“I didn’t believe him. I thought he was hoaxing me, putting me to some kind of silly test. It was a test, in a way, but not in the way I imagined. He wanted to be known, I think. He wanted me to accept him as he actually was. But by the time I understood that, it was too late. He’d gone into one of his deep freezes.” She touched her mournful mouth with the tips of her long fingers.
“When did this happen?”
“Last spring. It must have been early in March, there was still some snow on the ground.”
“Did you see John after that?”
“A few times, but it wasn’t any good. I think he regretted telling me about himself. In fact I know he did. That Sunday in Pitt was the end of any real communication between us. There were so many things we couldn’t talk about, finally we couldn’t talk at all. The last time I saw him was humiliating, for him, and for me, too. He asked me not to mention what he’d said about his origins, if anyone ever brought it up–”
“Who did he expect to bring it up? The police?”
“The immigration authorities. Apparently there was something irregular about his entry into the United States. That fitted in with what his mother told me afterwards. He’d run away with one of her boarders when he was sixteen, and apparendy crossed over into the States.”
“Did she give you the boarder’s name?”
“No. I’m surprised Mrs. Fredericks told me as much as she did. You know how the lower classes are, suspicious. But I gave her a little money, and that loosened her up.” Her tone was contemptuous, and she must have overheard herself: “I know, I’m just what John said I was, a dollar snob. Well, I had my comeuppance. There I was prowling around the Pitt slums on a hot summer day like a lady dog in season. And I might as well have stayed at home. His mother hadn’t laid eyes on him for over five years, and she never expected to see him again, she said. I realized that I’d lost him, for good.”
“He was easy to lose,” I said, “and no great loss.”
She looked at me like an enemy. “You don’t know him. John’s a fine person at heart, fine and deep. I was the one who failed in our relationship. If I’d been able to understand him that Sunday, say the right thing and hold him, he mightn’t have gone into this fraudulent life. I’m the one who wasn’t good for anything.”
She screwed up her face like a monkey and tugged at her hair, making herself look ugly.
“I’m just a hag.”
“Be quiet”
She looked at me incredulously, one hand flat against her temple. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“Ada Reichler. You’re worth five of him.”
“I’m not. I’m no good. I betrayed him. Nobody could love me. Nobody could.”
“I told you to be quiet.” I’d never been angrier in my life.
“Don’t you dare speak to me like that. Don’t you dare!”
Her eyes were as bright and heavy as mercury. She ran blind to the end of the garden, knelt at the edge of the grass, and buried her face in flowers.
Her back was long and beautiful. I waited until she was still, and lifted her to her feet. She turned toward me.
The last light faded from the flowers and from the lake. Night came on warm and moist. The grass was wet.
Chapter 25
THE TOWN of Pitt was dark except for occasional street lights and the fainter lights that fell from the heavily starred sky. Driving along the street Ada Reichler had named, I could see the moving river down between the houses. When I got out of the car, I could smell the river. A chanting chorus of frogs made the summer night pulsate at its edges.
On the second floor of the old red house, a bleary light outlined a window. The boards of the veranda groaned under my weight. I knocked on the alligatored door. A card offering “Rooms for Rent” was stuck inside the window beside the door.
A light went on over my head. Moths swirled up around it like unseasonable snow. An old man peered out, cocking his narrow gray head at me out of a permanent stoop.
“Something you want?” His voice was a husky whisper.
“I’d like to speak to Mrs. Fredericks, the landlady.”
“I’m Mr. Fredericks. If it’s a room you want, I can rent you a room just as good as she can.”
“Do you rent by the night?”
“Sure, I got a nice front room you can have. It’ll cost you – let’s see.” He stroked the bristles along the edge of his jaw, making a rasping noise. His dull eyes looked me over with stupid cunning. “Two dollars?”
“I’d like to see the room first.”
“If you say so. Try not to make too much noise, eh? The old woman – Mrs. Fredericks is in bed.”
He must have been just about to go himself. His shirt was open so that I could have counted his ribs, and his broad striped suspenders were hanging down. I followed him up the stairs. He moved with elaborate secrecy, and turned at the top to set a hushing finger to his lips. The light from the hall below cast his hunched condor shadow on the wall.
A woman’s voice rose from the back of the house: “What are you creeping around for?”
“Didn’t want to disturb the boarders,” he said in his carrying whisper.
“The boarders aren’t in yet, and you know it. Is somebody with you?”
“Nope. Just me and my shadow.”
He smiled a yellow-toothed smile at me, as if he expected me to share the joke.
“Come to bed then,” she called.
“In a minute.”
He tiptoed to the front of the hallway, beckoned me through an open door, and closed the door quietly behind me. For a moment we were alone in the dark, like conspirators. I could hear his emotional breathing.
Then he reached up to pull on a light. It swung on its cord, throwing lariats of shadow up to the high ceiling, and shifting gleam and gloom on the room’s contents. These included a bureau, a washstand with pitcher and bowl, and a bed which had taken the impress of many bodies. The furnishings reminded me of the room John Brown had had in Luna Bay.
John Brown? John Nobody.
I looked at the old man’s face. It was hard to imagine what quirk of his genes had produced the boy. If Fredericks had ever possessed good looks, time had washed them out. His face was patchily furred leather, stretched on gaunt bones, held in place by black nailhead eyes.
“The room all right?” he said uneasily.
I glanced at the flowered paper on the walls. Faded morning-glories climbed brown lattices to the watermarked ceiling. I didn’t think I could sleep in a room with morning-glories crawling up the walls all night.
“If it’s bugs you’re worried about,” he said, “we had the place fumigated last spring.”
“Oh. Good.”
“I’ll let in some fresh air.” He opened the window and sidled back to me. “Pay me cash in advance, and I can let you have it for a dollar and a half.”
I had no intention of staying the night, but I decided to let him have the money. I took out my wallet and gave him two ones. His hand trembled as he took them:
“I got no change.”
“Keep it. Mr. Fredericks, you have a son.”
He gave me a long slow cautious look. “What if I have?”
“A boy named Theodore.”
“He’s no boy. He’ll be grown up now.”
“How long is it since you’ve seen him?”
“I dunno. Four-five years, maybe longer. He ran away when he was sixteen. It’s a tough thing to have to say about your own boy, but it was good riddance of bad rubbish.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because it’s the truth. You acquainted with Theo?”
“Slightly.”
“Is he in trouble again? Is that why you’re here?”