With Option to Die Page 5

  She found the telephone between twin beds and sat on one of them as she reached for it. She said, “Hello?” and was conscious of the worried strain in her voice.

  The voice was a man’s, and not Eric’s.

  “We didn’t expect you back,” the man said. “We thought things had been made clear enough. How clear do we have to make them?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ann said. “Who is this? What—”

  “You know what we’re talking about,” the man said and then said two words—words which had been shouted at Ann Langley over and over a few months before. “Nigger lover,” the words were. And then there was the sharp snap of a telephone slammed into its cradle and, after seconds, the hum of the dial tone.

  Ann put her own receiver back and sat on the bed, which was gradually becoming damp under her, and looked at the telephone, which seemed to crouch menacingly in the cradle.

  She went back to the bathroom, toweling as she went and feeling, as she went, that she had been struck. Ugly words, an ugly voice, can deliver blows as bruising as those a fist can deliver. Because I worked on a documentary, asking questions which were not supposed to be asked and was jeered at for asking them? (And called worse names than this man called me, but was not hurt by them because I expected them.) Not, then, because I am Mrs. Eric Martin. Because, in screen credits, the name of Ann Langley is in a long list of lesser—

  It came to her abruptly as she pulled a panty girdle over hips which did not need its containment.

  He was not, she thought, talking to me at all. He was talking, thought he was talking, to Lucile Barnes. He said, “We didn’t expect you back.” “Back” was the word which counted. It was to Ralph and Lucile Barnes that things were supposed to have been made clear enough. That the Barneses had rented their house was, Faith Powers had made clear, known all over town. But this man, this man with an angry voice, apparently did not know. Then, not part of the town? Of the town which was “squeezed together mentally”?

  Ann pulled stockings up slim legs and cinched them to the panty girdle. (Which was what the panty girdle was really for.) She snapped her bra on. She was halfway into a green cotton dress—green goes well with dark red hair—when the telephone rang again.

  She thought for a moment she would not answer it. But then she hurried back to the bedroom, because this time it might be Eric—this time it surely would be Eric. He was going to be later than he had expected. She was to come in the wagon and meet him somewhere. He—

  She sat on the still somewhat damp bed and said, “Hello?” into the receiver and waited, tight, for the voice.

  The voice, this time, was that of a woman. It was a light, somehow artificial, voice. “Mrs. Eric Martin?” the woman said. “Long-distance call for Mrs. Eric Martin.”

  “This is she,” Ann said, and got “One minute, please” and then another voice, again a woman’s voice. This second woman’s voice was deeper. Yet, surely, it was not unlike the other.

  “Mrs. Martin?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is a friend, Mrs. Martin,” the woman said. “With friendly advice.”

  She speaks, Ann thought, as if she were reading from something. She said, “Who are you?”

  “We don’t want your kind meddling here,” the woman said, still as if she were reading something written down. “A hint to the wise.”

  Reading clichés written down, Ann thought, and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Meddling?”

  “You know what I’m talking about, all right,” the woman said. “Go somewhere else to pry. You’re an outsider. Stay outside. You understand.”

  “No,” Ann said. “Not a word of it. Or who you are or what—what any of this is about. And—wait a minute. You keep saying ‘here.’ But the operator said this was a long—”

  She stopped, because this mysterious “friend,” who seemed to be reading from a script, hung up on her.

  The other call had been, in an elusive way, almost frightening. This was no more than baffling, yet it, too, brought uneasiness. We came here for a quiet summer, in a place convenient to Eric’s job, Ann thought. What have we walked into? What on earth have we walked into?

  She went down to the kitchen—the strange kitchen. She stood in the middle of it and looked around and tried to decide what she had come to the kitchen for. That lasted only for a second. To decide what to get for dinner, of course. To get ice out of trays, of course.

  One of the things she had got at the supermarket was a steak—a thick shell steak, which was the kind they liked. Because, touring the house on Saturday, they had found a portable grill in the garage and a bag of charcoal briquets leaning against it. And because Eric liked to do steaks over charcoal, and did them well. An expensive steak it had turned out to be. But a steak broiled out-of-doors over charcoal would be—would be a kind of celebration meal, a way of welcoming themselves to their new house.

  The idea of welcoming themselves, or of being in any way welcomed, to this square white house seemed infinitely remote. Still, they had to eat; they might as well eat as they chose. If, Ann Martin thought, the grill isn’t booby-trapped.

  The notion—the entirely absurd notion—broke through the mood of uneasiness, and Ann laughed at herself. She was, she thought, taking this much too seriously. The town, with nothing much else to do, was fussing inside itself. Eric and I, she thought, are not part of that. That will be realized and these little “niggling” things will stop. Meanwhile, we can ignore them. Anonymous telephone calls, and many of them more objectionable than these, are fairly common. They are also often obscene. There had been a period, when she lived alone in the apartment in Manhattan, when her telephone had, for more than a week, rung every morning at three o’clock. When she answered it, there had been only the sound of deeply drawn breath. A detective from the local precinct had been sympathetic; he had told her that the city was full of crackpots; advised her to have her telephone number unlisted.

  It appeared that not all crackpots inhabit cities. North Wellwood, so seemingly peaceful in its tree-filled valley, obviously had its share.

  Ann went out to the garage, leaving the kitchen door open behind her. It was warm outdoors; the sun was still high on this long day. There was a terrace in the rear of the house, with a table and with chairs. Eric could cook their steak beyond it and, if they liked, they could eat steak on the terrace.

  The grill had wheels. She trundled it out to what she thought would be a convenient place and carried the bag of charcoal briquets out to it. She went back to the kitchen and rinsed cocktail glasses and put them in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. She took from the freezer a package of frozen French fried potatoes. (Tomorrow she would get real potatoes.) “Keep frozen until ready to use,” the directions told her, and she put the package back. Peas to go with the steak and French fries? They would do. A salad? She had remembered salad greens. But Eric did not much care for salad. Too soon yet to take the steak out to reach room temperature. Particularly on an afternoon as warm as this. Get out ice and put it in the thermos container. There is shade over part of the terrace from a big tree. An ash tree, I think. Probably Eric will know what kind of tree. It will be tranquil there. “Tranquil” is an odd word to come to mind. It is a word for special occasions. I’ll tell Eric about the telephone calls and about Faith Powers and about what she said about the Barneses being “squeezed out.” I’ll have many things to tell Eric and, unless he got held up and if New Canaan is really half an hour from here, he—

  A car which sounded indignant was coming up the drive. She went to the front door to greet car and husband.

  Her thin dark husband snapped himself out of the little car. He had driven with the top down and his dark brown hair was ruffled, although he wore it short. And the expression on his face was somewhat more than ruffled. Something’s gone wrong, she thought, and went out onto the porch and down the steps to the driveway. She said, “What is it, darling?”

&nbs
p; “Some son of a bitch thinks the end of our driveway is part of the town dump,” Eric said, and there was anger in his voice. “I had to—” But he did not finish that. His expression changed suddenly and entirely and he held out his arms to her. He said, “You look swell,” and she walked into his arms.

  After a moment, they freed themselves.

  “I’ll have to find a shovel,” Eric said. “Looks like somebody emptied a trash can.”

  “Out of a car,” Ann said. “People throw the remains of picnics out of cars. Unpleasant people.”

  “Only,” Eric said, “there’s a dead rat in this mess. A very dead rat.”

  They had learned—were beginning to learn—that even unpleasant things are best done together.

  Eric carried an empty trash can from the garage and down the drive and Ann carried a shovel.

  The mess did not look like the remains of a picnic, and the rat in it was indeed very dead. They dragged the partly filled trash can back up the drive, each pulling on one of its handles and Eric carrying the shovel in his free hand. In the garage they put the cover on the trash can, and put it on very firmly.

  Walter Brinkley had half wakened from his afternoon nap when the telephone rang. There was a telephone by his bed and he reached for it sleepily and then drew his hand back because it had stopped ringing. Harry had answered it on the extension in his apartment behind the kitchen. Or in the ktichen. Probably the call was for Harry. NAACP, probably.

  Brinkley looked at his watch, which told him it was five thirty-six. Time for a shower and shave and an hour’s work on A Note on American Regional Accents before, more agreeably, it was time for a cocktail on the terrace with some hours of tedious, and at times painful, revision behind him. He bounced out of bed and was in the process of bouncing toward the bathroom when he heard Harry Washington’s feet on the stairs.

  Harry knocked and then, through the door, said, “Mrs. Powers is calling, Professor.”

  Walter Brinkley went to the telephone and said, “Good evening, Faith,” into it.

  “Are you,” Faith Powers said, “tied up for dinner? I mean now. Tonight. I realize it’s short notice.”

  Harry had, Walter dimly remembered, said something about leg of lamb. With what was left as curry in the future. Walter Brinkley was fond of curried lamb. Of roast lamb, for that matter; although a leg of lamb, even a small one, was more than two men needed for a—

  “No, Faith,” Brinkley said. “Short a man, my dear?”

  “Not that, really,” Faith said. “Perhaps—call it long a man, Walter. And at the inn. Not at my house. And—we may have to loiter. Start early and stay late.”

  He told her that she was being mysterious.

  “I don’t,” Faith said, “want to precondition you. But—will you?”

  “Of course. I’ll pick you up.”

  “No. Meet me there. At around six-thirty, if you can make it. Because I don’t know when he—” She stopped herself. He waited

  for a second, but she waited too.

  “About six-thirty,” Brinkley said. “Shall I call Sally Lambert?”

  “No,” Faith Powers said. “We won’t need to, dear. Not so early. Anyway, I’d rather—”

  Again she did not finish, which was unlike Faith Powers, who usually spoke in sentences. A teacher, even at the university level, is trained to set a good example to the wayward, who often speak merely in a casual sprinkle of words.

  Brinkley called down to Harry that he would be eating out and if the lamb was in the oven …

  “Not yet, Professor,” Harry called up to Brinkley. “Since we both like it pink.”

  In the old days, the pleasant and relaxed days, Walter thought, Harry would have said “likes,” not “like.” Walter sighed and went to shave and shower.

  Faith’s unmistakable blue Mercedes was in the parking lot of the Maples Inn when Walter Brinkley swerved in his somewhat elderly MG. In the inn’s taproom, Faith had the table which faced the cavernous fireplace. Walter said, “’Evening, Sally,” in the entrance hall and got “Good evening, Professor Brinkley,” which was carrying formality rather far. He went into the taproom and sat beside Faith Powers.

  Faith had a drink in front of her—scotch on the rocks from its size and color, and from Brinkley’s considerable experience of the habits of an old friend. She had only had a sip from the glass, if she had had anything. She held the glass awkwardly and Brinkley looked at her hand and finger. “Slammed the car door on it,” Faith said.

  Tony came in from the bar with a martini on a tray and a small dish of lemon-peel slices. This was gratifying to Walter Brinkley. It was also, if he decided to think about it, a little embarrassing. He decided not to think about it and raised his glass to Faith and continued it to his lips. Adam had remembered to make the martini from House of Lords gin.

  The taproom was empty except for one youngish man at a corner table. The youngish man was reading a book and drinking a beer. The book was fat and flat on the table and Brinkley could not see its title. Brinkley regretted this. When he saw someone reading a book he always wanted to know what the book was.

  “A Thousand Days, dear,” Faith told him. “Schlesinger. We have new neighbors. In the Barnes house. A young couple named Martin. At least, she is young. And very pretty. Does the name Langley mean anything to you?”

  Faith usually finished sentences. She also usually stayed on subjects. She’s disturbed about something, Walter thought, and said that the name Langley did not mean anything to him and asked if it should.

  “Mrs. Martin’s professional name,” Faith told him. “I suppose her maiden name. Did you see the UBN documentary on the deep South? Mississippi, for the most part.”

  “TV?”

  “Yes, Walter. And UBN is the United Broadcasting Network. The documentary ran an hour and a half and was very interesting, and I doubt whether most of the Southern stations carried it. Actually, as I remember it, there was something of a furor about it in Southern newspapers. References to blackening the name of the Southland. Smirching Southern womanhood, for all I know.”

  “I don’t see much television,” Brinkley told her. “Or, I’m afraid, read the newspapers as much as I should. Mrs. Martin’s professional name is Langley. What is her profession, dear?”

  Faith Powers told her friend what Ann Martin-Langley’s profession was, and that she had received credit on the documentary.

  Brinkley raised his white eyebrows, which a little needed trimming. He also shook his head. Faith was, he thought, more oblique than he had ever known her to be.

  “Lucile is rather worried about them,” Faith Powers said. “About the Martins.”

  “Lucile worries rather easily,” Walter said. “Why is she worried this time?”

  Faith drank before she answered. She drank rather deeply for her. She was usually a sipper.

  “Walter,” she said, “I know you live in that book of yours. More than ever the last year or two. Do you know what’s going on in this town of ours? How it’s—drawing in on itself? And on its past? On what it thinks are the ideas of its past? And, of course, the country’s past.”

  “It’s always been conservative, in its sleepy way,” Brinkley said. “If that’s what you mean.”

  “It isn’t a sleepy way any more,” Faith said. “Did you hear about Thomas Peters? Did you know that Lucile and Ralph Barnes were—call it ostracized here. In the end, ostracized out of town?”

  “About Peters, yes. And that he insists it was accidental. Harry told me this morning. And about the Barneses. Yes, I gathered that. But Lucile always has been a worrier. I thought—well, that she had made much out of little. I suppose I did.”

  “You pull this book over your head. Burrow into it and hide.”

  “Very well, Faith. The absent-minded professor. And emeritus at that. Perhaps I merely hide in the book.”

  “It will be a fine book,” Faith said. “You’ve let me see enough of it to make me sure of that. Not that, knowing you for all th
ese years, I wouldn’t have been sure, anyway. But—have they bothered you? Since we both ran for the school board and got—what do they say?”

  “Clobbered,” Brinkley said, back on the familiar ground of words. “Snowed under. Routed. The word ‘skunked’ isn’t used much any more, I believe. The synonyms for ‘defeated’ are numerous. You asked me—oh, of course. If ‘they’ had bothered me. Who are they, Faith?”

  She drank again. This time she merely sipped, which somewhat relieved Walter Brinkley.

  “Do you mean the Birchites? I do know they’ve grown surprisingly strong in the community. They—” He interrupted himself by laughing, unexpectedly to himself. She waited.

  “The Misses Monroe are Birchites,” he said. “Elvina and Martha. They invited me to a meeting. Sweet little old things. A bit fuzzy, perhaps. And bewildered. The defeat of Senator Goldwater really shook them. And the income tax. They’ve never understood the income tax. And the United Nations. But harmless old ladies. Old even to me, Faith. Even to me.”

  “Did you go to the meeting?”

  “I meant to. I’m sure I planned to. But it slipped my mind. There was a question in my mind about the use of phonetic symbols and—” He broke himself off. He said, “Did you go, Faith?”

  “Wasn’t invited. No, I don’t mean members of the John Birch Society. Or, perhaps some of them. I agree, most of them are harmless. As harmless as ‘Monroe, Misses, the.’”

  (Elvina and Martha Monroe were so listed in the Brewster telephone directory, of which North Wellwood is an afterthought. The listing had long amused both Walter Brinkley and Faith Powers.)

  “Repeal of the income tax,” Faith said, and ticked that off with her thumb. “Withdrawal from the United Nations.” The index finger of her left hand withdrew the United States from the United Nations. “The Labor Relations Act.” Her middle finger did for that. “Reciprocal trade relations” took care of a ring finger which had a wedding ring on it. “Forced integration.” She used her little finger for that, and then, unexpectedly to Brinkley, clenched the small, plump hand into a fist. It relaxed almost at once.