Mad Season (24 page)

The bereaved woman’s sleeve brushed hers; the woman looked in her eyes, as if for sympathy. But Ruth couldn’t relate. With Vic back, there was life in the house again, the daffodils were in bud. She nodded and plunged down the steps.

“And I’m glad,” she told Colm, coming back to the present, to spring. “Bertha has a war on dandelions, you know. Even pulls mine up, and I like them. All that furry yellow stuff springing up in the grass! We’ll have to make wine. Vitamin C for the cows.”

“Won’t they get drunk?” And then, when she tried to help him down the steps: “I can do it myself. See?” He jumped a step—then flailed his arms and banged into the side of her pickup.

“But I’m worried about what we’ll find in the house.”

“You’re getting paranoid, Ruthie. We’ll have to commit you and Bertha together. You’d give those nurses the runaround.”

“I would.”

She watched him ease his body into the pickup, groan, and rearrange his legs. “You could have helped,” he accused.

Bertha’s doors were locked, front and back. The house was shut up like a tomb, the shades were drawn on the windows. She feasted her eyes, though, on the dandelions, popping up everywhere on the greening lawn.

“What good will it do to break in?” Colm squinted at the shut-up house. “The woman is loony, we know that.”

“I’m convinced some of this is an act. She was in a couple of plays in school, remember?”

“Sure. She played Grandma in
The Sandbox.
Threw sand in people’s eyes.”

“In Community Players,” she went on. “She did one show, small part, she has trouble memorizing lines. But she likes the limelight. Like I said, this could be an act. I’ve known her a long time.”

“I knew her too. The way she hunted me down, she was loony back then. Add a megadose of religion—”

“Enough,” said Ruth, and hushed him.

Bertha was inside, she was watching them, Ruth was sure of it. They had to get to her, make her talk to her lawyer, appear at the hearing. Pete would arrive at the last minute, he had an overnight sales meeting across the lake in Malone.

She didn’t care what Colm thought. Bertha had to account for her actions, admit she was in the wrong. Harold had, hadn’t he? By his suicide? But she didn’t want that for Bertha.

Colm had found an opening: the cellar doors had no lock; they were warped, like their owner. Together they yanked, and the doors screeched open. She followed him down into the basement that smelled of dry rot and mildew. It was crammed with junk: a rusted iron bedpost, boxes and boxes of damp discolored cardboard, a warped pair of cross-country skis, three worn snow tires, a plastic tray of apples, wrapped, rotting. The chaos was unlike Bertha, whose house was usually immaculate, like she was determined to meet her maker with a scrubbed floor, a starched blouse, clean underwear.

Ruth wanted to run back out in the fresh air. Why had she come here? What was she thinking of, anyway?

Colm was on the narrow steps that climbed to the kitchen. He turned at the top. “Locked,” his lips read.

She looked again at the cellar doors, at the apple tree at its entrance; already there were pale rosy buds that would break into the sweetest of spring scents. That very day Carol was to plant apple trees on the edge of her rented meadow. Would sheep eat apple trees? Nibble a bit, maybe.

Overhead the floorboards cracked, a voice squeaked through. “I know you’re there. But you can’t come in my house. I already have a visitor. He won’t want to see you.”

Colm said, “Who won’t? Who’s this visitor?”

“God,” said Bertha. “God’s here.”

“Bertha, let us up,” said Ruth, feeling the old alarm in her chest—was God here to take Bertha away? “We need to talk to you, Bertha. There are things you have to do. Do them for Pete— he’s coming tomorrow. Now let us up.”

There was no answer.

Ruth made a kissing sound in Colm’s ear. He grimaced. But caught on.

“Bertha, it’s me, Colm. I want to talk to you, Bertha. I’m sorry for—for a lot of things. I want to help you now, Bertha. You can let me up.” He glanced back at Ruth. “Just me, Bertha? You said you wanted to see me?”

The silence upstairs was total. Not even a board creaking. Bertha was thinking it over. Ruth held her breath. They had to get the woman out of here, whatever it took.

Colm said, “Unlatch the door, Bertha.”

Bertha said, “All right. But Ruth can’t come. Only you, Colm. God doesn’t want Ruth in here.”

Ruth lifted her arms in surrender. Did Colm look smug? Well, she didn’t want to be here either, she thought. She didn’t want Bertha’s god, a god that stole young boys from their mothers! Her own god was, well, out in the pasture with the cows, wasn’t she?

But when the door opened, and then slammed again after Colm squeezed through, she panicked. It was like the walls were closing in on her, any minute they’d crush her into a mash of blood and dust.

Behind her something moved in a pile of old newspapers. A rat?

She hammered on the door, she wouldn’t be left behind. “Colm! Bertha! Let me up, dammit! Let me in!”

The bolt slammed.

* * * *

Colm was face to face with a woman he’d never seen. The outer trappings maybe, the short pearlike body, the dyed orangy hair, though it was hardly groomed now. He could see the gray where the dye had worn away with washing.

But it was the face he was least prepared for, something out of myth—Medusa came to mind, her snaky hair. Would she turn him to stone? She grabbed his lapels, a cigarette in her fingers; any minute he’d be on fire.

“I know you,” she said. “I know your kind. Love them and then stamp on them.”

“Bertha, I never—”

“Don’t tell me. I have eyes. I have ears. I know how you all laughed at me in school, I know what you and that woman—”

“Ruth?” he said, he had to particularize, keep this dialogue grounded.

“Ruth,” she said, crushing the cigarette into a saucer. “You’ve been scheming against me, you two. Trying to prove I set fires.”

“Ruth’s was electrical, Bertha. Nobody set it. We know it wasn’t you. Elder’s was set, though. Asher’s, maybe Charlebois.” He watched her closely. He was serious about those “strike anywhere” matches. But who put them there?

That stopped her a minute, she stumbled back against a chair; it tipped, he righted it,

then moved off. For one thing, Bertha smelled—not of scent, but unwashed body. He could think of several figures of comparison.

“Charlebois,” she said. “That French Canadian.”

He was almost relieved to hear it, the old prejudice, she was sounding like Bertha again. He tried to make small talk, told about Marie moving back with her father.

She looked up at him, coy. “How do you know it wasn’t Harold took Victor?” she said. “He’s a Polack, you know that!” She corrected herself. “Was.”

“Come on, Bertha, we know it was you. Ruth talked to Pete. He confirmed it, his lady friend. We have to face things. They’ll go light on you if you own up.”

“Anyone could say she was me! It could’ve been Marie.” Her eyes narrowed at him, sly: the schoolgirl who’d followed into the locker room to borrow a quarter for a soda, hoping he’d have one with her. And never gave up when he wouldn’t.

“Bertha.” He looked in her eyes. She looked away, hurt. “When Vic got away from those guys—and he was damn lucky—he walked half the way. Hitchhiked the rest. He was desperate to get here. Anything could have happened to him, Bertha, a young kid like that. Did you think it through, what you did? Stealing him away? Leaving Ruth with that worry?”

He was leaning into her, never mind the smell. She had to realize something, Ruth was right.

Bertha was right, too, so she thought. She gazed down at her fingernails, buffed them, an old habit. Then she got up slowly, walked into the dining room. He followed her there. Last night’s supper was still on the table, something half eaten, spilled on the lace tablecloth. A nub of a candle was smoldering in a centerpiece of paper roses. He went to blow it out, and she shoved him back.

Whoa! He was unprepared for that. The woman had muscle!

“Don’t come near me,” she said, her back hunched against a window. “I know what you are. You’re a hypocrite.”

“Bertha,” he said, dropping into a highback chair. “Let’s talk a minute. About you. About what will happen to you. Ruth is concerned about you, Bertha.”

Bertha laughed.

“It’s true, believe me. Now that Vic’s back, she’s trying to understand what made you do it.” He’d be patient, try to be. He wanted to be done with this. “You were concerned, weren’t you, about Vic’s safety? That’s why you did it?”

Bertha’s tongue licked her upper lip, slowly came to rest in the corner of her mouth. “Yes. Why else do you think I did it?”

He noted the “I.” “You have to be at that hearing tomorrow, Bertha. If you don’t come, they’ll think you’re not sorry.”

She got up, he could see the vertebrae stiffen, straighten, one by one. “I’m not sorry,” she said, pacing her words. “What am I sorry about? I tried to save him! I almost did. You have to understand, Colm,” she said, sounding reasonable now. “He was in danger, he’d be the next victim. If you hadn’t interfered, he’d be safe now with Peter. It was that woman Pete took up with he ran away from.”

“Safe from what, Bertha? We know who killed Belle Larocque. Safe from whom? People who can’t face themselves, accept others as they are? Use God as a scapegoat?”

She was hunched over like she had a bellyache. There was something in the curve of her shoulder that looked vulnerable, soft. He got up, put his hand there.

For a minute she was still, crying softly now.

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow,” he said. “You can tell your story straight. You have a counselor, but you have to let him see you. Go to the hearing.”

“I can’t!” She jerked away from him, dashed out of the room and up the stairs. He saw there were holes in the backs of her purple socks.

He leaned his elbows on the banister. “Bertha, come down this goddamn minute. Quit this charade.” It was getting to be too much. He thought of Ruth waiting, probably pissed, in the basement. “Bertha? Be reasonable, Bertha!”

There was no answer, though he stood for ten minutes, and he decided to give up. So she didn’t come to the hearing. They’d get her one way or another, wouldn’t they? If the police couldn’t do it, Pete would come get her, she was his sister. In a way Pete was implicated, wasn’t he? It was still possible he had planted the idea in her head.

He went back to the kitchen, saw a mound of cookies there, dozens and dozens of cookies he hadn’t noticed when he first walked in. That’s what she’d been doing since she’d locked herself in here—baking cookies. Pretty soon she’d run out of ingredients, then she’d have to come out of the house. He took a bite of one, spit it out. What if it was laced with arsenic?

Stupid thought. The woman wasn’t a murderer, not overtly, anyway. But he threw it in the trash, unlocked the cellar door, and Ruth literally fell in. He grabbed an elbow.

“She’s upstairs,” he told her. “I’m not going up after her. Suppose she gets me on a bed.”

“It’d serve you right,” she said. “Okay, it’s my turn now. I’ve got an idea.” She headed back down the cellar steps.

“Jeez, Ruth, where you going? It’s no use, she’s probably locked herself in.”

But she was running around back to the bedroom window. “There’s a big maple there. If we could surprise her . . ..”

He followed, what else could he do? She was squinting at a maple, one of its limbs reached within a foot of an upstairs window, open on the crack. “I practically lived in trees as a kid,” she said. “I could make this one, easy.”

He’d like to offer, but he had this bad ankle. And there was his acrophobia. Heights made him want to throw up, dash himself into whatever lay below.

Anyway, she was already heaving herself up in the tree. She looked like a nymph, a bunch of new leaves in her tangled hair, her blue-jeaned legs kicking toward a higher limb. Even watching her made him woozy, so he focused on the window. Something was happening up there, he wasn’t sure what. He watched, ready to warn her. It was like the window was misting with rain, turning darker, clouding up. Was Bertha coming out? Ready to knock Ruth down with a chair?

Then he saw what it was. “For chrissake, Ruth, I see smoke!”

“What?”

“Her window. It’s smoke coming out of there. Look.”

“Oh,” she said, and swung up on the next limb.

“Come down, Ruth, you dumbbell!” he shouted. “You want to kill yourself?”

He went back in the house to call the fire shed, he was taking no chances. Twisted his one good ankle on a root but, oh hell. When he hung up he looked through the kitchen window for Ruth. She wasn’t in the tree. He stumbled back around the house, Bertha’s window was wide open, Ruth was inside. Jeez!

There was no way out now but to climb up himself. That damned Ruth! What had got into her, anyway? She used to have sense. He heaved himself up, he was so lightheaded he forgot to be sick. He crawled out on the branch by the window. He was dragging a dead limb with him, or was it the bum ankle?

And froze. “Ruth,” he called. “They’re coming. I can hear the sirens. Get out of there, Ruth. Ruth, I can’t—”

He’d lost his footing: hung, helpless, his hands ripped. He imagined what it was like, the Chinese tortures, hanging by one’s hands. Chinese, hell, he thought, the IRA did it, he’d heard of that, his own people. He measured the ground with his eyes—two stories down. The branch could crack and he’d be in the hospital for a month, a year. He could be paralyzed for life.

“Ruth!” he cried.

The beeper went off in his ear. “Answer me, Ruth!”

* * * *

She’d set the curtain on fire with a cigarette, she was still waving it in her hand. “Idiot,” Ruth shouted. She wrenched down the curtains while Bertha babbled on about the Day of Judgment.

“You’d better get to yours,” Ruth warned, raced into the bathroom, flung the smoldering curtain in the tub, turned on the shower. She stuck her arm under, she’d singed one wrist, it stung like a hundred bees.

“Bertha, you madwoman,” she yelled and ran back in the bedroom with a glass of water.