Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

The water was very cold. She felt it attacking her feet and her ankles, almost numbing. She gave a girlish little shriek. David stood on the shore, and she turned, surprised to see he wasn’t watching her but was looking out over the lake instead.

“Come on, sissy,” she said teasingly.

She pulled the skirt high on her thighs, held it there with one hand, and extended the other hand to him. He took it and came gingerly into the water.

“It’s like ice,” he said.

She squeezed his hand playfully. “You haven’t even got your feet wet.”

“That’s all they’re going to get wet,” he said, and he nodded once, emphatically, and then suddenly dropped her hand.

“Hey!” she said.

“I’ll watch you from here,” he called, wading back to the shore.

“Oh, come on back here!”

“My toes are blue,” he said.

“Well, what’s wrong with that? Blue’s a lovely color.”

David laughed. “Go on, enjoy yourself. I’ll sit here and watch your legs.”

She did not miss the reference, and yet there was the usual condescending tone in his voice. He was talking to a child. He was still talking to a child.

She pushed out suddenly against the water.

“Be careful, Kate,” he called. “Those rocks are slippery.”

The rocks were slippery, yes, and the water was truly very cold, and she had the sudden feeling she might really drown if she went through with her plan. She could feel the icy water attacking her legs, rising on her flesh as she waded deeper, over her knees, touching her thighs now. In a moment, she thought. In a moment.

“Be careful, Kate,” he warned again.

She would allow herself to slip, the child in Kate thought. She would allow one foot to reach out tentatively and to slip suddenly, and she would throw both hands up over her head, dropping her skirt, and go into the icy water. The child in Kate thought, I’ll flounder around a bit trying to swim, laughing perhaps, and then I’ll shout, “Help! David, help me!” and I’ll go under, and he’ll jump into the water and pull me out trembling, my clothes clinging to me, he’ll carry me into the house, I’ll undress and come into the living room wrapped in a blanket, the child in Kate plotted as she stood poised on the shelf at the edge of the drop, ready to feign a plunge into freezing deep water.

Go ahead, the child in Kate urged. Take the step. Do it.

But the woman in Kate hesitated. The woman in Kate clung to her skirts, she could feel the slime-covered rocks with the tips of her toes, could feel the numbing water, the woman in Kate weighed the plan silently, the blatancy of the plan, and wondered if it had not been too outrageously conceived. The woman in Kate was suddenly aware of caution and subtlety, and something beyond that, something only unconsciously understood, something that told her instantly and without doubt that the plan was wrong.

She turned and began wading out of the lake.

Clinging to her skirt with one hand, her long legs flashing in the golden sunshine, she extended her free hand to David, and he bent over to reach for it, laughing at her sudden reversal. She clung to his hand tightly. He tugged at it, and she came splashing out of the lake and onto the shore. Impulsively, she allowed the momentum to carry her into his arms. “David, I’m freezing ,” she said, “Oh, David, make me warm,” hugging herself to him girlishly, and yet aware that her skirt was still pulled up over her thighs, held there where their bodies met in flat contact, sensing he was aware of this, sensing he knew he was holding a woman against him. She broke away from him suddenly and started for the house, holding out her hand to him. He laughed again and took her hand, and they went up the path together, the lake silent, the woods still.

“We’re all alone in the world, David,” she said, and he stopped suddenly and looked at her curiously, his eyes searching hers.

“It was sweet of you to drive me here, David,” she said softly, and reached up to kiss him, a fleeting, little girl’s kiss, a simple kiss of gratitude, but tinged with slightly more than that, her lips parted slightly for only an instant, the brief increased pressure of her mouth. She pulled away from him swiftly and said, “We’d better go now,” as if he had taken a liberty to which he was not entitled.

She thought she detected a difference in his attitude as they drove away from the lake. She thought there was something new in his voice and on his face. When he stopped the car in front of Suzie’s house, she thanked him and then reached across the seat to give his hand a gentle squeeze. As she got out of the car, her skirt accidentally rode up over her knees. She went up the walk to the house without once looking back at the car, but she was certain he was watching her.

And she was certain now that he would return to Talmadge after his trip.

The two men sat in the screening room and waited for the third man to arrive. The lights were still on, and they sat chatting idly about production problems, not really too concerned with them, but only killing time while they waited. The third man came in breathlessly and took a seat alongside the others, apologizing for being late, but he’d been in conference with a set designer, what was all the shouting about, anyway?

“Herb Floren wants us to see this,” one of the men said.

He was sitting behind the control panel in the miniature theater, and he pressed a button in the face of the panel now, and there was a moment’s wait while the projectionist in the booth upstairs read the signal, and then the lights went out, and the screen was suddenly filled with color as the film began.

“Are we going to have to sit through the whole picture?” one of the men asked.

“No, just this reel. She’s in this reel.”

They sat watching the film. The man behind the panel pressed the button asking for more volume at one point, but for the most part the three men sat very still and watched the reel. They didn’t know quite what was happening because this was the last reel in the film, and it was impossible to get any true picture of plot development by watching a series of climaxes. One of the men lighted a cigar. One kept coughing into his handkerchief.

“This is the girl,” the man behind the panel said.

They watched the new face on the screen. No janitors in the hallway stopped sweeping. The projectionist in the booth did not put down his detective magazine to look at the screen in sudden awe. The three men watched the girl, and the one who’d been coughing into his handkerchief kept right on coughing into his handkerchief. The one who was smoking a cigar kept right on smoking it. The man behind the panel thought he detected a blur on the screen, and he pressed the focus button, and the projectionist put down his magazine and adjusted the focus, and then picked up his magazine again.

The scene was over in about five minutes.

“Is there more of her?” one of the men asked.

“That’s it. That’s her scene.”

“Do we have to watch the rest?”

“No,” the man behind the panel said, and he signaled for the projectionist to stop the film. The lights went on.

“I don’t know where I got this damn cold,” the coughing man said.

“What’s her name?” the man with the cigar asked.

“Burke. Gideon Burke.”

“That sounds phony as hell.”

“So does Rock Hudson.”

“What do you think?”

“I think she’s too old.”

“Look, she isn’t Sandra Dee, that’s for sure. But nobody says she’s supposed to be a teen-ager.”

“She comes over maybe thirty-eight, thirty-nine.”

“I think she comes over younger than that. Thirty-five maybe.”