Needful Things (23 page)

Pete took a deep breath, lowered his emotional blast-shield, and asked her what had happened with the Longman woman.

“She doesn't open until noon, and by then I just didn't feel so angry,” Wilma said. “I went up there to have it out with her just the same, though—I'd promised myself I was going to, after all. And do you know, she offered me a glass of sherry and said she wanted to give me my money back!”

“Wow! Great!” Pete had said, relieved and gladdened . . . and that had been the end of
l'affaire
Henrietta. He had spent days waiting for Wilma's rage to return, but it hadn't—at least not aimed in that direction.

He had considered suggesting that Wilma go to Dr. Van Allen and obtain a tranquilizer prescription of her own, but discarded the idea after long and careful consideration. Wilma would blow him out of the water—maybe right into orbit—if he suggested that she
TAKE DRUGS. TAKING DRUGS
was for junkies, and tranquilizers were for weak-sister junkies.
She
would face life on life's terms,
thank you very much. And besides, Pete concluded reluctantly, the truth was too plain to deny: Wilma
liked
being mad. Wilma in a red rage was Wilma fulfilled, Wilma imbued with high purpose.

And he loved her—just as the natives of that hypothetical tropic isle undoubtedly love their Great God Thunder Mountain. His awe and dread actually enhanced his love; she was
WILMA
, a force unto herself, and he attempted to deflect her from her course only when he was afraid she might injure herself . . . which, through the mystic transubstantiations of love, would also injure him.

He had slipped her the Xanax on just three occasions since then. The third—and the scariest by far—was The Night of the Muddy Sheets. He had been frantic to get her to take a cup of tea, and when she at last consented to drink one (after her short but extremely satisfactory dialogue with Crazy Nettie Cobb), he brewed it strong and dropped in not one Xanax but two. He was greatly relieved at how much her thermostat had dropped the next morning.

These were the things that Wilma Jerzyck, confident in her power over her husband's mind, did not know; they were also the things which kept Wilma from simply driving her Yugo through Nettie's door and snatching her bald-headed (or trying to) on Friday morning.

Not that Wilma had forgotten Nettie, or forgiven her, or come to entertain the slightest doubt as to who had vandalized her bed-linen; no medicine on earth would have done those things.

Shortly after Pete left for work, Wilma got into her car and cruised slowly down Willow Street (plastered to the back bumper of the little yellow Yugo was a bumper sticker which told the world
IF YOU DON'T LIKE MY DRIVING DIAL 1-800-EAT-SHIT
). She turned right, onto Ford Street, and slowed to a crawl as she approached Nettie Cobb's neat little house. She thought she saw one
of the curtains twitch, and that was a good start . . . but only a start.

She went around the block (passing the Rusk home on Pond Street without a glance), past her own home on Willow, and around to Ford Street for the second time. This time she honked the Yugo's horn twice as she approached Nettie's house and then parked out front with the engine idling.

The curtain twitched again. No mistake this time. The woman was peering out at her. Wilma thought of her behind the curtain, trembling with guilt and terror, and found she enjoyed the image even more than she enjoyed the one she had gone to bed with—the one where she was twisting the crazy bitch's noodle until it spun like that little girl's head in
The Exorcist.

“Peekaboo, I see you,” she said grimly as the curtain fell back in place. “Don't think I don't.”

She circled the block again and stopped in front of Nettie's a second time, honking the horn to notify her prey of her arrival. This time she sat out front for almost five minutes. The curtain twitched twice. At last she drove on again, satisfied.

Crazy broad will spend the rest of the day looking for me,
she thought as she parked in her own driveway and got out.
She'll be afraid to set foot out of her door.

Wilma went inside, light of foot and heart, and plunked down on the sofa with a catalogue. Soon she was happily ordering three new sets of sheets—white, yellow, and paisley.

Raider sat in the middle of the living-room carpet, looking at his mistress. At last he whined uneasily, as if to remind Nettie that this was a working day and she was already half an hour late. Today was the day she was supposed to vacuum the upstairs at Polly's, and the telephone man was coming with the new phones, the ones with the great big touch-tone pads. They were supposed to be easier for people who had the arthritis so terrible, like Polly did, to use.

But how could she go out?

That crazy Polish woman was out there someplace, cruising around in her little car.

Nettie sat in her chair, holding her lampshade in her lap. She had been holding it in her lap ever since the crazy Polish woman had driven past her house the first time. Then she had come again, parking and honking her horn. When she left, Nettie thought it might be over, but no—the woman had come back yet a third time. Nettie had been sure the crazy Polish woman would try to come in. She had sat in her chair, hugging the lampshade with one arm and Raider with the other, wondering what she would do when and if the crazy Polish woman did try—how she would defend herself. She didn't know.

At last she had mustered enough courage to take another peek out the window, and the crazy Polish woman had been gone. Her first feeling of relief had been superseded by dread. She was afraid that the crazy Polish woman was patrolling the streets, waiting for her to come out; she was even more afraid that the crazy Polish woman would come here after she was gone.

That she would break in and see her beautiful lampshade and shatter it to a thousand fragments on the floor.

Raider whined again.

“I know,” she said in a voice which was almost a groan. “I
know”

She had to leave. She had a responsibility, and she knew what it was and to whom she owed it. Polly Chalmers had been good to her. It had been Polly who wrote the recommendation that had gotten her out of Juniper Hill for good, and it had been Polly who had co-signed for her home loan at the bank. If not for Polly, whose father had been
her
father's best friend, she would still be living in a rented room on the other side of the Tin Bridge.

But what if she left and the crazy Polish woman came back?

Raider couldn't protect her lampshade; he was brave, but he was just a little dog. The crazy Polish woman might hurt him if he tried to stop her. Nettie felt her mind, caught in the vise of this horrible dilemma, beginning to slip. She groaned again.

And suddenly, mercifully, an idea occurred to her.

She got up, still cradling the lampshade in her arms, and crossed the living room, which was very gloomy with the shades drawn. She walked through the kitchen and opened the door in its far corner. There was a shed tacked onto this end of the house. The shadows of the woodpile and a great many stored objects bulked in the gloom.

A single lightbulb hung down from the ceiling on a cord. There was no switch or chain; you turned it on by screwing it firmly into its socket. She reached for this . . . then hesitated. If the crazy Polish woman was lurking in the back yard, she would
see
the light go on. And if she saw the light go on, she would know exactly where to look for Nettie's carnival glass lampshade, wouldn't she?

“Oh no, you don't get me that easy,” she said under her breath, feeling her way past her mother's armoire and her mother's old Dutch bookcase to the woodpile. “Oh no you don't, Wilma Jerzyck. I'm not
stupid,
you know. I'm warning you of that.”

Holding the lampshade against her belly with her left hand, Nettie used her right to pull down the tangle of old, dirty cobwebs in front of the shed's single window. Then she peered out into the back yard, her eyes jerking brightly from one spot to another. She remained so for almost a minute. Nothing in the back yard moved. Once she thought she saw the crazy Polish woman crouching in the far left corner of the yard, but closer study convinced her it was only the shade of the oak at the back of the Fearons' yard. The tree's lower branches overhung her own yard. They were moving a little in the wind, and that was why the patch of shade back there had looked like a crazy woman (a crazy
Polish
woman, to be exact) for a second.

Raider whined from behind her. She looked around and saw him standing in the shed door, a black silhouette with his head cocked.

“I know,” she said. “I know, boy—but we're going to fool her. She thinks I'm stupid. Well, I can teach her better news than that.”

She felt her way back. Her eyes were adjusting to the gloom and she decided she would not need to screw in the lightbulb after all. She stood on tiptoe and felt along the top of the armoire until her fingers encountered the key which locked and unlocked the long cupboard on the
left-hand side. The key which worked on the drawers had been missing for years, but that was all right—Nettie had the one she needed.

She opened the long cupboard and deposited the carnival glass lampshade inside, amid the dust bunnies and mouse-turds.

“It deserves to be in a better place and I know it,” she said softly to Raider. “But it's
safe,
and that's the important thing.”

She put the key back in the lock, turned it, then tried the cupboard door. It was tight, tight as a tick, and she felt suddenly as if a huge boulder had rolled off her heart. She tried the cupboard door again, nodded briskly, and slipped the key into the pocket of her housedress. When she got to Polly's house, she would put it on a piece of string and hang it around her neck. She would do it first thing.

“There!” she told Raider, who had begun wagging his tail. Perhaps he sensed that the crisis was past.
“That's
taken care of, big boy, and I must get to work! I'm late!”

As she was slipping into her coat, the telephone began to ring. Nettie took two steps toward it and then stopped.

Raider uttered his single, severe bark and looked at her. Don't you know what you're supposed to do when the telephone rings? his eyes asked her. Even I know that, and I'm only the
dog.

“I won't,” Nettie said.

I know what you did, you crazy bitch, I know what you did, I know what you did, and I . . . am going to . . .
GET
you!

“I won't answer it. I'm going to work.
She's
the one who's crazy, not me. I never did a
thing
to her! Not one solitary
thing!”

Raider barked agreement.

The telephone stopped ringing.

Nettie relaxed a little . . . but her heart was still pounding hard.

“You be a good boy,” she told Raider, stroking him. “I'll be back late, because I'm going in late. But I love you, and if you remember that, you will be a good doggy all day long.”

This was a going-to-work incantation which Raider
knew well, and he wagged his tail. Nettie opened the front door and peered both ways before stepping out. She had a bad moment when she saw a bright flash of yellow, but it wasn't the crazy Polish woman's car; the Pollard boy had left his Fisher-Price tricycle out on the sidewalk, that was all.

Nettie used her housekey to lock the door behind her, then walked around to the rear of the house to make sure the shed door was locked. It was. She set off for Polly's house, her purse over her arm and her eyes searching for the crazy Polish woman's car (she was trying to decide if she should hide behind a hedge or simply stand her ground if she saw it). She was almost to the end of the block when it came to her that she had not checked the front door as carefully as she should have done. She glanced anxiously at her watch and then retraced her steps. She checked the front door. It was locked tight. Nettie sighed with relief, and then decided she ought to check the lock on the woodshed door, too, just to be safe.

“Better safe than sorry,” she muttered under her breath, and went around to the back of the house.

Her hand froze in the act of pulling on the handle of the woodshed door.

Inside, the telephone was ringing again.

“She's crazy,” Nettie moaned. “I didn't do
anything!”

The shed door was locked, but she stood there until the telephone fell silent. Then she set sail for work again with her purse hanging over her arm.

This time she had gone almost two blocks before the conviction that she still might not have locked the front door recurred, gnawing at her. She knew she
had,
but she was afraid she
hadn't.

She stood by the blue U.S. mailbox at the corner of Ford and Deaconess Way, indecisive. She had almost made up her mind to push on when she saw a yellow car drift through the intersection a block down. It wasn't the crazy Polish woman's car, it was a Ford, but she thought it
might be an omen. She walked rapidly back to her house and checked both doors again. Locked. She got to the end of her walk before it occurred to her that she ought to double-check the cupboard door of the armoire as well, and make sure it was also locked.

She knew that it
was,
but she was afraid that it
wasn't.

She unlocked the front door and went inside. Raider jumped up on her, tail wagging wildly, and she petted him for a moment—but only a moment. She had to close the front door, because the crazy Polish woman might come by anytime. Anytime at all.

She slammed it, turned the thumb-bolt, and went back out to the woodshed. The cupboard door was locked, of course. She went back into the house and stood in the kitchen for a minute. Already she was beginning to worry, beginning to think she had made a mistake and the cupboard door really
wasn't
locked. Maybe she hadn't tugged on the pull hard enough to be really absolutely one hundred per cent sure. It might only be stuck.