by Della Martin
Eddie was tugged unwillingly between televised Dodgers and the church; her father made stern noises and reminded Lon that she was being unfair to her mother. So much for them. And after the initial scene, during which Lon had responded with terse, tight-lipped answers—Yes, I did, Mother... I guess you're right, Mother... I guess I'm sorry, Mother—the worst was suddenly over and Lon closed her bedroom door as she had closed it against unpleasantness so many times before.
The sense of having found sanctuary after a long pursuit enveloped Lon then. Her head felt airborne, sickeningly light from sleeplessness and a hunger she had no desire now to satisfy. Yet here she was safe. She would think things out after she slept.
But when she fell across the bed, an inner pressure would not let her sleep.
She tried to review the events of the preceding night and of the morning, hoping to isolate the precise reason for the knotted growth in her belly. Examine the moment, the deed, the malignancy that must be specifically identified before the surgical knife can cut it from the pain-wracked flesh. Killed somebody. Murdered somebody.
Yet the briefness of her time with Sassy was whirled away in kaleidescopic views of lengthier, more vivid scenes. A tricky left turn on the way to Violet's—the heavy Saturday evening traffic—the unappetizing look of delicatessen macaroni salad in the Polivka kitchen—Violet's mother—the sinking luxury of that hall carpet under her loafers at Greggs'. Views, sensations, impressions unworthy of memory, indelibly stenciled upon her mind, recalled more sharply now than that flashing instant between Sassy speaking, moving and breathing—and Sassy face down in pink water.
Something as shatteringly final as death should have been alloted more time. More significance than the recollection of a bruised forehead. Lon felt a vague resentment, thinking of this. It had taken so little time to end Sassy Gregg's life. Something as terribly important as that, and it had taken no more than a few seconds. It wasn't right, somehow. And Lon thought then, with a childlike pity for herself, someone should have told me she was sick. Resenting Sassy next, but only mildly, for cheating her out of the fair and satisfying revenge, for letting herself die under such unheroic, un-memorable circumstances. Pow. Thud. Sounds from a comic book—and that was all! The thoughts spun around in her brain and suddenly Lon wished she could cry. No one told me she was too sick to fight. What will they say when they find her? Drowned. Fell, hit her head, fell into the pool. Why lie here and worry about it?
Lon lay rigid, her arms feeling like overfilled tubes, blood forcing into them, pumping, nearing the point of bursting. Her head throbbed. The sound was the minor twang of a tuning fork now, playing back and forth from her forehead to her crown. Ceaseless, tremulous sound. Why couldn't she cry?
* * *
Miraculously, she had fallen asleep. She awoke as she always did, before the rest of the household. It was morning, all right, she convinced herself, glancing at the electric alarm clock. She had slept, then, most of one day and through a full night. Monday morning.
When the realizations had registered, she noted the time. Ten after seven. In twenty minutes, another alarm clock in her parents' room would bring the house to life.
The morning paper would be on the front lawn by now. Lon slid out of bed, wondering when she had straightened herself out to lie on the pillow with the covers over her; she had slept in the shirt and slacks worn to Violet's party—such a long time ago. She padded through the house, opened the door in cautious, silent slow-motion and returned to her room with the newspaper tucked inside her sleep-wrinkled shirt.
She saw Mavis's picture before she read the captions. And refused to let herself be shocked by the familiar face staring out at her from the shaking newspaper. Her eyes drifted to the center of a column, skimming through a reported exoneration of someone named Durham Saunders, until late Sunday considered the prime suspect. Seems the man had sobbed as he recounted discovery of his fiancée's body, had disclaimed all knowledge of her drug habit. Her parents had rushed home from Las Vegas—wealthy contractor Warren Gregg had collapsed upon viewing the body of the couple's only child.
Nothing at all about red stain or a fight. Nothing about Lon Harris. And she noted this with a garbled mixture of relief and disappointment. They had it all wrong! How could she let it upset her, when they had it all wrong?
Her vision traced an upward pattern to the bold-faced type: PLAYBOY RELEASED IN MYSTERY SLAYING. She read the caption under Mavis's picture then: Maid Sought In Drug Murder. Oh, they really had it fouled up!
Strange, she thought, that she could read it all without going to pieces. The newspaper was held steadily now and she could study it with an almost anesthetized calm. Her mind was clear and alert, so that she could analyze:
First, the flagstone coping hadn't been mentioned, but it was the clue they needed. She should have done a more thorough job of washing off the blood.
Second, they had not found Mavis. Not yet But they would. There would be only one thing to. do then, and it would be more noble to do it before they dragged Mavis into it.
Third, it was just as well that her mother hadn't seen this newspaper. She would insist that she had seen the missing "maid" on her doorstep between three and four on Sunday morning. More arguments. More scoldings, questionings.
And while she was working out all this logically, Lon thought, too, that it would be less irritating to have someone in a police uniform explain the whole situation to her mother later. Because, that way, he would be the one forced to answer the whining questions. She felt sorry for the faceless police officer, but a malicious amusement went with her sympathy. Let somebody else listen for a change!
Lon folded the newspaper carefully, covering the photo. They won't do anything to you, Mavis. Did you think I'd let them? When it's all over, we'll get together—you'll be proud of me!
She opened the bottom drawer of the desk, started to tuck the newspaper under her Island plans. Then, on second thought, Lon lifted the sheaves of paper to the desk top, leaving nothing in the drawer but the folded newspaper. Leafing through the stacks of notebook paper, it occurred to her that police stations were not like business offices or stores, where you had to wait until nine o'clock before making a phone call. Her father would miss his sports page during breakfast, might even tie up the phone, calling to find out why his paper hadn't been delivered. No, this was the time to call. Now, while she could do it without the self-conscious feeling of being overheard by the family. There was a dramatic sense, an excitement, in thinking of what she would say. And Lon's only regret was that Mavis would not be there to hear her.
* * *
There was so much to be done after the call was completed. So much to accomplish before the alarm clock in the other bedroom sounded—before they came to pick her up.
Lon patted cold water on her face, rinsed out her mouth, dried herself with a towel. She found cold fried chicken in the refrigerator, washed it down with milk, rinsed her mouth again, then hurried back to the bedroom.
She changed her shirt hurriedly. She tucked a nail file, pencils, other small items she might need, into the pockets of her slacks. And there was still time to pack methodically the charts, the rules, the plans, into a worn, zippered briefcase that had belonged to her father and had been stored away on her closet shelf. Lon studied each sheet with critical, proud eyes before laying it into the case. For a while, it had seemed that none of this was real—that the Island was a distant dream with no hope of being realized, perhaps only a figment of her imagination. She had drifted away, only to return... and this, now, was the true homecoming. Though there remained endless work to be done: lists to arrange in alphabetical order, ceremonies to be worked out (the initiation rite was very sketchy), and names to be added. One to be subtracted. For the most pressing problem now would be to find someone else who knew how to sail a boat...
Later. Later, when her head stopped hurting, she would tackle the most urgent problems. Someone should have told me she was sick. Drugs must make you si
ck.
The shuddering thought brought out a pencil, and across the margin of the List of Rules, Laws and Regulations, Lon jotted a pertinent reminder: Another rule will be no drugs allowed and all drug fiends will have to quit it or be subjected to heavy fines. She underlined heavy fines twice. Fair warning to any Island inhabitants contemplating the outlawed stupidity of sticking themselves with a needle.
There was barely time to replace the penciled sheet before a racing motor and the squeak of abruptly applied brakes sounded outside. Carrying the briefcase, and with the inward exultation of an unseasoned traveler embarking upon a long voyage, she hurried to the front door.
She had not laughed in a long time, Lon reflected. But how could anyone fail to be amused by the delightful coincidence of a doorbell and an alarm clock ringing at exactly the same moment?
CHAPTER 15
The walls of this room in downtown Los Angeles had been painted a cool, restful green. And to shut out those voices she had no particular wish to hear, Lon imagined the taste of those walls. Fresh, minty flavor. The clarity with which she could produce sensations of taste and smell at will buoyed her confidence. Sassy Gregg had not been thinking clearly before something happened to her. As long as you could think straight, everything was under control.
The Island's Crime Control System, which she had devised during the early part of the inquest, was further demonstration of her mind's sharpness. When this exasperating session was over, she would write it all down. That is, if the gray-haired man with the steel-rimmed glasses was finished with her papers. She liked him. What was his name—Doctor Something? He had talked to her for a long time, asking questions that didn't make much sense but were no bother to answer, and he had known Sassy Gregg, except that he kept calling her Sally, but he didn't say that he had particularly liked her or disliked her, only that he had been interested in her. But he seemed more interested in the contents of Lon's briefcase—in fact, had been fascinated by the Island.
She had decided, then, that even an elderly male doctor would be better than no doctor at all, and he had sounded grateful and enthusiastic when Lon had suggested that he might work on plans for a hospital. This had been a neglected area in her planning, like the Crime Control System. She was compensating now for her brief infidelity, with new ideas coming thick and fast. Why had she neglected her work lately?
Lon drew back from the suddenly lime walls. They were not minty, she decided, but sour and sharp in the jaws. They had started asking more questions about Sassy and the swimming pool, then, and it seemed that they wanted her to remember details, answering whatever they asked completely and honestly. Which she did, knowing how impressed they must be with her careful explanations.
Mavis was in the room. She hadn't looked up at Lon yet, but she would notice how well Lon answered questions, even the ones that had nothing to do with the matter: "And after you had parked the car below the Gregg residence, you had Lesbian relations with Mavis Thompson?" Then Mavis would realize how much simpler it was to get everyone straight on what did happen, because the sooner they did that, the sooner it would be all over. Refusing to tell that other man what her last name was, earlier, had only delayed the whole process. And you see? They knew it, anyway. Even knew Mavis's last name.
Actually, no one was cooperating as well as Lon was. That big guy, the one who told about finding Sassy, interrupted Lon—Mavis—shouting, "That's a damned lie!" And the blonde woman who resembled Sassy, but was much too young to be her mother, stood up every once in a while and cried, "My baby... Why did you kill my baby?" And the man who held his hands over his face most of the time would get the woman to sit down and would pat her shoulders, but all he did when they asked him questions was cry and shake his head.
Lon's mother was even worse. (And no one could tell her that wasn't her mother, because Lon knew that gray dress— had seen it hanging in the closet hundreds of times.) She had to nod her head, agreeing with the woman in gray, because it was perfectly true that Lorraine Harris had a good home. And had never lacked for anything and had been taught right from wrong. But no one in the room seemed to be disagreeing, which made it all a complete. waste of time. Repeating that good Christian home part and all that business about Evie and Judith, as though anyone had said there was something wrong with her sisters! And Lon thought, further, shut up, shut up and let me get back to work!
Her father was there, too, but it was harder to recognize him, because Lon had never seen him without the double-lensed glasses. And had discovered, surprisingly, that his eyelids were puffy and red. All these years she hadn't known that his eyes were puffy and red! Then it seemed, for a moment, that he might not be her father at all, because of the way he kept shaking his head, as though he might be thinking, no, no, no; not like her father at all.
Tired of the disorganization—things outside her mind were not crystallized as they were inside it, not seen clearly—Lon thought of how sensible it had been to plan the Island, long ago, when the woman in the gray dress (Mother: it was important to know who was who) had kept repeating things and annoying Lon. And how pleasant it was now to think about the sunny, sandy beach. Because something else was bothering her. Though it was hard to remember exactly what it was. She had been so busy...
Later, when the session had ended, Lon saw beckoning a plump, unsmiling woman in plain dark blue. That was after the flash bulb blinded Lon's eyes and the big light-haired man who had cried so much leaped at some little yelling guy and tried to smash his camera, for no good reason. And after the woman in the gray dress screamed that she would never be able to hold her head up again and how could a child of hers have done all those filthy things. The woman in blue led Lon to another room. It was a room somewhere at the end of a long corridor, and it might be a room painted purple, with a sweet, grape taste.
Halfway down that hallway (hushed-voice hallway; why didn't they speak out? Was there some reason to be quiet and afraid?) Lon hesitated. And the woman in blue slipped a plump arm around Lon's waist. Warm pressure, gentle, reassuring, urging her forward. Still Lon did not move, but glanced to the side, to catch sight of that round, jutting bosom; undivided, like a full, firm pillow. And substantial, so that if you suddenly rested your head there, buried your face there, the other arm would rise to fold you in and press you closer. Nothing would be asked or demanded, everything would be known and understood, not mattering, not mattering for some sweet and secret reason that only you and she could know. Mother-creature, lover-creature—mother!
And it happened then, bursting inside her, crumbling a great, gray flagstone dam behind which the tears had accumulated, slate and cloudy pink in color. Crumbled the retaining wall, washing over the lies, the lies, the hunger, the deceits and the self-deceptions. And a rush of tears reaching further to swell over the rituals, the chants, the shamefully childish plans, washing them clean and stark, unlike the blood-soaked stone, so that now they were revealed in bright, white light. Unreal, unreal—lies, all of these, lies!
"Come along, now. Come along with me." The arm pressing her forward. Firmly, tenderly.
But, oh, the lies! Crude, laughable lie of the Island—crudest of all the deceits! And that inwardly sneering doctor pretending it was all real, laughing at her, laughing because he knew... he knew it wasn't true. The lie of Mavis and the pretty round breasts—all wrong, wrong, and not what Lon had needed and hungered for. Not that at all. But now, at last, here was someone. Someone who touched her gently, wrapped love around her with a firm, warm arm and was real, as nothing Lon had believed in had ever been real.
And Lon heard her voice and the echo of her voice in the whispering corridor. Crying, "What are they going to do to me?" Then heard through a gruff and indifferent tone the crooning softness that only she, Lon, who shared the secret, could hear. "Let's not worry about that now, dear. It's going to be all right."
"I didn't want to kill anybody. I didn't want..."
"I know, I know. Now come along..."
"You're th
e only one who cares. I don't have anybody else... oh, please, please..."
The arm tightened, comforting. "It's all right, dear. You cry if you want to, but we can't stand out here in the hall…"
"Oh, please!" And the breast was a cushion against Lon's face, warm-smelling and generous. Loving... loving. "Please!"
"All right, all right...!"
"Don't let them hurt me, Mom! Tell them I didn't want to kill her! Tell them you won't let them hurt me, stay with me, tell them you love me... Will you do that, Mom? Will you tell them?"
There was a silence to be filled with tears. And then the caressing voice, so gentle now that it was no longer a secret; the love between them could be heard by anyone who might listen. "I'll tell them, honey."
The heavy blue fabric was limp and wet now. But it had been meant to hold her tears and there would be times when Lon would press her laughter against that warmth, with the strong arms always there to hold her, protect her from all the others.
Protect her even from the gray-haired man who had made fun of her, lying and pretending that he wanted to run a hospital on an island that never had been and never would be, apologizing that he wasn't really that kind of doctor, but looking into her eyes and nodding, yes, yes, he would work with her on the plans—she would tell him all about her island and they would work on the plans together. Even when he came, she was safe, and when the kindly voice near her ear whispered, "What do you want me to do, Dr. Friedman?" the arms tightened, so she knew the arms would not let her go.