The Cat's Pajamas Read online

  “Miss Madeline!”

  Madeline, pinned like Jesus to her linen-room door, rescrabbled the locks.

  “Miss Alice!”

  In the library, where her pale letters capered in darkness, like drunken moths, Alice fell back from her own shut door, found matches, relit the double hurricanes. Her head beat like a heart gorged, pressing her eyes out, gasping her lips, sealing her ears so nothing was heard but a wild pulse and the hollow in-suck of her breath.

  “Mrs. Benton!”

  The old one squirmed in bed, worked her hands over her face, to reshape the melted flesh into a shocked expression it most needed. Then her fingers splayed out at the unlocked door. “Fool! Damn fool! Someone lock my door! Alice, Robert, Madeline!”

  “Alice, Robert, Madeline!” the echoes blew in the unlit halls.

  “Mr. Robert!”

  The maid’s voice summoned him from the floor, trembling.

  Then, one by one, they heard the maid cry out. One small dismayed and accusing cry.

  After that the snow touched the roof of the house softly.

  They all stood, knowing what that silence meant. They waited for some new sound.

  Someone, treading slowly on nightmare softness, as if barefoot, drifted along the halls. They felt the house shift with the weight now here, now there, now farther along.

  Two phones stood on a far library desk. Alice seized one, chattered the hook, cried, “Operator! Police!”

  But then she remembered: No one will call Madeline and me now. Tell the Bell Company to pull the phone. There’s no one in town we know.

  Be practical, Mother had said. Leave the phone itself here, in case we ever decide to reconnect.

  “Operator!”

  She threw the instrument down and blinked at it as if it were some stubborn beast she had asked to do the simplest trick. She glanced at the window. Push it up, lean out, scream! Ah, but the neighbors were locked in, warm and apart and separate and lost, and the wind screaming, too, and winter all around, and night. It would be like shouting to graveyards.

  “Robert, Alice, Madeline, Robert, Alice, Madeline!”

  The mother, screaming, blind idiocy.

  “Lock my door! Robert, Alice, Madeline!”

  I hear, thought Alice. We all hear. And he’ll hear her too.

  She grabbed the second phone, gave its button three sharp jabs.

  “Madeline, Alice, Robert!” Her voice blew through the halls.

  “Mother!” cried Alice over the phone. “Don’t scream, don’t tell him where you are, don’t tell him what he doesn’t even know!” Alice jabbed the button again.

  “Robert, Alice, Madeline!”

  “Pick up the phone, Mother, please, pick—”

  Click.

  “Hello, Operator.” Her mother’s raw shrieking voice. “Save me! The locks!”

  “Mother, this is Alice! Quiet, he’ll hear you!”

  “Oh, God! Alice, oh God, the door! I can’t get out of bed! Silly, awful, all the locks and no way to get to them!”

  “Put out your lamp!”

  “Help me, Alice!”

  “I am helping. Listen! Find your gun. Blow out your light. Hide under your bed! Do that!”

  “Oh, God! Alice, come lock my door!”

  “Mother, listen!”

  “Alice, Alice!” Madeline’s voice. “What’s happened? I’m afraid!”

  Another voice. “Alice!”

  “Robert!”

  They shrieked and yelled.

  “No,” said Alice. “Quiet, one at a time! Before it’s too late. All of us. Do you hear? Get your guns, open your doors, come out in the hall. It’s us, all of us, against him. Yes?!”

  Robert sobbed.

  Madeline wailed.

  “Alice, Madeline, children, save your mother!”

  “Mother, shut up!” Alice swayed and chanted. “Open your doors. All of us. We can do it! Now!”

  “He’ll get me!” screamed Madeline.

  “No, no,” said Robert. “It’s no use, no use!”

  “The door, my door, unlocked,” cried the mother.

  “Listen, all of you!”

  “My door!” said the mother. “Oh God! It’s opening, now!”

  There was a scream in the halls and the same scream on the phone.

  The others stared at the phones in their hands where only their hearts beat.

  “Mother!”

  A door slammed upstairs.

  The scream stopped suddenly.

  “Mother!”

  If only she hadn’t yelled, thought Alice. If only she hadn’t showed him the way.

  “Madeline, Robert! Your guns. I’ll count five and we’ll all rush out! One, two, three—”

  Robert groaned.

  “Robert!”

  He fell to the floor, the phone in his fist. His door was still locked. His heart stopped. The phone in his fist shouted, “Robert!” He lay still.

  “He’s at my door now!” said Madeline, high in the winter house.

  “Fire through the door! Shoot!”

  “He won’t get me, he won’t have his way with me!”

  “Madeline, listen! Shoot through the door!”

  “He’s fumbling with the lock, he’ll get in!”

  “Madeline!”

  One shot.

  One shot and only one.

  Alice stood in the library alone, staring at the cold phone in her hand. It was now completely silent.

  Suddenly she saw that stranger in the dark, upstairs, outside a door, in the hall, scratching softly, smiling at the panel.

  The shot!

  The stranger in the dark peering down. And from under the locked door, slowly, a small stream of blood. Blood flowing quietly, very bright, in a tiny stream. All this, Alice saw. All this she knew, hearing a dark movement in the upstairs hall as someone moved from room to room, trying doors and finding silence.

  “Madeline,” she said to the phone, numbly. “Robert!” She called their names, uselessly. “Mother!” She shut her eyes. “Why didn’t you listen? If we had all of us at the very first—run out—”

  Silence.

  Snow fell in silent whirls and cornucopias, heaped itself in lavish quietness upon the lawn. She was now alone.

  Stumbling to the window, she unlocked it, forced it up, unhooked the storm window beyond, pushed it out. Then she straddled, half in the silent warm world of the house, half out into the snowing night. She sat a long moment, gazing at the locked library door. The brass knob twisted once.

  Fascinated, she watched it turn. Like a bright eye it fixed her.

  She almost wanted to walk over, undo the latch, and with a bow, beckon in the night, the shape of terror, so as to know the face of such a one who, with hardly a knock, had razed an island fort. She found the gun in her hand, raised it, pointed it at the door, shivering.

  The brass knob turned clockwise, counterclockwise. Darkness stood in darkness beyond, blowing. Clockwise, counterclockwise. With an unseen smile above.

  Eyes shut she fired three times!

  When she opened her eyes she saw that her shots had gone wide. One into the wall, another at the bottom of the door, a third at the top. She stared a moment at her coward’s hand, and flung the gun away.

  The doorknob turned this way, that. It was the last thing she saw. The bright doorknob shining like an eye.

  Leaning out, she fell into the snow.

  RETURNING WITH THE POLICE hours later, she saw her footsteps in the snow, running away from silence.

  She and the sheriff and his men stood under the empty trees, gazing at the house.

  It seemed warm and comfortable, once again brightly lighted, a world of radiance and cheer in a bleak landscape. The front door stood wide to the blowing snows.

  “Jesus,” said the sheriff. “He must have just opened up the front door and strolled out, damn, not caring who saw! Christ, what nerve!”

  Alice moved. A thousand white moths flicked her eyes. She blinked and her eyes
fixed in a stare. Then slowly, softly, her throat fluttered.

  She began a laugh that ended with a muffled sobbing.

  “Look!” she cried. “Oh, look!”

  They looked, and then saw the second path of footprints which came neatly down the front porch stairs into the white soft velvet snow. Evenly spaced, with a certain serenity, these footprints could be seen where they marched off across the front yard, confident and deep, vanishing away into the cold night and snowing town.

  “His footsteps.” Alice bent and put out her hand. She measured then tried to cover them with a thrust of her numb fingers. She cried out.

  “His footsteps. Oh God, what a little man! Do you see the size of them, do you see! My God, what a little man!”

  And even as she crouched there, on hands and knees, sobbing, the wind and the winter and the night did her a gentle kindness. Even as she watched, the snow fell into and around and over the footprints, smoothing and filling and erasing them until at last, with no trace, with no memory of their smallness, they were gone.

  Then, and only then, did she stop crying.

  SOMETIME BEFORE DAWN

  1950

  IT WAS THE CRYING LATE AT NIGHT, perhaps, the hysteria, and then the sobbing violently, and after it had passed away into a sighing, I could hear the husband’s voice through the wall. “There, there,” he would say, “there, there.”

  I would lie upon my back in my night bed and listen and wonder, and the calendar on my wall said August 2002. And the man and his wife, young, both about thirty, and fresh-looking, with light hair and blue eyes, but lines around their mouths, had just moved into the rooming house where I took my meals and worked as a janitor in the downtown library.

  Every night and every night it would be the same thing, the wife crying, and the husband quieting her with his soft voice beyond my wall. I would strain to hear what started it, but I could never tell. It wasn’t anything he said, I was positive of this, or anything he did. I was almost certain, in fact, that it started all by itself, late at night, about two o’clock. She would wake up, I theorized, and I would hear that first terrorized shriek and then the long crying. It made me sad. As old as I am, I hate to hear a woman cry.

  I remember the first night they came here, a month ago, an August evening here in this town deep in Illinois, all the houses dark and everyone on the porches licking ice-cream bars. I remember walking through the kitchen downstairs and standing in the old smells of cooking and hearing but not seeing the dog lapping water from the pan under the stove, a nocturnal sound, like water in a cave. And I walked on through to the parlor and in the dark, with his face devilish pink from exertion, Mr. Fiske, the landlord, was fretting over the air conditioner, which, damned thing, refused to work. Finally in the hot night he wandered outside onto the mosquito porch—it was made for mosquitoes only, Mr. Fiske averred, but went there anyway.

  I went out onto the porch and sat down and unwrapped a cigar to fire away my own special mosquitoes, and there were Grandma Fiske and Alice Fiske and Henry Fiske and Joseph Fiske and Bill Fiske and six other boarders and roomers, all unwrapping Eskimo pies.

  It was then that the man and his wife, as suddenly as if they had sprung up out of the wet dark grass, appeared at the bottom of the steps, looking up at us like the spectators in a summer night circus. They had no luggage. I always remembered that. They had no luggage. And their clothes did not seem to fit them.

  “Is there a place for food and sleep?” said the man, in a halting voice.

  Everyone was startled. Perhaps I was the one who saw them first, then Mrs. Fiske smiled and got out of her wicker chair and came forward. “Yes, we have rooms.”

  “How much is the money?” asked the man in the broiling dark.

  “Twenty dollars a day, with meals.”

  They did not seem to understand. They looked at each other.

  “Twenty dollars,” said Grandma.

  “We’ll move into here,” said the man.

  “Don’t you want to look first?” asked Mrs. Fiske.

  They came up the steps, looking back, as if someone was following them.

  That was the first night of the crying.

  BREAKFAST WAS SERVED EVERY MORNING at seven-thirty, large, toppling stacks of pancakes, huge jugs of syrup, islands of butter, toast, many pots of coffee, and cereal if you wished. I was working on my cereal when the new couple came down the stairs, slowly. They did not come into the dining room immediately, but I had a sense they were just looking at everything. Since Mrs. Fiske was busy I went in to fetch them, and there they were, the man and wife, just looking out the front window, looking and looking at the green grass and the big elm trees and the blue sky. Almost as if they had never seen them before.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  They ran their fingers over antimacassars or through the bead-curtain-rain that hung in the dining room doorway. Once I thought I saw them both smile very broadly at some secret thing. I asked them their name. At first they puzzled over this but then said,

  “Smith.”

  I introduced them around to everyone eating and they sat and looked at the food and at last began to eat.

  They spoke very little, and only when spoken to, and I had an opportunity to remark the beauty in their faces, for they had fine and graceful bone structures in their chins and cheeks and brows, good straight noses, and clear eyes, but always that tiredness about the mouths.

  Half through the breakfast, an event occurred to which I must call special attention. Mr. Britz, the garage mechanic, said, “Well, the president has been out fund-raising again today, I see by the paper.”

  The stranger, Mr. Smith, snorted angrily. “That terrible man! I’ve always hated Westercott.”

  Everyone looked at him. I stopped eating.

  Mrs. Smith frowned at her husband. He coughed slightly and went on eating.

  Mr. Britz scowled momentarily, and then we all finished breakfast, but I remember it now. What Mr. Smith had said was, “That terrible man! I’ve always hated Westercott.”

  I never forgot.

  THAT NIGHT SHE CRIED AGAIN, as if she was lost in the woods, and I stayed awake for an hour, thinking.

  There were so many things I suddenly wanted to ask them. And yet it was almost impossible to see them, for they stayed locked in the room constantly.

  The next day, however, was Saturday. I caught them momentarily in the garden looking at the pink roses, just standing and looking, not touching, and I said, “A fine day!”

  “A wonderful, wonderful day!” they both cried, almost in unison, and then laughed embarrassedly.

  “Oh, it can’t be that good.” I smiled.

  “You don’t know how good it is, you don’t know how wonderful it is—you can’t possibly guess,” she said, and then quite suddenly there were tears in her eyes.

  I stood bewildered. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes.” She blew her nose and went off a distance to pick a few flowers. I stood looking at the apple tree hung with red fruit, and at last I got the courage to inquire, “May I ask where you’re from, Mr. Smith?”

  “The United States,” he said slowly, as if piecing the words together.

  “Oh, I was rather under the impression that—”

  “We were from another country?”

  “Yes.”

  “We are from the United States.”

  “What’s your business, Mr. Smith?”

  “I think.”

  “I see,” I said, for all the answers were less than satisfactory. “Oh, by the way, what’s Westercott’s first name?”

  “Lionel,” said Mr. Smith, and then stared at me. The color left his face. He turned in a panic. “Please,” he cried, softly. “Why do you ask these questions?” They hurried into the house before I could apologize. From the stair window they looked out at me as if I were the spy of the world. I felt contemptible and ashamed.

  ON SUNDAY MORNING I helped clean the house. Ta
pping on the Smiths’ door I received no answer. Listening, for the first time, I heard the tickings, the little clicks and murmurs of numerous clocks working away quietly in the room. I stood entranced. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick! Two, no, three clocks. When I opened their door to fetch their wastepaper basket, I saw the clocks, arrayed, on the bureau, on the windowsill, and by the nightstand, small and large clocks, all set to this hour of the late morning, ticking like a roomful of insects.

  So many clocks. But why? I wondered. Mr. Smith had said he was a thinker.

  I took the wastebasket down to the incinerator. Inside the basket, as I was dumping it, I found one of her handkerchiefs. I fondled it for a moment, smelling the flower fragrance. Then I tossed it onto the fire.

  It did not burn.

  I poked at it and pushed it far back in the fire.

  But the handkerchief would not burn.

  In my room I took out my cigar lighter and touched it to the handkerchief. It would not burn, nor could I tear it.

  And then I considered their clothing. I realized why it had seemed peculiar. The cut was regular for men and women in this season, but in their coats and shirts and dresses and shoes, there was not one blessed seam anywhere!

  They came back out later that afternoon to walk in the garden. Peering from my high window I saw them standing together, holding hands, talking earnestly.

  It was then that the terrifying thing happened.

  A roar filled the sky. The woman looked into the sky, screamed, put her hands to her face, and collapsed. The man’s face turned white, he stared blindly at the sun, and he fell to his knees calling to his wife to get up, get up, but she lay there, hysterically.

  By the time I got downstairs to help, they had vanished. They had evidently run around one side of the house while I had gone around the other. The sky was empty, the roar had dwindled.

  Why, I thought, should a simple, ordinary sound of a plane flying unseen in the sky cause such terror?

  The airplane flew back a minute later and on the wings it said: COUNTY FAIR! ATTEND! RACING! FUN!

  That’s nothing to be afraid of, I thought.

  I passed their room at nine-thirty and the door was open. On the walls I saw three calendars lined up with the date August 18, 2035, prominently circled.