Different Seasons (39 page)

The door banged open. It was Lydia, her face rosy with smiles. An aluminum crutch was propped in her armpit and she was walking like Marshal Dillon’s friend Chester.
“Morris!”
she trilled. Trailing her and looking just as tremulously happy was Emma Rogan from next door.

Mr. Denker, startled, dropped his fork. He cursed softly under his breath and picked it up off the floor with a wince.

“It’s so
WONDERFUL
!” Lydia was almost baying with excitement. “I called Emma and asked her if we could come tonight instead of tomorrow, I had the crutch already, and I said, ‘Em,’ I said, ‘if I can’t bear this agony for Morris, what kind of wife am I to him?’ Those were my very words, weren’t they, Emma?”

Emma Rogan, perhaps remembering that her collie pup had caused at least some of the problem, nodded eagerly.

“So I called the hospital,” Lydia said, shrugging her coat off and settling in for a good long visit, “and
they
said it was past visiting hours but in my case they would make an exception, except we couldn’t stay too long because we might bother Mr. Denker. We aren’t bothering you, are we, Mr. Denker?”

“No, dear lady,” Mr. Denker said resignedly.

“Sit down, Emma, take Mr. Denker’s chair, he’s not using it. Here, Morris, stop with the ice cream, you’re slobbering it all over yourself, just like a baby. Never mind, we’ll have you up and around in no time. I’ll feed it to you. Goo-goo, ga-ga. Open wide ... over the teeth, over the gums ... look out, stomach, here it comes! ... No, don’t say a word, Mommy knows best. Would you look at him, Emma, he hardly has any hair left and I don’t wonder, thinking he might never walk again. It’s God’s mercy. I told him that stepladder was wobbly. I said, ‘Morris,’ I said, ‘come down off there before—’ ”

She fed him ice cream and chattered for the next hour and by the time she left, hobbling ostentatiously on the crutch while Emma held her other arm, thoughts of lamb stew and voices echoing up through the years were the last things in Morris Heisel’s mind. He was exhausted. To say it had been a busy day was putting it mildly. Morris fell deeply asleep.

 

He awoke sometime between 3:00 and 4:00 A.M. with a scream locked behind his lips.

Now he knew. He knew exactly where and exactly when he had been acquainted with the man in the other bed. Except his name had not been Denker then. Oh no, not at all.

He had awakened from the most terrible nightmare of his whole life. Someone had given him and Lydia a monkey’s paw, and they had wished for money. Then, somehow, a Western Union boy in a Hitler Youth uniform had been in the room with them. He handed Morris a telegram which read:

REGRET TO INFORM YOU BOTH DAUGHTERS DEAD STOP PATIN CONCENTRATION CAMP STOP GREATEST REGRETS AT THIS FINAL SOLUTION STOP COMMANDANT’S LETTER FOLLOWS STOP WILL TELL YOU EVERYTHING AND OMIT NOTHING STOP PLEASE ACCEPT OUR CHECK FOR 100 REICHMARKS ON DEPOSIT YOUR BANK TOMORROW STOP SIGNED ADOLF HITLER CHANCELLOR.

 

A great wail from Lydia, and although she had never even seen Morris’s daughters, she held the monkey’s paw high and wished for them to be returned to life. The room went dark. And suddenly, from outside, came the sound of dragging, lurching footfalls.

Morris was down on his hands and knees in a darkness that suddenly stank of smoke and gas and death. He was searching for the paw. One wish left. If he could find the paw he could wish this dreadful dream away. He would spare himself the sight of his daughters, thin as scarecrows, their eyes deep wounded holes, their numbers burning on the scant flesh of their arms.

Hammering on the door.

In the nightmare, his search for the paw became ever more frenzied, but it bore no fruit. It seemed to go on for years. And then, behind him, the door crashed open. No, he thought.
I won’t look. I’ll close my eyes. Rip them from my head if I have to, but I won’t look.

But he did look. He had to look. In the dream it was as if huge hands had grasped his head and wrenched it around.

It was not his daughters standing in the doorway; it was Denker. A much younger Denker, a Denker who wore a Nazi SS uniform, the cap with its death’s-head insignia cocked rakishly to one side. His buttons gleamed heartlessly, his boots were polished to a killing gloss.

Clasped in his arms was a huge and slowly bubbling pot of lamb stew.

And the dream-Denker, smiling his dark, suave smile, said:
You must sit down and tell us all about it—as one friend to another, hein? We have heard that gold has been hidden. That tobacco has been hoarded. That it was not food-poisoning with Schneibel at all but powdered glass in his supper two nights ago. You must not insult our intelligence by pretending you know nothing. You knew EVERYTHING. So tell it all. Omit nothing.

And in the dark, smelling the maddening aroma of the stew, he told them everything. His stomach, which had been a small gray rock, was now a ravening tiger. Words spilled helplessly from his lips. They spewed from him in the senseless sermon of a lunatic, truth and falsehood all mixed together.

Until he swam up into consciousness with a scream in his throat like fire.

Trembling uncontrollably, he looked at the sleeping form in the other bed. He found himself staring particularly at the wrinkled, caved-in mouth. Old tiger with no teeth. Ancient and vicious rogue elephant with one tusk gone and the other rotted loose in its socket. Senile monster.

“Oh my
God,”
Morris Heisel whispered. His voice was high and faint, inaudible to anyone but himself. Tears trickled down his cheeks toward his ears. “Oh dear
God,
the man who murdered my wife and my daughters is sleeping in the same room with me, my
God,
oh dear dear
God
, he is here with me now in this room.”

The tears began to flow faster now—tears of rage and horror, hot, scalding.

He trembled and waited for morning, and morning did not come for an age.

The next day, Monday, Todd was up at six o’clock in the morning and poking listlessly at a scrambled egg he had fixed for himself when his father came down still dressed in his monogrammed bathrobe and slippers.

“Mumph,” he said to Todd, going past him to the refrigerator for orange juice.

Todd grunted back without looking up from his book, one of the 87th Squad mysteries. He had been lucky enough to land a summer job with a landscaping outfit that operated out of Pasadena. That would have been much too far to commute ordinarily, even if one of his parents had been willing to loan him a car for the summer (neither was), but his father was working on-site not far from there, and he was able to drop Todd off at a bus stop on his way and pick him up at the same place on his way back. Todd was less than wild about the arrangement; he didn’t like riding home from work with his father and absolutely detested riding to work with him in the morning. It was in the mornings that he felt the most naked, when the wall between what he was and what he might be seemed the thinnest. It was worse after a night of bad dreams, but even if no dreams had come in the night, it was bad. One morning he realized with a fright so suddenly it was almost terror that he had been seriously considering reaching across his father’s briefcase, grabbing the wheel of the Porsche, and sending them corkscrewing into the two express lanes, cutting a swath of destruction through the morning commuters.

“You want another egg, Todd-O?”

“No thanks, Dad.” Dick Bowden ate them fried. How could anyone stand to eat a fried egg? On the grill of the Jenn-Air for two minutes, then over easy. What you got on your plate at the end looked like a giant dead eye with a cataract over it, an eye that would bleed orange when you poked it with your fork.

He pushed his scrambled egg away. He had barely touched it.

Outside, the morning paper slapped the step.

His father finished cooking, turned off the grill, and came to the table. “Not hungry this morning, Todd-O?”

You call me that one more time and I’m going to stick my knife right up your fucking nose
. . .
Dad-O.

“Not much appetite, I guess.”

Dick grinned affectionately at his son; there was still a tiny dab of shaving cream on the boy’s right ear. “Betty Trask stole your appetite. That’s my guess.”

“Yeah, maybe that’s it.” He offered a wan smile that vanished as soon as his father went down the stairs from the breakfast nook to get the paper.
Would it wake you up if I told you what a cunt she is, Dad-O? How about if I said, “Oh, by the way, did you know your good friend Ray Trask’s daughter is one of the biggest sluts in Santo Donato? She’d kiss her own twat if she was double-jointed, Dad-O. That’s how much she thinks of it. Just a stinking little slut. Two lines of coke and she’s yours for the night. And if you don’t happen to have any coke, she’s still yours for the night. She’d fuck a dog if she couldn’t get a man.” Think that’d wake you up, Dad-O? Get you a flying start on the day?

He pushed the thoughts back away viciously, knowing they wouldn’t stay gone.

His father came back with the paper. Todd glimpsed the headline: SPACE SHUTTLE WON’T FLY, EXPERT SAYS.

Dick sat down. “Betty’s a fine-looking girl,” he said. “She reminds me of your mother when I first met her.”

“Is that so?”

“Pretty ... young ... fresh ...” Dick Bowden’s eyes had gone vague. Now they came back, focusing almost anxiously on his son. “Not that your mother isn’t still a fine-looking woman. But at that age a girl has a certain ... glow, I guess you’d say. It’s there for awhile, and then it’s gone.” He shrugged and opened the paper.
“C’est la vie,
I guess.”

“You’re treating her right, aren’t you, Todd-O?” His father was making his usual rapid trip through the paper toward the sports pages. “Not getting too fresh?”

“Everything’s cool, Dad.”

“Ray thinks you’re a fine boy,” Dick said absently. He had at last reached the sports. He became absorbed. There was blessed silence at the breakfast table.

Betty Trask had been all over him the very first time they went out. He had taken her to the local lovers’ lane after the movie because he knew it would be expected of them; they could swap spits for half an hour or so and have all the right things to tell their respective friends the next day. She could roll her eyes and tell how she had fought off his advances—boys were so tiresome, really, and she never fucked on the first date, she wasn’t that kind of girl. Her friends would agree and then all of them would troop into the girls’ room and do whatever it was they did in there—put on fresh makeup, smoke Tampax, whatever.

And for a guy ... well, you had to make out. You had to get at least to second base and try for third. Because there were reputations and reputations. Todd couldn’t have cared less about having a stud reputation; he only wanted a reputation for being normal. And if you didn’t at least try, word got around. People started to wonder if you were all right.

So he took them up on Jane’s Hill, kissed them, felt their tits, went a little further than that if they would allow it. And that was it. The girl would stop him, he would put up a little good-natured argument, and then take her home. No worries about what might be said in the girls’ room the next day. No worries that anyone was going to think Todd Bowden was anything but normal. Except—

Except Betty Trask was the kind of girl who fucked on the first date. On every date. And in between dates.

The first time had been a month or so before the goddam Nazi’s heart attack, and Todd thought he had done pretty well for a virgin ... perhaps for the same reason a young pitcher will do well if he’s tapped to throw the biggest game of the year with no forewarning. There had been no time to worry, to get all strung up about it.

Always before, Todd had been able to sense when a girl had made up her mind that on the next date she would just allow herself to be carried away. He was aware that he was personable and that both his looks and his prospects were good. The kind of boy their cunty mothers regarded as “a good catch.” And when he sensed that physical capitulation about to happen, he would start dating some other girl. And whatever it said about his personality, Todd was able to admit to himself that if he ever started dating a truly frigid girl, he would probably be happy to date her for years to come. Maybe even marry her.

But the first time with Betty had gone fairly
well—she
was no virgin, even if he was. She had to help him get his cock into her, but she seemed to take that as a matter of course. And halfway through the act itself she had gurgled up from the blanket they were lying on: “I just love to fuck!” It was the tone of voice another girl might have used to express her love for strawberry whirl ice cream.