“Joe!”
“Yes, he’s able to start working again. I’m going to rehire him.”
“But, Erich, after all that happened.”
“Jenny, we’ve put all that behind us.”
“Erich, after all the gossip you propose to rehire him!” She bit her lip. What difference who was here?
Rooney would be coming back from the hospital around the fourteenth. They had persuaded Clyde to let her stay a full six weeks. Jenny wished she could say good-bye to her. Maybe she could write and have Fran mail the letter for her from some city on one of her flights. There was nothing else she could do.
At last it was time to go. The girls were dressed in their velvet coats and matching hats. Jenny’s heart surged. I’m going to take them to the Village for linguine the night we get to New York, she decided.
From the bedroom window she could barely see a corner of the cemetery. After breakfast she’d slipped over to the baby’s grave to say good-bye.
Erich had packed the car. “I’ll get Joe,” he told her. “Come with me, girls. Give Mommy a chance to finish dressing.”
“I am finished,” she said. “Hold a minute. I’ll go with you.”
He seemed not to have heard. “Hurry up, Mommy,” Beth called as she and Tina clattered down the stairs behind Erich. Jenny shrugged. Just as well to have five minutes to be sure she had everything. The locket money was in the inside jacket pocket of the suit she had packed.
On her way downstairs she glanced into the girls’ room. Elsa had made the beds and straightened the room. Now it seemed inordinately neat, with a quality of emptiness as though it sensed that the girls would not be returning.
Had Erich sensed the same thing?
Suddenly troubled, Jenny ran down the stairs, pulling on her jacket. Erich should be back any minute.
Ten minutes later, she went out on the porch. She was getting so warm. Surely he’d be along any second now? He always left so much time to get to the airport. She stared at the road, straining to see the first sign of the car coming.
At the end of half an hour, she phoned the Ekers’. Her fingers fumbled with the dial. Twice she had to break the connection and start again.
Maude answered. “What do you mean have they left yet? I saw Erich drive past here over forty minutes ago with the girls in the car . . . Joe? Joe wasn’t driving them to the airport. Where did you get that idea?”
Erich had gone without her. Taken the girls and gone without her. The money was in the luggage he’d taken. Somehow he had guessed her plans.
She called the hotel in Houston. “I want to leave a message for Erich Krueger. Tell him to call his wife as soon as he arrives.”
The reservation clerk’s hearty Texan voice: “There must be a misunderstanding. Those reservations were canceled nearly two weeks ago.”
At two o’clock Elsa came in to her. “Good-bye, Mrs. Krueger.”
Jenny was sitting in the parlor, studying Caroline’s painting. She did not turn her head. “Good-bye, Elsa.”
Elsa did not go at once. Her long frame hovered in the doorway. “I’m sorry to leave you.”
“Leave me?” Yanked from lethargy, Jenny jumped up. “What do you mean?”
“Mr. Krueger said that he and the girls would be going away. He said he’d let me know when to come back.”
“When did he tell you that, Elsa?”
“This morning, when he was getting in the car. Are you staying here alone?”
There was a curious mixture of emotion in the stolid face. Ever since the baby’s death Jenny had felt a compassion in Elsa she would not have expected. “I guess I am,” she said quietly.
For hours after Elsa left, she sat in the parlor waiting. Waiting for what? A phone call. Erich would phone. She was certain of that.
How would she handle the call? Admit she’d been planning to leave him? He already knew that. She was sure of it. Promise to stay with him? He wouldn’t trust the promise.
Where had he taken the girls?
The room grew dark. She should turn on some lamps. But somehow the effort was too great. The moon came up. It shone in through the lace of the curtains, throwing a weblike beam on the painting.
Finally Jenny went into the kitchen, made coffee, sat by the telephone. At nine o’clock it began to ring. Her hand trembled so she could barely pick up the receiver. “Hello.” Her voice was so low she wondered if it could be heard.
“Mommy!” Beth sounded so far away. “Why didn’t you want to come with us today? You promised.”
“Bethie, where are you?”
The sound of the phone being moved.
Beth’s voice changing to a protest. “I want to talk to Mommy.”
Tina interrupted. “Mommy, we didn’t go for a plane ride and you said we would.”
“Tina, where are you?”
“Hello, darling.” Erich’s voice was warmly solicitous. Tina and Beth were wailing in the background.
“Erich, where are you? Why did you do this?”
“Why did I do what, darling? Prevent you from taking my children from me? Keep them from danger?”
“Danger? What are you talking about?”
“Jenny, I told you I’d take care of you. I mean it. But I’ll never let you leave me and take my girls away.”
“I won’t, Erich. Bring them home.”
“That’s not good enough. Jenny, go over to the desk. Get writing paper and a pen. I’ll hold on.”
The girls were still crying. But she could hear something else. Road sounds. A truck in gear. He must be calling from a phone booth on a highway. “Erich, where are you?”
“I said get paper and pen. I’ll dictate. You write. Hurry up, Jenny.”
The Edwardian desk was held closed by a large gold key. As she tried to turn it, she pulled it out and dropped it. Awkwardly she bent down, scooped it up. The sudden rush of blood to her head made her dizzy. Tripping in her rush to return to the phone, she had to steady herself against the wall.
“I’m ready, Erich.”
“It’s a letter to me. Dear Erich . . .”
Wedging the receiver between her shoulder and ear, she scrawled the two words.
He spoke slowly:
“I realize I am very ill. I know I sleepwalk constantly. I think I do terrible things that I can’t remember. I lied when I said I didn’t get in the car with Kevin. I asked him to come down here so I could persuade him to leave us alone. I didn’t mean to hit him so hard.”
Mechanically she was writing, anxious not to make him angry. The meaning of the words filtered through.
“Erich, I won’t write that. That’s not true.”
“Let me finish. Just listen.” He spoke rapidly now.
“Joe was threatening to tell that he saw me get in the car. I couldn’t let him talk. I dreamed I mixed the poison with the oats. But I know it wasn’t a dream. I thought you would accept the baby but you knew it wasn’t yours. I thought it would be better for our marriage if the baby didn’t live. He was taking all my attention. Tina saw me go in to the baby. She saw me press my hands on his face. Erich, promise you will never trust me alone with the children. I am not responsible for what I do.”
The pen dropped from her fingers. “No!”
“When you write and sign that statement, Jenny, I’ll come back. I’ll put it in the safe. No one will ever know about it.”
“Erich, please. You can’t mean this?”
“Jenny, I can be gone months at a time, years if necessary. You know that. I’ll call you in a week or two. Think it over.”
“I won’t.”
“Jenny, I know what you’ve done.” His voice became warm. “We love each other, Jenny. We both know it. But I can’t risk losing you and I can’t risk the girls with you.”
The phone clicked. She stared into it, stared at the crumbled paper in her hand.
“Oh, God,” she said, “please help me. I don’t know what to do.”
She called Fran. “We’re not coming.
”
“Jenny, why not? What’s wrong?” The connection was poor. Even Fran’s normally strong voice sounded so remote.
“Erich’s taken the girls on a trip. I’m not sure when they’ll be back.”
“Jenny, do you want me to come out? I’ve got four days off.”
Erich would be furious if Fran came. It was the phone call from Fran in the hospital that had alerted him to her plans.
“No, Fran, don’t come. Don’t even call. Just pray for me. Please.”
She could not sleep in the master bedroom. She could not sleep anywhere upstairs: the long dark hallway, the closed doors, the girls’ room across from the master bedroom, the room where the baby had slept those few short weeks.
Instead she lay down on the couch by the iron stove and covered herself with the shawl Rooney had made. The heat automatically went off at ten. She decided to make a fire in the stove. The wood was in the cradle. The cradle moved as she touched it. Oh, Pumpkin, she mourned, remembering the solemn eyes that had gazed steadily back at her, the small fist that had curled around her finger.
She could not write that letter. The next time Erich had an outburst of jealousy he might give it to the sheriff. How long would he stay away?
She heard the clock strike one . . . two . . . three
. . . Sometime after that she dozed off. A sound awakened her. The house creaking and groaning as it settled. No, she was hearing footsteps. Someone was walking upstairs.
She had to know. Slowly, step by step, she made herself go up the stairs. She clutched the shawl around her against the chill. The hallway was empty. She made herself go into the master bedroom, switch on a lamp. There was no one there.
Erich’s old room. The door was open a crack. Hadn’t it been closed? She went into it, flipped on the overhead light. No one.
And yet, there was something, a feeling of presence. What was it? The pine scent. Was it stronger again? She couldn’t be sure.
She walked over to the window. She needed to open it, to breathe fresh air. Her hands on the sill, she looked down.
A figure was standing outside in the yard, the figure of a man gazing up at the house. The moonlight flickered on his face. It was Clyde. What was he doing there? She waved to him.
He turned and ran.
33
For the rest of the night she lay on the couch, listening.
Sometimes she fancied she heard sounds, footsteps, a door closing. Imagination. All of it.
At six o’clock she got up and realized she hadn’t undressed. The printed silk suit she’d planned to wear on the trip was hopelessly wrinkled. No wonder I couldn’t sleep, she thought.
A long, hot shower cleared some of the numbing fatigue. With the heavy bath towel wrapped around her she went into the bedroom and opened the drawer. A faded pair of jeans were there, a pair she used to wear in New York. She put them on and rummaged until she found one of her old sweaters. Erich had wanted her to give everything away. But she’d hung onto a few things. It was important to wear something of her own now, something she’d bought herself. She remembered how badly dressed she’d felt that day she met Erich. She’d been wearing that cheap sweater Kevin gave her and Nana’s gold locket.
She’d come here with that one piece of jewelery of her own and the girls. Now she didn’t have Nana’s locket and Erich had the girls.
Jenny stared at the dark oak floor. Something was shining on it, just outside the closet. She bent down and picked it up. It was a scrap of mink. She yanked open the closet door. The mink coat was half off the hanger. One sleeve drooped raggedly round the hem. What was the matter? Jenny went to adjust it, then pulled back. Her fingers had slid through to the skin beneath the fur at the collar line. Bits of fur clung to her fingers.
The coat had been slashed to ribbons.
At ten o’clock she went over to the office. Clyde was sitting at the large desk, the one Erich always used. “I always base here when Erich is going to be gone for a spell. Makes it easier.” Clyde looked older. The heavy wrinkles around his eyes were more pronounced. She waited for him to explain why he’d been looking up at the house in the middle of the night. But he said nothing.
“How long is Erich planning to be gone?” she asked.
“He didn’t say for sure, Miz Krueger.”
“Clyde, why were you outside the house last night?”
“You saw me?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then you saw her too?”
“Her?”
Clyde burst out: “Miz Krueger, maybe Rooney ain’t so crazy after all. You know she keeps saying she sees Caroline? Last night I couldn’t sleep. Knowing they still don’t want to let Rooney home more’n a few days at a time, wondering if I’m doing the right thing by her, anyhow I got up. And you know, Miz Krueger, how you can see a piece of the cemetery from our window? Well, I saw something moving there. And I went out.”
Clyde’s face became unnaturally pale. “Miz Krueger, I saw Caroline. Just like Rooney’s been saying. She was walking from the cemetery to the house. I followed her. That hair, that cape she always wore. She went in the back door. I tried it after her but it was locked. I wasn’t carrying my keys.
“I walked around and just waited. In a little while I saw the light go on in the master bedroom, then the light in Erich’s old room. Then she came to the window and looked out and waved at me.”
“Clyde, I was at the window. I waved at you.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Clyde whispered. “Rooney’s been saying she sees Caroline. Tina talks about the lady in the painting. I think I’m following Caroline. Oh, Jesus”— he stared at her, horror in his face—“and all the time, just like Erich said, it’s you we’ve been seeing.”
“It wasn’t me, Clyde,” she protested. “I went upstairs because I heard someone walking around.” She stopped, repelled by the disbelief in his face. She fled back to the house. Was Clyde right? Had she been walking near the graveyard? She’d been dreaming about the baby. And this morning she’d been thinking how much she hated the clothes Erich had bought her. Had she dreamed that too and then slashed the coat? Maybe she hadn’t heard anyone after all. Maybe she’d just been sleepwalking and woke up when she was upstairs.
She was the lady Tina saw, the lady in the painting.
She made coffee, drank it scalding hot. She had not eaten since yesterday morning. She toasted an English muffin, forced herself to nibble on it.
Clyde would tell the doctors that he’d seen the woman he thought was Caroline. He’d say that he followed her to the house and I admitted I waved to him.
Erich would come back and take care of her. She’d sign that statement and Erich would take care of her. For hours she sat at the kitchen table, then went to the desk and got the box of writing paper. Carefully she wrote, trying to remember Erich’s exact words. She’d tell about last night too. She wrote:
And last night I must have been sleepwalking again. Clyde saw me. I walked in from the cemetery. I guess I went to the baby’s grave. I woke up in the bedroom and saw Clyde from the window. I waved to him.
Clyde had been standing out there, standing in the ice-crusted snow.
The snow.
She’d been in her stocking feet. If she’d been outside her feet would have been wet. The boots she’d been planning to wear on the trip were by the couch, still freshly polished. They hadn’t been worn outside.
She might have imagined the draft of cold air, imagined the footsteps, forgotten about sleepwalking. But if she’d been out by the cemetery, her feet would have gotten wet, her stockings would have been stained.
Slowly she tore up the letter, tore it till it scattered in tiny pieces. Dispassionately she watched the pieces scatter around the kitchen. For the first time since Erich had gone, the sense of hopelessness began to lift.
She hadn’t been outside. But Rooney had seen Caroline. Tina had seen her. Clyde had seen her. She, Jenny, had heard her upstairs last night. Caroline had slashed the mink coat. Maybe
she was angry with Jenny for causing Erich so much trouble. Maybe she was still upstairs. She had come back.
Jenny got up. “Caroline,” she called. “Caroline.” She could hear her voice getting higher. Maybe Caroline couldn’t hear her. Step by step she ascended the stairs. The master bedroom was empty. She detected the faint scent of pine that was always there. Maybe if she left some pine soap out, Caroline would feel more at home. She reached into the crystal bowl, brought out three small cakes, left them on the pillow.
The attic. Perhaps she was in the attic. That’s where she might have gone last night. “Caroline,” Jenny called, trying to sound coaxing, “don’t be afraid of me. Please come. You have to help me get the girls.”
The attic was nearly dark. She walked up and down it. Caroline’s vanity case with her ticket and appointment book. Where was the rest of her luggage? Why did Caroline keep coming back to this house? She had been so anxious to get away.
“Caroline,” Jenny called softly, “please talk to me.”
The bassinette was in the corner, covered now with a sheet. Jenny walked over to it, touched it tenderly, began to rock it. “My little love,” she whispered. “Oh, little love.”
Something was sliding across the sheet, something slipping toward her hand. A delicate gold chain, a heart-shaped pendant, the filigree workmanship like spun-gold thread, the center diamond that flashed in the dusk.
Jenny closed her hand over Nana’s locket.
“Nana.” Saying the name aloud was like a drenching of cold water. What would Nana think of her, standing here, trying to talk to a dead woman?
The attic seemed intolerably confining. Clasping her hand over the locket she ran downstairs to the second floor, down to the main floor, into the kitchen. I am going mad, she thought. Aghast, she remembered calling Caroline’s name.