The Fiend Read online

  Mrs. Oakley kissed Mary Martha on the forehead. “Hello, lamb.” Then she patted Jessie on the shoulder. “Hello, Jessie. My goodness, you’re getting big. Each time I see you, I truly swear you’ve grown another inch.”

  Whenever Mrs. Oakley said this to her, which was at least once a week, Jessie felt highly complimented. Her own mother said, “Good Lord, do I have to buy you another pair of shoes already?” And her brother called her beanpole or toothpick or canary legs.

  “I eat a lot,” Jessie said modestly. “So does my brother, Mike. My father says he should get double tax exemptions for us.”

  As soon as she’d made the remark Jessie realized it was a mistake. Mary Martha nudged her in the side with her elbow, and Mrs. Oakley turned and walked away, her sharp heels leaving little dents in the waxed linoleum.

  “You shouldn’t talk about fathers or taxes,” Mary Martha whispered. “But it’s O.K., because now we won’t have to tell her about your hands. She hates the sight of blood.”

  “I’m not bleeding.”

  “You might start.”

  Charlie wrote the name and address on the inside cover of a book of matches: Jessie, 319 Jacaranda Road. He wasn’t sure yet what he intended to do with the information; it just seemed an important thing to have, like money in the bank. Perhaps he would find out Jessie’s last name and write a letter to her parents, warning them. Dear Mr. and Mrs. X: I have never written an anonymous letter before, but I cannot stand by and watch your daughter take such risks with her delicate bones. Children must be cherished, guarded against the terrible hazards of life, fed good nourishing meals so their bones will be padded and will not break coming into contact with the hard cruel earth. In the name of God, I beg you to protect your little girl….

  (2)

  For many years the Oakley house had stood by itself, a few miles west of the small city of San Félice, surrounded by lemon and walnut groves. Most of the groves were gone now, their places taken by subdivisions with fanciful names and low down payments. Into one of these tract houses, a few blocks away from the Oakleys, Jessie had moved a year ago with her family. The Brants had been living in an apartment in San Francisco and they were all delighted by the freedom of having their own private house and plot of land. Like most freedoms, it had its price. David Brant had been forced to renew his ac­quaintance with pliers and wrenches and fuse boxes, the children were expected to help with the housework, and Ellen Brant had taken over the garden. She bought a book on landscaping and another on Southern California flowers and shrubs, and set out to show the neighbors a thing or two.

  Ellen Brant was inexperienced but obstinate. Some of the shrubs had been moved six or seven times and were half dead from too much attention and overfeeding. The creeping fig vine, intended to cover the chimney of the fireplace, refused to creep. The leaves of the jasmine yellowed and dropped from excess dampness, and Ellen, assuming their wilting was due to lack of water, turned on the sprinkling system. Bills from the nursery and the water department ran high but when Dave Brant com­plained about them Ellen pointed out that she was actually in­creasing the value of the property. In fact, she didn’t know or care much about property values; she simply enjoyed being out-of-doors with the sun warm on her face and the wind smelling mysteriously of the sea.

  She was busy snipping dead blossoms off the rosebushes when Jessie arrived home at one o’clock.

  Ellen stood up, squinting against the sun and brushing dirt off her denim shorts and bare knees. She was slim and very tanned, like Jessie, and her eyes were the same unusual shade of grayish green.

  “What are you doing home so early?” she said, pushing a strand of moist hair off her forehead with the pruning shears. “By the way, you didn’t straighten up your room before you left. You know the rules, you helped us write them.”

  It seemed to Jessie a good time to change the subject as dramatically as possible. “Mary Martha says I may be dying.”

  “Really? Well, you wouldn’t want to be caught dead in a messy room, so up you go. Start moving, kiddo.”

  “You don’t even believe me.”

  “No.”

  “I bet if Mary Martha went home and told her mother she was dying, there’d be a terrible fuss. I bet there’d be ambulances and doctors and nurses and people screaming—”

  “If it will make you feel any better I’ll begin screaming right now.”

  “No! I mean, somebody might hear you.”

  “That’s the general purpose of screaming, isn’t it?” Ellen said with a smile. “Come on, let’s have it, old girl—what’s the matter?”

  Jessie exhibited her hands. A dusting of cinnamon hadn’t improved their appearance but Ellen Brant showed neither surprise nor dismay. She’d been through the same thing with Jessie’s older brother, Mike, a dozen times or more.

  She said, “I have the world’s climbingest children. Where’d you do this?”

  “The jungle gym.”

  “Well, you go in and fill the washbasin with warm water and start soaking your hands. I’ll be with you in a minute. I want to check my record book and see when you had your last tetanus booster shot.”

  “It was the Fourth of July when I stepped on the stingray at East Beach.”

  “I hope to heaven you’re not going to turn out to be accident-prone.”

  “What’s that?”

  “There were at least a thousand people on the beach that afternoon. Only you stepped on a stingray.”

  Although Jessie knew this was not intended as a compliment, she couldn’t help taking it as such. Being the only one of a thousand people to step on a stingray seemed to her quite dis­tinctive, the sort of thing that could never happen to someone like Mary Martha.

  Half an hour later she was ensconced on the davenport in the living room, watching a television program and drinking chocolate milk. On her hands she wore a pair of her mother’s white gloves, which made her feel very sophisticated if she didn’t look too closely at the way they fitted.

  The sliding glass door was partly open and she could see her mother out on the lawn talking to Virginia Arlington, who lived next door. Jessie was quite fond of Mrs. Arlington and called her Aunt Virginia, but she hoped both women would stay out­side and not interrupt the television movie.

  Virginia Arlington’s round pink face and plump white arms were moist with perspiration. As she talked she fanned herself with an advertisement she’d just picked up from the mailbox.

  Even her voice sounded warm. “I saw Jessie coming home early and I was worried. Is anything the matter?”

  “Not really. Her hands are sore from playing too long on the jungle gym.”

  “Poor baby. She has so much energy she never knows when to stop. She’s like you, Ellen. You drive yourself too hard sometimes.”

  “I manage to survive.” She dropped on her knees beside the rosebush again, hoping Virginia would take the hint and leave. She liked Virginia Arlington and appreciated her kindness and generosity, but there were times when Ellen preferred to work undisturbed and without someone reminding her she was driving herself too hard. Virginia had no children, and her husband, Howard, was away on business a great deal; she had a part- time gardener and a cleaning woman twice a week, and to open a can or the garage doors or the car windows, all she had to do was press a button. Ellen didn’t envy her neighbors. She knew that if their positions were reversed, she would be doing just as much as she did now and Virginia would be doing as little.

  Virginia lingered on, in spite of the sun which she hated and usually managed to avoid. Even five minutes of it made her nose turn pink and her neck break out in a rash. “I have an idea. Why don’t I slip downtown and buy Jessie a couple of games?—you know, something absorbing that will keep her quiet.”

  “I thought Howard was home today.”

  “He is, but he’s still asleep. I
could be back by the time he wakes up.”

  “I appreciate your offer, naturally,” Ellen said, “but you’ve already bought Jessie so many toys and books and games—”

  “That won’t spoil her. I was reading in a magazine just this morning that buying things for children doesn’t spoil them un­less those things are a substitute for something else.”

  Ellen had read the same magazine. “Love.”

  “Yes.”

  “Jessie gets plenty of love.”

  “I know. That’s my whole point. If she’s already loved, the little items I buy her can’t harm her.”

  Ellen hesitated. Some of the items hadn’t been so little—a ten-gear Italian bicycle, a cashmere sweater, a wrist watch—but she didn’t want to seem ungrateful. “All right, go ahead if you like. But please don’t spend too much money. Jessie might get the idea that she deserves an expensive gift every time some­thing happens to her. Life doesn’t work out that way.”

  There was a minute of strained silence between the two women, like the kind that comes after a quarrel over an im­portant issue. It bothered Ellen. There had been no quarrel, not even a real disagreement, and the issue was hardly im­portant, a two-dollar game for Jessie.

  Virginia said softly, “I haven’t offended you, have I, El? I mean, maybe you think I was implying that Jessie didn’t have enough toys and things.” Virginia’s pale blue eyes were anxious and the tip of her nose was already starting to turn red. “I’d feel terrible if you thought that.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  “You’re absolutely sure?”

  “Don’t go on about it, Virginia. You want to buy Jess a game, so buy it.”

  “We could pretend it was from you and Dave.”

  “I don’t believe in pretending to my children. They’re sub­jected to enough phoniness in the ordinary course of events.”

  From one of the back windows of the Arlington house a man’s voice shouted, “Virgie! Virgie!”

  “Howard’s awake,” Virginia said hastily. “I’ll go and make his breakfast and maybe slip downtown while he’s eating. Tell Jessie I’ll be over later on.”

  “All right.”

  Virginia walked across the lawn and down her own driveway. It was bordered on each side with a low privet hedge and small round clumps of French marigolds. Everything in the yard, as in the house, was so neat and orderly that Virginia felt none of it belonged to her. The house was Howard’s and the cleaning woman’s, and the yard was the gardener’s. Virginia was a guest and she had to act like a guest, polite and uncritical.

  Only the dog, a large golden retriever named Chap, was Virginia’s. She had wanted a small dog, one she could cuddle and hold on her lap, and when Howard brought Chap home from one of his trips she had felt cheated. Chap was already full-grown then and weighed ninety pounds, and the first time she was left alone with him she was frightened. His bark was loud and ferocious; when she fed him he nearly gobbled her hand; when she took him out on a leash he’d dragged her around the block like a horse pulling a wheelless carriage. She had gradually come to realize that his bark was a bluff, and that he had been underfed by his previous owners and never taught to obey any orders.

  From the beginning the dog had attached himself to Virginia, as if he knew she needed his company and protection. He was indifferent to Howard, despised the cleaning woman, and held the gardener in line with an occasional growl. He slept inside at night and kept prowlers away not only from Virginia but from the immediate neighbors as well.

  Howard had gotten up and let the dog out. Chap came bounding down the driveway, his plumed tail waving in circles.

  Virginia leaned down and pressed her cheek against the top of his huge golden head. “You silly boy, why the big greeting? I’ve only been away for ten minutes.”

  Through the open kitchen window Howard overheard her and said, “A likely story. You’ve probably been over at the Brants’ gabbing with Ellen all morning.”

  She knew he intended it mainly, though not entirely, as a joke. Without replying, she went in the back door, through the service porch to the kitchen. The dog followed her, still making a fuss, as if she were the one, not Howard, who’d been gone for two weeks.

  Howard had made coffee and was frying some bacon on the grill in the middle of the stove. When he was home he liked to mess around the kitchen because it was a pleasant contrast to sitting in restaurants, being served food he didn’t enjoy. He was a fussy eater for such a large man.

  A head taller than Virginia, he had to lean way down to kiss her on the mouth. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Virgie.”

  “Am I?” Virginia said. “The bacon’s burning.”

  “Let it. Did you miss me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that all, yes?”

  “I missed you very much, Howard.”

  He flipped the bacon expertly with a spatula, all four slices at once. “Still want me to quit my job, Virgie?”

  “I haven’t brought that subject up for over a year.”

  “I know. It makes me wonder how you’ve been spending your time while I’m away.”

  “If you want to know, ask me.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “All right.” Virginia sat down at the kitchen table, her pale pretty hands folded in her lap. “I start off each day with a champagne breakfast. After that, it’s luncheon with the girls, with plenty of drinks, of course. We play bridge for high stakes all afternoon and end up at a cocktail party. Then I have dinner at a nightclub and carouse until dawn with a group of merry companions.”

  “Sounds rigorous,” Howard said, smiling. “How do you manage to stay so beautiful?”

  “Howard—”

  “Put a couple of slices of bread in the toaster, will you?”

  “Howard, were you serious when you asked me how I spent my time?”

  “No.”

  “I think you were. Perhaps you’d like me to keep a diary. It would make fascinating reading. Juicy items like how I took some clothes to the cleaners, borrowed a book from the library, bought groceries—”

  “Cut it out, will you, Virgie? Something popped into my head and I said it and I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. Let’s forget it.”

  “I’ll try.”

  He brought his plate of bacon to the table and sat down op­posite her. “I hope I didn’t wake you when I came in this morn­ing. Chap made a hell of a fuss, he almost convinced me I had the wrong house. You’d think he’d know me by this time.”

  “He’s a good watchdog,” she said, adding silently: You’d think I, too, would know you by this time, Howard, but I don’t. “How was the trip?”

  “Hot—103 degrees in Bakersfield, 95 in L.A.”

  “It’s been hot here, too.”

  “I have an idea. Why don’t we head for the beach this after­noon? We’ll loll around on the sand, have a walk and a swim—”

  “It sounds nice, Howard, but I’m afraid I can’t. You know how badly I sunburn.

  “You could wear a wide straw hat and we’ll take along the umbrella from the patio table.”

  “No.”

  He stared at her across the table, his eyes puzzled. “That was a pretty definite no, Virginia. Are you still sore at me?”

  “Of course not. It’s just that—well, the umbrella’s no good any more. It was torn. I threw it away.”

  “It was practically brand-new. How did it get torn?”

  “The wind. I intended to tell you. We had a big wind here Tuesday afternoon, a Santa Ana from the desert. I was down­town when it started and by the time I got home the umbrella was already damaged.”

  “Why didn’t you take it to one of those canvas shops to have it repaired?”

  “The spokes were bent, too. You should have seen it, H
oward. It looked as if it had been in a hurricane.”

  “The bougainvillea beside the garage usually blows over in a Santa Ana. I didn’t notice anything wrong with it.”

  “Salvador may have tied it up.”

  She knew this was safe enough. Salvador, who spoke or pre­tended to speak only Spanish, wasn’t likely to deny or confirm anything. He would merely smile his stupid silver-toothed smile and crinkle up his wise old eyes and go right on working. You speak, señor, but if I do not hear you, you do not exist.

  There had been no Santa Ana on Tuesday afternoon, just a fresh cool breeze blowing in from the ocean. Virginia had not been downtown, she’d been sitting on the front porch watching Jessie and Mary Martha roller-skate up and down the sidewalk. It was Jessie’s idea to borrow the umbrella to use as a sail, and it had worked all too well. The two girls and the umbrella ended up against the telephone pole at the corner. Over cookies and chocolate malted milks Virginia told the girls, “There’s no need to go blabbing to your parents about this. You know your mother, Jessie. She’d insist on paying for the umbrella and she can’t really afford to. So let’s keep this our secret, shall we?”

  Virginia got up and poured Howard some coffee. Her hands were shaking and she felt sick with fear that Howard suspected her of lying. “I’m terribly sorry about the whole thing, Howard.”

  “Come on now. I hardly expect you to apologize for a Santa Ana. As for the umbrella, it was just an object. Objects can be replaced.”

  “I could go downtown right now and buy one, while you’re reading the newspaper.”

  “Nonsense. We’ll have one sent out.”

  “I’m going down anyway.”

  “Do you have to? We’ve hardly had a chance to talk.”

  We’ve had a chance, Howard, she thought, we just haven’t used it to very good advantage. She said, “You’ll be reading the paper anyway. It seems silly for me merely to sit and watch you when I could be accomplishing something.”