At the call of an angel with fiery wings, graves open, coffins burst, and the dead are naked.
“… I CAN see, madam, that there are many persons surrounding you who are envious of your happiness, your culture, your good fortune and-yes, I must be frank-your good looks. I would advise you, madam, to go your own way, doing those things which you know down deep in your heart of hearts is right. And I am sure your husband, who sits beside you in the theater now, will agree with me. There is no weapon you can use against malicious envy except the confidence in your way of life as the moral and righteous one, no matter what the envious say. And it is one of these, madam, and I believe you know of whom I am speaking, who has poisoned your dog.”
The applause was slow in starting. They were baffled; they were awe-struck. Then it began from the back of the theater and traveled forward, the people whose questions had been whispered to Molly and whose questions he had answered, clapping last. It was a storm of sound. And Stan, hearing it through the heavy drop curtain, breathed it in like mountain air.
The curtains parted for his second bow. He took it, bowing slowly from the waist and then he extended his hand and Molly swept from the wings where she had arrived by the door back-stage behind the boxes. They bowed together, hand in hand, and then the curtains cut down again and they moved off through the wings and up the concrete stairs that led to the dressing rooms.
Stan opened the dressing-room door, stood aside for Molly to go in, then followed and shut the door. He sat for a moment on the wicker couch, then whipped off his white tie and unbuttoned the neckband of his stiff shirt and lit a cigarette.
Molly had stepped out of the skin-tight evening gown she wore and hung it on a hanger. She stood for a moment without a stitch on, scratching her ribs under the arms. Then she slipped on a robe, caught up her hair in a knot and began to dab cold cream on her face.
Finally Stan spoke. “Two nights running is too much.”
Her hand stopped, pressed against her chin. Her head was turned away from him. “I’m sorry, Stan. I guess I was tired.”
He got up and moved over, looking down at her. “After five years you still fluff it. My God, what do you use for brains anyway? What’s eighty-eight?”
Her wide, smoky-gray eyes were brilliant with tears. “Stan, I-I’ll have to think about it. When you come at me all of a sudden that way I have to think. I-just have to think,” she finished lamely.
He went on, his voice cool. “Eighty-eight!”
“Organization!” she said, smiling quickly. “Shall I join some club, fraternity, or organization? Of course. I hadn’t forgotten it, Stan. Honest, honey.”
He went over to the couch and lay back on it. “You’ll say it backwards and forwards a hundred times before you go to sleep tonight. Right?”
“Sure, Stan.”
She brightened, relieved that the tension had passed. The towel came away from her face pink from the makeup. Molly patted powder on her forehead, started to put on her street lipstick. Stan took off his shirt and threw a robe around his shoulders. With a few practiced swipes he cold-creamed his face, frowning at his reflection. The blue eyes had grown frosty. There were lines, faint ones, at the corners of his mouth. They had always been there when he smiled but now he noticed for the first time that they stayed there when his face was relaxed. Time was passing over his head.
Molly was fastening the snaps of her skirt. “Glory be, but I’m tired. I don’t want to go anywhere tonight but to bed. I could sleep for a week.”
Stan sat gazing at his image in the mirror, made hard by the lights blazing around the edge. He was like a stranger to himself. He wondered what went on behind that familiar face, the square jaw, the corn-yellow hair. It was a mystery, even to himself. For the first time in months he thought of Gyp and could see him clearly through the mist of years, bounding through fields grown lush with neglected weeds of late summer.
“Good boy,” he muttered. “Good old boy.”
“What was it, honey?” Molly was sitting on the wicker couch reading a movie magazine while she waited for him to dress.
“Nothing, kid,” he said over his shoulder. “Just mumbling in my beard.”
Who poisoned our dog? People around you who envy you. Number fourteen. One: Will. Four: Tell. Will you tell this lady what she is thinking about?
Stan shook his head and rubbed his face evenly with the towel. He hung up his suit of tails and stepped into his tweed trousers. He ran a comb through his hair and knotted his tie.
Outside the snow was falling lightly, lingering on the dark surface of the dirty window of the dressing room.
At the stage door the winter met them with an icy breath. They found a cab and got in and Molly slipped her arm through his and rested her cheek against his shoulder and stayed that way.
“Here y’are, buddy. Hotel Plymouth.”
Stan handed the driver a dollar and helped Molly out.
They passed through the revolving door into the drowsy heat of the lobby and Stan stopped by the cigar counter for cigarettes. He lifted his eyes to the desk and then he stopped and Molly, turning back to see if he was coming, hurried up. She put her hand on his arm. “Stan, darling-what’s the matter with you? God, you look terrible. Are you sick, honey? Answer me. Are you sick? You’re not mad at me, are you, Stan?”
Abruptly he turned away and strode out of the lobby into the wind and the winter night. The cold air felt good and his face and neck needed the cold. He turned to the girl. “Molly, don’t ask any questions. I just saw somebody I’m trying to duck. Go upstairs and pack our stuff. We’re checking out. Got any dough? Well, square up the bill and have the bellhop bring the stuff out.”
Without asking any more questions she nodded and went in.
When she came down the woman at the desk, the night clerk, smiled up at her from a detective story. “Will you make up my bill, please? Mr. and Mrs. Stanton Carlisle.”
The woman smiled again. She was white-haired and Molly wondered why so many white-haired women insist on bright lipstick. It makes them look like such crows, she thought. If I ever get white-haired I’ll never wear anything darker than Passion Flower. Yet this woman had been quite a chick in her day, Molly decided. And she had lived. There was something about her that made you think she had been in show business. But then lots of good-looking people had when they were young and that really didn’t mean a thing. It was managing to stay in show business and stay at the top that counted. Never getting to be a has-been and washed-up. That was the worst thing, to be washed-up. Only you had to save a pile of money while you were in the chips. And what with staying at the best places and buying dinners and drinks for managers and newspapermen and people they never seemed to get much ahead at the end of a season on the road. That is, the more the act was worth, the more it seemed to take to sell it.
“That will be eighteen dollars and eighty-five cents,” the woman said. She looked searchingly at Molly. “Is-is your husband coming back to the hotel?”
Molly thought fast. “No. As a matter of fact, he’s already waiting for me further downtown. We have to make a train.”
The woman’s face was not smiling any more. It had a hunted, hopeful look which was, at the same time, strangely hungry. Molly didn’t like it a blessed bit. She paid and went out.
Stan was pacing up and down savagely. A cab was standing by the curb with its meter ticking. They put the bags in and rode off.
All hotels are the same place, Molly thought later, lying beside Stan in the partial darkness. Why do they always have street lights outside the windows and car lines in the street and elevators in the wall right beside your head and people upstairs who bang things? But anyhow it was better than never getting around or seeing anything.
Watching Stan undress had stirred her and made her remember so many good times and she had hoped he would feel like it even if they were both as tired as dogs. He had been so cross lately and they always seemed to be tired when they went to bed. With a little flare of panic she wondered if she were losing her looks or something. Stan could be so wonderful. It made her go all wriggly and scarey inside to think about it. God, it was worth waiting for-when he really wanted a party. But then she remembered something else and she began saying to herself, “Eighty-eight-organization. Shall I join some club, union, fraternity, or organization? Shall I join some club, union, fraternity, or organization?” She repeated it three times before she fell asleep with her lips slightly open and her cheek on one palm, her black hair tumbled over the pillow.
Stan reached out and felt around on the bedside table for the cigarettes. He found one and his match flared. Below them a late car whined into hearing from the distance, the steel rails carrying the sound. But he let it slip from his mind.
A memory was coming back. A day when he was eleven years old.
It was like other days of early summer. It began with a rattle of locusts in the trees outside the bedroom window. Stan Carlisle opened his eyes, and the sun was shining hotly.
Gyp sat on the chair beside the bed, whining gently deep in his throat and touching the boy’s arm with one paw.
Stan reached out lazily and rubbed the mongrel’s head while the dog writhed in delight. In a moment he had leaped onto the bed joyfully wagging all over. Then Stan was fully awake and remembered. He pushed Gyp off and began brushing violently at the streaks of dried clay left on the sheets by the dog’s paws. Mother always got mad when Gyp Jumped Up.
Stan stole to the door, but the door to his parents’ room across the hall was still closed. He tiptoed back and idly pulled on his underwear and the corduroy knickers. He stuffed a paper-backed book inside his shirt and laced up his shoes.
Down in the yard he could see the garage doors open. Dad had left for the office.
Stan went downstairs. Being careful not to make any noise he got a bottle of milk from the ice box, a loaf of bread and a jar of jelly. Gyp got bread and milk in a saucer on the floor.
While Stan sat in the early morning stillness of the empty kitchen, cutting off slices of bread and loading them with jelly, he read the catalog:
“… a real professional outfit, suitable for theater, club, or social gathering. An hour’s performance complete. With beautiful cloth-bound instruction book. Direct from us or at your toy or novelty dealer’s. $15.00.”
After his eighth slice of bread and jelly he put the remains of his breakfast away and went out on the back porch with the catalog. The sun was growing hotter. The brightness of the summer morning filled him with a pleasant sadness, as if at the thought of something noble and magic which had happened long ago in the days of knights and lonely towers.
Upstairs he heard the sharp rap of small heels on the floor and then the roar of water in the bathtub. Mother had gotten up early.
Stan hurried upstairs. Above the rush of the water he could make out his mother’s voice, singing in a hard, glittering soprano, “Oh, my laddie, my laddie, I luve the kent you carry. I luve your very bonnet with the silver buckle on it…”
He was disturbed and resentful of the song. Usually she sang it after he had been sent up to bed, when the parlor was full of people and Mark Humphries, the big dark man who taught singing, was playing the accompaniment while Dad sat in the dining room, smoking a cigar and talking in low tones about deals with one of his own friends. It was part of the grown-up world with its secrets, its baffling changes from good temper to bad without warning. Stan hated it.
He stepped into the bedroom that always smelled of perfume. The shining brass bedstead was glittering big and important in the bar of sunlight through the blind. The bed was rumpled.
Stan went over and buried his face in the pillow that smelled faintly of perfume, drawing in his breath through it again and again. The other pillow smelled of hair tonic.
He knelt beside the bed, thinking of Elaine and Lancelot-how she came floating down on a boat and Lancelot stood by the bank looking at her and being sorry she was dead.
The rush of water in the bathroom had given way to splashing and snatches of singing. Then the chung of the stopper and the water gurgling out.
Beyond the window, with its shades making the room cool and dark, a cicada’s note sounded, starting easy and getting loud and dying away, sign of hot weather coming.
Stan took one more breath of the pillow, pushing it around his face to shut out sound and everything except its yielding softness and its sweetness.
There was a sharp click from the latch of the bathroom door. The boy frantically smoothed out the pillow; he tore around the big brass bed and out into the hall and across to his own room.
Downstairs he heard Jennie’s slow step on the back porch and the creak of the kitchen chair as she slumped her weight into it to rest before she took off her hat and her good dress. It was the day for Jennie to do the wash.
Stan heard his mother come out of the bathroom; then he heard the bedroom door close. He crept out into the hall and paused beside it.
Inside there was a pat of bare feet on the floor and the catch of the bedroom door quietly slipped on. Grownups were always locking themselves in places. Stan got a sudden shiver of mystery and elation. It started in his lower back and rippled up between his shoulder blades.
Through the closed door came the soft clink of a perfume bottle being set down on the dressing table and then there was the scrape of chair legs. The chair creaked ever so little; it scraped the floor again; the bottle clinked as the stopper was put in.
When she came out she would be dressed up and ready to go downtown and she would have a lot of jobs for him to do while she was gone-like cleaning up the closet in his room or cutting the grass on the terrace.
He moved stealthily along the hall and eased open the door to the attic stairs, closed it behind him gently and went up. He knew the creaky steps and skipped them. The attic was hot and heavy with the smell of wood and old silk.
Stan stretched out on an iron bed covered with a silk patchwork quilt. It was made of strips of silk sewn in squares, different colors on each side and a single square of black silk in the center of each. Grandma Stanton made it the winter before she died.
The boy lay face down. The sounds of the house filtered up to him from far away. The whining scrape of Gyp, banished to the back porch. Jennie in the cellar and the chug of the new washing machine. The brisk clatter of Mother’s door opening and the tap of her high heels on the stairs. She called his name once sharply and then called something down to Jennie.
Jennie’s voice came out the cellar window, mournful and rich. “Yes, Mis’ Carlisle. If I see him I tell him.”
For a moment Stan was afraid Mother would go out the back door and that Gyp would Jump Up and make her cross and then she would start talking about getting rid of him. But she went out the front door instead. Stan heard the mail box rattle. Then she went down the steps.
He leaped up and ran over to the attic window where he could see the front lawn through the maple tops below him.
Mother was walking quickly away toward the car line.
She would be going downtown to Mr. Humphries for her singing lesson. And she would not be back for a long time. Once she paused before the glass signboard on the lawn of the church. It told what Dr. Parkman would preach about next Sunday, but it was so black, and with the glass in front of it, it was like looking into a mirror. Mother stopped, as if reading about next Sunday’s sermon; turning her head first one way and then another, she pulled her hat a little more forward and touched her hair.
She went on then, walking slower. The boy watched her until she was out of sight.
On every hilltop and rise Stan turned and gazed back across the fields. He could spy the roof of his own house rising among the bright green of the maples.
The sun beat down.
The air was sweet with the smell of summer grasses. Gyp bounded through the hummocks, chasing away almost out of sight and bouncing back again.
Stan climbed a fence, crossed a pasture, and then mounted a stone wall, boosting Gyp over. On the other side of the wall the fields were thicker with brush and little oak bushes and pines and beyond it the woods began.
When he stepped into their dark coolness he felt again that involuntary shudder, which was part pleasure and part apprehension, rise between his shoulder blades. The woods were a place to kill enemies in. You fought them with a battle-ax and you were naked and nobody dared say anything about it because you had the ax always hanging from your wrist by a piece of leather. Then there was an old castle deep in the forest. It had green moss in the cracks between the stones and there was a moat around it full of water and it stood there deep and still as death and from the castle there was never a sound or a sign of life.
Stan trod softly now and held his breath, listening to the green silence. The leaves were tender under his feet. He stepped over a fallen tree and then looked up through the branches to where the sun made them bright.
He began to dream. He and Lady Cynthia rode through the forest. Cynthia was Mother’s name, only Lady Cynthia was not like Mother except that she looked like her. She was just a beautiful lady on a white palfrey and the bridle was set with gems and jewels that winked in the dappled light through the branches. Stan was in armor and his hair was long and cut straight across and his face was tanned dark and with no freckles. His horse was a powerful charger as black as midnight. That was its name-Midnight. He and Lady Cynthia had come to the forest to seek an adventure, for in the forest was a powerful old magician.
Stan came out on a long-disused timber road where he slipped out of the dream, for he remembered that they had been here on the picnic. That was the time they had come out with Mr. and Mrs. Morris and Mark Humphries had driven Mother and Dad and Stan in his car with the top down. They brought the food in baskets.
Sudden anger rose up in him when he thought how his dad had had to spoil the day by having a fuss with Mother about something. He had spoken in low tones but then Mother had said, “Stan and I are going for a walk all by ourselves, aren’t we, Stan?” She was smiling at the others the way she did when something was wrong. Stan had felt that delicious shudder go up between his shoulders.
That was the time they found the Glade.
It was a deep cleft in a ridge and you would never know it was there unless you stumbled on it. He had been back since but on that day Mother had been there and all of a sudden, as if she had felt the magic of the place, she had knelt and kissed him. He remembered the perfume she had on. She had held him off at arm’s length and she was really smiling this time, as if at something deep inside herself, and she said, “Don’t tell anybody. This place is a secret just between us.”
He had been happy all the way back to the others.
That night when they were back home and he was in bed, the sound of his father’s voice, rasping and rumbling through the walls, had made him sick with rebellion. What did he have to always be fussing with Mother for? Then the thought of the Glade, and of how she looked when she kissed him, made him wriggle with delight.
But the next day it was all gone and she spoke sharp to him about everything and kept finding jobs for him to do.
Stan started down the loggers’ road. In a damp spot he stooped and then knelt like a tracker examining a spoor. The spot was fed by a trickle of spring. Across it were the tracks of auto tires, their clear and sacrilegious imprints just beginning to fill with water.
Stan hated them-the grownups were everywhere. He hated their voices most of all.
Cautiously he crossed the road, calling Gyp to him to keep him from rustling through the brush. He held the dog’s collar and went on, taking care not to tread on any dead twigs. The Glade had to be approached with the reverence of silence. He climbed the last bank on his hands and knees and then on looking over the crest he froze.
Voices were coming from the Glade.
He peered further over. Two people were lying on an Indian blanket and with a hot rush Stan knew that one was a man and the other was a woman and this was what men and women did secretly together that everybody stopped talking about when he came around, only some grownups never talked about it at all. Curiosity leaped inside of him at the thought of spying on them when they didn’t know he was there. He was seeing it all-all of it-the thing that made babies grow inside of women. He could hardly breathe.
The woman’s face was hidden by the man’s shoulder, and only her hands could be seen pressing against his back. After a while they were still. Stan wondered if they were dead-if they ever died doing it and if it hurt them but they had to do it even so.
At last they stirred and the man rolled over on his back. The woman sat up, holding her hands to her hair. Her laughter rang up the side of the Glade, a little harsh but still silvery.
Stan’s fingers tightened on the grass hummock under his hand. Then he spun around, dragging Gyp by the collar, and stumbled, sliding and bumping, down the slope to the road. He ran with his breath scorching his throat, his eyes burning with tears. He ran all the way back and then went up in the attic and lay on the iron bed and tried to cry, but then he couldn’t.
He heard Mother come in after a while. The light outside began to darken and shadows got longer.
Then he heard the car drive up. Dad got out. Stan could tell by the way he slammed the car door that he was mad. Downstairs he heard his father’s voice, rasping through the floors, and his mother’s raised, the way she spoke when she was exasperated.
Stan came downstairs, one step at a time, listening.
His father’s voice came from the living room. “… I don’t care for any more of your lies. I tell you, Mrs. Carpenter saw the two of you turning up the road into Mills’ Woods. She recognized you and she saw Mark and she recognized the car.”
Mother’s tone was brittle. “Charles, I should think you would have a little more-pride, shall we say?-than to take the word of anyone as malicious and as common as your friend, Mrs. Carpenter.”
Dad was hammering on the mantelpiece with his fist; Stan could hear the metal thing that covered the fireplace rattle. “New York hats! A nigger to clean up the house! Washing machines! Music lessons! After all I’ve given you, you turn around and hand me something like this. You! I ought to horsewhip that snake-in-the-grass within an inch of his life!”
Mother spoke slowly. “I rather think Mark Humphries can take care of himself. In fact, I should dearly love to see you walk right up to him on the street and tell him the things you’ve been saying to me. Because he would tell you that you are a liar. And you would get just what you’re asking for; just what you’re asking for. Besides that, Charles, you have a filthy mind. You mustn’t judge others by yourself, dear. After all, it is quite possible for a person with some breeding to enjoy an hour’s motoring in friendship and nothing more. But I realize that if you and-Clara Carpenter, shall we say?…”
Dad let out a noise that was something like a roar and something like a sob. “By the Eternal, I’ve sworn never to take the Lord’s name in vain, but you’re enough to try the patience of a saint. God damn you! D’you hear? God damn you and all-”
Stan had reached the ground floor and stood with his fingers running up and down the newel post of the stairs, looking in through the wide double doors of the living room. Mother was sitting very straight on the sofa without leaning back. Dad was standing by the mantel, one hand in his pocket and the other beating against the wood. When he looked up and saw Stan he stopped short.
Stan wanted to turn and run out the front door but his father’s eyes kept him fastened to the floor. Mother turned her head and saw him and smiled.
The telephone rang then.
Dad started and plunged down the hall to answer it, his savage “Hello!” bursting like a firecracker in the narrow hallway.
Stan moved painfully, like walking through molasses. He crossed the room and came near his mother whose smile had hardened and grown sick-looking. She whispered, “Stan, Dad is upset because I went riding with Mr. Humphries. We wanted to take you riding with us but Jennie said you weren’t here. But -Stan-let’s make believe you did go with us. You’ll go next time. I think it would make Dad feel better if he thought you were along.”
From the hall his father’s voice thundered, “By the Eternal, why did the fool have to be told in the first place? I was against telling him. It’s the Council’s business to vote on the committee’s recommendation. We had it in the bag, sewed up tight. Now every idiot in town will know just where the streets will be cut and that property will shoot sky-high by tomorrow morning…”
As Mother leaned close to Stan he smelled the perfume she had on her hair. She always put it on when she went downtown to take her singing lesson. Stan felt cold inside and empty. Even when she kissed him. “Whose boy are you, Stan? You’re Mother’s boy, aren’t you, dear?”
He nodded and walked clumsily to the double doors. Dad was coming back. He took Stan roughly by the shoulder and shoved him toward the front door. “Run along, now. Your mother and I are talking.”
Mother was beside them. “Let him stay, Charles. Why don’t you ask Stanton what-what he did this afternoon?”
Dad stood looking at her with his mouth shut tight. He still had Stan by the shoulder. Slowly he turned his head. “Stan, what’s your mother talking about?”
Stan swallowed. He hated that slack mouth and the stubble of pale yellow on the chin that came out when Dad hadn’t shaved for several hours. Mark Humphries did a trick with four little wads of newspaper and a hat and had showed Stan how to do it. And he used to ask riddles.
Stan said, “We went riding with Mr. Humphries in his automobile.” Over his father’s arm, still holding him, Stan saw Mother’s face make a little motion at him as if she were kissing the air.
Dad went on, his voice quiet and dangerous. “Where did you go with Mr. Humphries, son?”
Stan’s tongue felt thick. Mother’s face had gotten white, even her mouth. “We-we went out where we had the picnic that time.”
Dad’s fingers loosened and Stan turned and ran out into the falling dusk. He heard the front door close behind him.
Someone switched on the living-room lamp. After a while Dad came out, got in his car and went downtown. Mother had left some cold meat and bread and butter on the kitchen table and Stan ate it alone, reading the catalog. Only it had lost its flavor and there seemed to be something terribly sad about the blue willow-pattern plate and the old knife and fork. Gyp whined under the table. Stan handed him all his own meat and got some jelly and ate it on the bread. Mother was upstairs in the spare bedroom with the door locked.
The next day Mother got breakfast for him. He said nothing and neither did she. But she wasn’t a grownup any more. Or he wasn’t a kid any more. There were no more grownups. They lied when they got scared, just like anybody. Everybody was alike only some were bigger. He ate very little and wiped his mouth and said, “Excuse me,” politely. Mother didn’t ask him to do any jobs. She didn’t say anything at all.
He tied Gyp up to the kennel and set out for the woods where the old loggers’ road cut into them. He moved in a dream and the shine of the sun seemed to hold back its warmth. At the top of the Glade he paused and then slid doggedly down its slope. Around him the trees rose straight and innocent in the sun and the sound of a woodpecker came whirring through them. The grass was crushed in one place; close by Stan found a handkerchief with “C” embroidered in a corner.
He looked at it with a crawling kind of fascination and then scooped out a hole in the earth and buried it.
When he got back he kept catching himself thinking about things as if nothing had happened, then stopping and the wave of desolation would sweep over him.
Mother was in her room when he came upstairs.
But something was lying big and square on his bed. He raced in.
There it was. The “Number 3” set-Marvello Magic. A full hour’s entertainment, suitable for stage, club, or social gathering, $15.00. Its cover was gay with a picture of Mephistopheles making cards rise from a glass goblet. On the side of the box was a paper sticker which read, “Myers’ Toy and Novelty Mart” and the address downtown. The corners of the box were shiny with imitation metal bindings, printed on the paper.
Stan knelt beside the bed, gazing at it. Then he threw his arms around it and beat his forehead against one of the sharp corners until the blood came.
Outside the trolley had approached and slid under the hotel window, groaning its lonely way through the night. Stan was trembling. He threw back the covers, switched on the bed light and stumbled into the bathroom. From his fitted case he took a vial and shook a white tablet into his hand. He found the tooth glass, swallowed the tablet with a gulp of tepid water.
When he got back in bed it was several minutes before the sedative began to work and he felt the peaceful grogginess stealing up to his brain.
“Christ, why did I have to go thinking of that?” he said aloud. “After all these years, why did I have to see her? And Christmas only a week off.”