Driving back from the shack Emile felt that he was discovering in himself a new vein of seriousness, a new aspect of maturity. The kitchen was lighted when he came in but his mother was not at the stove and then he heard her crying in her room. He knew at once why she cried but he was completely unprepared. His heart moved him at once into her dark room, where she looked more desolate, more than ever like a child, dumped by her misery onto the bed, utterly mystified and forsaken. He felt crushed with the force of her grief. “I just can’t believe it,” she sobbed. “Just can’t believe it. I thought you were such a good boy, I thanked God night after night for your goodness and all the time right under my nose you were doing that. Mr. Narobi told me. He came to the store today.”
“It isn’t true, Mother. Whatever Mr. Narobi said isn’t true.”
She worked her face in the wet pillow like a child and he felt as if she were a child, his daughter, treated cruelly by some stranger.
“That’s what I prayed you’d say, that’s what I hoped you’d say but I can’t believe anything any more. Mr. Narobi told me all about it and why should he tell me if it wasn’t true? He couldn’t make that all up.”
“It isn’t true, Mother.”
“But why did he tell me all this then, why did he tell me all these lies? He said there’s this woman you’ve been going off with. He said she’s always calling the store when she doesn’t need anything and that he knows what’s going on.”
“It isn’t true.”
“But why did he tell me these lies then? Perhaps he’s jealous,” she asked in a reckless hopefulness. “You know the year before last he asked me to marry him. Of course I’ll never marry again, but he seemed cross when I said so.” She sat up and dried her tears.
“Perhaps that’s it.”
“He came here one night when I was alone. He brought me a box of candy and asked me to marry him. When I said no he was angry, he said I’d be sorry. Do you think that’s what he’s trying to do? Make me sorry?”
“Yes, that must be it.”
“Isn’t that funny? To think that someone should want to do me harm. Isn’t that funny? Don’t people do the strangest things?”
She washed her face and began to cook supper and Emile went to his room, worried about the sapphire ring, hidden in a drawer. He would feel safer if it was in his pocket. He opened the drawer and was taking the ring out of the box when he turned and saw her standing in the doorway. “Give that to me,” she said. “Give that to me, you devil. Whoever put the devil into you, who was it? Give me that ring. Is this how she paid you, you dirty, rotten snake? Don’t think I’m going to cry over you. I cried my last true tears at your father’s grave. I know what it was to be loved by a good man and nobody can take that away from me. You stay in your room until I tell you to come out.”
Moses answered the door the next evening when Mrs. Cranmer rang. She was wearing a hat, gloves and so forth and he couldn’t imagine what she wanted. She had no car and must have walked over from the bus stop. He thought at first that she had the wrong address. She might have been a cook or a seamstress, looking for work. To speak to him directly, as she did, seemed to drain her courage and self-esteem.
“You tell your wife to leave my son alone.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You tell your wife to leave my son alone. I don’t know how many other men she’s after but if I catch her near my boy again I’ll scratch her eyes out.”
“I don’t . . .” She had exhausted her strength and he closed the door calling: “Melissa, Melissa.” Why didn’t she answer? Why didn’t she answer? He heard her climbing the stairs and he followed. The door stood open and she sat at her dressing table with her face in her hands. He felt the blood of murder run in his veins and as, in desire, he sometimes seemed to feel her body beneath his hands before he had touched her, now he seemed to feel her throat, its cords and muscles, as he put out her life. He was shaking. He came up behind her, put his hands around her neck and when she screamed he strangled the scream but then some fear of Hell rose in him and he threw her onto the floor and went out.
What had happened; what had happened to Moses Wapshot? He was the better-looking, the brighter, the more natural of the two men and yet in his early thirties he had aged as if the crises of his time had been much harsher on a simple and impetuous nature like his than on Coverly, who had that long neck, that disgusting habit of cracking his knuckles and who suffered seizures of melancholy and petulance.
