Pity Him Afterwards

“Six-thirty. And no, I don’t. But there is a lot to do, and I don’t think I’ll get much chance to work later on today.” She smiled and patted his arm. “Come on, I’ll make you that coffee.”

They headed back for the house and he said, “What do you do here, anyway? I mean, I know what you do, publicity and assistant director and all that, but how come? You want to be an actress?”

“No, sillier than that.” She seemed less her practical self all at once, younger and more shy.

When she didn’t go on, he prodded her, saying, “Such as what?”

“Director.” She said it so softly, so hesitantly, that he could hardly hear the word; but once it was out, she strengthened, and the words came out of her in a sudden rush. “I want to be a director, Mel. I know, women aren’t even supposed to think that way, but that’s what I want. I have so many ideas, things I want to do— I have playbooks home, hundreds of them, full of staging directions, blocked down to every turn, every step. I have cast lists — you wouldn’t believe some of my casting, some of the plays and people I’d like to bring together. And movies!”

They were standing now on the porch, but they weren’t getting any closer to the kitchen. She stood there in front of the door, her face animated, her words quick and jumbled, her hands gesturing every which way as she talked. “There are so many things that haven’t even been tried! I go to a movie, and I look at a scene, and I say to myself, why didn’t they do it this way, why didn’t they put the camera here or here, why didn’t they get a set that, that— Oh, I don’t know, it’s just, just — I see it all so different! And when I watch Ralph work — he’s an awfully good director, Mel, he really is, but I watch him, and I think, why not have the actors do this or this, why not— You know who’s my ideal? Margo Jones, that’s who. To have my own theater, my own theater, and direct, find new plays, and new ways to do them, new, new — new approaches. I have it all in my head, and I’m learning more every day, and I don’t care what I do, I’ll do publicity or get coffee or hold the prompt book, I don’t care, just so I — just to be near it and keep on learning. Do you see?”

It was too early in the day for Mel to see much of anything clearly, but he did understand the intensity in her, and he reacted to it as he always reacted to selfless intensity, with a desire to be helpful and a feeling of sadness, because this kind of flame so rarely survived for very long, in a world that had no real use for such warmth. His voice was more serious — and compassionate — than he’d expected, as he said, “Then you ought to be in New York. You won’t get anywhere here.”

“Margo Jones didn’t work in New York, she worked in Dallas.”

“She worked in New York sometimes, and Cartier Isle is no Dallas.”

All at once, she slumped, as though already tasting defeat. “I know,” she said. “But I’m a coward. I’m twenty-two; if I’m ever going to get started it’s got to be now. But you can’t imagine how New York scares me, Mel. Here, I can make believe I’m still learning, still storing up knowledge, still getting ready for the big day. But to go to New York— I wouldn’t know anybody, I wouldn’t know where to start or what to do. If I wanted to be an actress, I could start out with little parts, I suppose, and build up. But there aren’t any minor roles for directors, there just aren’t.”

“Have you ever directed anything?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing.” She shook her head in irritation. “Just high school, and little shows at church, and sometimes I’ve taken over scenes for Ralph here, that’s all.”

“Well, you’ve met people here, people from New York. Can’t you make any contacts here, people who could help you when you got to New York, or introduce you to somebody else who could help you?”

“I don’t know, I suppose—” She shook her head. “I’m just a coward, that’s all. I don’t know if I’ll ever go or not. Maybe I’ll just start the Cartier Isle Little Theater for the winter season, and keep on doing publicity here in the summer, and die as the seventy-three-year-old town kook. Come on, I’ll make you some coffee.” She pushed open the door, and started down the hallway toward the kitchen.

He followed her, saying, “Listen, why not go to—?”

“No, don’t. I don’t want to talk about it any more. Not right now.”

“Later on.”

“All right, later on.”

They pushed open the swing door and went into the kitchen, and both of them saw it at the same time.

The kitchen table. Covered with red pulp, with an obscene red mass of lumpy sticky pulp, as though raw meat had been chopped up into tiny bits, and blood poured over it, and the whole mess had half coagulated, had started to scab over.

And scrawled through it, wavy jerky lines, narrow lines showing the table top beneath, the lines reading:

BOBBY DID IT