Crossroads Page 21

  The boy stared at her. She stared at him. The moment seemed to last about an hour.

  “Mom,” the boy shouted over his shoulder. “There’s a lady here.”

  He went away, and Isabelle Grant appeared with a dish towel in her hands. She was thick in the middle, not as tall as Marion had pictured her. Like Isabelle Washburn, she seemed more pitiable than murderable. This, too, was unexpected. “Can I help you?” she said.

  In Marion’s face the chameleoning reds, not the least bit funny to her now.

  “Miss?” Isabelle said. “Are you all right?”

  “Your, uh, your husband,” Marion said.

  “Yes?”

  “Your husband doesn’t love you anymore.”

  Now alarm, suspicion, anger. “Who are you?”

  “It’s very unfortunate. But you bore him.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I … well. Do you see what I’m saying?”

  “No. You must have the wrong house.”

  “You’re not Isabelle Grant?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know you.”

  “Bradley knows me. You can ask him. I’m the person he’s in love with.”

  The door slammed shut. Feeling that she hadn’t made herself sufficiently clear, Marion rang the doorbell again. From inside she heard children’s pounding footsteps. The door sprang open. “Whoever you are,” Isabelle said, “please go away.”

  “I’m sorry,” Marion said, with real remorse. “I shouldn’t have tried to hurt you. But what’s done is done. You just don’t satisfy him. Maybe, in the long run, it’ll be better for you, too.”

  This time, the door didn’t slam, it just clicked shut. She heard the deadbolt turning. After some unaccounted-for minutes, she found herself still standing on the welcome mat. It was all so disappointing. For days, she’d imagined that speaking to Bradley’s wife would entirely remake the world; that her mental pain, which had been growing steadily since he sent his dreadful letter to her, would cease in an instant and she would be in a world where decisions were easy. But the pain was still there. It now took the form of not knowing what to do next. She would have liked to simply stay standing on the welcome mat, but she was sane enough to recognize the badness of going to Bradley’s house—all she’d accomplished was to cause Isabelle pain without relieving her own. She turned and walked back to the sidewalk. Coming to a small park, she saw a box hedge behind which she could discreetly lie down. She rested her cheek on a tussock of grass between bare clods of earth. Although there was dog poop close enough to be smelled, she lay there until darkness fell.

  When she got back to her building, Bradley’s LaSalle was parked in front of it. He could have let himself into her apartment, but he was sitting at the wheel. He jerked his head to indicate that she should get in with him. She was frightened, but she did it. She cowered against the passenger door, trying to make herself smaller.

  “What do you want?” he said angrily.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, seriously. What do you want? Tell me what the hell you think you want.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s too late for sorry. I’ve got an unholy mess on my hands now. I swear to God, Marion, if you go anywhere near my wife again, I’m calling the police.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “The same goes for Lerner. We’ll call the police, and you know what they’ll do? They’ll put you in a hospital. You’re not right in the head. It kills me to say it, but you’re not.”

  “I’m throwing up a lot,” she agreed. “It’s hard to keep food down.”

  He sighed in frustration. “For the last time: We can’t see each other again. Never, ever. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. No.”

  “No contact of any kind. Do you understand?”

  She knew that it was important to say yes, but she couldn’t say it honestly.

  “What you need to do now,” he said, “is get yourself home. Can you do that for me? I want you to go back to San Francisco and let your family take care of you. You are the sweetest thing. It’s killing me to see what’s happened to you. But what you did today was just beyond the pale.”

  Her chest clotted up with a new worry: that she’d finally liberated Bradley but was now too wrong in the head for him to want her. The irony surged up and strangled her like stomach acid. She retched out five words. “Will she divorce you now?”

  “Honey—Marion. How many ways do I have to find to say it? We can’t be together.”

  “You and I.”

  “You and I.”

  The hyperventilating set in, and he reached into his jacket. The stack of money he put between them on the seat was thick. “I want you to take this,” he said. “Buy yourself a first-class ticket north. And then, as soon as you get to San Francisco, I want you to see the best psychiatrist you can find. Somebody who can help you.”

  She stared at the money.

  “I am so sorry,” he said. “But there’s nothing else I can give you. Please take it.”

  “I’m not a whore.”

  “No, you’re an angel. A sweet angel who’s in very bad trouble. I mean it—if there were anything else I could give you, I would do it. But this is all I’ve got.”

  She finally understood that she was nothing to him but his paid slut. The money on the seat seemed to her a dangerous, loathsome reptile. She found the door latch and half fell, backward, from his car. With a loathsome hand, he extended the money toward her. “Please, Marion. For God’s sake.”

  When she came out of her slippage, some morning or another, probably the very next one, she felt inexplicably better. It was as if her hatred of the man trying to pay her had made a crack in her obsession with Bradley Grant. The obsession was still in her, but it was weakened now, more readily observable for what it was. Inside her front door, wrapped in an advertising flyer and slipped under the door, she found the stack of money. She methodically cut each bill into tiny pieces and flushed them all down the toilet. This was a terrible mistake she had to make to ease her mental pain.

  In the first days of December, less distracted by pain, she was capable of reading the newspaper again, taking an interest in Mussolini’s attack on Greece, and venturing forth to seek work. Her employer references weren’t in order, but she still had her looks. She found a job as a greeter at a big Safeway supermarket, offering customers bite-size samples of featured food products, and was surprised by how little she minded it. She liked having only one thing to say and saying it over and over. Repetition calmed her fear of the thing she was now able to admit was inside her. But the smell of certain foods, meat products especially, was revoltingly intense to her, and her fear was growing with the thing inside her. One day, when she was sticking toothpicks in miniature canned franks, her fear impelled her to walk out of the store, run home, and obey the commands of her feral intelligence. She hit herself in the stomach and jumped up and down violently. She swallowed a mouthful of ammonia and couldn’t keep it down. When she tried again and blew the ammonia out her nose, the explosion in her head was so extreme she thought she was dying.

  In her narrative to Sophie, a straight line led from Bradley’s offer of money to the night she wandered the streets of downtown Los Angeles in the rain, raving on themes of sluttiness and murder, barefoot, her blouse soaking and unbuttoned, until she was picked up by the police. But the line hadn’t been straight. It had led through an eviction notice; a tearful scene with her property manager; telegrams to her mother and to Roy Collins, asking both of them for emergency money; and a phone call to Bradley at Lerner Motors. The property manager gave her until the end of December to pay her overdue rent. Her mother, it later turned out, was on a ski vacation with her friends. Roy Collins wired her twenty dollars of travel money, along with a terse offer to employ her. Bradley hung up the phone as soon as he heard her voice.

  Definitely pregnant and definitely not interested in carrying his baby, she took a streetcar out to Hollywood. The streets were dry a
nd dusk was falling, the holiday tinsel and ribbons in store windows emerging from the cheapening glare of daylight to glow and beckon. She was able to entertain rational thoughts and ordinary feelings—resentment of her mother, the thought of the darkness that had fallen on Europe, hatred of Bradley and his wife, appreciation of the fender lines of a custom-body Cadillac passing the streetcar, curiosity about her sister in New York, the question of Shirley’s own sexual experience or lack thereof—for no more than a few seconds before the terror of her situation welled up in her afresh and scattered them. When she saw the Egyptian Theatre, she stepped off the streetcar and asked a newspaper seller where Selma Avenue was. Her main hope now was Isabelle Washburn. Even if Isabelle couldn’t give her money, she could provide sisterly advice and sympathy, which Marion was very much in need of. In the dark, it was hard to tell the colors of houses, but eventually she found a distinctly red one. Dim, warm light was in the curtained front windows. She walked right up to the door and knocked. Almost immediately, the door opened; and there stood Satan.

  She didn’t know it was Satan. The man was short, almost elfin, with a full white beard and suntanned cheeks, a large shiny tanned bald spot on his head, and kindly wrinkles around his eyes. “Come in, come in,” he said, as if he’d been expecting her. Marion said she was looking for Isabelle Washburn. “Isabelle no longer lives here,” the man said, “but come in. Please.”

  “Are you the landlord?”

  “Why, yes, I am. Please come in.”

  In the living room were comfortably weary chairs, framed soft-focus head shots of young actresses or models, also a framed poster for King Kong. A bottle of red wine and a stemmed glass of it stood on a coffee table. “Let me get you a glass,” the man said, disappearing.

  Farther back in the house, water was splashing in a bathtub, skin squeaking resonantly on porcelain. The white-bearded man returned with a glass, sat down, and filled it. He seemed very happy to see Marion.

  “I just need to find Isabelle,” she said.

  “I understand. But you’re shaking like a leaf.”

  This was undeniable, and the wine looked good to her. She sat down and drank some. It was much weaker than the whiskey she’d drunk with Bradley. By the time she’d explained how she knew Isabelle and had come to the red house, her glass was empty. When the man moved to refill it, she didn’t stop him. The wine helped her rise with the upwellings of her fear, like a buoy on deep ocean.

  “I’m afraid I don’t actually know where Isabelle is at present,” the man said, “with respect to her street address and so forth. But I know one girl who might.”

  “That would be good,” Marion said, drinking.

  “You’re a very comely young woman,” he added for no obvious reason.

  Marion reddened. The wine was both weak and not so weak. She heard a door open, water draining from a tub, the soft stepping of bare feet, a door closing.

  “So the girl,” she said. “The person who knows where she lives.”

  “Oh, dear, you look terrified,” the man said. “Are you frightened? Marion? Why are you so frightened?”

  “I just want to find Isabelle.”

  “Of course,” he said. “I can help you with that.”

  There was a kindly light in his eyes, a sort of gentle mirth.

  “I’m a helpful person,” he said. “You wouldn’t be the first girl to come here in trouble. Is that what it is? Are you looking for Isabelle because you’re in some kind of trouble?”

  She couldn’t answer.

  “Marion? You can tell me. Are you in trouble?”

  Her trouble was too large to be spoken. To emerge from her in words, it needed to be broken into smaller pieces and arranged in a coherent sequence, and even if she’d been capable of the breaking and the arranging she would have been telling a total stranger that she was carrying a married man’s child. As the stranger waited for her to answer, she noticed a different, less kindly sort of light in his eyes. She noticed that his shirt was untucked and that he had quite a potbelly. She must have been mistaken about Isabelle’s romantic interest in her landlord.

  “It’s man trouble, isn’t it,” he said.

  She couldn’t breathe, and she had no intention of answering, not even with a nod.

  “I see,” he said. “And is your man still in the picture?”

  Had she nodded? Apparently she had. She went ahead and shook her head.

  “I’m very sorry,” the man said.

  “But the girl you mentioned. The one who knows where Isabelle is.”

  “Would you like me to telephone her?”

  “Yes. Please.”

  He left the room. Marion’s glass was empty, as was the bottle. While she waited, a series of small noises culminated in a clicking of heels, a woman entering the room. She stopped when she saw Marion. She was dressed in a narrow skirt and a matching jacket with padded shoulders. Her mouth, crimson-lipsticked, had a hard set to it. “You here about the room?”

  “No,” Marion said.

  “Good for you.”

  The woman turned and left the house. The man returned with a corkscrew and a second bottle of wine. Marion waited in suspense while he opened it.

  “No luck,” he said, pouring. “Jane hasn’t seen her since before Thanksgiving. She thinks she might have gone back to Santa Rosa. Apparently she’d talked about doing that.”

  Isabelle’s returning to Santa Rosa seemed strange to Marion, but everything seemed strange to her. She wished she hadn’t already spent the travel money Roy Collins had wired her. Imagining Isabelle in Santa Rosa made her homesick for the place.

  “We’ll have to think of something else for you,” the man said.

  “I think I’ll go to Santa Rosa.”

  “Yes, that would be one plan. Although, of course, we’re not sure that Isabelle is actually there. She could have gone anywhere. She could still be right here. All Jane said was that she hadn’t seen her in a while.”

  “But it sounds like … I’ll bet she went home to Santa Rosa.”

  “Mm.”

  He took a sip of wine, possibly to hide a smile. Why would he be smiling? Marion stood up and thanked him for making the call.

  “Sit down, dear,” he said. “You don’t want to go back to Santa Rosa. It’s a Podunk town—people talk. You’re much better off in the big city. We can arrange things here that would be difficult, if not impossible, in Santa Rosa. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  She did understand. Bradley had once asked her exactly the same question, and she was fast. Sitting down again, accelerated by the wine in her, she landed unexpectedly and tilted sideways.

  “You don’t have to be embarrassed,” the man said. “I’ve had this house for fifteen years, and there’s nothing I haven’t seen. So why don’t we speak frankly, you and I.”

  The thing was growing in her, and it was Bradley’s. This was the fact she couldn’t get around. She didn’t want to have the thing inside her. It reminded her of the boy who’d answered the door at his house, the horror of Bradley having children, the horror of his marriage, the horror of what she’d done to herself.

  “Perhaps you’ve missed a monthly,” the man said. “Perhaps more than one?”

  She affirmed it with a whimper.

  “How many?” he said. “Surely not more than two—you’re skinnier than a post.”

  She shook her head.

  “I like a skinny pretty little girl,” he commented in a throatier way. “And you are definitely that.”

  She could sooner have recited the Koran than raise her eyes to Isabelle’s former landlord. Except for the ticking of a clock on the mantel, the house was silent. She was certain that no one but the two of them was in it.

  “Luckily for you, I can help you,” he said. “I happen to know just the man—he’s very good. Tip-top hygiene. Nice office. Complete discretion.”

  She was breathing either far too fast or not at all. The man’s words came from a distance and receded further
as he spoke them. “Do you have a hundred fifty dollars? That would include the twenty-five for me. And, let’s see, today is Thursday, isn’t it. We could have you good as gold again by Saturday night.”

  She heard wine being poured.

  “Do you have a hundred fifty dollars?” he said.

  The question came through clearly. She indicated that she didn’t.

  “How much money do you have?” He waited for a response and got none. “Marion, do you have any money at all?”

  The answer must have been obvious. She heard him leave the room and return, felt the heat of him as he crouched by her. “I know how frightened you are,” he said. “You’re terribly frightened. Understandably frightened. You’ll feel better if you take these.”

  He opened one of her clenched hands and pressed two tablets into it.

  “It’s only Seconal. It’ll help you sleep.”

  She felt the heat of his hand on her knee.

  “I imagine you’re wondering if I can really solve your problem. I suppose I could give you references, but the other girls I’ve helped may be reluctant to talk about it. The way I see it, you’ll just have to trust me. I’ve run an honest business here for fifteen years. I never take anything I haven’t paid for, and I never give a girl anything she hasn’t paid for. That’s the rule in this house. Everything here is quid pro quo.”

  By bodily reflex, she removed the hand that was creeping up her leg. As soon as she let it go, he put it back.

  “I’m going to Palm Springs for the holidays,” he said. “If you’ll stay with me until then, we’ll have you good as gold by Christmas. That is a solemn promise. A mere eleven days. If I may say so, the terms are rather advantageous to you. Luckily for you, you’re just my kind of girlie. Very, very much my kind of girlie.”

  Her feral intelligence understood perfectly well what he was proposing. To agree to it, all she had to do was not stand up and leave. She raised her hand and put the two pills in her mouth. Her arms felt too short to reach for her glass, so she chewed them.

  Her mental illness, compounded by a Seconal fog, spared her from remembering much from her eleven days in the red house. She did remember listening for footsteps outside her door, the landlord’s and the other tenant’s, the latter even more dreadful than the former. She thought she would die if the other woman’s gaze so much as brushed her, she cowered at the clatter of high heels in the hallway, she let the landlord bring food to her room. Disgusting things were visited on her, but they rarely seemed to last long. As long as she stayed in the house, she remained entirely a victim and would have had nothing to confess to her priest in Arizona—in fact, she might have had grounds for going to the police. The Satanic thing about the landlord was that he’d struck a deal with her. Satan was a stickler when it came to contracts, and by following through with his side of the bargain, punctiliously delivering her to the doctor and paying for the abortion, he deprived her of her victimhood. By keeping his word, he made her submission to his lechery one half of a transaction, a quid pro quo, in which she was complicit. She couldn’t claim ignorance or innocence. She’d knowingly committed adultery with Bradley Grant, and then she’d knowingly sold herself to pay for the murder of her baby.