Phantom Nights Page 7

Brendan broke out in a smile and reached for Alex with both hands. Alex's expression changed, and he turned to take the boy from Cecily, but she put a shoulder between them, saying, "No, no, Brendy, Alex doesn't want to be bothered right now." The moment of pleasure left Alex's eyes. He turned his face away from everyone, chest tightening as he took a deep breath.

  "Oh, we're fine!" Bernice said. "Alex and I were having a, hem, getting the rules clear so we're not bumping into each other up here. I'm surprised you haven't told him that I would be your guest for a few days."

  "He's not around long enough to tell him anything," Cecily said with a curtness inspired by Brendan's outcry at being kept away from his uncle. Alex looked at him again, then reached past Cecily's protective shoulder to touch the baby's button nose with a forefinger. He walked away as Brendan's fuss turned to chortle. They heard Alex taking the stairs down two at a time, hitting the landing with both feet together, giving the women a mild seismic jolt.

  "Oh, my," Bernice said with a vague smile.

  "That's what I mean," Cecily said and grimaced to sum up all of the tension that she felt Alex brought to their house.

  "Couldn't you have let him hold the baby for a few moments?"

  "No," Cecily said.

  "Well. Frankly, under the circumstances—there's just so much hostility in Alex. You see that, don't you, dear?"

  "I only wish Bobby did."

  Alex was in the garage before supper cleaning his bike, applying a little 4-in-1 Oil to the chain, when Bobby strolled in, still wearing his sheriff's department khakis and black gunbelt rig. He leaned against his workbench with folded arms until Alex, crouching, glanced at him over his shoulder.

  "How's everything, Twig?"

  Alex shrugged slightly, then nodded toward the house. Bobby lighted a Lucky, blew smoke.

  "Yeah. I know. She 'Berns' me up too." He grinned encouragingly. "But I think we can both get along with Cece's mom for a few days."

  Alex shrugged again.

  "I got a call today from Berk Swift. Said you were over to their place using the pool today when nobody was around except the stable hands."

  Alex nodded indifferently.

  "Said it wasn't so much he minded you in their pool, but if you had an accident and drowned with nobody to help you, then they'd be liable."

  Alex got up, took the broom leaning at the other end of the bench and a dustpan and swept up some of the sawdust from the concrete floor where oil had dripped. He might leave his underwear and soggy towels on the bathroom floor, but he was meticulous about keeping the garage neat, tools hung correctly, not a stray nail anywhere. It was their place, his and Bobby's.

  Bobby handed the Lucky to Alex, who took a drag and gave it back.

  "Don't want to let it turn into a habit," Bobby cautioned routinely. "Half pack a day, that's all I allow myself. What I'm asking, summer's over another month, so unless they do the invitin', stay away from the Swifts' pool."

  Alex smiled cynically.

  "I know; you can swim like Tarzan so drowning's not the issue. What I thought we could do, get up early tomorrow morning, take the boat over to the Tennessee River for the day."

  Alex looked toward the house again, where Cecily, her mother, and Rhoda Jenks were all in the kitchen laughing about something.

  "Just the two of us," Bobby said. "Sound like a winner?"

  Alex gave him a thumbs-up sign, then took a double handful of sawdust from a barrel and spread it on the floor where he'd been working. He looked happy.

  Bobby stubbed out the Lucky in a Folger's can on the workbench. Half a pack a day, and never smoke one all the way down.

  "Supper," he said. "'N I could eat the ass off a barely singed cow."

  Halfway through the evening meal, Bobby was called away from the dinner table. An accident involving a truckful of hogs had tied up a highway bridge over the Yella Dog halfway down to Memphis, and there was a fatality; Luther Tebbetts being away on the third honeymoon of what Cecily called his "romantic career," Bobby was needed.

  After supper Cecily fed Brendan, who was still on the breast, in the nursery while Alex and Bernice ate peach cobbler on the front porch. Bernie keeping up a cheery dialogue about this and that, although she was largely talking to herself. But she had never minded the sound of her own voice. Alex nodded a couple of times while wolfing down his dessert but avoided looking at her.

  Alex's second cousin Denny Limber came by on his bike with his best friend Jess Robinson, as Denny was apt to do a couple of times a month, prodded by his mother, who felt sorry for Alex. They were going to the Gem picture show which was playing Red Mountain, a western with Alan Ladd. Alex made a quick decision to tag along. He seldom passed up a Western picture, and Alan Ladd was a big favorite of his. If he could have any voice he wanted it would be Alan Ladd's. Pleasant baritone timbre, manly. Alan Ladd wasn't tall, but he was someone who meant business. Alex sprinted upstairs to change his shirt and withdraw fifty cents from his hidden allowance cache.

  Once Brendan was tucked in for the night, Cecily went outside with her own postponed dessert. A mild wind had risen at night's renewal, freshly starred. Through tall poplars and shagbark hickories in the side yard she saw heat lightning. It was well to the north: no rain was expected in their vicinity.

  Mother and daughter passed a half hour together with gossip and random reminiscences, avoiding touchy subjects. Then Bernie, almost on the dot of nine-thirty, excused herself and went upstairs to draw her second bath of the day.

  Cecily rinsed out her dish in the kitchen, left it on the drainboard of the sink, then went up the back stairs to look in on Brendan. The filmy curtains at his windows billowed from the wind that had been consistent enough to cool down the house. The lightning seemed closer, more prolonged, and there was thunder. Brendan slept with little knowledge of the world to trouble him. She went into their bedroom wondering if Bobby would be gone half the night, feeling a little sore about that. And then he planned to be up early and off somewhere with Alex and the boat, probably for the whole day. Displeasure was hardening into resentment when she heard a knock.

  She opened the door to find her mother in the hall wearing only a pink lace negligee and a tight hairnet, hand at her throat, looking ill or faint from terror.

  "Cecily, ohhh, Cecily!"

  It was all of the talking she seemed able to manage. Through increasingly frantic gestures, she urged Cecily to follow her down the hall to the bathroom between her room and Alex's. Breathing heavily by the time they got there, Bernie motioned her daughter inside while leaning against the doorjamb, still clutching the root of her throat. Forcing blood into her cheeks as if she were decorating a cake with a pastry gun. Cecily looked around the brightly lit bathroom not knowing what to expect, but everything appeared perfectly in order.

  "The tub," Bernice said with an erratic flap of one hand. "Look."

  Cecily inspected the bathtub with its finely cracked porcelain and eyelets of blue iron where the porcelain was chipped away, then looked around at her mother in utter confusion.

  "Mom, I don't—"

  "Slippery. It's all slippery. He wanted . . ."

  Cecily got down on one knee beside the high tub and looked more carefully at the bottom. The stopper was in. Bernice had run about an inch of water.

  ". . . me to break my . . ."

  Cecily reached down and drew a finger across the tub bottom. Scummy; no, slick from something. Add a little water, and—

  "Thank my lucky stars I didn't run the tub full before stepping in! I might've hit my head and drowned."

  "I am not believing this," Cecily said slowly, rubbing her thumb and forefinger together, feeling stunned and apprehensive. Had to be petroleum jelly. And it completely coated the bottom of the tub.

  Bernice sat splay-legged on the toilet seat and announced, "I'm going to be hysterical."

  "Mom, no you're not; please try not to get all worked up."

  "I want to go home! I want to be in my own house! How can I sta
y here another minute? He's a young maniac, and he'll murder me in my sleep. I have never been anything but gracious to that unfortunate boy, but you see what he's done!" Bernie began to drum her heels on the tile floor and flap her hands. "Why are you doing this to me, Cecily? Don't you love me? How could you allow this to happen?"

  Cecily had been exposed to such outbursts before. If she touched Bernice during a wing-ding, then her mother would pummel her in a frenzy. Making the point that everything that was wrong in Bernice's life was Cecily's fault as an imperfect daughter.

  "I ought to kill myself and be done! That would be best for everybody, isn't that what you're thinking?"

  Hysteria had no logic; she would continue until she burned herself out, with the neighbors hearing and wondering what the hell. Cecily got up grimly, half-filled a pitcher of water, and let Bernice have it full in the face.

  "Sorry," she said and left her mother sputtering and keening to go into Alex's room. If Brendan didn't wake up, it would be a miracle.

  She didn't have to do much looking around. The nearly empty jar of petroleum jelly was at the bottom of Alex's wastebasket beside his desk, covered with the tissues he'd used to wipe his hands clean.

  Cecily just stood there looking down for the time it took disbelief to yield to heart-thumping rage. How much time she couldn't have said. But when she returned to the bathroom, her mother, prostrate and heaving on the floor with her negligee in total disarray, was in the latter stages of her fit, wailing incoherently. The wailing would taper off into moans and sobs, and then with the help of a sedative she could be expected to drop off and sleep soundly the rest of the night.

  She pulled Bernie to her feet and helped her into the guest room.

  "Don't know what it's like to get old and not be wanted anymore."

  "You're not that old, and you know I love you."

  "No, no, I can't stay here!" Bernice said, looking wildly around.

  "Yes, you can. You don't have to worry about Alex. He won't be spending the night in my house. Or any other night if I can help it."

  "Bob protects him."

  "That's over with. Even Bobby will have to see there's something seriously wrong with his brother."

  "You and Brendan are all I have left in the world."

  "I know, Mom. Let me get you into these pajamas."

  "You won't leave me? You'll stay right here? I'm afraid, Cecily."

  Cecily was afraid too, but couldn't let on. Her turn to do the mothering, to be the brave one.

  Bernie calmed down as Cecily helped her into silk pajamas.

  "You're such a dear. Always so good to me. I've never regretted not having other children, because none of them could have meant as much to me as you have. I've been blessed."

  "Yes, Mom," Cecily said, her mind on another track.

  "Would it be too much trouble to fix me a cup of tea? I want to take my pills."

  "Of course not."

  "I'm so anxious. To think . . . Does he hate me so much that he hoped I would slip and fracture my skull or break a hip? I'm not a young woman. It's what I most dread, living out my life as a helpless cripple in a wheelchair. And what a burden to you." In spite of her arthritis, Bernice managed a solid grip on one of Cecily's wrists. "You know, I've heard that young people with severe . . . mental disturbances do things that are spiteful or dangerous, but later on they have no recollection. They are subject to blackouts. Hem. Remember when Alex climbed the WDOK tower? To this day we don't know what he was thinking. Ask him about the Vaseline in the tub, undoubtedly he'll deny any knowledge of it. Blackouts." Bernice produced an expiratory moan as she slipped into bed and laid her bedraggled coif on a feather pillow. Cecily pulled up the sheet, smoothed it over her mother's breast, and rose from her side. Bernie made a last effort to cling. "Where're you going?"

  "Downstairs. To fix your tea and call my husband. I don't care about that wreck on the highway, I want Bobby home now."

  "And isn't it about time for Alex to be home from the picture show?"

  "Depends," Cecily said, pulse picking up again, a flurry of light behind her eyes like the hard jewel of a migraine exposing itself. "I'll be back in a few minutes. I'm closing the bedroom door, Mom. Don't get up unless you're feeling sick to your stomach."

  "Leave the lamp, and would you turn my little radio on? Ted Weems and his orchestra are broadcasting from the Drake Hotel in Chicago right after the ten o'clock news. I have such memories of the Drake Hotel. Your father and I spent our first night together there after we were married." She closed her eyes, smiling faintly. "Men and their urges," she said. "But it is over with rather quickly; otherwise I had a splendid time."

  Cecily stopped by Alex's room for the wastebasket with the discarded jar of petroleum jelly in it. She hurried downstairs to lock the front door.

  The house she loved suddenly seemed cursed, imbued with a deadly menace; Cecily didn't know if she was locking it out or locking it in. She stifled a splurge of tears on her way to the telephone on the hope chest in the center hall. There she cleared her throat and made her voice steady before she spoke to Arlinda Kellum, the night dispatcher in the sheriff's department.

  "Tell Bobby to get here as fast as he can."

  "Are you okay, Mrs. Gambier? If it's an emergency, I could have Tuck or Owen over there in two shakes."

  "It's really family business. I only want Bobby."

  To the kitchen.

  The key to lock the back door hung on a cup hook beside the keys to her Plymouth coupe. In the two years they'd lived on West Hatchie, Cecily had never locked any door. This lock was old, and the key wouldn't turn. Maybe some oil . . . but she would have to go out to the garage, which was twenty yards away. The speed of her heart dizzied her. She worked the key frantically in the frozen lock. Not only wouldn't it turn, now she couldn't pull it out.

  Behind her in the kitchen the refrigerator door opened. She looked up and saw Alex reflected in the glass half of the kitchen door, taking a quart of milk from the top shelf. He was already in the house—where, basement?—and she hadn't known.

  Her choices now were to confront him—Alex was looking at his wastebasket that she had brought downstairs—or open the door, walk outside, and wait for Bobby in the yard. And that was the same as being run out of her own house by this . . . boy who didn't belong there in the first place.

  Cecily stayed by the door, her hand on the knob. "Yes, I found it," she said. The migraine jewel inside her head winking again like a lighthouse mirror, so hurtful she squinted her eyes.

  Alex looked blankly at her, and again at the wastebasket. Standing there with the fridge door open, milk bottle in his hand, little smear of chocolate bar bought at the picture show in one corner of his mouth.

  The phone rang.

  Bobby, she thought. His presence, although at the other end of a telephone wire, still distant from the house, gave her courage.

  "Put that milk back and get out of here," Cecily said, taking a step toward Alex. "That's Bobby calling. And when I tell him what you've done . . . Get out. Now. I don't care where you go. I never want to see you again!"

  His flaky lips parted in astonishment. He started to shake his head, then shrugged, confused and defensive.

  Now Cecily, urged on by the ringing phone, continued through the kitchen as if stalking him, and Alex backed up, staring in consternation at her overheated face. Upstairs, Brendan let out a wail, probably disturbed in a dream. He usually slept through wet pants. But Cecily jumped to another conclusion.

  "Were you in the nursery? What did you do to Brendan?"

  Alex found this new accusation—although the other one was a mystery to him—unnerving, and Cecily's own nerves, her show of incoherence, panicked him. He turned to the message board on the wall beside the fridge and the pencil hanging there on a string and began to scrawl on the notepad fixed to the board. In his haste he lost his grip on the bottle of milk. Some of it splashed across Cecily's bare feet. Cecily kept moving toward the telephone in the hall
. She had cleared the doorway when Alex caught up and pulled her back into the kitchen. He wanted her to read the note he had ripped from the pad, but Cecily rounded on him in a panic equal to his and slapped him hard across the mouth, splitting his lower lip. Blood flew, but still he wouldn't let go until she screamed in his face.

  "If you ever hurt my mother or my child, I WILL KILLYOU!"

  Her fury staggered him, and his grip slackened. Cecily tore free of Alex and stumbled into the hall, stubbing a big toe on the doorjamb. She hopped twice and fell to her knees by the hope chest, lifted the receiver from the hook of the upright telephone.

  "Cecily?"

  "Bobbbbbbyyyyy."

  "What's wrong?"

  Crouched beside the chest, she looked in terror over her shoulder, thinking the worst: Alex now with knife or cleaver in his hand instead of a pencil, intent on shutting her up. But she didn't see him in the kitchen. The back door stood open. She heard her mother in the hall upstairs. Cecily's head was exploding, and she sobbed.

  "Bobby, it's Alex. He went crazy tonight. Tried to kill my mother. And he . . . put his hands on me. Bobby, Alex put his hands on me!"

  For the early part of the evening on that Saturday night, Mally Shaw had had company: a middle-aged man (late fifties probably was more accurate) who had notions of courting her. His given name was Herschel, but he had been called "Poke Chop" all of his life. They were related in some vague way Mally had never troubled to sort out. In the colored community Poke Chop had status: he was a 'cumulating man. Until recently he had been a letter carrier earning good Federal wages until fallen arches prompted his retirement. Among his accumulations were farmland, thirty beehives, fruit trees, a good well, a sound house filled with Sears Roebuck furniture and a late-model Oldsmobile. His most recent wife had gone to her rest two years ago; adult children had migrated to the big cities and he was lonely. Poke Chop had a wide rubbery face like a deflated inner tube and a picket-fence grin. He brought Mally treats such as pickled pigs feet or comb honey when he came to call, and played his banjo for her. Mally recopied in a good hand the letters he wrote to his scattered brood with a carpenter's pencil and served him spice cake.