Clemmie (35 page)

“Craig!” she said.

He walked to the door on legs gone wooden and stiltlike, moving slowly but with an immense determination. As he got the door open she caught his wrist and yanked him back with a frantic strength.

“What are you doing?”

“The animal escapes,” he said. “The animal gets out for good.”

“You’re out of your mind!”

He turned back toward the door and once again she spun him around. He pushed her away so violently that she fell, and gave a small cry of pain and scrambled up and stood looking at him.

“Don’t try to grab me again,” he said heavily. “I don’t think it’s a good thing for you to try to do that again. I don’t think that right now I’m entirely rational, because I can look at you and I can think how it would be to see you with one of those stockings knotted around your neck, and I can see you dead, with your face black. So don’t come near me, because I don’t know how close I am to doing that.”

He went down the steel stairs, planting his feet carefully because he knew he could easily fall. He heard her behind him. “Craig, my darling! I was just being bitchy. My dearest, it didn’t mean anything. Honestly. Please come back. Please! Darling, I was just upset.”

Upset by whom, he thought. She followed him out to the car. She stood in front of his car, trying to smile at him, and he heard her say, “You’ll have to run over me, darling. I can’t let you go like this.”

He put it in gear and stepped on the throttle. She jumped wildly to one side, and he caught a flash of frightened eyes. When he stopped at the alley mouth he looked in the rear vision mirror and saw her picking herself up.

He drove back to his house and put the car away and went in, and it was a place where some people he had once known had lived. He hadn’t known them very well. He felt like an intruder, as though they might come back at any moment, Mr. and Mrs. Fitz and their daughters, and find him here and wonder who he was.

Clemmie arrived forty minutes later. He would not let her in. He locked the doors. She circled the house and saw him through the windows and called out to him in an anguished voice, but he would not let himself hear what she was trying to say.

He did not know when she went away. The phone began ringing. He counted the rings the first few times she phoned. Then he was able to close his mind to that, too. It was a meaningless sound that happened at random intervals.

He did not know what time it was. He knew that it was dark, and that he sat in his chair in the living room with bowl of ice, bottle of bourbon, glass and pitcher of water. He made the drinks in the reflected yellow glow of the sodium vapor lights, and drank them down, but they had no effect.

“Craig, darling!” she said, and her voice was startlingly close. He turned his head slowly and saw her head framed in the window, face close to the screen, so that the yellow light was behind her and the moving car lights touched her cheeks. He wondered what she was standing on. Perhaps she had driven her car into the shallow front yard as before.

“Craig, let me in, beloved.”

“No.”

“Darling, this is all a mistake. I’m sorry I hurt you. I won’t do it again, ever. I promise with all my heart. I know I was being a dreadful bitch. I apologize.”

After a few moments he got up and went over to the window and knelt on the floor so that their faces were at the same level and a foot apart, separated by the screen.

“Kiss me through the screen,” she whispered. “It might be very gay.”

“You don’t understand yet.”

“I just understand I hurt you and I want to make it up to you.”

“No, you don’t. You found one more little area of rebellion, you think. And you want to eliminate it.”

“I’m not that horrid.”

“It isn’t a little area of rebellion. I’m drunk I think. The words come slow. It isn’t rebellion, Clemmie. It’s revulsion. All of a sudden I’m cured of you. All the way.
I don’t know what did it, exactly. Maybe a little pocket of character you overlooked.”

“Please let me in, darling. In a little while everything will be all right.”

He thought it over. His mind seemed to move very slowly. She was whispering provocative things to him, trying to stir him in a sensual way, but he paid no attention to her devices.

“Listen,” he said, and she stopped talking. “Like you said to me, today. Think this over very carefully before you answer. Think of all the aspects of it. A couple of minutes ago you said you can’t live without me. Think very carefully. If you ask me again, I will let you in. I’ll unlock the front door and you can come in. And when you come in, I’ll kill you. I’ll try to do it in a way that won’t hurt you too much, and I’ll try to make it quick. And when I do it, I won’t feel a thing. I’ll feel absolutely nothing toward you.”

After a silence she said, “Don’t try to bluff me, dearest.”

“Think it over. I never meant anything more in my whole life. It’s your choice. I’ll kill you as efficiently as I can, and in a sense I would merely be returning a favor. I will knock you unconscious and carry you up and drown you in the tub. Once I had to drown kittens. I didn’t like doing it, but did it. Do you want to come in?”

She slid down into the seat of the little car and drove away. He knelt by the window a long time, his body cold. He got up stiffly and went back to his chair and there was just enough ice left to make another drink.

George Bennet arrived at ten in the morning. Craig recognized him and opened the door and let him into the front hall, and blocked the way when George tried to move on into the living room.

“You look like hell, Craig. Are you sick?”

“In a sense. Stay right there a minute, George.” He went and got the airline tickets and brought them back and handed them to him. “You can get a refund on these.”

“Now let’s talk this over, Craig. Let’s not be too damn hasty. Harvey has the contract ready.”

“That’s nice. But I’m not for sale. Not any more.”

“I told you I’d expect diligence. You remember that.
My God, man, I wouldn’t be buying you for Clemmie. Don’t be so melodramatic.”

“I’ll take the job.”

“That’s better.”

“I’ll take the job under one condition. That I never have to see or speak to your daughter again. Is it still open?”

“You’re being foolish, Craig. I understand these little spats, these lovers’ quarrels. My God, Clemmie’s mother was a very highstrung and temperamental woman. It was hell trying to live with her. I’m an expert in quarrels. But this must have been more serious than most. I hope it may concern you to know that Clemmie is under a doctor’s care. She was hysterical when she arrived last night at midnight. Why she didn’t kill herself in that little car, I’ll never know. Here, take the tickets back, Craig. You don’t want to do this to Clemmie.”

Craig felt so weak he leaned against the wall. “The tickets won’t do any good. I cabled my wife to ignore the other cable. It was a very short cable. It said, ‘Ignore previous cable. I love you.’ That’s all it said. Love is a hell of a curious word, George.”

“We had this all straightened out.”

“It nearly got straightened out last night, George. She was here, murmuring her little obscenities through the screen, and I was perfectly willing she should come in. I told her she could come in and I would kill her, but that didn’t seem to be what she wanted.”

“Kill Clemmie!”

“Why not? She isn’t any use to herself or anybody else. I can understand her, after a fashion.”

Bennet stared at him. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Not entirely. There is a cute and bright and provocative little girl. Give her the slightest hold on you, and she has to grind you into the ground.”

“This is just a spat.”

“I’m tired, George. I’m tired of you and your moneyed confidence and your big house and your sick friends and your slut daughter. You people have worn me out. Your daughter isn’t a person, she’s a disease. She ought to be put away. Her heart is rotten. Honestly, George, I’d as
soon marry a leprous cretin as get mixed up with you Bennets.”

George was thick and quick and his brown hands were astonishingly hard. Craig felt a remote satisfaction as he bounced off the wall and was thrust back and hammered against the wall again. He lay on the floor for a long time, his cheek on the polished hardwood. Finally he sighed and pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and spat blood and a fragment of tooth, and got up by holding onto the wall. He wavered into the kitchen and held his head under cold water.

Craig was mowing the back yard on Sunday afternoon when he looked up and saw Al Jardine standing at the edge of the driveway. Al did not smile. Craig walked over to him. “Something you want?”

Al shrugged. “A cold beer, if you’ve got one.”

Craig hesitated, then went in and got two cans, opened them and took them out. They sat on the back steps.

“What else do you want?”

“Who worked you over?”

“George Bennet. Friday morning. It doesn’t look as bad as it did.”

Al nodded. “Ran into Chet yesterday and he told me that Harvey Tolle told him that your fancy job with Bennet went down the drain.”

“I ran it down the drain.”

“Nice pay.”

“The hours were too long.”

Al glanced at him. “I think I see what you mean. One reason I came over, I was off base when you stopped by. Jesus, the least I can do is be tolerant. That’s one thing I should have learned from the business I’m in. There shouldn’t be a complete collapse of friendship just because I disapprove of your actions.”

“Irene know you were coming here?”

“She knows I’ve been upset ever since. She sort of suggested it.”

“Thanks to Irene. I’m sorry for the way I acted.”

“I thought about it. It isn’t you. It’s a disease of our times. And, I suppose, of our income group. And age group. The tensions pile up. Then, when you go off the
deep end over a chippie, it’s just a sublimated form of suicide. Or as childish as the kid breaking all his toys in an attempt to punish God and his parents.”

“Pretty it up as much as you can, but basically there’s no decent excuse for it, Al. Ever.”

“Cured this time?”

Craig spat into the grass. “Completely.”

“What are you going to do?”

“It’s quite a problem.”

“When do Maura and the girls get back?”

“On the sixth. On the Queen Elizabeth.”

“Meeting them?”

“I guess so. I don’t know for sure. I haven’t been very decisive about anything. I tried to be decisive. I felt so sickened by myself that—you don’t want to hear all this.”

“I came over to hear all this.”

“All right. I wrote a suicide note. Six pages. Longest note in history. Anita’s method seemed fine. I guess I could have made the cut. The blade was sharp enough. But I felt like such a damn fool, sitting there in a hot tub. Gulping big sobs. Feeling so damn sorry for myself. Tears running down my face. Then I understood I just wanted to get out, go out the quickest door so I wouldn’t have to try to look Maura in the eye, and I wouldn’t have to look at my kids.”

“Jesus!” Al said softly. “So now what?”

“I’m taking little steps. One at a time. No big plan. I’ll work around here until it’s time to go meet them. I’ll decide whether I’m going when the time comes. The more work I do around here, the better price we can get for the house. I understand a few things. We’re through in this house. I’m through in Stoddard.”

“I know that.”

“So you don’t let yourself think too far ahead. You take little steps, one at a time. Convalescent steps. Whether I meet her or not, sooner or later I’ve got to sit down and look at her and tell her the whole thing.”

“How about a job?”

“There’s enough money to last a while. I’ll think about that afterward.”

Al finished his beer, set the can on the porch, took an envelope out of his pocket. “This is maybe to ease my conscience.
I phoned a friend this morning. I said you may stop and see him. I said I didn’t know when. Joe Casswell. Casswell Products, Eldon, Pennsylvania. Up in the northeast corner of the state. Employs about three hundred, making wood products, sectional furniture, that sort of thing. Big mail order business. He’s in the market for a production manager. He wrote me six months ago to keep my eyes open. I recommended you. Ask tor ten. You may get nine.” He handed Craig the envelope.

Craig said, “Al, I …”

“Whatever it is, don’t say it.” Al stood up and Craig stood up. Al took his hand, gave it a quick hard pressure and said, “Luck, boy.” He went across the yard and around the corner of the house and was gone.

Craig sat again and opened the addressed envelope. Al had scrawled on a sheet of letterhead, “Joe, this will introduce Craig Fitz, the man I told you about over the phone. Best regards, Al.”

Craig sat in the sun. He put the envelope aside, carefully. The sun was hot on his arms, and he could smell the warm scent of freshly cut grass. He thought of Clemmie and it seemed to him that, in this moment, he had taken another short step further from nightmare.

He thought, This makes the next step a little easier. Now I know I can meet them. And somehow I know I can make myself tell her. I could leave earlier. I could drive to Eldon, talk to Casswell and go on to New York.

He went out into the back yard and began to push the lawn mower again, cutting the high grass.

Then it will be her choice.

And he reached the end of the lawn and stood there and closed his eyes tightly and clenched his hands around the handlebar of the lawn mower.

But, he thought, it won’t be entirely her choice. I won’t let it be all her choice. I’ll go down on my damn knees to her. I’ll beg her mercy and forgiveness. And may God help me.

John D. MacDonald was an American novelist and short story writer. His works include the Travis McGee series and the novel
The Executioners
, which was adapted into the film
Cape Fear
. In 1962 MacDonald was named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America; in 1980 he won a National Book Award. In print he delighted in smashing the bad guys, deflating the pompous, and exposing the venal. In life he was a truly empathetic man; his friends, family, and colleagues found him to be loyal, generous, and practical. In business he was fastidiously ethical. About being a writer, he once expressed with gleeful astonishment, “They pay me to do this! They don’t realize, I would pay them.” He spent the later part of his life in Florida with his wife and son. He died in 1986.