The Girl Who Passed for Normal (4 page)

*

She never did discover how much Catherine had heard, standing at the door, or how long she’d been standing there. She never asked, and Catherine never told her. But, for the first three months, that was almost the only secret they had from each other. Catherine loved working with Barbara, and Barbara loved teaching Catherine. They did their exercises and they danced and they talked, and sometimes they went to the ballet or the cinema together.

One day Mary Emerson said, “Barbara, my dear, you have made enormous progress with her. I can’t tell you. She looks like something new that’s come up with the spring. Well — you can see what you’ve done, can’t you? Catherine’s thin
now, she keeps her mouth closed, she never hides behind doors.” She laughed. “Honestly, to look at her you’d think she’s normal. At least she passes for normal now. It’s just a shame you can’t get inside her head and teach movement there. I’m afraid that inside she’s as mad as ever.”

Catherine wasn’t mad though. She simply wasn’t, as
Barbara
put it to herself, all there. It was difficult to tell what was missing, what was wrong — but there was something, and sometimes the girl would retire into the part of her that was missing, and sit looking at a book that was upside down, or stand in the rock garden staring at the fish, or stand in the hall gazing at George, the myna bird, who laughed at her with the deep laugh that Barbara recognized as Mary Emerson’s.

However — when she sat with her book she kept her back straight, and when she stood in the garden or in the hall she looked as though she were studying the fish or the bird, keenly and intelligently. Mary Emerson was right. Catherine did, now, pass for normal. Barbara didn’t know why she felt slightly bitter about it, whether it was the idea of Catherine merely passing for normal that upset her, or the idea of
normalcy
itself; but she told herself that in either case her feeling was stupid, sentimental, and to be ignored.

If she loved teaching Catherine, she also loved talking to her; because she could talk endlessly, saying anything and everything she pleased, and Catherine sat and listened and in some way took it all in, making strange little comments, or suddenly asking acute little questions. Barbara sometimes felt that she was almost pregnant with the girl — as if
Catherine were a fetus that was being created, cell by cell — and she wondered whether the end result would be a new Barbara, or a new Catherine.

She told Catherine about her fat, sad mother, and Catherine said, “I think you were very right not to return to her after the death of your husband.”

She told Catherine about her husband; she discussed him again and again, until she felt that she had learned things about him that she had never known while he had been alive and they had been married.

Howard had been twenty years older than she, and after they were married she had never considered the possibility, as a real possibility, that they might not spend their entire lives together. She loved him, she liked his friends, she liked the university life. She read a lot, she listened to music, she went to London to the ballet as often as she could, and they entertained a lot; they had a house and a dog, they were not hard up, and they enjoyed themselves in bed. They had what Barbara considered to be a perfectly normal life and she was happy with it.

Then something abnormal happened. Howard got cancer and died. The six months he took to die almost killed her, too. Without thinking about it she had staked her whole life on him, and the gamble hadn’t paid off. She was left no money at all; they had always spent everything. She had nothing but a house and a dog; the dog was old and she had him destroyed; the house, she sold. Then she had nothing but her freedom; far more than she would have believed possible, a year before, to bear. She knew that millions of people were in the same situation as hers, but that changed nothing.

Two months after Howard died she was invited to a party; she accepted, and went, and met Mary Emerson.

Now, slowly, she told Catherine, she was getting herself together again. “So, you see, you’re helping me far more than you know.” Catherine nodded and said, “I’m glad.”

She asked Catherine about her father, but Catherine shook her head, which meant either that she didn’t remember him or that she didn’t want to talk about him.

But later that same day, she said, “My father hated mother, too. Do you hate her?”

Barbara did, but she shook her head no. In fact, by the spring, she had come to hate Mary Emerson not only for her cruelty to Catherine, but for her whole presence — for her thick, luxurious red hair, for her laziness, for her soft
handsomeness
. When they were together, which luckily was not often — Barbara often wondered whether their dislike was mutual — the big lady from the South made her feel widowed; made her feel thin and colorless and ended. It was partly for this that she longed to be able to get through to Catherine; if only she could find what was missing, she would have her revenge; if she could save Catherine, Mary Emerson would vanish; she would be destroyed. For Barbara couldn’t help feeling that the mother had stolen something from the daughter, and that her richness and life were dependent upon Catherine’s loss.

“Why must Catherine wear that brace on her teeth?” she asked Mary Emerson one day.

“Why? You don’t think she’s self-conscious about it, do you?”

“Yes,” Barbara said slowly, “I think she is. Really, she’s
quite an attractive girl, but that thing across the front of her mouth is so ugly.”

“But her teeth were all sticking out before. If she wears that thing for a couple of years, well —” Mary Emerson laughed. “I don’t know that I’d go as far as saying that she’ll be attractive — who to, God knows, unless it’s the boys down the end of the garden, and I’m sure they don’t care about Catherine’s
teeth
— but at least she won’t look imbecilic. No, Barbara, I think that, between you and the brace, wonders are being done to Catherine. And now, my dear, I must rush, I have to go out, and I haven’t washed my hair yet.”

*

April. May. June. July. But there was no change in Catherine after the first three months. She had learned to pass for normal, and that, it seemed, was as far as she was going to go.

Only once did Barbara feel they had made some further progress. One blazing hot day in August, when they had finished doing their exercises, they went out to sit on a bench by the fountain. Barbara held Catherine’s hand and said, “Listen, Catherine — I got a telegram from my mother this morning. She’s had a heart attack and is very ill. I’m going to have to go back to England. But I won’t be gone long, I promise. I’ll come back as soon as I possibly can.”

Catherine started to cry, quietly, and said, “But your mother was here last month.”

Barbara nodded. “Yes, I know. But I think she got tired here. The heat was too much for her. She was rather unhappy here.”

“Then why did she stay so long?” Catherine asked.

“I don’t know. But please don’t cry. I promise I’ll be back as soon as my mother’s better.”

Catherine cried and said nothing. She let her mouth fall open, pushed herself off the bench, and sat down in the gravel.

“I’ll write you a letter as soon as I arrive in England,” Barbara said.

“I can’t read.”

“You can read. You know you can.”

Catherine shook her head.

“Look,” Barbara said, “I swear I’ll be back. I love you.”

Catherine looked up from the gravel, “Why do you love me?” Her voice was strange.

Barbara shook her head. “I don’t know.” She looked down at Catherine and shook her head again, and the girl stared up at her with an expression, almost, of malice. Barbara
wondered
if, perhaps, they had made some progress.

*

And now Catherine had phoned her to say she knew where David was. Barbara felt both frightened and relieved. She didn’t know if Catherine was telling the truth, but it was something to go on. And as she thought about it, there seemed to be hope in the fact Catherine, rather than her mother or Marcello, had told her. But Catherine’s air of secrecy frightened her, and made her feel that David’s disappearance had no ordinary explanation.

She arrived at the villa at three-thirty, hoping to find Catherine alone. But Mary Emerson met her at the gate,
handsome
, tanned, and sympathetic.

“Have you found him, my dear?” she asked.

Barbara shook her head. “No. I —” she shrugged. “I think he must have gone away. Having a belated summer holiday, I suppose.”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s it.” Mary Emerson put her arm around Barbara’s shoulders, and smiled. “Anyway, welcome back, my dear. We’ve missed you so much, even though I must say Catherine has been pretty good while you’ve been away. I was afraid she was going to collapse again as soon as you left, but she really liked David. He’s the first man I’ve ever seen her talk to.”

Barbara gave a small smile. “Is that to his credit, or mine?”

Mary Emerson laughed. “Oh, to both of you, my dear.” Then her manner changed. “Why don’t you go and do your things with Catherine now,” she said. “I have to go out, but I’d like to talk to you when I come back. I have a proposition to make.” She let go of Barbara and called, “Catherine!
Barbara’s
here. Are you ready?”

There was no reply. “She’s ready,” Mary Emerson said. “Well, my dear, I must run. But please don’t go before I come back.” She walked toward the garage, and then turned and almost ran across the gravel, kissed Barbara on the cheek, and said, “Welcome back to Bedlam, my dear.” Then she went back toward the garage. Barbara went into the warm house, wiping her cheek where the big mouth had touched her.

She changed into the body stocking that she worked in, and then sat in the living room and waited until Catherine came down, in shorts and a T-shirt. She looked shyly at
Barbara
and said “Hello.” Then she lowered her eyes and said, “Can we do a lot of dancing today? I haven’t done any dancing for three months.”

“Nothing at all while I’ve been away?” Barbara said.

“I’ve done some exercises. But I haven’t danced. Not to music. And exercises —” she stopped, and looked dazed. She had forgotten what she was going to say.

“What about David, Catherine?” Barbara said softly.

The girl looked up at her as if she had said something shocking; then she looked away and said in a loud flat voice, “I can’t tell you now, mother’s listening.”

“She’s gone out,” Barbara said.

Catherine shook her head fiercely. “No. She’s listening at the door there.” She pointed at the door to the hall.

“Don’t be stupid,” Barbara said. “You know she’s not.”

Catherine smiled at the wall and repeated, “She’s listening at the door there.”

Barbara wondered whether she should plead with the girl, but it seemed useless. “Will you tell me before I go?”

Catherine nodded firmly. “Oh, yes.”

Barbara looked at the door behind which Mary Emerson was supposed to be hiding, and considered going over to it to prove Catherine was mistaken. She rejected the idea. She didn’t want to hurt or antagonize the girl in any way; and besides she was terrified that Catherine might be right. The thought of finding Mary Emerson in the position in which she had first seen Catherine was, to say the least, disturbing.

Barbara picked out a tape, pushed back the white rugs, started the music, and the lesson began. She heard a deep Southern laugh from the hall, and thought of the black myna bird sitting out there in his white cage.

*

They had been working for about a half hour when the
door opened and Mary Emerson peered around it. “I’m back sooner than I thought‚” she said. “Barbara, my dear, could you come and talk to me for five minutes? Catherine, sit down and wait.” She pointed at the sofa with a heavily ringed hand, and then smiled at Barbara. “Come, my dear.”

They went into the dining room, and Mary Emerson closed the door behind her. “Now I know this isn’t a very good time, but —” she paused. “By the way, how
is
your mother?”

“Much better. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought at the beginning.”

“That’s good. Anyway — what I want to say is that for various reasons I’m going to America in about six weeks’ time. One thing is that it’s my son’s twenty-first birthday.”

Barbara stared at her. “Then they’re twins? Catherine never told me. She always just said ‘my brother.’”

“Has she spoken about him to you?”

“Only once or twice. I sort of felt that she didn’t want to.”

“He’s been over here, you know. Almost all the time you were away. He’s back at college now, I hope.”

“How did —” Barbara paused, “he and Catherine get on?”

Mary Emerson shrugged her shoulders. “I’ve no idea, my dear. How does anyone ‘get on’ with Catherine, except you?” Then she added, “Oh, … and David. As I was saying, I have to go back to America, and I’m not sure how long I’ll be away. It might be quite a long time.” She looked meaningfully at Barbara, but Barbara looked back, expressionless.

“The trouble is, I don’t know what to do about Catherine. I mean — I know what to do, but — well, it all depends on you.”

Barbara made no comment.

“Iva’s here all the time, but I can’t really expect her to take complete charge of Catherine — for a couple of weeks, yes, but not for long. Catherine needs someone to talk to
occasionally
, and it wouldn’t be fair to ask Iva —”

“You want me to look after her?”

“Yes, my dear — well — not exactly. I was wondering whether you’d consider coming to live here while I’m away.”

“I thought you didn’t like the idea of two — mad girls living in the same house?” Barbara smiled.

Mary Emerson laughed. “You’re not mad, my dear, and I sometimes wonder, if you stay with Catherine for much longer, whether she’ll go on being mad.”

Barbara looked down. “I really can’t tell you until I know something definite about David.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’ll be all right.”

“What do you mean?” Barbara said sharply. “What’s David going to do if I come and live here?”