Louise listened, remembering the reason Charlie had given her for wanting to find out the name of the people who lived at 319 Jacaranda Road: “I must tell those people they’ve got to take better care of their little dog unless they want it to be killed by a car or something.”
She said, “How old was the girl?”
“Ten. But she looked younger because she was so small and skinny.”
“Was she pretty?”
“No.”
“What color was her hair, and was it short or long?”
“Dark and short, I think. I only saw her once, but I remember one of her front teeth was chipped from a fall.”
“Though it may seem like a terrible thing to say, Ben, all this sounds very promising.”
“Promising?”
“Yes. You see, I’ve met Mary Martha. She’s a plump, pretty child with a long blond ponytail, quite mature-looking for her age. She’s not a bit like that other girl. Isn’t that a good sign? She doesn’t fit the pattern at all, Ben.” Louise’s pale cheeks had taken on a flush of excitement. “Now tell me about Charlie, how he acted beforehand, everything you can think of.”
“I saw no difference in him,” Ben said heavily. “But then I wasn’t looking very hard, I’d just gotten married to Ann. Charlie could have grown another head and I might not have noticed.”
“You’d just gotten married,” Louise repeated. “Now Charlie’s about to get married. Is this just a coincidence or is it part of the pattern?”
“Stop thinking about patterns, Louise. A whole battery of experts tried to figure out Charlie’s and got nowhere.”
“Then it’s my turn to try. Where did you live after the wedding?”
“Here in this house. It was only supposed to be a temporary arrangement, we were going to buy a place of our own. Then Charlie was arrested and everything blew up in our faces. I didn’t have enough money left to buy a tent, but by that time it didn’t matter because I had no wife either.”
“And now Charlie and I will be living in this house, too.” Louise was looking around the room as if she were seeing it for the first time as a place she would have to call her home. “You still don’t notice any pattern, Ben?”
“What if I say yes? What do I do then?”
“You mean, what do we do? I’m in it with you this time.”
“Don’t say this time. There isn’t going to be a this time. It happened once, and it’s not going to happen again, by God, if I have to keep him in sight twenty-four hours a day, if I have to handcuff him to me.”
“That won’t be much of a life for Charlie. He’d be better off dead.”
“Do you suppose I haven’t thought of that?” he said roughly. “A hundred times, five hundred, I’ve looked at him and seen him suffering, and I’ve thought, this is my kid brother. I love him, I’d cut off an arm for him, but maybe the best thing I could do for him is to end it all.”
“You mean, kill him.”
“Yes, kill him. And don’t look at me with such horror. You may be thinking the same thing yourself before long.”
“If you feel like that, your problems may be worse than Charlie’s.” She looked a little surprised at her own words as if they had come out unplanned. “Perhaps yours are much worse because you’re not aware of them. When something happens to you, or inside yourself, you’ve always had Charlie to blame. It’s made you look pretty good in the eyes of the world but it hasn’t helped Charlie. He’s already had more blame than he can handle. What he needs now is confidence in himself, a feeling that he’ll do the right thing on his own and not because you’ll force him to. You spoke a minute ago of handcuffing him to you. That might work, up to a point. Perhaps it would prevent him from doing the wrong thing but it wouldn’t help him to do the right one.”
“Well, that was quite a speech, Louise.”
“There’s more.”
“I’m not sure I want to hear it.”
“Listen anyway, will you, Ben?”
“Since when have you become an authority on the Gowen brothers?”
She ignored the sarcasm. “I’ve been trying to do some figuring, out, that’s all.”
“And you’ve decided what?”
“Charlie’s problem wasn’t born inside him. It doesn’t belong only to him, it’s a family affair. Some event, some relationship, or several of both, made him not want to grow up. He let you assume the grown-up role. He remained a child, the kid brother, the baby of the family. He merely went through the motions of manhood by imitating you and doing what you told him to.”
She lapsed into silence, and Ben said, “I hope you’ve finished.”
“Almost. Did you and Ann go on a honeymoon?”
“We went to San Francisco for a week. I can’t see what that—”
“How soon after you got back did the trouble happen between Charlie and the girl?”
“A few days. Why?”
“Perhaps,” she said slowly, “Charlie was only trying, in his mixed-up way, to imitate you by ‘marrying’ the girl.”
Jessie had turned off her light and closed her door tightly to give her parents the impression that she’d gone to sleep. But both her side and back windows were wide open and she missed very little of what was going on.
She heard Virginia and Howard quarreling in the patio, and later, the gate opening and slamming shut again, and Howard’s car racing out of the driveway and down the street. Virginia started to cry and Dave took her home and then set out in his car to look for Howard. Jessie lay in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling and wondering how adults could get away with doing such puzzling things without any reason. She herself had to have at least one good reason, and sometimes two, for everything she did.
Shortly before ten o’clock Ellen paused outside Jessie’s door for a few seconds, then continued on down the hall.
Jessie called out, “I’m thirsty.”
“All right, get up and pour yourself a glass of water.”
“I’d rather you brought me one.”
“All right.” Ellen’s voice was cross, and when she came into the bedroom with the glass of water she looked tired and tense. “Why aren’t you ever thirsty during the day?”
“I don’t have time then to think about it.”
“Well, drink up. And if you need anything else get it now. I have a headache, I’m going to take a sleeping capsule and go to bed.”
“May I take one, too?”
“Of course not. Little girls don’t need sleeping capsules.”
“Mrs. Oakley gives Mary Martha one sometimes.”
“Mrs. Oakley is a— Well, anyway, you close your eyes and think pleasant thoughts.”
“Why did Howard and Virginia have a fight?”
“That’s a good question,” Ellen said dryly. “If, within the next fifty years, I come up with a good answer, I’ll tell it to you. Have you finished with the water?”
“Yes.”
Ellen reached for the glass, still nearly full. “Now this is the final good night, Jessie. You understand that? Absolutely final.” When she went out she shut the door in a way that indicated she meant business.