I began again. “We know that Troy loves you very much, Lala.”
She looked up with quick protest and I went on, “We know what kind of aloha Troy has for you. Please do not misunderstand. We’re glad for Troy, that he is so happy here. But we’re concerned about his wife. Do you think she really wants to stay?” Lala said suddenly, “No! She has said that she will not stay. I heard her tell him so.”
“When was this?”
“Two weeks ago.” Lala began to speak rapidly in a low voice. “I heard her tell him she will not stay, she cannot endure this place. She wants to go home, she says, where they can live like civilized human beings.”
“How could you know this?” Anne demanded.
“We live next door. The first time I heard them they had a terrible fight. That was the day Troy told Umi he will buy the house and will pay cash for it when his check comes from the magazine. She yelled at him that night. Troy told her to shut up but she kept on yelling. Finally he rushed out of the house and went up to the pool and stayed until very late. The next day she started again. This time she was more quiet.”
“Then how could you hear what she said? Did you listen deliberately?”
“Yes. Keoni and I — Troy still had posing for us to do, and we needed the money. I was afraid she might persuade him to leave. So I listened. I went to the windows on the other side of their house, the side away from ours. I heard everything.”
“What did you hear?”
“Troy told her he wanted a divorce. He said she could go home, and according to Territorial law he could divorce her for desertion after a year and nothing would be in the papers. She could have what was in their New York bank account and all the furniture. She said their savings wouldn’t last her six months. He was very angry that night. He said she could sell some of the expensive trash she had bought and have enough to live on for two years. They had a big fight.”
“What else?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, Lala? No more fighting?”
“That’s right. Next day I listened again, but they had made up. She told him she didn’t want a divorce, she loved him and only wanted him to be happy. He said that if she really meant it she would stay here with him and make a new life, that he never knew how to live until he came here. When she said living costs as much in Honolulu as in New York, he told her it depends on what you mean by living. He could sell enough of his paintings, he said, or he could take on a commercial job once in a while, and they would be comfortable. Then they made up.”
“What happened after that?”
“Nothing. Troy worked every day, he finished the paintings.”
“What did Mavis do?”
“When she was home she stayed in the house, reading. She went out a lot. Shopping, she said, getting ideas for furnishing the house. And she went to parties. I pressed all her clothes one day. She has beautiful clothes.”
“And she and Troy never had another argument?”
“No.” Lala stood up. “But I don’t believe she will stay here long. She is an empty woman. It takes a lot of money to fill her kind of emptiness, and then it is never filled.”
We watched as she went to join Keoni. He asked a question and she shook her head and smiled, and then they disappeared in the crowd.
“Let’s walk,” Anne said. We headed for the beach.
As we paced up and down we heard behind us the voices of singers, occasional shouts of laughter, cries of “Kani ka pila!” On with the music. The luau was just warming up.
Anne clung to my arm. Her bare shoulder brushed mine as we walked. “Before you joined us I asked Lala if she remembered the night Troy got drunk at the Erickssons’. She did remember it because that was the time the car rolled down the hill, and they saw how frightened Troy was when he ran after it. I think it was shock which made him drink that night.”
“But why is that — any of it — significant now?”
“What I really wanted to know from her was where Troy went after he got into the car alone and started off again. Johnny, he didn’t leave — he didn’t go anywhere! Lala said they heard the Purcells come in that night. Troy was singing and Mavis told him to be quiet. He went into the house with her, meek as a lamb, and went to bed.”
I stopped in my tracks. “Then she told a deliberate lie! She even called the Erickssons to say how worried she was. Now that I think of it, it was out of character for Mavis. She’s not the confiding type.”
Anne urged me into motion and we walked again. “No,” she agreed, “she’s not the confiding type, nor does she act on impulse, as Troy does. That story to the Erickssons was a calculated dramatization, a plant of some kind. And for some definite reason.”
We paced in silence for a while. “Tell me,” Anne said then, “what Bill Garrison was saying to you about Troy’s insurance.”
“You were behind me. You heard him.”
“Not every word.”
I slowed my step, scuffing damp sand as I concentrated.
“First, Peggy said it was a good thing Troy has Mavis to manage his affairs. Then Bill explained that Troy carries life insurance of thirty thousand and had told him he wanted to drop it because he doesn’t expect to earn enough in the future to keep up the payments. Bill argued with Troy but couldn’t persuade him to change his mind. Later he heard from the home office that they had received Troy’s check.”
“Troy’s check — or hers?”
“He didn’t say — why should he? Maybe they have a joint account. What difference does that make, anyhow?”
“At this point, none, probably.” Anne shivered.
I knew she couldn’t be cold. I stopped and pulled her into my arms and kissed her. She clung tight for a moment and then moved back and caught my hand and we walked on.
Anne began to think aloud. “Mavis has paid up Troy’s insurance — or persuaded him to do so. She has written to the Morgans — Leila’s letter was dated five days ago and she had just heard from Mavis — giving them notice to move because she wants the apartment. Yet today she lets us believe that she intends to stay here. She doesn’t contradict Troy when he mentions selling their furniture in New York and using the money to buy a car. She talks about decorating the cottage and says their new home will be charming.” She gripped my hand tight and said, “I don’t like it, Johnny! Especially after what we saw on her face this evening.”
“When you bring the facts together that way, I don’t like it either,” I admitted. “That naked hatred when she looked at Troy and Lala — it might be just the girl she hates. And Lala is leaving soon. Perhaps after she goes Mavis will get over it.”
“I don’t think she will,” Anne insisted. “She’s not young any more. She’s invested years of effort manipulating Troy, building the kind of life she wants for them both. Now the entire structure is threatened. And in spite of her pretty manners, she is capable of violence. Lala said she screamed at Troy in fury. That must have been one of her few unguarded moments. Now she’s docile. But she spends her time reading stories of murder.”
“That’s as good a sublimation as any.”
“Don’t be an idiot. It’s only in psychology books that sublimation really works.”
“All right,” I said. “What can we do? What can anybody do?”
We had turned and were headed toward the party again. “I don’t know,” Anne said. Automatically we quickened our pace.
When we rejoined the crowd we saw neither Troy nor his wife. We went to the table, now serving as a bar, then through the house to the kitchen, and back to the lanai. There we ran into Umi.
“Looking for Troy?” he said. “He just left.”
An old man on the grass near us cackled approval. “Troy plenty onaona. Had one fine time.”