The Perfect Host (19 page)

Yet for all her width and flatness and strength, for all her powerfully-set features, she was woman all through; and with clothes or without, she looked it.

She said, “I had no idea … after seven! Oh, darling, I’m sorry. You poor thing, and no dinner yet. Come help me,” and she dashed out of the room, leaving me flapping my lips, calling, “But Grace! Wait! Tell me first what’s the mat—”

And when I got to the kitchen she was whipping up a dinner, efficiently, deftly, and all my questions could wait, could be interrupted with “Helmuth, honey, open these, will you?” “I don’t know, b’loved; we’ll dig it out after supper. Will you see if there’re any French fries in the freezer?”

And afterward she remembered that
The Pearl
was playing at the Ascot Theater, and we’d missed it when it first came to town, and this was the best night … we went, and the picture was fine, and we talked of nothing else that night.

I could have forgotten about that episode, I suppose. I could have forgotten about any one of them—the time she turned her gaze so strangely inward when she was whipping cream, and turned it to butter because she simply forgot to stop whipping it when it was ready; the times she had the strong, uncharacteristic urges to do and feel things which had never interested her before—to lose herself in the distances from high buildings and tall hills, to swim underwater for long, frightening minutes; to hear new and ever newer kinds of music—saccharine fox-trots and atonal string quartets, arrangements for percussion alone and Oriental modes.

And foods—rattlesnake ribs, moo goo gai pan, curried salmon with green rice,
Paella
, with its chicken and clams, headcheese,
cannoli
, sweet-and-pungent pork; all these Grace made herself, and well.

But in food as in music, in new sensualities as in new activities, there was no basic change in Grace. These were additions only; for all the exoticism of the dishes, for example, we still had and enjoyed the things she had always made—the gingered leg of lamb, the acorn squash filled with creamed onions, the crêpes suzettes.

She could still be lost in the architecture of Bach’s “Passacaglia and Fugue” and in the raw heartbeat of the Hagard-Bauduc “Big
Noise from Winnetka.” Because she had this new passion for underwater swimming, she did not let it take from her enjoyment of highboard diving. Her occasional lapses from efficiency, as in the whipped cream episode, were rare and temporary. Her sometime dreaminess, when she would forget appointments and arrangements and time itself, happened so seldom, that in all justice, they could have been forgotten, or put down, with all my vaunted understanding, to some obscure desire for privacy, for aloneness.

So—she had everything she had always had, and now more. She was everything she always had been, and now more. She did everything had always done, and now more. Then what, what on earth and in heaven, was I bothered, worried, and—and afraid of?

I know now. It was jealousy. It was—one of the jealousies.

There wasn’t Another Man. That kind of poison springs from insecurity—from the knowledge that there’s enough wrong with you that the chances are high that another man—any other man—could do a better job than you in some department of your woman’s needs. Besides, that kind of thing can never be done by the Other Man alone; your woman must cooperate, willfully and consciously, or it can’t happen. And Grace was incapable of that.

No; it was because of the sharing we had had. My marriage was a magic one because of what we shared; because of our ability to see a red gold leaf, exchange a glance and say never a word, for we knew so well each other’s pleasure, its causes and expressions and associations. The pleasures were not the magic; the sharing was.

A poor analogy: you have a roommate who is a very dear friend, and together you have completely redecorated your room. The colors, the lighting, the concealed shelves and drapes, all are a glad communion of your separate tastes. You are both proud and fond of your beautiful room … and one day you come home and find a new television set. Your roommate has acquired it and brought it in to surprise you. You are surprised, and you are happy, too.

But slowly an ugly thing creeps into your mind. The set is a big thing, an important, dominating thing in the room and in the things for which you use the room. And it is
his
—not mine or ours, but
his
. There is his unspoken, undemanded authority in the choice of
programs in the evenings; and where are the chess games, the folk singing with your guitar, the long hours of phonograph music?

They are there, of course, ready for you every moment; no one has taken them away. But now the room is different. It can continue to be a happy room; only a petty mind would resent the new shared riches; but the fact is that the source of the riches is not shared, was not planned by you both. This changes the room and everything in it, the colors, the people, the shape and warmth.

So with my marriage. A thing had come to Grace which made us both richer but I did not share that source; and damn, damn my selfishness, I could not bear it; if I could not share it I wanted her deprived of it. I was gentle; beginning with, “How do you feel, sweetheart? But you aren’t all right; what were you thinking of? It couldn’t be ‘nothing’ … you were giving more attention to it than you are to me right now!”

I was firm, beginning with, “Now, look, darling; there’s something here that we have to face. Please help. Now, exactly why are you so interested in hearing that Hindemith sketch? You never used to be interested in music like that. It has no melody, no key, no rhythm; it’s unpredictable and ugly. I’m quoting you, darling; that’s what you used to say about it. And now you want to soak yourself in it. Why? Why? What has changed you? Yes—people must grow and change; I know that. But—growing so fast, so quickly, in so many different directions! Tell me, now. Tell me exactly why you feel moved to hear this thing at this time.”

And—I was angry, beginning with, “Grace! Why didn’t you answer me? Oh, you heard me, did you? What did I say? Yes; that’s right; you did … then why didn’t you answer? Well? Not important? You’ll have to realize that it’s important to me to be answered when I speak to you!”

She tried. I could see her trying. I wouldn’t stop. I began to watch her every minute. I stopped waiting for openings, and made them myself. I trapped her. I put on music in which I knew she would be lost, and spoke softly, and when she did not answer, I would kick over my chair with a shout and demand that she speak up. She
tried.… Sometimes she was indignant, and demanded the peace that should be her right. Once I struck her.

That did it. Oh, the poor, brutalized beloved!

Now I can see it,
now!

She never could answer me, until the one time. What could she have said? Her “I don’t know!” was the truth. Her patience went too far, her anger was not far enough, and I know that her hurt was without limits.

I struck her, and she answered my questions. I was even angrier after she had than I had been before, for I felt that she had known all along, that until now she had withheld what she knew; and I cursed myself for not using force earlier and more often. I did. For not hitting
Grace
before!

I came home that night tired, for there was trouble at the shop; I suppose I was irascible with the compositors, but that was only because I had not slept well the night before, which was because—anyway, when I got home, I slammed the door, which was not usual, and, standing there with my raincoat draped over one shoulder, looking at the beautiful spread on the coffee table in front of the fireplace, I demanded, “What’s that for?”

There were canapés and dainty round and rolled and triangular sandwiches; a frosty bluish beverage twinkling with effervescence in its slender pitcher; there were stars and flowers of tiny pickles, pastes and dressings, a lovely coral potato chip dip, and covered dishes full of delicate mysteries. There were also two small and vivid bowls of cut blooms, beautifully arranged.

“Why, for us. Just for us two,” she said.

I said, “Good God. Is there anything the matter with sitting up to a table and eating like a human being?” Then I went to hang up the coat.

She had not moved when I came back; she was still standing facing the door, and perhaps a quarter of her welcoming smile was frozen on her face.

No, I said to myself, no you don’t. Don’t go soft, now. You have her on the run; let’s break this thing up now, all at once, all over the place. The healing can come later. I said, “Well?”

She turned to me, her eyes full of tears. “Helmuth …” she said weakly. I waited. “Why did you … it was only a surprise. A pretty surprise for you. We haven’t been together for so long … you’ve been …”

“You haven’t been yourself since that accident,” I said coldly. “I think you like being different. Turn off the tears, honey. They’ll do you no good.”

“I’m
not
different!” she wailed; and then she began to cry in earnest. “I can’t stand it!” she moaned, “I can’t, I can’t … Helmuth, you’re losing your mind. I’m going to leave you. Leave you … maybe for just a while, maybe for …”

“You’re going to
what?
” I whispered, going very close to her.

She made a supreme effort and answered, flatly, looking me in the eye, “I’m going, Helmuth. I’ve got to.”

I think if she’d seen it coming she would have stood back; perhaps I’d have missed her. I think that if she’d expected it, she would have fled after I hit her once. Instead she stood still, unutterably shocked, unmoving, so it was easy to hit her again.

She stood watching me, her face dead, her eyes, and, increasingly, the flames of the fingermarks on her bleached cheeks burning. In that instant I knew how she felt, what her mind was trying frantically to do.

She was trying to think of a way to make this a dream, to explain it as an accident to find some excuse for me; and the growing sting in her beaten cheeks slowly proved and reproved that it was true. I know this, because the tingling sting of my hand was proving it to me.

Finally, she put one hand up to her face. She said,
“Why?”

I said, “Because you have kept a secret from me.”

She closed her eyes, swayed. I did not touch her. Still with her eyes closed, she said:

“It wants to be left alone. It feeds on vital substance, but there is always an excess … there is in a healthy person, anyway. It only takes a small part of that excess, not enough to matter, not enough for anyone but a jealous maniac like you to notice. It lives happily
in a happy person, it lives richly in a mind rich with the experiences of the senses, feeding only on what is spare and extra. And you have made me unfit, forever and ever, with your prodding and scarring, and because you have found it out it can never be left alone again, it can never be safe again, it can never be safe while you live, it can never be content, it can never leave me while I live, it can never, it can never, it can never.”

Her voice did not trail off—it simply stopped, without a rise or fall in pitch or volume, without any normal human aural punctuation. What she said made no sense to me.

I snarled at her—I don’t think it was a word—and turned my back. I heard her fall, and when I looked she was crumpled up like a castoff, empty, trodden-on white paper box.

I fought my battle between fury and tenderness that night, and met the morning with the dull conclusion that Grace was possessed, and that what had possessed her had gone mad … that I didn’t know where I was, what to do; that I must save her if I could, but in any case relentlessly track down and destroy the—the—No, it hadn’t a name …

Grace was conscious, docile, and had nothing to say. She was not angry or resentful; she was nothing but—obedient. She did what she was told, and when she finished she stopped until she was told to do something else.

I called in Doc Knapp. He said that what was mostly wrong with her was outside the field of a medical doctor, but he didn’t think a little regimented rest and high-powered food therapy would hurt.

I let him take her to the hospital. I think I was almost glad to see her go. No I wasn’t. I couldn’t be glad. How could I be glad about anything? Anyway, Knapp would have her rested and fed and quieted down and fattened up and supplied with two alcohol rubs a day, until she was fit to start some sort of psychotherapy. She always liked alcohol rubs. She killed her—she died just before the second alcohol rub, on the fourth day … Knapp said, when he took her away, “I can’t understand it, Helmuth. It’s like shock, but in Grace that doesn’t seem right at all. She’s too strong, too alive.”

Not any more, she isn’t.

My mind’s wandering. Hold on tight, you … Hold.…

Where am I? I am at home. I am sitting in the chair. I am getting up. Uh! I have fallen down. Why did I fall down? Because my leg was asleep. What was it asleep? Because I have been sitting here all day and most of the night without moving. The doorbell is ringing. Why is the doorbell ringing? Because someone wants to come in. Who is it? Someone who comes visiting at two o’ eight in the morning, I know that because I started the clock again and Tinkle says what time it is. Who visits at two o’ eight in the morning? Drunks and police and death. There is a small person’s shadow on the frosted door, which I open. “Hello, small person, Grace is dead.”

It is not a drunk it is not the police it is Death who has a child’s long lashes and small hands, one to hold up a blank piece of paper for me to stare at, one to slide the knife between my ribs, feel it scrape on my breastbone … a drama, Enter Knife Left Center, and I fall back away from the door, my blood leaping lingering after the withdrawn blade, Grace, Grace, treasure me in your cupped hands—

VI
As Told By
Lawrence Delehanty

I
GOT THE
call on the car radio just before half-past two. Headquarters had a phone tip of some funny business out on Poplar Street in Homeland. The fellow who phones was a milk truck dispatcher on his way to work. He says he thought he someone at the door of this house stab the guy who came to the door, close the door and beat it.