They Call Me Patrice

“Suppose I go to them of my own accord right now and tell them of this conversation we’ve just been having? My brother-in-law would go looking for you and beat you within an inch of your life.”

“We’ll let the relationship stand unchallenged. I wonder why women put such undue faith in a beating? Maybe because they’re not used to violence themselves. A beating doesn’t mean much to a man. Half an hour after it’s over, he’s as good as he was before.”

“You should know,” she murmured.

He tapped a finger to the tips of three others. “There are three alternatives. You go to them and tell them. Or I go to them and tell them. Or we remain in status quo. By which I mean, you do me a favor and then we drop the whole thing. But there isn’t any fourth alternative.”

He was too cold about the whole thing, that was the dangerous feature. No heat, no impulse, no emotion to cloud the issue. Everything planned, plotted, graphed, charted. Every step. Even the notes. She knew their purpose now. Not poison-pen letters at all. They had been important to the long-term scheme of the thing. Psychological warfare, nerve warfare, breaking her down ahead of time, toppling her resistance before the main attack had even been made.

“There’s no villain in this. Let’s get rid of the Victorian trappings. It’s just a business transaction. It’s no different from taking out insurance, really.” He turned to her with an assumption of candor that was almost charming for a moment. “Don’t you want to be practical about it?”

“I suppose so. I suppose I should meet you on your own ground.” She didn’t try to project her contempt: it would have failed to reach him.

“If you get rid of these stuffy fetishes of virtue and villainy, of black and white, the whole thing becomes so simple it’s not even worth the quarter of an hour we’re devoting to it now.”

“I have no money of my own, Steve.” Capitulation. Submission.

“They’re one of the wealthiest families in town; that’s common knowledge. Why be technical about it? Get them to open an account for you. You’re not a child.”

“I couldn’t ask them outright to do such a—”

“You don’t ask. There are ways. You’re a woman, aren’t you? It’s easy enough. A woman knows how to go about those things—”

“I’d like to go now,” she said, reaching blindly for the doorhandle.

“Do we understand one another?” He opened it for her. “I’ll give you another ring after awhile,” He paused a moment. The threat was so impalpable there was not even a change of inflection in the lazy drawl. “Don’t neglect it, Patrice.”

She got out. The crack of the door was the slap in the face she would have loved to administer.

“Good night, Patrice,” he drawled after her amiably.

“It was perfectly plain,” she was saying animatedly. “It had a belt of the same material, and then a row of buttons down to about here.”

She was purposely addressing herself to Mother Hazzard, to the exclusion of the two men members of the family. Well, the topic in itself was excuse enough for that.

“For heaven’s sake, why didn’t you take it?”

“I couldn’t do that,” she said reluctantly. She stopped a moment, then added: “Not right — then and there.”

They must have thought the expression on her face was wistful disappointment. It wasn’t. It was self-disgust. How defenseless those who love you are against you, she thought bitterly.

Father Hazzard cut into the conversation. “Why didn’t you just charge it up and have it sent?”

She let her eyes drop. “I wouldn’t have wanted to do that.”

“Nonsense—” He stopped suddenly. Almost as though someone had trodden briefly on his foot under the table.

“I think I hear Hugh crying,” she said, and flung down her napkin and ran out to the stairs to listen.

But in the act of listening upwards, she couldn’t avoid overhearing Mother Hazzard’s guarded voice.

“Donald Hazzard, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. Do you men have to be told everything? Haven’t you got a grain of tact in your heads?”

In the morning Father Hazzard lingered on at the breakfast table, instead of leaving early with Bill. He sat quietly reading his newspaper while she finished her coffee. There was just a touch of secretive self-satisfaction in his attitude, she thought.

He rose when she did. “Get your hat and coat, Pat. I want you to come with me in the car. This young lady and I have business downtown,” he announced to Mother Hazzard. The latter tried, not altogether successfully, to look blankly bewildered.

“But what about the baby’s feeding?” Patrice protested.

“You’ll be back in time for that. I’m just borrowing you.”

She got in the car next to him a moment later and they started off.

“Did poor Bill have to walk to the office this morning?” she asked.

“Poor Bill indeed!” he scoffed. “Do him good, the big lug. If I had those long legs of his, I’d walk every morning.”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Now just never you mind. No questions. Just wait’ll we get there, and you’ll see.”

They stopped in front of the bank. He motioned her out and led her inside with him.