Wicked Angel (2 page)

It was full summer now, and Alice was taking an extension course at the City’s university in order to obtain her master’s degree. She intended, later, to become a PhD, and then teach in the university, or in another city’s college. Marriage to anyone but Mark Saint was unthinkable to her eighteen-year-old and intellectual mind. The steadfastness of her love never diminished, never changed, was never diverted by any other man.

The latest maid in the Saint household was, as Kathy pettishly put it, “lazing away on our time,” though the girl was merely exercising her right to an hour’s rest after a strenuous day of work under the complaining lash of Kathy’s sharp tongue. Elsie’s day began at six o’clock, when she had to rise from her bed in a small room on the third floor to bring Angelo’s fresh orange juice and vitamins, to examine whether he had committed a nuisance during the night—which he often did, spitefully, to annoy the constant stream of maids who came and then left in bitter anger—and then to give him his bath and coating of fragrant powder, upon which Kathy insisted. “I want to keep him a baby as long as possible!” she would carol sweetly. “A child deserves the precious days of his babyhood, and cuddling, and pampering. They are so short!” After this coddling, he must then have “his” cereal, eggs, and mixture of cream and milk. All this was not accomplished without great difficulty, for Angelo had a high temper and native brutality and the child’s instinctive cruelty and malice which, in Angelo, were accentuated. He hated the maids; he understood that his mother exploited them, and degraded them with her condescension and her general vicious treatment, and so, to him, they were mean and worthless creatures who deserved tormenting. He liked to see them pale with anger, or color with frustration when they served him, or weep despairingly when he was particularly malicious and detestable. They enhanced his sense of importance, his belief that he stood in the center of the world, and that all was made for his own purpose.

“How is Elsie coming along?” asked Alice, standing near her sister who was anxiously seasoning Angelo’s special chicken broth. The fine kitchen was paneled in knotty pine, one wall covered with shining copper vessels of all sizes. Chintz curtains of blue and coral blew gently at the windows, and the blue kitchen furniture gleamed with a coating of plastic wax.

Kathy shrugged. She wore a dotted dimity dress the exact color of her eyes and the furniture, with her usual fluffy skirts and stiff petticoats which concealed the grossness of her belly and buttocks and thighs and upper calves. Her lovely auburn hair curled moistly about her pale and translucent face, and she looked charming, as usual. The kitchen was hot, in spite of the breeze at the windows. Kathy glanced at her sister, with a moue of despair, then remembered that this was Alice, or Alicia, and that she need not act or pretend. So she frowned, and said with some surliness, “Oh, she’s as bad as all the others. Does as little as possible. She’s sulking upstairs now, because I insisted that she wash out a batch of Angel’s underwear, and dear little shirts and pants and stockings. Only about an hour’s work in the basement, with our washer and dryer and ironer! But what can you expect of such trash?”

Alice’s stern young mouth, which often relaxed into intense softness in spite of herself, became tight. “Don’t you have a laundress twice a week, Kathy?”

“Oh, Alicia, how many times must I INSIST that you call me by my right name, Katherine! It’s so vulgar to be called Kathy—”

“That’s what you were baptized,” said Alice bluntly. “Never mind. Go on.”

“Yes, I have the laundress!” Kathy clattered a spoon on the sink, with vexation. “But in this weather, really! I don’t want Angel’s clothing to get the least bit musty, and I do change him so often!”

The boy, outside, hearing his beloved name, lifted his head alertly and tried to follow the conversation.

“But—Katherine—you know that you told Elsie, as you tell all the maids, that they never have to do any laundry. Or heavy cleaning. It isn’t fair to demand that they do, after you hire them. And Elsie is such a good cook, and so competent and responsible. And you pay her so little. I often wonder how you get them, honestly!”

But Alice knew. A prospective maid was invariably fascinated by Kathy’s air of innocent sweetness, her tender words, her look of melting trust, her promises, her trilling laughter, her affectionate demands that if Mary or Jane or Elsie took the “position,” she must, she really must, consider herself “one of the family.” Under this spell of sisterly democracy, and the wealth of promises, the hint of not too burdensome work, the selected girl always accepted the position. She remained not more than a month, or perhaps only a week, to leave in indignation and disillusion and sometimes in hatred. If she were foolish enough to give Kathy’s name as reference to another employer, Kathy made it her “duty” to enlighten the woman about the maid’s incompetence, insolence and sloth, and would even hint of missing lingerie or linen or silver, and all this in such a sighing, suffering voice that the girl was never hired. No one knew of this but Alice, who usually warned the girl quietly not to give her sister’s name as a reference.

She herself would write out an appreciative note, and slip a bill into the envelope.

The boy outside scowled, and kicked his stuffed bear, for he did not hear his name. When Alice spoke, he put his hands over his ears, and felt again that spiteful urge to soil himself, and then remembered, again, the one or two occasions when Alice, who watched him between maids when Kathy and Mark were away at dinner, had thrashed him for his incontinence. SHE was talking again, and he writhed a little on the step.

“Do try and keep Elsie,” said Alice, while Kathy covered the soup pan with the hushed care of one handling a holy thing. “She’s very good.”

“Let’s change the subject,” said Kathy, in her natural voice, which was hard and flat. “You asked me what I wanted for my birthday. You have only your salary, and you’re spending your first year’s savings at the university, and heavens know why! Well. I’d like an automatic fryer.”

“That’s about thirty-five dollars,” said Alice, in an expressionless tone.

“Yes. Very cheap, isn’t it?” Alice thought of the small sum remaining in the bank. This was only the middle of August. She would not receive her first paycheck for over a month. Of course, she thought, I can always charge it, and pay for it in October.

“An automatic fryer, then, it is,” she said. Her eyes, a blue much darker than Kathy’s, and filled with the radiance of intellect, clouded a little. She detested being reminded of her sister’s native avarice. Kathy gave her a peeping glance.

“You really should get married, dear,” she said. “You’ll soon be nineteen, and it’s time for you to be looking around for someone substantial and responsible, like Mark. You’ll never realize the joy of marriage until you have a child like Angel!”

“I thought the joy of marriage was in the husband,” said Alice dryly.

“Don’t quibble. Mark’s a darling, of course. But marriage means children.”

“Why don’t you have another, then?” asked Alice. She was distressed to hear a faint taunting note in her own voice, but she was thinking of Mark, who existed, in Cathy’s mind, as the father of her child and the provider of his comforts and the means of creating a large inheritance for him.

“Oh, how can you say that, Alicia!” cried Kathy, in a despairing voice. “I had such a hard time when Angel was born!”

“And besides,” said Alice, and wondered at herself, “thirty-five is a little old to be having more children, isn’t it?”

There was a sudden silence in the hot bright kitchen. Kathy’s face took on a shade of venom, and her eyes sparkled. Then Elsie, her features set sullenly, entered the room, and Kathy said with sharpness, “It’s five minutes after four! You were supposed to be down here five minutes ago!”

“I’m tired, Mrs. Saint,” said Elsie. Her tone was ominous, and Alice knew immediately that good Elsie was preparing to leave in a short time. But Kathy never knew, or cared. There were countless Elsies just waiting to be exploited, if only for a few weeks, at a small salary, and most easy to deceive with a beguiling smile and honeyed lies.

“How are you, Elsie?” asked Alice, going to the girl who was beginning to wash some dishes. Elsie looked over her shoulder at the younger girl, and smiled. Now, she thought, Miss Knowles was a really lovely person; you never knew how lovely she was until you’d seen her a few times. Elsie regretted that she would not see Alice again.

“Fine, Miss Knowles,” said Elsie.

“Do hurry with those dishes!” said Kathy. “It’s almost time for Angel’s little snack.”

The boy heard his name once more, and he smiled in beatitude. He stood up, reached high for the knob of the screen door and entered the kitchen, stamping his feet loudly. His smile disappeared; he began to whine fretfully, and gave Alice a malevolent look. Alice returned this with a regretful smile. It was dreadful to hate the child. Was it Kathy’s fault? Alice silently shook her head. She hoped it was so, and often she prayed that Angelo would improve as children had a habit of improving when the world assaulted them with reality and refused to coddle them as their mothers coddled them, and demanded of them some semblance of humanity and decent behavior, or be rigorously punished.

When Kathy saw her son her face radiated pure light. She swept him up into her arms with a cry of ecstasy, almost lascivious in its undertone. She pressed him to her breast and covered him with kisses. She knew the exact posture to take, legs a little apart, supple waist bent backwards, one shoulder raised a trifle, one arm about the boy just so, the other arm lifted and the hand curled and caressing, to create a charming picture of mother and child. As usual Alice thought to herself, and again with regret, that Kathy was a very amateur “ham.” She wondered if Kathy assumed this posture without an audience. It was very possible. Alice regarded Angelo gravely, as his mother kissed and fondled him, and he grinned at her with knowing malice, for he was a very intelligent child with every child’s acute awareness of the emotions of adults.

He was much larger than the average child his age, and muscular rather than fat, and he was quite the handsomest boy Alice had ever seen. She taught young children a year or so older than her nephew, and some were handsome and some were pretty. None could compare with Angelo. He had been born handsome, with no redness, no withered skin, no distortions, no simian resemblances. At birth, his hair was as crisply curled and dark red as it was now, his light brown eyes as big and shining, his skin as smooth and fair, his lips as pink, his cheeks as dimpled, his nose as well-shaped, his chin as round and firm, his ears as excellently formed. He had had none of the unfocused stare of the usual baby; almost from birth he seemed acutely knowing. He resembled his parents. He had Kathy’s overt charm, her fascinating smile, her coaxing ways, when it pleased him to coax rather than demand with screams of rage. His profile sometimes reminded Alice achingly of his father, and so her hatred was not always steadfast.

“My precious one!” Kathy sang, and began to whirl about the kitchen with the big boy in her arms, her skirts lifting and swaying, her bright auburn hair flying about her face. “My darling! Mother’s adorable! Mama’s delight! Oo, oo, oo!”

Angelo’s gaze never left Alice’s averted face, and he chuckled, and when he pinched his mother’s cheek his touch was less savage and deliberately hurting than usual. Kathy kissed the strong, tanned fingers, and threw back her head to let her worshiping eyes look upon her child. “Oh, Alicia!” she sang lyrically, “this is what I mean about marriage!”

She let Angelo slide to the floor, following his passage with kisses on random spots. “Oh, Alicia! Don’t you miss him, now you’ve left him?”

Alice said, “I wish you’d call me by my right name, Kathy.” She looked about for her purse, then remembered she had left it in the hall. “I really must go. I have at least four hours study waiting for me.”

Kathy said, in her hard change of tone, to Elsie, who was regarding Angelo with a curious expression, “Take Angel to the powder room. It’s been two hours!”

“No!” shouted Angelo, stamping his foot. “I don’t want to go!”

“Oh, darling, you must, you must. You know how you love the pretty green potty in the powder room. But would you rather go upstairs?” She half squatted before him, with her head cocked like an adoring dog, her eyes intent and anxious.

“No, no!” he shouted, and beat his strong feet on the coral linoleum tiles. “I want the green potty!”

Can’t she keep her hands off him a minute? thought Alice, disgusted. She mauls him all the time.

Kathy squealed with joy at her son’s decision, and clapped her hands. She lifted him in her arms again. “I’ll take you!” she said in that singing voice, and left the kitchen with Angelo, and entered the large cool hall whose floor was covered with black and white glimmering marble. Alice could hear the quick pattering of her footsteps on the stone, and her constant, murmurous words of endearment. Alone with Elsie, she said in a low voice, “Elsie, this job isn’t too bad. Why don’t you stay?”

Elsie answered at once, and simply. “You know I’m going. Miss Knowles? Then you must know I just can’t stay. I’m sorry. but it’s that—that kid. He kicked me twice today, and I’ve got bruises on my shins. And I can get much more somewhere else, and more time off. Mrs. Saint said I could have practically every evening off, except when they went out, and it isn’t so. I have to sit up there with that—kid—and watch him breathe and sing to him until he’s asleep, except the times Mrs. Saint wants to sing him to sleep or read to him. Even then, I’ve got to be around to do anything he wants, if he wakes up. And they have a lot of company, Miss Knowles. Last week, there was only one night when they didn’t, and I didn’t get through until twelve o’clock, and I have to be up at six. I wouldn’t have taken the job, if I’d known,” she added, with bitterness. “Too much work; I’ve got to go every second. If I sit down, Mrs. Saint finds something for me to do. I’m sorry. She’s your sister, and I guess I shouldn’t be talking this way.”