Evil Eye (20 page)

Several times she'd seen
The Red Shoes
. Mesmerized and deeply moved.

She felt a perverse sympathy for the murderous lovers of
Double Indemnity
. Each time she saw the film the ending came to her as a shock—for it might so easily have been another kind of ending.

She went to gallery openings. She went to poetry readings. She bought books for the poets to sign, which she kept in a special place in her loft apartment, on a window sill in the sun.

What are these? N. asked curiously.

She selected one of the slender books, opened it as if casually, and read lines of surpassing beauty and wonder:

What a fine performance they gave!

Though they didn't know where they were going,

they made their prettiest song of all.

N. asked what did this mean? Was it a happy poem?

She said, I think so. Yes.

Another thing about her, another special thing, to set her off from the pack of other good-looking young women, Cielle dressed exclusively in black.

She told him about the flatbed. A man chained on the flatbed behind a truck hauled on the interstate.

He whistled between his teeth. Where's the man being taken, to a slaughterhouse?

Yes. To a slaughterhouse.

But do you get that far? In the dream, I mean.

No. It's just the flatbed behind the truck, and him on it chained and knowing where he's being taken. He has plenty of time to think about where's he's being taken and what will be done to him then.

But you've never gotten that far.

He seemed to be goading her into saying
Not yet.

They were lying together on her bed. On the rainbow afghan on her bed. There were ways of intimacy, ways of avoiding her sexual fear, they were learning, in compensation.

In each other's arms not fully undressed. As a parent might comfort a fretting child so N. comforted her. Kissing her forehead, the hot pit of her neck that made her laugh wildly, and squirm.

It wasn't your fault, Ceille. I hope you know that.

She knew. She wished to think so.

A young child, an adult—there is no way that a child can “consent.” The law recognizes this. And the moral law.

She smiled. She laughed. For G. had quoted a German philosopher to her once, in one of his playful extravagant moods in which he pretended that she wasn't a little girl but an adult and an equal—“
The starry heavens above me, and the moral law within me.”

Why G. had quoted Immanuel Kant to her, she had no idea.

Only just he was a highly successful public man who tired of being public and accountable and responsible and adult and so at these secret times he was playful and extravagant and could not be predicted in his behavior as he could not be reined in, or controlled.

He smelled of a sweet cologne dabbed on his clean-shaven jaws. You wanted to smile at this fragrance, or you wanted to hide your face and cry. His
tickle finger
was a special finger and the nail always kept clean and filed by G. himself with an emery board carried in his pocket.

You're thinking of him now, Ceille? Tell me.

She bit her lip. She would not.

It makes me sick, Ceille. When you think of him. When you're with me, like this, and God damn, you think of
him.

She wanted to console him
Yes. It makes me sick, too.

His name? Who he was, to you?

He was—he—

Her heart beat painfully. She was frightened she would faint.

—he was very clever. No one ever knew, or suspected. In all those years—six years. He was
trusted
.

And did he victimize other girls? What about your sisters?

No.

No? Are you sure?

She tried to think. She was laughing, this conversation was so ridiculous, years too late to matter.

Oh no. I mean—yes. I'm sure.

He hadn't adored them. They were older, less attractive.

I was his little darling!

It would not be unpremeditated. Therefore, it would have to be skillfully executed.

N. had a law degree. He'd practiced law for several years. He told her to contact the relative who'd molested her for six years and to arrange to meet him in a neutral place.

Quickly she said
no.

Unless she said
The cemetery.

N. asked if it was a cemetery where people would be likely to be visiting, where they might be observed.

She said no. Her grandmother had been buried in a part of the cemetery owned by the Bankcroft family and this was at the edge of the cemetery near a pine forest.

You won't hurt him? You will just speak with him.

That's right. Just speak with him.

G. must have thought it was strange, at last she called him. It had been years since they'd seen each other for of course she had avoided family gatherings as soon as she'd left home.

Cecelia! Is it you?

The shock in his voice. Yet the old warmth beneath, she'd forgotten.

She'd been very clever. She'd learned G.'s current telephone number in a circuitous way so that the fact that she'd sought out the number might not be immediately evident. She had not asked her mother or her father, for instance.

She heard herself say, I miss my old life, Grandpapa. I am having some hard times now. I am very lonely, Grandpapa.

Grandpapa
. This had been the magic name.

Pronounced as if French. Emphasis upon
grand.

Blithe and bright she spoke to the astonished man at the other end of the line. Asking to see him, so that she might introduce him to her fiancé who was a secret from the family.

Secret? But why?

When you meet him, you will know. I will trust in your intuition.

This was flattering to him, she knew. This was the silver hook in his fat wet lip, that would doom him.

In Cross Cemetery. We can meet there.

In Cross Cemetery?

Yes. Please.

But—why don't you come to the house first. . . .

At Grandma's grave, we can meet. Where we used to walk, Grandpapa, remember?

Of course I remember, darling. How could I forget?

Truly the old man was flattered, hypnotized. This slow hour of his old-man life and the phone had rung and it was his
little darling
calling him who had never in her life called him before.

I've kept up on your news, darling. Your mother keeps me informed. I know you've moved. I know you have a new job that sounds important but I would guess it probably doesn't pay much so if you need some money, darling—just let me know.

That would be very kind, Grandpapa. We could talk about that.

Before hanging up the phone she said suddenly, Oh I miss you, Grandpapa! So much.

Each would be away for the weekend. N. in New York City, Ceille in Washington, D.C.

So they told friends. So N. told his near-grown children.

In N.'s SUV they then drove west to Rochester. It was a clear, sunny, vivid autumn morning in October.

She'd had a sleepless night. She warmed her hands at the dashboard heating vent as N. drove.

She was distracted by a pickup truck speeding ahead of them. The flatbed of the truck, piled with what appeared to be lumber.

And the lumber secured to the flatbed by chains.

She said, as if she'd only just thought of this, He's older now. He isn't a danger now. I'm sure.

(She was not sure. She was certainly not sure of this.)

I've heard he has had medical problems. I think cancer of some kind—prostate, probably.

(Of this she was more certain. Her mother had kept her advised of her Grandpapa Bankcroft knowing how much he meant to her, far more than he meant to his other grandchildren.)

N. said, Of course he victimized other children. Before you, and after you.

N. said, You didn't tell. He'd terrified you, and you didn't tell. And so, another little girl was victimized after you. That is the pattern.

N. was not accusing her. Carefully he spoke, sympathetic.

Now we're breaking the pattern. This will end it.

She wasn't hearing this. She was thinking maybe it had been a mistake to have confessed to N. For now the secret had been revealed. She'd unfurled a precious garment to be trampled in the mud.

She laughed, shivering. She was very excited!

Playfully she warmed her icy fingers between his legs.

N. pushed her hands away. Don't distract me, darling. I'm trying to drive.

He'd made a reservation in a high-rise upscale hotel outside the city, eleventh floor overlooking the interstate and, in the distance, the serrated skyline of the city of Rochester. They were registered under a fictitious name as
Mr. & Mrs.

Her love for N. was no longer a separate thing she could detach from her and hold at arm's length to contemplate.

Her love for N. had burrowed deep inside her. Her love for N. was inextricable from her fear of N.

In Cross Memorial Cemetery they saw him: the lone tall figure, still erect, well dressed, with a head of thick white hair. In his right hand he gripped an ebony cane in a way to suggest that the cane was mostly for show, not really needed.

He is only seventy-two or seventy-three, she said. He is not
old
.

Grandpapa had brought a pot of golden mums to the grave. The grandmother's grave.

It was famously known, locally—how grief-stricken G. had been, how heartbroken at the end of the long good marriage of forty-six years.

So good then, G. had had his family to console him. His young relatives, grandchildren.

On the graveled path they approached G. It was afternoon, the sky was amassing with clouds blown down from Lake Ontario. The last visitors were leaving the cemetery.

Now G. had sighted them. G. was alert and staring at them. At her. Slow happy recognition came into his face like candlelight.

Hi, Grandpapa!

Cecilia!

He moved to her, just perceptibly favoring his right leg. He would have taken her hand extended to him to squeeze her hand in greeting—but N. stepped between them.

Don't touch her!

White-haired G. stiffened. His smile faded.

His face was fine-creased, clean-shaven. He was a handsome old man who did not look his age. She felt a touch of vertigo in his presence.

N. was addressing G. calmly. Yet you could feel the mounting anger.

N.'s anger was inward, secret. Like N.'s love, that was indistinguishable from possession.

G. began to stammer to N. Foolish words were shaped by the old-man lips and wattles in the old-man face trembled.

She stood a little behind N. She saw that her grandfather had forgotten her in the exigency of the moment.

I—I have no idea what you are talking about, sir. Keep your voice down, please.

G. was indignant but G. was pleading. She was remembering how she and her family had heard G.'s voice frequently on the local radio news; they'd seen him often on television. He'd been a politician—township council, U.S. congressman on the Republican ticket—in the prime of his career.

G. was backing away from N. now. G. was visibly shaken—this was not the reception he'd anticipated.

His favorite granddaughter and her fiancé!—her secret fiancé.

Introduced to
him.

Wanting a blessing from
him.

With a shaky hand G. was tugging a handkerchief out of a pocket, dabbing at his nose.

A red-veined nose, this was. Still handsome and still youthful but broken capillaries marred the clean-shaven skin and the alert eyes were ringed in creases.

He said, I have no idea what you are talking about, sir. If you don't desist, I will call 911.

N. spoke further. N. was accusing G. of certain acts—“repeated statutory rape”—“sexual assault upon a minor.”

G. said indignantly, What has the girl been telling you! I did nothing to be ashamed of.

He said, Those were lost years. The girl was lonely.

Turning away with a look of wounded dignity. And the fear beneath.

Turning away on the graveled path clutching at his cane hoping that the confrontation had ended, he would be allowed to leave; that N., the girl's fiancé, advancing upon him, was going to let him go.

I want him to shit his pants. To be that scared.

The savagery of these words shocked her. She had no idea where they had come from.

She was hanging back, very excited. The shivering had begun, her teeth were chattering. She saw the chagrin, sick-guilt, yet righteousness in her grandfather's face. No! They could not let him walk away.

He would have walked away except N. sprang after him. The joy in N.'s face as he grabbed the fancy shining-ebony cane.

Sir! What are you—

Fuck you, old man! You're not going anywhere.

Foolishly G. tried to retrieve the cane. N. swung the cane at him, striking his head, his shoulders. Swift and deadly and unerring and paying no heed to the old man's pleas.

She was hiding her face. A little girl peeking through her fingers.

In the parking lot the last of the cemetery visitors were driving away. This was a good-luck sign: a blessing.

She was telling N. it was enough, now.

N. paid not the slightest heed to her. He did not hear her at all.

With a kind of sick fascination she held back. She saw her lover N. striking G., who'd been
Grandpapa
. She wanted to cry
No! Stop! He did love me.

Within seconds the white-haired man had fallen. Still N. continued to strike at him, cursing.

The white-haired man on hands and knees in the grass. Desperately trying to crawl, to escape amid the gravestones.

N. stooped over him, now striking him with his closed fist. You filthy son of a bitch. You disgusting old pervert. Inflicting yourself on a little girl—you bastard! She shut her eyes, she could not bear to see the white-haired man so humiliated, broken.