Brother and Sister (13 page)

The letter took a long time to write, with frequent pauses, and slow painful forming of the letters with the ball-point pen. But at last it was done, and she addressed an envelope, affixed the stamp, put the letter into the envelope and sealed it. Then she left the house.

She walked somnambulistically, paying no attention at all to her movements. Her feet simply pushed out in front of her, one after the other, carrying her slowly to the corner where she dropped the letter in the mailbox. Then the feet turned her around again and brought her, just as slowly and even more reluctantly, back to the house.

She sat at the kitchen table for a long while, staring at nothing.

She was lost. She was doomed.

Closing her eyes, she tried not to exist.

She shouldn’t have sent the letter. But she couldn’t get it back now. It was in the mailbox. There was no way to stop it now. Bob was going to know the truth.

When at last she moved, it was as slowly and heavily as before, but with more direction, more purpose. It was a hot, bright day and all the windows in the house were open. Starting with the kitchen, moving steadily through the house, she closed all the windows. Upstairs, she closed the bedroom doors, then came heavily down to the first floor again, and back out to the kitchen.

There was a door between the kitchen and the dining room which was rarely closed. She closed it now and then went over to the gas range. She opened the oven door, turned the oven on full, to
Broil,
but didn’t light it. She turned on all four burners on top of the stove, and blew them out when they automatically lit from the pilot light. She removed the protective cover and blew out the pilot light.

Then she sat at the kitchen table, closed her eyes again, and tried again to stop existing.

This time, she was successful.

TWELVE

In dusk, Paul sat in the living room, gazing unseeing at the turned-off television set. His hand reached out to the · glass, brought it to his mouth, tilted it, returned it to the table. He blinked slowly, once. Other than that, he didn’t move.

The house was his. The whole house was his now. The attic, the basement, the three bedrooms, the bathroom and the flight of stairs between the first and second floors; the living room, the foyer, the two flights of stairs to attic and basement; the front yard, the back yard, the two porches, the dining room, the den and the kitchen where Angie had killed herself.

His hand reached out to the glass, brought it to his mouth, tilted it and found it empty. His other hand reached down to the floor beside the chair, brought up the bottle, turned it over the glass, returned it to the floor. He drank from the glass, put it back on the table. Dusk was turning to night.

The doorbell sounded.

He didn’t move, made no sign he had even heard it.

The house was his and Angie had bought it for him. After her death, all the relatives had assembled here and slowly the facts had come out. Not the facts of what he and Angie had been to one another. No one knew about that but he
--
and he knew it only too well. No, the facts that had come out had been those concerning Uncle James and his harassment of the two of them over the ownership of the house.

The relatives had decided that Uncle James had had a lot to do with Angie’s death. Paul told them she had been moody and depressed ever since their parents had died, that she had even broken off with her boy friend, and the relatives became convinced that Uncle James had only added to the burden she was already carrying. He was told, by his brothers and sisters and in-laws, to stay away from Paul, stay away from the house, and stay away from them.

Uncle James had blustered and fumed, but it was obvious that he, too, felt he had been part of the cause of Angie’s death. His guilt had kept him quiet and Paul heard from him no more.

No more. Had heard from him no more. Had heard from Angie no more, no more, no more.

The doorbell sounded again. Still he didn’t move.

He rarely moved, any more. He had sold the Chevy. He had quit his job. He was living on what was left of his discharge money, and what was left of his parents’ money. He was living in the house, very rarely moving.

The doorknob rattled and someone rapped sharply against the panel. Someone called out his name.

He turned his head, slowly, to face the entranceway from the foyer. There was no expectancy on his face. There was nothing on his face at all.

A chill breeze of September scurried low along the floor to curl around his ankles, and he knew the front door had been opened. He waited and saw the shape come into the entranceway and wait there. The shape spoke and it had Bob’s voice. “Why didn’t you answer the door?” it asked.

He didn’t move, didn’t speak.

“Turn a light on,” Bob ordered. His voice was low and harsh.

Paul still didn’t move, still didn’t speak.

With a sudden angry movement, Bob stepped into the room and to the left, switching on the nearest floor lamp. In the sudden light, he squinted at Paul. “You knew I was coming, huh? Is that it? You knew I was coming?”

Paul raised his head a bit, just enough so he could look up at Bob’s angry face. A shade of puzzlement crossed Paul’s face and he shook his head slowly from side to side.

“You didn’t, huh?” Bob was dressed in his Army uniform, the sleeves still bare. He had just completed basic training. He reached into his Ike jacket, on the right side, and took out an envelope which he dropped in Paul’s lap. “Take a look at that,” he ordered. “Then you’ll know why I’m here.”

Paul’s movements were in slow motion, as though he were bemused by an ever-renewing wonder at the complexity of the world. Slowly he lowered his head to look at the envelope in his lap. Slowly his hands reached down to it and picked it up and plucked the letter from within; unfolding it, holding it up for his eyes to read.

It was Angie’s letter. Until this moment, he hadn’t even known of its existence.

He read it through, word for careful word, then read it through all over again. Bob reached out to pick it out of his hands just an instant before he would have crushed it and torn it to shreds. His hands closed on one another as though they still held the letter. They trembled convulsively, taut with muscular strain.

Then the hands fell away to his sides and he exhaled, reaching out again for the glass. It was halfway to his lips when Bob slapped it out of his hand, sending it spinning halfway across the room, sloshing liquor on the rug. On
his
rug.

“Look at me,” snapped Bob. “Look up at me, you son-of-a-bitch.”

Paul raised his eyes. Bob was standing spraddle-legged in front of him, his right hand clenching a small .25 calibre pocket pistol. It looked like a toy in his hand, a little metal toy containing caps, but Paul knew it wasn’t a toy. And he knew it didn’t contain caps.

Bob said: “I’m going to kill you, Paul. I’m not going to try to get away. I’m going to give myself up for it. But I don’t care. Because you’re going to be dead.
You
killed Angie. And I’m going to kill you for it.”

Paul wrenched his glance away from the gun and raised it higher, until he was looking into Bob’s hot, bitter eyes. His face didn’t change expression, didn’t
take on
expression, and his eyes were blank and empty. He sat there like that, waiting .

And Bob waited, too. They waited for one another, and slowly the hate in Bob’s eyes changed to bewilderment, then to contempt and finally to understanding. He shook his head.

Unintentionally, not knowing he’d done it, Paul aped the movement, shook own head.

“No,” said Bob decisively. “I’m not going to do it.” His right hand, carrying the gun, lifted up and tucked inside the Ike jacket and returned empty, to hang at his side. “I’m not going to do it,” he repeated. “Do you know why?”

Paul spoke then for the first time. “Bob,” he said, as though he had just identified him.

“I’ll tell you why,” Bob told him. “Because I don’t have to. Because. you’re doing it yourself, with that stuff.” He motioned at the bottle on the floor beside the chair. “So I don’t have to do a thing to you. You’re doing worse to yourself, inside your own head, than I or anybody else could ever think of doing to you. You’re punishing yourself, and you’re a hell of a lot better at the job than I could be.”

“Bob?” asked Paul.

“Good-bye, Paul,” said Bob. He turned away, headed for the front door and outside.

“No!”

Paul moved suddenly, in a frenzied flurry of motion, arcing up out of the chair and leaping to the middle of the room. “No!” he shouted again. “You can’t do it, you bastard, you can’t do that!”

Bob looked back at him. “I can’t do what?”

On Paul’s face there came now such a childish look of craftiness that it seemed as though it could only be a mockery of slyness. “You’re yellow,” he whispered. “You came here to avenge Angie, did you? The great lover, is that it, coming to avenge his sweetheart? And now you’re yellow. Now you suddenly find out you didn’t really love her that much, after all. You can’t go through with it! Is that it?”

Bob stared at him. “Do you
want
me to kill you?”

“You came in here so tough,” Paul taunted him. He was crouched forward now, hands clawlike at his sides, face jutted forward, leering at the other boy. “You came in here so big and tough, carrying a gun. You were going to be such a brave man. And you’re just a yellowbellied bastard. Aren’t you?”

Bob shook his head slowly in wonderment. “You want me to,” he whispered, still not really believing it. “You actually want me to kill you.”

“It isn’t what I want,” Paul snarled. “It’s what you want.
You,
talking so big.”

“You’ve been sitting there all this time,” Bob said, awed, “trying to work up enough courage to kill yourself. All this time, you’ve just been sitting there, and you’ve never had the guts.”

“Go
on!”
screamed Paul. “Go on, you bastard, kill me if you’re going to! What the hell are you waiting for? Are you going to let me get away with it?”

“And you never will have the guts, will you?” Bob asked him.
“You’re
the coward, not me.”

“Aren’t you going to
do
it?” Paul shrieked at him, his face contorted and grimacing.

Bob shook his head. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t do you the favor.” And he turned his back and went on out of the house.

Paul raced after him as far as the front door and stood in the doorway watching Bob proceed down the walk to the street. “Do it!” he screamed. “Do it, you bastard! Kill me, kill me, kill me!”

Bob paused and looked back at him. “Kill yourself,” he said contemptuously and strode away and out of sight.

Paul made as if to follow him even farther, to go down· the street after him, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t cross the threshold. He couldn’t step out of the house. He hung there, in the doorway, stating at the empty street, his one leg raised as though to rake a step, his face ravaged and haunted.

Full night had fallen, the street outside seemed gradually to press in on him, to loom closer and closer to him. He shook his head and stared into the darkness until he couldn’t stand it any more. Then he whirled back into the house, slamming the door after him and racing back into the living room.

He stood poised in the living room, his frozen stare darting this way and that. “Angie!” he called and waited. There was no answer. “Angie! Angie!
Angie!”

Still there was no answer.

He shrieked wordlessly, stumbling toward the dining room, kicking a drum table out of his path as he went, so that it careened across the floor and the lamp that had been on it crashed against the wall.

He blundered into the dark dining room, brought up heavily against the dining room table, reached out clawing hands and found one of the chairs. He picked it up and hurled it into the darkness ahead of him, heard it smash into the glass doors of the upper half of the secretary. He shoved at the table, pushing it and pushing it until it tipped over and out of his path.

He stormed through the house, upstairs and downstairs, crying out for his sister, hurling furniture from him whenever he happened to come near it, leaving behind him wreckage and shambles. He searched the house from top to bottom, crying for his sister.

But he didn’t once look in the kitchen.

***

It was Mrs. Fielding who phoned for the police. The racket and screaming from next door was just too much to ignore. Mrs. Fielding had never complained to the police about a neighbor in her life, but after the sounds of breakage and yelling had kept on for nearly half an hour, she had to call. It didn’t seem like a complaint any more. It was more like summoning help for a neighbor in trouble, for the good Lord alone knew what was going on over there.

A prowl car came first, arriving fifteen minutes after Mrs. Fielding called. Two patrolmen left the car and walked up to the stoop, pausing there to look and listen. There were no lights on in the house, there was no sound at all from the house. They looked at one another and shrugged.

Mrs. Fielding came across the front lawn to them. “I’m the one who called,” she said. “It stopped about five minutes ago.”

“Anybody come out?” one of the patrolmen asked her.

“No. Not out the front door, anyway. I’ve been watching that.”

“Well,” said the other, “let’s take a look.”

He withdrew a flashlight from his hip pocket and went up onto the porch, the other following him. Mrs. Fielding waited on the walk, looking anxious, hoping she hadn’t done the wrong thing.

The patrolmen stood at the door and rang the bell. They could hear it ring inside the house, but there was no other sound.

One of them went back to the head of the stoop and asked Mrs. Fielding, “Who lives here?”

“Just Paul Dane,” she told them. “All by himself. It’s a tragic family. His mother and father were killed in an automobile accident early in the summer, and his sister committed suicide just three weeks ago.”

“The door’s unlocked,” said the other patrolman.

The first one said to Mrs. Fielding, “Thank you.” He went back to the door and switched on his flashlight. Then he pushed the door open and went in.

The foyer was a mess. The rug had been balled-up in a comer, the hat rack was broken, the little table that had stood there was smashed into kindling. His flashlight beam touched all these things, then he moved forward cautiously to the living room doorway and flashed his light in there.

He almost dropped the flashlight. He had been riding in a prowl car for seven years, most of that time on night duty. He had been under the impression for some time that nothing in the world could ever again reduce him to instinctive terror. He knew that conscious, rational fear of actual danger would stay with him, and rightly so, but animal terror, he had believed, was behind him. He had been wrong.

He stared at Paul Dane and felt the tingling up his back, the raising of hairs on the back of his head, the sudden chill around the heart. He almost dropped the flashlight.

Paul Dane sat cross-legged on the living room floor, surrounded by the wreckage he had created. He sat there and gazed into the beam of the flashlight with bright, wide, merry eyes. His lips were drawn back in a wide, taut, terrible smile. He didn’t move.

The patrolman whispered, “Jesus!”

Paul still didn’t move, nor did he change expression.

When, a while later, two hospital attendants lifted him bodily and carried him out to the ambulance which had been quickly summoned by the police, he still hadn’t changed his expression. They carried him out of his front door and out of his house. Paul kept right on smiling. Just as though it didn’t make any difference.