CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
No one in the world can rise to a party or a
plateau of celebration like my Mary. It isn’t what she contributes
but what she receives that makes her glow like a jewel. Her eyes
shine, her smiling mouth underlines, her quick laughter builds
strength into a sickly joke. With Mary in the doorway of a party
everyone feels more attractive and clever than he was, and so he
actually becomes. Beyond this Mary does not and need not
contribute.
The whole Hawley house glowed with celebration
when I came home. Bright-colored plastic flags were strung in
canopies from center light to picture molding, and lines of colored
plastic bannerets hung from the banisters.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” Mary cried. “Ellen
got them from the Esso Service Station. George Sandow loaned
them.”
“What’s it about?”
“About everything. It’s a glory thing.”
I don’t know whether she had heard of Danny
Taylor or had heard and retired him. Certainly I didn’t invite him
to the feast, but he paced about outside. I knew I would have to go
out to meet him later but I did not ask him in.
“You’d think it was Ellen had won honorable
mention,” Mary said. “She’s even prouder than if she was the celebrity. Look at the cake she baked.”
It was a tall white cake with HERO written on its top in red,
green, yellow, and blue letters. “We’re having roast chicken
and dressing and
giblet gravy and mashed potatoes, even if
it is summer.”
“Good, darling, good. And where’s the young
celebrity?”
“Well, it’s changed him too. He’s taking a bath
and changing for dinner.”
“It’s a day of portent, sibyl. Somewhere you
will find a mule has foaled and a new comet come into the sky. A
bath before dinner. Imagine!”
“I thought you might like to change too. I have
a bottle of wine and I thought maybe a speech or a toast or
something like that, even if it’s just the family.” She fairly
flooded the house with party. I found myself rushing up the stairs
to bathe and be a part of it.
Passing Allen’s door, I knocked, heard a grunt,
and went in.
He was standing in front of his mirror, holding
a handglass so he could see his profile. With some dark stuff,
maybe Mary’s mascara, he had painted on a narrow black mustache,
had darkened his brows and raised the outer ends to satanic tips.
He was smiling a world-wise, cynical charm into the mirror when I
entered. And he was wearing my blue polka-dot bow tie. He did not
seem embarrassed at being caught.
“Rehearsing for a turn,” he said and put the
hand-mirror down.
“Son, in all the excitement I don’t think I’ve
told you how proud I am.”
“It’s—well, it’s only a start.”
“Frankly, I didn’t think you were even as good a
writer as the President. I’m as much surprised as I am pleased.
When are you going to read your essay to the world?”
“Sunday, four-thirty and
a national hookup. I have to go into New York. Special plane flying
me.”
“Are you well rehearsed?”
“Oh, I’ll do all right. It’s just a
start.”
“Well, it’s more like a jump to be one of five
in the whole country.”
“National hookup,” he said. He began to remove
the mustache with a cotton pad and I saw with amazement that he had
a make-up kit, eye-shadow, grease paint, cold cream.
“Everything’s happened at once to all of us. Do
you know I’ve bought the store?”
“Yeah! I heard.”
“Well, when the bunting and the tinsel come
down, I’m going to need your help.”
“How do you mean?”
“I told you before, to help me in the
store.”
“I couldn’t do that,” he said, and he inspected
his teeth in the hand-mirror.
“You couldn’t do what?”
“I’ve got a couple of guest shots and then
‘What’s My Line?’ and ‘Mystery Guest.’ Then there’s a new quiz
coming up called ‘Teen Twisters.’ I might even get to M.C. that. So
you see I won’t have time.” He sprayed something sticky on his hair
from a pressure can.
“So your career is all set, is it?”
“Like I told you, it’s just a start.”
“I’ll not let loose the dogs of war tonight.
We’ll discuss it later.”
“There’s a guy from N.B.C. been trying to get
you on the phone. Maybe it’s a contract because like I’m not of
age.”
“Have you thought of school, my son?”
“Who needs it if you got a contract?”
I got out fast and closed the door and in my
bathroom I ran the water cold and iced my skin and let the cold
penetrate deep to control my shaking rage. And when I emerged clean
and shining and smelling of Mary’s perfume, my control was back. In
the few moments before dinner, Ellen sat on the arm of my chair and
then rolled over in my lap and put her arms around me.
“I do love you,” she said. “Isn’t it exciting?
And isn’t Allen wonderful? It’s like he’s born to it.” And this was
the girl I had thought very selfish and a little mean.
Just before the cake I toasted the young hero
and wished him luck and I finished, “ ‘Now is the winter of our
discontent made glorious summer by this son of York.’ ”
“That’s Shakespeare,” Ellen said.
“Yes, muggins, but what play, who says it, and
where?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Allen. “That’s for
squares.”
I helped carry the dishes to the kitchen. Mary
still carried her glow. “Don’t fret,” she said. “He’ll find his
line. He’ll be all right. Please be patient with him.”
“I will, my holy quail.”
“There was a man calling from New York. I guess
about Allen. Isn’t it exciting, their sending a plane for him? I
can’t get used to you owning the store. I know—it’s all over town
you’re going to be Town Manager.”
“I’m not.”
“Well, I heard it a dozen times.”
“I have a business deal that makes it
impossible. I have to go out for a while, my darling. I have a
meeting.”
“Maybe I’ll get to wish you were back a clerk.
You were home nights then. What if the man calls back?”
“He can wait.”
“He didn’t want to. Will you be late?”
“Can’t tell. Depends on how it goes.”
“Wasn’t it sad about Danny Taylor? Take a
raincoat.”
“Sure was.”
In the hall I put on my hat and on an impulse
picked old Cap’n’s narwhal cane from the elephant foot. Ellen
materialized beside me.
“Can I go with you?”
“Not tonight.”
“I do love you.”
I stared deep into my daughter for a moment. “I
love you too,” I said. “I’ll bring you jewels—any favorites?”
She giggled. “You going to carry a cane?”
“For self-protection.” I held the spiraled ivory
at parry, like a broadsword.
“You going to be gone long?”
“Not long.”
“Why do you take the cane?”
“Pure decoration, a boast, a threat, a fear, a
vestigial need to bear arms.”
“I’ll wait up for you. Can I hold the pink
thing?”
“Oh, no you won’t, my little dung-flower. Pink
thing? You mean the talisman? Sure you may.”
“What’s a talisman?”
“Look it up in the dictionary. Know how to spell
it?”
“T-a-l-e-s-m-a-n.”
“No, t-a-l-i-s-m-a-n.”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“You’ll know it better if you look it up.”
She locked her arms around me and squeezed and
as quickly let me go.
The night closed thick and damp about me, humid
air about the consistency of chicken broth. The street lights
hiding among the fat leaves of Elm Street sprouted damp, hairy
halos of moisture.
A man with a job sees so little of the normal
daylight world. No wonder he must get his news and his attitudes
from his wife. She knows what happened and who said what about it,
but it is strained through her womanness, wherefore most working
men see the daylight world through women’s eyes. But in the night,
when his store or his job is closed, then is a man’s world risen—
for a time.
The twisted staff of narwhal ivory felt good in
my hand, its heavy silver knob polished by old Cap’n’s palm.
Once long ago when I lived in a daylight world,
the world being too much with me, I would have gone to grass. Face
downward and very close to the green stems, I became one with ants
and aphids and sow bugs, no longer a colossus. And in a ferocious
jungle of the grass I found the distraction that meant peace.
Now in the night I wanted Old Harbor and the
Place, where an inevitable world of cycles of life and time and of
tide could smooth my raggedness.
I walked quickly to the High Street, and only
glanced across at my green-curtained store as I passed the
Foremaster. In front of the fire station fat Willie sat in the
police car, red of face and sweating like a pig.
“You on the prowl again, Eth?”
“Yep.”
“Terrible sad about Danny Taylor. Nice
fella.”
“Terrible,” I said and hurried on.
A few cars cruised about, building a breeze, but
there were no strollers. No one risked the sweat of walking.
I turned at the monument and walked toward Old
Harbor and saw the anchor lights of a few yachts and offshore
fishing craft. Then I saw a figure turn out of Porlock Street and
come toward me and I knew by walk and posture it was Margie
Young-Hunt.
She stopped in front of me, gave me no chance of
passing. Some women can look cool on a hot night. Perhaps it was
the breezy movement of her cotton skirt.
She said, “I guess you’re looking for me.” She
replaced a strand of hair that wasn’t out of place.
“Why do you say that?”
She turned and took my arm and with her fingers
urged me to walk on. “That’s the kind I get. I was in the
Foremaster. I saw you go by and I thought you might be looking for
me, so I whipped around the block and intercepted you.”
“How’d you know which way I would turn?”
“I don’t know. I knew. Listen to the
cicadas—that’s more hot weather and no wind. Don’t worry, Ethan,
we’ll be out of the light in a moment. You can come to my place if
you want. I’ll give you a drink—a tall cold drink, from a tall hot
woman.”
I let her fingers guide me into the shadows of a
grove of outgrown privet. Some kind of yellow blossoms near the
ground burned the darkness.
“This is my house—a garage with a pleasure dome
over it.”
“What makes you think I was looking for
you?”
“Me or someone like me. Ever see a bullfight,
Ethan?”
“Once at Arles just after the war.”
“My second husband used to take me. He loved
them. I think bullfights are for men who aren’t very brave and wish
they were. If you saw one you’ll know what I mean. Remember after
all the cape work when the bull tries to kill something that isn’t
there?”
“Yes.”
“Remember how he gets confused and uneasy,
sometimes just stands and looks for an answer? Well, then they have
to give him a horse or his heart will break. He has to get his
horns into something solid or his spirit dies. Well, I’m that
horse. And that’s the kind of men I get, confused and puzzled. If
they can get a horn into me, that’s a little triumph. Then they can
go back to muleta and espada.”
“Margie!”
“Just a moment. I’m trying to find my key. Smell
the honeysuckle!”
“But I’ve just had a triumph.”
“You have? Hooked a cape—trampled it?”
“How do you know?”
“I just know when a man is looking for me, or
some other Margie. Watch the stairs, they’re narrow. Don’t hit your
head at the top. Now, here’s the switch—you see? A pleasure dome,
soft lights, smell of musk—down to a sunless sea!”
“I guess you’re a witch all right.”
“You know goddam well I am. A poor, pitiful
small-town witch. Sit there, near the window. I’ll turn on the fake
breeze. I’m going to what they call ‘slip into something
comfortable,’ then I’ll get you a tall cool skull-buster.”
“Where’d you hear that word?”
“You know where I heard it.”
“Did you know him well?”
“Part of him. The part of a man a woman can
know. Sometimes that’s the best part, but not often. It was with
Danny. He trusted me.”
The room was a memory album of other rooms, bits
and pieces of other lives like footnotes. The fan at the window
made a small whispering roar.
She came back soon in long, loose, billowing
blue and brought a cloud of scent. When I breathed it in she said,
“Don’t worry. It’s a cologne Mary has never smelled on me. Here’s a
drink—gin and tonic. I rubbed the glass with tonic. It’s gin, just
gin. If you rattle the ice, you’ll think it’s cool.”
I drank it down like beer and felt its dry heat
reach out over my shoulders and down my arms so that my skin
shimmered.
“I guess you needed that,” she said.
“I guess so.”
“I’ll make a brave bull of you—enough resistance
so you’ll think you have a triumph. That’s what a bull
needs.”
I stared at my hands, crisscrossed with
scratches and tiny cuts from opening boxes, and my nails, not too
clean.
She took the ivory stick from the couch where I
had dropped it. “I hope you don’t need this for your drooping
passion.”
“Are you my enemy, now?”
“Me, New Baytown’s playmate, your enemy?”
I was silent so long that I could feel her
growing restless. “Take your time,” she said. “You’ve got all your
life to answer. I’ll get you a drink.”
I took the full glass from her and my lips and
mouth were so dry I had to sip from it before I could speak, and
when I did my throat wore a husk.
“What do you want?”
“I might have settled for love.”
“From a man who loves his wife?”
“Mary? You don’t even know her.”
“I know she’s tender and sweet and kind of
helpless.”
“Helpless? She’s tough as a boot. She’ll go
right on long after you’ve rattled your engine to pieces. She’s
like a gull that uses the wind to stay aloft and never beats a
wing.”
“That’s not true.”
“Comes a big trouble, she’ll breeze through
while you burn up.”
“What do you want?”
“Aren’t you going to make a pass? Aren’t you
going to beat out your hatred with your hips on good old
Margie?”
I set my half-emptied glass down on a side
table, and quick as a snake she lifted it and put an ash tray under
it, and dried the ring of moisture with her hand.
“Margie—I want to know about you.”
“No kidding. You want to know what I thought of
your performance.”
“I can’t figure what you want until I know who
you are.”
“I believe the man means it—the dollar tour.
Through Margie Young-Hunt with gun and camera. I was a good little
kid, a smart little kid and a medium lousy dancer. Met what they
call an older man and married him. He didn’t love me—he was in love
with me. That’s on a silver platter for a good smart little kid. I
didn’t like to dance much and I sure as hell didn’t like to work.
When I dumped him he was so mixed up he didn’t even put a
remarriage clause in the settlement. Married another guy and led a
big world whirl that killed him. For twenty years that check has
zeroed in on the first of every month. For twenty years I haven’t
done a lick of work, except pick up a few presents from admirers.
Doesn’t seem like twenty years, but it is. I’m not a good little
kid any more.”
She went to her little kitchen and brought three
ice cubes in her hand, dumped them into her glass, and sloshed gin
over them. The muttering fan brought in the smell of sea flats
exposed by the dropping tide. She said softly, “You’re going to
make a lot of money, Ethan.”
“You know about the deal?”
“Some of the noblest Romans of them all are
creepers.”
“Go on.”
She made a sweeping gesture with her hand and
her glass went flying; the ice cubes bounced back from the wall
like dice.
“Lover boy had a stroke last week. When he
cools, the checks stop. I’m old and lazy and I’m scared. I set you
up as a backlog, but I don’t trust you. You might break the rules.
You might turn honest. I tell you I’m scared.”
I stood up and found my legs were heavy, not
wavery—just heavy and remote.
“What have you got to work with?”
“Marullo was my friend too.”
“I see.”
“Don’t you want to go to bed with me? I’m good.
That’s what they tell me.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“That’s why I don’t trust you.”
“We’ll try to work something out. I hate Baker.
Maybe you can clip him.”
“What language. You’re not working on your
drink.”
“Drink’s for happy times with me.”
“Does Baker know what you did to Danny?”
“Yes.”
“How’d he take it?”
“All right. But I wouldn’t like to turn my
back.”
“Alfio should have turned his back to
you.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Only what I guess. But I’d make book on my
guess. Don’t worry, I won’t tell him. Marullo is my friend.”
“I think I understand; you’re building up a hate
so you can use the sword. Margie, you’ve got a rubber sword.”
“Think I don’t know it, Eth? But I’ve got my
money on a hunch.”
“Do you want to tell me?”
“Might as well. I’m betting ten generations of
Hawleys are going to kick your ass around the block, and when they
leave off you’ll have your own wet rope and salt to rub in the
wounds.”
“If that were so—where does it leave you?”
“You’re going to need a friend to talk to and
I’m the only person in the world who fills the bill. A secret’s a
terribly lonesome thing, Ethan. And it won’t cost you much, maybe
only a small percentage.”
“I think I’ll go now.”
“Drink your drink.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Don’t bump your head going downstairs,
Ethan.”
I was halfway down when she followed me. “Did
you mean to leave your stick?”
“Lord, no.”
“Here it is. I thought it might be a kind
of—sacrifice.”
It was raining and that makes honeysuckle smell
sweet in the night. My legs were so wobbly that I really needed the
narwhal stick.
Fat Willie had a roll of paper towels on the
seat beside him to mop the sweat from his head.
“I’ll give you odds I know who she is.”
“You’d win.”
“Say, Eth, there’s been a guy looking for
you—guy in a big Chrysler, with a chauffeur.”
“What’d he want?”
“I don’t know. Wanted to know if I seen you. I
didn’t give a peep.”
“You’ll get a Christmas present, Willie.”
“Say, Eth, what’s the matter with your
feet?”
“Been playing poker. They went to sleep.”
“Yeah! they’ll do that. If I see the guy, shall
I tell him you’ve went home?”
“Tell him to come to the store tomorrow.”
“Chrysler Imperial. Big son of a bitch, long as
a freight car.”
Joey-boy was standing on the sidewalk in front
of the Foremaster, looking limp and humid.
“Thought you were going into New York for a cold
bottle.”
“Too hot. Couldn’t put my heart in it. Come in
and have a drink, Ethan. I’m feeling low.”
“Too hot for a drink, Morph.”
“Even a beer?”
“Beer heats me up.”
“Story of my life. When the cards are down—no
place to go. Nobody to talk to.”
“You should get married.”
“That’s nobody to talk to in spades.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“Damn right I am. There’s nobody as lonely as an
all-married man.”
“How do you know?”
“I see ’em. I’m looking at one. Guess I’ll get a
bag of cold beer and see if Margie Young-Hunt will play. She don’t
keep hours.”
“I don’t think she’s in town, Morph. She told my
wife—at least I think she did—that she was going up to Maine till
the heat is over.”
“Goddam her. Well—her loss is the barkeep’s
gain. I’ll tell him the sad episodes of a misspent life. He don’t
listen either. So long, Eth. Walk with God! That’s what they say in
Mexico.”
The narwhal stick tapped on the pavement and
punctuated my wondering about why I told Joey that. She wouldn’t
talk. That would spoil her game. She had to keep the pin in her
hand grenade. I don’t know why.
I could see the Chrysler standing at the curb by
the old Hawley house when I turned into Elm Street from the High,
but it was more like a hearse than a freight car, black but not
gleaming by reason of the droplets of rain and the greasy splash
that rises from the highways. It carried frosted parking
lights.
It must have been very late. No lights shone
from the sleeping houses on Elm Street. I was wet and I must
somewhere have stepped in a puddle. My shoes made a juicy squidging
sound as I walked.
I saw a man in a chauffeur’s cap through the
musty windshield. I stopped beside the monster car and rapped with
my knuckles on the glass and the window slid down with an electric
whine. I felt the unnatural climate of air-conditioning on my
face.
“I’m Ethan Hawley. Are you looking for me?” I
saw teeth in the dimness—gleaming teeth picked out by our street
light.
The door sprang open of itself and a lean,
well-tailored man stepped out. “I’m Dunscombe, Brock and Schwin,
television branch. I have to talk to you.” He looked toward the
driver. “Not here. Can we go inside?”
“I guess so. I think everyone’s asleep. If you
talk quietly . . .”
He followed me up our walk of flagstones set in
the spongy lawn. The night light was burning in the hall. As we
went in I put the narwhal stick in the elephant’s foot.
I turned on the reading light over my big
sprung-bottomed chair.
The house was quiet, but it seemed to me the
wrong kind of quiet—a nervous quiet. I glanced up the stairwell at
the bedroom doors above.
“Must be important to come this late.”
“It is.”
I could see him now. His teeth were his
ambassadors, un-helped by his weary but wary eyes.
“We want to keep this private. It’s been a bad
year, as you well know. The bottom fell out with the quiz scandals
and then the payola fuss and the Congressional committees. We have
to watch everything. It’s a dangerous time.”
“I wish you’d tell me what you want.”
“You’ve read your boy’s I Love America
essay?”
“No, I haven’t. He wanted to surprise me.”
“He has. I don’t know why we didn’t catch it,
but we didn’t.” He held out a folded blue cover to me. “Read the
underlining.”
I sank into my chair and opened it. It was
either printed or typed by one of those new machines that looks
like type, but it was marred with harsh black pencil lines down
both margins.
by
ETHAN ALLEN HAWLEY II
“Do you recognize it?”
“No. It sounds familiar—sounds like maybe
somewhere in the last century.”
“It is. It’s Henry Clay, delivered in
1850.”
“And the rest? All Clay?”
“No—bits and pieces, some Daniel Webster, some
Jefferson, and, God help me, a swatch from Lincoln’s Second
Inaugural. I don’t know how that got past. I guess because there
were thousands of them. Thank Christ we caught it in time—after all
the quiz troubles and Van Doren and all.”
“It doesn’t sound like the prose style of a
boy.”
“I don’t know how it happened. And it might have
gone through if we hadn’t got the postcard.”
“Postcard?”
“Picture postcard, picture of the Empire State
Building.”
“Who sent it?”
“Anonymous.”
“Where was it mailed from?”
“New York.”
“Let me see it.”
“It’s under lock and key in case there’s any
trouble. You don’t want to make trouble, do you?”
“What is it you want?”
“I want you to forget the whole thing. We’ll
just drop the whole thing and forget it—if you will.”
“It’s not a thing easy to forget.”
“Hell, I mean just keep your lip buttoned—don’t
give us any trouble. It’s been a bad year. Election year anybody
will dig up anything.”
I closed the rich blue covers and handed it back
to him. “I won’t give you any trouble.”
His teeth showed like matched pearls. “I knew
it. I told them. I looked you up. You have a good record—good
family.”
“Will you go away now?”
“You’ve got to know I understand how you
feel.”
“Thank you. And I know how you feel. What you
can cover up doesn’t exist.”
“I don’t want to go away leaving you angry.
Public relations is my line. We could work something out.
Scholarship or like that—something dignified.”
“Has sin gone on strike for a wage raise? No,
just go away now—please!”
“We’ll work something out.”
“I’m sure you will.”
I let him out and sat down again and turned out
the light and sat listening to my house. It thudded like a heart,
and maybe it was my heart and a rustling old house. I thought to go
to the cabinet and take the talisman in my hand—had stood up to get
it.
I heard a crunching sound and a whinny like a
frightened colt, and quick steps in the hall and silence. My shoes
squidged on the stairs. I went in to Ellen’s room and switched on
the light. She was balled up under a sheet, her head under her
pillow. When I tried to lift the pillow she clung to it and I had
to yank it away. A line of blood ran from the corner of her
mouth.
“I slipped in the bathroom.”
“I see. Are you badly hurt?”
“I don’t think so.”
“In other words, it’s none of my
business.”
“I didn’t want him to go to jail.”
Allen was sitting on the edge of his bed, naked
except for jockey shorts. His eyes—they made me think of a mouse in
a corner, ready at last to fight a broom.
“The stinking sneak!”
“Did you hear it all?”
“I heard what that stinking sneak did.”
“Did you hear what you did?”
The driven mouse attacked. “Who cares? Everybody
does it. It’s the way the cooky crumbles.”
“You believe that?”
“Don’t you read the papers? Everybody right up
to the top— just read the papers. You get to feeling holy, just
read the papers. I bet you took some in your time, because they all
do. I’m not going to take the rap for everybody. I don’t care about
anything. Except that stinking sneak.”
Mary awakens slowly, but she was awake. Perhaps
she hadn’t been asleep. She was in Ellen’s room, sitting on the
edge of the bed. The street light made her plain enough with
shadows of leaves moving on her face. She was a rock, a great
granite rock set in a tide race. It was true. She was tough as a
boot, unmoving, unyielding, and safe.
“Will you be coming to bed, Ethan?”
So she had been listening too.
“Not now, my darling dear.”
“Are you going out again?”
“Yes—to walk.”
“You need your sleep. It’s still raining. Do you
have to go?”
“Yes. There’s a place. I have to go
there.”
“Take your raincoat. You forgot it
before.”
“Yes, my darling.”
I didn’t kiss her then. I couldn’t with the
balled and covered figure beside her. But I touched her shoulder
and I touched her face and she was tough as a boot.
I went to the bathroom for a moment for a
package of razor blades.
I was in the hall, reaching in the closet for a
raincoat as Mary wished, when I heard a scuffle and a scramble and
a rush and Ellen flung herself at me, grunting and snuffling. She
buried her bleeding nose against my breast and pinned my elbows
down with encircling arms. And her whole little body shook.
I took her by the forelock and pulled her head
up under the hall night light.
“Take me with you.”
“Silly, I can’t. But if you’ll come in the
kitchen, I’ll wash your face.”
“Take me with you. You’re not coming
back.”
“What do you mean, skookum? Of course I’m coming
back. I’m always coming back. You go up to bed and rest. Then
you’ll feel better.”
“You won’t take me?”
“Where I’m going they wouldn’t let you in. Do
you want to stand outside in your nightgown?”
“You can’t.”
She grappled me again and her hands caressed and
stroked my arms, my sides, dug her balled fists into my side
pockets so that I was afraid she might find the razor blades. She
was always a caressing girl, a stroking girl, and a surprising
girl. Suddenly she released me and stood back with her head raised
and her eyes level and without tears. I kissed her dirty little
cheek and felt the dried blood against my mouth. And then I turned
to the door.
“Don’t you want your stick?”
“No, Ellen. Not tonight. Go to bed, darling. Go
to bed.”
I ran away fast. I guess I ran away from her and
from Mary. I could hear Mary coming down the stairs with measured
steps.