Immediately he heard a familiar voice, thin and gravelly although he turned the volume full. “. . . against smallpox.” Randy knew he had missed the first item of news. Then he heard:
There have been isolated reports of disorders and outlawry from several of the Contaminated Zones. As a result, Mrs.
Vanbruuker-Brown, Acting President, in her capacity as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, has authorized all Reserve officers and National Guard officers, not in contact with their commanders or headquarters, to take independent action to preserve public safety in those areas where Civil Defense has broken down or where organized military units do not exist. These officers will act in accordance with their best judgment, under the proclamation of martial law. When possible, they will wear the uniform when exercising authority. I repeat this new . . .”
The signal hummed and faded. Randy clicked off the set. Even as he began to assimiliate the significance of what he had heard he was aware that Helen was standing on the other side of the counter. In her hands she held a pair of scissors, comb, and a silver hand mirror. She was smiling. “Did you hear that?” he asked.
“Yes. Today’s your haircut day, Randy. Today’s Friday.” Helen trimmed his hair and Bill McGovern’s fringe each Friday, and barbered Dan and Ben Franklin Saturdays.
“You know I’m in the Reserve,” Randy said. “I’m legal.” “What do you mean?”
“I had to pull my gun this morning to get Porky Logan buried. I had no authority. Now I do have authority, legally.” His thoughts on the proclamation, at the moment, went no further. “That’s fine. Now get into a chair.”
He walked into his office. Because of the swivel chair, it was also the barbershop. Helen tied a towel around his neck and began snipping, deftly and rapidly. She was some woman, he thought. Under any conditions she could keep a household running smoothly. In ten minutes it was done.
Her hand ruffled and then smoothed his hair. He could feel her breasts, round and warm, pressing against his shoulder blades. “You’re getting gray hairs, Randy,” she said. The timbre of her voice was deeper than usual.
“W110 isn’t?”
She rubbed and smoothed his temples. Her fingers kneaded the back of his neck. “Do you like that?” she whispered. “Mark loved it. When he came home, tense and worried, I always rubbed his temples and his neck like this.”
Randy said, “It feels fine.” He wished she wouldn’t talk like that. She made him nervous. He put his hands on the arms of the chair and started to rise.
She pulled him back and whirled the chair so that he faced her. Her eyes were round. He could see beads of perspiration at the corners of her nose, and on her forehead. “You are Mark,” she said. “Don’t you believe me? Here, look!” She lifted the mirror from the desk and thrust it before his face.
He looked, wondering how he could gracefully escape, wondering what was wrong with her. It was true that his face, leaner and harder, looked like Mark’s face now. “I do look something like him,” he admitted, “but why shouldn’t I? I’m his brother.”
Her arms pinning him with unexpected strength, she kissed him wildly, as if her mouth could subdue and mold and change him.
His hands found her wrists and he forced her back. The mirror fell and smashed.
“Don’t!” she cried. “Don’t push me away! You’re Mark! You can’t deny it! You’re Mark!”
He struggled out of the chair, clamping her wrists, trying not to injure her. He knew that she was mad and he fought to control the panic within himself. “Stop it!” he heard himself shouting. “Stop it, Helen! Stop it! I’m not Mark! I’m Randy!”
She screamed, “Mark!”
The door was ajar. Through it came Lib’s voice, loud and welcome, “Randy, are you shorn? If Helen’s finished, come on out. I’ve got something to show you.”
He released Helen’s wrists. She leaned against the desk, face averted, shoulders quivering, one hand stifling the sounds erupting from her mouth. He said, gently, “Please, Helen-” He touched her arm. She drew away from him. He fled into the living room.
Lib stood at the porch door, her face somber, beckoning. She said quietly, “Up to the roof, where we can talk.”
Randy followed her, knowing that she must have heard and grateful for her interference. It was something he would have had to tell Lib anyway. He would have to tell Dan too. This emotional earthquake could bring down their house. It was a problem for a physician.
Up on the captain’s walk, Randy lowered himself carefully into a deck chair. The canvas would rot before summer’s end. His hands were shaking. “Did you hear it all?” he asked.
“Yes. All. And saw some too. Don’t ever let her know.” “What’s wrong with her?” It was a protest rather than a question.
Lib sat on the edge of his chair and put her hands on his hands and said, “Stop shaking, Randy. I know you’re confused. It was inevitable. I knew it was coming. I’ll diagnose it for you as best I can. It’s a form of fantasy.”
Randy was silent, wondering at her detachment and cool ness.
“It is,” she went on, “the sort of transference you find in dreams-the substitution in dreams of one person for another. Helen allowed herself to slip into a dream. I think she is a completely chaste person. She is, isn’t she?”
“I’m sure of it, or I was.”
“Yet she is a person who requires love and is used to it. For many years a man has been the greater part of her life. So she has this conflict-intense loyalty to her husband and yet need of a man to receive her abundance of love and affection. She tried to resolve the conflict irrationally. You became Mark. It was an hallucination.”
“You’re talking like a professional, Lib.”
“I’m not a professional. I just wanted to be one. I majored in psychology. Remember?”
It was something she had told him but he had forgotten because it seemed incongruous and not in the least important. Lib looked like a girl who had majored in ballet and water-skiing at Miami rather than psychology at Sarah Lawrence. He knew that she worked for a year in a Cleveland clinic and had abandoned the job only because of her mother’s illness. When she spoke of this year, which was seldom, it was with nostalgia, as some girls spoke of a year in Europe or on the stage. He suspected it must have been the most rewarding year of her life, and certainly there must have been a man, or men, in it. Randy said, “Lib, do you think she’s crazy?”
“Helen’s not psychotic. She’s under terrible strain. She let herself go, but only for a moment. She indulged a temporary fantasy. Now it is over. Now she will be ashamed of herself. The best thing you can do is pretend it didn’t happen. One day she’ll mention it to you, perhaps obliquely, and apologize. Eventually she’ll understand why she did it and the sense of guilt will leave her. One day, when we’re better friends, I’ll make her understand it. You know there is a man in the house for Helen-a perfectly fine man. I’m going to make that my special project.”
Randy felt relieved. He looked out over the river, contemplating his ignorance of women and the peace of evening. On the end of the dock Ben Franklin and Peyton were fishing. It was understood that anyone, child or adult, could go fishing before breakfast or after assigned chores were done. Fishing was not only recreation but the necessary daily harvest of a crop providentially swimming at their feet. Presently the brass ship’s bell on the porch sang its sharp, clean, sea note. The bell was a relic of Lieutenant Randolph Rowzee Peyton’s longboats. It was the same bell that Randy’s mother had used to summon Mark and him from the river to wash for dinner. There was peace and continuity in the sound of the bell. The bell announced that there was food on the table and a women in the kitchen. So it was not only a message to the children but to Randy. Helen had pulled herself together. He watched Ben and Peyton, trailed by Graf, thread their way up through the grove. Graf still shared Randy’s couch but all day he shadowed the boy. This was right. A boy needed a dog. A boy also needed a father.