Crying Child (6 page)

“I don’t think you’re a louse,” I said. “I think you’re a rare bird—an honest man. I know a little something about twisted emotions myself.”

He looked up at me, his face a mixture of gratitude and relief.

“Thanks, Jo. I’m sorry; I’ve let my worries make me selfish. Have you had a bad time this past year?”

“No. No worse than…Forget it, Ran. Your worries are my worries, don’t forget. We’ll work them out somehow.”

“What was she like today? What happened?”

“Has she ever spoken to you—has she ever said anything about…” It was odd; I couldn’t say it.

“About hearing a child cry?” From Ran’s tone I knew the subject worried him as much as it did me. But there was a kind of relief in hearing the words said, like the fading of pain after a boil is lanced.

“Ran, she thinks the baby is alive. At least that’s what I understood from what she said: ‘It is a boy. His name is Kevin.’”

“She told you that?” Ran’s heavy brows lowered. “My God, Jo, she hasn’t said that much to me. Only about hearing the crying. What else did she say?”

“That was about all. Mrs. Willard came in then, and I was too shaken to pursue the subject. I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Kevin,” Ran muttered. “That’s odd.”

“The whole thing is odd.”

“Not really. It’s a predictable delusion for a woman who wanted a child so badly. But I wonder where she got the name. We always thought…if we ever had a boy…”

There was no break in his voice, no change in his expression of concentrated thoughtfulness; but I sensed that this was suddenly more than he could bear, and I realized with a sharp stab of guilt that his desire for children had been as keen as Mary’s.

“Yes, I know,” I said. “Randall Junior. Elizabeth if it had been a girl…Maybe I didn’t hear the name correctly. I was, as you might say, taken aback.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m not so sure,” I said slowly.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know…. For a second there, when you said it doesn’t matter, I had the weirdest feeling…of warning, almost.”

“Cut it out, Jo. Don’t you go psychic on me.”

The words were brusque but the smile was not. I laughed self-consciously, feeling that peculiar sense of relaxation that follows an emotional outburst.

“Sorry. The crucial question is, how do I react to remarks like that one of Mary’s? Do I accept it? Question it? Contradict it? I can put on any act that’s required, but I’m afraid of doing the wrong thing.”

“I know what you mean. I don’t know the answer, not yet, but I did something today that—”

His voice broke off; and then I heard the other sound.

It was faint, as though it came from a long, long way away—a high, shrill keening sound. The sound of someone crying.

Ran moved so fast that the breeze of his passage riffled the pages of the magazine lying open
on the table. When I stumbled out into the hall he was already halfway up the stairs, taking them three at a time. The sound was still going on, a desolate wailing that tore at the ears. It was real: there was no possible question of that. But I think I knew the truth, even before I saw.

Mary’s room was down the hall and across from mine. When I reached the top of the stairs I could see the door—and Ran bent over at an odd angle which made sense only when I heard the click of the lock. He flung the door open and disappeared inside. The sound was loud now, and unmistakable; it came from inside the room.

They stood locked together near the doorway; it wasn’t apparent, at first glance, whether Ran’s arms were embracing or restraining her. She was still crying, but more normally, with sobs and muffled words.

“Couldn’t get out…. Let me go, Ran, let me go…. He wants me…. Couldn’t get out!”

The last word rose to a scream, and then she struggled wildly while Ran tried to hold her. I saw her face as she writhed. I don’t think I’d have recognized it if I hadn’t known who she was. Her eyes, black holes in a white mask, saw me, but without recognition. Then her face vanished behind the heavy shape of Ran’s shoulder. I heard him speak, sharply; and then there was a flurry of movement and Mary went limp. Ran gathered
her up as she fell. He turned toward me with her body cradled against him. Her cheek lay on his breast. On his cheek I could see the livid marks of her nails. I started toward him.

“Get out,” he said. “Get out of here, Jo.”

I fell back a step as the door slammed in my face.

3

I WAS LURED DOWNSTAIRS NEXT MORNING BY THEsmells from the kitchen—bacon and eggs and coffee and muffins, fresh out of the oven. The muffins were dark with cinnamon and sticky with warm sugar. I ate three of them, sitting at the kitchen table while Mrs. Willard watched approvingly.

“Don’t suppose you usually eat a decent breakfast,” she said. “That instant stuff, or dry cereal. That’s just like grass. No body to it.”

“If I ate like this every morning, I’d gain five pounds a week,” I mumbled, through my third muffin. “It might be worth it, at that…. Where is everybody? Am I late or early?”

“Ran already had breakfast. He’s in the library; said he had some work to do this morning.”

“What about Mary?”

Mrs. Willard turned away to wipe an already immaculate counter top.

“I take hers up to her. She doesn’t sleep too good.”

“I know.”

Mrs. Willard turned. Her pink face was impassive, but from the cloth in her hand a small trickle of water dripped down onto the spotless floor. Her fingers must have been tightly clenched to squeeze water from a cloth she had already wrung out.

“She was up again last night?”

“Yes. You lock her in?”

“It’s Ran’s orders.”

It is useless to speculate on what would have developed if I had spoken out then and there. Probably it wouldn’t have made any difference. We were not ready, either of us, for the kind of confidences that could have changed the course of events. She didn’t trust me, and I had reservations about speaking candidly to her. She had known Ran for years, and helped to raise him. How could I tell Ran’s old friend and foster mother that I was beginning to suspect his treatment of my sister?

And yet, with my well-known propensity for babbling, I might have spoken, if we had not been interrupted. The shadow fell across the floor between us like a long dark bar, dividing our locked
glances as effectively as a wall. Mrs. Willard started, and I turned, half rising from my chair.

“Good morning, all,” said Will Graham. Framed by the open door, one long brown hand resting against it, he grinned at us. “You two look as guilty as a pair of thieves. What did I interrupt, some deep dark female gossip?”

“Gossip indeed,” said Mrs. Willard tartly. “I know what you’re here for, and if you think you’re going to talk me out of another breakfast, Willie Graham, you’d better keep a civil tongue in your head.”

“How many times have I asked you not to call me Willie?” Will glanced at me; I tried, unsuccessfully, to wipe the grin off my face.

“You mean I can’t call you Willie?” I asked. “I would dearly love to.”

“Not unless you learn to make muffins.” Will sat down across from me. “Women who make muffins can call me anything. I’m very susceptible to muffins.”

“You’re susceptible to any kind of food,” Mrs. Willard scoffed. She handed him a plate.

“I’ve been up since five,” Will said. “If that doesn’t rate another breakfast, I don’t know what does. And it wasn’t your cooking that brought me here, so don’t look so smug. I came to ask Jo if she’d like to go for a walk. I thought she might like to see my house.”

“It’s those beasts you’re wanting to show off,” Mrs. Willard said. Her voice was so grim I visualized some monstrous menagerie—lions or crocodiles or snakes.

“That’s ridiculous,” Will said indignantly. “Here I am trying to entertain a visitor and all you can do is insult me.” He took a muffin. “I’m leaving. Are you coming, Jo?”

I gave him a suspicious look, which he countered with his famous smile. I told myself it wasn’t the smile that made me weaken; if the man was trying, in his clumsy male fashion, to apologize for his outrageous remarks the day before, the least I could do was meet him halfway.

“Okay,” I said.

We walked across the lawn in silence while Will finished the muffin he had carried off, and I eyed his lean figure with unwilling amusement.

“Do you always eat like this?”

“I do when I can get it,” Will said. “I’m not much of a cook. And—though you may find this difficult to believe—I have a fairly sizable practice. On the mainland and some of the other islands as well as here. Keeps me busy.”

“Does it?”

“I’m sorry about yesterday.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion.”

“But I’m not entitled to foist it on other people
so loudly. I—well, to tell the truth, I’d been up all night. Lost a patient. I was in a bad mood.”

“I’m sorry. About the patient.”

He gave me a quick, sidelong glance and then his somber face lightened in one of those smiles.

“You really are sorry, aren’t you?”

“I’m sorry for the whole sad, sad world,” I said. “But at the moment I’m concentrating on Mary.”

“Look, let’s take the morning off, okay? Forget about Mary for a couple of hours.”

“You’d like to forget her altogether.”

“I don’t provoke,” Will said calmly. “Not on a day like this, when I’ve had a couple of hours sleep. I promise, I will reobserve and reconsider and anything else you want. Maybe I was wrong about Mary—and, by God, you won’t get a concession like that from me very often. But this morning I want to relax. Okay?”

“Well…”

When he said “walk,” he wasn’t kidding. We didn’t follow the road, but struck off into the woods. There was a path of sorts, but it was badly overgrown. Will admitted that it was seldom used; the old ladies hadn’t been much given to hiking after they passed seventy, and he usually drove. Even with Will preceding me, fending off the worst of the overhanging branches, I was winded and disheveled by the time we reached the edge of the woods.

I understood then why trees and vines had seemed so thick, so twisted together. Without mutual support they could not have survived. Only a few hundred yards away, the ground ended, with breathtaking abruptness, in a cliff that seemed to drop off into empty space. As soon as I stepped out of the woods I could feel the force of the wind. During a winter storm it would howl through the eaves of the forest like a banshee.

The house huddled close to the shelter of the trees. I could see the necessity for that, though I wondered whether I would like living so close to the dark pines.

The house itself was a gem, a classic example of a home-grown architectural style. I knew it must be quite old. The New England saltbox style was at its best in the mid-eighteenth century, which would make this house about two hundred years old. It wore its age well. The silvery gray surface had been weathered by that unique blend of salt sea air that is found only along this coast. Two small one-story additions had been built out from the back, and a deep porch jutted out to protect the front door. Vines covered its latticed sides, but I could see wooden benches set at right angles to the house. A single massive chimney jutted up from the center of the roof. The windows were good-sized, and the wooden shutters looked as if they had been designed for use. Even with the
woods behind it, the house would endure bitter weather; except for a pair of tall pines by the front gate, it was completely exposed to the wind from the sea.

The only flaw in the scene of picturesque charm was Will’s battered blue station wagon, parked at the end of what could only be described as a track. Unpaved and rocky, it curved off to the right and vanished behind the trees.

“How on earth do you get out of here to make house calls in the winter?” I asked.

“Oh, I board in town during the worst months. But you could live here all right if you didn’t have to answer emergency calls. A jeep with four-wheel drive would get you in and out most days, and I can imagine worse fates than being snowed in for a week or two. With one shed full of firewood and the other packed with canned goods…I’ve got five hundred books I haven’t had time to read and a tape recorder I can run from batteries.”

I could understand the wistful note in his voice. The picture had a strong appeal for me too. A fire roaring up the chimney while the wintry blasts howled outside…. Books, music…and other equally cozy occupations…