Penelope Read online

“Then I am going out of my mind. Will you please tell me what prompted you to rob a bank?” His voice was severe and scolding now, and Penelope told him that she would not be scolded.

  “I am not scolding you, Penelope.”

  “You are—and it’s against every rule of therapeutic procedure, and you know that as well as I do.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “I accept your apology,” Penelope said with satisfaction.

  “I am not apologizing. I simply said that I am sorry.”

  “It’s the same thing. And why must you be so argumentative, Gregory?”

  “Me? Argumentative?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “See?” she cried.

  “Well, I am disturbed. Telling me you robbed a bank!”

  “It’s not so dreadful, if you only think about it objectively.”

  “I want to know what brought you to it?”

  “It was so obvious, Gregory.”

  “Obvious?”

  “Of course—that is, once the whole notion occurred to me. I mean, you know the way James is. He was building this bank. Burglarproof—he kept saying that, burglar-proof. I tried to discuss it with him once, and he just brushed me off. ‘What do you know about it, anyway?’ he demanded. Oh—he makes me want to shake him! Then I realized that all those other things I stole—well, they made no sense at all except in terms of this bank. I had to rob his bank. I had to. Don’t you understand, Gregory?”

  “I am trying to.”

  “I knew you would.”

  “Penelope,” he said, his voice once more the controlled voice of the analyst, “I want you to tell me about the first time you took anything.”

  “You mean stole anything, don’t you? Why is it so hard to say that I steal things, Gregory—I mean, say it right out.”

  “‘Steal’ is not a clinical word.”

  “Anyway, we went through that. Long ago.”

  “If you don’t mind, Penelope, I would like to go through it again.”

  “Why?”

  “Did you really rob a bank?”

  “Gregory, you are provoking,” Penelope said.

  “I suppose I am,” he agreed in his therapeutically unemotional tone. “On the other hand, it would seem to me that I am exercising commendable control. It’s not every physician whose patient comes in and calmly announces that she has robbed a bank—”

  “Of course not! It would be a pretty pass indeed if everyone robbed banks. And as for being calm, Gregory, I am just about to explode and you sit there and ask me to tell you about the first time I ever stole anything. We have been all through that.”

  “Not to very much purpose, when you go around robbing banks.”

  “I don’t go around robbing banks. This is the first time and possibly the last.”

  “Possibly?”

  “All right. All right,” she sighed. “Very well, Gregory, we will go through it again. It was just about three years and three months ago, I believe, and we were having dinner with the Stonehams—the steel Stonehams, who are even richer than most Texans—and that stupid woman was wearing half a million dollars worth of diamonds and sapphires and things.

  “She is stupid, Gregory. She just knew that Eisenhower was a Communist and Kennedy a top man in the Soviet Secret ‘Service, and she would glow when her tiresome husband launched into one of his tiresome tirades against modern art, or Jews, or Harvard—and believe me, my sister Bookie went to Wellesley, and it was only Harvard that kept her alive (of course, you wouldn’t know about girls’ colleges)—or anything else that he decided was subversive or un-American; and oh! he could be so provoking.

  “And then that silly ass of a wife of his—she flunked out of Finch, can you imagine? Probably the first girl in the history of Finch to flunk out of Finch, which nobody believed was possible anyway—well, that silly ass asks me to step into her bedroom with her because her diamond bracelet is chafing her wrist; and in there she took it off and dropped it on her dressing table and turned away. And I reached out and lifted it and dropped it into my purse, just a step behind her, because at that point I just had to; and then we came back into the living room together, and I remained with her all evening, so she could swear on a stack of Bibles that I was the only one there who simply could not have pinched those diamonds. It’s tiresome, Gregory. You know how many times we have been through this.”

  “Now think back, Penelope,” he said, with a contrived patience and tolerance that Penelope found intolerable. “At the moment you took that bracelet—exactly what were your feelings? Did you want it desperately? Were you upset? Disturbed?”

  Penelope pressed her lips together, closed her eyes, and said nothing.

  “Penelope …”

  The continuing silence filled Dr. Mannix’s room, until at last he demanded, “Very well, Penelope, you have made your point, and what have I done?”

  “For a psychiatrist, you are marvelously insensitive.”

  “But what …?”

  “I will not be treated like an idiot or a child. I am ready to admit that I am neurotic. But you yourself said that I am not a kleptomaniac—”

  “Yes, yes—of course, Penelope, keeping in mind that kleptomania is an old-fashioned and somewhat meaningless word. A person has an irresistible desire to steal—and no economic motivation. Irresistible desire. That is why I beg you to go back.”

  “I had no desire to steal, and less to possess, an ugly, ridiculous diamond bracelet. And Gregory, let me tell you this—because you will unquestionably find it useful in your practice. There is a type of woman who gets a certain sexual satisfaction out of diamonds. It replaces the real thing. I mean, these women are frigid—”

  “Isn’t that a rather broad statement?” Dr. Mannix asked.

  “By no means. And I am not frigid. I will admit that my sex life leaves something to be desired, but it is not pathological to the extent that I must steal—”

  “Penelope,” Dr. Mannix complained, “I am still the doctor. Please stop the diagnosis. Can’t you answer a simple question?”

  “How I felt?” Penelope snapped. “I will tell you how I felt. I felt that if I could take that stuffed, vulgar bitch’s evening gown and let her come back naked, I would.”

  “Why do you dislike her so?”

  “Exactly. I come here for the answers, and you keep asking me questions. My friends go to analysts who never ask questions. Never!”

  At the point of losing his temper and his professional objectivity, Dr. Mannix almost shouted. “Yes, and your friends have nice, respectable, middle-class neuroses. They have civilized anxieties. They do not go around lifting diamonds and robbing banks. They do not pack guns and heist payrolls—”

  “Oh, Gregory,” Penelope giggled, “you are so darling when you try to use slang. It wasn’t a payroll at all—just a lot of silly large bills that James ordered for window displays. It was the first creative idea he ever had—I do think—and he was just as proud as punch. And I did not have a gun, Gregory, I wouldn’t know what to do with a gun. I hate guns. I don’t know why there isn’t a law against guns—”

  “It would be unconstitutional.”

  “That’s just ridiculous, Gregory, and really, you’re a psychiatrist, not a lawyer. Anyway, I found this plastic gun in Norman’s room. He used to love to put those plastic models together. He once made a sort of plastic cannon and I was almost tempted to use that. But a toy cannon would be silly, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Mannix said hopelessly, “a toy cannon would be silly. Furthermore, you are an intelligent woman, Penelope. In secondary school, you had an IQ of one hundred and forty-six—genius level. You graduated from college cum laude. You are not a fool. In three months, before you came to me, you stole half a million dollars worth of jewels—”

  “Closer to seven hundred thousand dollars worth, Gregory,” Penelope said sadly.

  “I stand corrected. And today, if you are to be believed, you planned a
bank robbery with the kind of precision and audacity that one might expect from a master criminal—”

  “I suppose all things are relative,” Penelope sighed. “I suppose most criminals are poor pathological things. It doesn’t take any great talent to be a master criminal.”

  “Why? Why? And your husband’s bank? Why?”

  “When I was a little girl,” Penelope said, “I used to think about all the things I would do when I grew up—you know, little girls do think about such things, much more so than they think about such things as planning dinners. I was going to be a Madame Curie. Marie Sklodowska Curie. I used to walk around whispering that name—I don’t suppose I ever pronounced it properly, and my mother heard it. She thought I could do better than to mutter those dreadful foreign names. She was always terribly afraid that I would wind up marrying a Jew or a Catholic. She became very tolerant of the Catholics, in her later years—but Jews—well! You know, I said to James, there must be things in banking that are fun. I mean, we never talked about what he occupied his life with, and he is so certain that I occupy my life with nothing … of course I robbed his bank. That’s why I robbed the bank.”

  “Out of hostility,” Dr. Mannix interrupted.

  “No, no! I have no hostility toward James. I just don’t like him very much. Good heavens! I never said that before, did I, Gregory?”

  “Go ahead, Penelope.”

  “Oh, I don’t really dislike him—Gregory, he’s very stupid. Well, this is my day for things, isn’t it? I’m afraid you’re not going to like me very much—not even for thirty dollars an hour, Gregory; because here I lie, and suddenly it just seems to me that men are stupid, yourself included, Gregory. Are you very angry?”

  “Go ahead. This is quite constructive,” he said.

  “Oh, really, Gregory—constructive!”

  “Just take my word that it is. What is your general feeling toward men?”

  “Pity, I suppose.”

  “Pity?”

  “I can’t explain that,” she said helplessly. “I don’t even know exactly what I mean. I have a sort of feeling. James once made a confession to me. He said there are days when his work eases off and there is nothing for him to do; so he locks himself in his office and he just sits. You see—he just sits.”

  “Penelope,” Dr. Mannix said earnestly and rather severely, “where are the jewels?”

  “Where I always keep them. In my jewel box.”

  “You mean that in your jewel box, in your dressing table, you keep half a million dollars worth of stolen jewels?”

  “Gregory, we’ve been over all this. It’s the safest place. No one looks there. And if I were robbed, so much the better. Then I would be rid of the wretched things.”

  “You could always return them, Penelope—even if you did so anonymously.”

  “Gregory, sometimes you are simply unrealistic. Simply unrealistic. All these people have spent the insurance money and had the fun of buying new things. Wouldn’t it make a dreadful mess if the originals turned up?”

  “Would it?”

  Penelope sat up now and turned to face Dr. Mannix. “Depths beneath depths,” she said, nodding at him. “I always underestimate you, Gregory. I am a kleptomaniac, aren’t I?” She smiled sweetly at him.

  “I told you, Penelope, this is not a clinical word but simply a descriptive term. Most people who steal are in very reduced economic circumstances—or else they have a moral code that puts them beyond the decent fringes of society. When someone like yourself steals—my God, I just don’t believe it.”

  “What, Gregory?”

  “That you robbed a bank today. How?”

  “It was so simple, Gregory dear. I went into the bank dressed as an old woman, took the money from the teller, went into the ladies’ john, took off the old-woman stuff, and put on my little black wig and walked out. I purposely wore my bright-yellow suit. Everyone was looking for an old woman, and they just paid no attention to me.”

  Dr. Mannix nodded dumbly.

  “Poor Gregory—I give you so much trouble, don’t I? I keep on making you an accessory after the fact. Gregory …”

  Dr. Mannix stared at her hopelessly.

  “Gregory, I’m going to return all the jewels. Today.”

  “Thank you, Penny,” he said gratefully.

  “‘Penny.’ Oh, that sounds so nice! This has been such a rewarding hour, don’t you think, Gregory?”

  “Penny …”

  “Yes, Gregory?”

  Dr. Mannix began to say something, and then shook his head and swallowed his words.

  “You are shy, Gregory dear,” Penelope said. “But very nice. Very understanding.”

  “Tomorrow,” Dr. Mannix said.

  “Of course.” Penelope smiled. She had only missed one session in all her three years. As she emerged from Dr. Mannix’s office now, she met Miss Gilmore’s prophylactic and professional look; but Penelope only smiled sweetly and waved at her on the way out.

  CHAPTER THREE

  In the small vestibule that Dr. Mannix shared with the two other physicians who had their offices in the same maisonette, there was a powder room, unattended. Penelope was grateful for it, believing that no woman should step from her analyst’s couch into the hard world of reality without a modest halt for repairs. Now, alone in the powder room, she contemplated her face with interest and without anguish.

  It was true that she was forty-four years old, but it did not seem to her—or to most people who knew her—that she had changed perceptibly during the last decade. Her neat blond curls were devoid of any trace of gray or white, her face unlined, her eyes clear and unperturbed. Her figure was tight and shapely, her clothes neat and crisp. From the bright yellow (stopping to cover it with a coat she had checked with a restaurant a block from the bank) she had changed into a tailored blue suit and a mink coat. It troubled her just a little that she was wearing the mink, but then they were common enough now on the East Side to defy identification.

  She was pleasantly excited, her face flushed slightly, her eyes glowing. One of the drawbacks of being a thief was that it remained of necessity an intermittent occupation. One could not devote oneself to it as one could to needlepoint or bridge or charity. She still felt a guilty sense when she recollected her refusal to work as a volunteer at General Hospital’s Thrift Store on Third Avenue. But there was a sour, dry smell of decay about all of these thrift stores that made her wretched and sometimes actually ill. Robbery had its high moments, but they were widely spaced.

  Yet they were high, deliciously high, she decided as she powdered her face, then took her little black wig out of her purse and carefully covered her blond curls with it. It was amazing how completely her personality as well as her looks seemed to change, once she became a brunette. Now she made a mole high on her left cheek, a large and ugly mole, the result of a soft eyebrow pencil; and she finished by stuffing a wad of absorbent cotton into her right nostril. It was enough. Her hair was black, her nose was distorted, and she had a mole. She was not so terribly unattractive, she decided, but neither was she Penny Hastings.

  As she walked out of the maisonette, she felt that some might think this a great deal of trouble to go to, simply to buy a dozen manila envelopes; but envelopes bought by a bright-eyed blonde who perhaps reminded the stationery man of Doris Day were all too readily traceable. Penelope felt that either things were worth doing well and tastefully—or should not be done at all; and when she passed Lucy Gaylord on the corner of Park Avenue and Seventy-eighth Street, without eliciting even a raised eyebrow or a puzzled frown, she knew that she had done very nicely indeed.

  Dr. Mannix had once said to her, “You do know that you are being a child, Penelope, and playing children’s games?”

  But didn’t everyone play one sort of a game or another, Penelope wondered. Who gave the gold stars of approval? Penelope drifted uptown, her collar turned up, lost in her own thoughts, until she was across the street from the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola. She ha
d never known one saint from another, and she had a childhood wariness of Catholic churches. But one summer, on a dude ranch in Wyoming, she had visited a nearby American Indian reservation and had seen such hopeless and despairing poverty and filth and ignorance as to turn her stomach and make her sick with herself and everyone around her. And in this cesspool of ignominy and misery, the only one attempting to alleviate or to teach or to build was one small, middle-aged, and hopelessly overworked Catholic priest. He told her that he had once been a parish priest at St. Ignatius, and ever since then Penelope had been meaning to do something about it, but forgetting to. Now she went into the church, found the poor box, and stuffed into it ten neatly folded thousand-dollar bills.

  A priest who was walking by smiled at her and said, “God bless you.”

  “Sometimes giving can be less than kind,” Penelope sighed.

  “Oh? I don’t think so.”

  “Is it equally blessed to take—as well as to give?”

  “Hardly,” the priest answered.

  “I just bet,” Penelope said.

  Then she walked to Madison Avenue, found a stationery store, and became a Hungarian. Penelope had always been enchanted by foreign accents, any foreign accent, but a Hungarian accent melted her with delight. Zsa Zsa’s was her favorite. She became Zsa Zsa as she asked the man behind the counter:

  “Pleece, you haff manila henvelop?”

  He placed the voice and the accent, frowned, and scrutinized her carefully.

  “What size, lady?”

  “Zey are in sizes? Vell—maybe seex inches.”

  “How about five by seven? You ain’t related to the Gabors?”

  “Ees fine. Yes. Zey are very dear to me.”

  She purchased a dozen envelopes and left the store with the good feeling of having brought a little color into a life that did not have an abundance of color and excitement to enjoy—nor had she lied to achieve her effect. Not that she had any silly position against lying. One of the necessities in pursuing her vocation or avocation or hobby—depending upon how you looked at it—was the proper lie at the proper moment; but she never overcame her Presbyterian background to the extent of being bland about her formulations. To the outright, blunt lie she preferred the lie that was not totally a lie, the insinuation, the innuendo, the double entendre. These left fewer nagging guilts; and like so many persons of similar background, she had discovered the improbable fact that less guilts attached themselves to stealing than to a lie around the process.