Margaret and I, page 1
MARGARET AND I
Kate Wilhelm
www.sfgateway.com
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Contents
Title Page
Gateway Introduction
Contents
Preface
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Website
Also by Kate Wilhelm
Dedication
About the Author
Copyright
“I am interested in Margaret, but I don’t really care…”
Margaret Oliver needs to get away to Aunt Josie’s and rest, to think about what to do with her insensitive, humorless husband.
But there is no rest—only “dreams?” at night and visions of Josie and her lover, Paul Tyson, during the day. When suddenly, Paul’s revolutionary explorations into the action of time approach the breakthrough point, there is Paul’s … suicide? accident? murder?
And all the while her subconscious is active, restless, goading her on, offering suggestions, trying to find out what is happening to Margaret… and why?
We have no knowledge of how this unconscious functions, but since it is conjectured to be a psychic system it may possibly have everything that consciousness has … If the unconscious can contain everything that is known to be a function of consciousness, then we are faced with the possibility that it too, like consciousness, possesses a subject, a sort of ego.
Individuation is complete when the conscious and the unconscious learn to know, respect, and accommodate each other.
C. G. Jung
Chapter 1
Even the subdivisions thinned out after Margaret passed Brookhaven, and she started to watch for the turnoff, to her left, that would take her to Josie’s house. They say that there used to be many large estates on this part of the island and perhaps they were still there, but from the highway they were invisible and, she suspected, long since abandoned, razed for the innumerable rows of houses and white concrete streets. It was hot that day; an out-of-season heat wave had come in to replace April’s sooty rains, and the expressway had been swarming with traffic, apparently headed toward Jones Beach. They separated, she to hew to her more northern route, the endless parade keeping right Brookhaven. She looked at the signs and what? She couldn’t remember if she thought about it. Then or not: I did and have since then, I know. So while I thought about atomic accidents and mutated brush, purple grasses, white leaves, disproportionately shaped trees, and such, she was preoccupied with watching for the turnoff, although it wasn’t even due for twenty miles. Bennett had said twenty miles. I tried to make her remember his words, but only succeeded in making her anxious, so I gave up and continued to consider Brookhaven. She was worrying about the narrowness of the road, hoping she wouldn’t meet a truck on it. And she had slowed down infernally. Not that I cared particularly. I studied the roadside, and noticed the clouds that were scudding now, and smelled the sea air, and let her worry about trucks.
I began watching for the turnoff, too, and if she missed it, I planned to give her an itch that wouldn’t let up for hours.
There were cliffs along her left, Margaret was thinking, with some surprise. Now and then there was a glimpse of the sound, and the air had changed in the past half hour or so, smelling of air that has been purified by hundreds of miles of interplay with salt spray and sun. She drove through Baiting Hollow with absolutely no awareness that in less than a tenth of a mile she would have to turn. I made her hands tighten, and she decided it must be near now. I made her slow down and make the turn, and then keep her eyes on the left to catch the first sight of the house from above it on the road, I could remember the entire scene with Bennett when he described this place, but, of course, she didn’t. She was pleasantly jolted when she saw the small gray building in front of boulders that almost dwarfed it, and the scraggly, wind-warped pines that shielded it from the constant sea wind. I shall call it the sea.
The road twisted and the view was gone. She didn’t see it again until she made a second turn, this time from the tertiary road that was pitted and gutted, to a driveway that was in even worse condition. It had heaved and cracked and thawed so many, times in the past that there were jumbles of macadam and deep gullies and hummocks of grasses. It led to the house and was passable, in low, if you had no need to get back out in a hurry. Margaret thought that perhaps she would never want to leave. She looked out the rearview mirror as she slipped and ground her way toward the house and already she was alone in the world. The poor road was out of sight; there was nothing but the boulders and the steep driveway and the house.
It was for the sea that she had come. She sat in the car when she brought it to a halt and stared out at the choppy water, blue green, gray, purple, whitecapped and rough at a shoals several hundred feet offshore, smooth and glassy on this side of the sandbars, wavelets which hardly even murmured as they touched the coarse sand shore. She found herself leaving the car. I took her toward the rocks that were tossed this way and that, and stood her on them with the wind whipping her skirt about her legs, feeling through her the sea and the air and the chill that erased the thoughts of the heat of the city and the long drive to this place. She listened to the quiet waves and the rustle of the grasses as blades rubbed and freed themselves only to rub abrasively again. It was too late for a swim, already the shadows were elongated and black, and the air was cooling very fast. Tomorrow, she promised, herself or the sea, and she wasn’t certain which. Tomorrow.
She opened the house then, not paying more than cursory attention to it yet. She hadn’t come for the house. Bennett had said it was very nice; he said the Metropolitan Museum was very nice; Buckingham Palace was very nice; his hotel room in Atlanta from which he had called her last night was very nice; Josie’s house was very nice. Later she would study it, pry, redecorate it in her mind, but then she was not interested. She scowled at the thoughts of Bennett that kept bobbing up. She had come here to think about Bennett, but not tonight. Not now.
She took the groceries from the car, studied the remaining driveway to the garage which had an apartment over it, and shook her head. It certainly was impassable. Bennett had told her not to leave the car out where the salt spray and blowing sand would pit the finish, but the driveway was nothing but holes. She turned and glanced at the length she had driven and saw, that there really was no difference. She finished unpacking the car, took her bags inside the house and left the car standing outside the door, where the wind would drive salt and sand against it and pit it and pit it and pit it.
Margaret was too tired to think, too tired to care that the house was wrapped in dust covers from end to end. I had her pull the sheets from the furniture and toss them in a corner; if she had no curiosity about the house, I did. I got her started on unpacking the groceries and through her eyes I examined the kitchen; As she put things away I wondered about the house, about Josie, why she had left it like this; I wondered about Bennett, what he was doing, and what Margaret would do next I didn’t care a lot I am interested, but don’t really care, unless she begins to go the route of drugs. I keep her away from them, when I can. Sleeping pills are the worst; they hit me harder than they do her. The others usually don’t touch me at all, but they make her try to get at me, sometimes, and that can be bothersome. She is so terribly afraid of me. If it weren’t for that those probes wouldn’t matter, might even be nice for both of us, but she is afraid of what shell find, and I can’t reassure her without bringing on the acute anxieties that make her reach for the sleeping pills: ouroboros. I wondered: if the worm got enough of his tail inside him, so that it reached the digestive juices, how much of himself would he digest before he died of auto-cannibalism?
Margaret lifted a bottle of bourbon from the last of the bags and stared at it as if she had forgotten that she had packed it herself. Suddenly she sat down hard, still clutching the bottle.
“God,” she whispered. “Oh, God, what am I doing?” She felt as if she had been asleep and stared about at the kitchen as if seeing it for the first time that evening. The same thoughts kept going around and around, drowning out everything else: she had to think about Bennett and her; she had to call him before eight; she had to eat something. At the thought of eating she realized that she hadn’t eaten since nine that morning, and then only toast and coffee.
Briskly she rummaged among the groceries she had put away in the refrigerator and brought out cold beef, lettuce and tomatoes, and a quart of milk. She was being determined so I left her alone. She made a sandwich and ate it as she wandered again through the house, carrying a glass of milk. Her room, in blue and white, nice … She said, ugh, at the word nice. He had her doing it. The room was comfortable, feminine, well furnished with a chaise longue, a chair, a large bed, a desk, dresser. A closet was half lull of clothes, all in dust bags. She would look them over the next day, she thought, closing the door. A partitioned bathroom led to a second bedroom, and this one was a man’s room. She pulled dust covers off to see the furniture. Brown and white, plain, larger than the first bedroom. She wandered through it to the hall, and I gave her a twinge and sent her back to look it over more carefully. She was almost finished with her sandwich, and was thinking about the coffee she had left on the stove. She saw little of the room, but I studied it very carefully. The bed was twin size, covered with a tailored spread; there was a very worn leather chair and a large desk with a drawing board tilted back on it, half a dozen pens in a brown mug. One wall was covered with shelves of books, a print and some blown-up astronomy pictures on another wall…
Margaret left the room again and once more felt the urge to return. There was something about it … She shrugged. Tomorrow.
I let her go and looked again at the bedroom, now a permanent part of my memory. It was the best room in the house, with a fireplace between double windows overlooking the sea and the rocks. The room had been used by someone who appreciated it. The leather chair was worn, but kept, probably always in that same spot where he could look up from his book and study the patterns of light and dark on the water. The rug had indentations; the chair belonged there, as the desk belonged where it was, and the ashtray on the desk, and the wastebasket by the desk. A swing-out typewriter? I made her put down her coffee and return to the bedroom and examine the desk more closely; there it was, complete with electric typewriter. She went back to the kitchen and finished eating then.
She was thinking about the room too, and as so often happens when her thoughts echo mine, there was a good bit of carryover. That was the middle ground where I feel that I can almost get through to her, or let her come into me.
She and Bennett had talked of Josie now and then, but she could remember little of what he had told her about his aunt Josie Oliver was his old maid aunt, he had said jokingly once: Josie Oliver, the famous theater designer.
“She pulled out the year before we got married,” Bennett had said. “No one knows why. She never said. But she’s in London now, and the house is standing there vacant, and she says that we are welcome to it anytime.”
That was all that Margaret could remember of Josie Oliver. But Bennett’s old maid aunt holed up in a country house with a man? Who was he, where was he? Why hadn’t they married? Margaret frowned, wondering if Bennett knew anything about this. I knew that he didn’t. He would never have permitted his wife to come into the house if he had known. The thought made her uneasy and she pushed it aside.
I had a lot more about Josie than she did, but none of it added to any more than she had reached: the pages of Bennett’s album that had ads for various shows that Josie had designed sets and costumes for; a few cards she had sent him when he was younger; a note or two. I looked again at her decisive handwriting, bold, self-assured, half script, half print, all her very own. No picture. I never had seen her or a picture of her. Bennett’s description: “She’s two or three years older than I am”—he was now forty—“rather pretty, or was a few years ago, taller than you, but not very much, thin, smokes like a train, with long skinny fingers. I remembered her fingers. She loved rings, great big flashy ones, wore them all the time. She lost one of them at our house once and there was hell for a week until it was found, turned out that it was a real emerald.”
That was Josie. Her room had been stripped of personal things: her books were gone, her art materials, her accessories had been cleared from the bathroom and the dresser in her room. But his, the man’s, things were all there, just as he must have left them. Why? I knew she would hear the telephone ring in a moment or two, and that it was seven-thirty then, and that Margaret had to call Bennett before eight. Also, she was getting cool, and she was afraid to turn on the furnace.
The telephone rang and Margaret jerked at the sound. I would have warned her if I’d been able to. Sometimes I can, but not usually.
“Hello,” she said, almost in a whisper, not wanting to hear her own voice in that quiet house.
“Miss Oliver? This is Gus Dyerman. Everything all right up to the house?”
Margaret stared blankly at the phone. Gus Dyerman, the grocer that the agent said would check. Why didn’t the fool remember? She didn’t, not at all. She made a noise that could have meant anything and he said:
“I wanted to tell you that I put some logs on the back stoop for you. And m’boy Harry’ll be there first thing in the morning to light your furnace, less’n you want him to do it tonight. Don’t ’spect it’ll get very cold tonight though, do you?”
“No, not at all. It’s fine,” Margaret said. She didn’t know what to call him. He had slurred his name and she wasn’t even sure of what or who he was.
“Yes’m. If you want anything, want Harry to bring up anything, you just call, you hear? Nice lamb chops came in today, and some good Boston lettuce….”
“I don’t think, I mean … Yes, I’ll call, if I think of anything….”
“Better take down my new number, Miss Oliver. It’s 378-9402. You got that?”
“Yes,” Margaret said, almost desperately, “but I’m not…”
“I’ll just send up a few things that I recall you used to like, nice berries up from the South, and some cream, and eggs. Anything you don’ need, just send back with Harry. Won’t bother you no more tonight, Miss Oliver. Glad to have you back again, ma’am.”
Margaret sat holding the still phone and finally laughed. “Just what the hell difference does it make?” she said. She would straighten it out the next day, or someday. She glanced at her watch and dialed the hotel in Atlanta where Bennett was staying.
“Hello, dear, I’m here.” Margaret forced gaiety into her voice.
“Good. Everything all set then? Is the electricity turned on, the furnace, and everything?” “Yes. Everything’s fine.”
“Good. You get some rest and I’ll try to get up in the middle of the week. I can’t promise yet, though. Did you catch the evening news?”
“No, I forgot … I was just getting in,” she added quickly.
“Okay, but try to get the late news. We made all the networks. Greeley’s in great form. Tomorrow we’re off to Birmingham….”
I could see Bennett, crisp white shirt, black tie, spotless black tuxedo, his hair so precise it might have been painted on. No man named Arnold, I thought at Margaret forcefully, will ever become President. Margaret thought how much she disliked Arnold Greeley; she said, “Let me know where you are in Birmingham. I won’t try to call you again. It will be much easier if you just call here from time to time. I’ll be here.”
Pictures of Bennett flashed on and off in her mind: Bennett smiling at her, his glasses hiding his eyes behind reflections of twin lamps, his lips curved showing his gorgeous teeth. Bennett gorgeous, phoney but gorgeous, right out of a poster of the most successful man of his time, with painted-on hair and eyes that hid behind glasses and teeth that made dentists envious. Bennett turning off the light before touching her. Bennett coming in late, groping for her in the dark, finishing with her quickly, falling asleep, not knowing, or caring, if she slept then, or if she crept from the bed…. Bennett, sleeping, mouth partly open, trickle of drool.
