Free Radicals 5 страница

He had counted on this, I thought. That they would not suspect me, thinking of his being in charge. And in fact he was.

“We have to get in,” said Roxanne. She gave a kick to the door.

“Stop that,” said Old Mrs. Crozier. “Do you want to wreck the door? You couldn’t get through it anyway; it’s solid oak. Every door in this house is solid oak.”

“Then we have to get the police.”

There was a pause.

“They could get up to the window,” said Roxanne.

Old Mrs. Crozier drew in her breath and spoke decisively.

“You do not know what you are saying. I won’t have the police in this house. I won’t have them climbing all over my walls like caterpillars.”

“We don’t know what he could be doing in there.”

“Well, then, that’s up to him. Isn’t it?”

Another pause.

Now steps-Roxanne’s-retreating to the back staircase.

“Yes, you better,” said Mrs. Crozier. “You better just take yourself away before you forget whose house this is.”

Roxanne was going down the stairs. A couple of stomps of the stick went after her but did not continue down.

“And don’t get the idea you’ll go to the constable behind my back. He’s not going to take his orders from you. Who gives the orders around here anyway? It’s certainly not you. You hear me?”

Very soon I heard the kitchen door slam shut. And then Roxanne’s car start.

I was no more worried about the police than Old Mrs. Crozier was. The police in our town meant Constable McClarty who came to the school to warn us about sledding on the streets in the winter and swimming in the millrace in summer, both of which we continued to do. It was ridiculous to think of him climbing up on a ladder or lecturing Mr. Crozier through a locked door.

He would tell Roxanne to mind her own business and let the Croziers mind theirs.

It was not ridiculous, however, to think of Old Mrs. Crozier giving orders, and I thought she might do so now that Roxanne-whom she apparently did not like anymore-was gone. She might turn on me and demand to know if I had anything to do with this.

But she did not even rattle the knob. She just stood at the locked door and said one thing.

“Stronger than you’d think,” she muttered.

Then made her way downstairs. The usual punishing noises with her steady stick.

I waited awhile and then I went out to the kitchen. Old Mrs. Crozier wasn’t there. She wasn’t in either parlor or in the dining room or the sunroom. I got up my nerve and knocked on the toilet door, then opened it, and she was not there either. Then I looked out the window over the kitchen sink and I saw her straw hat moving along slowly above the cedar hedge. She was out in the garden in the heat, stumping along between her flower beds.

I was not worried by the thought that had troubled Roxanne. I did not stop to consider it, because I believed that it would be quite absurd for a person with only a short time to live to commit suicide. It could not happen.

All the same, I was nervous. I ate two of the macaroons that were still sitting on the kitchen table. I ate them hoping that pleasure would bring back normalcy, but I barely tasted them. Then I shoved the box into the refrigerator so I would not hope to turn the trick by eating more.

Old Mrs. Crozier was still outside when Sylvia got home. And she didn’t come in then.

I got the key from between the pages of the book as soon as I heard the car and I gave it to Sylvia as soon as she was in the house. I just told her quickly what had happened, leaving out most of the fuss. She would not have waited to listen to that, anyway. She went running upstairs.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs to hear what I could hear.

Nothing. Nothing.

Then Sylvia’s voice, surprised and upset but in no way desperate, and too low for me to make out what she was saying. Within about five minutes she was downstairs, saying it was time to get me home. She was flushed as if the spots in her cheeks had spread all over her face, and she looked shocked but unable to resist her happiness.

Then, “Oh. Where is Mother Crozier?”

“In the flower garden, I think.”

“Well, I suppose I better speak to her, just for a moment.”

After she had done that, she no longer looked quite so happy.

“I suppose you know,” she said as she backed out the car, “I suppose you can imagine Mother Crozier is upset. Not that I am blaming you. It was very good and loyal of you. Doing what Mr. Crozier asked you to do. You weren’t scared of anything happening? With Mr. Crozier? Were you?”

I said no.

Then I said, “I think Roxanne was.”

“Mrs. Hoy? Yes. That’s too bad.”

As we were driving down what was known as Croziers’ Hill she said, “I don’t think he wanted to be mean and frighten them. You know when you’re sick, sick for a long time, you can get not to appreciate other people’s feelings. You can get turned against people even when they’re so good and doing what they can to help you. Mrs. Crozier and Mrs. Hoy were certainly trying their best, but Mr. Crozier just didn’t feel that he wanted them around anymore. He’d just had enough of them. You understand?”

She did not seem to know she was smiling when she said this.

Mrs. Hoy.

Had I ever heard that name before?

And spoken so gently and respectfully, yet with light-years’ condescension.

Did I believe what Sylvia had said?

I believed it was what he had told her.

I did see Roxanne again that day. I saw her at the very time that Sylvia was talking to me and introducing to me this new name. Mrs. Hoy.

She-Roxanne-was in her car and she had stopped at the first cross street at the bottom of Croziers’ Hill to watch us drive by. I didn’t turn to look at her because it was all too confusing, with Sylvia talking to me.

Of course Sylvia would not know whose car that was. She wouldn’t know that Roxanne must have come back to get an idea of what was going on. Or that maybe she had kept driving around the block-could she have done that?-all the time since she had left the Croziers’ house.

Roxanne would recognize Sylvia’s car, probably. She would notice me. She would know that things must be all right, from the kindly, serious, faintly smiling way that Sylvia was talking to me.

She didn’t turn the corner and drive back up the hill to the Croziers’ house. Oh no. She drove across the street-I watched in the rearview mirror-towards the east part of town where the wartime houses had been put up. That was where she lived.

“Feel the breeze,” said Sylvia. “Maybe those clouds are going to bring us rain.”

The clouds were high and white, glaring; they looked nothing like rain clouds; and the breeze was because we were in a moving car with the windows rolled down.

· · ·

I understood pretty well the winning and losing that had taken place, between Sylvia and Roxanne, but it was strange to think of the almost obliterated prize, Mr. Crozier-and to think that he could have had the will to make a decision, even to deprive himself, so late in his life. The carnality at death’s door-or the true love, for that matter-were things I had to shake off with shivers down my spine.

Sylvia took Mr. Crozier away to a rented cottage on the lake, where he died sometime before the leaves were off.

The Hoy family moved on, as mechanics’ families often did.

My mother struggled with a crippling disease, which put an end to all her moneymaking dreams.

Dorothy Crozier had a stroke, but recovered, and famously bought Halloween candy for the children whose older brothers and sisters she had ordered from her door.

I grew up, and old.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29