The Innocent (15 page)

“If you want to know, yes, she did mind, but there wasn't much she could do about it so long as I was her husband. She didn't like it, but she got over it because she had to. She forgave my trespass.”

I forgave him, Claire had written. There was nothing else I could do at the moment. Claire had forgiven Charles for stealing her bonds.

Charles said, “Forget it, Margie. The point is, there isn't a cent left of Claire's money, so what will we do?” He closed his fingers around her wrist gently. He stroked up her arm with his index finger. A vein disappeared and then came blue again. Charles whispered, “Margie, can't you go back to your job now? That will give me a breathing spell to look around for something else.”

She shook her head. His finger pressed down harder. She became conscious of her pulse.

“Just for a couple of weeks, say? Maybe I'll find a place where I really can get going, where I'll have a dog's chance.”

“No can do.” He dropped her wrist. He pushed her hand away. “Charles, I can't help it!”

“Don't do it, Margie! Please. Don't make me think maybe you just talk a good love. Don't make me feel you're just saying how much you love me, just putting on an act, but then when it comes to the point when you have to prove it, that's different.”

Marjorie recollected how many times she had proved it today, on this one awful day. “Don't say that, Charles.” Quickly, turning to him, Marjorie held his face between her palms and kissed it quickly and passionately, his eyes so they would not look so hurt and forlorn, his mouth so that it would not curve down.

Charles pulled Marjorie's hands off his face. He was very serious, frowning, not angry, just intent on making her understand. “Mugging me doesn't prove anything. Don't you see?” With the same soiled handkerchief he wiped her kisses off his face, to get them out of the way. Charles stared at the handkerchief. “That's not enough. That's just lip service, just lip service.” He nodded at her. “Not a bad pun, is it? Lip service?”

Marjorie clasped her hands. “I can't bear it,” she whispered. The tears came out of her eyes, rolling down her round cheeks. Charles saw them and jumped out of his chair.

“Margie. Sweetheart,” he said. “I didn't mean to hurt you, making a lousy pun on you.” He sat on the chair again, pulling her onto his lap. “It's just that it does something terrible to me when I feel I can't trust someone. Unless I know you love me the way you say you do—”

“Yes, darling?”

“I go all to pieces,” he told her. “I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know whether I'm coming or going. Don't forget that, sweetheart.”

“Oh, Charles, Charles—” She lay back in his arms and would have stayed there forever, would have forgotten about his job, about Edna, about everything except that she felt so small in his arms that she remembered little Pete. It seemed to her she had heard him cry. She kissed Charles in a more businesslike way. “I've got a million things to do, darling, and you must go back to work.” She rushed to the foyer and took his hat from the telephone table. “Here you are, darling.”

“What's your hurry, here's your hat,” he said.

“I'll see you tonight, darling.”

“What's your hurry, here's your hat,” Charles said again. He jammed the hat on his head.

Marjorie saw her husband's scowling face. She felt the anger rising in her. The omelet, the wine, the careful attention, her caresses, were all for nothing. She might just as well not have bothered. She should have stood in bed. “Yes, here's your hat,” she said coolly, for the first time coolly to Charles. “You better get back to work.” Then she turned and ran toward the stairs. She had just set her foot on the first step when the front door banged after Charles. Marjorie sighed and shrugged, but her mind was on her baby. So much had happened that it seemed to her she hadn't seen little Pete for days.

Marjorie always listened for the infant's snuffling breath before she reached his room. There was always this moment at the entrance to the study before she could quite hear it. But this time, once again this time, little Pete was breathing, little Pete was O.K., safe again this time. He was lying as she had left him with his arms over the cover, but his face was wet with tears and convulsed with hurt feelings. He drank the boiled water Marjorie gave him with more than normal eagerness. He must have been thirsty and felt deserted because she had not immediately appeared to assuage his thirst. Marjorie wiped his face with a soft towel and sprinkled powder down his neck and held him in her arms, so he would know she loved him and it was not indifference that had kept her from him. Walking smoothly up and down the room with little Pete in her arms, Marjorie hoped that Charles was on his way back to his office, not only because he had to go back and hold his job, but because she wanted to telephone him. She wanted to call him as soon as she could, now that little Pete was soothed and easy in her love, to assure Charles that she loved him even if she rushed him back to B & B so unceremoniously. Poor darling Charles. Charles had killed so they could be together and “What's your hurry, here's your hat,” she had sent him away abruptly so that she could run up to little Pete.

She must not think of Charles killing Claire, not up here, not in Claire's room. It was worse up here, much more vivid. She started to lay the baby back in his crib, but he was not ready to be abandoned. He whimpered and the protestant red started to clot his tiny face when she bent to lay him in his crib. She straightened up again and walked him some more, telling herself not to think. Then what? Count sheep? No, that was for going to sleep. Repeat poetry. She began, “Breathes there a man with soul so dead.” She said, “Keep away from dead up here.” She said, “Men have died from time to time and the worms have eaten them, but not for love.”

She repeated, “But not for love?” But it was for love this time; that is why I can do what I'm doing, because it was for love.

She said, “What am I going to do about that girl? How can I call Dr. Gresham and offer to take her out of Bellevue when there isn't any money except what we have in the bank right now?”

Claire must have been livid when she discovered Charles had taken her bonds and used them as security and lost them, but Claire hadn't been able to be very vindictive. (At college she was very generous with her things, but only if she wanted to be. Nobody could walk into Claire's room and borrow a skirt or a blouse without permission.) Claire had been forced to let Charles get away with it because he was her husband, but she would have brought it up whenever Charles did anything to displease her. She certainly brought it up on that last night when Edna snitched that Charles was having an affair. Claire, sitting in that bed, smoking a cigarette in the holder which now lay on the bed table, would have said, “You're a fine specimen of mankind, aren't you? Living on me, letting me give you everything, and taking my money to lunch Marjorie Black! Taking my bonds that Mother left me, me, not you, and losing them for me while all the time you and Marjorie—

“Of course I can't do anything about it while you're married to me.”

Marjorie wondered if Claire could have done something about it if Charles weren't her husband, if she had divorced him—

But she hadn't divorced him; that is, she had refused to divorce him even after she discovered that he loved Marjorie. Why, it was because Claire had refused to divorce Charles and let him marry Marjorie that he had had to kill her.

“Men have died from time to time and the worms have eaten them, but not for love.”

But not for love? For money?

Suppose Claire had said, all right, so you love Marjorie and not me. So you've been carrying on with Marjorie Black and making a fool of me. Very well then, good riddance to you. I'll divorce you and then I'll punish you properly. I'll see you in the divorce court and after that in a court of equity for stealing my bonds, because when you are no longer my husband the law will call it stealing.

Would that have been possible?

How should I know? Marjorie asked herself, walking faster and faster, walking so rapidly that little Pete opened his eyes which had been drooping in sleep and blinked around at the peculiarly moving room. “I'm not a lawyer,” Marjorie said. “Oh, I'm a fool,” she said.

“How can I have forgotten what really happened? How can I have gone on fooling myself all this time when I knew that Charles had allowed me to go out of his life without too much protest? How could I have let myself believe that he loved me so much that he killed for me?”

Because I wanted to believe.

Because I wanted to forget.

Because she, dumpy, unattractive Marjorie Black, wanted to believe that she really was in heaven where the first are last and the last are first and where she was the beloved of Charles Carter.

She had jounced little Pete into an awed silence. He was quiet as she put him back into his crib and did not protest when she tucked the blanket just tight enough and pulled his hands outside the covers.

Hadn't she already gone to Wilton when Charles killed Claire? And why was she in Wilton? She was in Wilton because she had already said goodbye to Charles. He had allowed her to say goodbye. He had accepted his loss. She had assured him that he would be all right with Claire, fine with Claire, and he had believed her and gone meekly back to life with Claire without her.

He would still be meekly back with Claire if something else hadn't happened, if a number of things hadn't happened. If Claire hadn't written that thing, if Claire hadn't left a syringe around, if Claire hadn't believed until it was too late that Edna had taken the syringe. If Claire hadn't threatened something which was far more inimical to Charles than the loss of Marjorie.

Charles had been able to take Marjorie's leaving him, but suppose that night Claire had threatened Charles with some retaliation he couldn't take? Suppose she had hit him where he really lived?

Suppose his killing Claire had nothing to do with love at all, with Marjorie at all?

She tiptoed out of little Pete's room, she dashed lightly through the study, she ran down the stairs. No. No. He killed her because he loved me. He does love me. He loves me more than anything in the world. He can't do without me. She dialed Charles' office.

A voice burred with mechanical animation said, “Brown and Bixby,
good
afternoon.”

“Good afternoon,” Marjorie replied. “Mr. Carter, please.”

“Carter?”

“Brown and Bixby, good after
noon
,” said the other telephone operator into a twin mouthpiece.

“Yes, please, Mr. Carter.”

“I asked which Mr. Carter, Miss?”

“Mr. Charles Carter. Extension 241, please.”

“241? Almost asked her Carter or The Great—”

“You'll get in hot water one of these days. Yes, sir, I'll connect you,” said the twin operator.

Then the girl plugged in Charles' extension and Marjorie heard it ring. The switchboard girl had called Charles the great something. Great lover? Did she covet him? All women coveted Charles, but he was hers. He loved her. Not Nick Carter, who was the bald-headed bookkeeper and was inevitably called The Great Detective, but Charles The Great Lover. The great Marjorie-lover. Of course, he was The Great Marjorie-Lover. “Charles? This is Marjorie. Oh, I'm so glad you're back in your office, Charles!”

“It's very kind of you to check up on me. Yes, I'm here. Are you satisfied?”

“Charles! Don't talk like that, darling. I'm not checking up on you. I've been having such a miserable time.”

“Of course I've been having the time of my life.”

“I know you're not. Oh, Charles, I'm so miserable.”

“Miserable? So am I, Margie. Margie, do you mean you see things my way?”

“No, darling, how can I? I mean, I can't. You know I can't.”

Charles made no comment.

“Darling, please be reasonable.” She lowered her voice. “Charles, please tell me you love me.”

Silence.

“I know you can't say it right out, Charles, but oh, tell me some way, some way so nobody but me will understand.”

“Sorry. Can't talk now. I'm rather tied up here at the moment.”

“Charles, just say ‘yes.'”

“No.”

“Just say ‘yes,' that's all. That will do.”

“No. Goodbye, now.”

She put back the telephone receiver, seeing the “no” come out of it, like a speech balloon in a cartoon. No, I don't love you. I never loved you. I gave you up the minute somebody better came along, didn't I? You damned deluded fool, didn't I make it quite obvious that I was open to the highest bidder and Claire was the highest bidder? I married Claire, didn't I? Then we met again that time by accident, and I took you back. Why shouldn't I?

Why shouldn't I take what I could get? I didn't have to coax too long for a date, even though I was married to your friend. You were a pushover, Marjorie. “No, no,” you said. No, you wouldn't see me again because it wasn't right, but your tongue was hanging out to be coaxed. I could see that. Any dope could see that. Why shouldn't I coax a little more, pretend I loved you all the time, that I'd made a mistake marrying Claire, selling out to the highest bidder? And from then on, from prim kisses at your door to lingering kisses on your studio couch—Anyway, it started off as a studio couch, we started off making love on it at first as if it were a studio couch, but how difficult is it, after all, to yank the tailored slip cover off and crawl between the sheets? Why shouldn't I have crawled between the sheets with you? Maybe Claire was a cold piece of business, but you certainly weren't. Did I make love to you? From where I sat, the love-making was on the other foot, on the other hand, completely in your hands.

Marjorie stared down at her hands, which trembled. That was true, that much was hideously, shamelessly true. It was these hands which aroused Charles. She knew she played the more active role in love-making with Charles. She knew that he lay back languid and beautiful and her hands, stroking, patting, adoring, roused him.