Town Burning (39 page)

“She sure took to Jenny Lou. She always did want a little girl.”

Franklin was noncommittal, as if he considered such problems beyond comment at his age. “It’s too bad,” he said, and stuck his finger into the bottle of Pepsi-Cola.

“We’ve both had a wonderful time with you kids,” William Cotter said. Jenny Lou’s song of comfort, and an undertone of sobs which now was not so desperately gaspy, came insistently into the kitchen. “Your little sister,” he went on, staring worriedly at Franklin and knowing the nakedness of his expression, “has been awfully good for Mrs. Cotter.”

“Yes,” Franklin said.

“Frank, I’m awfully sorry we couldn’t show you a better time up here!”

“Oh, I had a good time,” Franklin said earnestly, “I had an awfully good time.”

“Thank you for saying so, Frank,” William Cotter said. The sobs were slowly dying away, and Jenny Lou’s voice had fallen to a gentle murmur.

“I mean it, Mr. Cotter,” Franklin said.

“But all this…” William Cotter gestured toward the living room with a hand that held beer can and cigarette.

“John told me about that—about Bruce and all that.”

“He did!”

“Sure he did. He told me a lot. I like him very much. I like you too, Mr. Cotter.”

“Why, for God’s sake?” William Cotter said, and then gasped involuntarily, having somehow been shocked right out of breath. “I’m sorry, Frank,” he said, then breathed long and purposefully in order to recharge his lungs, to let the shock of such a bald statement of affection drain away. As the boy watched him closely he again tried to speak, but could only listen helplessly to the sounds from the living room. And his inability to throw off the sudden, helpless feeling—self-pity, he must call it, the one emotion that had the power to paralyze his voice—made him scowl. Franklin watched warily, though not obviously surprised, and certainly not afraid. John, his own dear son, could not say, as this visiting ten-year-old could, “I like you.” Period. His own son, on the telephone last night, had been tongue-tied, spastic in the mouth, trying to say, “Dad.” And what words were difficult and twisted the mouth? Lies. Neither of his sons found it easy to lie; Bruce refused to. That was a virtue, wasn’t it? Such a cruel virtue! And so they condemned their mother, too, whenever she found it necessary, in the cause of happiness, to lie.
Liar,
they would think, and tell her that no end could justify such means, not even love.

And he, William Cotter, after mastering his self-pity, would now successfully change the subject. He would be prepared to go down to the office as soon as possible. Sneak out. Run. Run with self-disgust. Elope with it. Maybe, for once, he would stay and face a situation he knew only time could cure. No. No. Time didn’t cure anything; it just treated symptoms, like aspirin. Gladys would stop crying, eventually, and Jenny Lou would never miss her gift of sympathy. Franklin was young and could take it. (Why should he have to, though?) Never mind, the fact was, he could. (Why couldn’t William Cotter?) Because he didn’t have to, that was why. He could escape to the office, a good excuse to everybody but himself.

Gladys now appeared in the doorway, Jenny Lou beside her, holding her hand and looking up at the tall woman, the little black head tilted back to look almost straight up, the commiserating eyes half closed. William Cotter was somewhat relieved to see that his problems had come to him: one dishonorable decision, at least, had been averted.

“Bill,” Gladys quavered, making no attempt to hold anything back. She never had. Tears had wet her high cheeks, dampened the soft, chamois-like skin around her mouth, reddened the shiny rims around her eyes. The blue eyes stared just over precariously balanced sills of water which bulged from side to side as she made her characteristic shrug of hopelessness.

“Bill!”

He made the comforting words which were no comfort. He knew her well enough not to despise her theatrical entrance. (Who was he to condemn anyone?) That she truly grieved, that she had reason, he knew. It made no difference that these tears had been touched off by the thought of Jenny Lou’s inevitable, and sensible, return home. Everything had always gone away from her, as he supposed his own love for her had gone a long time ago. Understanding and pity were pretty good substitutes, he supposed; something worse might have come in love’s place. But with such weak medicine he could not help her.

It seemed to him that there must be people in the world who burned so brightly—had more watts in them or something—that they loved and burned all the time, that they were full of passion. Such people would not have felt that stinking, lousy, tiny bit of
relief
when disease cost a difficult son the use of his mind! Such people—such
real
people—would never yearn for relief, for peaceful adjustment at all costs. Such people were run by
honor,
had
virtues,
morals,
stuff like that. They were proud inside and out.

Gladys Cotter swayed toward him, pretending to gain support from the little hand of Jenny Lou. Tall, her lean legs as unsteady as stilts, her breasts flat against her big ribcage, she passed the porcelain worktable just as a siren blatted past on Bank Street. He winced as the high scream of emergency, of disorder, flew down his own calm Maple Street and hit his ears. Still his wife came on, wrapped in her own drama, completely unaware of his panic.

He jumped up, cracking his knee against the crowding edge of the breakfast nook table. “God damn it!” he said. Caught already, he knew, by this invention of hers, he would not get away. She had always devised nooks, traps where her family must cuddle and be cozy. The tall, gawky woman wanted to be close and comfy—always! It was like having an affectionate giraffe after him. There must have been a time when he desired her leanness. Yes, and how the memory of old passion could sicken him! He once schemed for those absurdly long legs, pleased and planned her into letting him get between them. He had kissed those now wrecked lips and said loving things into those now hair-entangled long ears as he humped and groaned upon her bones. And for this old debt she now demanded him, all of him, demanded him unto disintegration.

“Now, Glad,” he said warningly as she forced him to sit down again, “let’s not make the kids go through this.” Oh, what an easy liar he was! He found himself watching Franklin’s small hand; like a little black house mouse, it nibbled at Franklin’s mouth, twitchy as a nervous animal. If Franklin suffered, Jenny Lou did not. She stroked Gladys’ arm and tried to pull her away from the breakfast nook where she leaned beseechingly toward William Cotter.

“Come on, Gladys,” Jenny Lou purred. “Come on and lie down, Gladys. You don’t feel so good.”

Gladys allowed herself to be cajoled, but would stay and prolong the scene. No one could take this away from her. He wondered, on the verge of panic, what he could possibly do to stop this. He might rise, with all his strength in affected wrath, scream Stop! and wreck the breakfast nook, break the birch slab and wrench loose the joinings all around, all the time bellowing. Or maybe several peals of gigantic laughter, this time outdoing at least in volume any hysterical fit he’d ever seen Gladys produce, might free him—free him to the extent that tense silence would replace loose despair. Yes, and hurt poor Franklin more. No. His sins were sins of omission: the crudest under time.

“Oh, Bill! The Fresh Air Lady called!”

“You knew the kids had to go home, Glad,” he said carefully.

“Home?” she sang in a breaking voice. “Home to what? The slums?”

Poor Glad, he thought. Both Franklin and Jenny Lou now listened with a new intensity.

“What have they got to go home to? Those awful slums!”

He almost said: Don’t pretend that it’s their need. Obviously they don’t need anything at all. Obviously they have more to give than you.

“Glad, Franklin and Jenny Lou have a fine home of their own, and fine parents of their own.”

“Think of what we could give them, Bill!”

To Jenny Lou, who had withdrawn a little, who now watched Gladys with a colder eye, he wanted to say: Please stretch your pity over this inadequacy of truth! Can’t you pity a liar as well as an honest beggar?

But how could Jenny Lou know the limits of her own strength, her own rights? At seven years the little girl might think these rich, and white, people could steal her from her mother and father with no trouble at all, if they took the notion. Franklin, too, in spite of his astounding and disconcerting maturity, might grow desperate at the thought of that basic nightmare of childhood. He could think of no way to tell them of their safety.

“Gladys,” Jenny Lou said accusingly.

“What, dear?” Gladys Cotter had reeled against the sink cabinet, and stood as if on a tilting deck, facing a sea of cruel and unreasonable opposition.

“We have a fine home of our own, and fine parents of our own.”

“Of course you do, dear! Of course you do!” Gladys Cotter moved a supplicating arm toward Jenny Lou, who did not touch it. Gladys wanted some more of that comfort—wanted another good portion, at least, before admitting defeat. Her mouth rounded, her eyes blurred again and she turned her blind face toward William Cotter. “Oh, Bill! I don’t want them to go home!”

She had admitted home. She had admitted need. Poor woman! He could not trust her yet. He had seen lies born before, whole and hairy, on the very edge of confession.

A tangle of distant sirens turned the square, downstreet, and busied off, one falling like a long sigh. Perhaps the wind had risen, and the fire again fed on toward Leah. He listened, but heard no whistle or moan of wind at the windows. Protected by the maples, his street would hear it last, and softly.

“You don’t want anything!” she said, and began to sob, not bothering to shield him with her hands. She aimed her face at him and bawled nakedly, making him see the tears well up, making him suffer the wanderings of her chin and the rags of drool that grew upon her lips.

“Glad, I know how you feel!” he said, rising as far as he could in the cramped breakfast nook to reach for her arm. This was her next move; that poor last offense that reveals the lie, that leaves no way for retreat. Jenny Lou hadn’t moved, and now watched with bright, yet noncommittal eyes. Franklin had crammed himself into the farthest corner of the bench. With his head low and his finger stuck firmly into the Pepsi-Cola bottle, he waited it out.

“You don’t care how I feel!” she cried, and hit his hand away. The blow must have hurt her arm very badly—he saw her wince, and her face grew cold and stern for a moment as the pain struck her. Out of dramatic gesture she became, as always, and in every way, genuinely wounded.

“You
bitch!”
she screamed at him, and turned to stagger tragically, blushing, across the kitchen toward the door to the dining room. She disappeared around the corner, he and Franklin and Jenny Lou gaping after. Then he managed, at last, to escape the breakfast nook, and walked unsteadily across to the refrigerator, his mind upon another morning beer—almost, but not quite, fixing upon the two inches of bourbon he knew to be in the liquor cabinet. No, he decided, not the bourbon. He was too tired. The children must be watching him now, unless they were looking into each other’s frightened eyes and agreeing upon the horror of this house.

A large red bowl covered with aluminum foil caught his eye, and seemed familiar. Upon the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, the clean sheen of aluminum winked like a cracked mirror, and with a hand he was not surprised to find unsteady he peeled the crinkly stuff away.

The froglegs, pink-white as human skin, as in disaster piled in kicking and swimming attitudes in a gelatin of their own exudate; just the legs, amputated, bodiless, eyeless—the naked product of his play at slaughter. His chest contracted, his mouth filled with waterbrash and he nearly vomited. And again. His ears popped, his jaw locked open and he half fell back, slamming the door too hard. A tinkle of glass falling upon the cold bars came from inside. It was the bottle of Spanish olives that was always falling over—but busy and roiling in there, something called with a cold, connective voice; called his throat into desperate contractions, as if the copper-eyed amphibians he had dismembered alive demanded him to come, to look and drown.

When his nausea at last came under control he sat weakly on a straight-backed chair, his hands on his face, ashamed to look at the children. All he saw was the red darkness, the misty borders of his protecting fingers as they cupped his face.

Jenny Lou had gone after Gladys, and from the living room her high croon of comfort sounded again. Again! And the little girl had been concerned, frightened—who could blame her? Yet even out of such terrible risk as hers, when she had seen Gladys lie in devious ways and must know better than to trust her, she could offer sympathy.

“How we are found out!” he said out loud, and opened his hands to find the dark and compassionate face of Franklin before him.

Soft black, as black as the furry rime upon a burned tree, the little boy’s face gathered light and William Cotter’s eyes as if all light poured into and grew lost upon that dark and growing continent. Franklin’s pink-palmed hand flashed and fell lightly upon his shoulder, and the little fingers gripped him—but with such strength!

And now, he thought, I must—we must—receive the infinite pity of children. “Franklin,” he managed to say, “Aren’t you afraid at all?”

“No, sir,” Franklin said, “not of you.”

“No one will bother us here,” Jane said, “Mrs. Pettibone will see to that.”

“She knows?” John said, feeling a little ashamed of his sudden timidity now that they lay beside each other, apart by the smallest fraction of an inch. He didn’t yet want to move away, knowing in spite of the weight of fulfillment that he wanted her. Just wanted her, now, then, any and all times, and would want her. It was relief: the smooth and confident feeling of the end of search. “I love you,” he said. They lay, now naked, side by side, and she reached over for his hand and held it firmly for a long time as the sun, dark yellow, left the small under-eave window.