They entered the park and, slackening still further their already leisurely pace, strolled down one of the long, winding, paved walks. The greenery was absolutely incredible, its hues heightened almost above nature by the clearness of the air and the brilliance of the sun. The grass was like emeralds, and even had a sparkle to it (from being recently wetted down, she supposed). The leaves on the trees were like little slivers and disks of wafer-thin dark green jade, and under each tree lay a pool of sapphire shadow. It looked like an artificially colored picture postcard of a park, and not a real one, on such a jeweled day as this.
“Cities, and their parks, still can be beautiful at times, even nowadays,” Madeline remarked.
“I used to come here and play when I was a child myself, many times. My mother would bring me.”
They came past a small lake with ducks swimming on it. The water flashed and dazzled like highly polished silver. Even the plumage of the ungainly little fowl glinted like burnished bronze and green-gold.
Madeline had seen her opening in the last remark.
“I suppose Starr did too, afterward.”
“Yes, I brought her as often as I could. And the cycle repeated itself. Strange thing, life.”
But now she’s dead, so she herself will never be able to bring a little girl of her own here to play, in her turn.
Charlotte turned toward her quite unexpectedly and said, “I know what you were thinking just then.”
Madeline didn’t try to deny it. She simply nodded and said, “Yes, I was.”
They came to a bench and Madeline said, “How about sitting here? Will this do?”
They both sat down.
Madeline took out cigarettes and offered one to her companion.
“It’s been years since I’ve tried one,” Charlotte said. “But I think I will have one for a change, as long as it’s all right with you.”
“I want to talk to you a little more about Starr,” Madeline said. “That is, if it doesn’t bother you.”
“It doesn’t now anymore,” Charlotte said. “Not since you’ve been here. Before that it used to hurt even to think about her. Now it seems to help me, to ease me, if I talk about her.”
Madeline wasted no further time on preliminaries. “When she went back to the city, when she left you the last time, do you think she intended to — rejoin her husband, effect a reconciliation to him?” She completed dropping her midget cloisonné-enamel lighter back inside her bag.
Charlotte looked up at her in considerable surprise.
“Why do you hesitate about answering? You’re not sure, is that it?”
“I am sure,” Charlotte said, and looked the other way.
“You’re sure she was not going back to him?”
“I’m sure she was not going back to him. Not in the way that you mean.”
“Oh, I see,” Madeline said briefly, hoping that enough impetus had been given the conversation by now for the rest of it to come more or less by itself without having to dig at it too much.
It did but a little reluctantly.
“I asked her that question myself, when she started her packing the night before she was to leave. It was a natural one for a mother to ask a married daughter who’s been estranged from her husband, don’t you think?”
Madeline nodded, trying not to break in.
“She stopped what she was doing and looked at me. I’ll never forget that look as long as I live. It was a terrible look. I’d never seen such a look on her face before. Not on anyone else’s either. It was grim, it was deadly with hate. Her eyes were pulled back tight at the corners, and they were hard as rocks. Her mouth was drawn out too, into a thin, bitter line. And even her nostrils, I could see them pulsing in and out with her breaths. I repeat, it was the most terrible look I’d ever seen.
“And then she said — and even her voice wasn’t the same — ‘I’m going to look him up, all right. I’m going to look him up if it’s the last thing I do. I’m going to look him up, you can count on it.’
“I didn’t understand, just as I see you don’t now, what she meant. I knew by the terrible, almost maddened look I’ve just been telling you about, she didn’t mean reconciliation, she didn’t mean forgiveness, she didn’t mean love. Even the way she’d said it. She didn’t say, ‘I’m going back to him.’ She didn’t say ‘I’m going back with him.’ She kept hammering on the words ‘look him up,’ as though that was where the threat or the implication of whatever she intended doing lay.”
Charlotte was holding her cigarette in the way of a woman unaccustomed to smoking, two fingers hooked around the extreme back end of it. She threw it down on the walk and stepped it out.
“Have him arrested, perhaps, have him taken into court. Or even put in jail?”
Charlotte shook her head, very quietly, very slowly. “More than that.”
“What more than that can a wife—?”
“She intended to kill him.”
Madeline gave an involuntary start. “How can you be sure of that?”
“I have the gun,” Charlotte said flatly.
“How did you know she had it?”
“I didn’t. It came about quite accidentally. She finished her packing that night, and we didn’t talk about it anymore. I didn’t want to see that look on her face anymore. I didn’t want to bring it back. The next day she went out for a short while to do some last-minute shopping before she took the train. I came across some handkerchiefs of hers that I’d given her a helping hand with by washing and pressing. I’d forgotten to give them back to her the night before in time to go into the valise, and evidently she’d forgotten I still had them.
“I went into her room with them. The valise was locked and ready to go, but she’d left her keys on her dresser top. No reason for her not to. I’d never been the prying sort of mother that noses into a girl’s belongings, even when she was younger. I opened it and started to spread the handkerchiefs out evenly all over the top of it. While I was doing this I felt something hard and heavy under one of the layers of clothing. I exposed it, and it was a gun.”
A little of the fear and worry came back to her face, Madeline could see, even this long after.
“I was afraid to leave it in there. I kept seeing that look on her face the night before. I didn’t want her to do it, to get into trouble. Her whole life would be worthless from then on, ruined. No matter what he’d done to her. I took it out and rearranged the valise, and relocked it. Put the keys back where I’d found them.
“I didn’t know what to do with it. I knew if she missed it in time, before she got on the train, she’d look high and low for it. I didn’t want her to get it back. Finally I thought of a place that might very well not occur to her. The refrigerator in the kitchen was very old, and there was a space between the back of it and the wall. I slipped it down inside there. The part that you hold, the handle, was a little bit thicker than the rest of it, so it didn’t drop all the way down, it got caught and stayed where it was, near the top.”
“Did she miss it?”
“No, she never reopened the valise again. The last-minute things she’d bought, she took with her in an extra shopping bag. There wasn’t any more room in the valise for them, anyway.”
She breathed heavily. “We kissed goodbye, and she took the train. That was the last time in this world I ever saw her. I never even heard from her again by mail. The next thing I knew she was dead. It must have happened right after she got back, within the next day or two.”
Then she added, “She wouldn’t even let me come to the train with her, I remember that. She said she didn’t want me to see her off. That alone showed she fully intended to do — what I’ve told you. We said goodbye right at the door of the apartment, upstairs. And then I watched the light inside the little pane of glass in the elevator door slowly going down. Like a life going out.”