by Packer, Vin
She settled down to enjoy the Post as though she were pausing for a cup of coffee with an old friend. She read Harriet Van Horne, glanced at Nancy and Dennis the Menace, and then her eye caught Carroll Righter’s column, In the Stars. The predictions always pertained to the following day; she looked for hers for Thursday, today, under “Moon Children,” which some astrologers now chose in preference to the dread word “Cancer.”
You have some responsibility that you want to renege on, but this would lead to trouble. Why don’t you help that person who is in trouble?
Both sentences ended with the word “trouble.” Right, folks?
She sighed and naturally thought of a way this little message could pertain to her. It was her responsibility to return the letters and the diary; it was up to her to help Neal. Even if the truth hurt, it probably wouldn’t hurt as badly as the exaggerations Neal’s anxieties were conjuring up.
But she was the chicken’s chicken, friends; the only way she could imagine herself carrying it off was to deposit Tuto’s mewings and Margaret Dana’s musings on Neal’s porch by dark of night, the way bastards are given over to orphanages.
She’d have to sneak up the hill on foot, and then undoubtedly suffer herself being sacrificed to Kendal as she came back down; Fate would surely penalize her in some way like that.
What were Gemini’s chances for Thursday?
You have a wild desire to make some hasty changes. Curb these impulses. They could later boomerang.
While she thought that one over, she glanced out the window toward the parking lot at the rear of the library. At first her mind did not register the significance of what her eyes watched: a woman getting into a car, the same woman she had noticed so fleetingly back in the stacks. She recognized the paisley-collared kelly green suit, all that she had really noticed about the woman. Then she recognized something else: the black Ford Falcon with the gold penny on the door. The car passed out of view before she could get a good look at Margaret Dana.
For a moment Dru simply sat there damning her luck. Then she remembered the section in the stacks where she had come upon the woman; she remembered that Margaret Dana had not moved from that section. Curious to know what she could have come to the library to look for, Dru went back to the stacks. All of the books along the shelf where Margaret Dana had been standing were in neat order, except four or five near the end. One was tipped forward, and Dru reached for it.
Its title was The Pregnant Woman.
Next to it was a Dr. Spock; beside that was Expectant Motherhood.
• • •
Dru didn’t wait to take off her coat when she reached the Cages’. It was four-thirty; Archie usually checked with the answering service three or four times a day when he was out. If she could catch him before he started back to the country, she was going to suggest (insist?) that she drive in to meet him, that they spend the night at the apartment. On the drive from Nyack, she had started putting together the pieces:
Margaret Dana was expecting Tuto’s child, that much was obvious. And Archie hadn’t seen a mirage last Saturday night; Margaret Dana was still very much in the vicinity. Neal couldn’t know it—everything about his actions said as much—yet she didn’t seem to be making any secret of her whereabouts. She could easily have run into Neal as he was walking Dru to the library … Yet, Neal had said that it was unusual for him to be away from the clinic in the afternoon; Margaret Dana wouldn’t have anticipated an encounter with him at that time of day in downtown Nyack. Anyone else, though; friends, the police—she certainly wasn’t trying to hide.
The pieces didn’t fit together. The more Dru tried to force them into a logical pattern, the more they refused any attempt at organization.
The thing that was beginning to crystallize was the thing that prompted Dru to call Archie and tell him she wanted a night back in their own place. For whatever else was askew, unfamiliar, mysterious, illogical—Mrs. Muckermann’s presentiments were beginning to seem like the only sure thing. And as Dru dialed New York, a new thought occurred to her: what if it wasn’t Tuto’s baby at all, but Neal’s? Mars, Neptune and Leo were in Neal’s House of Offspring, right? What if Margaret Dana had just discovered she was pregnant as she was about to run off with Tuto? And what if she knew that it was Neal’s baby? Weren’t the later letters filled with references to broken dates, as though they weren’t seeing each other very much at all? If she were newly pregnant, wouldn’t it be Neal’s child?
As soon as she gave the service a message for Archie to call, Dru intended to look through the letters and diary again, paying closer attention to the dates. But first she would try to reach Archie. She needed a night in town; they both did. Maybe see something wild off-off Broadway which would take the edge off this witches’ cauldron out here; maybe drop in at La Mama, hopefully happen on a Megan Terry fantasy, whip down to Chinatown after for bean curd and wor shew duck.
“The Gambles’ residence.”
“Has Mr. Gamble checked in yet?”
“Yes, ma’am. He left a message for you. Just a minute.”
Then before Dru could say anything to that, the Answer-phone girl returned on the line with this to say: “Miss Denyven? He’ll meet you at the Algonquin at five.”
“You’d better save that message for Miss Denyven,” said Dru, and she dropped the phone back into its cradle.
• • •
By the time Archie called to say he was spending the night in New York, she had composed herself. Fearful of losing that composure, she kept it short and not very sweet.
Then she went back to finish the letter she had decided to write Neal Dana. It was a complete confession. She absolved Archie since he wasn’t there to okay it.
She intended to drive up the hill and present it to Neal, along with the billets-doux and the diary.
She knew this much: she had played God long enough. And the thing about God was, He was dead, anyway; someone else was working the strings now: Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, maybe the devil himself in drag as Mrs. Muckermann.
But Dru had had the subterfuge, the hypocrisy, and the intrigue up to here! Undoubtedly, Fate was repaying her in kind for what she had done to Neal.
The phone rang a few times and Dru let it ring.
What was left to say to Archie?
So long, Oolong.
After she picked at a dinner of scrambled eggs and cottage cheese, she drove down River Road in the damp night, determined to get it over with. Would she sit there while Neal read the words she couldn’t have found the presence of mind to say, or would she simply hand him everything and leave immediately?
The coward in her told her to do the latter, then observed the shroud of fog hovering ominously around the Buick and turned the car around, heading back to the Cages’.
CHAPTER 21
Dear Neal,
Archie doesn’t know any of this, so if you’re going to hate someone, focus entirely on me.
These letters and the diary were in the Pan Am bag Margaret left in the Volkswagen.
I read them because that’s the kind of unprincipled busybody I am. I didn’t put them back in the bag, because I didn’t feel you would have found them at all if we hadn’t called your attention to the bag. I thought Margaret would come back and maybe you’d never have to know about it … Selfishly I thought that if the Gambles were the instrument to your finding out, you might not consent to the special … At the time, the special seemed to be the most important thing for Archie and me.
Everything will speak for itself, Neal, but as long as I’m telling you all this, let me add more. The night we came to your house for the first time, I noticed a car in the drive. I don’t know whose car it is—perhaps you do. I wouldn’t have paid any attention to it, except for the penny on the door. That struck me as a feminine touch, though I can see now that a boy might stick something like that on a car door, too. I saw the car again this afternoon at the library. If it is that Tuto’s car, if it could be that Margaret drives it sometimes,
then I saw Margaret. I don’t know the significance of any of this, and
I’m too confused by my own life to think clearly—which is why I have to write this instead of saying it—but if it was Margaret I saw today, she was looking through some books on pregnancy. I didn’t get a good look at her, but I’m certain about the books she was examining.
Maybe it’ll shed some light on things for you—I hope so. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted nothing more to do with me, but I couldn’t be more sorry, Neal—please believe that.
Dru.
CHAPTER 22
As though he were taking to dinner two small children who could not read, Frank Gamble recited aloud to Archie and Liddy the three dinner entrees on the menu at the Gramercy Park Hotel.
“Poached Filet of Lemon Sole, Bonne Femme; Whole Boneless Cornish Game Hen; and Prime Ribs of Blue Ribbon Beef. They all sound good to me!”
Archie had known they would all sound good to his father. Years of dissipation had left its mark on Frank Gamble’s stomach. Whenever he was confronted with anything other than bland food, he began a lengthy, vivid recital of his ailments. Archie wasn’t up to it tonight, which was the reason he had suggested the hotel.
It was just a few blocks from Archie’s apartment, too. He could make a fast getaway after dinner, while Liddy and his father whiled away the few hours which would be left before they were due to catch an eleven-thirty flight to San Juan.
“This din-din won’t be hard on the old tum-tum,” said Frank Gamble, “and I thank you, son, for being thoughtful enough to choose this place.”
Archie didn’t dare look Liddy in the eye, for fear he would see registered there his own feeling of embarrassment for her. He could not believe it had been anything but a last desperate decision which had motivated her to marry Frank Gamble, and he hated himself for failing to perceive her despair, for letting it come to this.
But then Liddy touched the sleeve of his jacket, and sought his eyes with her own, and hers were shining. She said, “You are a doll, Archie! I was sure we were in for garlic and snails and rodents’ tails in some smart East Side bistro. Then I’d have to spoon Maalox down Daddy all the way to San Juan.”
“You used to love French food,” Archie said. “I can remember when you used to look down your nose at a good Christ Cella steak and long for frogs’ legs over at some dump on the West Side.”
“I didn’t have Daddy to worry over then,” she said.
Archie sighed. “Order the roast beef for me, please. I’m going to try to call Dru back again.” He stood up. “And order me a double Dewar’s, too.”
When there was no answer, Archie slammed down the receiver angrily and checked the time again. It was a quarter to nine. One of Dru’s favorite tricks was not to answer the phone when she was angry and aware that he was trying to reach her. He was just as angry at her for hanging up on him when he had called from the Algonquin; he was disinclined to persist in calling her back, but he had to let her know he was staying over because of the trip to Bay Shore tomorrow.
He damned her stubbornness and took it out on the door of the phone booth as he emerged, slamming it back with his elbow. Heads turned in the lobby, eyes stared … among them the enormous bluebird eyes of Anna Muckermann.
She was standing just to the right of the newsstand with another thin little woman clutching a Yorkie under her arm.
Archie had to pass them on his way back to the dining room. As he approached, Mrs. Muckermann said, “A hot temper leaps, ah?”
“I beg your pardon?”
She said, “I said, a hot temper leaps. A very famous Taurus once wrote, ‘The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper leaps o’er a cold decree.’ “
Her companion remarked softly, “William Shakespeare,” and shifted the shivering Yorkie to her other arm.
Mrs. Muckermann said, “Yes. William Shakespeare. Taurus the bull. The bull sees red, as you just did, Archie. This is Mrs. Stimpson, Archie. Fulvia, this is the gentleman I was speaking about earlier. The writer.”
Archie said, “How do you do.”
“Better, I dare say than you do,” Mrs. Muckermann continued. “Mrs. Stimpson is a Virgo-Libra, born on the cusp, a minute after midnight on the twenty-third of September, combining Virgo’s sharp analytical powers with Libra’s idealism. A fascinating combination.”
Mrs. Stimpson flashed a gratified smile and held up the wiggling dog. “And don’t forget Thumper,” she said. “Thumper’s Aries, like Joan Crawford, Claire Boothe Luce and Harry Houdini. That’s why he’s so frisky.”
Archie could think of nothing he wanted to say, and started to proceed to the dining room, when Mrs. Muckermann clamped her skinny fingers around his wrist. She said, “Even the weather seems to be conspiring against you tonight, poor boy. What seems like happenstance is all predestined … planned, a part of fate … But take precautions anyway: you know Gemini’s alignment to the lungs. Don’t catch cold tonight; it could easily develop into bronchitis.”
“Thanks for caring,” Archie said snidely.
“Oh, even though I do, I wonder if it matters,” said Mrs. Muckermann. “I wonder if you haven’t already turned down that road. I see you, symbolically, on a road in a storm such as the one outside, and then—” She shivered as the Yorkie did, removed her hand from his wrist and said, “Remember, Fulvia, what I told you about his configurations?”
And Fulvia nodded sadly.
“It was a pleasure meeting you like this,” Archie told her, and left the pair looking after him as he journeyed to the double Dewar’s and “Daddy” Gamble with his bride.
• • •
“Eleven o’clock,” Archie said. “No answer out there.”
Frank Gamble was staring out the window of the apartment on 18th Street, smoking a Dutch Masters and complaining, “We’re never going to get off the ground in this soup!”
The eleven-thirty flight to San Juan had been canceled; they were standing by for a one-thirty possibility.
“Sometimes she doesn’t answer the phone when she’s this mad,” said Archie, still standing under the Constitution mirror by the telephone stand. “I guess she’s pulling that tonight.”
“What’s she so mad about?” said Liddy. She had kicked off her Guccis and she was rocking in the Boston Rocker, craddling a snifter filled with Remy Martin.
“She’d probably bought stuff for dinner … How the hell do I know what she’s so mad about!” said Archie.
“Some women don’t need a reason,” Frank Gamble told him. “Your mother never did.”
Archie laughed and picked up his beer. “If she didn’t need them, it wasn’t because they weren’t in plentiful supply.”
“Oh, dear God,” Liddy groaned. “Are we going to start raking over your childhood again? I had fifteen years of that!”
“I didn’t bring up the subject.”
Frank Gamble said, “Well, it’s time bygones were bygones.” “Then keep them bygone,” Liddy said to him. “I know I did things wrong,” he said. “Hell, I hadn’t had any practice being a father.”
“Forget it,” Archie said. “Drop it!”
“Son, I really appreciate the way you’re taking this. Liddy and me. I really appreciate it.”
“How’d you think I was going to take it?” said Archie, angry at himself for asking them back to the apartment.
“Frank thought you’d be after him with a gun,” Liddy said. “He was even afraid to marry me in New York. He wanted me to get the damn Mexican divorce straightened out and then hop a plane to the Coast to get married. We were going to send you a postcard.”
“I just wanted to be sure I wouldn’t lose you, my darling,” said Archie’s father.
God, it was all so absurd and unbelievable. Archie was champing at the bit to tell Dru about it, when he wasn’t champing at the bit to tell her off … Maybe they ought to have a baby if this behavior was any portent of the future; maybe they ought to have a chicken farm or a kennel or beehive or some d
amn thing that would keep her from concentrating all of her energies on him.
Could she have gone to a movie?
It was “Gala Gone With The Wind Week” at the local theater in Nyack, and they had seen it Tuesday night; that meant she would have had to drive to Spring Valley or New City … in this weather.
Liddy said, “Frank thought you’d hold up our divorce, Archie, that you wouldn’t sign any of the papers. Honestly!”
“What would I have done with Dru?”
Frank Gamble said, “She doesn’t think much of me, does she, son?”
“You can’t win ‘em all, Dad.”
“Do I offend her? How do I offend her?”
“Naw—forget it.”
“No, I want to know. I want us all to be friends.”
Liddy kicked her leg up in the air and said, “Let’s all live together, sleep in the same bed.”
Archie laughed, but Frank Gamble was halfway into the bottle, fast approaching the middle ground between Maudlin and Inarticulate. His eyelids were starting to droop, and there was cigar ash on his vest. He said, “Does she hold it against me the way I treated your mother?”
“Why should she care?”
“Oh, you learn to care,” Liddy said in a tone laced with irony, “if you prefer peace to war.”
Archie said, “Come off it, Liddy. I never asked you to take sides.”
“No, but what about that altar to Mother Gamble we had constructed in the living room?” “Bullshit,” Archie said.
“And all the votive candles with her initials on them?”
Archie’s father lumbered across and poured himself another brandy. “Well,” he said, “Archie’s mother was a fine woman. A very decent woman. She really was.”