Douglas’ door was locked; it was the only way she had of knowing that he had come back some time during the night, perhaps because he wanted to, perhaps because he had no place else to go.
She knocked and said, “Douglas,” in a harsh heavy voice that was like a stranger’s to her. “Are you awake, Douglas?”
From inside the room there came a mumbled reply and the soft thud of feet striking carpet.
“I want to talk to you, Douglas. Get dressed and come downstairs. Right away.”
In the kitchen, the part-time maid, a spare, elderly woman named Mabel, was sitting cross-legged at the dresser ledge, drinking a cup of coffee and reading the morning Times. She didn’t rise when she saw Verna, who owed her back wages in civility as well as cash.
“There’s muffins in the oven. Yesterday’s. Heated up. You want your orange-juice now?”
“I’ll get it myself.”
“I made a grocery list. We’re out of eggs and coffee again. I need a drop of coffee now and then to steady myself and there’s barely a cup left in the pot.”
“All right, go and buy some. You might as well do the rest of the shopping while you’re at it. We need some 100-watt bulbs and paper towels, and you’d better check the potato bin.”
“You want I should do it now, before I have a bite to eat?”
“Our understanding was that you were to eat before you come here.”
“We had other understandings too.”
“You’ll be paid this week. I expect a check in the mail today.”
When the maid had gone, Verna took the muffins out of the oven and tested one. It was rubbery, and the blueberries inside were like squashed purple flies.
She added water to the coffee and reheated it, and then she poured some orange-juice out of a pitcher in the refrigerator. It smelled stale. The whole refrigerator smelled stale, as if Mabel had tucked odds and ends of food into forgotten corners.
Hearing the wheeze and rattle of Mabel’s ancient Dodge as it moved down the driveway, Verna thought, I’ll have to let her go, as soon as I can pay her. How awkward it is to have to keep her on because I can’t afford to fire her.
Douglas came in as she was pouring herself a cup of coffee. He hadn’t dressed, as she’d asked him to. He was wearing the terrycloth robe and beaded moccasins he’d had on the previous night before Blackshear’s visit. He looked haggard. The circles under his eyes were like bruises, and from his left temple to the corner of his mouth there ran three parallel scratches. He tried to hide the scratches with his hand, but the attempt only drew attention to them.
“What happened to your cheek?”
“I was petting a cat.”
He sat down beside her, on her left, so that she would only see the uninjured side of his face. Their arms touched and the physical contact jabbed Verna like a needle. She got up, feeling a little faint, and walked over to the stove.
“I’ll get you some muffins.”
“I’m not hungry.” He lit a cigarette.
“You shouldn’t smoke before breakfast. Where did you go last night?”
“Out.”
“You went out and petted a cat. A real big evening, eh?”
He shook his head wearily.
“What kind of cat was it that you petted?”
“Just an ordinary alley cat.”
“Four-legged?”
She paused. “Not the one that scratched you.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at, I really don’t.” He turned his eyes on her, dove-colored, full of innocence. “What are you so angry about, Mother? I went for a walk last night, I saw this cat, I picked it up and tried to pet it and it scratched me. God help me, that’s the truth.”
“God help you, yes,” she said. “No one else will.”
“What brought on this somber mood?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“Certainly I can guess.”
“Go ahead then.”
“You tried to borrow money from Helen and she turned you down.”
“Wrong.”
“Mabel asked for her back wages?”
“Wrong again.”
“It has something to do with money, that’s for sure.”
“Not this time.”
He got up and started towards the door. “I’m tired of this guessing game. I think I’ll go up—”
“Sit down.”
He stopped at the doorway. “Don’t you think I’m too old to be ordered around like—”
“Sit down, Douglas.”
“All right, all right.”
“Where did you go last night?”
“Are we going to start that all over again?”
“We are.”
“I went out for a walk. It was a nice night.”
“It was raining.”
“Not when I left. The rain started about ten o’clock.”
“And you just kept on walking.”
“Sure.”
“Until you got to Mr. Terola’s place?”
He stared at her across the room, unblinking, mute.
“That was your destination, wasn’t it, one of the back rooms of Terola’s studio?”
He still didn’t speak.
“Or perhaps it wasn’t Terola’s, perhaps it was just anybody’s back room. I hear your kind isn’t particular.” She heard herself saying the words, but still she didn’t believe them. She waited, her fists clenched against her sides, for the reactions she wanted from him: shock, anger, denial.
He said nothing.
“What goes on in that studio, Douglas? I have a right to know. I’m paying for those so-called ‘photography’ lessons of yours. Are you really learning anything about photography?”
He walked unsteadily back to the dresser and sat down. “Yes.”
“Are you behind the camera or in front of it?”
“I don’t know—what you mean.”
“You must know, other people do. I heard it myself last night.”
“Heard what?”
“About the kind of pictures Terola takes. Not the sort of thing one would want in a family album, are they?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Who would know better than you, Douglas? You pose for them, don’t you?”
He shook his head. It was the denial she’d been waiting for, praying for, but it was so fragile she couldn’t touch it for fear it would break.
“Who’s been talking to you?” he said.
“Someone called me last night after you went out.”
“Who was it?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“If rumors are going around about me I have a right to know who’s passing them along.”
She clutched at the straw. “Rumors? That’s all they are then, Douglas? None of it’s true? Not a word?”
“No.”
“Oh, thank God, thank God.”
She rushed at him across the room, her arms outspread.
His face whitened and his body tensed as he braced himself for her caress. She stroked his hair, she kissed his forehead, she touched the scratches on his cheek with loving tenderness, she murmured his name, “Dougie. Dougie dear. I’m so sorry, darling.”
Her arms entwined around him like snakes. He felt sick with revulsion and weak with fear. A scream for help rose in his throat and suffocated there: God. God help me. God save me.
“Dougie dear, I’m so sorry. You’ll forgive me, won’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, what a horrible mother I am, believing those lies. That’s all there were, lies, lies.”
“Please,” he whispered. “You’re choking me.”
But the words were so muffled she didn’t hear them. She pressed her cheek against his. “I shouldn’t have said those terrible things, Dougie. You’re my son. I love you.”
“Stop it! Stop!”
He tore himself out of her grasp and ran to the door, and a moment later she heard the wild pounding of his feet on the stairs.
She sat for a long time, stone-faced, marble-eyed, like a deaf person in a room of chatterers. Then she followed him upstairs.
He was lying spread-eagled across the bed, face down. She didn’t go near him. She stood just inside the door.
“Douglas.”
“Go away. Please. I’m sick.”
“I know you are,” she said painfully. “We must—cure you, take you to a doctor.”
He rolled his head back and forth on the satin spread.
Questions rose on her tongue and died there: When did you first know? Why didn’t you come and tell me? Who corrupted you?
“We’ll go to a doctor,” she said more firmly. “It’s curable; it must be curable. They cure everything nowadays with all those wonder drugs they’ve got, cortisone and A.C.T.H., things like that.”
“You don’t understand. You just don’t understand.”
“Try me. What it is? What don’t I understand?”
“Please. Leave me alone.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes.”
“Very well,” she said coldly. “I’ll leave you alone. I have an errand to do anyway.”
Something in her voice alerted him, and he rolled over on the bed and sat up. “What kind of errand? You’re not going to see a doctor?”
“No; that’s your duty.”
“And what’s yours?”
“Mine,” she said, “is to see Terola.”
“No. Don’t go there.”
“I must. It’s my duty, as your mother.”
“Don’t go.”
“I must confront this evil man, face to face.”
“He’s not an evil man,” Douglas said wearily. “He’s like me.”
“Have you no shame, no sense of decency, defending a man like that to me, your own mother?”
“I’m not defen—”
“Where’s your self-respect, Douglas, your pride?”
He had so many things to say to her that the words became congested in his throat and he said nothing.
“I’m going to see this Terola and give him a piece of my mind. A man like that being allowed to run around loose; it’s a disgrace. He’s probably corrupted other young men besides you.”
“He didn’t corrupt me.”
“What are you saying, Douglas? Of course he did. He was responsible. If it weren’t for him you’d be perfectly normal. I’ll see to it that he pays for the—”
“Mother. Stop it.”
There was a long silence. Their eyes met across the room and went on again, like strangers passing on a street.
“Terola,” she said finally. “He wasn’t the first, then.”
“No.”
“Who was?”
“I’ve forgotten.”
“When did it happen?”
“It was so long ago that I can’t remember.”
“And all these years—all these years—”
“All these years,” he repeated slowly, using the words like weapons against both her and himself.
He didn’t hear her leave, but when he looked up again, she was gone and the door was closed.
He lay back on the bed, listening to the beat of rain on the roof, and the cheep-cheep of a disgruntled house-wren complaining about the weather from under the eaves. Every sound was clear and sharp and final: the cracking of the eucalyptus trees as the wind increased, the barking of the collie next door, Mabel’s old Dodge wheezing up the driveway, the slam of a car door, the murmur of the electric clock beside his bed.
It seemed that he had never really listened before, and now that he had learned how, each sound was personal and prophetic. He was the wren and the rain, he was the wind and the trees bending under the wind. He was split in two, the mover and the moved, the male and the female.
All these years, the clock murmured, all these years.
Verna tapped on the door again and came in. She was dressed to meet the weather, in a red plaid raincoat and a matched peaked cap.
She said, “Mabel’s back. Keep your voice down. She has ears like a fox.”
“I have nothing to say, anyway.”
“Perhaps you’ll think of something by the time I get back.”
“You’re not going to see Terola?”
“I told you I was.”
“Please don’t.”
“I have some questions to ask him.”
“Ask me instead. I’ll answer. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“Stop wheedling like that, Douglas. It annoys me.” She hesitated. “Don’t you see, I’m only doing my duty? I’m only doing what your father would have done if he were still alive. This man Terola, he’s obviously corrupt, and yet you’re trying to protect him. Why? You said you’d tell me anything. Why?”
He lay motionless on the bed, his eyes closed, his face grey. For a moment she thought he was dead, and she was neither glad nor sorry, only relieved that the problem had been solved by the simple stopping of a heart. Then his lips moved. “You want to know why?”
“Yes.”
“Because I’m his wife.”
“His—What did you say?”
“I’m his wife.”
Her mouth opened in shock and slowly closed again. “You filthy little beast,” she said quietly. “You filthy little beast.”
He turned his head. She was standing by the bed watching him, her face distorted with loathing and contempt.
“Mother. Don’t go. Mom!”
“Don’t call me that. You’re no part of me.” She walked decisively to the door and opened it. “By the way, I forgot. Happy birthday.”
Alone, he began to listen again to the clock and the wren and the rain and the trees; and then the sound of the Buick’s engine racing in response to Verna’s anger. She’s leaving, he thought. She’s going to see Jack. I couldn’t stop her.
He got up and went into the bathroom.
For almost a year, ever since his marriage to Evelyn, he’d been saving sleeping pills. He had nearly fifty of them now, hidden in an Epsom salt box in his medicine chest, capsules in various gay colors that belied their purpose. He swallowed five of them without difficulty, but the sixth stuck in his throat for a few moments, and the seventh wouldn’t go down at all. The gelatin coating melted in his mouth and released a dry, bitter powder that choked him. He did not try an eighth.
He removed the blade from his safety razor, and standing over the washbasin, he pressed the blade into the flesh that covered the veins of his left wrist. The razor was dull, the wound was hardly more than a scratch, but the sight of his blood oozing out made him dizzy with terror. He felt as if his knees were turning into water and his head was filling with air like a balloon.
He tried to scream, “Help, Mother!” but the words came out like a whimper.
As he fell forward in a faint his temple struck the projecting corner of the washbasin. The last sound Douglas heard was sharp and clear and final, the crack of bone.