Just the note I had in mind, Leonard said.
How did you find me, Charlotte said.
Never mind how I found you. I always find you. What about the baby.
The baby is you hit that girl in the head.
Youre on pills, Warren said. You dont know what youre talking about.
Dont let that stop you, Leonard said. Pitch her another life decision.
He doesnt want you to see the baby, Warren said. Does he.
No, Leonard said. I dont. The topic is now closed. Now were going to limit our remarks to areas in which Charlotte has no immediate interest. Sex. Politics. Religion. All right?
You dont know anything about Charlotte, Warren said. Charlotte could smell bay rum. Bay rum and cigar smoke. Warren. You never did.
Charlotte tried to focus on the tight pink balls of peony blossom.
He wants you to walk away, Warren said.
The tight pink balls seemed to swell as she watched them. The babys head would swell if the baby lived but the baby could not live. They had told her so. The doctors. Leonard too. If Leonard had told her about the baby then Leonard had been in the room before, she had just forgotten.
He wants you to walk away from here the same way you walked away from everything else in your life.
You hit that girl in the head. You dont take care of anybody.
Im taking care of you right now. Im telling you not to walk away.
I never did, Charlotte said.
How could I leave you, Warren said. The same way you left everybody. How-could-I-leave-you-let-me-count-the ways.
She closed her eyes against the obscene peonies.
Never mind whether I take care of you, Warren said. You can take care of me.
Cut her loose, Leonard said.
She doesnt want to be loose, Warren said.
The peonies were swelling behind her eyelids.
It doesnt matter whether you take care of somebody or somebody takes care of you, Warren said. Its the same thing in the end. Its all the same.
You had your shot, Leonard said.
She kept her eyes closed and she heard their voices ugly and raised and by the time the voices were normal again the peonies had burst behind her eyelids and the warm drugs were pulling her back under and she knew what she was going to do. She was not going to do what they wanted her to do. She was not even sure what they wanted her to do but she was not going to do it.
Tell her I said its all the same, she heard Warren say to Leonard.
She was going to leave here alone with her baby.
You want her to watch you die, she heard Leonard say to Warren.
She was going to let her baby die with her.
Never mind what I want, she heard Warren say to Leonard. Just tell her I said its all the same. Tell her that for me.
4
WHEN I CONSIDER THE PATTERN OF THEIR DAYS AND nights during those five months I see again that nothing outside that pattern happened at the Mountain Brook Country Club.
I wonder again why Charlotte left that night and not some other.
Charlotte could never tell me.
But I had to leave, Charlotte would repeat, as if until ten minutes past eleven P.M. on the eighteenth of July there had been some imperative to her staying. Hed been with this girl and hed hurt her and he was acting crazy. After I left the Clarks took her to the hospital, she had a concussion. Mild.
Had not other such evenings occurred during those five months?
Charlotte said that she could not remember.
Bear in mind that I am talking here about a woman I believe to have been in shock.
Everywhere they went during those five months they ended up staying in a motel. Charlotte did remember the motels. They had stayed a while with Howard Hollerith in Greenville and they had stayed a while with Billy Daikin in Clarksdale and they had stayed a while with other people in other places but after a certain kind of evening they would always move to a motel. Usually Warren would not be present during the early part of this certain kind of evening. Usually Warren would be upriver or downriver or across the county with their hosts wife or sister or recently divorced niece. Never daughter. Warren never went upriver or downriver or across the county with the daughter of a host.
Charlotte learned early to recognize the advent of such an evening.
For the day or two before such an evening Warren would announce his inability to sleep.
Im restless, Im wired, I got the mean reds, he would say.
Dont cross me, he would say.
Dont mess with me, he would say.
For the day or two before such an evening their host would announce his inability to provide minor but key aspects of his normal hospitality.
Wouldnt be surprised Warrens used up all those Peychaud bitters he cant take a drink without, what a shame, cant buy them up here.
Damn that plumber, cant get here before Tuesday, daresay youll be glad to get somewhere theyve got the pipes in working order.
A familiar drift would emerge. Not only toilets but guest-room telephones would go out of order. Men would arrive to drain the swimming pool. Suggestions would be made for traveling before the rain set in, or the heat, or the projected work on the Interstate. Reminders would be made about promises to visit Charlie Ferris in Oxford, or Miss Anne Clary on the Gulf.
Doors would be closed.
Voices would be raised.
The evening itself would begin uneasily and end badly.
Hope Warren has the courtesy to leave a little something for old Jennie, all the extra picking up shes done, you might remind him, Charlotte. Or isnt that the custom where you come from.
And: Most interesting the way men where you come from allow their wives to traipse around as they please, must be very advanced thinkers in California.
And then: The idea, your friend Warren going off and leaving you here alone, might not matter to you but it matters to me, a man insults a lady in my house he insults me. You wouldnt understand that, Mrs. Douglas, Im certain its all free and easy where your people come from.
And finally: You say youre going to bed and fuck it, Mrs. Douglas, I believe that is your name, just what am I meant to conclude? Am I meant to conclude theres a woman in my house whos certifiable? Or did my ears deceive me.
After Charlotte went to bed there would be silence for a few hours and then more raised voices, Warrens among them, and Charlotte would bury her head in one pillow and put another over her belly so the baby could not hear and the next day she and Warren would move to a motel.
I dont like these people, she said to Warren after one such evening. I dont like them and I dont want to be beholden to them.
Youre not beholden to anybody. Youre too used to Arabs and Jews, you dont know how normal people behave.
I cant help noticing Arabs and Jews are rather less insulting to their houseguests.
Not to this houseguest they wouldnt be, babe. In the wreckage of these visits Warren seemed unfailingly cheerful. You show me an Arab wholl put up with me, Ill show you an Arab doesnt get the picture.
In all those motels he wanted the curtains shut in the daytime.
In all those motels she would sit in the dark room a while and watch him sleep.
It seemed to her that toward the end of the five months they had spent more time in motels than toward the beginning of the five months but she could not be sure. Warren always paid for the rooms with crumpled bills fished from various of his pockets and she paid for meals, when they ate meals. She ate regularly, usually alone. She forced herself to eat, just as she forced herself to take her calcium and see an obstetrician in any town where they spent more than a day or two. There was no need for her to see an obstetrician that often but she wanted to have a number she could call in the middle of the night. An obstetrician would not question her reason for seeing him. An obstetrician was the logical doctor to see.
Youre sick, she had said the first time she saw Warren gray and sweating. He had swerved abruptly off the highway and stopped the car on the shoulder. Youre sick and you need a doctor.
Not going running to any doctor. His breathing was harsh and shallow and he did not seem to have strength to turn off the ignition. Not sick. Ran over a moccasin is all.
They sat in the idling car until his breathing evened out. He did not speak again but took her hand. When he finally put the car into gear and drove on she glanced back at the highway but of course there was no moccasin. It was after that day when she began to find an obstetrician in every town, began to get the questions done with early and the telephone number in hand. Some night in some town she was going to need to call a doctor and ask him for something and she wanted that doctor to take her call. She did not let her mind form the word cancer and she did not let her mind form the word dying but the word Demerol was always in her mind. She had not been there when her father died but Pete Wright had told her about the Demerol, the night they had dinner at the Palm.
5
SOMETIMES SHE WOULD LEAVE THE MOTEL DURING THE day. She would leave Warren sleeping and take the car and drive down the main street of whatever town it was and look for somewhere to spend an hour. She remembered sitting in the library in Demopolis, Alabama, every afternoon for most of a week. She had read back newspapers in the Demopolis library. She had followed the progress in the newspapers of a Greene County murder trial which had taken place some months before. They left Demopolis before she got to the verdict and when she asked the woman at the motel desk if she recalled how the trial came out the woman said curiosity killed the cat. She remembered having her nails manicured in a pine town above Mobile by a child who looked like Marin but was fifteen and married to a logger and running her mothers beauty shop in a trailer. She remembered drinking chocolate Cokes at the counter of the Trailways station in Pass Christian and reading an Associated Press story about the continuing search for Marin Bogart and she remembered leaving the paper on the counter and staring out at the dark glare off the Gulf. She remembered drinking chocolate Cokes at the counter of the Trailways station in a lot of towns. She remembered staring at the Gulf in a lot of towns. She remembered the Associated Press quoting Leonard as saying that she was traveling with friends.