The Boy Who Could Draw Tomorrow (8 page)

***

She gave Sam some Benedryl to help him drift off to sleep. She puffed up his pillows, tidied the covers over his shoulders, then rubbed his back as he lay there restively tossing and gently, ever more gently, sobbing in the darkened room. At length she kissed him and went to get ready for bed, changing into her nightgown in the bathroom she 
shared with Hal instead of in the bedroom where he could see her undress.

It was when she went to brush her teeth that she finally noticed his soap-written message on the mirror of the medicine chest.

Forgive? Forgive what? What was it that he
really
wished her forgiveness for?

She wet a wad of toilet paper and washed the mirror clean. But when she dried it off with a towel, the word came back, hovering stubbornly beneath the surface of the glass like an eternal ghostly image. She tried it again, repeating the procedure, this time pressing harder with the wet toilet paper and the towel. The word was fainter now, but demonstrably there, a dogged reminder of what she now dreaded might be his secret and unforgivable guilt.

She switched off the night light on her side of the bed, slipped herself gingerly between the covers and turned onto her side so that her back was to him.

"How much did you pay for it?" she said.

She heard him breathe out with annoyance.

"For what?"

"For the necklace."

"Don't you like it? It looks nice on you."

"I asked you how much you paid for it."

"I'll answer you when you face me," he said.

"Forget it." Peggy said. She pushed her knees free of the covers and got to her feet.

***

She stood listening at Sam's doorway. When she was certain he was asleep, she stepped softly into the room and went to his worktable.

The Jumbo pad was where he always kept it.

She lay down on the couch in the third bedroom and stretched out, reaching behind her to turn on the floor lamp. It wasn't there. She looked through every page, but nowhere could she find the drawing of the woman whose blank face was disfigured by the nose of a pig.

She checked again, pressing each sheet between her fingers to make sure no two were stuck together.

It was gone, torn out—but by whom? Sam always kept his pads intact, storing them under his bed when one was finished and he was ready to start on a fresh one.

Once again she riffled through the pages. Maybe this was a new pad, a different one. But no, this was the same one. She saw the moving van, the portrait of Val, the taxi cab going over the bridge, the pendant that hung from the slim chain encircling her own neck.

***

She turned off the light and replaced the pad on Sam's worktable, then went back to bed. She lay listening in the darkness—his breathing, the blood pumping in her ears, a car that now and then moved more noisily than most as it made its way along Lexington or Park.

She was willing to understand that she did not like this quiet anymore. Eight floors above the street, in a neighborhood that was predominantly residential, behind the thicker walls that came with a pre-war building, it all made for a strangled silence louder than the sirens that had screamed all night back on Thirty-third.

What the hell was happening to them, anyway? With their fancy new jobs and their fancy new co-op, their son miraculously enrolled in a snooty little prep school—why was it that she'd never felt more unhappy in her entire married life? She felt so alienated from Hal it terrified her—if it weren't for Sam, she realized, she could walk away from her marriage without a backward glance. The awful truth of it was enough to make her sob.

When had everything started to fall apart? Had they just gone through too many changes too quickly? Was it the move? Was that the dreadful, terrible mistake that had signaled an end to all their domestic contentment? Or was it that goddamned school? It seemed to mean too much to Hal—during the times they'd discussed their "St. Martin's boy," she'd had to fight a feeling that Hal seemed to place a life-and-death importance on Sam's being there, as if all the insecurities and self-doubts he felt about his own background would rise up and annihilate him if Sam were for some reason deprived entree to the magic sphere St. Martin's represented to him. It was unhealthy, really, the passionate significance Hal attached to it.

When she stopped to think about it, Peggy had to admit to herself that there was something deeply unnerving about
all
the events of the past several months. How
odd
it was, really, that she and Hal should have both received such fantastic promotions, after so many years, within weeks of each other. And she knew there were people at the store who couldn't really believe the Coopers had been accepted into this building, a building whose board normally demanded that applicants be able to pay for the apartment in cash and
still
show assets in excess of the purchase price. The Coopers would have been lucky to make it into a low-rent building on the Upper West Side—that they'd gotten into
this
building was almost inexplicable.

And finally, there was the matter of St. Martin's. Peggy had absolutely no doubt that had Sam applied through normal channels, he'd have stood as good a chance as the next guy of getting in. He was terrifically bright and engaging, and even the toniest prep schools were not the exclusive province of the "upper crust" anymore. The public school system was so rotten that by now the middle class had invaded the private schools in droves.

But Peggy was too well versed in the admissions procedures—God knows she'd heard enough about it from her frantic friends last year—not to realize that there was something—well, something
bizarre
—in the way Sam had just waltzed in practically on the same day the term began. She
knew
people were talking about it,
knew
that a lot of people were trying to figure out whom the Coopers knew, whom they'd managed to pay off, to get Sam in. Well, the hell with all that. She had far worse things to worry about than a bunch of nasty gossip. What she had to do was something to regain the feeling that she was in control of her life and that she lived within a comforting and sustaining domestic circle.

Almost as if he'd read her mind, Hal said in a voice that was little more than a croak, "You want to talk?"

"All right," she said, and turned onto her back.

"I don't like what's happening to us," he said.

"Me neither," Peggy said. "It's not good for Sam."

"I know," he said. "Let's fix it," he said, and she could feel his hand jerk up from the mattress, the palm flattening gently on her belly.

She nearly jumped at his touch, almost perceptibly recoiling.

"You said you wanted to talk," she said.

"Yes," he whispered, his lips touching her ear now, his hand traveling to the hem of her nightgown, pausing there as if awaiting permission.

She lifted herself and snapped on her night light. She got out of bed and went to the rocker.

"Is that how you want to talk?" he said, hoisting himself up onto his elbows and regarding her in the dim light.

"This is fine," Peggy said. She raised her knees to her chest and locked her arms around her legs, a motion that started the rocker listing to and fro. "Let's begin with Sam," she said. "I think we should take him out of that school."

"No," he said, instantly hostile and defensive. "That's out of the question."

"But he's upset. Can't you see how much he dislikes it?"

"He'll get over it. Besides, they don't refund tuition. It's right in the contract we signed—no refunds, and no exceptions."

"You'd sacrifice your son for money?"

He sat up higher and snapped on his light.

"That's a pretty lowdown crack."

"I'm sorry, Hal," she said, not sounding as if she meant it at all, "but I don't think you really have any idea what kind of a repressive environment that kid's being subjected to. You've never even been inside St. Martin's. I think you're acting like an uptight, social-climbing
arriviste,
willing to tolerate any indignity just for the sake of some hollow status symbol. There
are
other private schools you know—schools that would be much more appropriate for a creative kid like Sam. At least let me apply him to a few for next year."

"Peggy, I forbid it." He was icy cold now, talking to her in a tone of voice she'd never heard from him in all their years together. "I think you're making a very hasty and ill-considered snap judgement. If you think Sam's not being treated properly, for God's sake set up a conference with his teacher, talk to the headmaster, try to work things out. Don't just go off half-cocked and yank him out before you've even given the place a chance. Miss Putnam told me—"

Suddenly he broke off, a look of panic washing over him. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and began searching nervously for his cigarettes.

"Miss Putnam told you," Peggy repeated, her bewilderment swamping the rage that had begun to flood her only a few moments before. "When did you talk to Miss Putnam? When I tried to get in to see her I was treated to the bum's rush by a goddamned secretary!"

"Oh, well, I didn't
see
her, Pegs. I just chatted with her briefly on the phone. Just this morning. I felt bad about not being home for Sam's first day of school, and I thought I'd check in with his teacher to see how things were going. I didn't find her at all unapproachable," he concluded smugly, his earlier discomfiture all but vanished.

He was lying. She felt it with the force of a blow. But some sixth sense told her that now was not the time to call him on it. Let him think he was fooling her—when the right time came to get to the bottom of all this, she'd know it. The thought filled her with disgust but she was even beginning to wonder if
Hal
had somehow bribed Sam's way into St. Martin's—although God only knew where he could have gotten the money. But then where was the money for any of their new lifestyle coming from?

"You're tense, Pegs," he was saying. "You're making a mountain out of a molehill. I'm telling you, Sam's fine. He'll adjust. Just give it a little time." She heard him chuckle to himself as if privately amused. "I don't know what's gotten into you lately—but, lady, you've sure been acting strange."

She teetered herself forward and held herself there so that the chair stayed poised on the front of the rockers.

"Did you take a page out of the pad Sam's working on?"

"Did I what?"

"You heard me."

He sat up again. She could see him staring at her, his eyes briefly darting to the seat of the chair. She let go of her legs and canted them to the floor.

"Too bad," he said. "Best view I've had all day."

"I asked you if you took a drawing out of Sam's pad."

"Now why should I do that?" he said.

She got up from the chair and moved across the floor, placing herself squarely in his line of vision.

"What did you whisper to Sam when you carried him out of the dining room? I want you to tell me what you whispered to him."

She could see him studying her, and she saw his hand swing up to the night light and his fingers feeling for the little burled knob that switched it on and off.

"Jesus," he said. "You're nuts."

And then she heard the tiny click as he rotated the knob and the circuit shut off.

She kept hearing it over and over in the silence, that click. It was like the period at the end of a sentence. Or a small pistol's hammer abruptly thumbed back.

Biting winds drove a steady drizzle of bone-chilling rain against hapless pedestrians; traffic snarled for miles in every direction; and it would have been worth Peggy's life to catch a cab. Rush hour was at its height, and since the subway was right outside Bloomingdale's anyway, she decided to make her way downtown underground.

Her estrangement from Hal had intensified over the past several weeks, and the affable, affectionate and amusing man she'd known and loved for so long had all but disappeared. In his place was a driven and remote careerist who seemed to her to be totally at the mercy of the demands of his job, and utterly indifferent to all they had formerly shared together.

As the Lexington Avenue train lurched to a halt at Thirty-third Street and Peggy struggled her way out of the car against the damp and urgent crowd that jostled and crushed her, she thought bitterly of the recent quarrels she and Hal had been having over St. Martin's. For reasons she couldn't put into words, but which she felt with the certainty of her entire being, Peggy was convinced that she should get Sam out of there as soon as she could make some alternate arrangement. She couldn't really stick him in a public school at this point—aside from the fact that she herself didn't really want that for him, Hal's burgeoning snobbery simply precluded such a move. It was crazy, really, the intensity of his investment in that school—crazy and frightening, because it just didn't make any sense.

Almost in desperation, Peggy had agreed to have dinner tonight with Sarah Goldenson, Sam's old nursery school teacher. The woman had called her the other day—out of the blue, it had seemed to Peggy—to see how Sam was doing, and Peggy had decided right then and there to get together with her and pour out all of her misgivings and miseries about St. Martin's. Maybe the teacher who had been so good to Sam, and who so obviously adored him, could help her. For some reason, she was almost certain that Sarah Goldenson would not find her growing distaste for St. Martin's at all surprising or uncomprehensible.

Peggy spotted Sarah Goldenson as soon as she entered the restaurant. She'd already taken a table, and her face brightened with a welcoming and somehow comforting smile as Peggy approached her.

After they'd ordered drinks and dispensed with some routine and perfunctory chit-chat, Sarah Goldenson came abruptly to the point. She didn't mean to pry or cause offense, she assured Peggy, but Sam was such a
special
child, and she'd always been so fond of him, that she just felt she had to let Peggy know that however ridiculous it might seem, she'd been worried about Sam for months. She felt she had to share these feelings with Peggy.

Peggy's vodka and tonic had arrived by this time, and she'd already drained it and signaled the waiter to bring another round. And even though she'd quit smoking years ago, and hadn't even thought about it in as long as she could remember, she now felt a craving for a cigarette that almost left her breathless.

"... didn't get to meet her when she observed at the nursery school," Sarah Goldenson was saying, "but it seemed to me a Miss Putnam from St. Martin's exhibited a rather inexplicable—unsavory, if you will—interest in your Sam, especially since at that point he wasn't even an applicant."

"I'm afraid I'm not following you," Peggy said weakly, as she reached gratefully for her second drink and decided to force herself to nurse it.

"Well, as you probably know, it's common practice for these private schools to send someone around to various nursery schools to observe applicants in their nursery school environment. Since Town and Country sends so many kids on to private schools, we're subjected to a constant round of observers in the fall. Their comments and judgments become a part of each kid's application file. Anyway, one day last October when I was out sick with one thing or another, a Miss Putnam came to observe my class, which was perfectly normal, since a number of the boys had applied to St. Martin's. But about a week later, she called me on the phone and started asking a lot of questions about Sam, particularly about his drawing, which she must have seen him working on while she was there. I just assumed there must be some mistake—I told her Sam Cooper hadn't even applied to St. Martin's. She said she knew that—she'd just been so taken by his talent she wanted to know more about him. At the time I guess I didn't find that all
that
peculiar—he is strikingly gifted as an artist—but then, when I found out he'd been admitted to that school on such an irregular basis and I thought back on my conversation with Putnam, it seemed to take on a—oh, I don't know—almost
sinister
quality. And the more I've thought about it, the more concerned I've become. So here I am. If you think I'm out of line—even if you think I'm nuts—just say so, and we'll just go ahead with dinner as if this conversation never took place. But I have to tell you that I know in my gut I'm on to something!"

Peggy was now in the grip of an anxiety so powerful she felt that it must surely be emanating from her body like some visible substance. But surely neither she nor Sarah Goldenson should allow themselves to disintegrate into infantile irrationality over this whole business. When you thought about it, their fears and suspicions not just about St. Martin's but about Sam's "gift" itself—for Peggy knew without having to be told that Sarah Goldenson felt as she did that there was a literally uncanny power to Sam's drawing—seemed both ludicrous and deranged. But no. It simply was no use to try to pretend that this was "all in her head." But what to do? Somehow she had to get Sam out of Putnam's clutches—he'd never set foot in that school again. And as for Hal's complicity in all this—if complicity there was—she'd get to the bottom of
that,
too. Her son's survival was at stake. She was convinced of that now. Nothing and no one could prevent her from doing everything in her power to safeguard him.

***

The next morning she walked right in. With Sam's hand in hers, his grip tightening when they came into view of the school, Peggy strode up the marble steps, through the doors, and into the large, domed space that functioned as an anteroom. It was empty of anyone who looked official, but it was crowded with boys moving in all directions, some of the older ones pausing to gape as if her presence contaminated the air.

When she bent down to speak to him, she could see Sam's eyes darting frantically to the side, real fear grabbing at the flesh of his face so that his cheeks seemed to sag.

"Now look, honey," Peggy said softly, "there's absolutely nothing to this. I'll have a little chat with Miss Putnam, and everything will be hunky-dory, I promise. You just show me the way, okay?"

He pulled her along to a hallway that gave off to their left. The light was weak in here, but even so Peggy could see large, brooding portraits of somber, white-haired men peering down at them from heavy gilt frames. A curious odor, like that of wood smoke mixed with a sweetish fragrance—lavender, perhaps, or frankincense—hung thick in the corridor like some meaty, sluggish mist. Small boys passed silently by in both directions, their well-shod feet stepping reverently as they negotiated the gleaming parquet floor.

Sam came to a halt before a wide, paneled door. 
There was a white card fitted into a brass slot, the slot screwed into the door at a level where a small boy would have no trouble seeing it. Inked onto the card in flowery, embellished script there was the number One and the letter P.