Prye went back to the garage. The three women were standing in the driveway waiting for him. Dinah was swaying somewhat but she looked sober enough.
“I’ll ride in the rumble seat with Dinah,” Nora suggested. “The more air the better.”
“What’s all this about air?” Dinah said. “What are those men doing?”
One of the men looked up and said he was planting petunias.
“I hate petunias,” Dinah said. “Reminds me of a guy I knew once. He was a petunia.”
“Can’t you get your mind off men?” Jane cried irritably. “Come on.”
Prye backed the car out of the garage. Dinah poised on the back fender and tugged at the handle of the rumble seat.
“Let me,” Prye said, getting out of the car. “I think it’s locked.”
“Locked hell,” Dinah said. “Easy as rolling off a log—”
The seat opened up and Dinah said “Locked hell,” again in a strange voice. The next instant she had fallen headfirst into the rumble seat.
“I’m sick of drunks,” Prye said. “Dinab! Come out of there!” He went over and grabbed her leg. “Dinah!”
Dinah didn’t move. Prye climbed up and looked into the rumble seat.
Sammy Twist was in there. His eyes were wide open, as if he were surprised that a strange woman had fallen on top of him. The blood had dried on his hair and his forehead.
“I do wish—” Jane began.
“Go away,” Prye said curtly. “Nora, go too.”
Nora put out her hand and grasped Jane’s arm. “Paul. It’s not — it couldn’t possibly be—”
Prye said grimly, “It is.”
“Is what?” Jane said. “I thought we were going for a drive.”
The two men beside the garage had put down their spades and come up to the car.
One of them looked in and said, “Holy cats.”
He moved aside politely and let the other one look in too.
“Help me get this woman out of here,” Prye yelled. “She’s fainted.”
“Don’t disturb the body,” one of the men said.
Jane let out a feeble bleat and started running to the house, holding her hands to her ears. Nora sat down quietly on the driveway and closed her eyes.
Prye had grasped the front of Dinah’s coat and was pulling her out of the seat.
Sammy didn’t blink an eye.
He was quiet and cold and brittle. His bloody head rested against the blue leather seat and his knees were bent up against his chest like a baby’s in the womb.
The two policemen carried Dinah into the house. Prye went back to Sammy and stood looking down at him with angry eyes.
“Like a baby,” he said. “Like a damn little baby. Like a damn bloody baby you are, Sammy.”
Sammy’s eyes, wide, innocent, knowing, surprised, looked back at him.
13
Even before she opened her eyes Dinah started to cry. She cried quietly, without moving. From his chair Prye could see the tears streaming from her closed eyelids. He was still angry about Sammy. He watched Dinah, detached, critical, without sympathy.
He said finally, “What are you crying about? Are you sorry for Sammy or sorry for yourself? In either case there’s nothing I can do. Do you mind if I go now?”
She opened her eyes and blew her nose. Prye went over and sat down beside the bed. “While you’re crying, you might toss in a gallon or so for Revel too. He’s still in love with you. He’s practically pushed himself into the penitentiary to prove it.”
She blew her nose again and said, “How?”
“He told me what Duncan brought to this house, what he was killed for. He wants to get the mystery cleared up so that you can go away from this house and be happy. I told him it was a lost cause, that you’d never be happy.”
“You think that’s true?”
“Certainly.”
“Why can’t I be? Why won’t I be?”
“Because you don’t know what happiness is. You think it’s living on an exalted plane all the time, a constant ecstasy. You want to swoon with bliss twenty-four hours a day.”
“I don’t!” she cried shrilly.
“You want to sink up to your eyes in an oozy mixture of sweetness and light, a sluggish syrup that will paralyze you. You’re a nihilist. You believe in nothing really, because you believe that happiness is unconsciousness, unawareness of unhappiness. You’re in love with death. There are thousands of neurotics like you, many of them alcoholics, drinking themselves into a stupor, groping always toward extinction, the bliss of unconsciousness.”
“But why? If I am like this there is a reason. I want to know.”
“I am hampered by my lack of knowledge of you and your family. But I would guess that you experienced a great deal of illness, perhaps a death, when you were a child.”
“Yes.”
“Freud would trace it back to some unpleasant sex experience which has been repressed. I don’t always agree with Freud but I think such a repression, added to your painful memories of illness and death, has made you what you are. I think you’re a passionate woman who has never known fulfillment.”
She was very white. She said, “No, no, I haven’t.”
“I believe your marriage was a constant struggle not between you and Revel as you thought, but between you and you, between the instinctive sex-hungry Dinah and the Dinah who hates her own body and takes off her clothes in the dark. To you the natural functions of the body are depraved. But that’s a stiff dose for your mind to take, so your mind didn’t take it. It indulged in some dexterous hocus-pocus, with the result that the depravity applies to everything male. Your hate for your own body has been directed into a hate for all men. Me, even.”
“You,” she said grimly. “I’d hate you anyway for knowing so much about me.”
“That’s often the case,” he said in a mild voice. “Neurotics seldom want to be understood. Hospitals are full of them — little whining cats that rub up against you for sympathy, showing their wounds but not letting you touch them. They’ve got to keep their wounds open, you see; they’re what make them different from other people. Their wounds are their excuse in the eyes of the world, their justification.”
She sat up straight in the bed. “I’m not like that! I’m not asking for sympathy.”
“I’m just telling you what I think. You don’t have to believe me. I’ll also tell you what I’d do if I were you.”
“All right.” Her voice was tired.
“It won’t be easy. In your case I don’t recommend psychoanalysis. It has cured some neurotics, but in others it has merely intensified their egocentricity and magnified their ills. I’d advise you to try switching the emphasis of your life and quit moping over the inadequacy of your sex life.”
“I don’t—”
“Then I’d take some of my money, if I were you, and spend it. Very few people are civilized enough to enjoy a lot of money by spending it on themselves. You might try some social-service work. Go to a baby clinic and change a few diapers. There’s something very earthy about changing diapers. After that you might try having a few babies of your own, say three or four, for instance.”
“Four!” She looked horrified. “Whose babies?”
“George will do,” Prye said easily. “Providing he’s not in jail. And if I know George he won’t be. Yes, a few babies by all means. Instead of worrying about yourself you’ll be worrying about Junior refusing his spinach and whether little Mary’s hair will be curly.”
“But... heredity?”
“George isn’t a born crook,” Prye said. “Besides, that type of heredity is important only when it’s aided by environment.”
“What did George do exactly?”
Prye looked down at her thoughtfully. “Really want to know? George didn’t tell me. He merely gave me the clues. My subconscious did the rest by making me whistle ‘Yankee Doodle.’ ”