The Girl Who Passed for Normal (8 page)

She smiled to herself. Oh, she would be all right; she would get taken out to dinner as often as she liked and make love with as many different men as she liked, because she would never be able to get involved with them. She was free, and Catherine was going to be the guardian of her freedom. Catherine was going to keep her free for David.

She wondered what Catherine thought about sex, or what, if anything, she did about sex. She hoped she wasn’t lesbian; it might make things difficult. But she didn’t think so; Catherine had never tried to touch her unnecessarily, or get close to her physically. Perhaps Mary Emerson’s sneering explanation was right; perhaps, in the spring and summer, when Catherine went off into the wilderness, she met some boy or boys who had come over the wall. Perhaps the local boys knew that the mad foreign girl could always be had when she wandered through the long grass in the spring and summer.

But it was more likely, Barbara thought, that Catherine had no sex, and thought about it only in abstract terms; her sexual urges were sublimated in some way. Perhaps — she smiled as she thought it — simply looking for snakes in the grass was enough; were she ever to find one, it would — what? Bite her, and make her die of bliss? She smiled again, and thought, “Poor Catherine.”

She wondered whether Mary Emerson had a lover, or whether her own mother had ever had sex again after her husband, Barbara’s father, had died, when she was two years old.

She walked along thinking about David, about Catherine, about her mother, about sex. She thought about Mary
Emerson
, who had wasted her life being with someone she hated but couldn’t leave. It was sad, because it had been
unnecessary
. If only she had loved Catherine, she wouldn’t have been her prisoner. She was going off now, thinking she was going to be free and happy, but she wouldn’t be. She had wasted too much for what remained to be anything other than bitter, and that was why, if she thought she was going to have David, she was wrong. She was leaving too late. David would stay with her for three months, six months, possibly a year. Then he would see the awful waste in her, like a hole left by the removal of a vast tumor, and he would go away. He would have proved whatever it was he was trying to prove to himself. And that would be the end of Mary Emerson.

Barbara felt sad for her, walking along in the November afternoon. She even felt sad for Marcello. For all his strength and his position, he was wasted, too. He planned for his sterile state, and there was no more life in it than in Mary Emerson’s hope. At least, Barbara thought, whatever she did
with Catherine, she would be making something grow,
creating
something.

She felt sad for her mother, for David trying to prove the improvable, for Mary Emerson and Marcello. She felt sad for everyone, except Catherine and herself. For them there was hope.

She had nearly reached the villa. She stepped out into the road without thinking, to cross. There was a squeal of brakes, she screamed and jumped, and a truck stopped within an inch of her.

She shook her head. She had been thinking. She didn’t, for a second, know where she was. She hadn’t heard anything. She stared at the truck and felt very weak.

The truck driver shouted at her, asked her if she was mad, called her an idiot whore and a cretin. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t see you.” The truck driver drove off. She was
shaking
. She felt sick. She had been thinking, planning, thinking of things she knew nothing about, planning for a future she knew nothing about; and she had nearly been killed. She looked at the cobbled road, and the wall behind her. She looked at the pines and the sky from which the sun had fallen. She was cold, and she was alone. She started to run. She remembered what Catherine had whispered to her the
previous
afternoon, and couldn’t help feeling, though she knew it was absurd, that she had had a warning, that she had received a threat of death.

*

“What
is
wrong, Barbara?” Mary Emerson asked.

“I was almost killed,” Barbara said. “I stepped right under a truck. I was miles away, thinking, and I just didn’t hear anything.”

“You look very pale. Come and have a brandy. Half the time they see you’re about to cross and the bastards accelerate. Think they’ll make you jump for it. They’re mad. They’ve only got to misjudge something, or if their brakes fail, or if you don’t see them bearing down on you, and — bang. And then they blame you. I bet he shouted at you.”

Barbara nodded. “Yes. He did.”

“Bastard.”

“But it was my fault. I simply didn’t look.”

“Well, he should have seen anyway, the bastard.” She laughed. “Please don’t get yourself killed, my dear. Not now.”

Barbara smiled at the big handsome head. “I won’t. And talking of which, I meant to tell you today — I’ll come and look after Catherine. I’d like to.”

Mary Emerson took the news without comment; she had obviously been expecting it. She watched Barbara drink her brandy and said, “There! Have you heard from David?”

“No. But I think I know where he is.” She looked the woman in the eye; but Mary Emerson was giving nothing away. “I think he’s gone away for a bit and — you will leave me your address when you go, won’t you? So if I need
anything
, or David comes back —”

Mary Emerson smiled. “My dear, I’ll probably phone you every week. Of course I’ll leave you my address. You don’t think I’m going to disappear, do you?” She stood up. “I’m so glad you’ve decided you’ll come, and I know Catherine will be. I do hope, from a purely selfish point of view, that David doesn’t come back too soon.” She smiled again. “And remember, don’t get yourself killed. I’ll go call Catherine.”
She turned from the doorway, and said with a laugh, “You must think I’m dreadful.”

*

When Barbara told Catherine what she had decided, Catherine nodded and said, “Good.”

“Remember what you told me yesterday?” Barbara said.

“What?”

“I was nearly killed coming here this afternoon.”

Catherine stared at her.

“I was walking along, not watching, thinking about
coming
here to live with you, and about everything, and I stepped right out in front of a truck.”

Catherine stared at her and then, suddenly, started
laughing
.

*

When they were in the middle of their lesson, Mary
Emerson
looked in the door and said, “Barbara, do you think you could stay to dinner tonight? I have to talk to you about things.”

Barbara nodded. “Thank you. I’d like to.”

*

They ate at nine; Catherine had already eaten, and was in bed.

“There are a few more things I didn’t tell you about the other day,” Mary Emerson said, “but — well, for obvious reasons I had to know whether you were coming before I mentioned them.”

Barbara thought of what the woman had told Marcello, and wondered what her “obvious reasons” were.

“You know, all the fiddly little details it wasn’t worth going into unless —” she smiled, and didn’t finish. “Anyway, as you may or may not know, Catherine is a very rich girl and will theoretically come into her money when she is twenty-one, on December 30th. Of course she can’t actually look after it herself, and Luke, my son, becomes more or less responsible for her. Now as I said, you’ll get $600 a month, which will be paid by the trustees — that’s your salary, let’s say. Then Iva will have her money and everything she needs for running the house and generally looking after things — she’ll send an account of what she’s spent every month and — oh, well, I’ve known Iva for years and there are no problems there, and besides I know more or less what it costs to keep this place running. But the problem is Catherine. What’s to be done with her? She will have an income — after she’s paid you and Iva and taxes and everything — of about $60,000 a year — more or less $5000 a month. Catherine couldn’t
possibly
spend that amount of money — on the other hand, she should have anything and everything she wants, within reason. Now Luke and I thought — he’s very mature for his age — and the trustees have agreed to always keep $1000 at the disposal of whoever’s looking after Catherine. This will have to be accounted for to the trustees, of course, as it’s spent — you know, if Catherine needs new clothes, if she goes to the doctor or the dentist or anything, you must always keep the receipts and send them off. But also, if you want to take Catherine away for a holiday or anything, you can pay for yourself out of that money.” She smiled, and poured some more wine. “What I mean is — anything that you and Catherine do together she will pay for — and then as you
send receipts, airline tickets, hotel bills, and the trustees see that the $1000 are nearly finished, they’ll send more money. Or if, for any reason, you needed more money than $1000, or whatever’s left in the account, just write to the trustees and explain, and they’ll forward what you need.” Barbara noticed that the woman was sweating. “I’m afraid it’s a little complicated, my dear, but you see it doesn’t depend on me but the trustees, and they don’t know you and obviously must safeguard Catherine’s interests.”

“Yes, of course,” Barbara said.

Mary Emerson drank her wine, poured some more, and said, “If it was up to me, my dear, I’d give you the $5000 a month and let you get on with it.” She wiped her forehead. “I hate talking about money. I knew I’d have to and I was dreading it. I thought of writing it all to you in a letter, and then I thought no, I can’t do that, it’s so stupid — oh, and I thought of getting Luke to write to you, or Iva to tell you—” she drank her wine — “it’s so silly. I get quite angry with myself. I’m not a stupid woman normally.”

And that, Barbara supposed, was why she had told
Marcello
.

“There are some other things, like getting the car insurance transferred into your name, and — oh, I don’t know, but we can talk about all that nearer the time. My lawyer here is looking into all the things that might crop up. The important. thing was to give you the general picture, the basic scheme of things, so you’d know just how things stand.”

Barbara had not drunk nearly so much as Mary Emerson. “One thing I would like to know,” she said. “Are you really just planning a long trip or are you planning to go for good?”

Mary Emerson sighed. “I honestly don’t know, my dear. It depends on a great many unknowns. But let’s say I think I’ll be away fairly permanently.”

Barbara nodded. “Do you like — I mean, have you liked living abroad?”

“Yes and no. I honestly don’t know that either. I was
talking
about it with your friend Marcello yesterday. I guess I’ve given up a lot living here, but I’ve been obliged, for one reason or another, to live here for so long that it’s difficult to imagine living anywhere else. I really don’t know if I’ve liked it. Do you?”

Barbara nodded. “I think so. I think I love it here. I think—” and she went off into a long, confused, and
sentimental
speech about the pleasures of Italy, finishing up with, “Excuse me, I think I’ve drunk too much.”

Mary Emerson poured them both some more wine and laughed. “Go on. Drink up. It’s good for you.”

They drank, both of them, but Barbara wasn’t at all drunk. She had made her sentimental speech in order to create what she hoped was a certain mood. She had prepared a question for Mary Emerson, and she had to be sure the time was right for asking it. She asked about Mary Emerson’s youth, about life in the South; and finally she asked, “Did you like David?”

Mary Emerson tried to look at her sharply, but failed, and relapsed into the dreamy smiles that talking about Charleston had produced. “Of course I did, my dear. I thought he was quite beautiful. Silly though it sounds, I was really wild about him.”

Barbara nodded.

“I think Catherine was, too. Oh, dear.” She laughed.
“Middle-aged follies. Unfortunately — or perhaps it was
fortunately
— I don’t think he cared for me.” She shrugged her big shoulders. “I did ask him, but he wasn’t the kind to give a straight answer, was he?”

“No.”

“But I must say I did envy you.” She drank some more wine.

“You don’t think he’ll come back, do you?”

Mary Emerson laughed. “How should I know, my dear?” Then she stood and came around the table to where Barbara was sitting. She stood behind her and put her arms around her, leaned over her and kissed her on the cheek. She made Barbara feel very thin, and barren, and sober. Then she stood back and threw her red hair over her shoulders and
trumpeted
, rather than laughed.

“Come now, Barbara,” she said, “let’s be honest with
ourselves
. You know as well as I do he’ll never come back. You must have known that from the minute he disappeared — or even before. Have some more wine.”

Barbara woke with a hangover, and — she thought grimly as she lay in bed — almost nothing else. A hangover and a commitment.

She lay in bed and remembered Mary Emerson lying back on her big sofa, drunk and asleep, with her big jaw hanging down; Barbara had wanted to wake her and tell her she looked like her daughter’s mother. Mary Emerson beached on a
sand-colored
sofa; a stranded whale with red hair.

Barbara had stared at her as she slept; at the brown silk dress, at the heavy ringed hands, at the shoes that didn’t fall off the surprisingly small feet; and she wondered whether David had ever made love to this carcass, this heavy,
handsome
lump of flesh. She wondered what the woman was like nude, and pictured David lying on top of her, with his long fair hair falling straight into her thick red hair. She could see them together, and could imagine Mary Emerson saying something like, “David, are you
most
in love with me?” She could imagine David laughing, and not saying anything — and then she could hear them, lightly, confidently, amusingly,
starting to talk about her, to pull her to pieces, and to pity her.

She could hear them, and she knew it was her they were talking about. Staring at the great Southern whale stranded on the sofa, she wished it were dead; she wished that if she got up and walked across the room and touched it, it would fall to the floor with its mouth open; its rings would bang on the wooden floor, its neck would twist back, its little shoes would drop off to reveal red-painted toenails; it would make no sound, and it would be dead.

But Barbara had left her there, called a taxi, and gone home. In the taxi she had wondered what would happen to Catherine if Mary Emerson died. She presumed that Luke Emerson would come over from America, ask her if she was prepared to continue looking after his sister, and make the same deal with her as his mother had made; then he would return to America and Catherine would be hers forever. If Mary Emerson were to die, she wondered, where did that put David; but she supposed it didn’t matter very much. She remembered the deep Southern voice: “You know as well as I do he’ll never come back.” Sitting in the back of the taxi, she shivered, and wished Mary Emerson were dead.

She remembered all this later in bed, and thought that if Mary Emerson were dead, Catherine would be hers forever, or for as long as she wanted her; Catherine and the villa and Iva and a more or less inexhaustible supply of money; and with that money — she smiled bitterly as she thought of it — she would justify her mother’s years of hard work, her years of deprivation and self-denial. She would be making use of the education her mother, with such sacrifice, had
bought for her; making use of it beyond her mother’s wildest dreams. For her mother had educated her in order that she could get a good “job” — the job of a perfect secretary, for example. But if Mary Emerson were to die, and Catherine were hers forever, she would no longer be in the position of a secretary; she would be the boss. She smiled.

She sat up and lit a cigarette. There was no point in
thinking
like that. One couldn’t live for villas and housekeepers or inexhaustible supplies of money; one couldn’t live on the assumption that Mary Emerson was going to die some lonely and miserable death; one couldn’t live on theories and money, as Marcello did; one could only live — or rather she could only live — for Catherine at the moment; or, better, David. She didn’t know why she couldn’t live only for herself, but she suspected that there wasn’t really quite enough to live for if she did that. She drew on her cigarette and supposed that it was the same for everyone, which was why love, in one form or another, was generally considered to be the
highest
good by people who thought about such things. Even
Marcello
might shamefacedly have claimed this to be so, if pushed to it.

Meanwhile it was Saturday. She had a Saturday and a
Sunday
to get through, alone, without David; and another six Saturdays and Sundays alone before she even had Catherine.

*

She didn’t have to spend all Saturday alone, however. Mary Emerson called her at eleven to apologize for getting drunk the night before, and asked Barbara to forgive her if she had said anything dreadful.

“Not really,” Barbara said, “I think I was as drunk as you.”

Still apologetic, Mary Emerson asked, “What are you doing today, my dear? You’re not going to spend the day on your own, are you?”

Barbara remembered Marcello saying that Mary Emerson was guilty, and wondered whether it was guilt that made her ask the question, or pity.

“No,” she said. “I mean yes, I am. I haven’t really got anything to do.” She thought that if Mary Emerson felt sorry for her it was hardly surprising, because she felt sorry for herself; and if Mary Emerson felt guilty that was hardly
surprising
either, because she had something to feel guilty about. She, and Marcello, and the unknown Luke, and her mother — they were all guilty. They had all helped take David away. She supposed they had all loved David. Perhaps even her mother, though it was difficult to tell; her mother was like an immensely old dog whose tail had been cut off because it could work harder without a tail, but which remembered how, when it was a puppy, it had wagged its tail when it was happy. Perhaps David reminded her of what it was like when she had a tail to wag, and she hated being reminded.

“Please come and have lunch with me then, and I promise I won’t get drunk again. We can drink milk or something.”

“Oh no. I mean — I’d love to have lunch, but I don’t like milk.”

It must be because they all loved David that they resented her having him; they loved him, knew they couldn’t have him, but couldn’t bear to see him with anyone else. It was for this they had all plotted to free him. She wondered if this had been David’s secret — not that he wanted to be free, but that he was obliged to be.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t catch that.”

“Is one o’clock all right?”

“Yes, fine.”

“See you then, my dear. Bye.”

Or, she wondered, was David simply spoiled and selfish and beautiful, and had she loved him for that, and was that the reason everyone else loved him, and her mother professed to hate him? It was more likely; David, who pretended that he didn’t give a damn about anything or anyone — though, of course, it wasn’t true, really; because truly not to give a damn about anything was a major feat that, she was sure, not even David was capable of. What he did was make a secret of what he cared for.

She wondered what further confessions she would be told at lunch — to make up for having been told the truth at dinner the night before.

*

In fact, she was to hear two different versions of the death of Catherine’s father.

According to Mary Emerson, her husband had adored Catherine when she was small. Then, as it became apparent that there was something wrong with the child, he began to turn against his wife, accusing her of not looking after Catherine properly, of secretly mistreating her, of neglecting her in favor of her twin brother, Luke — of being, in some way, responsible for whatever was wrong with the girl. The more Catherine grew, and the more apparent it was that her development was to be limited, and the more the doctors were pessimistic, and the more Luke grew healthy and
good-looking
, the more husband and wife grew apart.

“And honestly, before that we had been very happy together. But it all happened so slowly and we were both so worried about Catherine that by the time we had got used to the fact that there was something irreparably wrong with her and started looking at ourselves again, we realized we had drifted too far apart to ever really come together again. And anyway, we had damaged each other too much in the process of drifting apart to make it wise to think of coming together.”

But they didn’t know what to do about Catherine if they separated, so again they turned away from themselves to
consider
the child, to consider what effect their separation would have on her. While they were fighting and crying about Catherine they were falling not only apart but to pieces; one day Mary Emerson came home and found that her husband had tried to kill himself. She saved him. He was in the hospital for about a week, and she went to see him every day and it was as it had been just after their marriage, before Catherine had come between them. They were able to talk to each other about themselves, about the past, and even about the future.

The day before he was due to be discharged from the
hospital
Mary took Catherine to visit him; he seemed pleased to see her, and thanked Mary for bringing her. That night he discharged himself from the hospital and disappeared.

The police looked for him everywhere, but no trace of him was found until two years later. A man was found dead with a shotgun beside him in a cheap boardinghouse in Dallas. He had no documents on him, but he had a photograph of a girl — Catherine. Mary Emerson identified the body.

It was never discovered where or how he had passed the
two years from the time of his disappearance to the time of his death.

Mary was told she could, almost certainly successfully, contest her husband’s will, which he had made six months before his disappearance, on the grounds that it had been made when the balance of his mind was disturbed. But by its terms she would have money enough until Catherine was twenty-one, and after that she expected that her son would look after her, or that Catherine’s trustees would, or that someone would — she might even marry again — and so she didn’t bother to waste time and money in court
proceedings
.

“Where were you living when all this happened?”

“We were married in California just after the war. Then George decided he wanted to move to Europe, and we chose Rome for various reasons. Then four years after we were
married
the twins were born. I went back to New York to have them; I brought them back to Italy when they were four months old. It wasn’t until Catherine was six that we started to suspect something was wrong, and it wasn’t until she was eight, nearly nine, that we knew it for certain. The doctors kept on saying that she might just be very slow, that
sometimes
one twin is slower, all sorts of things. But, as I say, by the time she was nine we knew definitely. The doctors told us even then, that there could, possibly, be nothing wrong — but what they meant was that they had no idea what caused Catherine’s form of retardation, and couldn’t do anything about it.”

It was from that time that the marriage started to break up.

“We had moved back to New York when Catherine was seven, so she could see all the best doctors and speak the language properly. We closed this house down and rented an apartment in Manhattan.”

“What about your husband’s work? Didn’t he do any?”

“No, not unless he worked in the two years he was
missing
. I guess he must have worked then because we had always had a joint bank account and he never drew on that, or got in touch with his lawyers to get money from them. So he must have worked. But all the time we were together he —” she laughed, — “studied.”

“Was Catherine very upset when he died?”

“She was very upset when he disappeared. I mean very. She seemed to go backward physically. She got fat, and had a terrible vacant stare and made me think for a time I’d really have to have her put in a home.”

“How old was she?”

“Ten, when he disappeared. Twelve when he died.”

“Were you here when he died?”

“Yes. We moved back to Rome after George disappeared. I sort of felt he might turn up here. He loved it.”

“And the doctors have never been able to tell what’s wrong with Catherine?”

“No. She has a fairly common case of retardation — but they don’t know what causes it, and can’t cure it. There are absolutely no signs of physical damage to her brain, as far as they can tell.”

“So it’s something psychological?”

“Psychological, something physical they can’t see, who knows? No one can tell. They’ve tried hypnosis, but she’s
the same hypnotized as unhypnotized. One doctor told me frankly that there is no hope at all. And the tragedy is that Catherine is so nearly normal sometimes. She can sort of reason, and sort of think. But then why can’t she read? And why is her speech quite normal sometimes and other times she sounds as though she’s got a sock in her mouth? I guess she just can’t cope with anything outside herself, and
sometimes
with anything inside. But anyway, you’ve seen all this, and I can’t explain.”

“I think she can talk and think in her way,” Barbara said, “but it’s like when we go abroad on holiday and don’t speak a foreign language too well. We can ask questions, and say things, but all the time we’re translating back into our own language, thinking that we’re not
really
saying those strange foreign words, but ‘Do you have a match?’ or ‘What time does the train leave?’ We feel we’re really just talking our own language in disguise and that our own language is the real, true one.” She paused; she was, she realized, speaking very fast, as if what she was talking about was a subject of urgent concern for herself. “For Catherine, talking is like speaking a foreign language — but without a language of her own to translate back into it. Catherine’s got nothing that she can think is
really
what she means, nothing she can think is true. To her it’s all just a foreign language that she’ll never learn well enough to think in very much, because she’s had no training in a language of her own. Somewhere inside her there’s total, absolute darkness. The real and the true are in that darkness, so she simply has to live with her foreign
language
and remember what she can. That wouldn’t be so bad if she could look out and see beautiful things when she’s not
trying to remember something — but I’m sure even when she goes out there into the garden she never actually looks at the sky, never actually looks at a flower. She’s always
having
to try and remember what she’s been told they are, she’s always trying to recall the idea of the sky or of a flower, to see if it matches what she’s looking at. And so ultimately she’s only trying to match memories and ideas, only seeing someone else’s idea of the sky. The real sky, and the real flower, are inside her in the darkness, and she knows it. So when she goes out there into the wilderness she’s looking into the darkness and wondering what a real flower is like.”