The Innocent (20 page)

Charles continued to stare at the ceiling.

She pressed his hand against her cheek. It was becoming warm again. “Here I am, darling.” She had neglected to pick up a bottle of Drisdol at the drugstore, but Charles wouldn't check up because it didn't matter to him what she had gone for; she had left him, that was her crime. There could be no ameliorating circumstances for Charles. It didn't matter why she went; now she would fix it up. She would kiss the hurt place and make it better. Marjorie kissed Charles' hand.

He turned his head.

Marjorie saw that Charles' eyes were glazed. He might almost have been crying, “Oh, my darling, was it that bad?”

“Margie, Margie—Oh, Jesus, Oh, Jesus! I told you I go to pieces when I need you and you're not with me. You know how I am. I never lied to you about that!”

He was putting some new unknown responsibility on her. Never mind, she could take it. Now that she knew Charles had loved her all along, she could take anything. “I know,” she whispered. “Of course I know how you are, dear. And you know
what
you are, Charles, darling? You're hungry. And you know what I am? A very, very bad wife. It's after seven and I haven't telephoned the butcher or the baker. I've completely neglected to order any dinner, but we'll use what we find around and we'll make out. Don't worry, I'll fix us something fine in a jiffy.”

Now his hand wasn't limp. It grasped hers imploringly; now his head wasn't turned away. He raised himself on his other arm and moved his face close to hers. “Tell me you love me.”

“I love you, you dope. Aren't you hungry, Charles?”

“More than anything? Anything?”

“More than anything, anything. Now, if you'll release me, sir, If you'll unhand me, sir!”

“Must you?”

“Unless you want to starve. Oh, darling, do you love me enough to starve for me?”

“I love you enough for anything.”

She heard his teeth grind together. “More than your stomach? Well, well.” Marjorie stood up and settled her rumpled skirt. As she turned, Marjorie saw the four-ounce feeding bottle on the window sill. With a pang she realized that she had forgotten little Pete's dinner, too. For the first time since Dr. Larker had showed him to her, so ugly, so frail, wrapped in the gray cotton hospital blanket, she had forgotten little Pete's feeding. But Charles hadn't forgotten to feed him, or they would have heard from him long before this. He'd be mewling his head off up there. “How much formula did Pete take, Charles? Not much from the looks of that bottle, I'd say!”

Charles jumped up from the couch and stood between Marjorie and the bottle.

His face looked so comical that Marjorie almost laughed aloud at it. “Was feeding him so bad? What is it, dear, did he throw up on you?” Charles' hands were making washing motions. He was washing one hand with the other. His face still looked comically upset. “Don't take it so hard. All babies do that. You certainly don't take naturally to nursemaiding, do you, dear, Never mind, you're just not the type.” She thought of Dr. Newhouse and his two motherless sons. Probably Dr. Newhouse could manage the care and feeding of those two with one hand tied behind his back, but Dr. Newhouse was a physician and Charles wasn't. Dr. Newhouse was Lincoln and Charles was Apollo. Hollow Apollo. Indeed! Filled with love for her! Lincoln had two sons, like Dr. Newhouse. Tad and Billy. Was it Billy? One of his sons died as a very young boy. Tad? Poor Lincoln. Poor Dr. Newhouse “You needn't stand there looking so sick to your stomach, darling. I won't make a nursemaid of you again. This was the first and last time.”

“The first and last time,” Charles repeated. “Marjorie, Marjorie!”

There were tears in his eyes. His face didn't look comical at all. Whatever it was, Marjorie told herself, she would deal with it later. She was tired now; there would be plenty of time to comfort whatever it was later, after dinner, when she had some food in her. Except for breakfast she hadn't had a thing to eat all day. It had been impossible to eat a bite of lunch because she had been uncomfortable about that girl. She would worry about that girl later, too. Bending, she caught sight of the bottle behind Charles. “Why, that bottle looks absolutely untouched, Charles. Didn't you try little Pete with it again after he upchucked?”

Charles' face puckered still more. It seemed to Marjorie that he shook his head but she wasn't sure. “You didn't?”

He said, “I did. I tried.”

“And he wouldn't touch any? And he went right to sleep on an empty tummy? That's odd. I'll just run up,” she said. “You open a can of whatever you like for me while I'm gone, will you, dear?”

“Don't go. Look, he's quiet. You'll disturb him.”

“I won't. I'll just look in, that's all.”

“Now we have a little time to be together and you want to run away again.”

“Well. All right, darling, you tell me. Didn't he seem anxious to eat at all?”

Charles cleared his throat. “Just took a couple of sucks on the thing.”

“And then he vomited and wouldn't try again?”

“I gave it the bottle again. The way you said, Margie. Not lying down, sitting up so it wouldn't choke the way you said.”

It seemed to Margie that he was speaking with such emphatic righteousness, he had done everything right but little Pete simply hadn't co-operated. She had to smile at him. “Did he cry?”

“No. No. He was sleepy.”

Marjorie giggled. “How did you know that? Did he tell you he was sleepy?”

Charles frowned. “He yawned.”

“Petey yawned?”

“So I put it in the bed.”

“Put
him
in his crib, dear.”

“I put him in his crib. I did exactly what you told me to, O.K.?”

“Just one more thing, darling, did you cover him carefully?”

“Forget about that now, Margie. Look, Margie, you just came back and—forget about everything but me! Tell me you'll never leave me again.”

“I won't, darling. But I can't understand his falling asleep on an empty tummy. It doesn't sound right, does it? I'll just run up.” He made a frantic gesture with his hand. She caught the hand and kissed it. “This isn't leaving you. Just for a sec, that's not going away.”

“That's the truth, isn't it, Margie? Nothing will take you away again.”

“Nothing.”

“Say it.” He pulled his hand free and held her tightly. “Say it.”

“Nothing will take me away.” He kissed her, he pressed his lips hard on hers. Her eyes closed but in their dropping caught sight of the white flash of milk on the window sill. She turned her head away from Charles. “In a minute, darling. Back in a minute.” Since he made no move to get out of her way, she walked around him toward the stairs and heard him moving after her. She ran up the stairs and, as usual, paused at the entrance to the study, at the place where she always stopped to hear little Pete's breathing. The only sound she could hear was Charles' feet on the stairs. She waited until he reached her and listened again. She still couldn't hear Petey.

Marjorie ran through the study to the bedroom. Charles followed her as far as the doorway, then he stopped.

There was no disarray in the room or around little Pete. He was lying with his face pressed into the mattress as neatly at Marjorie left him; the blanket was tucked in as tidily, only more tightly, only too tightly, only so tightly that he could not have managed to turn his head to get air into his tiny lungs, even though he struggled his feeble best.

“O.K?” Charles called from the doorway. “Sleeping?”

She stared at the crib. The movement of her own breast, up and down, up and down, was tumultuous, mountain high. Petey's tidy blankets were stiff, blankets of ice.

“What's wrong?” Charles asked. “What's the trouble? What's wrong?”

Marjorie tore the tidy ice blankets lose. The touch made her finger tips tingle.

“Why are you doing that, Margie? Won't he catch cold?”

Ice. Ice. Ice. But Charles wasn't ice. She could see that his face was red and hot.

“What's wrong?” He left the doorway reluctantly and stood beside her next to the crib. Charles was perspiring in a pattern. There was a triangle of perspiration on his forehead with the narrow point between his eyelids. There was a triangle on his upper lip and one on his chin. They were quite distinct. The point of the triangle above his mouth dripped on to his lip. Charles licked his lip suddenly, as if the sweat were bitter. His hand reached out to touch, drew back, his throat swelled as he forced his hand to touch again. “God!” he said. “Margie! Margie!”

She slapped his hand away and lifted the baby. It seemed to Marjorie as she held her son's body in her arms that little Pete was larger and heavier, more robust in death, closer to Dr. Newhouse's sturdy child than he had ever been before. Marjorie turned and Charles moved backward. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, as if he had been standing there a long time and was tired of it. Marjorie wiped little Pete's face off with the bottom of his flannel nightdress and Charles stood there and watched and changed feet. Marjorie put little Pete back in his crib, and Charles watched that too.

“Margie, tell me—is it—”

She whispered, “He's dead.” She heard herself sigh.

“It was asleep when I left it, Margie. I told you that. It wouldn't eat. Maybe it was sick.”

“He wasn't sick,” she said. “No.”

“It didn't seem sick, of course. As I told you downstairs, it just seemed sleepy, but maybe—”

At first she took the infant's arms and laid them outside the covers as she had always done, as a precaution against the bedcovers creeping up over his nose and mouth and suffocating him. Then she put his hands down at his sides and pulled the small white blanket over his head. And now he was very small. He hardly raised the sheet at all.

He really was very small, Marjorie thought, looking at the sheet. She said, “He really was very small.”

“Puny,” Charles agreed with terrible eagerness. “Any other kid could take—things, couldn't it, Margie? Because I did what you told me, that's all.”

Marjorie stopped looking at the crib and looked at Charles.

“I guess I did it too tight, is that it? Margie, I don't know how to take care of it. You should have warned me. I mean, if it wasn't sick or something, it was an accident, you know that. An accident,” he repeated, his eyes bearing down on her.

She said, “An accident?”

“Why—you didn't think—” His voice was harsh with spurious horror. “Margie, you listen to me. Don't look like that! It was an accident. I was only trying to be careful and I overdid it. I can't help it if it turned over on its face!”

She said wearily, “Petey couldn't turn over on his face.”

“He couldn't? You mean he couldn't?” The triangles of sweat has reappeared, the pinpoints glistened.

“He couldn't turn over.”

“Maybe I turned him over then. I didn't know I shouldn't. You didn't tell me not to!”

“Not to press his face into the sheet? Not to tuck the covers in as tight as a winding sheet, a shroud?”

“Don't!” he said, holding on to the door. “Don't! Margie, you can't think—I didn't, that's all! Margie, darling, you can't think I—” Then he met her eyes. “But I didn't mean to. I didn't. When you left, I didn't mean to. It just happened. You shouldn't have left me. I begged you not to leave me. I'm on my ear. I've got a lot on my mind. You shouldn't have left me when I told you not to.” He got down on his knees.

“No. I shouldn't have left you. No. No. No, I shouldn't have left you.” He clasped her around the knees. Dr. Newhouse's little boys held him like that. They almost knocked Dr. Newhouse over, but you couldn't blame a child. “Don't blame Charlie,” Dr. Newhouse said. Margie whispered. “Get up, get up, please.”

“I went nuts. It seemed to me that he was always coming between us. I needed you, and you left me because of him. You shouldn't have left me.”

“I shouldn't have left you.”

“You understand me, Margie, don't you?”

“I shouldn't have left you.”

“It isn't the way it looks. I can see how it looks. I can see that.” He got up from his knees, clumsily, rocking a little as if the ground were unsteady. “Don't look at me that way, Margie. Forgive me. Forgive me!”

She nodded.

“Say it, Margie. I've got to hear you say it. I'll go nuts if you don't say it.”

“Yes.” She could talk.

“Say, ‘I forgive you.'”

“I forgive you.”

“You're not angry?”

Angry? What was angry? “I'm not angry.”

“About that, I mean.”

“I'm not angry about that.” It was quite easy to talk, after all. She could talk. She could breathe. The breath wound around the terrible constriction in her chest. She would become accustomed to it and breathe quite easily after a while.

“Margie, prove you're not angry. Prove it to me. Prove you really love me. Call Dr. Larker and tell him it died.”

“He
died!
He
died!” Why was she angry because he kept calling little Pete “it” and not angry because he killed him?

“Tell Dr. Larker he just died, that's the best thing. You left him, see? You had to go out to get those drops, didn't you? He was alive when you left, see? I wasn't here. He did it to himself while you were gone. It all works out. Dr. Larker won't be too surprised because he never expected it to live—expected
him
to live, Margie. You know that. He'll sign the death certificate without any fuss if you tell him that when you came back, you found him like that. He'll believe it if you tell him, and he never expected it to live anyhow.”

She put her hand up to her mouth and Charles pulled it down.