” “Sure.”
“The way it used to be with us?” “Why not?”
The tablecloth was oilcloth; the napkins were paper.
Remember the way Margaret had set a table? There was always clean linen and often fresh flowers. Margaret would never place a milk container on the table, as Penny had done, or a tin of Durkee’s black pepper alongside the salt shaker.
Neal had married Margaret when she was Penny’s age, but even in the beginning Margaret had known the way to do things. She had been raised in an environment no more privileged financially than Penny’s, but she had come from solid old Pennsylvania Dutch stock on her mother’s side and God-fearing Irish Catholic on her father’s. Blood will tell. Margaret had learned a sense of responsibility—yes, and the words she had cried out before she had plummeted to her death: character, integrity—she had had both. But Bissel blood?
Neal remembered the wry grin that always tipped Forrest Bissel’s lips whenever Neal reviewed with him his felonies and misdemeanors, the casual admission, “I’m not much good, am I?,” and the shrug of his broad shoulders, as though there were nothing he could think to do about it, no way for him to fight it, nor a reason to.
And was there a reason to, when he received so much gratification in the punishment?
Now, supposedly, Forrest understood that there were other, better forms of gratification; supposedly Neal had given him the necessary insight to fight his behavior pattern and helped him gain the impetus for the battle. Time would tell how successful Neal had been.
Forrest had said, “From here on out, I’ll think of you as my old man, my authority figure; that’ll keep me straight.”
• • •
Penny said, “I hate it this way, Neal!” “I know.”
“No, you don’t know! I imagine that this,” she hesitated, “this thing has turned you against me! Is it my imagination?” “Of course it is.” “Is it?”