The Girl Who Passed for Normal (10 page)

Barbara sniffed the letter to see if it smelled of grease, but it had no smell and she tore it up. It was a mean, miserable letter; her mother disapproved of her going to live with
Catherine because of the money involved; and she
disapproved
of money because she had none, having spent
everything
she had worked so hard to earn on educating her
daughters
so they could make it. She had lived for money, and expected Barbara to do the same; but she had thought that in order to have money one had to suffer, be miserable, make compromises, accept all that life offered, however cruel or unfair or sad.

But she wasn’t right, Barbara knew.
She
wanted money, she loved money, because it gave possibilities to life. But she didn’t want it on her mother’s conditions; for if she did, she would end up like her mother, with only sadness. That had been her mother’s mistake. By accepting the compromises she had not only lost any chance of love and happiness, but had also, ironically, condemned herself to poverty; a poverty of the spirit made manifest in the flesh.

It was an example of her mother’s puritanical, sad
reasoning
, that she said it was unnatural for Barbara to go and live with Catherine, when what she considered natural was
finding
a husband with money. And if, Barbara thought, by
saying
that she wasn’t going to help this time, she meant that she had helped by faking her heart attack and precipitating the present situation — well, she was glad she wasn’t going to help.

David had left. Mary Emerson was leaving. Marcello and her mother had abandoned her as if she had the plague. She was alone. But soon she would have Catherine, and she would love her — and this was what her mother and Marcello hadn’t admitted or considered. Her mother had said it was a nasty, perverted love, but her mother loved nothing, so how could
she tell? And Marcello was perverted himself, because he only thought about loving, and didn’t do anything about it; that would have meant admitting that he was weak, and believed in myths.

*

One Sunday at the beginning of December, Barbara took all David’s clothes out of the wardrobe, folded them up, and packed them in his suitcases. She stacked his books in
cardboard
boxes she had collected from local shops. It took the whole day, but by late afternoon she had made the apartment look empty and about-to-be-left. She had decided to take all David’s things with her when she moved to the Emersons’; then, if he came back, he would have to come to her. She was sure he would come to her in any case, but she didn’t want it to look as if she hadn’t been expecting him; besides, if she didn’t take them she knew Marcello would, and
distribute
them among his pretentious friends.

If David did come back, perhaps he would want to move into the villa with her and Catherine. She wondered how Catherine would like that, and decided she’d like it quite a lot. The three of them living there… David could have a room to work in somewhere, and she’d spend the day with Catherine, and then in the evening … oh, it would be
beautiful
. David could teach Catherine to read. She would be like a child to them. A child who paid them and gave them a house and a garden and a housekeeper. Perhaps, when David heard where she was living, he would come back. Perhaps he had left so that all this would happen. Perhaps he had planned it all.

Next day she said to Catherine, “If David comes back I’m
not sure what I’d do. You see I’ve given up our apartment from the end of December, and —” she shrugged. She thought it was better to plant the idea in Catherine’s mind now. Later, if David returned, she would cultivate it. And if David didn’t return, it occurred to her, there might be someone else.

Five minutes later Catherine said with a little frown, “But David’s not coming back. He’s buried in the wilderness; don’t you remember? You told me not to mention it.” She turned away as if she was afraid of being punished for having
mentioned
it now.

Barbara nodded. “Oh yes. I forgot.”

*

She was alone all the time, and she wanted everything to be simple. But still, when she woke in the middle of the night sometimes, she wondered whether it was possible that Catherine was right about her mother’s having killed David. It was absurd of course — but since she had imagined that Catherine was essentially, if poetically, right about the death of her father, wasn’t it also just possible she was poetically right about the death of David?

She knew it was ridiculous, for even if, in her fantasies, she believed Catherine, she had also believed Mary Emerson’s version of the death of her husband at the time. She had believed both versions, and felt that somehow both were true.

It was absurd, ridiculous — but what, she couldn’t help asking herself, would happen if Mary Emerson had killed David? She would have to be caught, of course, and tried, and punished — she couldn’t be allowed to go away to America and be free. She would have to be locked up and punished, and be condemned to have dirty hair for the rest
of her life. Yes — Barbara smiled in the middle of the night — that would be a suitable punishment. Condemned never to have her hair washed again, until it turned from its rich red to a gray that was slimy with dirt, until it heaved with the movement of every sort of flea and louse…

These were the thoughts of the middle of the night, but on the afternoon of the 15th of December, Mary Emerson called Barbara from her lesson with Catherine, and said she wanted to speak to her. There had been a change in the plans they had agreed on a couple of days before. She had planned to leave on the 20th; now she had had to postpone her
departure
till the 23rd. The trouble was she had already promised Iva that she could go away for her Christmas holidays on the 21st, and Iva had already booked her ticket to Germany, where her sister lived.

“Honestly, it doesn’t matter,” Barbara said. “I can clear up after you’ve gone. I promise.”

“I hate to do that to you, my dear,” Mary Emerson said. “I already feel guilty about going off before Christmas and leaving you here without Iva, but at least if she’d been here when I left she could have gotten the house really cleaned up. But I can’t ask her to put off her holiday. She always goes to her sister’s for Christmas and the New Year.”

“I promise you it’s all right. I’ve been thinking about it, and I’m quite glad that Catherine and I will be alone together for those ten days. It’ll be good at the beginning. Because, however well we know each other now, it’s still not like living in the same house, and if we’re alone, we can really start the relationship we’re going to have. No, I promise you it’s all right. It won’t take me long to clean up.”

Mary Emerson put her head on one side and smiled. “Well, if you’re sure, my dear — it’s so sweet of you.”

They were standing in the dining room, by the window. A lamp was on in the far corner of the room, but it was not bright, and the darkness from outside, coming in from the wilderness, seemed to make it less bright than it was. Barbara remembered her thoughts of the previous night, and said, “I was thinking —” she waved her hand toward the dark wilderness — “in the spring, would you mind if I got someone to clear at least part of the wilderness? It’s depressing, isn’t it?”

Mary Emerson looked out of the windows and nodded. “I guess so, but I never really look at it. In the summer it’s all right.” She turned back toward Barbara and said, almost impatiently, “Look, my dear, once I’ve gone, you can do exactly as you please. It’s nothing to do with me. As long as you can get the money out of the trustees, you can build swimming pools, have the whole garden landscaped, go to the South of France or India with Catherine, go to Switzerland for winter sports, go wherever you like, but please don’t tell me. I’ll be in touch, of course, very often, but I really only want to know how Catherine — and you and Iva — are. What you actually do —” she shrugged. “And if I were you I
wouldn’t
ask
the trustees anything;
tell
them. But please don’t ask me for advice. As of next week, Catherine, and all this mess, is yours, and the only advice I would give you is not to get a conscience about Catherine’s money. Spend it as fast as the trustees allow you to, and start from the beginning, so they get used to the idea and think you’re being thrifty if one month you spend slightly less than usual. Catherine
doesn’t need money, and something’s got to be done with it.” She walked across the room and turned another lamp on, and the wilderness retreated. “My dear, if I were you I would spend some of the money trying to find out where David is and some of it trying to get him back.”

Barbara looked around the bright room as if she had never seen it before. She had, she thought, come a long way since she arrived back in Italy a month ago. “I thought you said he’ll never come back?” She smiled.

Mary Emerson touched her hair. “Did I say that? Oh, dear.” She looked confused, and glanced at Barbara as if she wasn’t quite sure how Barbara would take it if she laughed. “How dreadful. But anyway, if you can’t buy David back, you’ll be able to afford anyone you want.” She smiled, and went over to the door. “I’ll let you get back to Catherine now, my dear. But seriously, don’t get a conscience, or you’ll not only be a hypocrite, but you’ll end up like Catherine.”

As she walked out of the room Barbara swore to herself that, even in the night, she would never again think of David dead and buried in the wilderness.

When she had finished her lesson with Catherine she said, “Catherine, you must be nice to your mother this week before she goes away. Please. Do it for me. Then we can all part friends.”

Catherine smiled at her blankly and said, “Do you have many more things to bring from your apartment?”

“No. I’m almost through now.”

“Why do you come by bus every day?”

“How should I come?”

“By car.”

“I don’t have a car.”

“Mother has a car.”

“She uses it. I can’t use it till she’s gone. The insurance papers have to be changed and things.”

Catherine considered this, and then asked, “Why do I have to be nice to mother?”

“Because she’s leaving, and —” Barbara hesitated, “—
because
she’s nice.”

Catherine looked at her scornfully. “You’re only saying that because you hate her and you’re glad she’s going.”

Barbara shook her head.

“Oh, yes, you do. You’re a
hypocrite
.” Catherine said the word proudly, as if she had just learned it — which, Barbara reflected, she possibly had. She supposed the girl had been listening, and she glanced at the door of the living room, from behind which she had first seen Catherine appear.

The girl followed her eyes, and smiled. “Are you frightened she’s listening?”

Barbara shook her head.

Catherine said, “You should hate her, you know.”

“I have nothing to hate her for.”

“What about David?”

“It was not her fault if she liked David. Even if she went to bed with him.”

“Even if she killed him?”

“She didn’t kill him. Catherine, your mother is nice.”

“Then why do you hate her?”

Barbara sighed. “I don’t hate her, Catherine.”

“Oh, yes, you do.”

Barbara shrugged her shoulders.

“You’re only telling me to be nice to her because you don’t want her to know how much you hate her. You’re frightened of losing your job.”

Barbara was silent for a moment, and then said firmly, “Catherine, stop this silliness.” She looked down, and saw that her hands were trembling, and when she looked up again at Catherine the girl was staring at her lips. “I don’t hate your mother and I’m not coming to stay here for any reason like that.”

Catherine said seriously, “Oh, I know that.”

Barbara wondered what she meant by that; but she guessed it depended on what the girl had understood her to have said.

Catherine came up to her and said softly, “I love you. And I wouldn’t let her send you away if she wanted to.”

Barbara smiled and said, “Thank you.” Then she lowered her head. “I don’t think she’d send me away in any case.”

“Oh, yes,” Catherine said. “She’ll try. Once she’s got
herself
all fixed up in America she’ll get Luke to send someone else to stay with me. You’ll see. She’s being nice to you now because you’ll do for now, and she wants to get away. Also she doesn’t like scenes.”

Barbara stared at the girl. “Rubbish! You’re just saying evil things.” Catherine didn’t say anything, or move. Weakly, Barbara said, “Why should she send me away? Because she thinks I hate her?”

“Oh, no.” Catherine shook her head. “She doesn’t care about that. It’s just that she doesn’t trust you.”

“You’re making these things up,” Barbara whispered.

“Oh, no, I’m not.”

“Then how — do you listen at the door and —”

Catherine frowned. “No. Mother tells me everything. She doesn’t really hate me, you know.”

“I know,” Barbara whispered, so quietly she hardly heard herself.

“She’s always told me everything. She just talks to me because it’s like thinking out loud for her. She’d talk to George if I wasn’t here.”

“And she’s said all these things to you? She’s told you?”

Catherine didn’t reply to that. Instead she said brightly, “But don’t worry. I won’t let her send you away.”

Barbara moved in officially on the afternoon of December 22nd. The room to which she had been bringing bags and cases, every day for the last four weeks, the room that she had been gradually taking over, finally became her own. Tomorrow, she told herself, the whole house would become hers — the house and the land, and Catherine. Eventually, of course, she would move down into what was now Mary Emerson’s
bedroom
; but not immediately. First she would get used to the feeling that the house was hers, that she was free to sleep where she liked in it; then she would start rearranging things, just as she would start rearranging her life. She would move slowly into it, feeling her way around, until she had, as it were, the run of it. Then, when she had learned perfectly how to use this vast property, she would turn to the world — Marcello, her mother, David if he returned — and the world would have to see her as she wanted to be seen, accept her as she was. She would no longer be a secretary, to be hired or fired at will, to be patronized or corrected, to be summoned to the bedsides of the falsely sick; she would have a share of power in the world; she would be ruler, not ruled.

She helped Mary Emerson finish her packing; four trunks were being sent by sea, and Mary was taking two smaller bags with her on the plane. The trunks were to be sent off after Christmas, when Mary was sure where she wanted them to go. She told Barbara she would telephone her as soon as she had a definite address, and Barbara said she would handle everything.

“Listen, my dear,” Mary Emerson said, “I’ve written my friend’s address, where I’ll be staying for the first two weeks or so, Catherine’s lawyers’ address in America, my lawyers’ address here, and Luke’s address, in the book by the phone in the dining room. Also the telephone numbers.”

As soon as she could, Barbara looked at this book. Luke Emerson’s address was in San Francisco; Catherine’s lawyers’, in New York City; and Mary Emerson’s friend, also in New York City, on Central Park West.

“Will someone be meeting you?” Barbara asked.

“I don’t think so. Only two people — two or three — know I’m coming. I thought I’d surprise everyone else. And
anyway
,” she glanced at the door and lowered her voice, “I’ve been on the point of going so many times before, and I’ve even written and told people to expect me — once even to meet me — and I’ve never gone. I think they’ve begun to doubt that I ever will leave this place, so it’s better not to say anything, I think.”

“What would you have done with Catherine if you’d left?”

“Oh, taken her back with me, and rented this place to someone. But it was always easier to stay here when it came to it. First of all, it’s a nice house and I like the city — then I have Iva — and I guess not least I notice the limitations
that Catherine has always imposed on my life less here than I would have done back home.”

Barbara looked around the room at all the evidence of
departure
, and it made her feel sad. “Do you know where you’ll end up — I mean, where you’ll live eventually?”

Mary Emerson was sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed. She shook her head. “No. I guess New York. Or I might go back down South. I don’t know. It’s a marvelous feeling, to know that tomorrow, when I leave this house, I don’t really have to go anywhere — or I could go anywhere. I don’t have to go to New York at all. I could go to Africa. Or Teheran. Or Iceland, or Poland, or —” she shrugged. “Charleston, I guess. You know, to be completely free, after so long. It’ll be strange.” She turned to Barbara, who was sitting on the bed behind her. “It’ll be sort of frightening, too.” She wrinkled her nose.

“Do you think you’ll marry again?” Barbara said softly.

“Me?” Mary Emerson croaked. “I can’t see it. But I guess I could. Who knows? Would you?”

Barbara sat, thin and widowed on the big woman’s bed, with signs of departure all around her. She prepared her lips, and they said “No” for her.

Mary Emerson leaned forward and touched a piece of tissue paper that was lying on the carpet. “You’ll be able to have your mother out here to stay in the spring,” she said.

Barbara shook her head. “No, I don’t think she’ll be coming again. I don’t think she’s well enough.”

“I guess I should have asked you before,” Mary Emerson said, “but what would you do if she got sick again, like this summer? I mean, have you thought about that?”

Barbara nodded. “Oh, yes. But don’t worry, I won’t leave Catherine.” She smiled, breathing heavily through her nostrils so Mary Emerson would hear her smiling. “Anyway, my mother’s an old fraud. She won’t get sick again for some time, I’m sure. And, ultimately, if it comes to it, and I know it sounds heartless, but I can’t really let her dictate my life, can I? If I’m going to be doing something I hope will be good for Catherine, I can’t ruin it all, can I?”

Mary Emerson said, doubtfully, “I guess not. Won’t she miss you at Christmas though? I do feel terrible about going off now. It couldn’t possibly be a worse time if I’d tried.”

Barbara pictured her old, fat, poor mother sitting alone eating turkey. Perhaps she’d invite one of her neighbors in — though it wasn’t likely, because her mother didn’t get on well with any of her neighbors. Or perhaps someone would invite her out for the day.

“No,” she said, “she always spends Christmas alone. She’s always disliked Christmas.”

It wasn’t true. They had always spent Christmas together; when Howard had been alive her mother had come to stay with them, and last year Barbara had gone to stay with her, just before she left for Italy. Once the fat old thing had even flown out to spend Christmas with her other daughter, who was ten years older than Barbara, in South America. Her mother had never spent Christmas alone.

She wanted to cry. It was pathetic, and she hated pathos. But she wanted to cry all the same, to put her arms around Mary Emerson and cry on her shoulder; to tell her that of course her mother would be lonely, but there was nothing to be done about it. Her mother was old, had had her life,
had chosen, for the supposed good of others, to put up with poverty and hardship. She couldn’t go back and share that with her, or take any responsibility for that choice. She had made her own choice, which her mother in turn had refused to have any part of, and if she didn’t want to end up like her mother, she had to stay here, with Catherine. She had to try, at least, to save Catherine in order to save herself.

“I must go out at four and get Catherine a Christmas present and a birthday present,” Mary Emerson said quietly. “I’m afraid she’s terribly overexcited.”

Catherine was in bed. She was excited, but quietly, and intensely; she had looked feverish when Barbara had arrived at the villa, just after two. She had been wearing a long,
dark-gray
coat, and her face was red, as if she had been out for a long walk in a cold wind. But it was a beautiful day, and there was no wind. She hadn’t said anything at all as Barbara had got out of the yellow taxi with one small bag, and paid the driver. She had watched for a second, and then wandered to the low sparse hedge, and looked out over the wilderness.

Barbara slipped off the bed and stood up. She went over to the window and looked out. In the spring she would have rose bushes planted in the wilderness, and other flowers.

“Poor Catherine’s been very sweet to me this last week,” Mary Emerson said. “It’s almost as if she were sorry I’m going.” She gave a small, soft laugh.

Ever since Catherine had warned Barbara that her mother didn’t trust her, the girl had gone out of her way to be nice — both to her mother and Barbara. She had said nothing strange, nothing sly, nothing insinuating. She had looked almost pretty, and had seemed to be making an effort to hold
herself together — perhaps to show her mother, at the end, how very normal she could pass for.

“I guess I will miss her‚” Mary Emerson said, “but I’ll miss her with relief.”

*

Half an hour later Catherine came to find Barbara, who was lying down on her bed. She’d left Mary Emerson sitting on the floor of her bedroom, contemplating her painted toenails.

“I want to buy some Christmas presents,” Catherine said.

Barbara propped herself up on her elbows. “Your mother’s going in a minute. Why don’t you go with her? It is her last day, you know.”

Catherine nodded. “Yes. I know. But I can’t go with her.” She paused. “I want to get something for her. She mustn’t know.”

“All right. We’ll go together. Do you have any money?”

Catherine nodded. “I told mother I wanted to buy a present for you and Iva. She told me I must buy you a very nice present. She gave me 50,000 lire.”

Barbara smiled. “Where do you want to go? To the center?”

Catherine shook her head. “No. That won’t be necessary.” She looked accusingly at Barbara. “I guess you still can’t use the car till tomorrow.”

Barbara nodded. “I could,” she said. “It’s all in order now. It’s just that —” she smiled.

“Then you must call a taxi for me,” Catherine said. “We must go by taxi.” She suddenly bowed her head. “Please call a taxi for me. I can’t speak on the telephone.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“I want to go around all the supermarkets.”

“Oh,” Barbara said.

“Please‚” Catherine said softly, “I want to go and come back before mother comes back, so I have her present ready for her.”

Barbara got up off her bed. “O.K. I’ll call a taxi right now. Go and put your coat on.”

Catherine was trembling, and trying to say something. But then she turned and ran out of the room. Barbara went to Mary Emerson’s bedroom and knocked lightly on the door, then opened it and leaned around. The big red-headed woman was still sitting on the floor. She turned her face toward
Barbara
.

“Sorry to disturb you, but we’re just going out.” She was, she heard, whispering. “Catherine’s just told me she wants to do some shopping — she wants to buy you a Christmas present. I’ll phone for a taxi.”

Mary Emerson looked as if she didn’t understand what she’d been told. She nodded and said, “Yes, sure.” Then she said, almost to herself, “I’ll be back around six. I have to wash my hair.”

*

When they reached the Romana Supermarket on the Via Cristoforo Colombo, Catherine said to Barbara, “You wait here with the tzxi. I want to go in on my own.”

“Can you manage?”

Catherine nodded.

“O.K.”

She sat and waited, and five minutes later Catherine came out of the supermarket accompanied by a young man pushing
a grocery cart for her, on which were piled three large cardboard boxes. Barbara and the taxi driver got out of the car to help load the boxes, but Catherine said to Barbara, “No, you mustn’t look. You must sit in the car.”

Barbara sat, and watched the young man and the taxi driver load the boxes into the trunk. When Catherine got back into the car she was biting her lower lip, and trembling so much that Barbara thought she was going to become hysterical.

“Did you give the boy a tip?” Barbara said gently.

Catherine nodded.

“Are you all right, Catherine?”

Looking straight ahead, with scarlet blotches on her cheeks, the girl nodded. “Please tell the driver to go to the next one,” she whispered.

As the car moved away Barbara looked out of the window and saw that they boy who had pushed the cart was standing, staring at them, looking half amused and half frightened.

They went to the S.M.A. supermarket, in Viale Beethoven, and the same thing happened. Barbara was told to sit in the car, Catherine was gone for five minutes, and when she returned she was accompanied by a boy pushing a cart on which were loaded — Barbara counted them — five plastic bags. The bags were loaded into the trunk of the taxi, the grocery boy was tipped, and as they drove away Barbara turned and saw him through the back window, staring after them, looking half amused and half frightened.

They went to the Standa in Viale Trastevere, to the Romana Supermarket in the Villaggio Olimpico, to the S.M.A. in Piazza Independenza — and everywhere it was the same;
Barbara
in the taxi, Catherine hurriedly making her secret
purchases, and the half-frightened expression on the grocery boy’s face as he watched them drive away.

They arrived back at the villa just after five. The taxi driver piled the cardboard boxes and plastic bags on the brown gravel drive, and Barbara moved to pick one of the boxes up and carry it inside. But Catherine almost shouted at her, “No! You’re not to touch them. They’re your Christmas present, too. Here —” she stuck out her hand with some money in it. “Pay the man, please, because I don’t know how much it is. And then you’re to go to your room and stay there till I call you. Promise.”

“I promise,” Barbara said. She was very uneasy, and had a feeling that her first day with Catherine was going to end, somehow, in disgrace; she was horribly afraid that Catherine had spent her 50,000 lire on something ridiculous. Mary
Emerson
would not be pleased, or consider it a good omen for the future. But then, Barbara reasoned, it was Christmas and it was Catherine’s money, and her mother was going away, and she was very upset and excited, and even if she had done something absurd with the money, it was only 50,000 lire; and that was nothing to Catherine.

Turning to go into the house, she glanced at the plastic bags lying on the gravel. In one of them she saw what looked like a carton of eggs.

As she went up the stairs to her room, she remembered the half-frightened looks of the boys who had pushed the grocery carts for Catherine.

*

She stayed in her room for more than two hours. She felt that, for some reason, it was very important for her to stay
there until Catherine called her — if only to please the girl on their first day together.

She lay on her bed and smoked. She got up and finished unpacking her bags. She turned her radio on. She lay down again and smoked another cigarette. She read a few pages of a book. She looked at the furniture, and at the reproductions of English landscape paintings on the walls.