Эд Макбейн - Mothers and Daughters

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Amanda asked.

“Yes,” Kate answered. There was an edge of sharpness to her voice. Amanda’s eyes suddenly moved from the piano and rested on her daughter.

“Good,” she said. “I’m glad you understand.”

“Yes,” Kate said. “I understand.”

They stared at each other, and Kate thought suddenly and for the first time since she could remember, She’s not my real mother. My real mother wouldn’t be saying these things to me.

“I want to be myself,” Kate said. “That’s good enough for me.”

“Yes, but—”

“I want to be myself! ” Kate said fiercely.

Her heart had begun to beat against her chest. She rose swiftly and started out of the living room. Behind her, Amanda said, “Kate?” and she turned.

“I didn’t mean—” Amanda started, and then closed her mouth and simply shook her head. Kate waited for her to continue. But she was silent now, and it did not seem she would speak again.

Quickly, Kate went upstairs to dress.

She heard the station wagon starting in the driveway outside just as she was putting on her skirt. The sound of the engine annoyed her because she’d planned to use the wagon herself, and now her mother was obviously tooling off in it someplace, and she would have to walk. Where was everyone rushing to all of a sudden, everyone leaving the house as if it were too small to contain the separate lives inside it, everyone getting out and away from each other. She buttoned her skirt angrily. She did not want to be alone in this house. She did not understand her mother. And again she thought, She’s not my real mother, and again the image of some isolated soul drifted back to her, a woman with staring eyes and a scissors in her hand, back, back through long narrow corridors, stop it.

Stop it, she told herself.

But her hand trembled as she put on her lipstick.

The blond hair falling to the scatter rug, the women fighting for the scissors, their shadows huge and grotesque on the wall, the taste of hair, and the taste of fear, and ...

Stop!

Please, oh please stop.

She rushed out of the room and down the long flight of stairs. The house was empty, and it creaked with strange sounds she had never heard before. Frightened, she passed the empty living room with the piano at the far end, silent, and rushed out of the house. It was chilly outside. There was a strong wind, and the sky was falling apart. She suddenly thought of Chicken Little. Someone had read it to her a long time ago, Minnesota, an old house, organ notes coming from a nearby church, Mother, she thought, Mother, the sky was falling apart.

She wished someone were with her.

“Beverly!” she called. “Here, Bev! Come on, Bev!”

The dog came out of the garage and wagged her tail, but she would not go to Kate. She called once more, and then walked swiftly up the driveway and turned left at the sidewalk and continued walking at a fast pace, looking down at her feet, not daring to look up at the sky where the clouds rushed frantically.

It was several moments before she realized where she was going. She was heading for Julia Regan’s house.

The Alfa Romeo was parked in the driveway when she got there. As she passed the garage, she stood on tiptoe and looked through the windows to see if David’s car was there, but apparently he had not come up for the weekend. She went to the front door and rang the bell.

When Julia opened the door, she said at once, “Mrs. Regan, could we go for a drive, please?”

Julia hesitated only an instant. There was something in the child’s eyes she had never seen there before.

“Yes, of course,” she answered.

She closed the door behind her instantly, and together they walked quickly to the car.

He had burned out his anger on the parkway, speeding up toward New Haven, stopping at a diner for lunch, and then turning back and heading for Talmadge again.

He sat behind the wheel of the car now with only a weary sadness inside him, the anger all gone, wondering why life never turned out the way you expected it would.

You get old, he thought. The damn trouble is you get old.

Everything seemed the same as he turned off the parkway and pointed the nose of the car toward Talmadge. The noises in the brush alongside the road, the lush June landscape, the pines, everything seemed the same. And as he made the turn into the main street, Talmadge looked placid and peaceful, tree-shaded, the big church on the hill, the shops lining the sidewalks, the women in slacks, everything seemed the same, but you get old.

The anger had dissipated under his foot pressed to the accelerator, his eye watching the rear-view mirror for state troopers, the anger was all gone now. There was only sadness now, and disappointment. He had been deprived of something essential. Whatever her reasons, whatever had provoked her vehemence, she had forced him into relinquishing something he had desperately needed and wanted. And he blamed her now for her insensitivity, her coldness, her inability to recognize this need. He wondered what had provoked her attack. What had he done or said to so infuriate her, couldn’t she recognize his need? Damn it, couldn’t she see they were getting old? Couldn’t she understand that?

Coming up the road that led to the driveway of his house, he still could not understand. He knew only that he had been denied. The denial, he felt, was willful and impetuous. If she really loved him, if she really understood him, she would have felt his need, and subjected her own wishes to it, especially now when it was so important, especially...

He applied his foot to the brake gently. There was something in the road ahead, just in front of his driveway, a carton or a discarded garment, or... no, it was an animal, a mole probably, or a beaver, or perhaps even...

He stopped the car on the side of the road.

The animal was a dog.

He opened the door of the car. He knew even before he stepped out that the dog was Beverly. He did not want to walk to her. He saw the blood on the asphalt when he was ten steps away from her. He stopped. Oh, you son of a bitch, he thought. Oh, you bastard, who did this?

“Beverly?” he said, as if by calling her name, by getting no response, he could prove to himself this was not Beverly lying in the road with blood spreading on the asphalt.

As he approached her, he began hoping she was dead.

He looked down at her. There was not a mark on her body, and yet the asphalt was covered with blood, how...? He glanced past the dog, his eyes following the trail of blood she’d left, across the sidewalk, and into the woods beyond. She had come out of the woods then. She couldn’t possibly have been hit by a car.

Her eyes, normally brown, had a strange whitish-blue cast, as if they had been drained of all color, wide and staring in her head. Her body was stiff, as if in shock, and there was a questioning, puzzled look on her face. And as he stood over her, watching, she began to vomit blood, and suddenly she seemed to be hemorrhaging from every opening in her body, and he knew at once she had swallowed something poisonous, knew she had somehow got hold of one or maybe more of those goddamned pellets people were putting around to control field mice and moles, probably softened by the morning rain, a little rancid, Oh you son of a bitch, he thought.

He reached down for her. She whimpered as he picked her up, he had the feeling she would drain away in his hands, had the feeling she would turn to liquid in his hands as he began walking up the driveway to his house, wanting only to take her inside the house someplace, wanting only to make her comfortable. “Please, Beverly,” he said, “please, Beverly.” He walked with her in his arms. He could feel her hot blood on his hands. He was trembling. He wondered, Should I call the vet? What can I do? Oh my God, she’s bleeding to death in my hands. “Please, Beverly,” he said again.