“Your nature, maybe. Not...”
“Anybody’s nature!”
“Keep your voice down. The boys might hear you.”
“Let them. Maybe they’ll learn a thing or two.”
“If you don’t mind,” Meecham said, “I’d better be going.”
Neither of them paid the slightest attention. They were absorbed in each other, like boxers in a ring, each of them intent only on the other’s weak spots and unguarded moments.
She had crossed her arms on her chest, as if protecting a vulnerable place. “What are you accusing me of? Say it.”
“I will.”
“Well, go on. Say it in front of Mr. Meecham here. He’s a lawyer.”
“Sure, I’ll say it. I don’t care if he’s President Truman.”
“Well, what’s stopping you? Go on, go on.”
“He was your lover,” Hearst said. “That piddling little shrimp was your lover.”
“You fool,” she whispered. “You terrible fool.” She began to cry, very quietly, her forehead pressing against the wall. Tears fell from her swollen eyes and splattered the greasy lilies of the wallpaper. Her head moved, from one side to another, in misery and denial.
“Emmy?”
“Go away.”
“It’s not true then, eh, Emmy?”
“What do you think? A sick man — a dying man — what — do — you — think?”
“I... well...”
He looked with pathetic uncertainty at Meecham, like a small boy who had made his mother cry and sought reassurance that eventually she would stop and everything would be all right again.
“Emmy?” He touched her shoulder tentatively. “I didn’t mean nothing, Emmy. You know me, I shoot off at the mouth, sure, but I wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head. If you was only honest with me, Emmy. If you was only honest.”
Meecham went out the door with the package under his arm. Neither of them noticed or cared.
Outside, the wind was fresh, but he had a sensation of suffocating heaviness in his throat and chest, as if the slices of life he had seen in the course of the morning were too sharp and fibrous to be swallowed.
12
Highway 12 ran due west from Arbana to Kincaid, just over fifty miles of straight road through flat countryside. Under better circumstances it might have been an hour drive. But heavy trucks and heavy weather had pocked and dented the road, and beyond Jackson the snow began to fall in huge wet flakes that clung to the windshield like glue. Every few minutes Meecham had to slow down to give the windshield wipers more power and speed.
When he reached Kincaid it was five, and the street lights were on. Here and there a few houses were already decorated for Christmas, with strings of colored lights along the porches, clusters of pine branches and cones attached to the doors. The shops and the streets were crowded, and the crowds looked gay as if freshened by the new snow.
He had no trouble finding Oak Street. It crossed the main highway at a traffic signal in the center of town.
Two Hundred Thirty-one was a two-story, white-brick apartment house in a neighborhood that derived its brash but decaying air from nearby slums. Meecham parked his car and crossed the street with the brown package under his arm. The building itself was well kept, and nailed to the front door there was a Christmas wreath, a red cellophane bell surrounded by artificial spruce boughs and red wax berries. The snow made the spruce and the berries look quite real.
Inside the small lobby there was a row of locked mailboxes and on the wall a black arrow pointing to the basement, and a sign, Manager’s Office. The third mailbox belonged to Loftus’ mother: Mrs. C. E. Loftus, Apartment Five.
Meecham walked down the hall. The carpeting was worn but clean, and the air smelled pungently of paint. Someone in the building obviously had a flair for lettering. All over the walls there were elaborately executed instructions: APARTMENTS ONE — FIVE, THIS WAY →→. NO SMOKING IN CORRIDORS. KEEP YOUR RADIO LOW AFTER ELEVEN O’CLOCK PLEASE. NO SOLICITING. PLEASE USE NIGHT BELL ONLY WHEN NECESSARY. NIGHT BELL ↓↓.
Number Five had a fire extinguisher fastened to the wall just outside the door. Meecham pressed the buzzer, waited half a minute, and pressed it again, twice. There was no response. He went back to the lobby and down the steps to the basement following the Manager’s Office arrow.
A small man past middle age, in a peaked painting cap and splattered overalls, was squatting in a full knee bend outside the door, putting masking tape around the knob. He turned when he heard Meecham’s footsteps, turned without rising and without losing his balance even for a moment. His back was straight as a board.
“Yes, sir?”
“Are you the manager?”
“Yes, sir, I am. Victor Garino.”
“I’m looking for Mrs. Loftus. I’m Eric Meecham, a friend of Earl’s, her son.”
Garino’s eyes behind his rimless spectacles looked misty.
“Oh, you are? Earl’s a fine boy. You tried her apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Well, come in, come inside.” He opened the door and Meecham preceded him into a small living room. The room was so crowded with furniture and knickknacks that there was hardly any space to move. In a box beside an electric heater a litter of kittens was mewling, while the mother cat stalked around and around the box with a kind of angry dignity, as if ashamed of the way her children were behaving in front of a stranger.
“You like cats, Mr. Meecham? Yes?”
“Very much.” He had never particularly liked or disliked them but the sight of the tiny furry bodies stirred something inside him.
“Yes, I like all animals, but cats, ah, they’re quiet and quick, and they earn their keep. We never have any complaints about rats,” Garino added proudly. “Never. Sit down, will you? Then I can sit down too. Ah, that’s better. You came from Earl, eh? How is he?”
“The same as usual.”
“Ah, yes. Did you...? You knocked on her door very loud, did you? Sometimes she’s hard of hearing. Also she’s a deep sleeper.”
“Also she gets loaded.”
“Yes,” Garino said in a melancholy voice. “She gets loaded very bad. Often’s the time I let myself in her apartment with my passkey just to see she’s not burning the place down or something. She’s a problem. She’s a nice lady but she’s a problem.”
“I can see that.”
“How we found out, Mama and me, was by the incinerator. Rum bottles. Empty rum bottles kept coming down the chute all the time making a fine mess. Mama said it must be Mrs. Loftus. No, I said, no, how could it be, such a nice dignified lady drinking all that rum. Mama was right, though.” Garino’s eyes were sad as a hound’s. “I went up and asked Mrs. Loftus please not to throw rum bottles down the chute. Right away she denied it, acted real shocked. Why, Victor, she said, why, Victor, you know I never touch the stuff. It must be the young couple upstairs, she said.”
The mother cat had settled down beside Garino on the davenport and was purring in her sleep.
“After that,” Garino said, “there were no more rum bottles in the incinerator. She took them out and threw them somewhere. I often saw her go down the street with a paper bag full of bottles. It looked funny, her such a lady walking down the street to dispose of her garbage. Ah, we feel bad, Mama and me. The bottles didn’t make such a great mess, we would have just let her keep on using the incinerator.”
“Maybe you should.”
“It’s too late now. If I went and told her it was all right to use the incinerator she couldn’t pretend any more, she couldn’t have any pride left. That wouldn’t be good. Anyway” — Garino spread his hands — “she’s not such a terrible bother. Her rent is always paid, Earl sends it to me. And she is quiet. No parties, no company. She keeps to herself. Sometimes when she forgets to eat, Mama takes her up a little plate of something. She’s not a common drunkard, you understand. She’s a lady who’s had one sorrow too many. Some people get strong under sorrows. Other people, they snap like twigs, they break, it’s not their fault.”