William Kienzle - Deadline for a Critic

“I won’t tell you! I can’t tell you!”

“You can tell me as long as you can talk. Which is not gonna be much longer if you don’t tell me! Who was it?”

“No!”

“Goddamit, yes! Who was it?”

Jane clutched herself tighter and said nothing. If she could have, she would have become a small ball of fluff and blown away.

“Who?” Condon grabbed a table lamp, yanking the plug out of its socket. He threw the lamp. It glanced off Jane’s shoulder and pitched over, shattering on the floor behind the couch.

“John!” Mrs. Condon shrieked.

But John was quite beside himself. Mouth foaming, he hovered over his daughter. “Who was it? Answer me, whore! Who was it? Who? Who? Who?” He began striking Jane about the shoulders and back, the only areas she’d left exposed.

Martha Condon leaped on her husband’s back in an attempt to wrestle him away. The two fell in a heap to the floor. She used all her strength to hold him down.

“Then get out!” he shouted from his prone position. “Get out! Take your bastard baby and get out! I paid my good money so you could go to a Catholic school. And what did you learn there? How to make a bastard baby! If you think I’m gonna spend a nickel so you can give birth to that thing while the father gets off scot-free, you got another thing coming! Get out! Get out! Get out! You got an hour, and then I don’t ever want to see you again!”

Condon struggled to his feet and stormed out of the house.

Jane and Mrs. Condon spent some time sobbing in each other’s arms. At last there was no alternative. They packed as many necessaries as Jane could carry, and she left. But not before her mother made her promise to keep in touch. Mrs. Condon in her turn promised that she would try to help in every way she could. In tears, they parted.

From that point, it would have been difficult for Greg Larson to follow Jane Condon’s story. However, as luck would have it, Jane’s mother, in dire need of a confidante, unburdened herself to a sympathetic neighbor, who, though close, was not close-mouthed. The news, having reached one ear, soon reached many—including that of Ridley Groendal’s faithful correspondent.

Jane thought it would be a good idea to leave town. The priest she consulted agreed. He put her in touch with the Department of Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of Chicago. They arranged for her to stay with a family there until birth. It was not a pleasant experience, but then, nothing in this entire affair had been.

At about the time school started for Ridley Groendal in September, Jane delivered a baby boy. She would never forget the shock when first she saw and held him. He had slanting eyes, a short broad skull, and broad fingers. He was a Mongoloid . . . a Down’s Syndrome baby.

That was enough for Ridley Groendal. It couldn’t have been his child. If there had been any doubt, and there certainly wasn’t in Ridley’s mind, all uncertainty was dispelled when Jane produced a defective child. Groendal, without the need for corroborating evidence, knew he never would have fathered a deformed child.

That could well have been the end of his vendetta against Jane. There was no question that she had suffered and that she continued to hurt.

She was cut off from her parents. Her father would have nothing to do with her. When he learned of the condition of her child, he drew a strange satisfaction from the tragedy. It was God’s punishment. John Condon was not a religious man. But he could tell divine retribution when he saw it, by God!

Mrs. Condon was distraught. But she was helpless. Her husband forbade her to help her daughter or her grandchild. And so, in a show of obedience, she did nothing overtly. Secretly, she sent as much money as she could scrape up to Jane as the girl moved from place to place trying to survive.

Even for one bent on vengeance, this suffering surely should have been enough.

It wasn’t enough for Groendal. That the child was Mongoloid was God’s hand. He had punished her for having a child out of wedlock. That was clear enough. Groendal had no idea whether the child’s father was likewise punished. He of course had no idea who the father was. But if Jane had set her trap for the unlucky fellow as she had for Groendal, it probably wasn’t the real father’s fault.

The point was that whether or not the father of the child had been punished, the mother—Jane—had been chastised by God, but not by Groendal. And since Jane had done her part to ruin Groendal’s life, he owed her. And he would repay.

But how?

He was at a loss to invent a retribution that would reach Jane. She seemed to be at the bottom of a barrel. In disgrace, in poverty, with no employment, nowhere to turn, and a Mongoloid infant to care for.

It seemed that fate had foiled Groendal. Even if Jane were able somehow to reach a level of survival, she still would not fall under his sphere of influence. She was not a professional and showed no promise of ever becoming one. She was no actress. She was no playwright. She would never be on the stage or contribute to it. She was not literary. She would write nothing that he might be able to destroy. And if she did come up with some story, it would have to be an “as-told-to” book. And to whom would she tell her story? No one would be interested.

Finally, she was no musician. So there would be no musical career for him to shoot down.

Beyond these boundaries, what could he do? Supposing she got a job as a clerk in a department store. What could he do—complain to her supervisor that when they had been considerably younger, she had seduced him? So what?

Frustrating.

But among Ridley’s strong points were patience and perseverance.

Actually, his most difficult task at this time was to keep Greg Larson on the case. There just wasn’t much to report. And what news there was was so depressing that Larson was tempted to write only happy news to Groendal.

Ridley was in no position to argue against whatever Larson chose to write. The idea was to keep him going until something broke, as Groendal hoped, prayed, and knew it would.

As it turned out, Jane did exactly what Groendal supposed she might. She returned to Detroit and got a job as a salesclerk in Hudson’s department store. With this and the little her mother was able to pass on surreptitiously, Jane made ends meet. There was almost nothing else in her life. She rarely splurged on entertainment of any sort. She couldn’t afford it.

She was still attractive, but she never dated. Her life revolved around her son. Outstandingly lovable and sweet, as many Down’s Syndrome children are, he needed Jane constantly. And so, outside of the times she had to leave him with a sitter while she worked, Jane spent nearly every free moment with him.

Down’s Syndrome children frequently have health problems that reduce the normal life span. Jane’s little boy, Billy, lived ten years. And then he broke her heart once more and died.

Billy’s death did not move Groendal one way or the other. He was interested only in what might happen next.

According to Greg Larson’s infrequent but faithful letters, nothing much happened next. Jane kept her sales position at Hudson’s. Her social life remained a cipher. She went out infrequently, as far as Larson could tell, usually with “the girls.”

Groendal found maintaining the correspondence with Larson more and more taxing. Jane’s life—Ridley’s sole genuine interest in this communication—seemed to be going nowhere.

It happened in March of 1964. Jane was thirty-three. She got married. In old St. Mary’s downtown, near the apartment complex where she lived. Somehow the courtship had escaped Larson’s notice.

The event piqued Ridley’s curiosity. At first blush, the marriage did not appear to lend itself to any purpose Groendal had in mind. Jane’s husband, William Cahill, was a skilled worker at a Ford automotive plant. Groendal could not wreak revenge on Jane through her husband. Jane as a sales clerk, and William, as an automotive worker, were outside the sphere of Ridley’s influence.