Free The Black House by Patricia Highsmith Page A

during that week when the well-mended basket had been in her possession. But she was determined not to say anything more about it to Reg. He had been on the verge of impatience that Saturday before the Sunday when she had burned it. And in fact could she even put any more into words? No. So she had to stop thinking about it. Yes.

Under a Dark Angel’s Eye
    N ow he was on the last leg of his journey, the bus stretch from the airport to Arlington Hills. There would be nobody to meet him at the bus terminal, and Lee didn’t mind in the least. In fact he preferred it. He could walk with his small suitcase the four or five blocks to the Capitol Hotel (he assumed it was still functioning), check in, then telephone Winston Greeves to say he had arrived. Maybe they could even wind up the business with the lawyer today, because it would be only four in the afternoon by the time Lee would be phoning Winston. It was a matter of signing a paper in regard to the house where Lee Mandeville had been born. Lee owned it, and now he had to sell it, because he needed the money. He didn’t care, he wasn’t sentimental about the two-story white house with the green lawn in front. Or was he? Lee honestly didn’t think so. He’d had some nasty, unpleasant hours in that house, as well as a few happy ones—a barefoot boyhood, tossing a football with chums from the neighborhood on the front lawn. He had lost Louise there, too.
    Lee shifted in his seat, rested his cheek against his hand which was lightly closed in a fist, and stared out the window at the Indiana landscape that drifted past. He barely recognized a small town they were going through. How long had it been, nine, no ten years since he had been to Arlington Hills. Ten years ago he had come to visit his mother in the nursing home called the Hearthside, and she had either not recognized him or pretended not to, or had really thought he was someone else. At any rate she had managed to come out with “Don’t come back!” just as he had been going out the door of her room. Winston who had accompanied Lee had chuckled and shaken his head, as if to say, “What can you do with the old folks—except put up with them?”
    Yes, they lived on forever these days. Doctors didn’t let old people die, not as long as there were pills, injections, kidney machines, new drugs, all costing dearly. That was why Lee had to sell the house. For twelve years, since his mother had entered the nursing home, the house had been rented to a couple whose two children were in their teens now. Lee had never charged them much rent, because they couldn’t afford a high rent, and Lee valued their reliability. But Lee’s mother was now costing between five and six hundred dollars a week, her savings had run out five years ago, and Lee had borne the burden ever since, though Medicare paid some of it. His mother Edna wasn’t ill, but she did need certain pills, tranquilizers alternating with pick-ups, plus checkups and special vitamins. Lee paid little attention to his mother’s health, because it stayed the same year after year. She was ambulant but crochety, and never wrote to Lee, because he didn’t write to her. Even before the nursing home, she had cursed Lee out by letter for imaginary faults and deeds, so Lee had washed his hands of his mother, except to pay her bills. An offspring owed that to a parent, Lee believed, just as a parent owed to a child love, care, and as much education as the parent could afford. Children were expensive and time-consuming, but the parents certainly were repaid when they became elderly and imposed the same burdens on their children.
    Lee Mandeville was fifty-five, unmarried, and had a modestly successful antique shop in Chicago. He dealt in old furniture, a few good carpets, old pictures and frames, brass and silver items and silverware also. He was by no means a big wheel in the antique business, but he was known and