Росс Макдональд - The Goodbye Look

“I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”

“Yes, he did.”

She made her engine roar. At the last moment I remembered that Chalmers’s war letters were still in the trunk of my car. I went back to get them, and looked over the top ones again as Betty drove me to the freeway.

The heading of the second letter stopped me:

Lt. (j.g.) L. Chalmers

USS Sorrel Bay (CVE 185)

March 15, 1945

I turned to Betty. “You mentioned Nick’s birthday the other day. Didn’t you say it was in December?”

“December 14,” she said.

“And what year was he born?”

“Nineteen forty-five. He was twenty-three last month. Is it important?”

“It could be. Did Nick rearrange these letters, with certain ones up front and out of chronological order?”

“He may have. I think he had been reading them. Why?”

“Mr. Chalmers wrote a letter at sea in the forward area, dated March 15, 1945.”

“I’m not too good at arithmetic, especially when I’m driving. Is it nine months from March 15 to December 14?”

“Exactly.”

“Isn’t that strange? Nick always suspected that his fa – that Mr. Chalmers wasn’t his real father. He used to think he was adopted.”

“Maybe he was.”

I put the three top letters in my wallet. The girl turned up the on-ramp to the freeway. She drove with angry speed under a brown firmament of smog.

Southward along the coast it was a bright, windy day. From the mesa above Pacific Point I could see occasional whitecaps on the water, and a few sails leaning far over.

Betty took me directly to the Smitheram Clinic. The well-groomed, rather formal young woman who presided over the reception desk said that Dr. Smitheram was with a patient and couldn’t possibly see us. He would be with patients all the rest of the day, including the evening.

“What about a week from Tuesday at midnight?”

The young woman looked me over disapprovingly. “Are you sure you don’t want the emergency ward at the hospital?”

“I’m sure. Is Nicholas Chalmers a patient here?”

“I’m not authorized to answer questions like that.”

“Can I see Mrs. Smitheram?”

The young woman didn’t answer for a while. She pretended to be busy with her papers. Finally she said:

“I’ll see. What did you say your name was, again?”

I told her. She opened an inner door. Before she closed it behind her, I heard a flash of noise that made the back of my neck bristle. It was a high yell; someone crying out wordlessly in pain and desolation.

Betty and I looked at each other. “That may be Nick,” she said. “What are they doing to him?”

“Nothing. You shouldn’t be here.”

“Where should I be?”

“At home reading a book.”

“Dostoevsky?” she said sharply.

“Something lighter than that.”

“Like Little Women? I’m afraid you don’t understand me, Mr. Archer. You’re fatherizing again.”

“You’re daughterizing.”

Moira and the receptionist opened the inner door and came out unaccompanied by any sound. Moira gave me a look of surprise and Betty a more complex look which seemed to combine both envy and contempt. Betty was younger, Moira’s look seemed to say, but she herself had survived longer.

She moved toward me. “What on earth’s been happening, Mr. Archer?”

“I was accidentally shot, if you mean this.” I touched my left arm. “Is Nick Chalmers here?”

“Yes. He is.”

“Was that him yelling?”

“Yelling? I don’t believe so.” She was flustered. “We have several patients in the closed wing. Nick isn’t one of the more disturbed ones.”

“Then you won’t object if we see him. Miss Truttwell is his fiancée–”

“I know that.”

“–and she’s quite concerned about him.”

“There’s no need to feel that way.” But she herself seemed deeply concerned. “I’m sorry I can’t let you see him. Dr. Smitheram makes these decisions. He evidently thinks that Nick needs seclusion.”

Her mouth twisted sideways. The strain of keeping up her public face and voice was telling on Moira.

“Could we discuss this in private, Mrs. Smitheram?”

“Yes. Come into my office, please.”

The invitation excluded Betty. I followed Moira into an office which was partly sitting room and partly file room. The room was windowless but hung with abstract paintings, like inward windows replacing the outward ones. Moira closed the door and locked it and stood against it.

“Am I your prisoner?” I said.

She answered without trying to be light: “I’m the prisoner. I wish I could get out of this.” A slight upward movement of her hands and shoulders suggested the almost insupportable weight of the building. “But I can’t.”

“Won’t your husband let you?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that. I’m the prisoner of all my past mistakes – I’m feeling sententious today – and Ralph is one of them. You’re a more recent one.”

“What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing. I thought you liked me, is all.” She had dropped her public face and voice entirely. “I acted on that assumption the other night.”

“So did I. It was a true assumption.”

“Then why are you giving me a bad time?”

“I didn’t mean to. But we seem to be ending up on different sides.”

She shook her head. “I don’t believe it. All I want is a decent life, a possible life, for the people concerned.” She added: “Including me.”

“What does your husband want?”

“The same thing, according to his lights. We don’t agree about everything, of course. And I made the mistake of going along with all his large ideas.” Once again the movement of her arms referred to the entire building. “As if we could save our marriage by giving birth to a clinic.” She added wryly: “We should have rented one.”

She was a complex woman, spinning off ambiguities, talking too much. I moved solidly against her, held her not very masterfully with one arm, and silenced her mouth.

The wound in my shoulder was beating like an auxiliary heart.

As if she could sense the pain directly, Moira said:

“I’m sorry you’re hurt.”

“I’m sorry you’re hurt, Moira.”

“Don’t waste your sympathy on me.” Her tone reminded me that she was or had been a kind of nurse. “I’ll survive. But it isn’t going to be much fun, I’m afraid.”

“You’re losing me again. What are we talking about?”

“Disaster. I can feel it in my bones. I’m partly Irish, you know.”

“Disaster for Nick Chalmers?”

“For all of us. He’s part of it, of course.”

“Why don’t you let me take him out of here?”

“I can’t.”

“Is his life in danger?”

“Not as long as he stays here.”

“Will you let me see him?”

“I can’t. My husband won’t allow it.”

“Are you afraid of him?”

“No. But he’s a doctor and I’m just a technician. I simply can’t second-guess him.”

“How long is he proposing to keep Nick here?”

“Until the danger is over.”

“Who’s the source of the danger?”

“I can’t tell you that. Please don’t ask any more questions, Lew. The questions spoil everything.”

We stood and held each other for a while, leaning against the locked door. The warmth of her body and her mouth revived me, even though our minds were at odds and part of my mind was keeping track of the time.

She said in a low voice. “I wish we could walk out of here this minute, you and I, and never come back.”

“You have a marriage.”

“It isn’t going to last.”