Weep for Me (8 page)

You think and think and think. The checks on you are pretty intricate. A teller can’t really take out enough to make it worth while between auditings. You never get into the main vault without people watching you.

Years before I had decided, playing my mental game, that the only possible way to make a decent haul is to have an accomplice upstairs. Once I had arrived at that decision, I had given no more thought to the mechanics of it. Now I had the accomplice upstairs, ready made. I knew I wasn’t going to let her angle me into turning thief. So I told myself there was no harm in giving a little thought to the mechanics.

All day Friday I was slow, and kept catching myself up in one error after another.

At the end of the day I had a double error somewhere in the checkup, and couldn’t clear it until quarter of six, much to the disgust of all concerned. But while I was fumbling through my job, something cold and sharp and accurate in the back of my mind was ticking over like the timing mechanism on a bomb.

Saturday morning at ten-thirty, Jo Anne, her eyes dancing, met me in town and we took a bus out to Hilson Gardens. She chattered all the way out, seeming not to notice the depression that I was trying, unsuccessfully, to hide.

There was quite a crowd there. It was a privately owned housing development. The propaganda sheet they handed out had a lot to say about utilization of space, dynamic design, functional living. The apartments in the first unit to be completed were certainly unlike anything else in Thrace. Panel heat, living rooms designed for television, sliding-door closets, glass shower stalls, pass-throughs from kitchen to dining nook, kitchens complete with garbage disposals and dishwashers.

We found ourselves alone in one, the bare rooms echoing to our footsteps.

“Kyle, I love this one!” she said. She trotted around opening closets and shutting them again, looking in cupboards. “Hey! Look! Magnetic things on the cupboards to keep them shut. And did you see the size of that shower?”

We went into the bedroom, the bigger one. “This will be ours, Kyle. With the children’s room across the hall.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Don’t you just
love
it?”

“Certainly is attractive.”

“Gee, you sound kind of flat about it, darling.” She took my arm. “We’ve always dreamed of a place like this. Remember all the times we’ve talked? Of course, it’s just for a few years. We’ll have to have a house of our own eventually.”

“Yeah. I guess we will.”

“Shall we tell Mr. Anderson all right? The only deposit they want is two months’ rent. And we’ll be in that second unit over there, the one they’re still working on. Come here and you can see it from this window, darling. We can have the same floor plan as this, with the same big windows and all. And see, there’s where they’re putting up the swings and teeter-totters. There’s even going to be a sort of nursery-school thing where you can leave little children while you go shopping or anything. We’ll be happy here, Kyle. So terribly, terribly happy.”

She spun around and faced me, her face pink and glowing. “Let’s go give Mr. Anderson the money. I withdrew it from our account and had a check made out.”

I looked at my knuckles. “Maybe we could look around some more.”

“Why? Gosh, it’s perfect! There
couldn’t
be anything better. And if we don’t decide today, it will be too late. Mr. Anderson told me that he could hold it for us for August first if we let him know today. They’re going like hot cakes. And mostly all young people, Kyle. I think …”

“Is there any law against looking around some more?” I asked her.

She took hold of my arms. Her face crumpled like a child’s. Her eyes filled with tears. “Kyle, do you want to marry me?”

I delayed a fatal fraction of a second too long. “Of course!”

She stamped her foot. “You don’t, you don’t!”

Another couple wandered in, stopped, backed hurriedly out. “What gives you that strange idea?”

“You don’t. And it’s that girl. I know it is. Oh, don’t look so injured. Peggy Reese told me about her, and enjoyed telling it, too. It’s all over the bank, she says, that you waited for her after work and now she has an apartment right in the same building with you. She might just as well have moved in with you. And Peggy says she’s cheap. Peggy says she looks hard.”

“Shut up!”

“Now you want to defend her. You don’t want to hear the truth about her, do you? You’d rather carry on some cheap, cheap, cheap …” Her voice broke completely and she went into the bathroom and closed the door.

I shoved my hands in my pockets and looked blindly out the window. After a long time she came out.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“How about the deposit?”

She looked around the room as though saying good-by to something dear. “I don’t think I’d like to live here now. Maybe we can find another place.”

“I thought there wasn’t any other place like this.”

She left me standing there. I followed her out. There was a long wait for a bus. She’d made the crazy accusations. I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of trying
to explain anything. The next step was up to her. We got off downtown and she turned, quite calmly. “I have some shopping to do, Kyle.”

“In other words, run along.”

Her mouth tightened. “If that’s the way it sounded.”

“That’s exactly how it sounded. Shall I come over tomorrow?”

“You’re under no obligation, you know.” I had never realized her blue eyes could be so cool.

“In other words, don’t come.”

“You seem to be making the interpretations.”

“If you want me to come, invite me.”

She turned quickly and went off into the crowd. She carried her shoulders straight and her head high.

I had lunch in a drugstore and went to a double feature. It was full of screaming kids. I sat with my eyes shut and that cold mechanism in the back of my mind was still clicking over, grinding out data.

I sat through it nearly twice, and came out a little after six. At a liquor store I bought a bottle of cheap rye and took it home. I pushed open the street door. Jo Anne was standing by the mailboxes. She had the look of someone who had been standing there for a long time.

She looked at the center of my chest rather than at my face. “I came to extend that invitation,” she said. Her lips barely moved as she spoke.

I kissed her forehead. “I’m sorry about today.”

“Can I come up?”

“Of course.”

We went into my apartment. She acted very strange. She had only been there twice before, and that had been when we were with other couples. She sat on the couch.

“Drink?” I said.

“A stiff one, Kyle. Strong as strong.”

“Depth bomb coming up for the lady.” Her answering smile was meager.

I made two drinks of rye and water. I made them both stiff. I handed one to her. She lifted it to her lips. Higher and higher, her throat working.

“Hey!” I said.

When the glass was empty she lowered it. She made a face and held the glass out. “Make me another, Kyle.”

“I won’t be responsible,” I said.

She looked me directly in the eye and said, “I don’t want you to be.”

I made her second drink weaker than the first. She didn’t seem to notice. But at least she didn’t drink it in the same manner. She only drank half of it in the first attempt.

I saw the drinks hit her, saw her blue eyes grow a bit vacant, saw her mouth slacken. She lifted the glass and drained it.

“Feel floaty,” she said.

“How could you help it? Not being used to it.”

“Had to have a drink. Have to say something. Walking and thinking and crying and walking some more. People staring at me. Crazy girl.”

I was standing, looking down at her. “What do you want to say?”

“Came to tell you to take me, if you want me. Been a sissy. Sissy for years. Scared of it. More scared of it than anything in the world. Girls told me it hurts bad. Terrible. The first time. First time for me, Kyle, Twenty-eight. Firs’ time.”

I sat beside her. “Not like this, Jo Anne. Not this way. This isn’t what you want.”

She looked at me with tipsy shrewdness. “Want you, Kyle. For keeps. If this is the way, Jo Anne does it this way. Now. Sorry about … drinking. Scared.”

“Jo Anne, I …”

“Insist. Where’s your chiv’lry? Maiden humiliating herself.” She shut her eyes tight, then opened them wide, held her arms out. “Oh, Kyle! Please, Kyle.”

I took her in my arms. Her lips were cold, compressed, frightened. She trembled violently. I moved her over so that she lay beside me, her back to the wall. This was one way out of it. One sure way out. After this, there would be no chance for me to continue the crazy tangent that I had started on.

I was holding her, caressing her, murmuring to her,
trying to make her fears smaller and her wants greater, when I heard a slow familiar step on the stairs. Involuntarily I stiffened. I heard Emily come up the stairs to my floor, walk by my door with her soft tread, and go on up to the floor above. Then I heard her footsteps over us.

“That’s her, isn’t it?” Jo Anne whispered.

“No, I just thought somebody might be coming to …”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Jo Anne. Baby. Just …”

“Don’t put your hands on me.” Suddenly she began to push frantically against me. “Sick,” she gasped. “Sick!”

In the bathroom I had to support her with my arm around her waist, or she would have fallen. She had taken the liquor too fast. Her system couldn’t handle it.

She straightened up, wavering, her face grayish green, her blue eyes dead. “Better get me home, Kyle.”

“Honey, you take a nap. Then you’ll feel all right.”

“Don’t want me here. Not with her here.”

I shook her until her head wobbled loosely on her shoulders. “Take a nap. It’s an order.”

She started to cry. “Everything goes wrong. Everything.”

“Everything is going to be all right. Take a nap. I’ll phone your house and tell them we’re going to be out to dinner and a movie and we’ll be back late. Then I’ll phone Anderson. There’s a pay station down the street.”

“Anderson? Oh, Kyle, darling!”

She stretched out like an obedient child. I took off her shoes. “You’ll wake me up?”

“With kisses.”

I went down to the pay station. I phoned her house. Ed, barely able to talk, said that the ambulance was on the way to pick up Mom. I called a taxi and we went directly from my place to the hospital. Jo Anne looked like a blonde ghost. We found out from the doctor that Mom had know for seven months that she had incurable cancer, and had preferred to keep it to herself, to try to keep from collapsing until Jo Anne was married. Yes, she could be relieved of most of the pain and nursed at home. Daphne had turned back into a child. A frightened child.

O
n the following Tuesday, when Mrs. Lane was brought home from the hospital, Jo Anne was permitted by the insurance company to take a leave of absence.

After I saw Mrs. Lane, Jo Anne took a short walk with me while Daphne stayed with her mother.

“How long will she last?” I asked.

“They don’t know,” Jo Anne said in a dull voice. “She has a lot of vitality. Maybe as long as a year. I’ll stay with it. We can’t afford a nurse for that long.”

“She’s got a lot of courage. And so have you.”

She looked at me. “I’ve got no courage at all, Kyle. When this is all over, come back if you want to.” She put the ring in my hand.

I looked stupidly at it. “But, Jo Anne, we could …”

“Call on her once in a while. She’ll like that. Afterwards, if we can pick up the pieces of our own life, Kyle, well and good. I’ve held you tied for too long as it is. I know that now. Whatever happens, good luck.”

It was the moment for protestations. It was the time to tell her she was wrong, that it was a burden I could share. She would be hard to convince, but I knew that I could convince her.

I didn’t even try. I stood there, with a damnable hypocritical look of sorrow on my face, and back in my heart some evil little creature thought of Emily’s thighs of long sleek marble, and it danced and danced.

Wednesday I was waiting for Emily Rudolph when she came out of the bank. It was a sort of anniversary. I had first seen her two weeks before. June was now nearly over. The first time I had waited for her I had worried about the others seeing me. Now it didn’t make any difference. I fell in stride with her.

“Surprised you haven’t left town, Emily,” I said.

She stared straight ahead and did not answer.

“A girl like you should pursue luck. I’ve thought about you a lot.”

Still she didn’t answer. I kept pace with her, standing at her side as we waited for the lights. When she bought a newspaper, I waited patiently. At last, in the last block, there was no one within earshot of us for a few seconds.

“I was doing a little research,” I said, “When it’s winter here, it’s summer in Buenos Aires.”

She went on for four of those gliding steps of hers and then stopped absolutely dead. It took me by surprise. I continued on for a step or two and turned and looked at her. Her lips were parted and there were faint pink spots of color in her cheeks.

I looked at her steadily. I left no doubt of my meaning. She began walking again. And this time, she took my arm. I glanced at her. Something seemed to twist violently beneath the dark sheen of her eyes.

“Half an hour,” she murmured as she went up the stairs.

I showered, changed, filled the shaker, knocked on her door. The room was as before. She wore tailored green shorts with a white stripe down the sides, a high-necked cotton basque sweater of green and white stripes. Her hair was tied with a dark green strand of yarn. That outfit would have made another girl look like a member of the high-school field-hockey team. She looked unchanged. She sat down on the couch and rested her heels on the floor, legs straight, ankles crossed. Generally legs that white have an unpleasant, mealy look. Hers didn’t. They had a hard sheen, like polished wax.

“Glasses?” I said.

“Put the shaker in the refrigerator, Kyle. We’ll drink after we talk.”