Riven Rock Part 21

The doctor blanched. He looked like Valentino facing down a bull in Blood and Sand and Sand-sans the mustache and excess hair, of course. "I can't allow it," he said. "Not today, of all days."

Katherine was in a state, all her Back Bay debutante's ire aroused, the crater visible between her pinched brows, her eyes incinerating all before her. She wouldn't be denied, not this time-O'Kane could see that, and he began to feel very uncomfortable indeed. "What you will or will not allow is beside the point, Edward," she said, "because I'll have you out of here in two shakes if you continue in this obstinate-"

"Your fellow guardians may have something to say about that."

"Well, do you hear that?" Katherine huffed, looking to Mrs. Roessing for support; to her credit, Mrs. Roessing merely seemed embarra.s.sed. "The insolence of the man. I'll see Cyrus and Anita in court-and you too. It's high time I had the guardianship of my own husband, and we've come this far, with our lovely beach parties and, and"-here she faltered, the voice gone thick in her throat-"and Muriel and all the rest, and I won't see it spoiled now, I simply won't." She shot a look at O'Kane, as if to see if he was going to offer any protest, and he dropped his eyes.

"All right, Jane," she said then, her voice brisk and businesslike, "let's go fetch Stanley."

There was a moment of hesitation, Kempf giving O'Kane a sour look as the two women slammed out the door and down the steps to the path that led to the main house, their shoulders squared, hats marching in regimental display, and then he said, "Come on, Eddie, we'd better get over there and see that Martin doesn't open that door-or if he does, well, I won't answer for it."

They weren't more than two minutes behind the women, but by the time they reached the main house, with its door flung open wide and a faint cool breath of lemon oil and furniture wax emanating from somewhere deep inside, Katherine and Mrs. Roessing were already at the top of the stairs, on the landing, and Katherine was shrilly demanding that Martin open the door. Mr. McCormick was bent over the table in the upstairs parlor at the time, rocking back and forth and chanting his mantra-one slit-over and over, while he worked at drawing a continuous line down the center of a hundred or so sheets of the finest handmade cotton-rag sketching paper, front and back. He was still in his robe and pajamas, having refused to dress that morning, an act of insubordination Kempf overlooked because of Mr. McCormick's highly discomposed state. O'Kane was just coming up the stairs at this point, and all he was able to see at first was some sort of commotion, but Mart later filled him in on the details.

The moment the women had appeared on the landing, Mr. McCormick snapped to attention. He stopped rocking, stopped chanting, threw down his pencil. "Martin," Katherine demanded, "open this door at once. Jane and I are taking Mr. McCormick out for a proper lunch."

In the absence of Kempf and O'Kane, Mart was slow to react, a farrago of conflicting loyalties-he knew perfectly well that Mr. McCormick wasn't himself and he knew what had happened the night before and what it meant, and that opening the door would lead to trouble, he was sure of it. On the other hand, Mrs. McCormick was the ultimate authority here, the president, Congress and Supreme Court of Riven Rock all rolled in one. "I'm coming," he said, though she could plainly see through the grid that he wasn't, that he was delaying, pretending to fumble in his pockets for the keys, and she became impatient and began to rattle the bars. There she was, in her tailor-made clothes and half-a-melon hat, her slim gloved fingers wrapped round the impervious iron bars, tugging in impatience as if it were she who was locked in and her husband roaming free.

The bars rattling, his wife's fingers and her white throat, the petulant crease over the bridge of her nose, the pique of her eyes and the set of her hat: suddenly Mr. McCormick came to life. In two bounds he was at the door, and though she drew back instinctively and Mrs. Roessing cried out and Mart rumbled up out of the chair, Katherine was caught. Mr. McCormick had her by both wrists, all the incensed, aroused, preternatural strength of him, his rotten teeth and his close and personal odor, and he drew her to him, Sam Wah all over again, and then s.n.a.t.c.hed a hand to her throat, clamped it there like a staple, forcing her head back, and he was whinnying in his excitement: "A kiss! A kiss!"

O'Kane was the one who broke his grip and then he was pinioned there in Katherine's place, Mr. McCormick like the tar baby, stuck fast now to his wrists, Katherine staggering back from the door, the wreck of her bloodless face, Mrs. Roessing already wrapping her in her arms and Dr. Kempf's voice gone high with agitation: "You see? You see what happens when you interfere?"

And all of them-O'Kane and Mart, Mrs. Roessing, Kempf and even the furiously tugging and whimpering Mr. McCormick-looked to her for a response. She held tight to Jane Roessing, her hat askew, the red marks of her husband's fingers melting into the chalk of her throat. "I blame you for this," she said finally, all threat and defiance, glaring at Kempf as if to incinerate him on the spot. "You're alienating my husband's affections, that's all you're doing with your, your precious psychoa.n.a.lysis-and that's just what the McCormicks want, isn't it? Isn't it?"

Kempf held his peace. Mr. McCormick dropped O'Kane's wrists and worked his arms back through the bars-he looked dubious and bewildered, as if he'd just gotten off a streetcar at the wrong stop. Mrs. Roessing reached up to straighten Katherine's hat and mumured something to her, and then the two of them were receding down the staircase, their hats in retreat.

"You know what's wrong with that woman?" Kempf said as soon as she was out of hearing. Mr. McCormick stared wildly through the bars. Mart hovered helplessly in the background, undecided as to whether he should tackle their employer from behind and bind him up in the sheet restraints or just let it go and settle back into the personal hollow he'd eroded in the pillows of the couch over the course of the stultifying months and obliterative years.

"No," O'Kane said, and he was interested to know, vitally interested, "no, what's wrong with her?"

"It's a prescription I'd give her, really-one of Freud's." Kempf tugged at his sleeves and then brushed down his jacket with a flick of his fingers, as if to rid himself of the residue of what had just transpired. "Do you know Latin, Eddie?"

"I was an altar boy."

"Good. Then you'll appreciate this. Freud said it of a female hysteric whose husband"-he lowered his voice, out of Mrs. McCormick's hearing-"was impotent. And I'd say it fits Mrs. McCormick to a T."

"Yes?"

The doctor lowered his voice still further. "'p.e.n.i.s normalis, dosim repetatur.' "

SICK, VERY SICK.

stanley knew what was going on he might have been sick but he wasn't r.e.t.a.r.ded and he wasn't blind or deaf either and it was the women the women yet again because they weren't content to sit at lunch with him or make conversation over iced tea in the cabana don't you think it's just outrageous what the french have done to the hemline this year no they weren't satisfied that he was a gentleman bred by his mother and held himself just so and made the smallest talk and didn't punish them and give them what they needed and deserved and wanted no they had to come to him in the night ghostly and white in their skin with their wet tongueless mouths and the smell of their heat a b.i.t.c.h in heat like a b.i.t.c.h in heat and take hold of him down there where he was most vulnerable and how he hated that because there was nothing nothing nothing he hated more than that and the Judges had warned him and lashed him and beaten and pummeled him and yet here it was all over again and she didn't even have a name but she wasn't katherine oh no not katherine never katherine he was sure of that because she was some s.l.u.t and wh.o.r.e and degraded filthy streetwalking prost.i.tute who could have her way with him any way she liked and he'd almost felt it almost almost thrust back at her and showed her what it was to be a man a real man a he-man like his father the president and his brother the president and harold the vice president with his two wives like a pasha and his monkey glands and his beautiful little adorable little child woman daughter muriel ... almost ... ...

but almost wasn't all the way home almost didn't win the race or drive the ball over the fence or invent the reaper out of nothing or the stingaree either which was G.o.ds reaper lurking there in the water and who knew better that it was there and what it liked to do and was likely to do than katherine who was the scientist after all the biologist who would sing out the latin names of every animal and plant and bounding squirrel with the breeze of the car in her face her beautiful face katherine dexter and he thought about that and brooded and picked over it all through the day of the stingaree and the day it melted into because she'd done it because she wanted to see him dead and drowned because she wanted to be a widow like mrs.jane two of them widows because she wanted his money and he could see right through her because dr kempf the free a.s.sociator and inkblot man-"Tell me, Stanley, when I say 'boxer dog,' what do you think of?" -had taught him to control himself just as if he were wearing the harness again an invisible harness no straps or wires or restraints but that was the end of katherine no more katherine no sir never again not after that stinking filthy animal of a wh.o.r.e and what was her scientific name he'd like to know she'd brought into his very bedroom to debase and humiliate him while nick and par breathed in the dark and yes he'd heard them there and felt them but no more no more and never again make me a baby stanley make me a baby ... -had taught him to control himself just as if he were wearing the harness again an invisible harness no straps or wires or restraints but that was the end of katherine no more katherine no sir never again not after that stinking filthy animal of a wh.o.r.e and what was her scientific name he'd like to know she'd brought into his very bedroom to debase and humiliate him while nick and par breathed in the dark and yes he'd heard them there and felt them but no more no more and never again make me a baby stanley make me a baby ...

Katherine couldn't know what her husband was thinking-she never knew what he was thinking, even when he was sitting there on the carpet they brought to the beach discussing the Malemute Kid with Muriel and fastidiously nibbling round the edges of a smoked salmon sandwich Giovannella had prepared at first light. All she knew was that he'd come so far, come all the way back to who he was, her Stanley, Stanley of the retiring mien and shining eye, and now he'd fallen away from her again-and she would be d.a.m.ned twice over if she was going to be cut out of his life this time. That was why she'd hired Newton Baker, her old friend and colleague from the War days and the Women's Committee of the National Defense Council, to pet.i.tion the Santa Barbara Superior Court for sole guardianship of her husband:

IN THE MATTER OF THE GUARDIAN SHIP OF THE PERSON OF STANLEY MCCORMICK, AN INCOMPETENT PERSON:.

No. 7146

PEt.i.tION FOR REMOVAL OF CERTAIN GUARDIANS.

TO THE HONORABLE, THE SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA IN AND FOR THE COUNTY OF SANTA BARBARA:.

COMES NOW KATHERINE DEXTER MCCORMICK, AND RESPECTFULLY SHOWS:.

That Kempf was alienating the affections of her husband on behalf of Cyrus and Anita and refusing him the endocrine treatment that could well provide a cure for him, and that she, as Stanley's wife, knew better than his brother and sister what was good and proper for him and was better able to provide it without their interference. That all they cared about was keeping the McCormick fortune intact. That she, Katherine, his wife, had through all these splayed and tottering years managed her husband's estate despite their automatic two-to-one vote against her on any matter of real importance, as for example spending ten thousand dollars a month on a psychiatrist who believed that psychoanlysis could repair rotten teeth, and she wanted redress and wanted it now.

Jane backed her. And her mother too. And though she hated the publicity and dreaded the thought of what the papers would do with this, she could hardly wait to take the stand and give them all a piece of her mind. And why? Because of Stanley, nothing more. Stanley was all that mattered-and her guilt for having neglected him over the course of the years, all her loyalty notwithstanding, because she had had neglected him and she'd allowed herself to be badgered and pigeonholed by the Favills and Bentleys and Hamiltons of the world and now by Anita and Cyrus. But she wouldn't give in. Not anymore. Because she alone knew how wrenching and terrifying it was to lose Stanley the first time, the time he floundered and splashed and finally went down, and no one there to throw him a lifeline, no one but her.... neglected him and she'd allowed herself to be badgered and pigeonholed by the Favills and Bentleys and Hamiltons of the world and now by Anita and Cyrus. But she wouldn't give in. Not anymore. Because she alone knew how wrenching and terrifying it was to lose Stanley the first time, the time he floundered and splashed and finally went down, and no one there to throw him a lifeline, no one but her....

It all came to a head after their return from Maine, the ongoing and unrelieved nightmare that was Maine, in the fall of 1905. Everything she'd tried-patience and understanding, firmness, reason, love-was a failure, that was clear, and Stanley was caught in a downward spiral that threatened to suck her under too. "s.e.xual hypochondriachal neurasthenia and incipient dementia praec.o.x" was Dr. Trudeau's chilling a.s.sessment, and all she could do was try to insulate Stanley against anything that might cause him undue stress-his mother, in particular, the Reaper Works, and, sad to say, marital relations. She'd pushed him too far, moved too quickly, and now she had to draw back and a.s.suage and nurture him all over again.

On their first day back in Boston-the twenty-first of November-they went down to the harbor to meet her mother, who was just then returning from an extended stay at Prangins. The day was gloomy and cold, with a scent of rain on the air and a low scrolling sky stuffed full of gray clouds that unfurled in procession out over the sea. The liner was just docking as the driver let them down from the carriage and they hurried up to the gate that gave on to the pier, hardly noticing the others in the crowd or the man in a cap and loden jacket trimmed with gold piping standing to one side of the entrance. Katherine was intent on her mother and on Stanley, who'd been stiff and incommunicative all morning, and never gave the man a second glance, never dreaming that they needed pa.s.ses to enter the dock area and that this man was stationed there in an official capacity to check those very pa.s.ses.

There was a cry at their back, rude and insulting, and here came the man-an Italian, she believed, swarthy and black-eyed-rushing down the pier to intercept them. "Hey," he shouted, addressing Stanley, "where the h.e.l.l you think you're going, mister?"

Katherine felt the blood rush to her face. She could scarcely believe her ears. At the same time, her arm was looped through Stanley's, and she could feel him stiffen. He gave the approaching guard a wild look, and then the man was there, out of breath, and he reached out to seize Stanley by the arm.

He couldn't have known what he was doing. Because in that moment all Stanley's frustrations came to the surface in a molten swelling rush-Maine, his mother, the farce of their honeymoon, his failure in bed-and he erupted. He shook the man off as if he were an insect, sending him careening across the planks in a clutch of spinning limbs and flailing hands. And when the man picked himself up with a curse and came at him again, Stanley brought his umbrella into play, slashing away at his adversary's face and head until the umbrella was nothing but rag and splinter and the dazed guard, blood wadded in his hair and bright down the front of his jacket, staggered off in retreat.

They were both upset, both she and Stanley, and she held tight to his arm as they made their way through the awestruck crowd, which parted automatically at the sight of Stanley's grim bloodless face and the shredded trophy that had been his umbrella. "The impudence of that man," she said. "The first thing I'm going to do when we get home is write a letter to the steamer line-if they can't hire a gentleman to accommodate the public then they shouldn't hire anyone at all. You're not hurt, are you?"

He shook his head, his lips pressed tight.

"Good," she said, "thank heavens," but she could feel him trembling and recoiling like a plucked string. They were almost at the boat now, the vast field of it blocking the horizon from view, the crowd closing ranks behind them. Was that her mother, up there, leaning over the rail and waving a handkerchief? No, no it wasn't.

"I can't," Stanley said suddenly, pulling up short. "I-I've got to go back. They'll have the police."

"Don't be ridiculous. The man attacked you-there were witnesses. If anyone need fear the police, it's him."

"No," he said, trembling, and there was that look, the eyes sunk into his head and his lips jerking away from the skirts of his teeth and his teeth clamped and grinding. "They-they'll put me in jail, I'll be ruined. Bars," he said, "iron bars," and he pulled away from her in a single clonic spasm, turned his back on her and started up the pier in the direction of the gate.

"Stanley!" she called, but he was beyond hearing, already swallowed up in the milling crowd, already lost.

She didn't see him again till late that night-past ten-and all through her reunion with her mother and dinner and the unwrapping of the little gifts Josephine had brought her back from Paris she was sick with worry. She was sure Stanley had gone off and got himself in some sort of trouble (she thought of the old man at the lake and what might have happened if he hadn't been able to swim)-trouble no amount of money could get him out of. He was seething. Out of control. Ready to lash out at anyone who got in his way, however unknowingly or innocently. And while her mother nattered on about Prangins and Madame Fleury and how the wedding was still the talk of the village, all Katherine could think of was the police. Should she call them? But what would she say-that her husband was lost? That Stanley Robert McCormick, with all his savoir faire and talent and wealth, couldn't be trusted on the public streets? That he was mad and disoriented and suffering from s.e.xual hypochondriacal neurasthenia?

She broke down in the middle of one of her mother's stories about Emily Esterbrook, of the Worcester Esterbrooks, who'd had the stateroom across from hers on the pa.s.sage back and could whistle the second violin part to Beethoven's Harp Quartet-all the way through-without missing a note. "Emily's daughter is engaged to the nicest man," her mother was saying, when suddenly Katherine began to sob and she couldn't seem to stop, not even when Stanley finally came banging up the stairs.

"Stanley," Josephine cried, rising from her chair to greet him, "how nice to see you again," but then she faltered. Stanley stood there in the middle of her mother's parlor with the strangest look on his face, as if he didn't recognize the place at all-or the people in it. There was a smudge of oil or grease on his forehead and the flesh round his right eye was puffy and discolored, as if just that smallest part of him had begun to decay. His jacket had suffered too, the left sleeve hanging by a thread and the right gone altogether. What looked to be blood was crusted round the elbow of the exposed shirtsleeve.

"But Stanley, what's happened?" Josephine exclaimed, crossing the room to take him by the hand, and she was thinking of her own son, her own dead son, all sympathy and maternal solace, and Katherine's heart went out to her. As for Stanley-her own reaction to him, that is-she was paralyzed, utterly paralyzed. She couldn't say What? or How? or even open her mouth. "Here," Josephine was crooning, "let me see. Here, under the light."

At first, in the first moment her mother touched him, Stanley seemed to acquiesce, bowing his head and relaxing his shoulders, but then all at once he jerked his hand away as if he'd been bitten. "You stupid old woman!" he shouted, every cord of his throat flexed and straining. "You stupid interfering old woman, don't you touch me, don't you dare touch me!"

"Stanley!" Katherine gasped, and suddenly she'd found her voice, angry now as she watched her mother's face collapse-the kindest woman in the world and she meant nothing but kindness-sore and angry and ready to put an end to this... this insanity. "Stanley, you apologize this instant!"

But he turned on her now, out of control, out of anybody's control, even his own, his face a whipping rag of rage. "Shut up, you b.i.t.c.h!"

In the morning, early, before anyone was stirring, they went out to Brookline in a private carriage, Stanley sunk so deep in the cushions he was all but invisible from the street, his long legs tented before him, his head and shoulders slouched at the uncomfortable level of Katherine's b.u.t.tocks. Both his cheekbones had swollen overnight-he'd been beaten, beaten savagely, she could see that now-and it gave him a look of squint-eyed inscrutability, as if he'd been transformed into a Tatar tribesman while he slept. He said nothing. Not a word. No explanations, no apologies. As soon as they got home, she put him to bed and he slept all through that day and the night and morning that followed.

Then came the procession of psychiatrists, neurologists and pathologists, an unending parade of them marching through the parlor of the Brookline house, tapping, probing and auscultating her shrinking husband, holding up pictures and geometric forms for his comment, questioning him closely about current events and throwing their arms over his shoulder and suggesting a nice walk around the garden. Katherine was frightened. Stanley seemed to be getting progressively worse, slipping away from her, and no one seemed capable of touching him-each physician who came to the door undermined the opinion of his predecessor, as if it were all some elaborate medical chess match. She needed a plan of action, a line of inquiry and therapy to pursue, but all she got was confusion. Outside, the trees stood in tatters, winter advancing, the light fading, the wind gathering, and nothing settled. She wasn't sleeping well. Meals were a torment. She couldn't exercise, couldn't read, couldn't think. In her desperation, she wired Nettie, hoping for some insight, some shred of wisdom, sympathy, anything. The reply was curt: YOU'VE MADE YOUR BED STOP NOW LIE IN IT.

The last of the doctors, a leonine general pract.i.tioner with white hairs growing out of his nose and ears, was the only one able to reach Stanley-at least at first. Dr. Putnam had been recommended by a friend of Josephine, and though he didn't know Charcot from Mesmer or Freud from Bloch, in his forty-seven years in the medical profession he'd encountered just about everything, including dementia in all its forms and the secret hysteria that made women hang themselves in closets. He came up the steps jauntily enough, considering he was in his seventies, and before he had his hat and gloves off he'd challenged Stanley to a game of checkers. The two of them played wordlessly through the afternoon and into the evening, and the next morning at eight the doctor appeared with two iron posts and a set of horseshoes under his arm. All morning the posts clanked as he and Stanley studied and released their shoes, and the only other sound was the low murmur of their voices totting up the score.

The next day, the old doctor didn't appear till nearly three in the afternoon-he'd had to make the rounds of his other patients, he explained, and Mrs. Trusock had kept him with her shingles-but Stanley had been out all morning in a cold wind, flinging his horseshoes at the unyielding stake, over and over again. They played till dark, and then the doctor, warming himself by the fire with a cup of tea before heading home to his wife and supper, called Katherine into the room. She found the two of them drawn up to the hearth in a pair of straight-backed chairs, their knees practically touching. "Stanley," the doctor said when Katherine had settled herself in the armchair across from them, "you're as crafty a checkers player as I've seen and a deadeye shot at horseshoes. My advice to you, sir, is to find yourself a hobby and pursue it-does wonders for the nerves. Tell me, what do you like, in the way of hobbies, that is?"

Stanley made no reply.

"Nothing?" The old man canted his head, as if listening for a response from the next room. "Well," he said, smacking his lips over the tea and giving Katherine a quick penetrating look, "I'd prescribe German and fencing lessons. Something you can sink your teeth into. And useful too. Nothing more useful than German in today's world, and the fencing, well, it will give you some discipline and rigor, and that's just what you need to take your mind off your troubles. Business troubles, isn't it? Yes, I thought so." He set down his teacup with elaborate care and rose from the chair. "I'll stop in to see how you're doing in a week or so-and I'll bring my sabre along too.... Well," he said, smacking his lips again and looking round the room as if he'd just healed all the lepers of Calcutta in one stroke, "what can I say but auf Wiedersehen!"

For the next several days Stanley was very quiet. Twice Katherine found him out in the yard, brooding over the extemporized horseshoe pit, but when she asked him about it-if he'd like her to play him a match-he wouldn't give her the courtesy of a reply. One night, soon after, it snowed; Stanley hung the horseshoes on a nail in the bas.e.m.e.nt and never mentioned them again. Christmas came and went-Stanley's favorite season-and he hardly seemed to notice. He didn't send out cards, he was so unenthusiastic about the decorations that Katherine and the maid wound up tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the tree, and their exchange of presents was perfunctory to say the least. They spent a quiet New Year's mewed up in the house, barely talking to one another, while everyone else was dancing and visiting. Stanley brooded. Katherine was miserable.

At the end of the first week of January they went into Boston, Katherine to see about her research work at the Inst.i.tute and Stanley to locate and purchase the foils he would need for fencing. They had a late breakfast with her mother and Stanley didn't have two words to say the whole time, but at least he was tractable and outwardly calm, and then they took a walk down Commonwealth Avenue, just as they had when they were lovers two years before.

Stanley was very solemn and he held himself with a kind of fanatic rigidity, his chest thrust out so far the b.u.t.tons of his overcoat seemed ready to give way. She tried to make small talk, more as a way of rea.s.suring herself than anything else, but after a while she gave it up and made do with the morning, the briskness of the air and the gentle pressure of her husband's arm in her own. German and fencing, she was thinking. As ridiculous as the idea had first sounded to her, she'd now begun to warm to it-maybe it would help focus Stanley in the way the checkers and horseshoes had. Maybe the old ghost of a country G.P. knew more than the experts, maybe he was right, maybe he was. Just then, just as she began to feel that things might turn out right after all, Stanley began to drag his foot-his right foot-as if he'd been shot in the leg. She tried to ignore it at first-it was a pa.s.sing quirk, she was sure of it-but after they'd gone a block, people staring, his foot sc.r.a.ping rhythmically at the concrete, the pressure ever greater on her arm till it felt as if she were supporting his entire weight, she had to say something.

"Stanley, dear, are you all right?" she asked, slowing her pace to accommodate him. "Are you feeling tired? Or cold? Would you like to go back now?"

He pulled up short then and looked at her in surprise, as if he didn't know how she'd become attached to his arm. His face was working and she had the strangest fancy that he was drifting away from her like a helium-filled balloon and that if she let go, even for an instant, he'd recede into the clouds. "I can't," he said. "You see, I've got-got to find a German teacher. That's where I'm going."

"But your leg-?"

"My leg?"

"Yes. You were limping. I thought you'd got a stone in your shoe,or-"

He gently disengaged himself from her arm and tipped his hat. "Auf Wiedersehen," he said, and he went off down the street in a peculiar slouching hobble, dragging his right foot all the way.

It was a repet.i.tion of the scene at the pier and she was afraid for him-anything could happen-but she knew enough to understand that she couldn't stop him now, short of putting a collar and leash on him, and she still fanned that dim little coal of a hope: the German teacher. Of course. Why not? She went on to MIT and at two she took a cab to the restaurant where they'd arranged to meet for lunch, but no Stanley. No Stanley at two or two-fifteen or two-thirty either. She waited until three and then she left a note with the maitre d' and went back to the Inst.i.tute.

It was dark by the time she returned to her mother's, only to discover that Josephine was out, and she settled into a chair with Wallace and read about natural selection amongst the mammalian species of Borneo and watched the clock. Sometime later-at seven or thereabout-the bell rang downstairs and she heard the maid tripping through the hallway to answer it. This was succeeded by a confusion of voices-Stanley's, she recognized Stanley's-and a thunder of footsteps coming up the stairs. She rose from her chair and her heart was flapping like a sheet in the wind: what now?

A moment later Stanley appeared at the parlor door, a slight embarra.s.sed-looking man in a gray overcoat and gold-rimmed spectacles at his side. Stanley had his hand on the man's upper arm and he wore a look of transport on his face, of rapture, as if he'd found the very key to existence. "My-my German teacher," he announced.

The man in his grip seemed to shrink away from him. "I'm very sorry," he said through the impediment of a heavy accent while lifting his eyes to Katherine's, "sorry to intrude on you this way." He looked to Stanley, but Stanley was oblivious. "My name is Schneerman, and I teach at the Deutsche Schule, and, uh, this gentleman, your husband, I take it, well-he was very persuasive. I give him my card. I tell him that I am expected home to dinner with my wife-and here his voice cracked-"and, and my children, but he is very insistent."

"Deutsche Schule," Stanley repeated. "Das Bettchen. Der Tisch. Ich bin gut. Wie geht es Ihnen?"

Katherine moved across the room and tried to separate her husband from the German teacher, who'd gone white and begun to breathe rapidly and shallowly, as if he were having some sort of attack. She laid a hand on Stanley's arm and said, as casually as she could, "You must be exhausted, both of you. Here, sit down, won't you, Mr. Schneerman?"

Stanley was in a sweat; he neither moved nor relaxed his grip. The German teacher looked as if he were about to faint.

"How about a nice cup of tea, Stanley?" she said. "We can sit here with Mr. Schneerman and have a chat about your lessons-perhaps he'll even give us some tips as to our p.r.o.nunciation of some of the more difficult configurations, the umlauts and such. Would you like that, Stanley? Hm?" She turned to the German teacher. "Mr. Schneerman?"

"Yah," the little man said. "Yah, sure. We have a lesson now."

Still nothing. Stanley seemed to be in some sort of trance, his eyes fixed on the lamp across the room, his hand so tightly clamped to the German teacher's arm she could see the tendons standing out like wires beneath his skin. She was afraid suddenly. Very afraid. What if he hurt the man? What if he had one of his tantrums? It was then that she hit on the expedient of asking Stanley's help with the furniture-as a gentleman coming to the aid of a lady, and that was the true and invincible core of him, she knew it, civility, decency and goodness. "Stanley," she said, "would you help me move this end table so we can settle Mr. Schneerman here by the fireplace?" And she bent to remove the lamp, doily and bric-a-brac from the table, then lifted it with some effort and held it out before him in two trembling hands.

Stanley's eyes came back into focus. He gave her that searching, bewildered look and then automatically dropped the German teacher's arm and took the table from her. Immediately, the little man backed away from him, ducked his head and shot out the door, Katherine on his heels. "Just a minute, Stanley," she called over her shoulder, "I'll be right back."

She caught up with Mr. Schneerman at the front door. "Please," she begged, and she thought she was going to cry, "please let me explain. It's my husband, he-"

The little man spun round to finish the sentence for her: "-he should be locked up. The man is a menace. I have in my mind to sue, that is what!" If he'd been meek and cowed in the parlor, he was self-possessed now, storming at her, all the fear and embarra.s.sment of the situation released in a rush of anger. "You, you people!" people!" he cried, and he might have gone further but for the fact that Stanley appeared suddenly at the top of the stairs, the end table still cradled in his arms. "Where did you say you wanted this, Katherine?" Stanley called, and the man shrank into himself all over again, flung open the door and disappeared into the night. he cried, and he might have gone further but for the fact that Stanley appeared suddenly at the top of the stairs, the end table still cradled in his arms. "Where did you say you wanted this, Katherine?" Stanley called, and the man shrank into himself all over again, flung open the door and disappeared into the night.

Clearly the situation had become impossible. There was no fooling herself anymore-Stanley had become a danger to himself and to others and he needed to be watched around the clock, watched and protected. She wasn't equal to it, she knew that, and the charade of domestic life had to end, at least for the present. Stanley needed help-professional help, inst.i.tutional help-and he needed it now.

She was able to calm him that night by having him rearrange all the furniture in the parlor, even the heaviest pieces, which he was capable of handling without the slightest evidence of strain. He worked at it with the obsessive attention to detail he brought to any task, shifting a chair an inch here or an inch there, over and over, till he got it right, but after an hour or so he began to flag, moving automatically now, until finally, at her suggestion, he took a seat by the fire. The maid brought up a light supper and Katherine put him to bed. When she looked in on him an hour later, he was in a deep sleep, the covers pulled up to his chin, his face as relaxed and still and beautiful as if it had been carved of marble.

When her mother came home, they sat up over biscuits and hot chocolate and discussed the situation. "Oh, I liked him well enough before he changed," Josephine said, pursing her lips as she dipped a biscuit into her chocolate. "That's the way it is with marriage sometimes-once they've got you they lose all respect for you. The things he said to me in this house, well, I just hope I don't have to hear anything like that again as long as I live. To think I'd be called a stupid old woman in my own parlor-and by my own son-in-law!"

"He's sick, mother," Katherine said. "Very sick. He needs help."

"I wouldn't doubt it. Look at his family. His sister. His mother. They're all of them three steps from the madhouse, and if he keeps on like this, I must say I'm going to very much regret your having married him."

The room was very still. But for the hiss of the coals in the fireplace and the low persistent ticking of the clock there wasn't a sound. Katherine cradled the cup in her hands. She was thinking of her wedding night, of the scene on the boat, of Maine, of Doctors Putnam and Trudeau and the sick pale terrified face of that poor little German teacher. She looked up at her mother, at the paintings on the walls, the furniture, the draperies. There she was, her mother's daughter, safe in the familiar room, surrounded by the shapes and colors of the life she'd led up till now, but it seemed different somehow, barren and cold as some Arctic landscape. , "Mama," she said, reverting to the diminutive she hadn't used since she was a child. "Mama, I'm afraid of him."

THREE O'CLOCK At first, when O'Kane saw the four men standing there in the alley out back of Menhoff's, he didn't think anything of it-there were always men there, milling around in the shadows and perpetuating various half-truths and outright lies while pa.s.sing one of the fifths of hooch Cody sold on the sly. He wasn't even especially surprised when he recognized one of them as Giovannella's father, Baldy Dimucci, and another as her brother Pietro, the runt he'd had that minor disagreement with a lifetime ago in the driveway at Riven Rock. Pietro was now in his forties, and there wasn't much more to him than there'd been twenty years ago-he was scrawny as a chicken, not as dark as Giovannella, but with her shining hair and fathomless eyes. O'Kane had run into him any number of times over the years-out on State Street, in Montecito Village, in the drive of the Dimucci house when it was raining and Roscoe gave Giovannella a ride home before taking him and Mart on into town-and though he couldn't say he liked the man, there was no animosity between them, not that he knew of. They typically exchanged a few words, mainly of the h.e.l.lo-how-are-you-fine variety, and went on about their business. But here he was, out in the alley with his father and two other guys, big guys, O'Kane saw now, big guys with ax handles clutched in their big sweating fists.

O'Kane had been drinking with the projectionist from the Granada, a whole long night of drinking, and it had been so long since his little altercation with Giovannella-a year or more now-that he'd forgotten all about it. Up until now, that is. "Hi, Baldy," he said, but his feet couldn't seem to work up the volition to usher him on past this little Dago confabulation. "Nice night," he added uncertainly.

Baldy was an old man now, with a potbelly and a fringe of white hair that stood straight up off the crown of his head like a nimbus of feathers. "You're the bad man, Eddie," he said. "You're the very bad man."

O'Kane wanted to deny it, wanted to hoot and caper and tease the old man's hair right up off his head, but he was drunk and he knew what was coming. He knew it, but somehow he couldn't seem to muster the energy to care.