The Plot (11 page)

“That's stupid, that's blind. Oh, you are blind, Louis! She won't look at you!” Ethel flung her arms around Louis. “Look at me; she won't look at you!”

For a moment he was completely shocked, immobilized, for he certainly had been blind, then he awoke; her arms, which held him in a most unmotherly way, awoke him; her lips, which fastened against his cheek, were not motherly or kind, they burned and pressed. He pulled her off. “You're upset, Ethel,” he said, trying to fit her into the frame again, because that was where he wanted her, that was where he pitied her, that was where he wanted to help her, that was where he could partially excuse himself, since it was to help her.

“Upset! Just because she's pretty, just because she's younger. Don't be such a fool, Louis!” She licked her lips, her pale eyes bulged, her bosom heaved in a tumultuous and unseemly way. “You're too smart to be taken in by a pretty face. Ah, Louis, let me—let me——”

“Cut it out,” he said, thinking that he could not be shocked, asking what kind of child he was to be shocked.

“Cut it out? Cut my heart out? I can't any longer. I can't when I see you falling for her, escorting her home, glued to her when she moves. I'm only human, Ethel's human——”

“Stop it!” He began to shake her violently in a sort of primitive attempt to loose this possession, to shake out this devil and leave only the old-mother Ethel. “Stop it!”

“I won't stop it! You stop it! You leave her alone, I tell you!”

He said quietly, “You can't tell me what to do, Ethel.”

“Can't I?”

Couldn't she? Louis shook his head as if he had been dreaming and wanted to wake up now. He felt he had been dreaming, sleepwalking. It was: “Where am I? How did I get here?” How had he reached the place where this jealous woman (not poor old Ethel, not poor old maltreated Ethel), this clinging, blazing woman, could tell him what to do and what not to do? His arms fell to his sides. “This is stupid. Excuse me, Ethel—the whole thing's stupid and to hell with it. I'm going away, keed.”

She was still panting; the fake casual voice that emerged topped her heaving bosom like a little boat on a rough sea. “Leaving? And what about my little souvenir?”

“Ethel …” He was awake, but he still wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. “You keep that money when it comes, Ethel. And welcome. You … I wish I could do more. You haven't had an easy life.”

“Thanks. And the autobiography?”

“That's out.”

“Out? One hundred twenty-five thousand dollars out? Do you think you're going to get away with it? Do you think I'm going to let you get away with it?”

“Let me get away with it? I think I'm going to get away with it, if that's what you mean. You know what I'm going to do, Ethel? Before I leave, I'm going to Jamey. I'm going to tell him about the story.”

“Dear Father Washington, I cannot tell a lie, I chopped down your cherry tree! Little Louis George Washington!”

He blushed because it had been like that in his mind. He had visualized himself going to Jamey in that rather filial spirit to ask his forgiveness. He had visualized Jamey as angry, but then, paternally, forgiving him for this literary version of a boyish prank.

“Well, it's not going to be like that, Georgie-Louis, because I'm going to get to Jamey first and hardest. I'm going to tell Jamey that—as he knows—I want him to write again, I pant for a new Vaughn. He still has so much material I will tell Jamey I told you. I will tell Jamey that I told you the plot from his notebook as an example of what Vaughn still has to give the world, and that you promptly stole it. You wrote it. You sent it to
Green Book
. I found out about it only yesterday, when they wrote to ask me a couple of questions. I will tell Jamey that I've been in a quandry about telling him how you betrayed him because I know how crazy about you he is. But—if you're going away, I will say to Jamey, I cannot take the chance of your pulling this trick again and again, using your own plots from now on and Jamey's name. See?”

“I see.”

“And if you should intend to throw any countercharges …” But he wouldn't, she thought; he is incapable of treating a woman like that, even hitting back at a woman. “You needn't bother trying to involve me, Louis, because I'll get out of it. I'll get to Jamey first because I was here first. I've been his devoted slave for ten years; you've been hanging around how long? How many days? Which of us will he believe, Louis?”

I believed her, Louis thought. How could I have believed her? How the hell could I have got in this deep? “I guess he'll believe you, Ethel; it seems likely, but I'm going to confess anyhow. I've got to get out of this.”

“Do you think you'll get out? Do you think when I get through with Jamey he's going to take his ruler and slap your palms and tell you to go forth and sin no more?”

She would tell Jamey that Louis believed he was the better writer, that his stories were better; she'd give Jamey that about Freud, all that. No, Jamey wouldn't talk about his spiritual son once his rivalry was aroused. (The old seal? The bloody water?) “You're quite right, Ethel, I don't think Jamey will wash my mind out with soap and let it go at that.” He shrugged. “I'm going to take my medicine anyhow.”

“Do you know the law, Louis?”

“Vaguely. So he'll inform magazines and publishers that I'm a plagiarist. So I'll be behind the eight-ball. So it's my own fault.”

“Is it your mother's fault, too? I wasn't talking about plagiarism; I was talking about using the United States mail to defraud. Jamey will see that you go to jail for this, and if you think that you deserve to go to jail—which I most certainly do not—don't you agree that your mother doesn't deserve to die with you behind bars? And I'll see that she knows where you are, Louis. If you and your tender conscience would prefer to expiate your sins, you're not going to be able to fake the postmarks on your mail to your mother and have her die thinking you're writing the great American novel somewhere pleasant!

“And for what? For whom are you going to kill your mother? For Jamey? We'll omit any bitchery he's done to me. For that man who wouldn't lift a finger to help you? For Jamey who wouldn't let you earn the money honestly by giving you an interview, who wouldn't dictate a note to an editor, for Jamey who uses you, who thinks he can make a fancy boy out of you with a suit of clothes and a dressing gown and three meals a day?

“Go on, confess to him! Go to jail for
lèse-majesté
, for daring to impersonate the king, you lousy commoner! That story won't hurt him, will it? You know it won't, unless he knows. Maybe you don't hate Jamey the way I do, all right, then think of Jamey—omit everything that concerns you, since you're such a little hero—think of the effect of this news on Jamey; he'll collapse!”

“Come on, Ethel!”

“You don't think so? What do you think holds him up if not his exalted opinion of himself? The incomparable Vaughn, the inimitable Vaughn! You're going to show him just how inimitable he is with that story that was so much Vaughn they bought it. Wait until he sees the letter saying that it was better than Vaughn; he'll love that!” She smiled, slowly. “If I weren't slightly mercenary, I'd say go on and tell all. It would be a much better revenge for me that way. Now
I
want to see his face! Go on and tell him; I want to see his face; it will almost be worth one hundred twenty-five thousand dollars to me to see Jamey's face when he collapses.”

Louis could see Jamey's face without showing him the story. “You're a devil, aren't you?”

“No, I'm a woman.”

Woman, yes. “You win, Ethel; I'm not going to tell Jamey about the story; I'm just going.”

“The story money is to be my consolation prize, is that it, Louis? I'm supposed to take five thousand for two hundred and fifty thousand—and all because of her? Dear Alex! Dear, dear Alex!”

“She had nothing to do with this.” That was feeble, that was useless; Ethel was simply laughing at him. He said, “Listen, Ethel—”

“You listen, Louis. You can leave now if you wish, but I tell you that if that girl hangs around here, I will not be responsible for what I do.”

He swung around, peering close, trying to get the exact meaning of these words, taking in the set of her jaw, the angry red, the bulging of her pale-blue eyes. “What do you mean what you do? What will you do?”

“I will not be responsible for what I do, that's all. I will not be responsible for what I do.”

“You sound like a broken record.”

“Perhaps I'm a little more dangerous than that.”

“You're trying to hold me here. How dangerous?”

“Louis …” She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Her voice was very controlled, soft, even; she meant to prove to him that she was not threatening in a fit of jealous anger; that she was cool. “I was about to say that, at the moment, I could kill her—and wouldn't that be a foolish thing to say? Hear no evil. See no evil. Speak no evil.”

“Which, incidentally, Ethel, does not include: do no evil.” Louis could feel the fire in her; it leaped in her eyes, excluded from her softened voice; dammed up, it burned in her eyes.

“Isn't that the saying? ‘Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil'?”

“Yes, from the Chinese, I believe. I'll tell Jamey after dinner that I'm going.”

“You love Jamey too much to spoil his dinner by telling him before he eats, or is it going to be seven courses of dear Alex? One more meal to feast on her beauty, eh?”

He could have strangled her for being right.

CHAPTER NINE

Ethel intended to see Alex before dinner. She was panting from the exertion of walking so fast. She stopped when she came to the big house, awed by the massive Corinthian pillars, the neoclassic front, then, as suddenly enraged by them, made more purposeful by them, called sharply, peremptorily, “Miss Wilcoxen! Miss Wilcoxen!”

William Reas stuck his head out of the window over the pillars.

“I want to see Miss Wilcoxen, William Reas; where is she?”

“I go for call Miss Alex. You sit yourself on the piazza, Miss Ethel. I go for call she.”

Alex was wearing a nightgown and a floating, airy peignoir. She must have been napping, or at least resting in the heat. There was no trace of the brilliant lipstick that Ethel detested, or the rouge and eye make-up Ethel suspected; yet the girl was even prettier without them. “Hello, Ethel. You look hot. Shall I ask William Reas to fix you something cool to drink?”

“If I didn't pay the servants myself every month with Jamey's money, I would think they were still your servants.”

Alex blushed. “But you looked so warm.”

Ethel stared pointedly at the filmy peignoir. “You look cool enough for both of us.” There was a heavy rayon slip under Ethel's dress, a boned girdle, and stockings.

“Am I indecent? I guess I am indecent, Ethel. Please sit down, or would you like to come inside?”

The interior of the great house was dim, almost dark. “I don't see how you can stay there alone, the way you do. Aren't you frightened?”

“With William Reas and Joseph Reas? And of what, Ethel? You don't believe in Maum Cloe's badevil, do you?”

“Evil or no evil is beside the point. It bothers Jamey having you here alone, with no one but the servants.”

“This is my home, Ethel.”

“Excuse me, it is not your home. It is Jamey's.”

“It is Jamey's, of course. Why are you so provoked with me, Ethel? What did you walk all this way to tell me?”

“I came to tell you to go away.”

“Did Jamey ask you to tell me that?”

“Certainly.”

“Why didn't he tell me himself?”

“It would embarrass him, and, anyhow, he is too kind. He was too fond of your family to tell you you're being a nuisance. He is an old man, very set in his ways, as you know. Any deviation from routine wears him out.” Ethel snorted unhappily. “There is nothing routine about you, is there, Alex?”

“I tried not to bother Jamey. Just coming over the little I do? Just having three-o'clock dinner with him?” She shrugged. “Well, I can't help it. I have to stay anyhow.”

Ethel stared at the point of her shoe, but out of the corner she saw Alex' small foot with the perfect toes, with the delicate arch, the slender ankle. She forced her eyes to see her own foot, but the harder she tried, the more clearly she saw Alex' foot with Louis' eyes, as Louis must have seen it. “You really must leave,” she said, her lips so stiff she had to manipulate them to speak. “If you don't care how Jamey feels about you, go because of Louis Daignot.”

“I didn't expect to hear that from you. It's bad enough to have Maum Cloe telling me to go because of him.”

“What do you mean? Why does Maum Cloe tell you to go because of him?”

Alex twisted her fingers together. “Oh, you know—because Maum Cloe——Oh, Ethel, I adore Maum Cloe, but really”—she laughed in embarrassment—“you know how some old people are? She just doesn't think anybody is good enough for me.”

“Maybe she's right. Maybe he isn't good enough for you.”

Alex was too deep in her own story to notice this. She continued, “Maum Cloe and I had a dreadful scene. I guess it just never occurred to her that a Wilcoxen could care about anyone who couldn't be asked to the St. Cecilia Ball.”

“You had better not be interested in him!”

“Now, Ethel! You can't be an old snob like Maum Cloe. You don't mean Jamey wants me to leave because he's a snob too—oh, no!”

“Oh, no; that's right. Listen, perhaps the reason that it didn't occur to Maum Cloe that it was dangerous to call you down here with Louis on the premises was because she gives you credit for more—er—sophistication than you have.”