Her face twisted. It was an expression like anger. She closed her hand into a fist and she struck her husband on the thigh as she said, “She was so joyous! So damn joyous! When she was little, even. She’d either be laughing, or so mad she was purple. And always running. No whining, no sulking. She was...”
And then she was beyond words. Dr. Wister dropped the folder on the floor and held his wife in his big, strong, clumsy arms. He could not comfort her. He endured the awkwardness of his position until the first storm of her anguish had passed and she had exhausted herself.
He went to the bathroom and brought her back another capsule and a glass of water. Her face looked stained and gray under the light.
She hesitated. “Will this put me so far under you won’t be able to tell me if... they find out anything?”
“No. I can wake you easily,” he lied.
“Are you going to take anything? You should sleep too, darling. You look terribly tired.”
“I took one,” he said, lying again.
She took the capsule and drank half the water. He put the glass aside and took her hand and helped her up. He took her robe and she got into bed. He bent over and kissed her on the forehead. He prepared slowly for bed. He went over and stood by her. She was breathing slowly and deeply.
“Jane,” he said softly. She did not stir. “Jane!” he said in a louder tone. There was no response. He went to his dressing room and put on a robe and went back to the kitchen and turned on the burner under the kettle. It was nearly two o’clock.
While Dr. Wister sat in the kitchen of the house where his wife and his sons slept, Dallas Kemp sat at the drafting table in his studio, working, driving himself. He and Helen had planned that after they returned from the wedding trip, they would live at his place. And then, in a year or two, they would begin to build a place of their own. They had talked about the kind of house they would like, an enclosure for their love.
“I’ll make like a difficult client,” she had said to him. “Light and space and air, yes. But I don’t want to be on display. I don’t want people gooping in at me. I don’t want a huge place, because I’ll have to be taking care of it, and I can only mop so many floors before I begin to feel futile. But I want a part of the house to have... scope. A big feeling of space. And I want part of it to be... cozy. Isn’t that a hell of a word? And I want it to be a place where children can romp, but also where they have their own place, shut off but not too much. And it better be sort of flexible, because once I start having kids, I might like it well enough to have scads.”
“How about materials?”
“Oh, nice things to touch and look at. Rough, hairy textures. Wood and stone and stuff. I want to be able to hang a pot in the fireplace and sit on the floor. That’s what I don’t like about a lot of these glossy, new houses, made of miracle plastics and things. They’re not sit-on-the-floor houses. See? I’m a difficult client.”
“Difficult? You’re impossible.”
“You’re the bright architect. Whip me up a dream, boy.”
Ever since they had talked, he had been working out the problems in the back of his mind. He decided that a hillside house would be best. The hill should be abrupt, but not necessarily high, and overlooking an emptiness of vista where nothing could suddenly rise up and stare in at them. Then, with glass, he could give her all the light and sun and space she craved, and with a big cantilevered deck in front of it, nobody could stare up into the house.
After he had left Dunnigan’s temporary office, he had gone home and started to work, sketching front and side elevations, balling them up and discarding them until he was close to what he wanted. He had secretly located a two-acre hillside tract south of the city and had paid thirty per cent down and signed a mortgage deed for the balance. It was to be his wedding present to her.
Now he was working on the floor plan. The house would be on three levels. He knew it was good. When he worked on something good he got a special feeling in the pit of his stomach. This could be a gem. This could be the best thing he had ever done.
He worked with a special dedication, a unique intensity. Without bothering to clarify it in his mind, he felt that it was an affirmation. If he worked well enough, and hard enough, then they would one day live together in love in this place taking shape and form on his drawing board. If he did not do it well, she was lost forever. It was his incantation, his offering. It was the only thing he could do which would bring her back. She would have to come back to a place so special. Any other outcome was inconceivable.
And so, deep in the fury of concentration, he was not quite sane. But he was using himself utterly, and that was all he could do.
A bright, round, flawless sun came up out of the Atlantic on the twenty-seventh day of July. An enormous and stationary high pressure area covered all of the Northeast and the Middle Atlantic states, and reached as far west as Illinois. Vacationers congratulated themselves on having selected that segment of the summer which included these perfect days. Those whose vacations were over wished they had waited. Those who had not yet gone, hoped the weather would hold.
The newspapers which thudded against front doors and were stuffed in rural tubes, dropped in heavy bundles on street corners, inserted in store-front racks, yelped and thumped and yammered about the Wolf Pack. The early commentators said, with mock regret, that the criminals were still at large. On buses and subways, over breakfast tables and lunch counters, around office water coolers and factory Coke machines, the nation talked about the Wolf Pack and Helen Wister.
“It’s a terrible, terrible thing. Her poor parents. — If a guy was going to steal him a blonde, he couldn’t do better, hey, Barney? — Mark my words, when they capture those fiends, they’ll find they have been drinking alcohol, Mary. — You know, that’s the kind of deal Bugsie would pull, he had the nerve. — This is another example of the accelerated decay of public morals, gentlemen. — The broad with the knife, that’s the one for me, Al. I go for the mean, gutsy ones. — You can’t tell me it wasn’t all planned between her and those thugs. I’ll bet you she paid them to kill that boy friend of hers on account of he was blackmailing her with that architect. Had enough money, didn’t she? Didn’t put up any fight, did she? Well?
The sun climbed high and bright toward noon. Four hundred and thirty miles north-northeast of Monroe, up in the western end of the state of Pennsylvania, was the small resort community of Seven Mile Lake. The whole south shore of the lake was a long strip of tawdry honky-tonks — ice-cream stands, boat rentals, shooting galleries, lunchrooms, cabins, cottages, beer joints. It was the height of the vacation season. Jukes whined and thumped. Boats roared up and down the lake, towing water-skiers. The pebbly beaches were half paved with the baking, simmering flesh of the sunbathers. Squalling children dropped ice cream in the dust.
In the middle of the commercial area were the Lakeshore Cottages, managed this season by Joe Rendi and his wife, Clara. They handled the rental of the cottages and operated the small ice cream and sundries store at the roadside, on a percentage basis. Joe got up, surly as usual, at eleven. He went down the street for breakfast and then walked slowly back to the store. There were no customers at the moment. Clara was washing glasses.
“What the hell was the night bell last night?” he demanded.
“You heard it? You mean you really heard it? Tanked on beer so bad you snore like a walrus couldn’t sleep in there too, and you heard it?”
“Cut the goddam comedy. What was it?”
“I rented number four, that’s all.”
He sat down heavily on the stool and stared at her. “Oh, great! Oh, fine and dandy and nifty! You rented number four. Bully for you! And tomorrow comes those people for all the way up to Labor Day and a hunnert twenny-fi dollars a week and a fifty-dollar deposit we got already and you can say sorry, we’re full up.”