Эд Макбейн - Snow White and Rose Red

I was wearing white that day, Snow White was, a white dress and white sandals and white lace-trimmed bikini panties, inadvertently and surprisingly damp as I listened to this illicit conversation, these hoarse intimate voices, the horse pawing the ground behind him, deeper, darlin’.

He protested all over the place, of course. He was upstairs in the bedroom he shared with my mother, talking to this horrible little slut , and he protested vigorously, oh yes, vigorously I might add, that he was not a jealous person by nature but that common decency dictated an obligation on her part to keep him informed of her whereabouts when after all he was paying for the fucking apartment she was in — this word on my father’s lips! — and letting her use the company car, and permitting long-distance calls on the company telephone to God knew where in the country and abroad, certainly to Los Angeles where she had gone without telling him. And what friend out there, may I ask, he asks, what friend did you go out there to visit, some old boyfriend of yours out there? This from the man protesting he is not jealous. My ears were burning. Snow White’s ears burned, they burn even now in recalling that shimmering August day, two weeks before he died. A heart attack. An attack of the heart. Small wonder, is it not? The passion in the voices on the phone that day. I almost had a heart attack myself.

And then she said — and this is what I will never forget — then she tried to console him, started buttering him up, buttering her bread and butter, her bread-and-butter man, Rich Daddy Whittaker with his tart in an apartment someplace, his heart in an apartment someplace, his heart-on in an apartment someplace, Oh Horace , she says, calls him Horace, she does, Oh Horace, how can you be so mean to me when I was pining for you all the while I was in LA and am dying to see you now? What I want you to do, what I want — oh the horror!

She said...

Oh, what she said to him.

Snow White listens, tingling with excitement.

Her father, her Horace, her Rich Daddy Whittaker says he’ll try.

Be here, she commands, the Harlot Witch.

I’ll try, he says again, and there is an abrupt click on the line, he has hung up the phone in the upstairs bedroom. I stood, Snow White stands, I stood trembling in the library, unable to move, the telephone receiver fastened irrevocably to my hand, an extension of my hand, the telephone and my hand are one, my hand has become white plastic. I try to shake the receiver free, it is alive, the receiver, it refuses to seat itself firmly on the cradle, it rattles to the desktop, it is alive with voices! There are footsteps on the steps leading downstairs, is he hearkening to her summons? I confront him in the downstairs hallway, I face him there, Snow White and her father... Does Snow White even have a father? Forgive me, doctors, I... I...

Once upon a time there was a destitute widow who lived in a ramshackle house with her two children named Snow White and Rose Red for the flowers that bloomed on the rosebushes in the yard, the flowers that bloomed, the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la.

Exactly.

No father at the time, then, no widow either, but how can that be? If you’ll excuse me for just one moment, I’m sure I’ll work this out, it’s all clear in my mind, truly it is. She was not a widow then , no, of course not, the Harlot Witch was not then a widow, not at the time of that showdown in the OK Corral in the hallway where the dust motes climbed relentlessly and the carpeting on the stairs absorbed our words with a silent hush, hush little baby, don’t you cry.

I told him I had heard.

He blinked in astonishment, this father who was not a father, no destitute widow either, not yet, no destitution , merely prostitution in an apartment somewhere, saying things to him on the telephone — I told him what I had heard. I repeated to him the foul obscenities she had whispered on the phone. We had no rosebushes in our garden. A pity. So rich and no roses. So poor.

Oh, I laid it out to him, laid it out, laid it. I told him he must never see her again. I told him I would be watching him. I told him I would track him day and night, follow him wherever he went, I demanded that he end this relationship with this Tracy Witch Harlot Witch, end it at once .

You are mistaken, Snow White, he says, though he does not call me Snow White, he does not know I am Snow White, her own father doesn’t know his darling daughter. But in his stammering, the truth is in his eyes, dead eyes, cold dead lying eyes, he loves me not. Oh, not dead yet , I certainly know the difference between fact and fiction, fantasy and reality, how could he be dead when I was speaking to him, pleading with him, begging him not to continue this terrible thing, threatening him, yes — no, not yet.

I did not threaten him then.

This was still the middle of August, so terribly hot down here in August, don’t you know, heat on that landing with the carpeted steps behind him and outside the tinkling of the small pool in the Spanish courtyard, do you have to tinkle, Sarah, well certainly not, I’ve already wet my pants, Snow White’s pants are soaking wet as she discusses all this with her father.

The threat — but I am innocent of his death, he is not dead, bless me, Father, for I have sinned — the threat was not until September. Labor Day. September third. Why do they call it Labor Day? Is it a holiday in honor of countless women suffering on innumerable maternity wards? As my mother must have suffered, the Harlot Witch delivering her Snow White into the world, Dear Daddy later delivering his Snow White into the hands of the Black Knight, Black Knights both, black as night, mmm, that’s the way. Was it supposed to be white? From a black man? Do you know I was totally surprised that it was white ? Well, of course, an innocent, only twelve years old. It should have been black , shouldn’t it? Swallow it, darlin’, he said, but I would not.

I am wearing a white bikini bathing suit.

I am basking in the sunshine beside the pool, the waters of the bay lapping the pilings, lapping my, oh, what she said to him on the telephone!

Those voices! Snow White lies in the dazzling sunlight, dazzling in her brief white bikini. It is Labor Day, but there is no labor at the Whittaker mansion, there is only lassitude and lust, I did not mean to say that. He, my father, the Black Knight with his thick black hair and brief black swimming trunks, swallow it, darlin’, lies beside me in a lounge chair. Mother, the Harlot Witch in embryo, has gone into the house for lemonade for this is Labor Day and the help is away, God help them. I tell him, I am testing him, you see, because I really have no way of knowing this, I tell him that I know he is still seeing the Bimbo Witch, and he looks at me with his dead, cold, lying eyes, and he says No, Sarah — my name an abomination on his lying lips, expecting me to swallow his blatant lies — he says No, I have stopped seeing her, and I tell him this is a lie, I know it is a lie, still testing him, and I tell him I will reveal all to Mother the moment she comes out to the pool again. This is my threat — but it is not my fault, what happened was not my fault.

She is coming through the French doors out onto the patio.

She is carrying a silver tray and on it a pitcher of lemonade, the sunlight splinters on the pitcher, yellow on yellow, and I call to her, I say Mother, there is something you should know — a knife to his heart! He clutches for his heart, he looks at me, his eyes opening wide, bless me, Father, for I have sinned, and he whispers No, Sarah, his last words, my name on his lips the final word he utters, for he is dead in the next instant. Well, of course he isn’t dead, he arranged for me to be brought here before you learned gentlemen, did he not, arranged for my rescue from the Tomb of the Innocent where they placed me against my will, it is she who killed him, the words she said on the telephone, those voices on the telephone. It is she who killed my father, it is she, the witch, the Harlot Witch Tracy!