“It was a smart trick, O’Malley.”
“Anyway it caught a fish. Maybe instead of a cop I ought to be a crook, but I figure a crook works harder than a cop, and I ain’t that fond of working.”
Jean Potts
The Inner Voices
An unusual and beautifully written story about a problem that faced a man’s wife, mistress, mother, and brother — and how they acted and reacted...
Estrella’s first impulse had been to cancel her usual birthday re-union this year; it would be too poignant without her favorite son, Byron. But then — as she pointed out, in her bravest tremolo — an Inner Voice had spoken. They must carry on, in spite of their aching hearts and the mute pathos of the one vacant chair. Dear Byron would not want it otherwise. He who could nevermore be with them in the flesh would be with them in spirit.
There she went, stealing her daughter-in-law’s lines again. Completely shameless. After all, Byron’s widow, nut his mother, was entitled to the starring role. But Mary Ethel could afford to be big about it. “Exactly my feeling,” she said in the sincere, spontaneous tones that had come across so well in her television interview. “I’m sure Byron wouldn’t want his mother’s sixtieth birthday to pass unnoticed.”
“Fifty-ninth,” said Estrella. “I knew you’d understand, my dear.”
Then she called Tennyson, who of course questioned the advisability. As the one son left to her, he took his responsibilities seriously. “Are you sure you’re up to it, Mother? We all know how hard this has hit you, in spite of the way you’ve borne up so wonderfully. Not that I’m trying to dictate or anything, you understand — I realize you’re the best judge—”
“Then I’ll see you on the fifteenth,” said Estrella, who was sometimes circumspect about overruling Tennyson’s objections and sometimes not, depending on how busy she was. “I can’t decide about inviting Carol. What do you think?”
“Carol? Oh. Well, Mother, I hardly know what to say. I mean—”
There was a pause. Then Estrella said gently, “Yes. I think Byron would want her to be with us.”
So it was settled. They would meet, but they would miss him.
Indeed they would; indeed they did; it was their own business how and for what reasons...
In one of the more moving passages of her forthcoming book, Mary Ethel described (with certain basic modifications) the incredulity that still seized her at times, oftenest on her return to the empty apartment, just before she turned her key in the lock. It can’t be true, she would think; when I open the door Byron will be there.
No doubt all widows had such heart-stopping moments, even those who had actually looked into their husbands’ dead faces. But Byron’s body had never been recovered from the Everglades swamp where his little plane had crashed six months before. He remained incorrigibly alive in Mary Ethel’s memory — and, sometimes, in her imagination.
This was one of the times, this glum February afternoon, the day before the scheduled birthday reunion. She had lunched, at delightful length, with her editors. It was spitting sleet; mindful of her new feather hat (what a grand piece of luck that black was so becoming to her), she dashed from the cab to the street door of the reconverted brownstone where she stayed on, and started up the stairs that led to her second-floor apartment.
Here it was, the familiar inner quaver, like the delicious self-induced shivers that children feel when they tell each other ghost stories. Only a dream, she thought: Byron was not dead. When she opened the door he would come toward her, smiling his doggedly hopeful smile. There you are, honey, he would say, and there she would be, thudded back into reality. Not Byron’s widow. His wife.
She unlocked the door and stepped into the dusky hall. Everything was just as she had left it. Of course. On her way to the living room she drew a tremulous sigh.
“There you are, honey,” he said. “How’s tricks?”
The parquet floor under her feet lurched and tipped upward like a ship in a heavy swell. Her hand groped for the wall and found it. Solid, real. No sound now but the click of sleet against the living-room windows. The room itself was already so dark, on this sunless day, that she could not distinguish swarming shadow from impossible substance.
He switched on the table lamp. There he stood, alert, nimble-looking, head tilted in the characteristic way. He risked a smile, but not a step toward her.
“I couldn’t get you on the phone,” he explained. “So I thought I’d drop by and leave a note in the mailbox. But I still had the door key, and... hey. Hey, Mary Ethel, you’re not going to faint, are you?”
She shook her head. Sat down, carefully, on the edge of the wing-back chair. Closed her eyes. Opened, them again. He was still there.
“The crash,” she whispered. “They told us you couldn’t possibly have survived.”
“I damn near didn’t.” He spoke with jaunty complacence. “Wouldn’t have, except these Indians came along and fished me out of the swamp. The last thing I remember is thinking, ‘This is it, boy, you’ve had it,’ and when I came to it was two months later and the alligators hadn’t eaten me, after all. By that time all I had to worry about was a bad case of malaria. Too mean to die, I guess.” He paused, but she made no comment. “Would you like a brandy?”
“Please,” she said. He had a pronounced limp, she noticed as he crossed to the liquor cabinet. He had always been thin; now he was like a contraption of wire coat hangers and twine, with a piece of parchment for a face. The malaria. Which hadn’t killed him, either. “You might at least have called from down there. Or written. You might have given me some warning.”
“Yes. I didn’t intend to shake you up like this. But somehow I—” He limped over with her brandy. “You look great, Mary Ethel,” he said shyly. “Beautiful.” He stayed there in front of her, carefully not touching her. “All right, I’ll tell you the truth. I didn’t call or write because I couldn’t make up my mind about whether to come back or not.”
“Not come back?”
“Not come back,” he repeated. “Let Byron Hawley stay as dead as everybody — including me, for a while there — thought he was. Who needed him? It makes you stop and think, a narrow squeak like that. I couldn’t help wondering, for instance, whether you— Well. You’ve got to admit, we weren’t doing so hot, you and I, when I took off on that last trip.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” she reminded him bitterly. “You were the one. You and that cheap little stenographer of yours. Carol. Don’t blame me for the way we were doing.”
“But I never would have gotten mixed up with Carol if — ah, skip it. We’ve been through this too many times already.”
“Yes, we have.” She resisted the temptation to add that, to Carol at least, it was now ancient history. Let him find out for himself. “I suppose you’ve seen her?”
“No,” he said shortly. “You’re the only one who knows I’m back.”
“You haven’t even seen your mother? Or Tennyson?” She felt an inner whirring, as if an antenna were beginning to vibrate. You’re the only one who knows I’m back. The only one that knows I’m alive.
“Not yet. I wanted to see you first. I suppose Tenny’s taken over at the office?”
She nodded. “I haven’t seen much of him lately. We’ve both been busy. Your mother’s having her birthday do tomorrow. You came back just in time.” No vacant chair, after all. “She’s very busy these days too, trying to get through to you in The Great Beyond. She and Dr. Mehallah. He’s her latest discovery.”