Маргарет Миллар - The Cannibal Heart

Luisa gave a wild little shriek.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You scared me to death.” Luisa cried. “You shouldn’t scare people with bad hearts like I’ve got.” Luisa could conjure up a fatal disease at the drop of a hat, and she frequently did, in the interests of drama. “I’ll probably die young.”

“That’s too bad.”

“I inherited it.”

Mark said soberly, “Perhaps if you’ve got a bad heart you shouldn’t smoke.”

Luisa got up and brushed the sand off her skirt, watching Mark slyly out of the corner of her eye. “Are you going to tell on me?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Mark hesitated. “Well, I don’t know why not. I suppose it’s because I wouldn’t like to get you in trouble. It might be a good idea if you didn’t smoke until you’re older, though.”

“I don’t smoke much. Only when I’m miserable and hate everyone. I ran away once. Two years ago.”

“Where did you go?”

“Just to my aunt’s house in San Diego. She married a white man. I was going to start my life all over, change my hair and my name. I was going to have a real English-sounding name like Jane Alice Fitzsimmons, something like that.”

“Fitzsimmons is Irish, isn’t it?”

Luisa shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, Irish would be good enough. Anyway my aunt sent me back. Did you ever run away?”

“No,” Mark said, smiling. “I wouldn’t have stood a chance of getting far. I have five sisters.”

“Five? Oh, I’d hate that. I hate women. Are they all married?”

“Three of them are. The other two work with me. We have sort of a family company.”

“Mr. Wakefield didn’t work at all,” Luisa said. “He had money. Not her. She didn’t have a cent. She was an ordinary schoolteacher before she got married. When he died, though, she got the money.”

“I didn’t even know he was dead.”

“He is, he died almost on this very spot.” She leaned her elbows on the rock and stared up at Mark. “It’s funny you’re Jessie’s father.”

“Why?”

“You’re not like a father. You’re more like, well, maybe a bandleader.”

“Thanks,” Mark said wryly. “Perhaps you don’t know much about bandleaders.”

Luisa’s face indicated reproach. “It’s my specialty in life. That’s what I’m going to be some day, a singer with a band. First I wanted to be a nurse, like Miss Lewis. She was Billy’s nurse. She was just wonderful, she knew everything. I’d like to know everything and go around saving people’s lives, etcetera, and helping people. But I can’t.”

“You could try.”

“It isn’t just trying that counts. Nursing schools don’t want people like me. Miss Lewis said that being colored doesn’t matter, but she was wrong. It matters all the time, and everywhere, except right here.”

“Why not here?”

“Mrs. Wakefield is different from other people.”

In spite of the fact that the words sounded complimentary, Mark noticed the expression of repugnance on Luisa’s face.

He said, “We’d better go back now, it’s getting pretty dark.”

“No, thanks,” Luisa’s voice was polite but firm. “I want to stay here.”

“Come on. Your parents will be worried about you.”

“No, they won’t.” She stood up straight again, rubbing one of her elbows where the skin was chafed from contact with the rock. “They’ll be fussing around Mrs. Wakefield.”

With a half-muffled snort of exasperation, Mark jumped down from the rock. “Okay. Stay here if you like.”

He began walking briskly along the damp sand toward the stone steps, but he hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards before he heard Luisa calling him:

“Mr. Banner! Wait, Mr. Banner!”

He turned around and waited, frowning, until she caught up with him.

“What changed your mind?”

“My matches are wet. They wouldn’t light.”

“That’s just too bad.”

“I was going to stay down here practically all night so I wouldn’t have to be nice to Mrs. Wakefield.”

“Why don’t you want to be nice to her?”

“Because they are,” Luisa said scornfully. “My parents, I mean. They’re always making such a fuss over her. I’ll be glad when she leaves.”

He paused at the bottom of the steps for Luisa to go up ahead of him. He saw that she was shivering, and the skin of her bare arms was tinged with mauve in the twilight.

“Mr. Banner, do you believe that a person can be terribly nice on the surface and still have bad things inside them that come out in their children?”

“No,” Mark said. “Come on now, make it fast. You’re getting cold.”

When they reached the top of the steps they saw that most of the lights in the house were on, and the Japanese lanterns in the patio had been lit.

“I was supposed to help with supper,” Luisa said bitterly. “Now everybody’ll be mad at me, everybody.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“You sounded mad, down there,” Luisa said. “Kind of like James Mason.”

Mark didn’t know who James Mason was, but he felt vaguely uncomfortable under Luisa’s stare. He was glad when they reached the house and she ducked away, around the side of it, bent double to avoid the patio lights.

Evelyn was sitting on the stone half-wall, smoking cigarette. Her slight delicate figure, and the fluff of bangs over her forehead made her look more childish and virginal than Luisa. At his approach she stood up and threw away the cigarette. She had put on a fresh dress, a blue-and-white printed silk that brought out the blue in her eyes and showed off her new tan.

“Have a nice walk?”

“No.”

“I thought I saw Luisa with you,” Evelyn said. “Everyone’s been looking for her.”

“I bumped into her down by the rock.”

“That must have been fun.”

She smiled, but she had a sudden sick feeling at the pit of her stomach. In all their twelve years of marriage, she had never been able to get over these quick spasms of jealousy. She had always prided herself on being a reasonable woman. Her jealousy worried her because it was so capricious and unjust, and it had no relation to the facts. It was impossible to be jealous of Mark talking to a fifteen-year-old girl; but the feeling was there, a lost helpless sensation.

Holding on tight to her smile, she said, “What did you talk about? There are some martinis in the pitcher on the table.”

“I’ll have one,” Mark said. “She talked, I stooged. She can be rather interesting when she forgets to put on those adolescent histrionics.”

“Such as?” Evelyn said brightly. “What’d she say?”

“This and that. You don’t seriously want to know, do you?”

“Well, we haven’t got anything else much to talk about right now, have we? We might as well talk about Luisa. Or a good book. Have you read any good books lately?”

Mark shook his head. “No. Have a martini?”

“Thanks.”

He brought the drink over to her. “Now let’s have it. What’s on your mind?”

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing!”

“Cross your heart?”

“And hope to die.”

“That’s fine.” Balancing his own glass and hers, he leaned down and kissed the tip of her ear. “Sometimes you get some peculiar ideas.”

She flashed him a bright, empty smile.

“Don’t I just,” she said cheerfully.

Mrs. Wakefield came out from the living room. She was still wearing the yellow knit dress but she had put on a topaz necklace, and her hair was combed straight back from her forehead and caught in a barrette at the nape of her neck.

There was a certain new buoyancy in her walk as she crossed the patio holding Jessie by the hand. Under the soft lights of the lanterns her hair glowed, rich and velvety, and her face was quite animated, as if the contact with old friends and the excitement of meeting new people had stimulated her, and restored her youth.