THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction (8 page)

“Really,” said Hammond. “Then you think maybe that’s why she dragged him over there then? She had the same designs on him? Though not as godfather and godmother now but as man and wife, bride and groom? And the infant, the catalyst… Why, of course, it could be theirs.” Hammond slapped his knees with his hands. “Women do that sort of thing, you know. It’s their way of indoctrinating you. Setting you up for the kill which, of course, is
their
wedding ceremony.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but if so this phantasm was short lived. For guess who’d just entered the chapel door and stood just inside the entranceway with her arms folded as if she were a Sybil about to go to war?”

“You’ve got me, who?”

“June, who else? Somehow she’d found out when the rite was to actually be performed and had managed to arrive back in time for it. At least part of it. And there she stood, the ravishing blond in her own white dress. And I might add she appeared far more chic in it than Sandy in hers, though the two women were about equal in looks and figure. If you like blonds, of course.”

“Well,” said Hammond, “Hartwig was certainly no gentleman if that means anything.”

“Oh,” I disagreed. “In his own way I think you could say he was.”

As soon as Sandy noticed the newcomer, of course, her jaw dropped open. She knew damn well what she’d done by accepting the honor and in turn usurping her best friend’s filial right. And now as it were it was as if she’d been caught red handed. Her beatific look was replaced by one of downright fear, like the look of a guilty child. Temporarily, however, temporarily for the very instant the priest pronounced the concluding orisons and the crowd broke up to approach the mother one by one to squeeze the tiny mitt of the urchin (some with two fingers only) she held up like a votive offering, Sandy ran over to June and threw her arms around her cold corpse.

“So glad you’re here. I want you to meet my new friend. We thought you couldn’t make it.” Her cheeks flushed. She appeared elated.

“Yes, Sandy,” June replied with the ember eyed stare of Medusa speaking to a child. And in an icy, facetious voice continued, “it’s so good to see you.” And she removed the hands as though they’d been poisonous vines that had suddenly entwined her. She then went to her son in law, Stich, to engage him in some important business deal (as a realtor she was always making them) while Sandy joined the line of hand squeezers.

“There,” said the enormous man, Stich, the contractor and father of the child, to June, “Well you may be the last but you’re certainly not the least.”

And as she moved forward and touched the baby, guess what. The infant who as a rule whined non stop in almost any situation but who had been silent all day, perhaps in pleasant bewilderment, as soon as it saw the hand of its grandmother come out towards it must’ve been frightened beyond credulity for its sudden spasmic howls and wails played from the little creature’s lungs like the movement of a triumphant symphony that had just run a life’s course from birth through procreation to old age and back. It cried, said Hartwig, like a cosmic orgasm. ‘Just like a cosmic…’ Everyone stood still to listen.

“Oh, come on,” said Hammond, “you don’t have to go that far. Did the thing ever stop?”

“Never,” I shook my head, “that is not until after the procession down old Wharf road to the beach was over and it got home. And guess who held it all that while. The luckless father, who rocked it back and forth in his arms making his own baby sounds if you can believe it as though he could make himself understood, this big bear, and in the baby’s language. Of course, he couldn’t…”

“I wouldn’t either,” said Hammond, “if I’d been an infant and seen this Medusa from what you say about her. I’d probably’ve wailed all day too.”

“No doubt. No doubt about it,” I said, “the godmother’s mere appearance must’ve set it off.” Like ten thousand sirens screeching at once. Sometimes a child’s intuition is truer than a sermon on the mount. June’d been introduced to Hartwig. That’d evidently been more important to her than a slight to the person she was. If indeed it was a slight and anyone made the connection. As a matter of fact from the first handshake and kiss on the cheek she monopolized him the rest of the afternoon.

“Really, and Sandy couldn’t do a thing about it?”

“Nothing. Not a thing,” I said. “Remember, June was the one with the brains in all this; not Sandy. And Hartwig always enjoyed a good intellectual conversation more than any other. Well, that afternoon he got it.” Hammond shook his head.

“These people,” was his only comment.

“Yes,” I said, “these people.”

And there’s more. As the priest, who held his cross before him, led the tiny procession of witnesses down to the beach past the group of bums who sat on the hillside drinking wine, and the father still held the wailing infant, guess who stood in the large window of the only bar in town with her face pressed to it like a rubber mask,
watching
all this. But only watching and perhaps crying a little or a lot?

“This time you can’t fool me. I … I believe I know. The … the mother of the daughter whose son’d just been christened. The real mother. The one they call the
beauty
out there. Her name was…?” Hammond fumbled a moment and started as if looking very seriously into himself then bright eyed he added. “Sarah, wasn’t it. Correct me if…”

“No, that was it, you’re right.”

And she, of course could only witness her real grandchild’s christening from the window of a bar. A sleazy one at that I might add. Because of circumstance really, nothing more. And though a few of the guests saw and recognized her, I’m sure none of them waved. Like Orestes hounded over the earth by the furies she was an outcast and her jailed boyfriend had been her only link to social stability. In essence June hated the very sight or mention of the ‘alcoholic wreck’ as she called her. Had done everything in her power to keep her daughter away from the woman even if it had meant avoiding her half-brother Marcus, who was yet now living with the mother. But June hadn’t had to work too hard on that issue for the daughter herself saw how far her real mother had fallen and how self-destructive she’d become. Hence she did all she could on her own to avoid her. And why not, the woman was stubborn as a mule. She wouldn’t seek help for her drinking problem. She drove anyone who suggested it away. Physically beautiful as she was there was a point, it seemed, beyond which to persist in trying to help someone like that you found a part of yourself giving way. Evidently the daughter’d reached it and pulled back.

“Does that mean she’d’ve had to start drinking to maintain the communication? That sometimes happens between persons,” said Hammond.

“Julia, no, not at all. Julia never drank. Maybe a glass of wine or two. Her spirit level was affected. That sort of dragging down.”

“Oh!”

“Yes, and that was the reason Sarah hadn’t gone uninvited to the christening.” Besides figuring June’d be there she knew her own daughter didn’t want her. Or at least hadn’t been concerned enough to ask. What none of them did know at this time, of course, was, Sarah over the loss of her boyfriend, the new slight, her drinking, etc., was definitely suicidal though I doubt if any of them did know it’d’ve made any difference. People don’t generally help others in those situations. They figure, ‘if I’m strong enough not to do something like that, why aren’t they?’ And they let the matter drop.

“True, how true,” said Hammond. “It’s almost like in the most important instances where our empathy should be exposed it’s hermetically sealed. And yet that’s the way we survive. At least the strongest of us do. It’s called Social Darwinism or something like that, isn’t it?” We had our own moment of silent prayer over another stiff drink. Some areas of the psyche are just too destructive to delve further into. If it means shutting yourself off from the truth you do that. You do it for your own survival.

After the short walk past the bakery and the grocery store with its psychedelic murals colorfully painted on the side, several art galleries, the tiny community center and the marine biology lab, the group reached the estuary, which ran like a full bodied river from the lagoon into the ocean. Here the pelicans circled and dove, seals barked and worked the shallows for their meals, their heads protruding from the murky water like rats, swimming rats. And whatever else the ocean provided it must’ve satisfied a longing for those people marveled in their hearts at just being there. You weren’t ‘in it’ like a church. It was just before you, mirror smooth, vast and infinite, full of awe, good feelings and what’s more good will, though it’s virtually as dead as we are.

Then came the reception, which was held at the contractor’s house on the mesa. It was here the baby finally stopped wailing.

“Really, about time,” said Hammond, “the little thing must’ve been virtually exhausted.

“It was,” I said, “so much so it rejected its bottle, fell asleep in its crib for it’d seen a big day. For the others (adults) theirs was just beginning.”

With its main player asleep the reception for the christening turned out to be a social gathering among the guests. The contractor’s mother and father with their little niece, many neighbors … as many as could fit into that small chapel and others who hadn’t been there arrived. The man had constructed his own two-story house on the mesa overlooking the ocean. It was all wood, stained gray and trimmed in black. His large white two-seater diesel pickup with his name embossed on its doors stood in the driveway next to their two other cars. The man was doing well, going places just like everyone who chooses to go on his own in our society and who works hard is guaranteed to make it. It’s called ‘cottage industry’. Our country’s full of these independent souls, who make as much as they can for themselves and hire the cheapest labor they can to do so. If others simply don’t possess this sort of ability and drive they’re relegated to living on a less grand scale. No success is about to share his profit with them so they might too have some of the material benefits of life. For that to occur you’d have to have government control and that, of course, is socialism. A form of government we don’t want.

“I certainly don’t,” said Hammond. “It’s the worst sort of government in the world.”

Perhaps, perhaps? One who certainly didn’t want it was June, Sandy’s best friend. Though probably wealthier than Sandy in her own inherited right she worked full time as a realtor. She was busy night and day selling houses and, of course, with her social connections in the city, which naturally extended across the bay she did very well at it. She made money hand over fist and was always on the go. Though she’d been married once and divorced, she’d never had any children of her own but had adopted two.

“Two? I thought you only said one. This Julia, mother of the infant.”

“No, she had another. This turned out to be quite a disturbed child who was nonetheless talented. Her name was Jennifer she played the piano and…”

“And what?”

“She’d refused to attend the christening. It wasn’t as though she didn’t love her adopted sister. She didn’t trust how she might act before the guests. She was shy and embarrassed easily and she knew her mother’d sneaked her way in and she wanted no part of it.”

“Well,” said Hammond. “At least someone has the temerity to stand up to that tyrant of the family.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but believe me it didn’t turn out to be easy. Just as living under June, evidently, was like surviving under someone like Mussolini or Hitler. And the real reason she’d adopted children to begin with wasn’t just because she couldn’t have them but because of her own loneliness, a desperate goad when unfulfilled. As effervescent and demonstrative as she was, it seems, she couldn’t stand living alone…”

“To hear you,” said Hammond, “who could? For the way you talk, we’re the only humans in the universe, trapped on a tiny planet in relation to them all. It’s a big spread out there, diabolically lonely, and who do we really have except ourselves?”

“Well said,” I commented. “Even tyrants have their emotional disturbances. How far we tolerate them, of course, depends on how they mortally affect us. Even pity has to have its own limitations if we’re to survive.”

When Sandy and Hartwig joined the large group of parked cars and walked upstairs to the enormous living room with its ocean view and deck where the reception was in full swing, of course, June was the first guest to acknowledge them. With her high heeled elegance and blond swagger she approached the two much like a sheep dog who divides a certain member from the pack, nipping and biting at the heels of the others until the one alone remains in its custody. This, naturally, was Hartwig.

“You’re kidding,” said Hammond. “After what they’d been through together June’d do something like that. And Sandy let it happen?”

“She did,” I said. “Like a child with no defenses. She couldn’t get a word in edgewise. It was downright pathetic and June thoroughly relished monopolizing the conversation to show how smart she was. Every time she’d launch into another of her nebulous subjects Sandy had little knowledge of she’d retreat with a frightened look on her face, engage Stich or his wife in conversation, enter the sleeping baby’s room to view it mantra like as it lay in its bassinet, or she might very likely confide in Marcus who she soon brought back with her and that way found she could be included.”

“How if she didn’t know…?”

“Marcus who truly did love her knew it for her. I told you how smart he was. He… Well on many subjects he outshone Hartwig. Especially on politics. And don’t think June didn’t pick up on this either. She’d never met Marcus before though she had seen him and she was instantly impressed mind you, instantly impressed.”