Authors: Patricia Highsmith
‘I am not going to faint,’ Edith said to her great-aunt, as if Melanie had said she was going to, and Edith sat up straighter.
‘Of course you’re not. I know it’s a difficult time for you, darling, and I’m glad I’m here. – What does Julia say? And Bill?’
These were Edith’s parents who lived in the country near Richmond. Though Edith was an only child, she and her parents were not close. Her parents were more interested in growing prize roses than in politics, and thought Edith might have married ‘better’, one of the bores from a better family than Brett’s who populated their district and their world. Sometimes Melanie telephoned her parents, Edith’s mother being Melanie’s niece, and Edith wondered if Melanie had in the past months. ‘I wrote them that Brett was going to work in New York for a while and take an apartment,’ Edith said, ‘and that he was working also on his book, you know. I can’t tell my parents everything, Aunt Melanie, I don’t want to.’
Melanie patted her hand. ‘All right, m’dear. Let’s talk about something else.’
So they did. And Cliffie did not come home for dinner or even to sleep that night.
The next morning Edith shopped and was home by 10, then she and Melanie spent a pleasant hour weeding sweet peas and making an edge in the grass with the spade. Nelson followed them about, collapsing in patches of sunlight, watching them. Melanie called him their white overseer. Even at her vast age, Melanie didn’t mind kneeling with a trowel, bare-legged in her longish summer skirt. The Quickmans (a name Cliffie thought hilarious, and he called them the Quickmen) were coming for drinks. They liked Melanie. And the Johnsons had invited them, including Cliffie, for dinner tomorrow night. With drives into the country, visits to antique shops, Melanie’s five-day stay would be pleasantly filled. But Edith knew Melanie was going to say something more in regard to Brett before she left.
Cliffie came in before 3 that afternoon, his beard miraculously gone, his face pale, his manner chastened. Edith and Melanie were having after-lunch coffee in the living room.
‘Well, Cliffie,’ Melanie said. ‘How are you? Give us a kiss. Um – smack!’ Melanie laughed. ‘I thought you had a beard!’
‘Just got it shorn,’ Cliffie replied. He carried a magazine rolled tightly in one nervous hand.
‘You were at Mel’s?’ Edith asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘You might give me a buzz next time, Cliffie. How do I know what’s happened to you, if you stay out all night? You could have been in an accident somewhere.’ Edith felt false, as if she was saying what she thought she should be saying.
‘Oh, if I’m in an accident, the police or the hospital always telephone home. No need to worry about that!’
‘Working tonight?’ Edith asked. If he worked the evening shift at the Chop House, he had to be there by 5:15 p.m.
‘No,’ Cliffie said. ‘Well – I dunno. I can work if I want to, they said.’
‘Because the Quickmans are coming for a drink at six.’
‘The Quickmen,’ Cliffie said, with a glance at Melanie, who was observing him with a friendly attention.
Cliffie might have slept in his shirt and trousers, Edith thought, from their look. ‘Have you had lunch?’ she asked.
‘No.’ Cliffie was walking toward the rear door of the living room, the direction of the kitchen and his own room. ‘And I’m hungry.’ He disappeared.
Edith said softly, ‘I think he shaved his beard off for you.’
‘He needn’t have done,’ Melanie said. ‘Didn’t he have one last year? Does he think I’d be shocked by a beard?’
Edith shook her head. ‘I never know what’s in his mind.’
‘He really should get out of the house,’ Melanie said gently, not for the first time. ‘He’s such a silly boy sometimes. He needs a few hard knocks to grow up.’
They’d been over this before. ‘If you have any ideas, I’d be grateful if you told him – talked to him. One of my friends – probably Gert – said I’d be taking care of him when he was forty. I don’t know what’ll happen when he’s forty, except maybe I’ll be dead by then myself.’ Edith laughed.
They were both almost whispering. Edith knew that Cliffie eavesdropped when he could, like some insane self-prisoner wondering how to escape a place from which his captors would be delighted if he did escape, or like a paranoid who thought everyone was plotting against him.
The Quickmans came, Frances pink-faced from gardening in the sun. She had red hair. Her grown-up daughter had married two years ago, and now lived in Philadelphia. Her husband Ben was manager of a car sales office in Flemington, a sturdy good-natured man with brown curly hair, balding on top. Edith had never seen Ben in other than a cheerful mood, and Edith supposed it helped to sell cars. Or was he cracked like everyone else? The Quickmans were determined Republicans, and had voted for Goldwater. They did useful favors such as cat-feeding. Now they were tactful enough not to mention Brett at all, and they hadn’t asked questions even in the days after Brett’s departure. Edith knew they had heard the news, not to mention that Brett’s absence must have been noticed by them since they lived next door. Cliffie was not present. Was he working tonight? He had slipped out with his usual vagueness, not saying where he was going when Edith had asked him.
‘We’ll miss Brett,’ said Ben, blinking behind his glasses at Edith. ‘Hope he comes back to the homestead weekends now and then.’
Everyone was polite.
The Johnsons on the following evening were equally discreet, and Brett’s name wasn’t uttered. Cliffie did not come with Edith and Melanie, though he had not been working that evening. The Johnsons talked about their son Derek, who was due home for a three-week leave in August. Gert and Norm were thrilled.
‘I’m gonna make shur-r,’ Norm said, ‘he breaks a knee in a car accident or something while he’s here, so he won’t have to go back.’
Derek had another five months to serve in Viet Nam.
On the fourth day of her visit, Melanie asked, ‘Does Brett write to you?’
‘Oh yes. I must’ve had – at least three letters. I can’t expect him to write every week! And once in a while he phones. It just happens he hasn’t phoned while you’ve been here.’
‘And do you write him?’
‘No. I don’t want my letters crashing in where they’re living – together.’
‘But you could write him at the
Post
marked personal. You know, Edith, I think you should have a face to face talk with him in New York before the final papers are signed. Wouldn’t he agree to meet you somewhere?’
They were sitting in the living room, and Cliffie’s transistor again jangled Edith’s nerves, but she was afraid to ask him to cut it off, lest he be sullen at dinner on Melanie’s last evening.
‘I can’t seem to explain to you, Aunt Melanie, that Brett and I have been over this. He spoke to me – very plainly. Seven months he knew Carol before he – sprang this thing. I think he had to wrestle with himself – though you may think that’s —’ Edith broke off. ‘If you want me to appeal to his conscience or sense of duty, I simply don’t care to. I don’t think it would be right.’
‘There are things in people’s relationships that you can’t put into words,’ Melanie said. ‘I don’t mean to tell you do this and do that, but there’s such a thing as human contact, a reminder to him that you exist. It’s the years past that you’ve had – and it’s Cliffie too. It hasn’t much to do with going to bed with a younger woman, if you know what I mean.’
Edith knew. As for Cliffie, going on twenty-two, Edith knew that Brett thought Cliffie should have been on his own a couple of years ago, and if Cliffie wasn’t by now, then to hell with him.
Brett’s given Cliffie up as a bad job
,
Edith wanted to say and couldn’t. Aunt Melanie knew, anyway.
‘You said Carol’s twenty-six,’ Melanie went on. ‘More than twenty years’ difference in their ages. How long will it be till she tells
him
good-bye, I wonder. Two years? I wouldn’t give it that. – She’s not pregnant, is she?’
‘Not that I know.’
‘A blessing, if it continues.’
Edith had told Melanie what she could about Carol, that she seemed intelligent, had good manners, and hadn’t once telephoned Brett at the house here. And maybe, Edith thought, Carol really loved Brett.
‘How long has it been now since you’ve seen him?’
‘Oh – I think around Easter he had to come back to get something. A couple of books. Clothes.’
‘By himself?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘How long did he stay? You didn’t talk?’
‘He stayed about an hour. I think I asked him if he was happy. I hope he is. Why should I bear him a grudge?’
Melanie inquired also about the financial situation. Brett was sending Edith two hundred dollars a month. Cliffie contributed between thirty and fifty dollars a month (he paid something weekly, usually, but Edith was giving statistics by the month), George more or less pulled his weight with a hundred and fifty a month, and of course his medical insurance paid for his doctor, though some of his medicines had to come out of the hundred and fifty and were rather expensive. Edith patronized the local drugstore, Stan’s, and Stan would always refill the phenobarbitol or whatever prescriptions even if Edith hadn’t the renewal stamp from Carstairs. Edith didn’t write down the cost every time, because it was a bore and it didn’t seem to matter all that much. But after the electricity, oil for the heating and hot water, gas, and the telephone bill (lots of the telephone bill had to do with the
Bugle
),
the car upkeep (Ford only, as Cliffie took care of the Volks), and the house mortgage which would, thank God, be finished in another two years, and the crazy unexpecteds like the rusted boiler that had had to be replaced a few months ago, there was either nothing left at the end of the month, or Edith had to dip into the checking account at Brunswick First National. Edith and Brett kept about six hundred in the checking account, and they had around three thousand in the Brunswick Savings Bank. She told Melanie all this. Brett hadn’t taken any cash with him that Edith knew of.
‘I wouldn’t have minded at all if he’d taken a couple of thousand. It’s his right,’ Edith said.
Edith went on to say that she and Brett had around fourteen thousand invested in the Dreyfus Fund in New York, and Brett hadn’t said anything about this, was leaving it to her presumably.
‘In an annuity?’ Melanie asked.
‘No, it’s just invested. We let it ride. We never felt we had enough – definite money coming in to start an annuity. We were —’ She had been going to say they had intended to use the money to send Cliffie to Princeton. Edith felt suddenly bewildered, as if she’d had a few drinks, though she hadn’t had a drink all day. Edith realized that the sums she had mentioned must sound like peanuts to her great-aunt, and that Melanie must think she and Brett were fuzzy-minded about money, not to have straightened all this out between them. So be it, Edith thought, at least they’d never borrowed or run into debt, and they had the house here, certainly worth fifty thousand by now, more than the twenty-five they’d paid for it. This was more than one could say for people like the Johnsons who were always in the red, Gert admitted, and as Brett had said years ago had debts all over the place, and didn’t own their house, only rented it.
‘If I may ask, dear, what does Brett intend to do about the Dreyfus money?’
‘Oh, I think he said that’s mine. Yes, I’m sure he said that.’ Edith was not sure. It wasn’t on any paper that it was hers, and Edith felt sure Melanie was thinking this. But Brett wasn’t the type to try to hang on to fourteen thousand or even part of it, under these circumstances.
Melanie had more questions. Edith told her that Brett’s job on the
Post
paid nearly twice as much as the
Trenton Standard
had, and Melanie was quick to observe that Brett and Carol must be doing quite well in New York with Carol’s salary plus her well-to-do-family, and Edith had to admit that this must be true.
‘I don’t mind taking a job as a saleswoman somewhere in town, if I have to,’ Edith said. ‘Might even be good for me. There’re a couple of shops I know of I could try, one a gift shop and the other specializes in oriental imports – bamboo and such-like. Both the shops are always complaining about the rotten help they get from teen-aged girls. They wouldn’t mind a middle-aged woman they could count on.’ Edith paused and laughed. ‘I know, because Gert’s always telling me.’
Melanie was silent for a few moments, and Edith braced herself for Melanie to tell her to ring up Brett now, even at the office, which Edith would have been loath to do. Just then, Edith heard a car in the driveway that sounded like Cliffie’s Volks, and almost at the same time the doorbell rang.
‘Don’t know who
this
is,’ Edith said as she got up.
It was Dr Carstairs with his black bag at the door, and from the driveway came Cliffie, climbing the side steps in dirty sneakers, hands in hip pockets.
‘Hello, Mrs Howland,’ said the doctor. ‘I think it’s time for another look at our patient. Sorry I didn’t have time to phone you first.’ The doctor came in with the confidence of a man who knew he would be admitted. He wore a rather limp white jacket, not a doctor’s jacket but an ordinary summer jacket. ‘How is he?’
‘Hi, Mom,’ Cliffie said, going into the living room.
‘He had his tea today. I don’t know if he’s awake or not.’ Edith had the feeling she had said exactly the same phrases a hundred times before.
‘I’ll just go up, if I may.’ Dr Carstairs climbed the stairs two at a time with hardly a sound.
Had another month rolled by? Must have. ‘Dr Carstairs,’ Edith said to Melanie. ‘He comes once a month to look at George and give him some kind of injection.’
‘
Pee-eeesurr-rr! Pow!
’
Cliffie put in, miming the act of giving himself an injection in the rump, wincing mightily.
Edith tried to ignore him. He’d had a few beers at very least.
‘I’d like to speak with the doctor,’ Melanie said. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Edith?’
‘Of course
not
!
But I’ve got to catch him for you, because he practically dashes out.’
‘Dash, dash!
Fweet!
’
said Cliffie, brushing his hands together, swinging a foot high in front of him like a football kick.
Edith wished he would go to his room, even turn his transistor on full blast, rather than this. ‘Want some iced tea, Cliffie?’
‘I want an iced
beer
!’
Cliffie said, looking at both of them, and laughing.
He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days, and was going to grow a beard again, Edith supposed.
Melanie put on a tactful smile. ‘Where’ve you been, Cliffie?’
‘Just hacking.’
This was a term meaning to stand around talking, Edith thought, maybe a term years old, but Cliffie hung onto things in an amusing way.
‘Why doesn’t Carstairs give old George a real whammo and then –
fweet!
’
Cliffie gave himself the powerful injection again. ‘
Finito!
’
‘Cliffie, on your old aunt’s last day, I think you might cut the horseplay,’ Edith said.
‘Oh, that’s all right, Edith!’
‘What horseplay?’ asked Cliffie.
Edith heard the doctor’s light step descending the stairs, and went into the hall. He had spent scarcely five minutes with George, as usual. ‘You know my great-aunt, Mrs Cobb, I think,’ Edith said to the doctor.