CHAPTER XXV

Emile and Mrs. Cranmer lived on the second floor of a two-family frame house. The house was painted a dark green with white trim—the green turned black in the rain and was one of a species, gregarious in that one seldom finds them alone. They appear in the suburbs of Montreal, reappear across the border in Northern lumber and mill towns, flourish in Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland and Chicago and go underground briefly in the wheat states to appear again in the depressed neighborhoods of Sioux City, Wichita and Kansas City, forming an irregular and mighty chain of quasi-nomadic domiciles that reaches across the entire continent.

On her walk home in the evening from Barnum’s Mrs. Cranmer passed the house that had been hers when Mr. Cranmer was alive. It was a large brick and stucco house. Twelve rooms! The dimensions and conveniences of the place returned to her like an incantation. The house had been sold by the bank to an Italian family named Tomasi. In spite of her struggle to accept the doctrines of equality that had been taught to her in school she still felt some bitterness that people from another country, people who had not yet learned the language and the customs of the United States, could possess the house of someone who was native born like herself. The economic facts were inescapable and she knew them but this didn’t cure her bitterness. The house still seemed to be hers, still seemed in her custody, still reminded her of the richness of her life with Mr. Cranmer. The Tomasis spent most of their time in the kitchen and the front windows were usually dark but this evening a fringed lamp in one of the windows was lighted and beyond the lamp she could see, hanging on the wall, the enlarged photographs of some foreigners, the men with mustaches and high collars and the women in black. There was a powerful otherness for her in looking into the lighted windows of a house where her life had been centered. On she went in her comic-strip shoes.

The evening paper was in the mailbox. She usually looked at this in the kitchen. The most sensational stories dealt with the covert moral revolution that was being waged by men of Emile’s age. They robbed, they pillaged, they drank, they raped and when they were locked up in jail they ripped out the plumbing. She reasoned that their parents were to blame and she sent up to heaven a completely sincere prayer of thanksgiving over the fact that Emile was such a good boy. In her own youth she had seen some wildness but the world had seemed more commodious and forgiving. She had never been able to settle on who was to blame. She feared that the world might have changed too swiftly for her intelligence and her intuition. She had no one to help her sift out the good from the evil. When she had finished with the paper she usually went into her room and unfastened those gallant bindings that signified that she had known the love of a good man. She was never unready, she was never slovenly. She put on clean slippers and a clean cotton dress and then as a rule she cooked the supper. This night she went directly into her bedroom, lay on her bed in the dark and cried.

Driving back from the shack Emile felt that he was discovering in himself a new vein of seriousness, a new aspect of maturity. The kitchen was lighted when he came in but his mother was not at the stove and then he heard her crying in her room. He knew at once why she cried but he was completely unprepared. His heart moved him at once into her dark room, where she looked more desolate, more than ever like a child, dumped by her misery onto the bed, utterly mystified and forsaken. He felt crushed with the force of her grief. “I just can’t believe it,” she sobbed. “Just can’t believe it. I thought you were such a good boy, I thanked God night after night for your goodness and all the time right under my nose you were doing that. Mr. Narobi told me. He came to the store today.”

“It isn’t true, Mother. Whatever Mr. Narobi said isn’t true.”

She worked her face in the wet pillow like a child and he felt as if she were a child, his daughter, treated cruelly by some stranger.

“That’s what I prayed you’d say, that’s what I hoped you’d say but I can’t believe anything any more. Mr. Narobi told me all about it and why should he tell me if it wasn’t true? He couldn’t make that all up.”

“It isn’t true, Mother.”

“But why did he tell me all this then, why did he tell me all these lies? He said there’s this woman you’ve been going off with. He said she’s always calling the store when she doesn’t need anything and that he knows what’s going on.”

“It isn’t true.”

“But why did he tell me these lies then? Perhaps he’s jealous,” she asked in a reckless hopefulness. “You know the year before last he asked me to marry him. Of course I’ll never marry again, but he seemed cross when I said so.” She sat up and dried her tears.

“Perhaps that’s it.”

“He came here one night when I was alone. He brought me a box of candy and asked me to marry him. When I said no he was angry, he said I’d be sorry. Do you think that’s what he’s trying to do? Make me sorry?”

“Yes, that must be it.”

“Isn’t that funny? To think that someone should want to do me harm. Isn’t that funny? Don’t people do the strangest things?”

She washed her face and began to cook supper and Emile went to his room, worried about the sapphire ring, hidden in a drawer. He would feel safer if it was in his pocket. He opened the drawer and was taking the ring out of the box when he turned and saw her standing in the doorway. “Give that to me,” she said. “Give that to me, you devil. Whoever put the devil into you, who was it? Give me that ring. Is this how she paid you, you dirty, rotten snake? Don’t think I’m going to cry over you. I cried my last true tears at your father’s grave. I know what it was to be loved by a good man and nobody can take that away from me. You stay in your room until I tell you to come out.”

Moses answered the door the next evening when Mrs. Cranmer rang. She was wearing a hat, gloves and so forth and he couldn’t imagine what she wanted. She had no car and must have walked over from the bus stop. He thought at first that she had the wrong address. She might have been a cook or a seamstress, looking for work. To speak to him directly, as she did, seemed to drain her courage and self-esteem.

“You tell your wife to leave my son alone.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You tell your wife to leave my son alone. I don’t know how many other men she’s after but if I catch her near my boy again I’ll scratch her eyes out.”

“I don’t . . .” She had exhausted her strength and he closed the door calling: “Melissa, Melissa.” Why didn’t she answer? Why didn’t she answer? He heard her climbing the stairs and he followed. The door stood open and she sat at her dressing table with her face in her hands. He felt the blood of murder run in his veins and as, in desire, he sometimes seemed to feel her body beneath his hands before he had touched her, now he seemed to feel her throat, its cords and muscles, as he put out her life. He was shaking. He came up behind her, put his hands around her neck and when she screamed he strangled the scream but then some fear of Hell rose in him and he threw her onto the floor and went out.