The Marchand Woman

Can you tell us how it feels.… Have you been told if anything has been learned.… What sort of boy was he.… Your reaction to the Venezuelan delay that may have cost your son his life.… How does it feel?

She screamed. “You fucking hyenas!” knowing the obscenity would render their films and recordings useless.

Howard was booming calmly, “Give us a break, this is no time.…” His voice was lost in the babble.

He fed her into the car; she punched the lock button down and stared ahead stonily. Like slavering kids at a candy store window they pressed up against the windshield. She held herself rigid. Flashbulbs exploded. One of the reporters stumbled against the car, making it rock. Howard fought his way around and squeezed into the driver’s seat. When he turned the key in the ignition she said, “Run them down.”

“Take it easy. We’ll be out of this in a minute.” He gu

“I know. I know.” He pulled up at a red light. “Look, we’d better drive up to Beaumont and catch a plane there. They might be covering the airport here.”

“You go ahead. Drop me by a taxi. I’ll check into a motel.”

“What’s the point of hanging on here?”

“I’m going to wait and fly back to Virginia with the body when they’re finished with it.”

“That’s morbid.”

“One of us has to do it.”

“They’ll send it on. We’ve got to get back to Alexandria—the funeral arrangements have to be made.…”

“You go ahead then.”

“It’s something else, isn’t it?”

She said, “In all the madness I didn’t really get a chance to talk to that Marine.”

“You won’t get a crack at him for weeks, Carole. He’ll be closeted in debriefing sessions with the others. They won’t let him talk to outsiders until they’ve squeezed him dry—they may not even let him talk afterward.”

“I have to know,” she said.

“There’s a better chance of that in Washington than there is here. At least we may be able to squeeze some information out of O’Hillary.”

“There’s a taxi. Pull over.”

“Nonsense,” he said. “If you’re determined I’ll take you to a hotel. Any preference?”

“I’ve never been in Houston in my life. How do I know?”

The car’s air conditioner blew a dry chill against her face. The street was a wide boulevard lined with structures that looked tentative and temporary; it might have been Los Angeles. Traffic endlessly streaming. Life goes on, she thought with bitter banality.

At the first motor hotel she said, “That one will do,” not caring; Howard pulled in under the porte-cochere and opened the trunk to get out her overnight bag. The heat was close and depressingly heavy.

By the room, key in hand, she said, “Go ahead. I’ll be all right. I’ve got phone calls to make.” She opened it and pushed inside.

“I don’t like leaving you just now.”

She turned, lurching; walked blindly toward a door.

“Where are you going?”

“The bathroom,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’m all right.”

“Don’t go. Stay here.”

“Howard, I’m going to make a fool of myself and cry.”

“Fine. I’d rather you cried here with me than by yourself in there.”

She sat down. “I’m sorry to be such a fool. I’ll get over it in a minute.”

“Suppose I stay on a while. I can take a late-night flight. Let’s have di

“I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve just remembered I have a terrible headache.”

He pressed his hands together until she heard the knuckles crack. “I wish I knew what to do for you.”

“Nothing. I’ll be all right. You can depart with a clear conscience.”

“Please don’t be like that.”

“I’m sorry.” She was too exhausted to argue.

“Look, if there’s anything—”

“The fact is right now at the moment I’m unable to meet the emotional demands of this and I need to be left alone to collect myself. If you stay much longer we’ll start degrading each other.”

After he left she went to the window and watched his car until he got into it and drove away into the traffic. Failing to collect her thoughts she attempted to rest but her eyes wouldn’t stay shut and finally she made a number of phone calls trying to arrange a meeting with the Marine but everything was shut to her.

Then she had a half-formed idea. There’d been a dimly familiar face in that mob of journalists on the steps. She went back to the phone. It required three calls. One to Los Angeles Information; armed with the number she called the L.A. paper; armed by the Examiner with a Houston number she called Dwiggins’ hotel.

Dwiggins arrived in something under twenty minutes and gave her a baffled smile.

“Come in,” she said, “I’m unarmed.”

“Why me?”

“Because I want something from you.”

“Quid pro quo?”

“Yes. You can have an interview if you think it’s worth it.”

“You’re front-page copy right now. Celebrity mother of terrorist victim.” He came in but seemed hesitant about shutting the door. She made a vague gesture and he closed it and crossed gingerly to a chair where he sat up on the edge like an expectant pupil.

Dwiggins was fortyish and quite fat, his hair prematurely white and wispy; he had a journalistically bibulous nose and wry eyes that had seen everything.

She said, “I noticed you in that lynch mob but it didn’t register until afterward.”

“I’m flattered you remember me at all.”

“Your column on me wasn’t particularly friendly, as I recall—something about me being the apostate leader of a new wave of sentimentality and cornball trash—but you did me the extraordinary courtesy of printing what I’d actually said in the interview. I find that unique.”

He dipped his head an inch. “Thank you.”

“Are you also old-fashioned enough to honor an agreement to keep something off the record?”

“If the agreement is made beforehand. I won’t print anything without your permission.”

“You won’t even discuss it among your friends. Fair enough?”

“All right. But—”

“The quid pro quo, I know. I’ll give you an interview you can print. This is something else.”

Dwiggins acceded with a dip of his broad face.

“I’ll make it as painless for you as possible.” She nodded toward the tape recorder, granting permission. “You want to know how I feel about the death of my son. I feel every which way—like a kaleidoscope. Right at this moment I have an acute desire never to feel anything again.”

“Sure.”

“I’m sure you don’t need remarks from me about the senselessness of this tragedy. Of course it’s arbitrary, it’s a grisly waste of a brilliant human life, it’s pointless and maddening.”

He said quietly, “Have you cried much?”

“Yes, I have tears but I don’t let them blur my vision. Mainly right now I feel rage. I want revenge, you see. I can’t help it, I can’t rationalize it away. It’s intensely personal and I’m sure that’s a useless response to such an impersonal attack but that’s how I feel. I want these terrorists punished.”

“Brought to justice.”

“Justice,” she said, “doesn’t come into it. I’m talking about emotions now. Justice is an abstract concept.” She made a loose fist and contemplated it; she looked up at the reporter. “I want to be there, physically present, the day these animals are destroyed. I’ll get satisfaction from it—I know, nothing can bring my son back. But all the same. It’s what I feel.”

Dwiggins said, “Tell me about Robert.”

At one point he stopped her to flip the tape cassette over to Side Two. They kept talking and it was unreal to her: Two people conversing normally as if the world still were the same as it had been a week ago. She tried to be candid and articulate. She tried to listen carefully to his questions and respond appropriately. But the words—both Dwiggins’ and her own—broke up in her mind. Half the time she was not aware of what she was saying, although a ca