A moment of horror came over him. She’s not supposed to know.
“I’m not blind,” she muttered, and walked away. He was alone.
Later there was twilight, and Loftis, far now from conscience or thoughts of Helen, told a funny story. Laughter floated across the lawn and up to the sky, blue shadows filled the air, and a faint breeze, stirred up by the coming darkness, made dry, hoarse scrapings in the cedar trees. “Milton,” said Dolly, “you ought to be ashamed,” but she and Pookie broke out again in laughter, and Loftis, rather pleased, smiled unobtrusively and turned away, watching dizzily a huge sunset that drained away in the west like blood. In the kitchen above a light winked on. He inhaled the sweet evening odor of roses and grass.
“That reminds me——” Pookie began, but there was a rush of feet down the slope behind them, and Melvin, who was nine and bore an embarrassing resemblance to his father, appeared at Dolly’s side, saying, “Mama, Peyton hit me in the face.” Apparently she had, for on his cheek there was a pink welt the size of a walnut, and now, having evoked attention, he clutched his mother’s arm convulsively and let out a wail.
“That’s all right, dear,” she said indolently, “it’ll be O.K. in a minute,” and Pookie, in the midst of all these sobs and cries ringing out on the stillness, got up and knelt down beside the boy, saying, “That’s all right, Buster, don’t holler so.”
The child stopped crying. He pressed his head against Pookie’s shoulder and began a peevish, incoherent whimper. “Wanna go home, wanna go home … hungry,” Loftis made out. Exasperated, Loftis poured himself another drink while Dolly, diverted for a moment, pulled a handkerchief from her purse and tried to wipe off Melvin’s face. “O.K., Buster,” Loftis heard her say in a voice full of irritation and boredom, “we’ll go home in a minute,” and for the first time in hours Loftis was aware of a bleak moment of depression. She would have to go, and then he’d be by himself. He dreaded the coming hours in the house with Helen. The goddam kid. Buster. Why didn’t they have his adenoids taken out? He’d grow up an adolescent lout and most likely they’d have to send him to military school, to keep him away from growing girls. Wearily Loftis drank.
In an instant Pookie and Melvin had begun to climb up the hill toward the cedars—where the two little girls were still playing—in order to reconcile things; Pookie turned once—Loftis could see him—with a ridiculous smile gazing toward the lawn chairs, said something Loftis couldn’t hear and proceeded on up the slope. Then, looking up from his glass to find Dolly regarding him gravely, Loftis returned her gaze, unsmiling, giddy, aware of something that made a faint summery humming in the air, fireflies flickering through the twilight like luminous raindrops, and of a hot, helpless desire.
“Are you happy?” he said softly.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because Pookie isn’t a handsome man.”
“You don’t mean that,” he said.
“No, I mean because he’s a funnyman,” she said.
“Because he’s a clown,” he suggested easily. For a long while neither of them spoke.
“He’s sweet,” she sighed finally.
“The hell with that,” he said.
Pookie descended the slope, flapping a cheerful arm in their direction. He passed them, heading for the beach. “Gonna take a look at that little old boat you were talking about,” he called. “Gonna——”
Loftis lifted the bottle. “Have another drink!“ he shouted.
“Thanks, no, old man,” Pookie called back. From the distance his eyes were glassy, faintly perplexed; his face wore a befuddled grin. “I’m a man who knows when to stop!” Loftis waved merrily; Pookie vanished beyond the seawall.
“The hell with that,” Loftis repeated to Dolly. “Somehow, somewhere, you got stuck.”
They sat there for a few minutes in silence. Then Dolly stirred. With what seemed infinite tenderness she gazed directly at him. She was discontented, she had had too much whisky, and she was vulnerable to most any emotion, especially that of lust. “You’re beautiful,” Dolly whispered. “You’re wonderful.”
He walked toward her through the gloom. “Dolly,” he said. “Sweet kitten …” he murmured, committing himself, he somehow knew, with foreknowledge and awareness, as if to an exciting and perilous journey.
Then all of a sudden, shattering the twilight, a wild, stricken scream came from above. He and Dolly turned toward the house together; Loftis heard Dolly give a startled gasp, half-rising from her chair, and he himself, hands still outspread, paralyzed in the gesture of entreaty and affirmation, turned his eyes toward the terrace where beneath a tree he could see La Ruth, monstrous and disturbed, apron fluttering, hands to her face, making crazy motions on the brow of the hill like some black, outlandish bird. “Aiee-eee,” she shrieked, together with long drawn-out cries of “Lawd!” and “Mercy!” and Loftis froze all over, trembling, so certain he was that someone had been killed. He was never quite sure how, in a state already befogged by extravagant emotion and by whisky, he gained the top of the hill, and yet he did, with the absolute speed of light, it seemed, leaving Dolly far behind—she who, horrified, too, cried, “Wait, wait!”—and stumbled up the flagstone steps and beneath the cedars where fallen branches almost sent him tumbling, and rushed desperately, afraid to think what might have happened, to the place where La Ruth stood cradling her face in her hands and lifting her eyes to God. “Now tell me——” he cried breathlessly. She smelled of cooking and of grease and she was speechless. “Now tell me, damn you!” he cried, shaking her, but she only rolled her great black eyes upward while a feeble peeping sound escaped from her throat.
He brushed her aside. There were voices from beneath the cedars and he ran there where, on the cool grassless ground, Helen and Ella Swan were furiously extricating Maudie from a mass of rope and twine. He bent down unsteadily to help, bewildered and frightened, but Helen said fiercely, “Get away, get away,” and Ella, who with palsied fingers had begun to loosen a rope which bound Maudie’s neck, moaned: “Dey tied her up, dey almos’ killed her, de nasty things.”
Now Dolly and Pookie arrived on the run, tripping on the roots of the cedar trees, and Maudie, who had had a handkerchief stuffed in her mouth and whose little face for a moment had been quite blue, began to breathe again. Her face turned a glowing red in an endless spasm of fear or pain, or both, and she emitted finally an agonized scream which, mingled with those of La Ruth still echoing hysterically from the terrace, gave Loftis a sudden sense of unearthliness. Helen swept Maudie up to her breast. The withered leg dangled pitifully and Helen began to walk about in little circles beneath the cedars, talking in soft muffled tones to the child who, becoming calmer, sobbed in a tortured, broken fashion against her mother’s face. Vainly Loftis cast about for something to do or say. Somehow, as he stood there helplessly, the scene possessed a vast unseemliness, now that he knew Maudie was safe, and he wished that everything might suddenly vanish like smoke, leaving him in a lawn chair once more. Yet all that he could do, it seemed, was to stand there making futile motions with his hands and groping around in his pockets for a cigarette.
“Poor child,” Dolly exclaimed, moving toward Helen with a comforting gesture, but Helen avoided her, turned away with Maudie and started toward the kitchen door just as Peyton and Melvin emerged from beneath a big hydrangea, four eyes in the shadows big with fright.
They all stood watching. Very gently Helen deposited Maudie in Ella Swan’s arms, whirled then savagely and in silence before the sight of everyone—including a large chow dog that had wandered over from the neighboring house, his silly violet tongue lolling out—strode over to the place where Peyton stood with sudden-imperiled eyes and gave her a hard, vicious slap across the cheek. Then she spoke in a whisper, but they all could hear her. “You little devil!” she said and turned, head bowed, and took Maudie, who was still sobbing quietly, once again tenderly from Ella’s arms and walked up the steps into the house. T
he screen door banged behind her, and Peyton began to shriek. Each of them watched this in silence—stock-still, rigid there beneath the bending cedars: Loftis and his guests and finally the two Negro women, who with shy and puzzled yet oddly comprehending grins had drawn near the others—each perhaps conscious of a clean spring twilight laden with cedar and the smell of the sea, and of something else, also: the cluster around them of quiet, middle-class homes, hedged and pruned and proper, all touched at this moment by a somber trouble; while each mind, too, perhaps turned inward for an instant, like the soul that forever seeks a grave, upon his own particular guilt. The bell, from afar, dropped seven jangling notes upon the stillness, and Peyton, weeping desperately, crept back beneath the hydrangea.
The door of the room where they stood, he and Peyton together, her hand in his, confronted the edge of darkness, like a shore at night facing on the sea. Beyond them in the shadows arose swollen, mysterious scents, powders and perfumes which, though familiar to both of them, never lost the odor of strangeness and secrecy—to him, because they stung his senses with memories of dances and parties in the distant past, and of love, always the scent of gardenias. In Peyton they aroused wicked excitement, a promise, too, of dances and parties, and—since she was still nine years old—hope that when the Prince came finally with love and a joyful rattling of spurs, the day would smell like this, a heartbreaking scent, always of roses. A breeze stirred somewhere in the room, shook a piece of paper with a tiny clattering noise, like toy hooves echoing down a tiny road. He and Peyton stood still, listening; the paper chattered endlessly, small hooves galloping across the silence: the breeze died with a whisper and the paper, hooves, horse and rider, vanished without a sound, tumbled into some toy abyss. They listened, hesitant, somehow afraid, for now beyond them, floating up like crickets from the darkness, an alarm clock went clickcluckclick, a broken-down soliloquy, promising terrible things.
“Helen,” he said softly. There was no answer.
“Helen,” he repeated.
“Yes.” That was all. A voice without anticipation or hostility, without anything. Silence again. They could hear her breathing, summoning up to both of them an instant’s vision: the form outstretched, mother and lover, passionless, unfeeling, sick. What has happened to those warm, loving hands which once took care of us so well? But nothing stirred in the darkness. The hands were still. The alarm clock went clickcluckclick. So sick, so sick, so sick.
“May we come in, Helen?”
“Yes.”
They crossed the room slowly, groping at the darkness as if they might be tearing cobwebs from some unseen wall. There were twin beds here, a small crocheted rug between, and they halted by her side still unable to see, yet aware through past acquaintance of things surrounding them in the night: rug, bedsteads, a score of little figurines and ornaments gazing at them, eyeless in the darkness; tiny bottles, too, medicine and pills, a little mirrored cabinet exuding a faint thin odor of sirup and chemicals. The sound of her breathing returned, close by, and as their eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness they sought out the place where she lay, a white-clad form gently breathing, hands across her body limp and unfolded like pale ghostly wings. Seabird wings.
“Helen,” he said softly.
“Yes.”
“Helen, I’ve brought Peyton. Peyton and I——”
They sat down on the edge of the bed across from her. A great blossom of fire suddenly illuminated the darkness; Helen lighted a cigarette, propped herself on one elbow. For a moment they saw her face, drawn and twisted with anger, sorrow—they really couldn’t tell. She sank back again, blew out the match. The bloom of fire collapsed as darkness rushed in about them all: a tiny crumb of light flickered at the match end; then this also went out. Night enclosed them—night, fragrant with gardenia and rose, yet with a smell of medicine rising through the darkness, an unpleasant vapor faintly threatful, suggesting weariness and infirmity and disorder.
“Helen,” he said slowly. “Peyton wants to tell you—that she’s sorry … about Maudie.”
“Mama, I’m sorry that I hurt Maudie. I’m sorry, Mama. I didn’t mean to, Mama.”
“Yes,” Helen said.
They sat in silence, smelling the perfume, the medicine, the cigarette smoke, unable to see. High above, an airplane droned past; each of them stirred a little, listening: how far was it going, where? On the wingtips lights would flash green and red, demon eyes winking in the night.
“She’s sorry, Helen,” he said.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” Peyton said again, a little breathlessly, as if she might begin to cry.
“Yes,” said Helen.
“I’m sorry, Mama.”
There was a whisper and rustle of bedclothes in the darkness. A hand reached out; she pulled Peyton toward her. “Oh, yes, dear. I know you’re sorry. I know. I know. I’m sorry, too.” And together, both of them weeping a bit, they made the soft, soothing sounds two women make when they try to forgive each other. Loftis sat idly by for a while, until finally Helen whispered to Peyton, “Now, dear, you go downstairs. Go and wash your face now. You must be awfully dirty. It’s time to go to bed.” Peyton stumbled past him—he couldn’t see her—but he felt her fingers on his leg, trembling there like moths, plucking at his trousers. “Daddy?” she said.
“Just a minute, baby,” he said. “I’ll be right along.”
Peyton left the room, bumping against footstools and dressers, and again Loftis sat in silence.
Finally he said, “She was really sorry, I think. It wasn’t I … who prompted her. I just told her how to say it. I think she was really sorry.”
“Yes. She was.”
“Is Maudie all right now?”
“Yes,” she said in a weary voice.
“I think she was just frightened,” he ventured slowly.
“Yes.”
Then he said something which he didn’t want to say, it hurt his pride so, yet he knew he had to: “Helen, I’m really very sorry about today. Really I am. It was a very foolish business, the whole thing. I hope you really didn’t get the wrong idea. I just shouldn’t have done it.”
“No.”
“Invited them over, I mean.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Helen, I love you. Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She turned over on her side with a labored sigh. He couldn’t see her, although he knew from her voice that she was still facing him. The words came without hesitation, in a tired sort of monotone, and as he listened he began to break out in a chilly sweat: “I don’t know. I just don’t think you do. I’ve tried to do the right thing. I’ve tried to humor you even knowing that when I humored you I wasn’t doing the right thing. I just think you’re a child. I just don’t think we’ve ever understood each other. That’s all. I just think we’ve got a whole lot of different values.”
“Do you love me?” he asked quietly. It occurred to him that he hadn’t asked her that in a long time, and the thought of what she might reply caused him a vague tremor of fear.
“I don’t know——”
“How do you mean that, Helen?”
“If it weren’t for Maudie. If it weren’t for Maudie——”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think I’d be able to live with you anymore. I just think you’re going to destroy us all.”
He stood up. A surge of anger and futility rose up in his chest—and sudden shame, too, shame at the fact that their life together, which had begun, as most marriages do, with such jaunty good humor and confidence, had come to this footlessness, this confusion.
“Well,” he said in a level voice, thinking well, it’s your money, that’s the awful part. “Well, I’m sorry.”
“Yes,” she said.
“We started everything and now we’ll have to finish it.”
“Yes.” Her voice was cool, tired, full of indifference. She rose once more on her elbow, turned the alarm clock
’s luminous dial away from the wall so that a weird green halo of light was cast about her. Then she reached for a glass of water and swallowed a pill. He wanted to shout something at her. “Keep your hands off my daughter!” was what, with desperate urgency, he wanted to say, but for a moment he also wished to sit down by her and take her hand because there was something wrong with her—but he loved her, and she had to understand all these things. However, he really didn’t know what to say, and so he merely turned and groped his way out of the room.
Downstairs he found Peyton twisted up in a chair, calmly reading Winnie-the-Pooh. He called to her and they went outside. They got in the car and drove for what seemed miles, out of town and through the lonely pinewoods, across wild swamps full of frogs that piped shrilly and, dazed by the headlights, hopped giddily onto the road and got squashed beneath the wheels. This excited Peyton but Loftis had a headache. It began to rain—a half-hour’s steady drizzle which ceased as abruptly as it had begun. Fsinally, at about ten o’clock, Peyton announced that she was hungry and so, in a little fishing town up the bay, they stopped at a deserted restaurant and had deviled crabs and Seven Up. Peyton kept up an incessant chatter and told him to look at her: look at this new bracelet. Loftis had a beer. Then a red-faced woman, with a wen on her cheek, who seemed to be the owner of the restaurant, came up with sawdust and a broom and told them they would have to leave, it was closing time.
The car was parked on a dark wharf outside. They sat there for a long time, gazing at the bay. The tide rose, bright with phosphorescence, washing gently at the shore. It began to get cool and Peyton curled up beside him. “The more it snows-tiddely-pom, the more it goes-tiddely-pom …”