The Nanny (21 page)

“It's a shame there's such a difference in ages,” Dr. Meducca told himself. “This kid and Roberta are made for each other! What a pair they would make!”

But what do I have to do? he wondered, pushing at his face, staring at the boy, admitting by his glance that it had to do with the boy, knowing that much. The old woman, yes, the old woman lying on the floor who had given her life for children, he murdered her.

Yes, yes, but there's nothing I can do about that. What can I do?

“You know.”

I don't know. If I knew I would have done it long ago with Roberta. If there was anything humanly possible, I would have done it.

“You know.”

The two words returning, chiming, “humanly possible, humanly possible.” It was not humanly possible with her, he meant, not humanly possible with his daughter. Because I remembered Lucy and the plans we made for Roberta. He had a picture of Lucy, big with child so that the soda fountain stool she was perched on looked ridiculous under her, sipping a chocolate float at the corner drugstore on Lexington and Fifty-third. He had said, tasting the sweetness of those plans, like the pineapple ice cream with hot fudge he was having, that he would like the child to be a doctor. And, shaking her head, sipping, Lucy had warned him that they must wait to find out whether Robert or Roberta wanted to be a doctor.
Suck. Suck
. Lucy had said
(suck, suck)
that they mustn't force what they wanted on their child. (That was a laugh!)

“But I can dream, can't I?” he had told Lucy.

It wasn't humanly possible with Roberta, he told himself. He couldn't do it. In the beginning, he had talked big—a regular scientist—“It could be glandular, Lucy.” Science would discover what was lacking in Roberta, or what was excessive, and correct the balance. “Oh, God, I couldn't kill my own child with my own hands, but this one is different. I had no ice cream sweet dreams for this child. I never laid eyes on him before tonight. If I remember his poor little mother, his father, vomiting their guts out because this kid tried to kill them. If I hold on to the picture of the old woman sprawled on that pillow she was bringing him.…”

“
I don't mean,”
the voice said,
“for you to kill him and get away with it. I don't mean the perfect crime. I know you couldn't do that, couldn't live with it even if you did get away with it; but an eye for an eye, your life for his life, how's that?

“And then,”
the voice continued cleverly (it knew how to get him)
“they won't let Roberta go free if you're not around to send her back to, will they?”

I will write a letter telling them what Roberta tried to do to the boy. If I am dead, how can they ignore it? I will warn them that if they let her get away with this tonight, tomorrow she'll do something else. Or tonight she will. Tonight's not over with yet, he reminded them.

Yes, this is the answer to Roberta as well. If I'm not around, they will have to keep her locked up. They will have no choice.

I will write a letter which they cannot ignore since there is the rope and the old woman's body to explain away. I will tell them that in nineteen years of Roberta's life, I've found no way to deal with her. By doing this, I can be useful. Yes, yes, the newspapers will headline this:
DOCTOR KILLS CHILD PSYCHOPATH AND SELF
.
LEAVES LETTER EXPLAINING WHY THIS IS ONLY SOLUTION
. That will show them! Maybe the parents of other psychopaths will be spared what Lucy and I had, and what this poor little Mrs. Fane and her husband will have. Maybe that old nursemaid didn't die in vain, either!

The hot tears dribbled down his cheeks, but they weren't tears of weakness, no, of thankfulness, because it need not all have been for nothing. They would pay particular attention to his act because he was no layman, so that even his M.D. dreams, the dreams he had had of being a good doctor, would not be all lost, either.

“Can you?”

This way, yes. Yes, I can.

“Don't be so glib. A test. Look at him, first. Stop staring out that window. Turn and see him lying there, so smooth, such a baby. Remember how you took to him before you knew what he was. Remember that you told yourself if you'd have a son like that
—
Look at him!”

He considered the child for a long time. “I can do it,” he told himself. He stood up. “Now, what's the best way? There must be no mistakes. No pain. Morphine intravenously. First the boy, then himself.”

He went to the table desk under the bookshelves and found some notepaper and took a wad of it. As he pulled his fountain pen from his pocket, he touched the clip of the pocket thermometer next to it, and for a moment let his finger rest on it; then he thought, smiling: Physician, heal thyself.

He took an art book from the pile of them on the coffee table to lean on, sitting in the big chair near the window, where he could keep an eye on the boy in case he awoke.

The minute he came down from opening 8A for the doctor, Patrick rang the bell to the doctor's apartment. That one was glad enough to see him until he told her he only wanted to know if she'd found his wallet. “It's my bit of cash,” he said. “I'm quitting the job and all in the morning, and I must have my bit of cash.”

She said she hadn't found his wallet, but she'd give him ten dollars if he came back in now. (She was a bad article and no mistake. She was a——.) He declined the offer. “Where you going?” she asks, and he tells her that the wallet must have dropped out in the doctor's office because he had it before, when he took a note out to pay the cabby. He tells her he'll use the passkey to open the doctor's office door.

Then she tries to keep him there. Ach, he didn't want to go in there now. She'd go in later and look for it. She would, certain. If he went in now, he'd be caught, she says. Why, they might think he was after the dope kept in the office. There's some would be found missing, she says, winking, and he need not think she'd confess she took it or stand up for him and explain why he had to go into the office.

Then when she saw that he still wouldn't come back to bed with her … she changed feet and said, all right, all right, she'd save his skin for him. She'd search there for the wallet herself. She knew that office like the back of her hand, so if she didn't find it, nobody would. But well he knew from the talk that she wasn't above stealing his bit of cash. They said she'd taken money out of the trousers pockets of a black delivery boy, so he said he'd be going in with her, then. But she wouldn't have that, oh, no. Oh, no! He must stay outside and signal her by a loud rap on the door when the doctor her father came down.

Now she is going to cut my finger off, Virgie thought as the girl came in and picked the scalpel up.
Now
. The gun was in the same place.

“Don't pass out, Banjo Eyes.” Smiling, she walked to Virgie and pulled a hair from her head and cut it with the scalpel. “You know what I'm going to do first. Your hair. Like a razor cut. There's a way I'd like to fix mine and I can try it out on you.” She came closer, around the back. “If you don't keep your head still, you're going to get cut. One place Pa never sent me to was Barber's College.”

She worked with absorption, as if painting a picture, stepping back to see the effect from time to time, impatiently brushing off the clumps of bright hair which fell to Virgie's shoulders, only, after brushing off the hair, she would take a clump of it from the floor and press it to her nose, inhaling with delight, an odd expression appearing in her round eyes and a certain tautness in her lips. Then she was finished and stepped to where the gun lay. “That's how I figured.” She cocked her head. “No. No good.” She tapped the scalpel against her palm. “You know what? While I'm at it, I'm going to give you a
boyish.”
Moving swiftly, she touched the palm of her left hand to the back of Virgie's neck, cupping it. “I'm going to make a boy out of you, how about that?”

“She just means a boy's haircut,” Virgie told herself. “Only a haircut. If she does
that,”
Virgie thought, “she'll have to untie me and if she unties me I can try to get that gun.” The clumps of hair fell faster now because she was just hacking at them. Virgie closed her eyes. It was funny how she minded having all her hair cut off even at a time like this. She remembered having told Victor that she didn't know what perverts did and Victor said, “Why should you know, darling?”

“Do you like me so dumb, Victor?”

“Yes, I love you dumb,” he said.

Then she remembered Althea Gore-Green and—oh, what did that matter now, or anything? If she could keep still the girl wouldn't kill her yet. If she could keep still until she was untied, the girl wouldn't kill her yet.

“Pretty soon you'll be Robert. I'm Roberta.”

Victor heard the voices as part of his dream, the way one does, and then, awakening fully, as real voices. Mary Lou Finch, from the ninth floor, her face still blotchy from the memory of the calling down Dr. Meducca had given her when she phoned to tell him that Mrs. Fane had walked out of the hospital, was in Victor's room. Mary Lou was asking Victor's nurse whether she could account for it. They were so engrossed that neither of them noticed that the sedation had worn off and the patient was taking it all in.

Victor's nurse was telling Mary Lou that, yes, she thought she knew the reason for the disappearing act, not
how
she sneaked out, but
why
. At least she thought so. At least if
she
had just found out that her husband and his secretary were having an affair, she'd want out. “‘Guess,' this girl of his says to me, sitting right there, Mary Lou! ‘I'm the secretary, so guess!' Did you ever hear such nerve? The wife walks in, poor kid, to see how her husband is and gets this right in the kisser. I'd jump from my skin if it was Nat!”

“I'd rather have Fred than an emerald any day,” Mary Lou said. “Well, I'd rather have both. No, well, now I got it, Eva. No wonder she wanted out.”

“Straight to her lawyer do you think?”

“Eva, I hate to do this to you, but Dr. Meducca came down on me like a ton of bricks, and then he told Mayhew, so I have to make a report on what happened here.”

“Go report,” Eva said. “Nat will give you a bonus if they take my license away.”

“They won't.”

“I know they won't, and talking about licenses, maybe I better ask to see the patient's wife's wedding license next time. Go report.”

“Before you do,” Victor said, sitting up, “you can fill in the details for me. Come on,” he said. “I know the husband is the last to know, but even the husband finds out eventually.”

He couldn't wait there. Mother of God, what was keeping her? Finally he used the passkey.

The girl heard the footsteps and was hiding behind the door holding the gun when the doorman, Patrick, came in.

“Well, the mick,” she said. “Okay, Mick, come on in!”

“Mother of God,” he whispered, staring at Virgie tied up and gagged and all her pretty hair cut off. “Mother of God, what's she done to you and all?”

She mimicked him. “What have I done to her and all? Nothing much yet.”

“You bad article,” he said, not wanting to say what she really was in front of the poor lady.

“You don't like me any more, Mick? You like her better?” She tapped the mouth of the gun against her lips. “Untie her, Mick. Go on, cut her loose. Just leave the gag in.” She tossed the scalpel at him and held the gun on him while he obeyed. “Now put your big strong arms around her, Mick. Now kiss her. Kiss her hard. What's the trouble? Oh, she's numb. So rub the circulation back first,” she said. “She can't feel if she's numb, can she?”

Patrick kept saying, “Pardon, pardon,” as he rubbed the white rings the rubber tubing had made on her ankles. “Pardon, pardon.” Then, as he reached for her hands, he saw the cut. “What have you done, you …!”

The gun jumped. “It's nothing,” Virgie said with her eyes and shoulders, “nothing.” She tried to tell him not to get her angry because she did not believe he knew what this girl was like.

“That's enough. She should be able to feel now, so, go, go, go, Mick!”

He stammered, “L-l-listen, you.… The doctor is upstairs in Madame's flat. She isn't there, so he'll be down here. He was going to come in here only I put him off it, God blast my soul to hell! I put him off it for my bloody bit of cash! He'll come in here, sure.…” She was smiling down at the gun. “You wouldn't shoot your own da?” he asked.

She made the muzzle nod it would. Then she waved the gun for him to get to it.

“I know he'll be down and that's why I'm telling you to go, go, go!”

He knew what she meant and, Mother of God, she must be scotious drunk or out of her senses.

“Get it up, Mick!”

“I can't with her,” he whispered, his head hanging and his face turned away from Virgie.

“You hear that?” Roberta said. “Well, he can with me. Can't you, Mick?” She pointed to the rubber tubing. “Tie her up again.”

He recoiled. “Not with her in here!”

“She was right here before, Mick. Right here.”

And that was the noise he had heard. And he had believed this scum, and he had … “What do you take me for? I didn't know it then!”

“Okay. In my bedroom, then. Now tie her up and don't forget I'm watching. Now the other hand,” she said.

“It's her left hand and you didn't have that tied before. Do you want her to bleed to death?”

It wasn't that the girl didn't want her to bleed to death, Virgie decided, but only that she could not want more than one thing at a time. She felt the girl's hands checking on the knots and whenever her fingers touched, Virgie's gorge rose. Then, the doorman walking in front of the girl, the two of them left the room and she heard them go down the hall and, after a minute or so, a door closing after them.