Orrie's Story (16 page)

He went quickly to his room and closed the door, but before long there was a knock, and his mother's voice asked, “Are you there?”

He opened the door. She was the most attractive woman he had yet seen in real life, slightly taller than he, and so far as he knew he had reached his maximum growth. He could not remember her ever before wearing a completely black outfit, though perhaps she had done so at the funerals of other relatives, which had all taken place when he was very young.

She was angry. “Will you please tell me why you two ran away? You embarrassed me, you know. That doesn't surprise me in
her
case. But
you.”

“I know it might have looked strange —”

“Is that the word for it?”

He beckoned her inside and gently closed the door. “Ellie's in a bad way,” he said. “She absolutely refused to go, and I didn't want to leave her wander around by herself.”

“We all lost someone, didn't we?” his mother asked, looking at him with angry dark eyes. “Why is it worse for her than for anyone else?”

Because she cared for him more than any of the rest of us did…
But that would have been out of line to say on the day of cremation.

Instead: “She's got a delicate system. I think she should go to the doctor and get something for her nerves.”

“That's crap,” his mother said vulgarly, and loudly enough to be heard through a closed door. “She's putting it on to get attention, as usual!” She strode to the door and flung it open. “We've got to have a little conference and straighten things out. I'll meet you both downstairs.”

When he reached the hall, Ellie was standing there. She had heard. They went down the stairway in silence, she a step behind.

Their mother stood at the table where the green glass vase had been for years. He noticed its absence. In its place was a cardboard box. She told them to sit down.

Orrie joined Ellie on the couch, which had a summer cover on it throughout the year because it needed reupholstering. But the room was seldom used. They never had guests unless Uncle Erie could be called such.

“We need to get some things straight,” his mother said now, looking at the worn rug. “Life goes on and we've got to live it. You should know I am having trouble in locating your father's Army insurance, I don't know why. I haven't even been able to find his serial number. As it is, he's left us with nothing so far.”

“I'm leaving school,” Orrie said, “and getting a job.”

“No, you're not.”

“I'm not contributing anything. I can get hired tomorrow at the factory.” He referred to the automobile assembly plant just across the state line, which had been occupied with military vehicles during the war but was expected soon to return to family cars. Several of his male contemporaries had gone there last summer, directly on graduation from high school, while they waited to be drafted.

“Don't talk like that. As it is, you're paying your own way completely, with the scholarship and waiting on tables. Hang on and you'll be a doctor and be able to name your own price. You'll
be
somebody, not some loser who lets everyone down.”

He was really uneasy at being used for the purposes of adverse implication on his dead father and hastily said, “The work as waiter just takes care of the board. I'm going to look for something else that pays real wages. I got my nights and weekends.”

His mother winced and at last sat down. “No,” she said. “Absolutely not. You
must
stick to your studies. I'll get by. I just say it might be tough.”

Ellie spoke in her high-pitched voice. “I'll try baby-sitting again.” She had had little success at that pursuit. Though there were local girls who made good money at such work, Ellie had not been able to get hired by anybody but a young wife who had had a baby almost nine months after her husband had been drafted. Still a teenager herself, the girl found it hard to accept her new responsibility and wanted a baby-sitter to take care of the infant while she went out on the town, sometimes returning with a man. Ellie could not suffer such an offense against her personal moral code.

“Our problems are solved,” their mother said with a smirk.

Orrie thought it regrettable that sarcasm was his mother's habitual response to Ellie. Which of course did not justify Ellie's believing her a murderess. But neither did it help.

“That's a good idea,” he said, mollifyingly, to his sister and then, to his mother, “It's really lousy the way the government is treating you. A man puts his life on the line for this country, and that's the way they act. I'd better go down there and straighten them out.” He was capable of a vigorous public display of indignation when the occasion called for it: somebody unjustly cutting into the head of a line, for example, or the way a postal clerk would shut his window on someone who had waited a quarter hour to reach it. Once as a passenger in a friend's car he denounced, at a stoplight, a driver who had dangerously swerved in front of them a mile earlier, a very large football sort of guy, who on Orrie's complaint climbed heavily out and challenged him to make something of it, and Orrie would recklessly have done it though a head shorter, but his friend was of less stern stuff and sped away. Orrie still believed that a righteous cause gave one the strength of ten, despite the exceptions to the rule that were cited by cynics.

“You,”
said his mother, “are going back to school. You can't miss any more classes.”

Ellie suddenly rested her small hand on the back of his. She had never done anything of the kind before, and he was moved. He knew he was defying his mother, but he said firmly, “Not right away. I'm staying around here till we get things back on an even keel.”

“What things?”

“Well,” he said, “it was
you
who had that idea, just now when you told us to come downstairs for a talk.”

She sniffed and stood up. “There's one thing more…. As you know, your Uncle Erie owns this house. It was only through his generosity that We've been able to stay here.” She turned her back on them and spoke toward the arched doorway to the dining room. “He's been living in that apartment hotel in the city. It doesn't make any sense, when this place is his.”

“He's moving in,” Ellie said levelly, without apparent emotion.

“He
could
just throw us out. Not that he would ever do that, of course, good as he's been to us!”

Orrie asked, “He's moving in?”

Their mother turned to face them. “Would you prefer that he sell it? He's had an offer.”

Orrie could not stay seated any longer. “Then Ellie and I are getting out.” He grasped his sister's hand, and they both stood up.

“Sit down!”

“No!”

His mother breathed deeply. “Please sit down,” she said. “Don't tell me we can't speak reasonably any more.”

This sort of approach always appealed to Orrie, who believed in nothing more than reason. He was no authority on international affairs, but he suspected that if someone had spoken reasonably to Hitler early on, there might not have been a World War II.

But Ellie was tugging at him. “Don't listen to her.”

This infuriated his mother. “Damn you!”

“All right,” he said in his masculine role. “Everybody simmer down.”

But now Ellie had become intractable. “Not me,” she cried. “No more!” She tore her hand from his and left the room. He could hear her running upstairs.

“If this keeps up,” his mother said, “she's going to find herself in some institution. I can't stand much more of it.”

“I'll
look after her,” Orrie said with quiet authority. “But I'll tell you this: I won't let her live here if Erie moves in.”

His mother shook her head. “What's that supposed to mean? You're not making any sense. Where then would she live? She's not an adult, you know.”

“The Terwillens have offered her a home.”

“You must be kidding. That pal of Augie's, Bobby Terwillen, on the lifesaving squad? He's
got
a home?”

Again the sarcasm, and about a decent man. “Yes,” Orrie said, “and he's got a very nice wife. They don't have any children but have a fairly big house, I guess.” He looked down. “Actually, they included me in the offer.”

“That's a nice thing to say to me.”

He looked up but would not meet her eyes. “I didn't say I accepted.”

“What is going on?” his mother asked. Now she was more plaintive than angry. “Why would this subject even come up?
This
is your home. Since when has there been any doubt about that?”

“Well, I'm staying,” he said, with a certain sense of shame, for if she had challenged him on the subject of Erie, he would have had the courage to tackle the matter of Gena. But as it stood now, how, out of the clear blue sky, could he bring it up? He had never in all his life said one word about sex, even the normal kind, to his mother. What pretext, what provocation would he need to air this perverted thing? And yet neither could he continue to evade the issue.

“When's he moving in?”

His mother sighed and sat down in the chair. He had to admit she did not look happy at the prospect. He had always avoided thinking too much about her relations with Erie—quite a different thing from the matter of Gena—because there was really nothing he could do about it one way or the other. It was really his father's business, and his father had run away to war, deserting them all.

She said, “He wanted me to tell you.”

“Why?”

“He wanted to know your reaction.”

Orrie threw his arms in the air. “For God's sake, a lot he cares about that!”

“Don't talk that way,” said she. “You matter most with us all.”

There was an element in her tone that touched him, even though he could assume it was the kind of sentiment a mother believes she must voice on occasion. He rubbed his nose. “I don't see that it has much to do with me.”

She was ill at ease. “Well, it does. He'll need a room, and of course with you at school…”

For an instant Orrie was almost happy: that was the pitiful truth. Only now did he realize that he had tacitly been assuming that Erie would move in with her. He shrugged. “As you say, it's his house.” But then he hardened. “I'm not going back to school yet.” He patted the sofa beneath him. “I'll bunk on this.” He spoke quickly to counter her imminent objection. “No! I'm going to do this my way.” He sprang to his feet. “When's he coming?”

His mother's expression was grim. She too stood up. “He wanted first to hear your reaction.”

Orrie shook his head. The idea that anyone would seriously ask for an opinion of his was novel indeed. He might have been flattered had he believed for a moment that Erie was sincere, even though he could not have identified a likely reason for the man to be hypocritical in this instance. Why should Erie curry favor, now that he was their only hope? Orrie was never a cynic except when it came to Erie: nor could he have explained that state of mind. He was about to leave the room when his mother detained him. She indicated the box that occupied the place on the drum table which had always belonged to the vase. “Would you ask Ellie if she'd like to have these?”

She had correctly assumed that he himself would have been embarrassed by the offer and was therefore careful not to make it to him.

His sister could not be found anywhere on the second floor, yet he had not heard her leave the house. The only place left then was the attic, which could be reached through the last door at the end of the north side of the hallway, and then on up one straight flight of stairs. It was the kind of place he would have adored as a younger boy, but they had not lived in this house until he began adolescence and was too old for hideouts for make-believe.

Ellie was there now, examining a collection of pieces of luggage, all pretty old and shabby: he had already helped himself to the best of the lot when he went off to college.

“You're getting prepared to move to the Terwillens'?” he asked disingenuously.

She shook her head. “But I'm getting out of this place.”

“You'll have to get past me first.” Orrie histrionically squared off before her. “I'm not letting you hit the road.”

“Then come along.”

“Maybe I will be ready for that when the time comes, but —”

“For God's sake, he's
moving in!
What time are you waiting for? Isn't that the limit?”

The fact was simply that Orrie still could not make up his mind as to what he should do, but he could no longer afford to let her know that, for she would only consider it as a weakness—which perhaps it was.

“If we leave now, though,” he said, “he's won, hasn't he? We don't have anything on him but your word. Not that that's not good enough for me, but it isn't enough to take to the police. If we stay, we can keep him under surveillance. If we do it the right way, I mean not too obviously, he'll be lulled into a sense of false security.”

He lowered himself onto a middle-sized trunk that had come down from one part of the family or another.

Ellie began to like the idea. Perhaps she had seen the same movie he had taken it from. She sat down alongside him. “If only,” she said, “we could plant a secret microphone someplace where they would talk.”

Orrie knew she was quite serious. To give her something to think about, he said, “You know you can listen through a wall to conversations on the other side by means of a water glass: you put the bottom of the glass against the wall and the hollow end against your ear. It really works.” As a high-school student he had once seen some of the other guys doing that on the wall between the respective locker rooms of the boys and the girls, though apparently nothing memorable was heard.