Authors: Patricia Highsmith
How could she doubt it? Edith said nothing.
‘You’ve lost a little weight since I saw you. And I hear you’re – antagonizing some of the people around here…’
Isn’t that too bad, Edith thought, and continued to half-listen as Brett went on in a soothing tone. Now it was ‘make friends’ with Dr Stetler, or if she didn’t like him, Brett would find someone else for her to talk to.
‘…
not
your enemy,’ Brett was repeating. ‘Your friend. Trained and willing – to make life easier for you.’
Shove it, Edith thought.
Brett stood up. Was he leaving? He looked at the other man, who was standing also and shaking his head slightly.
‘I’d like to see the upstairs, Edie,’ Brett said.
Edith was on her feet. ‘Really? Why?’
Brett had walked to the stairs. ‘What’s the harm? Relax, Edie, we’re not going to touch a thing.’ Brett climbed the stairs.
Edith followed him.
‘Mr Howland,’ the doctor said behind Edith. Cliffie had wandered into the hall with his beer can. What the hell was going on? He could see his mother detested the ‘doctor’ who was probably a shrink. Interesting. Cliffie felt one hundred percent on his mother’s side. These two – including his father – seemed to be invading the house! Now the voices were louder from upstairs. Cliffie mounted the steps, intending to linger halfway up them, where he could hear. His father was walking slowly toward his mother’s workroom, preceding her, talking.
Edith managed to get in front of Brett and faced him, with her back to the open door. ‘I find this extremely rude!’ Her diary was open on her worktable. It was somehow worse than invading a bedroom in which the bed was not made. Edith braced her hands against the door jambs.
‘Edie, quite simply we want to get an idea —’ Brett stopped as Edith threw off his touch on her forearm.
‘Mr Howland, I think this is not the way,’ Dr Stetler said.
‘You will not!’ Edith said.
Brett pushed off Edith’s hand and walked into her room.
‘Mr Howland, this is not going to accomplish —’
‘Get out!
Both
of you!’ Edith now had got into her room and stood between Brett and the doctor and her desk. ‘Please get out.’ She realized her teeth were bared, that she was panting. ‘You might have given me some notice! I think this is simply awful!’ She heard her own voice shrieking, as if the voice belonged to someone else.
Dr Stetler took Brett’s arm, pulling him back toward the door. Edith was relieved to see that Dr Stetler, at least, had not been rude enough to stare, to gawk about at her sculpture or anything else.
They were all downstairs again. Both the men were talking. The blood sang in Edith’s ears. She was not interested in what they were saying. Take it easy, she told herself, and they’ll be gone in two minutes. They’re in the hall now.
They were making moves of departure, thank God, tugging on coats that Edith didn’t remember they had hung in the hall, pulling on mufflers.
‘Mrs Howland, I am so sorry that we disturbed you,’ said Dr Stetler in a tone of infinite gentleness, which made Edith think he wanted to make a ‘success’ of this call and collect a fee for future appointments. ‘I do apologize – myself. That was your notebook, the big book on your desk?’
Edith’s eyes almost closed in fury, but she kept Stetler in focus, wary of him.
‘Diary, I think,’ said Brett.
‘I have a respect for privacy,’ the doctor said to Edith in a deep, slow voice. ‘It’s a lovely workroom you have. I —’
‘Just get out,’ Edith said.
At the back of the hall, near the open door of his room, Cliffie rocked back on his heels and chuckled without making a sound. His mother was giving them the old heave-ho!
Ka-
plump
!
That was the front door.
Cliffie drained his beer can, swaggered into the dining room, then into the living room. ‘What swine!’
His mother had just come in from the hall. Her face looked pink and white at the same time. ‘Swine. You’re right.’
‘Have a scotch, Mom.’
‘I think I could use one.’ And she poured it.
Cliffie was silent, not looking at his mother, but aware of her wrath.
Edith took her drink to the telephone and dialed Gert Johnson’s number. The line was busy, and Edith imagined Gert yacking away to someone else, spreading more trouble, more distorted information. As soon as Edith put the phone down, it rang. It was Gert.
‘Just trying to ring you. You were busy,’ Gert said.
Edith let it go by. It sounded mealy-mouthed and phony. ‘Just what have you been saying to Brett – if you don’t mind my asking. Your gratuitous news bureau —’
‘About
what
?’
‘He was just here with a doctor, a shrink. You must know. And what you —’
‘Well, Edie, it’s for your own good.’
‘I’d be grateful, Gert, if you wouldn’t talk so freely about my personal life. It’s no business of Brett’s who has his own life now.’
‘
No
,
Edie! It’s abstract things,
not
personal. Objective things – like —’
‘Worry about your own problems. I’m not complaining, Gert. But I don’t like these invasions – into my house!’
‘All right, Edie.’
Edith felt she had got the last word, when they hung up.
It had been a disturbing hour. And Cliffie had drifted out of the living room (with a glass) without further comment. Edith longed to get dinner over with, and to get back to a book she was reading in bed – still another book on the Kennedy assassination, which one was this? – unless she felt like pottering around a bit in her workroom. Yes, she would spend some time in her workroom, just to get rid of the atmosphere of those two who had been in it this afternoon.
The date had been set, noted in Edith’s diary, for months: April 5th, a Saturday. Cliffie, Debbie, and the kids were coming to lunch. Maybe staying the night. Edith wasn’t sure. Most of the time, Cliffie and Debbie preferred to sleep in their own house near Princeton, which was normal, or with Debbie’s parents who, Edith had to admit, had a larger house than hers. Edith had bought champagne. Spring was definitely here, jonquils still flourishing, roses getting into stride. Edith had cut her first purple and yellow irises for the dining table.
She had said to Cliffie, whom she had wanted to be there, ‘No harm in having a decent Saturday lunch now and then, is there?’ when he had remarked upon the champagne chilling in the bottom of the fridge. Edith had put on a pink, short-sleeved linen dress with a green sash.
‘But what’s the occasion?’ Cliffie asked, picking up a lobster claw in his fingers now, chewing, dripping butter.
‘Spring is here!’ Edith said, and returned to her own dreams. She saw the other Cliffie in a dark blue jacket (linen also) with his suntan, his strong hair, and Debbie with peaches-and-cream cheeks, and heard the low hum of their chit-chat, laughter, news.
‘Mom, would you stop humming? Drives me nuts,’ Cliffie said, dropping his lobster claw which made a thin, paperlike clatter. He wiped his fingers on one of Melanie’s hundred-year-old napkins.
Even the coffee was a success, strong and fresh, poured from a silver pot. Then the doorbell rang.
‘The doorbell!’ Cliffie said, mellow indeed on champagne, scotch and other things.
‘Dr Carstairs!’ Edith said.
Old Carstairs smiled. ‘Francis to you. How are you, Edith? My! You’re looking nice today!’
Edith had thought suddenly, George isn’t here. Who was sick? Had she invited Dr Carstairs for coffee? No. ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘Have some coffee with us.’
Cliffie sat in the rose-sprigged armchair. Dr Carstairs accepted coffee. But he looked uncomfortable, and after a minute said, ‘Cliffie, since I do have an appointment with your mother, I wonder would you mind if we talked alone for a minute or two?’
‘An appointment?’ Cliffie interrupted in the middle of Carstairs’ words, but he stood up. ‘Sure, sure, doc.’ And he trudged out.
Edith didn’t remember an appointment. No, indeed. But she sat upright, polite and attentive.
‘Edith – Brett’s written me a couple of times, you know, about you.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘Well, yes, I told you that on the phone,’ Dr Carstairs said with a smile. ‘Yesterday.’
His slender face looked as dry and wrinkled as Brett’s, Edith thought. She listened, partly, to what he said, and he went on and on, it seemed, but she intended to be polite and not interrupt him. He was talking about her ‘hardships,’ while Edith thought that things were not so bad, and she did interrupt him to say so. Now Dr Carstairs was repeating:
‘… Either you see someone, who can have a talk with you or – I’m afraid something might happen.’
‘What?’ Edith demanded.
‘If you didn’t like this man Stetler —’
‘Oh!’ Edith laughed. ‘That creature!’
‘I have a friend – or two I could introduce you to. One in Doylestown and that’s not far away. It’s a lonely life you have, Edith, and your friends —’
‘I’m not lonely at all. I’m busy, to tell you the truth.’
‘With no —’ Dr Carstairs stopped with a shrug. ‘Anyway, Brett asked me to see you – to say what I’ve said. He is concerned, Edith.’ Now he was fishing cards from his jacket pocket. ‘Now if you’re willing – and Brett said he’d pay for it —’
‘He needn’t bother!’
‘— here are the two people
I
know. Both friends of mine, both – here’s the one in Doylestown.’
Edith only glanced at the card the doctor put on her coffee table, and the card was illegible from where she sat.
‘… Edith, you’re losing your friends, and you don’t want to end your days – You’re not even old as yet, I mean, as a lonely woman, living alone —’
‘Lots of people live alone.’
‘I’m not a psychiatrist,’ Dr Carstairs continued in his patient tone, ‘but I think seeing one would do you a world of good. To talk about your worries, grievances – Even Gert Johnson, you know,’ he went on in a brighter tone, ‘rang me up last week. Now wait a minute? She
is
your friend, friend enough to care, it seems. I know her pretty well, too, I’ve been
their
doctor for – twenty years anyway. She mentioned your writing articles – short stories that were fantasies or near it.’
Edith laughed. ‘How true! Some of them sell, at least. These fantasies.’
‘Good! Well then, fantasy is as good a description as anything, maybe. Very important and useful, if you’re talking with a psychiatrist. I’d bring a couple of stories to his office to show him, if I were you. That’s Phil in Doylestown, the one I’d recommend.’ Dr Carstairs pointed to the card on the coffee table.
Edith felt a bit stunned, also bored, but quite in control of herself. Why was Carstairs making such a to-do?
‘Would you like me to make an appointment for you, Edith? Monday? Tuesday? I know Phil so well, I can call him up during the weekend.’
‘Do you know one of my articles sold only last month? “Under Plain Wrapper,” it’s called. A fantasy, of course.’
‘Well – congratulations, Edith.’
‘I didn’t mean for you to congratulate me – but I can’t understand everyone hovering over me as if I were an invalid.’
Dr Carstairs laughed his dry laugh again. ‘ ’Course you’re not an invalid! Nobody said you were. – Now this business of sending Brett’s check back, ten thousand, he said, patched up with scotch tape as if somebody’s torn it —’ The doctor laughed gently, as if at some old family joke.
Had she sent it back? Had Cliffie? ‘If you don’t use a check, the correct thing is to send it back, I believe.’
‘But Brett wanted to give you a helping hand with that check. He can afford it and he still wants to do it. Wants to write you a new check if you’ll accept it.’
Helping hand with stinking George all those years, Edith thought. Helping hand far away in New York, married to a woman who had his child now! ‘He never helped me in the least with George!’ Edith had suddenly stood up, furious. ‘Brett’s talking a lot of crap! He’s trying to annoy me at present, if you want the truth, using my friends in fact to undermine me! Look at the Gert Johnson situation! Can’t you see it? Whose side are you on – Francis?’ Edith desperately wanted an honest answer to that question. And she saw Dr Francis X. Carstairs squirming under it, as he had squirmed when she had asked him if George shouldn’t be put into a home. He was really twisting his neck now, and this sight reminded her of Nixon. ‘This is a political world,’ Edith declared. ‘You’re all playing rotten politics – squirming, delaying, anything to avoid stating plain truths!’
‘Edie – It’s not politics, it’s ordinary life. It’s the ABC’s of life we’re all talking about.’
‘No! You expect me to be content with a warm house in winter, enough food to eat – television! You can all shove it! People still have brains! Even my
cat
has more brains and judgement and sense of proportion…’
The doctor interrupted her, standing up now too. He was producing a little round pill box from his pocket, placing the box on the table like a mystical peace offering. ‘You don’t have to take these, Edith. Mild sedatives. Two a day, I’d recommend. I just happen to have them with me.’ A smile. ‘They’d help.’
Edith felt only mild scorn for the pills, neither looked at the box nor thanked Carstairs for it. ‘Now I suppose you’re going to report to Gert and Brett?’
The doctor was leaving. ‘Have you heard again from Dr Stetler?’ he asked at the door.
Edith sought in her memory, and found him all too easily. ‘That was months ago! Why should I hear from him? Of course I haven’t.’
Dr Carstairs nodded. ‘I’ll just say good-bye to Cliffie. He’s in his room?’ Carstairs started walking down the hall.
Edith turned at once to go back to the living room, where she had not finished her coffee, but she was annoyed by Carstairs’ lingering. There was no need to say ‘goodbye’ to Cliffie. She threw a pained, apologetic glance into the empty dining room, almost uttered the word ‘Sorry’ to Cliffie and Debbie – and maybe their two kids – who sat at the table. Or were they already in the living room? Edith couldn’t think, because she was mainly thinking of Carstairs who was still in the house.
Cliffie had his room door locked, his transistor on, and was annoyed at being disturbed, surprised also to find that it was Dr Carstairs at the door. Carstairs murmured an apology, and Cliffie said it was quite all right. Cliffie was dressed but had his shoes off. He turned his radio lower.
‘You know, Cliffie,’ Dr Carstairs began, speaking more slowly than usual. ‘Your mother’s in a bad way, and I want you to do what you can to persuade her to see a doctor. Not me, a psychiatrist. I’ve given her two names just now. The one called Philip McElroy in Doylestown is my choice. He’s a friend of mine, I know him well.’
Cliffie had anticipated this. ‘Bad way how?’ he asked, curious to know what the doctor would say.
‘She’s been under a strain for a long time, and it’s showing up. You must know that. She doesn’t even remember, it seems, what she’s said to her friend Gert, she won’t let your father – help out much.’
Cliffie waited, hands on hips, seeing the doctor a bit fuzzily. He was aware of a desire to protect his mother, to defend her from Carstairs’ verbal attack, and he squared his shoulders. ‘I don’t see that she’s doing so bad.’
‘She’s done marvelously. But she needs a little help now – guidance.’
‘Oh, fuck it,’ Cliffie murmured, reacting at once to the word ‘guidance,’ of which he had heard enough in his time.
‘Take it easy, Cliffie. When you’re in a better mood – I want you to see that your mother sees my friend Phil, all right? I’m going to call him up. Brett’s footing the bill, so don’t let your mother worry about that.’
Cliffie hated the conversation. But fortunately the doctor was leaving.
‘You’re the man of the house now, Cliffie.’
Cliffie nodded slightly and coldly.
Clump-clump-clump down the hall, and the old boy was gone, letting himself out evidently, because Cliffie didn’t hear any voices. Then suddenly, shrilly:
‘Do
you
realize the collapse in Viet Nam? And you ask
me
to go to a psychiatrist in
Doylestown
?’
Then there was the gentle closing of the front door.
That day was not April 5th, as Edith had thought, but April 12th, still a Saturday, however. Sunday for some reason loomed like a horrible thing, like something concrete, not just a day composed of sunrise, sunlight, and dusk. Sunday seemed like a void as well as a unit, like a cube, something solid. Something was going to happen Sunday, she felt, although logically nothing ever happened on Sunday, because there was no mail, for one thing.
Cliffie had been out till all hours, and was sleeping at 11 a.m. on Sunday morning.
Edith, having had a quiet evening and a good night’s sleep, spent part of the morning writing up the events of yesterday, the successful lunch of caviar, lobster and champagne, the departure of the young people at 5 p.m. for Princeton, where they would spend the next couple of days before returning to Brunswick Corner Tuesday or Wednesday to stay the night before heading for New York and the Middle East again. Edith felt happy, writing in her diary. Her black, smallish handwriting filled the page with solid information, enlivened, she felt, by remarks from Cliffie, anecdotes from Debbie about their house-maid in Kuwait who carried transistors in the pockets of her apron and on one shoulder, playing several stations at once.
These happy sentences brightened Edith’s mood as she worked in the garden that afternoon. She had put horse manure around all the roses weeks ago, the manure a gift from Cliffie, who had been given it, Edith recalled, by some people to whom he had delivered groceries. Cliffie had probably told them an inane joke, or sung one of his parodies of a song. Don’t look gift horse manure in the mouth, however, Edith told herself. What a shame she hadn’t asked Cliffie and Debbie to stay all day yesterday and today, and go to Princeton tomorrow. But she must have asked them, she thought, because she always did. These thoughts, all these thoughts – She knew what she was trying to drive out of her mind, the awful television news pictures last evening, repeated again at noon today, of South Vietnamese refugees clinging to the bottom of helicopters, trying to get away from their own country before the Viet Cong poured in. The Communists were of course pouring in, and all this was
happening
.
Now. Today. According to her latest copy of
Time
,
regular South Vietnamese soldiers, in retreat and already aboard airplanes, had struck women and children with rifle butts to prevent them from boarding the overcrowded planes.
Now
,
as she drove her trowel into the well-turned Pennsylvania soil, giving final touches to her flourishing rosebushes.
The telephone rang. Cliffie, she thought – maybe – wanting to tell her they were safe in Princeton, to thank her for yesterday.
No. An ache in Edith’s knees as she stood up brought her back to reality. She entered the house through the back door and walked quickly down the hall.
‘Hello, Edith, it’s Brett. How are things?’
‘Quite all right, thank you. And how are you?’
‘You saw Carstairs yesterday – he said.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes. Well, look, Edie, I just spoke with Carstairs, and he and his friend Philip McElroy want to pay you a visit tomorrow morning around 11. Is that all right?’
Edith was instantly annoyed, but tried to dredge up her patience. ‘I don’t know
why
. – I’m
not going to bar the door to them, I suppose, much as I’d like to.
Brett, what is
this conspiracy?
’
Edith went on through something Brett was saying. ‘
Gert’s
in on it, and
you
…’
‘…
not
a conspiracy!’ Brett yelled. ‘Just to talk with you for, say, ten minutes! All right, Edie – as long as you’re willing to see them —’