Chapter 13
It began on the last Saturday in June. Began undramatically and almost innocuously, with Paul out of the house. (He had gone to Clebb's drugstore for aspirin and cigarettes, commodities which in recent weeks, he seemingly stocked in carload lots.) The weather was hot and sultry. And the air lay heavy over Riverdale. Nadine, in white shirt and shorts, cooled the cement driveway with the garden hose. It was something to do. Little River Seines trickled down to the curb. She held an imaginary conversation with a Monty who had sprouted a Parisian smock and beret. Tolouse Le Carrell spoke to her above the whoosh of the hose spray.
It began then, with the screeching stop of Mabel Ryner's yellow convertible. Mabel was wearing shorts, too, Nadine noticed, grateful that she had been spared the rear view. Mabel stamped across the lawn. Her shirtwaist was grey, her shorts were fire-engine red, complementing her face.
Sounding ludicrously like the heavy in a grammar school theatrical, Mabel said, "Just the person I want to see!"
"Hello, Mabel," Nadine said. Perversely, she added the standard summertime cliche, "Hot enough for you?"
Mabel bristled across the wet driveway. Two feet away from Nadine, she stopped. "Listen, I wouldn't have believed it! I used to say, if there's one person I can trust, it's Nadine."
"Mabel, for goodness' sake ... here, let me shut off this hose and we'll go inside...."
"Don't bother! I wouldn't step inside your house! And believe you me, if I didn't feel sorry for Paulie, you wouldn't be able to make the payments on it!"
Nadine looked into the blazing face of one of the original Furies. "Mabel, what's come over you?"
Now one of the angry red cheeks glistened with a tear, Asking the question with unvarying monotony, even though the train was never late ... and Nadine could not tell Paul how long she had waited or how far she had traveled in those five fanciful minutes. then the other. What was called for, Nadine decided quickly, was a delicate blend of injured-friend, what's-all-this-about? and you-poor-dear-you've-misunderstood-something-but-I-won't-hold-it-against-you-once-you've-realized-y our-mistake. Nadine assumed the proper posture and expression, listening to Mabel's tearful, uncontrolled recital of suspicions, conversations with Gwen and quotes from an argument between Wardy and Cousin George.
Sifting the salient points, Nadine concluded that there were no Definite Proofs upon which Mabel could firmly stand. There were only ambiguities; "I'm not as dumb as you think I am," and, "Gwen isn't a dummy, either," and, "Why would Wardy get so mad at George if there wasn't something going on with you two, tell me that?"
No firm footing, and tears, demonstrating that Mabel regretted the need for this tirade and would appreciate discovering that she was wrong. It would be a great kindness to prove her wrong. Nadine waited patiently until Mabel exhausted her accumulation of the garbled half-truths (half true because Mabel didn't suspect nearly enough to make her accusations wholly true). Then, mustering pained tears of her own, Nadine said, "If you want to believe all that about me, Mabel ... there's nothing I can do to defend myself, is there?" (For, at that moment, there was nothing Nadine could do. She stood horribly accused, defenseless and hurt. Terribly hurt, and the tears, as she thought of it thus, flowed like spring wine.)
Mabel waited for more. The silence thickened, more leaden than the oppressive heat. Nadine stared pitiably at the driveway and the rivulets at their feet, chewing her lower lip, shaking her head, refusing to believe that a friend ... a dear friend could even have dreamed, let alone said that....
Mabel's face was too florid to reflect a blush of embarrassment. She blushed, instead, with the tremulous uncertainty of her words. "Nadine ... you know I ... sure don't want to think ... I'd feel like two cents if...."
Nadine brushed aside a tear with her wrist, careful not to smudge her mascara. "You're entitled to believe anything you want to, Mabel."
"It's not that I want to...." Mabel was frightened now. She sounded sick. She moved her arms aimlessly, as though searching for a support.
"Don't cry, Mabel. Please ... honey, I've made a lot bigger mistakes in my day. Why, the first year Paul had your account, I used to be jealous as hell. All I heard around the house was Warren this and Mabel that. I actually resented you."
"Me?"
"Why wouldn't I?" Crying beautifully now, Nadine stammered, "You have everything, Mabel. Absolutely everything. Sometimes I don't think you realize what your position is. We're so completely dependent on you ... financially, socially. I realize now that Paul ... that he only thinks of you as a wonderful friend. But at first...."
"You were jealous of me? Oh, Nadine...."
"Maybe I listened to too many ... catty women. You know the kind."
Mabel furrowed her brow, undoubtedly recalling the poisons implanted by Gwen Allegretti. "Most women are that way," Mabel admitted hesitantly. "Except you. I've got to say that. You never stab anybody in the back ... "
Slowly, expressing a simple, uncontestable philosophy, Nadine said, "I think people in a neighborhood like this should ... think of each as family. You know? Paul and Warren are like brothers. For a long time now I've thought of you as my...."
Nadine left the "sister" unsaid deliberately. It was more effective that way. For any references to familial ties evoked in Mabel the same response that "White Christmas" wrings from homesick troops overseas.
"I've been so ... nervous lately," Mabel said feebly. "Getting ready for Georgie ... and ... everything."
It was touching, a moment of gripping poignancy; Mabel weeping copiously, Nadine not letting herself be outdone.
Before Mabel returned to her car, apologizing that she felt too miserable to come in for coffee, they exchanged a long, soulful look of repledged sisterly devotion. And Nadine added what she considered an inspired sprig of parsley to the dish, a you-crazy-wonderful-silly-girl-you half-smile and a gentle corrective punch to Mabel's plump arm.
But when Mabel had driven off and when Nadine had turned the hose spigot and returned to the house, she found herself shaking with a palsied breathlessness. It had been a job well done. Everyone was happy. Yet the performance had not been casually and effortlessly executed. She felt drained, siphoned dry, and uneasy.
She might have reclaimed her composure if Sherry had not been standing next to the screen door as she came in. And Sherry had heard. One glance at that mirror-sensitive face and there was no doubt that Sherry had heard.
Anticipating the battle, Nadine struck the first blow. "Is it getting to be a habit with you, Sherry? Eavesdropping on private conversations?"
Sherry glared her inarticulate disgust.
It was enervating. Handling Mabel had been a strain. And now to be plunged into another tournament of wits without a moment's respite ... plus having to overcome that most formidable of weapons, frozen silence! Speaking first put Nadine at a disadvantage-placed her on the defensive-yet Sherry's stony wall of contempt called for some positive action....
"I expect you're going to twist everything out of perspective and misconstrue every...."
"I thought it was fabulous," Sherry said in a drab monotone.
"You thought...?"
"Mrs. Ryner's so square and you're so sharp. It was fabulous. At Pine Cove ... you could have coached the drama teacher." Sherry's eyes were direct and uncompromisingly cold. "The way you had her apologizing ... oh, man! I was afraid she wouldn't let George come here again. I was even afraid Daddy might lose the Weidberger deal. I just didn't give you credit! Mommy, you're the most gifted lying bitch in the world!"
"Sheryl, you'll apologize for that!"
"The way I apologized for thinking the same things Mrs. Ryner thought? I said I was sorry! I was sorry! What a laugh! Will you make Daddy say he's sorry, too? When he finds out?"
"How can you possibly...?"
"Oh, can it! Can it! It won't work with me. Once, sure, but not over and over. What do you take me for? A meat-head like Mabel Ryner? A poor, dumb sap like Dad?"
Sherry's cry was punctuated by the slam of the screen door. They had moved only a few feet down the entry hall during the argument. Paul's entrance made a nonchalant retreat impossible.
Nadine and Sherry stiffened. Paul slowed his step just inside the door, looking from one to the other, picking up the tense vibrations, showing it with concerned, questioning eyes.
Nadine waited for him to ask what was wrong; any im-perceptive stranger would have sensed their discord.
Paul only paused, grim ... adding to the suspenseful tableaux.
And then, with shocking, incredible swiftness, Sherry threw herself forward, almost falling the few feet to where Paul stood, and flinging her long arms around his neck, shrilling the terrifying sounds of hysteria, "Oh, Daddy ... Daddy, I can't stand it ... I can't take any more ... I don't ever want to see her again! ... Oh, Daddy, you don't know, you don't know!"
Paul folded Sherry in his arms. The carton of cigarettes in his hand seemed fearfully incongruous to Nadine. It was like some bizarre bit of symbolism, though exactly what it could represent eluded her imagination. She stared at the long, trembling white carton, remembering a movie Pop had taken her to see when she was no more than five or six ... All Quiet on the Western Front; that close-up of the dead soldier's hand, and the bright, gay, horrifyingly out-of-place butterfly landing there, seeing the same chilling strangeness pressed now against Sherry's convulsive back; King-Size Filter-Tip, magnifying the contrast of the inconsequential with the rakingly genuine sorrow.
Nadine turned from the scene. No, it was no longer a scene but an unmanageable reality, beyond her control. And she longed for the play-acting episodes in which the drama had stemmed from the bottomless depths of her chimerical mind. These passionate cries were emerging in spite of Nadine; she ached for a return to that unperturbing stage upon which all scenes could be ended with the drop of a curtain, her own hand pulling the drawcord.
She had an obscure impression of Paul walking Sherry to her room. Of their voices rising and falling from behind a muffling barricade of doors, of her own regret, not at what had been done (for, as always, her intentions had been beyond reproach) but at having stupidly permitted this uncomfortably, inescapably real state of affairs.
A long time later, after Nadine had retreated from the hallway battlefield to the sanctuary of her bedroom (exclusively hers since Paul's weekend at the lake), the bewildered and bewildering mood, her illusion of being suspended in a vacuum, ended abruptly with the appearance of Paul.
Truthfully, it was only the ghost of Paul who closed the door behind him. Pale, a shadowy quality in his presence, spectre eyes that simultaneously saw nothing and everything. Nadine stretched herself resignedly across the chaise lounge. Paul dropped to an unsettled perch on the edge of her vanity bench.
He sat rigidly for a moment; silent, breathing heavily. Then his hand slid across his face, smashing his features in its downward movement, finally dropping weightily into his lap. "I can't ... I don't want to. I'm like that poor kid in there. I refuse to believe ... but it's not because ... I'm incapable of seeing the truth." Paul sighed, a minor, moaning, dying wind sound. "I just don't want to, Nadine! I want to go on believing you're my Mom ... my girl ... Sherry's mother ... oh, Jesus Christ, how I wish I was as stupid as you've made me out to be! Christ, Christ, Christ!" His fist pounded the bench in a desperate rhythm of emphasis. "I don't want to face what you are!"
Nadine had managed feminine tears effectively and, in recent weeks, often. But the sight of Paul weeping, enormous, crooked tears zigzagging across that undeniably masculine face, paralyzed the usual rapier-sharpness of her brain. Paul speaking in that agonizing, tense half-whisper and crying ... Paul ... my God, crying!
"Dear...."
"Don't say anything! You'll do...."
"Paul, you've got to...."
"... such a remarkable job of convincing me I'm wrong. It's what I want! What everyone around you wants." Paul shook his head like a wet terrier, the unaccustomed tears changing their course. "You can do it. You'll sell me a bill of goods ... maybe that's what hurts most. Knowing you can look me in the eyes...."
"You might tell me what's happened!"...." stare me straight in the face. 'Vince is just another neighbor.' 'Leila can't write her own letters.' How many other times? I'll never know. Maybe everybody around me's been laughing behind my back. My own kid ... calling me a damned fool. My kid ... my wife ... my family. God, Nadine ... my whole goddamned life!"
It would be impossible to reach him now, on any level. What was important was to learn exactly what he knew and from whom. (Vince and Roy. Nothing certain, nothing recent.) Painful to listen to him, more painful to look at him. But how else could she pour oil over the troubled waters? She had to hear him out because she had to know.
"What's this about Vince?" she asked quietly, unbelieving.
"I could have killed him. I wanted to kill him. If it hadn't been for Warren ... telling me the guy's drunk ... he's only doing a little wishful thinking out loud...."
"What did he say? Vince, I mean."
"The bleary cracks. All the way there, all the way home. And, in between ... grabbing at every excuse to mention your name. Comparing you with Gwen. Throwing dirty digs at Warren ... as though you were the town strumpet ... insulting a friend like Warren, implying he felt the same way about you ... with Junior and Bucky in the car! How could the man defend himself?"
"Warren? You see how ridiculous it is? Listening to a drunk...."
"I knew that was ridiculous, sure. Warren's not a ... , I can trust him. But not Vince. Not you!"
"Paul, how can you...?"
"I heard enough to convince me it wasn't pure imagination. That it wasn't one-sided. And don't ask me for details ... I couldn't bring myself to repeat them. Nadine, I was sick enough to do it. Kill him!"
"Thank God Warren was with you."
"Sure. Having to lie ... tell me it wasn't you Vince was calling from that phone booth...."
"How do you know...."
"I've had a ... hunch for a long time ... all those middle-of-the-night calls. It wasn't really what Warren kept saying that stopped me. I actually felt sorry for that plastered sonofabitch."
"I feel sorry for him, too, Paul...."
"Not for the same reasons," Paul said thickly. "I got to thinking ... to looking back ... remembering ... fitting little pieces together. That time the two of you disappeared from Stroud's on New Years' Eve ... the way he makes a bee-line for you at parties. And the way you encourage him."
"Yes, wave yourself under his nose. Is that what you did with Roy? Is that why he left?"
He was only guessing. And apparently Sherry hadn't told him about Mabel's visit ... or the phone conversations with Monty. Paul, like Mabel, had worked himself into a lather over nothing but unprovable suspicions! She told him so resentfully, shocked that he would take the fanciful mutterings of a dipso against her word.
"There's more to it," Paul said tiredly. "Once I lost confidence ... once I stopped believing in you the way a man believes in his wife ... it began to pile up and stare me in the face. Just tell me why? Why, with a couple of weaklings like Roy Stroud ... like Vince?" Bitterly, he added, "You could have done better, Nadine. Wound all three of us around your little finger ... lied to them the way you lied to me. But I'm a trusting sap. They're a couple of mixed-up characters who live in a dream world. You could have done better."
"That's a terrible...."
"Vince seemed to think you were more in Monty Carrell's league. Apparently he kept a closer eye on you at Ryners' party than I did. I came close to beating his head in when he talked about ... how you'd knocked Monty off his feet...."
"God, he must have been drunk!"
"Sickening! And then I got to thinking about ... the Zam-Zam Club." Suddenly, throwing the question out like a lance, Paul demanded, "Where were you Saturday night?"
"Where would I be...?"
"I was afraid Vince had reached you. Worried about him upsetting you ... furious ... I don't know. I tried calling you myself. I tried all night and all Sunday morning!"
"Where did you think...."
"Answer me!"
"I was...."
"There was no answer at Monty Carrell's, either! You were out somewhere with him! Making a laughing stock of me ... of yourself!"
"Myself?"
"You think he's a dumb lovesick slob ... like Roy? Like Gwen's husband? Like yours? You think he could ever give a damn about you ... beyond a quick roll in the hay?"
"Paul, don't shout! Sherry...."
"It's too late to think about Sherry!"
"Don't scream at me!"
"You were with him! Like any one of his cheap one-night stands! My wife. Mommy! Throwing herself at...."
"I didn't throw myself at him!"
It was too late to cover up, too foolish to entangle herself further in the web; Paul knew too much and now he had struck at that most inflamed, sensitive Achillean heel ... her ego. What happened now was up to the gods ... but damned if he was to go on believing Monty had used her!
"You asked for this, Paul! It wasn't any cheap one-night stand!"
"Oh, wasn't it!"
"He's in love with me...."
"Oh, Christ...!"
"I love him!"
And this was more like it. Nadine tingled with the ultimate in dramatic declamations. It was heartbreaking to tell him, but Paul had to know. She was in love ... against her will, against her judgment ... against all her powers to resist.
"I'm in love with him!"
"But you waited until you were trapped to tell me! The jig is up ... might as well let the old fool know...."
"Nor
"Go. Go on. Go on, get out! God almighty, go to him ... I don't know you ... I've lived eighteen years with a stranger!"
"Paul, I don't want you to be hurt...."
"My God! You don't want me to be hurt!"
"Couldn't you try to understand?"
"Go on! You're free ... I'm not holding you. I never had you ... I never knew you. Vince knows you! Maybe Roy did! Lead your kind of life, but get out ... get out of my sight, let me pick up the pieces, you ... you...."