Wicked Angel

by Taylor Caldwell

  Angel, all at once, was ominously quiet. He listened with his inner ear. His mother was holding a debate with herself; he knew that delicate nibbling of her lower lip with her small white teeth; he knew that silly glow in her eyes, that secret, delighted smile. He knew the arch expression, the radiant look. He stood and watched her; his heart was still roaring; his breath was still heavy and audible. But he was waiting now.

  And then, Kathy was lifting her right forefinger archly; she was cocking her head; she was preening. He knew the signs. She had a secret, and she was going to impart it to him. It wasn’t a dangerous secret, it wasn’t something that threatened him. Or was it?

  He watched her as she tiptoed elaborately about the room, preparing to divulge the delicious secret. Angelo became puzzled, and more wary than ever. He knew all these disgusting symptoms, which he had endured indulgently in the past, for it usually meant something delightful about to happen to him. She locked the door with dainty, flourishing gestures; she peeked into her blue and pink bathroom as though, idiot! she thought some one was hiding there who should not hear what she was about to say. She ran to the window, and carefully pulled aside the draperies, and peeped outside. Idiot! Fool! Stupid, fat old woman! Yes, she was getting fat and shapeless; she ate too much. And she was old, old and revolting. He winced and clenched his teeth at the sound of her ruffled lace petticoats under the bouncing, foolish skirt. He shivered at the sight of her profile, girlish, naughtily sly, grinning, as she looked through the window. Her auburn curls were in rings around her flushed cheeks and wizened neck.

  And then she hugged herself with a girlish trill. “Betty’s out in the garden, cutting the last roses, and some phlox!” she caroled. “Oh, we’ll have such a celebration tonight! There’ll even be a teentsy glass of wine for my darling, to toast! How we’ll laugh together, and plan! Oh, oh, I can’t wait!”

  Stupid old bitch! What was she talking about? But Angelo’s eyes lost their fire, and began to sparkle with anticipation. This must be a special occasion. There were no birthdays imminent. There were no anniversaries at hand. It must be very special. But why did she always have to go through this babyish ritual, this mincing, this self-hugging, this trilling, this radiance? Angelo’s heart still thudded, but it was quieter. Still, he felt that he would shout, maddened beyond endurance, after what he had just suffered, by this imbecility of his mother’s. What was there he wanted? A treehouse he had been coaxing for up at the cabin? A motor bike, which his father had forbidden? A motor scooter, even more quickly forbidden? Angelo caught his breath. He had talked winningly of that motor scooter only yesterday; several of the boys at school had them; his father had not exactly said no this time. He had merely frowned and answered nothing. A motor scooter! Angelo forgot all about his mother’s impending visit to the doctor. She would not be so flushed now, so delighted, so arch, so coquettish, if there was anything serious in the background. She looked well, even if she was so damned fat lately, with bulging breasts.

  She tiptoed over to Angelo, teetering, smiling, clapping her hands. He was almost as tall as she, yet she bent in her silly way as if he were two years old.

  “Guess!” she sang. “Oh, my darling, guess!”

  Angelo, through the open window, filled with sun, could hear the brisk clipping of Betty’s garden shears in the hot silence. He could hear sudden locusts whirr. There was no other sound.

  He was still unnerved. But he controlled himself. “There—there isn’t anything wrong with you, Mum?” he asked, thinking of the doctor again. “I mean, you wanting to have more tests—”

  “Oh, no, no! In fact, I was never better in my life, sweetheart. Never better! Never happier! Oh, my sweet, and you were worried so about your mother—” She stretched out her hand to ruffle his crisp curls, but he drew back. He breathed a heavy sigh of relief. His face began to shine. It was something special for him, something wonderful for him. She had been going today to order it; she had been lying; she had not intended to go to the doctor at all. He smiled like the sun.

  “A motor bike? A motor scooter?” he said lovingly. “I can’t wait. Tell me.”

  “Oh, oh, oh!” cried Kathy in rapture. “Much, much more wonderful than that! So wonderful that sometimes I can’t believe it! And I just can’t wait, though I promised your father not to tell you! It’s naughty of me, but I just can’t wait!”

  He began to sweat, now, with glorious anticipation. What? What?

  “You’ll dance with joy!” sang Kathy. “We’ll dance together!”

  Angelo, in his consuming curiositv, wanted to slap her. His heart was thumoing again. And there she was. tiptoeing, wetting her lips with her tongue, grinning like a half-wit, swishing her skirts, and moving, high step after exaggerated high step, towards one of her large fruitwood dressers. And then, dramatically, she pulled open one of the larger drawers. “Come and see for yourself, Angel. Come and feast your eyes yourself!”

  He flew across the room. Holding his breath, he looked into the drawers. They were heaped with infants’ clothing, tiny white dresses trimmed with lace, minute shirts, fluffy little coats, bonnets, doll-like stockings, blankets, fluffy petticoats, diapers.

  Angelo fell back. His face turned a curious doughy color; his lips thickened; his eyes dilated. He was so stunned that he could not speak or move. He watched his mother lovingly touch those loathsome things; he saw her lift a shirt and kiss it and hold it against her rosy cheek; he saw her pressing a small white shoe against her lips. And he knew. He knew without a single doubt.

  And then, as Kathy, her back to him, began that murmurous litany of adoration he knew so well—but which was not for him, now!—and he saw the kisses, the love, the fondling, he was filled with the most appalling rage he had ever experienced, the most overpowering of hatreds, the most tearing of furies. Everything enlarged in the room, tilted, became outlined with a rippling of flame. The top of his head was a lid of red-hot iron, hammering onto his naked brain. He could not breathe. He began to shudder; the insane light in the room brightened, glowed, flamed, until it was the breath of a cauldron.

  Yet his thoughts, though appalled, were orderly enough. There was going to be a baby. A boy, or a girl. There was going to be another center of adoration, another deity. There was going to be a rival, another point of attention. There was going to be someone else to share every thought of his parents, every loving touch of his mother’s, all her pampering. There would be another bed to visit. There would be another voice to which his mother would listen, another hand she would lead to delights, another creature who would demand. Something shifted in the boy; he felt an invisible pushing for place inside yet outside him. He felt a dreadful struggling for power. This was something he could not endure; this was something he would not endure, he dared not endure! All that he had, all that he was, was mortally threatened! He was undone; he had become only another member of the family, and not its absolute center. Someone else would take his place, someone younger—No, no, no! he shrieked in himself. No!

  No other threat, however formidable, had been so terrible, so imminent, so certain as this for him. Always, he had overcome the threat, removed it, destroyed it, frightened it away, intimidated or deceived it into acquiescence. But he could do none of these things to the invisible peril in his mother’s body, the absolute peril, the titanic peril. He was helpless. He had often heard his parents discussing his “inheritance,” as they called it, when he listened slyly at their door. A lot of money! It belonged to him. And now it would not belong to him alone. He would have only part of it. There would be somebody else, somebody as yet faceless, yet equal to him, perhaps someone more powerful than he, displacing him, driving him away, rendering him insignificant in its infant might.

  He had been most horribly, most deliberately, betrayed! His parents together had done this to him, in the darkness of some loathsome night. He had not, after all, had them completely in the palms of his hands; he had not, after all, been the undisputed center of their lives! They had done
this to him! They had dared to do this thing to him! For months, now, they had humored him, and all the time they had been laughing at him, he, Angelo Saint! Did they, after all, honestly expect that he’d stand for it? Did they think that what they had done to him would go unpunished?

  Kathy was cooing over some lace-trimmed, infant nightgowns, her face transfigured as she thought of the coming child. She shook out a gown; she laughed softly; she kissed the glossy folds. A little girl, perhaps, to be adored also, to be pampered and petted by herself and Mark and dearest Angelo! What fun they would have with her! What joy over her first tooth, her first step, her first laugh and smile! Kathy’s arms ached for the child six months in her womb, three months away! How could they all wait that long?

  Watching her, Angelo cringed and shuddered and hated her beyond anyone else he had ever hated. His thoughts rolled like a sparkling wheel. He had only to wait until the baby was born, the usurper, the betrayer. No! That would be too long.

  Kathy replaced the garments with the tenderest hands, looked at them long and with passion, and closed the drawer as if closing it on a beloved face. She then glanced up at the mirror over the dresser. And she saw Angelo’s face reflected in it.

  Her hands remained in the air, paralyzed. Her breath stopped in her throat. Her heart gave a great bound. For never had she seen his face like this, mature, distorted, disfigured by hate, murderous. She could not believe it! She continued to stare at it; a throb of pain flashed across her forehead, and there was a sudden roiling sickness in her stomach. The child in her womb, feeling her perturbation perhaps, moved restlessly. What’s the matter with Angel? thought Kathy, with confusion.

  She swung about quickly. But as quickly as she swung he as quickly controlled his features; he was an expert in these matters. He was very white, but his face was calm. Oh! thought Kathy. It was only an effect of glass and light! But she continued to feel weak and ill.

  “Angel!” she exclaimed. She felt for her chair and sat down in it, and tried to smile. Her instincts were alive and clamoring in her, but she suppressed them. The soft summer wind blew out the curtains a little; Betty was snipping closer to the house. She was singing tunelessly. A distant dog barked.

  Angelo moved very softly toward his mother and stood near her.

  “You’re old, Mum,” he said seriously. “You’ll die if you have this—baby.”

  Kathy forced a difficult smile, her eyes on his face, her eyes remembering, but her mind repudiating.

  “Oh no, dear. The doctor said I am in excellent health. In fact, I am due at his office in less than an hour; Betty’s driving me.” Why was there a sharp pain like a knife in her throat? “Lots of women, much older than I am, have babies without trouble. You—you mustn’t worry your dear, darling head about me.”

  The fury boiled up in Angelo again, but he restrained it. The strange and flickering outline was still around every object, as if it were on fire.

  “Why didn’t you stop it—when it began?” he asked.

  Kathy heard, but refused to hear it with her mind. “What do you mean, dear?” she faltered.

  “There was a boy in our class. His sister got into trouble; everybody knew about it, and we laughed. It was their chauffeur. She was going to marry him. Her father stopped it. And they took her away for an operation, and that was the end of the baby.” He made fists of his hands. His voice rose thinly, again almost a shriek. “Why didn’t you stop it like that?”

  Kathy put her hands quickly to the sides of her face, and stared at him. She swallowed a few times, unable to speak. Oh, this was not Angel, this stranger with the terrible eyes, this stranger who had said such terrible things! This was not her baby speaking.

  “You could have stopped it!” he wailed. “Why did you have to do this to me? Why, why? What’ve I ever done to you? I tried—I tried—and now you’ve done it!”

  He looked at her collapsed body in the chair; the foolish skirt was pulled tight across it, and he saw that her belly was swollen. How soon would the Terror be born, the usurper? Four months? Three months? Two?

  Kathy swallowed over and over. Her throat and mouth were like paper, dry and choking. She put a hand to her breast.

  Then a radiant smile broke out on her face. She understood! Of course! Hadn’t Mark told her, and the doctor, too, and Alice in her letters? Silly she! She hadn’t listened, but it was true! The older child was always jealous, at first, of his prerogatives, always afraid that he would be displaced in his parents’ affections, always had to be reassured and told that no other child would ever take his place. Poor child. The dear Children, The Children, The Children! It was very natural, and Angelo was the most natural and normal boy in the world, going on eleven now, able to understand—but still just a child. Of course, he was a little resentful and jealous. It only had to be explained to him, he need only be given extra love and reassurance. Kathy forgot the glimpse she had had of her son’s awful face; she forgot what he had just said. She held out her arms to him.

  “Oh, darling, you’re just jealous!” she trilled with girlish delight. “Come to Mum, dear. Here, sit right here on the edge of my knee, and I’ll have a nice cozy chat with you. I’ll explain. Did you think for a minute that anyone, even this lovely, lovely baby, would take your place in our hearts? Why, each child has his own special place in the hearts of his parents—no one can take it away from him. Look, I have five fingers on my hand, and each one is different and each one is necessary. If I lost one of them, would the others take its place? No, no!”

  Angelo’s face had become smooth and bland as it always did when he was thinking and plotting, and Kathy thought that he was listening to her, that she had comforted him and dispelled his “jealousy.” She giggled with happiness. She stood up and again held out her arms to her son.

  Angelo let her come the right distance. He measured it carefully. And then, while Kathy stood before him, a big wide smile on her unsuspecting face, her arms outstretched to take and embrace him, he lifted his large foot deliberately and kicked his mother accurately, strongly, powerfully, in the very center of her living belly, where the usurper was, where the Terror crouched, waiting to be born to deprive him, but where it would now die, where it must die.

  So violent was the blow that Kathy, her face becoming absolutely blank with shock, staggered back. Before she could regain her balance, Angelo kicked her precisely and even more powerfully in the same spot.

  Kathy, her face still blank, her eyes still staring witlessly, reeled. She flung out her arms to stop herself from falling. She caught the back of her dressing-table chair. For one nightmare moment she appeared to dance with it, and then it toppled with her weight and she fell upon it, sprawling.

  It was then she uttered a dreadful animal cry of agony, of purely physical agony. She uttered it over and over, and Betty, in the garden below, heard it and was stunned and paralyzed, the scissors in her hand, the cut flowers all about her.

  Angelo came close to his mother, lying there like a broken doll over the chair. He said, through his teeth, “That’ll teach you you can’t do this to me! It’s all your fault!” he suddenly cried. “It’s all your fault! You made me do it!”

  The empty eyes looked up at him, and then the soul of Kathy knew. She did not scream again. She only lay on the back of the chair, the legs thrusting against her body. In falling, she had hit her lip; it was bleeding profusely. She was not aware of it; she was not aware of the convulsions of agony in her body. She could only look at her son, the murderer.

  The door slammed below, and there was a frightened call. Angelo, half-crouching, wheeled. But he knew what he had to do. He screamed, shouted, “My mother! My mother!” he howled. “Come and help Mum! I don’t know what to do!”

  He ran out of the room. Betty had reached the dimly shining hall below, and she was running toward the staircase. Crying wildly, Angelo ran to the head of the stairs and prepared to descend toward her, still screaming about his mother who had “fallen down.”

 
Betty, standing aghast below, did not know exactly what happened. Did the boy’s foot catch on a minutely loose carpet seam? Did he stumble? Did he trip on his own feet? Had his false tears blinded him? No one would ever know.

  But as Betty stood stonelike, unable to move, she saw his large body lift itself in the air like a bird on the top of the long stairway. He soared, and then he struck halfway down. But the impetus was too great. He bounced and lifted again, and turned over and over. And then, with a nauseating crash he plunged almost directly at Betty’s feet, and landed full on his head on the marble floor.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mark Saint sat in the waiting room with Alice Knowles beside him. They had sat this way for three hideous days, praying silently to themselves, hoping against hope. But only Alice wept. Mark’s eyes remained stiff and dry and staring. The nurses looked at him with pity; the doctors came to him often, begging him to go home to rest. He would not leave. He had taken a room in the hospital to be near his wife, who was dying, who could not possibly live with her internal injuries. So the doctors had told him. They had not told him something else: that Kathy was making no effort to live, that she had lost the will to live. They looked into her dulling eyes, and they knew. Yet she had not been told that her son was dead, that he had died instantly of a crushed skull.

  And Kathy was mute. She lay like one already dead, and suffered her husband’s kisses, and Alice’s. She did not speak; sometimes she moaned and groaned speechlessly, especially in her drugged sleep. But she did not speak.

  The baby, born prematurely, had been dead, desperately injured in Kathy’s “fall.” It was a beautiful little girl. Even the nurses had cried over its pretty perfection, and had handled the small body tenderly.