The Woman Next Door (26 page)

Greg stayed quiet.

"Yeah," Little Rat went on, "well, that was a shifty Story. That was a real shifty story. It probably wasn't even true. I'll bet three spits it wasn't true."

"It was true," Greg whispered. He felt the blanket being tugged harder.

"Come on
outa
there, Greg. I can't hear what you're
sayin
'."

Greg felt the blanket yanked away. He rolled in the bed toward Little Rat, eyes wide.

And gasped. The word "Mommy!" escaped him, and he buried his head in the pillow to shut himself away from what stood beside the bed.

"She's a damned
freakin
' old bitch!" it yelled. And Greg imagined the words moving out of the motionless, dark oval mouth, and the dark eyes in the pasty-white face grinning madly at him.

Little Rat had changed.

"Mommy!" Greg whimpered.

"A
freakin
' greedy old witch, yeah, and she's gonna let
ya
starve here, to death."

"Mommy!" Greg screamed.

"In your own shit—"

The door burst open. The overhead light came on. Marilyn screeched, "Shut up you goddamned little bastard I'm trying to sleep can't you see that?" And Greg was amazed, petrified, that she had said it all in one breath.

"Mommy?" he whispered.

The overhead light went out. The door slammed shut. Seconds later another door, down the hall, slammed shut.

Little Rat said, "Neat trick, huh? I can do it for
ya
again. Wanna see?"

Greg had curled up into a fetal position. He said nothing. He wanted desperately to get away from this thing that was sharing his room with him.

"C
hristine, wake up." Tim nudged her. "Darling?" He flicked on the bedside lamp. "My God!" Her face, neck, and shoulders were bathed in perspiration, and her body shook convulsively. He put his hand to her cheek; the skin was incredibly hot.

Tim scrambled out of bed, ran to the living room, snatched up the phone. He hesitated. It would be best, he reasoned, to call an ambulance. He couldn't be certain Christine's doctor was available now and might waste precious time finding out. He got the phone book, opened it.

"Tim?"

He looked toward the bedroom. "Christine?"

He dropped the phone book and hurried into the bedroom. She was sitting up, her head thrown back against the headboard, her arms limp at her sides. She looked exhausted.

"I was just about to call an ambulance," he said. "I thought you were sick."

"I was." She smiled weakly. "I guess I still am." "I'll call the doctor." He started to leave the room. "No, Tim." He stopped. "It's not necessary." She paused. "It was only a nightmare."

Tim looked incredulously at her. "It must have been one hell of a nightmare. You should have seen yourself."

"Yes, Tim, it was one hell of a nightmare."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

She shook her head. "No, I don't. I can't."

Tim went over to her, sat on the edge of the bed. "It might be better for you if you talked about it, Christine. It's obvious you're sublimating something—"

"I can't talk about it, Tim, because I don't remember it."

"You don't remember it? How can you not remember it? I don't understand."

"All I remember is that Jimmy Wheeler was in it."

"Jimmy Wheeler? Who's Jimmy Wheeler?"

Christine sighed. "That little boy, the one I met in the park. You remember—I did his portrait."

Tim remembered. "Oh, you mean the boy who died."

Christine looked pained. "Yes."

"I'm sorry." He took her hand, caressed it. "I didn't mean to sound insensitive. I just didn't know he meant that much to you."

"Apparently he does, Tim."

"Yes," Tim murmured, "I can see that." He paused, then: "I can still call Dr.
Tichell
, Christine."

"Not now, Tim."

He stood, went over to his side of the bed. "If It happens again, Christine, I'm calling the doctor."

"I hope you do, Tim. And if you do, I hope he can help."

A half-hour later, the thought that accompanied Christine into sleep was:
I am dying. Something inside, a part of me, is slowly killing me. And there's nothing I can do about it
.

I
t didn't make any sense to Greg, but it didn't need to. She had good reasons for shutting him up in here and not feeding him very much (which was okay, he thought, because he didn't feel hungry anymore, just thirsty) and keeping the radiator broken. It was cold, sure, but at least he had this heavy blanket. He wished he had a TV, though. There were no hours here, just mornings and afternoons and evenings. A TV would let him count the hours, and the half-hours, and, something inside him said, that would make the wait here a little easier.

She would tell him what her reasons were soon enough. Because she loved him. She had said it more than once. She had said it a million times: "I love you, my Greg." A zillion times.

He wondered, suddenly, what she meant.

He heard the door being unlocked. He looked toward it. The door opened.

His mother, a tray of food in hand, stepped into the room. She didn't bother to turn on the light; it was nearly dawn.

"Greg"—she kicked the door closed—"I'm sorry. Can you forgive me? I was sitting and talking with Mrs.
Bennet
about one thing and another, and we got onto the subject of food—she was giving me a recipe, I believe—and I suddenly remembered I hadn't fed you in a long, long time." She grinned hugely. "So I hurried to the market and I bought all the things you like so much." She held the tray out so he could see what was on it. "Macaroni and cheese," she said, "peanut butter and jelly sandwiches—grape jelly—lemonade, and some root beer, too, and over here"—she pointed happily—"spinach (it always amazed me, my Gregory, that you liked spinach so much) and some salad with Russian dressing, and, for dessert, sherbet and whipped cream (I must confess, Gregory, that I like that, too) and pound cake." She rushed to the bed with the tray of food, held it out to him. He pushed himself to a sitting position and took the tray. He was bewildered, a little frightened, speechless. "And then, my Greg, when you're done with that, you can settle down and watch TV." She gestured toward the door.

And vanished.

Greg stifled a gasp.

The tray of food vanished.

And Greg felt suddenly hollow, alone, like a bamboo fishing pole tossed overboard and allowed to drift.

She's going to let me starve to death!

No she won't.

She couldn't.

She was his mother!

He still felt the metal tray in his hands, still smelled the cheese, and the jelly. And, strangely, the smells made him a little sick—the way taco smell made him sick. He needed to vomit, suddenly, but knew if he did it would hurt, because there was nothing in his stomach. He fought the smells back, and very slowly his nausea disappeared.

He grinned at the small victory.

And felt Little Rat lie down beside him.

"A
freakin
' goddamned old scumbag, yeah—"

"Don't," Greg hissed, his clenched fists suddenly pressed hard to his ears. "Don't!"

"She crawled out from under some kinda slimy rock and she was
draggin
' you behind her." He chuckled that low, earthy chuckle. "Yeah, you were
fallin
'
outa
her
,
fallin
'
outa
her she was so slimy—"

Greg had never imagined he could move so fast. One moment his right fist was at his ear—though it did no good; he still heard Little Rat—and the next it was connecting with something hard, but something that gave, too, under pressure, something that snapped dully, like a live, moist twig.

He heard a quick, short-lived gurgling noise, then realized that Little Rat's weight was off the bed. Greg rolled over and opened his eyes wide. "Mommy!" he screeched, so loud it hurt his ears and throat and made bile creep into his mouth.

Little Rat was tearing madly at his own throat, as if there were something awful inside it and the only way to get it out was through the skin and bone. And he was stumbling around the room, like his legs were slowly breaking. And hoarse "
ak-ak
" noises were coming from him. And every other second he turned his head and stared round-eyed, accusingly, at Greg.

"Mommy! Mommy!"

Little Rat crumpled near the window, lay still on his back, hands still at his throat.

Greg screamed again, and again, and again. Until the bedroom door burst open. Until Marilyn crossed the room, her hand raised, and he saw that horrible smile on her face. Until he saw that she had left the door open. Until he jumped from the bed, ran across the room through the open door, down the hallway—

He stopped screaming, at last, when he felt the cold air of the early spring morning through his pajamas.

He wondered where he was. Behind the garage, he realized.

And his mother was in front of it, calling to him: "My Gregory? My Gregory?"

He knew what she would do with him: She would shut him up in that room again. With Little Rat. "Gregory, you're going to catch your death."

He could hear her coming around to the side of the garage now. He glanced about. He knew Cornhill well; he had lived in the district all his life. He knew that it was big, but not awfully big, and that downtown was about a thirty-minute walk from here. Or a fifteen-minute run.

"Please, Gregory, Mommy needs you—"

He ran. Through a dozen backyards and a dozen front yards, over a half-dozen fences, causing a dozen chained dogs to bark wildly. He ran wildly, certain she was behind him, right behind him, her outstretched hand almost on him, and Little Rat—his hands still at his throat, those "
ak-ak
" noises still coming from him —right behind her.

He ran until he collapsed, barely able to breathe. He looked up. The morning sun cast the raised letters above the doorway in harsh relief: "Sibley Building." It was the right place.

He closed his eyes.

I
t was like watching some pretentious avant-garde movie, Marilyn thought. Still, there was much to be said for it, real benefit to be gained from it.

She had never before been able to weep spontaneously. She remembered weeping only once, as a girl, and then out of need, because tears had been expected from her, because, if she failed to produce tears, eyebrows would be raised and accusations made.

But now. . . .

Six hours. . . . She thought it was pathetic, and wonderful, that she had actually wept without stopping for six hours. And much of it—all of it?—was genuine. But it had been progressive—at first a heavy, heart-thumping, throat-closing remorse. Greg had run from her, he was afraid of her, he hated her, at last. It was a phrase that stayed with her, that lingered in the darkest corners of her remorse for the first two, three hours—during the time her remorse was for her loss, the loss of her son. A time when her senses dulled, and her vision blurred, and she felt certain her whole beautiful, ordered world was coming apart. Then, gradually, the truth of the phrase revealed itself to her:

At last! At last! Greg hated her. At last!

And, in that moment, the cause for her weeping changed. The weeping itself changed; occasional squeals of almost childish laughter came into it.

Greg hated her at last!

It had been so terribly obvious, she hadn't even seen it:

Only one thing really mattered. Not Brett, that
whoremongering
, abhorrent bastard stinking her house up; no, not him! And not Greg, always sniveling at her, calling her "Mommy" as though she were some ghastly, milk-producing, soft-skinned moron who would one day be a grandmother and that's what she did with her life; no, not Greg!

Only the house, big and eternal; only the house mattered.

Greg and Brett had been trespassers in it. They had corrupted it, dirtied it, trespassed in it. Just as they had trespassed on her. Through her. And into her.

Greg hated her at last!

Her scheme to rid herself of him, and to rid her house of him, had worked at last.
At last!

She looked at the clock: 12:15. It was time.

She got out of her wing chair, crossed to the telephone, lifted it, got the phone book from beneath it. She turned to the Yellow Pages, looked under "Antiques—Dealers." She knew the value of what she was selling. She'd make a pretty penny. She wouldn't tell anyone it had all been dirtied, soiled, corrupted. She cringed. Christ, could she imagine, could she imagine?—the whole house, even the walls. But not the attic. It was sealed now.

She would call the painters later.