He was, however, the landlord, and a decent one at that. As long as she didn’t have to love him—some other poor girl had made that mistake—she didn’t mind paying him monthly, nodding politely when he passed, and, now and then, having him in for coffee and pound cake.
As Cornell approached, Mrs. White stepped to the kitchen door and pushed it open. She threw her hand high above her head and waved, calling, “Yoo-hoo!”
Cornell liked his coffee black, but Mrs. White always put milk in. “Your milk’s already in,” she would say. “Why, thank you,” he would sigh. Today was no different.
“Your milk’s already in.”
“Why, thank you.” Today, he added: “I would have just hated it if it were black.”
Mrs. White did not respond. She only smiled, glad. She put a steaming cup up to her lips. They were sitting at the kitchen table, Cornell at the head, Mrs. White beside him.
“Please take a piece of cake,” Mrs. White urged.
This Cornell always did with the greatest reluctance. He could not deny that Mrs. White’s pound cake tasted fine, it was the essence, the principle of pound cake he despised. So he took only the smallest piece and gingerly laid it on his plate.
“So,” he said, nibbling a corner of the stuff, “any complaints about the old homestead?”
“No, no need to complain,” she said with more irony than Cornell would have expected. “Paul’s a carpenter, remember.”
“Oh.” Cornell cleared his throat. “Nothing, uh, required his taking his work home with him, I trust.”
“Oh, no, nothing. Just that shaky chandelier. He did something to the foundation of it.”
“I always felt its swinging was rather romantic, not to mention its twinkling.”
“Well, not at three o’clock in the morning,” said Mrs. White. “There are times and places for romance.”
“Three o’clock’s always been good for me,” he told her. “Not as good as two o’clock, but better than four.”
Mrs. White only shrugged. Cornell felt she did not understand him well enough to be embarrassed. He was glad of it. He really ought to control himself, he thought.
“We hardly use half our lights nowadays anyway,” she said. “I mean, the bills are just too high. Paul and I have a new system and we’ve made sure that the children learn it. No big ceiling fixtures on in the daytime. Of course, this is depending on the weather. If it’s very cloudy, it might as well be night and then we’d be foolish to sit in the dark. But otherwise we …”
Cornell, though smiling and nodding, had drifted away. He had hopped upon another train of thought, one which took him, at a pleasant, leisurely pace, to the stream where the big fish swam. He heard enough of Mrs. White’s chatter to bob his head at the proper places, but otherwise her talk was lost in the whirr of line and the splash of captured trout.
“… it’s only a little thing and we don’t feel it’s too much of a sacrifice—” Mrs. White stopped, a bit peeved. She could see that glassy look on Cornell’s face, and she knew it meant he was listening only to his own hyperactive brain. His grin was silly, she thought; he looked like a chimp. “Anyway, it’s just a little thing.”
Cornell nodded, clued by the pause that Mrs. White was through. “That’s very nice.”
Mrs. White cut another piece of cake, which Cornell unwillingly accepted. The pause lengthened.
It was not so unpleasant to have him there, Mrs. White thought, despite his superior air and his out-of-this-world musings. There was only so much she could say to Mary, after all; some company during the day was better than none. He would not have been an unpresentable fellow either if he only combed his hair. She thought that what Cornell needed was someone to look after him, but she would have felt uncomfortable broaching such a subject.
“How was your fishing?” she said instead.
“Oh, fine, just fine.”
“Did you catch anything?”
“No.” He shrugged. “Catching something’s not really the point. The thing is just—to fish. That’s the idea.”
Mrs. White only poured herself more coffee.
“But I did nearly leave my pole down there,” he said. “I was lucky I remembered. A fisherman without a fishing pole is like a man without a …” He caught himself. “… purpose,” he finished.
There was a long quiet, as Mrs. White smiled derisively. This time Cornell felt himself judged—judged and found guilty of crudeness. And even though the jury was Mrs. White—dowdy Mrs. White—he could not keep from changing color slightly.
At the same time, he felt a twinge of anger at himself—and a twinge of bitterness toward Mrs. White. How easily women could make you feel guilty. They must take courses in it, he thought. They must learn it at their mothers’ knee. How clearly he could still picture that look the former Mrs. Cornell would sometimes give him when he said something she found offensive or cruel or even just silly. It was much like the look Mrs. White was giving him now. Maybe the females of the world had a patent on it. Or maybe it was just the wives—just the housewives. They spent their days cleaning their houses, ironing their socks, cooking their dinners—and practicing that look: that look that made you feel that you owed them everything, that you would be nothing without them.
Cornell was too easygoing to be a violent man. He had never raised a fist against anyone in his life. If he had, he’d have probably had it broken for him. But for a moment, suffering and flushing under Mrs. White’s gaze, he thought he could understand the motives of the man who had recently murdered those two housewives over in Putnam Wells. With a smile flickering at the corners of his lips, he thought: It’s easier than divorce, anyway, and a lot cheaper.
He blinked, realizing suddenly that the silence had become rather heavy. He broke it with the topic first in his mind.
“So—what do you think about those murders?” he asked.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Murders?” said Mrs. White. With a guilty expression she reached out and cut herself another piece of cake. She nibbled at it. “What murders?”
Cornell reached into the pocket of his coat and drew out his pipe and a package of tobacco. As he filled the pipe bowl and tamped on it with his index finger, he raised his eyebrows at Mrs. White. “Haven’t you heard?” he said. Then with what he hoped was a melodramatic flair: “The Suburban Housewife Murders.”
With the cake poised before her teeth, Mrs. White’s eyes widened—much to Cornell’s satisfaction. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, yes, I did hear something about that. Dorothy Howell mentioned it. She said someone had killed a woman in Putnam Wells.”
“Not a woman,” said Cornell. “Two women. Don’t you read the papers?”
Mrs. White shook her head, munching cake again. “No, no,” she said. “There’s nothing in them but depressing news. And what can you do about it? Paul tells me all the important things, and I get by.” She smiled sheepishly. “Here I am anyway,” she added.
“Well, Paul didn’t tell you about this important thing,” said Cornell. “This—” He stopped, as if a thought had occurred to him. “Don’t you listen to the radio?” he asked her—he rarely read the papers himself, in fact.
“Oh, no,” said Mrs. White again. “Well, I listen to the music now and again. But—” She shrugged.
“Oh. Well …” Cornell lit his pipe with grand style, milking the pause. He was going to enjoy this. “Well—you know there’s this guy who’s been going around bumping off unsuspecting housewives in Putnam Wells, right?”
Mrs. White gave the appropriate expression of shock. “Isn’t it terrible?” she said.
Cornell nodded. “He’s killed two of them so far—the second one just last Tuesday. And now the papers are beginning to say that the police are holding out—that kill is a polite word for what he does.”
“Oh, my,” said Mrs. White. “How awful.”
“Awful’s a polite word for it, too, according to the stories.” Cornell puffed away happily. “Can you imagine what this guy
does?”
He waited, hoping Mrs. White would ask him to imagine it for her. She, however, merely looked into her coffee cup and shook her head.
“What a shame,” she said. “What are things coming to?”
Disappointed, Cornell nodded. “What are things coming to?” he sighed.
“Can’t the police do anything about it?” she asked him.
He shrugged, worldly wise. “You know the cops,” he said. “If he kills about four more women, they’ll catch him on a traffic violation or something. Like Son of Sam.”
Mrs. White thought a moment longer. “Oh, yes,” she said, then, “Son of Sam.”
“Right now they can’t even be sure that that’s the pattern.”
“The pattern?” she said.
“Housewives,” said Cornell. He puffed some more, then peered into his pipe. “So far it looks as if he only goes after housewives in their thirties. You know, he seems to know when they’re alone and”—he added wickedly—“they’re an easy mark when their husbands are away.” He mused for a second. “Then again, maybe it’s something in their looks, maybe he just likes a certain kind of woman—there could be something to that. It’s all psychology.” He pointed his pipe stem at her pompously. “You have to figure out what’s going on inside a guy like that.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. White softly. “Whatever would make someone do such a thing?”
“His psychological makeup,” said Cornell, sounding pompous now even to himself.
“Do you think that’s it?”
“Sure. A guy like that, there’s probably something in his childhood. You know, say, he identifies with his father, Dad beats up on Mom, so little John Doe starts thinking Mommy must be bad and starts hating himself for liking her so much.… Or take it from that angle—say he loves his mother, wants to possess her—identifies with her because his father is such a creep—then, when he realizes that his mother is betraying him with Dad—”
“Betraying him—how?” said Mrs. White.
Cornell stopped. The blankness in Mrs. White’s round face, the lack of understanding in her blue eyes, made him listen to his own voice. He was heartily sick of it. If there was anything in the world he despised, it was simplistic psychology from someone who knew nothing about it. And he had spent a lifetime trying to learn as little about it as he could.
“Well,” he said, “anyway …” He tried to smile at her. God, how he hated these little chats. “You’d better keep your doors locked tight,” he said. “Especially when Paul’s not around.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Mrs. White considered this, her face serious. She stared past Cornell at a lacquered wooden plaque on the kitchen wall that read: I’M THE QUEEN OF THIS KITCHEN. IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT—STARVE!
She murmured with real gravity, “Yes, I guess I’d better. If anything happened to the children …”
Immediately Cornell felt a new wave of guilt wash over him. He hadn’t meant to scare her that way. He was only joking around. Now that he thought about it—and looking at her serious face, he had to think about it—it wasn’t really all that funny.
Trying to recoup, he set his pipe on the table and went on in a different tone. “You know, it’s odd about these things,” he said, “they make such a big fuss about them in the papers and all. Really, when you think about it, you have a much better chance of getting hit by a car than getting attacked by a weirdo like this.”
“Oh,” she said, coming back to earth a little, “do you think so?”
“Sure,” said Cornell. “Ten to one the police have him in jail by next week.”
“Yes,” she said.
“The police really know what they’re doing when it comes to this sort of thing. This is just the kind of thing they’re trained for. Well …” He pushed his coffee cup away. He felt awful. “You’re really right about reading the papers. They’re really the ones who get this kind of thing started.”
She smiled at him and he noticed suddenly what a kind-looking woman she was, almost pretty in a way.
“I know,” she said. “They just love to scare people and depress them. You’d think they’d have something better to do.”
“Yes.” He, too, had a charming smile. “You would, wouldn’t you? Well …” he said again.
He stood up from the kitchen table. “Listen, uh, don’t you forget to send me the cost of the materials for that chandelier, now.”
“Oh.” Mrs. White stood up, her smile even broader and sweeter. “All right. That’s very nice.”
“No, sure, it’s great that he can do that, keep the place up and everything. I never could do anything with my hands.”
“Oh, now.” She cocked her head to one side. “You paint, after all.”
“Oh, that. Yes, but I meant …” He stood there stupidly a moment.
“And you drew that wonderful frog for Mary. You know, she still keeps it on her wall.”
“Does she?” His smile now was genuine. “That’s really nice,” he said. “Tell her to kiss it and I’ll draw her a prince.”
Mrs. White laughed musically. “I’ll tell her.”
He studied the woman with a vague fondness. “Thanks for the cake,” he said.
“It’s good to see you.”
“Well …” he said a third time. He picked up the pole and tackle box and stepped out the door.
“Wait—Jonathan,” she called after him. “You forgot your pipe.”
He came back to the door, his face red, and she handed it to him. Then off he went.
Shaking her head, Mrs. White returned to the table and began clearing the dishes. A more absentminded, dreamy man, she thought, I can’t imagine. Still, he could be nice sometimes, when he wanted to be. Really a shame. What a wife could make of him—really a waste.
She set the plates down in the sink. Head in the clouds, she thought. And then, talking about those terrible murders. What a terrible thing. Who would do a thing like that?
She shivered slightly and glanced at the door. Then quickly, as if she didn’t want anyone to see, she stepped to it and locked it. She had never done that before.
She went back to the sink, picked up a sponge, and sprayed some Joy dishwashing liquid over it. For a moment she paused with a saucer in one hand and the sponge in the other. She wondered why Paul never mentioned the murders. They were happening right in the town where he did most of his work. The poor women there, they must be terrified.… And that, of course, was why Paul hadn’t told her. He didn’t want her to be upset, didn’t want her going around locking her door like a fool, worrying about something less likely to happen than being hit by a car.
Again she paused. She rinsed off the saucer and set it in the drainboard. She put down the sponge and went back to the door to unlock it. But she didn’t unlock it. She returned to the sink and picked up a coffee cup. Maybe Paul had forgotten to tell her if it happened last Tuesday. That was the day Paul worked late and he might’ve forgotten and so maybe she should keep the door locked after all.
Peevishly, she scolded Cornell in her mind for bringing a fresh worry into her life. But in a very few moments, as she fell into the rhythm of washing the dishes, she’d begun to think of other things.
She left the door locked all day though. She felt safer, locked inside.
CHAPTER NINE
It bothered her for the rest of the day, even after the children came home from school to keep her company. It bothered her that Paul wasn’t there. She had often thought—when a noise disturbed her in the night, or a lightning storm turned her thoughts morbid—how safe she felt when he was beside her. He, with his deep voice and his muscular arms, could always protect her and keep her from harm.
She had not always felt that way about him though. There had been a time—just at first—when he frightened her a little. Before she understood who he really was.
As she waited for him, slightly unnerved by all of Cornell’s talk about murder, she remembered that time.
Halfway through her
junior year in high school, she had become Mike Chambers’s steady. They went out together all the time and he gave her his pin and she let him kiss her all the time and sometimes do more. Still, she was always aware that it was his presence more than his personality that attracted her. There was something about him—something that would not take charge. She would not have said it, even to herself, but the fact was she thought Mike just a little weak.
She found herself thinking more and more about Paul White.
In the second semester Joan scheduled herself into an elective history class usually reserved for seniors. She got in and found, with mixed and unsettled emotions, that Paul was in it too. He didn’t say much in class. Mostly, he just sat in the back of the room with his arms folded across his chest and his lips curved into a small, indifferent smirk. If the teacher called on him, he would mumble something casual and disdainful and the teacher, intimidated by his quiet self-control, would back off.
Joan would sometimes walk slowly past him coming from or going to class, but she could never catch his eye. One time she even asked him for a pen. He gave one to her, but said nothing. He seemed to need no one.
Almost against her will she found herself bringing Paul up in her conversations with Mike.
“How well do you know that boy?” she asked him once.
“Paul?” Mike said. “I know him all right.”
“He doesn’t seem like your type,” she said, wishing she could shut herself up. “He seems a little—I don’t know—wild.”
Mike gave a gangling shrug. “Yeah, he’s a little wild. He’s okay underneath though. More or less.” He shrugged again.
There was a pause and Joan looked away, trying to control her tongue. Then she turned back to Mike.
“How long have you known him?” she asked.
She saw the corner of Mike’s mouth turn down. It was his turn to look away from her.
“Long enough,” he said.
Sometimes Joan saw Mike and Paul together. They seemed to get along well. Sometimes she saw them laughing and Mike would laugh so hard that his pale face turned bright pink.