A Secret Rage (20 page)

Mimi had slung her purse onto the front seat and had one leg inside. ‘Listen, why don’t you come over Wednesday night before Thanksgiving?’ she asked Barbara suddenly. ‘Since Nickie and Cully are going out, I’ll need help wrestling with the damn turkey. I have the worst time getting the legs out of that metal brace, when I’m ready to pull the innards out. And we can share some wine.’

‘Okay,’ Barbara said after a moment’s hesitation. She was obviously afraid that Mimi was only asking out of pity. ‘What time?’

‘Seven-thirty, I guess.’

‘I’ll bring the wine, and you have to let me know what I can cook and bring for the Thanksgiving table,’ Barbara said firmly.

Mimi gave her a brilliant smile. ‘Sure I will,’ she said. ‘I look forward to it, the whole holiday.’ Then Mimi scooted out of the weather and into the front seat. I folded my longer legs and got in more slowly.

‘What was it that surprised you when Sarah Chase and Barbara were talking about the Christmas party?’ I asked Mimi curiously, after she’d negotiated the driveway.

‘What?’ she asked blankly.

‘You had a pretty strange expression—’

‘Oh, that,’ she interrupted. ‘Well—’ Suddenly the Scottie shot across the road in front of us, I gasped, Mimi slammed on the brakes, and we began to skid on the mistslick blacktop. We screeched to a stop about a foot from a mailbox. The Scottie scampered across a lawn, quite unhurt, and Mimi swore for half a minute while belated adrenaline made my mouth taste metallic.

‘You better get one of those bumper stickers,’ I advised when Mimi had started driving again. ‘One that says “Warning: I brake for animals.” ’

‘Might not be a bad idea,’ Mimi said dryly, and then, glancing at the sky, added, ‘Oh hell, look at that rain.’ It hit the windshield as if someone had thrown a bucket of water at us.

The heavy gray of the sky, the wind, and the cold rain turned the day into one of those classic early-winter nasties.

Cully was already home. He opened the kitchen door as we scurried from the car. The kitchen light silhouetted him in the doorway; and the sight of that tall thin outline filled me with a rush of love that made me a little short of breath. I found I was too thankful for the warmth Cully and I had begun to share to ask any more questions about motivation or permanence. I came out of the cold rain into the warmth and comfort of the kitchen. ‘If I were watching a movie, I’d call that symbolic,’ I murmured to the cats as I hung up my coat.

* * * *

It was certainly our week for being entertained. Mimi had to answer the phone just when Cully was saying that Elaine and Don had invited us over for Friday night. I nodded assent glumly. I’d seen Elaine a few times since our confrontation a few weeks before, but though we’d made our outward peace, we were both well aware we just plain didn’t like each other.

I passed Cully another biscuit, and reflected idly that Mimi must have taken her call upstairs, since I couldn’t hear her voice in the hall.

‘Are you all right?’ Cully asked me. ‘After this morning, I mean.’

His concerned face reminded me of the awful flashback. ‘I’m fine,’ I said firmly. ‘There may be something else lurking in the woodwork for me; I don’t know. But to tell you the truth, I feel better now than I have since it happened.’

‘I hated to leave you today. I’ll make it up to you tonight.’ There was a slight hint of conspiratorial wickedness in his thin mobile lips that made me tingle.

I gave him a parody of a lewd wink; he laughed.

‘Are you going to be around this evening?’ I asked as he began clearing the table. Since he was gone so often in the evening, tending to his private practice, he’d slipped into the habit of clearing the table and putting the left-overs away, so all the dishes were lined up to wash and dry.

‘No, two appointments. I should be home around nine.’

Mimi didn’t get off the phone until Cully had been gone about ten minutes. She went directly to the sink, turning on the water with unnecessary force.

‘What are your folks doing for the holidays, Mimi?’ I asked, after I’d told her about our Friday night dinner at their home.

‘Oh, I forgot to tell you. Ever since Cully and I graduated from college and went our own way, they’ve been spending Thanksgiving in the Bahamas. It’s a yearly rite now. They thought about canceling their reservation after we both got divorced, but when Mother mentioned it a few weeks ago I told her they should go on and go. She and Daddy were looking forward to it, and we can perfectly well have our own Thanksgiving.’

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, so I was glad to have dinner with Elaine Friday night instead of sacrificing the big feast. Mimi seemed to be in one of her ‘fond of Mother’ moods, so I didn’t voice my relief. It occurred to me that Mimi might be so fond of her mother right now just because she wouldn’t have to spend Thanksgiving with her. I’d have been jumpy about spending a whole day with Don, anyway, since he was on the list. I hadn’t seen him since the weird scene over Alicia’s coffin. I shuddered when I thought about it, and told my thoughts to move right along.

I went on drying dishes mindlessly, content not to think for a while. Gradually I became aware that Mimi was quiet, too. We usually talked during this unpleasant chore, to make it go faster. Things had gone so well between us that afternoon that it had almost seemed as though nothing had ever gone wrong.

‘Cully gone to an evening appointment?’ Mimi asked.

‘Yep.’

‘He’s probably meeting another woman on the sly,’ she said bitterly.

That kind of nastiness, out of the blue, wasn’t typical of Mimi. It was so ugly and unexpected that I put down my towel and stared at her. Surely she wasn’t brooding any longer about Richard’s defection to the long-haired lady in Albuquerque?

‘I’m sorry,’ she said curtly. ‘Male junkies.’

‘What?’

‘I once heard a lecture by a woman who worked for
Ms
,’ she explained, ‘and she called women in our culture “male junkies.” She said most women’s magazines were about how to attract, keep, and entertain men. Or – having caught and kept – how to entertain and feed those men’s children.’

‘Was that back when you were in college?’

‘Yes, but we still are, Nick. We still are! Look at the way we were brought up. Every woman, but especially southern women. All brought up that way. You remember teen magazines? Everything down to how to tie your hair ribbon – for your
date
. If you disagreed with him, you were supposed to keep your mouth shut. Unless the dis-agreement was about whether he could stick his hand up your skirt. Then, and only then, you were supposed to disagree. That was why you had to carry change in your purse, to call your folks when he dumped you out of the car for resisting him.’

This was the woman who’d saved four pair of white gloves? ‘From the magazines I’ve read lately, that seems to have modified quite a bit,’ I said mildly.

‘Yes, maybe. But the old way is almost impossible to shake. You have to fight it all the time.’ Mimi scrubbed the pot she was holding as if she were indeed fighting it.

‘It’s been impossible for me to uproot, just like monkey grass when you let it take over the garden. You pull it up one place, it comes back another. Propitiate, manipulate, never confront. And forgive, forgive, forgive! It’s like a knee-jerk reflex!’

‘Yeah, but you know what you do in a knee-jerk reflex, don’t you? You kick at the guy with the hammer!’

That made her laugh. But I could still see the traces of regret around her mouth when I went to my desk to start studying. I’d known that Mimi’s two aspects warred between themselves, but I’d never seen it get this intense. I was worried about her. But I concluded that, as always, Mimi would tell me what was on her mind when she chose. I couldn’t figure out if she was angry with someone else or with herself. Both, I decided.

Barbara called about eight-thirty. ‘I didn’t have a chance to tell you this afternoon, but Jeff Simmons’s blood type is AB,’ she announced. ‘It took me thirty minutes’ conversation to work around to blood types in some semblance of a normal manner.’

‘So. Four,’ I said slowly. ‘I thought you might’ve found out Theo’s from Sarah Chase.’

‘It seemed like an abuse of hospitality,’ Barbara said. ‘If we’d met anywhere else but her house. I just couldn’t.’

‘I see what you mean,’ I said. But I wondered if we’d make any more progress if we let the smaller scruples stand in our way. I listened to Mimi’s footsteps moving around her bedroom overhead.

‘Are you really determined?’ Barbara asked suddenly.

‘I was just wondering if I could ask you the same question.’

‘It’s more awful, isn’t it, the more we go on? Sometimes I’m tired of being so angry. Sometimes I just want to put it all away in a drawer somewhere. But then, when I really remember . . .’

‘I know.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Should we go on?’ I honestly didn’t know how I felt. One day, one moment, I was up, hot on the trail. The next I was down, wanting only, as Barbara said, to shut it all away in a drawer, to begin to forget.

‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’

‘Maybe we should finish what we’ve started,’ I said.

‘Like cleaning our plate of something we don’t like to eat?’ There was the faintest tinge of amusement in Barbara’s voice.

Maybe I was being childishly stubborn. I pulled off my reading glasses and rubbed my eyelids. I searched around for a principle on which I could base a decision. Instead, I thought of Mimi, who in this continuing siege of fear and suspicion was being driven further and further away from me. It would put the nail in the coffin of our friendship if Barbara and I discovered somehow that Mimi’s father or the man she loved was a rapist and a murderer. On the other hand (and I rubbed my eyes until I saw flashes), if Theo or John Tendall were to attack Mimi – after all, she was the same kind of woman . . .

I had a glimmering, then, but I let it slide away as I slogged down my original muddy path of thought.

. . . and if she got raped, then . . .

So I found the principle. ‘Other women,’ I said succinctly.

‘Sure,’ said Barbara. ‘How could we live with our-selves?’

‘So that settles that.’ I wasn’t exactly pleased with our final decision, but I was relieved to have it over with.

‘What if all the rest really do have O positive? I was just joking this morning, but they might turn out to. What do we do then?’

‘Hell, I don’t know. We line them up and ask them to drop their pants.’

Dreadfully, we both began snickering.

‘That was pretty sick,’ Barbara said when she’d wound down. ‘But we’d have a chance of recognizing the one.’

‘Like you said today, I take a laugh where I can find it, now.’ I heard Mimi at the head of the stairs. ‘So you’ve got one more to go, and I’ve got two. Let’s get to work,’ I said hurriedly. ‘See you.’ I hung up.

‘Nick, I’m going out for a while,’ Mimi said. Suddenly she seemed to recall something, and looked concerned. ‘When’s Cully coming home?’

I glanced at my watch. ‘He should be here any time. He said about nine, and it’s almost that now.’ I realized what she was worried about. ‘Hey, I can be alone and not go to pieces,’ I told her gently.

‘Oh. You figured it out.’ She grinned. ‘We thought we were being so clever about it.’

‘It took me a while,’ I assured her, and grinned back.

‘Nick, you know how – well, I’m sort of proud.’

‘Yes, Miss Mimi Houghton.’ I was still smiling, but I could feel my smile begin to wane. Her face had turned completely sober.

‘You know I told you I knew Charles isn’t involved in all this.’ She gestured with her hand to indicate me and the direction in which Alicia’s house lay.

I nodded, trying to keep my face expressionless.

‘I did that all wrong, but what I said is true. I’ll tell you all about it, when I can stand to.’

‘Okay, Mimi.’ What else could I say?

Then she was out the back door to her car. I was shaking my head as I locked the door behind her.

* * * *

The Houghtons’ dining room had changed very little since the night I’d met Cully more than fourteen years before. Elaine bought the best and took care of it. Just as she’d picked the best husband for her and had taken excellent care of him, I decided during the delicious dinner. I could have carried the idea further and further and my understanding of the family would have profited from it, but I called myself to order and reminded myself of my mission.

It wasn’t easy to find an opening into which I could insert the odd subject of blood types. The gleaming wood of the table, the heavy sheen of the silver, the flowers in the crystal bowl, all reproached me for my tawdry problem. It hardly seemed possible that the rich striped upholstery of Elaine’s chairs would consent to hold the bottom of a woman who had been raped. But that was just as real as the table or the silver, I told myself sternly. I braced and waited for the right opening in the conversation. Don himself provided it.

‘Honey, have you heard how Orrin Sherwood is?’ he asked Elaine.

‘Not too good,’ she answered with that ominous little shake of the head that means death is in the offing. ‘That wreck was just a terrible thing. His wife won’t even leave the hospital to lie down at home for an hour or two. She says Orrin’s got to see her face if he opens his eyes, Miss Pearlie told me.’

‘I didn’t hear about that! What happened?’ Cully asked. ‘Orrin’s worked for Father for, oh, twenty years,’ he told me. Elaine frowned slightly.

Don proceeded to describe the circumstances of the wreck, which I barely heard, poised as I was to spring.

‘. . . and he’d lost a lot of blood, way too much.’

Thanks, Don. Ready, set, go. ‘I guess that’s what they wanted the blood for the other day,’ I interjected. ‘They called this boy in one of my classes, he was telling me. The hospital was short of that blood type. He went in and gave.’

‘Gosh, if I’d known that, I’d have given some,’ Don said with deep chagrin. ‘I do wish they’d said something while I was at the hospital! Orrin and I were in the army together, and it seems to me we found out then that we had the same blood type. What type was the boy, the one who told you this, Nickie?’