The Innocent (22 page)

Smothered it. Smothered was such a big word, such a powerful word for what Charles had had to do, simply to turn Petey over, pull the blankets tight. Oh God, she thought, oh God.

“It wouldn't be hard to convince anyone that you cracked up and did it. Nobody would suspect me. Everyone knows that you were the one who took care of it and got up at night for it and waited on it twenty-four hours a day. Such devotion! Dr. Larker told me it was too much for you; he'll tell them. You cracked up. In a moment of temporary insanity you did it to him.”

Marjorie whispered, “Charles, Charles!”

He lifted his head sharply, as though he were lost and had heard a familiar voice. His face fell; he whimpered, “Oh, Margie—” but seeing her in the chair, bound there by his hands, he shook his head. He went back to his plot. “You do it to him, but then you can't take what you did. Your conscience gets after you. You can't take it. So you commit suicide.”

“Charles, that's crazy! Nobody would believe it, Charles.” He was going to kill her. She pulled against the strips of sheet and they cut into her, making the last time she said “Charles” a scream.

“None of that! It won't do any good.”

“But what you're planning won't do any good, either. You'll be found out. It's crazy.”

“No, it's not crazy, believe me, it's not crazy at all. Now you've shown me how much you really care for me, it would be crazy to let you live, knowing what you know. Wouldn't it, Margie? Wouldn't it?” He seemed to be waiting in the old way for her to tell him, and when she didn't answer he had to look at her again to remember that he couldn't put this question to her. He tested a strip of linen more to prove that is was there and he had put it there than to see whether it would hold. “Letting you live would be nuts, all right. Letting you go so you can call that doctor the way you tried to, so you can tell him about Claire. So he'll get me. Crazy? I'm crazy like a fox!”

She began to cry. “Charles, it's Margie. It's Margie, Charles.”

But she wasn't Margie. Margie had meant Mother as Aunt Alice had meant Mother, as Claire had meant Mother until she threatened him. Once Claire made those threats, she was no longer Claire because she was no longer Mother. A mother never made threats. Claire was his enemy because all the world except his mother had always been Charles' enemy. So he killed her. When Margie threatened Charles' security, she was no longer a mother, no longer Margie. Margie became an enemy who held his life in her hands. Such an enemy must be silenced. Marjorie was Charles' enemy now; he would have to kill her.

Marjorie said, “I wouldn't tell them, Charles. I promise you I wouldn't tell them. I wouldn't let them hurt you, Charles.”

“Wouldn't you?” His mouth began to tremble because she sounded like a mother and he needed one so badly. “How could you do this to me?” he asked. “After all we've been to one another, how could you want to call that doctor? Now I can't trust you any more. I can't trust you, don't you see that? It's your own fault. All you had to do was love me enough. You said you loved me enough, you kept saying it, but it was words, words. I can't trust you.”

“Why not? What did I do, Charles?”

“That girl. As if you don't know! You were going to leave me if I didn't let you call about that girl!”

He actually looked horrified at what Marjorie had proposed doing. And hadn't Marjorie herself been horrified at that Italian mother who turned her child over to the police? Hadn't Marjorie cried out that only an unnatural mother could do that? Charles believed Marjorie was unnatural. It was quite easy, once you understood Charles. He hadn't gone mad. He was still Charles. It was Marjorie who had changed.

It was then that the doorbell rang downstairs.

Charles said, “They're coming! You told them!” He was quite pale. With the color drained, spots were visible on his skin, a type of ghostly freckles and tiny scars where long ago he had cut himself. The red of his lips was faded. A vein bulged in his forehead, very blue, almost black. His eyes jumped, his left shoulder twitched. Charles was bent over, in an unconscious effort to make himself smaller, to hide.

Until then Charles had been the calm one. Through all the months it was Marjorie who had nightmares, Marjorie who had been on edge, and that was because until now Charles had trusted Mother-Marjorie. Until now he believed he was in good hands, that he needn't trouble, that he could sleep peacefully. Marjorie could see now what she had done to Charles. She understood him then. “Don't be frightened. I've told no one, Charles.”

The doorbell rang again, stubbornly.

“It's not anyone, Charles. I mean, it will be about magazines or subscriptions, something like that.”

“Shut up.” He jiggled his finger in his ear as if the doorbell noise was an insect that had crept into his ear.

Whoever was down there was leaning on the bell. “You better answer it, Charles.”

“You think I'm a dope, don't you? I go down and you yell your head off and start trouble for me.”

“I won't. I wouldn't start trouble, Charles. Charles, I wouldn't make trouble for you.”

“I better go down,” Charles said. “Even if it is about magazines, I better go down. Might think something was wrong if I didn't. Busybodies. Might be someone who knows that you're always here on account of it. Lots of people know that we're stuck here night after night. Better go down. I can get rid of whoever it was.”

He was quite capable of getting rid of whoever it was, Marjorie thought. He was quite capable of anything now. She was not at all surprised when he gagged her, using one of little Pete's soft undershirts to stuff into her mouth, and then his handkerchief to keep it in place. It was the same soiled handkerchief Marjorie had scolded him for having used. But Charles didn't remember that as he knotted it firmly at the back of her head. He remembered nothing about her any more. She wasn't Margie; she was the enemy.

When your hands touched anyone who was your enemy, they were robbed of all humane qualities; they were efficient and unfeeling.

Marjorie wondered rather casually who was ringing the bell so persistently—casually because it didn't seriously concern her. She wondered who it was without undue concern or emotion, because there wasn't a chance in a million that whoever it was could save her now. If it was, as she had suggested, about magazines, about the butcher, the baker, or the lady next door, Charles would get rid of them. Once the handyman had come up because there was a leak in the plumbing. She had told the handyman to come back later because Petey was asleep. The handyman had gone away and come back later. Charles would get rid of whoever it was.

Of course the police—but it wouldn't be the police because she hadn't gone to the police. It wouldn't be that doctor from Bellevue because he would have no reason to come here, because he would be down in that ward watching Edna. Marjorie prayed he would watch her. She prayed for forgiveness for what she had done to Edna and little Pete. If it were Eve, which was most unlikely, Charles was capable of handling her now. Charles would tell Eve that Marjorie was asleep or ill or out. No, the new, cunning Charles would say that she was so run down, so nervy, so jittery from doing too much for Pete that he had insisted she take one evening off and go to a movie. That would build up the picture of temporary insanity he intended to present. But if Eve believed that Marjorie was at the movies and only Charles home and then heard later about little Pete, wouldn't she suspect Charles?

Charles could say the movies didn't do Marjorie any good. She had come home, he could say, in a worse state than when she left. Little Pete was fretful when she got home; he had cried from the moment Marjorie came home until the moment she went out of her mind and killed him. Charles would say he had tried to get Marjorie to take it easy. He would look at Eve, his voice would break. Eve would look at him and she would believe him. “I told her to keep the nurse on,” Charles would say. This was true, so of course Eve would believe it. Charles' eyes would fill with tears and Eve would comfort him. Eve would forget all about her husband and comfort Charles.

Charles could manage Eve. He could say Marjorie was home or Marjorie was out. He could turn either story to his advantage. Charles could be trusted to do that. It was very strange that the one thing Charles could be trusted to do was take care of himself, because this was what she had believed him incapable of.

Marjorie listened with this subdued curiosity to Charles' footsteps as he walked downstairs. Then she couldn't hear anything at all because he carefully closed the stairway door, taking no chances. Then he must have hurried back and opened the door again, because now she heard perfectly. Why was that? Marjorie thought about it, working at the gag with her pushed-back, curled-up tongue, not to get it loose which was impossible, but to make it less hideously uncomfortable. Charles had opened the door again because if it were Eve, she would think it odd that it was closed, since they always left it open so as to hear little Pete if he cried. Eve had inquired about that last night and had been told that with the door open they could hear all right. If it wasn't anybody they knew at the door, then they wouldn't come up here with or without the door open and she couldn't call out because of the gag. How clever Charles was, really! When threatened he was more than usually capable of looking after his own interests. He had been helpless only so long as somebody else had him in hand.

Marjorie wondered how he would kill her. Was there enough insulin left in that syringe? Had he bought some more insulin? Would he force her to drink iodine, make her take an overdose of the phenobarbital tablets Dr. Larker had given her when she came home from the hospital? Would he push her out of the window? Charles was the only one who could raise that window which always stuck, but Charles could do it. Charles could do it. He certainly was strong enough. Men were stronger than women, but men didn't hurt women. Men were gentle; only little boys were rough. “A hollow Apollo with a scared little boy huddled inside.”

Now I'm scared, she thought, now that it's too late.

She wondered how she would die.

She wondered if this was how Claire had sat here and waited for Charles to come up and kill her. She began to say, “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” as Claire must have done. As Claire must have hoped, she hoped that Charles would hurry up and get it over with. She was angry with whoever it was downstairs for keeping Charles so long. Was Charles buying a magazine subscription? Was he taking a ticket to the Fireman's Ball? Was he entertaining Eve down there, mixing her a cocktail?

I won't be able to stand this much longer, she thought. I'll die.

Now that was funny.

“What a night,” commented a deep, rough voice, an unfamiliar voice. “Hey, you don't want me in your parlor dripping rain! Don't you want me to park my raincoat and umbrella somewhere?”

Charles said, “I thought you couldn't stay.”

“I can stay longer than it will take to ruin your rug. Hey, you're not trying to get rid of me, are you?”

Try, try, Charles. If you try to get rid of whoever than man is, he might become suspicious.

“Hell, no,” Charles said. “Here, give me your coat.”

Whoever it was was taking off his raincoat, giving Charles an umbrella. That was Charles putting them in the foyer; she could hear the rattle as Charles pushed the umbrella into the umbrella stand.

“That's better.”

Rubbing his hands, quite content to have a cheerful little visit and depart! This is no good, Marjorie thought. If I begin to believe that man down there will save me, it will be worse for me. Harder.

“Long time no see, Charlie. As they say, New York City is a good place to live but a hell of a place for a visit. Nobody visits anybody in New York City. Haven't visited you since you dropped in on me almost a year ago, eh, Charlie?”

Charlie. Dr. Newhouse. Dr. Ned Newhouse.

“What made you drop in tonight, Ned?”

Charles was putting precisely the right grade of interest into the question. It wasn't life and death. It was a social question. Dr. Newhouse didn't advance a life and death explanation; it came easily, without a hitch.

“I had a call in the neighborhood, Charlie, so I thought I'd run in for a minute and see if old Charlie was
zu Hause
. You're looking well, Charlie.”

“So are you, Ned. Sit down.”

There was a scrape of a chair being pushed, the blue chair, the one with its back to the stairway door.

“Well, just for a couple of minutes.”

Marjorie said, “Please, please, please.” Her bound hands yearned toward each other. They wanted to clasp together as they did when they were a little girl's hands, praying.

“I see fatherhood becomes you, Charlie.”

“What? What?”

He spluttered; the sounds were explosive. Oh, Dr. Newhouse, Dr. Newhouse, don't be pulling at the crease in your trousers, don't be getting a cigarette out of your pocket. Watch Charles.

“Fatherhood,” repeated Dr. Newhouse. “Don't look so embarrassed, Charlie. I can understand your not telling me after what you made me go through.”

“Who told you, Ned?”

“The little woman. She's a sweet kid, Charlie.”

“Marjorie told you? Marjorie told you, Ned?”

Charles was frightened. Charles thought she had gone to Dr. Newhouse and told him about Claire, but she hadn't. She had gone to Dr. Newhouse and told him Charles loved her. Everything was fine, she had told Dr. Newhouse.

“I certainly was surprised, Charlie.”

Charles cleared his throat. He cleared his throat again. “Is that all she told you, Ned? I mean, what did she come to see you for, Ned?”

There was a pause. Dr. Newhouse's face was being examined by Charles. Charles found nothing alarming in it. Charles laughed.