The Stolen Child (12 page)

“Speck, wake up.”

She murmured in her sleep and pulled me closer. I pried away her arm and rolled out.

“We have to go. Don’t you feel the air on your skin changing? The dawn’s about to begin.”

“Come back to sleep.”

I gathered my things together. “We won’t be able to leave unless we go right now.”

She lifted herself up by the elbows. “We can stay. It’s Sunday and the library’s closed. We can stay all day and read. Nobody will be here. We can go back when it’s dark again.”

For a fleeting second, I considered her idea, but the very thought of staying in town during daylight hours, chancing discovery with people up and about, filled me with a holy terror.

“It’s too risky,” I whispered. “Suppose someone happens by. A policeman. A watchman.”

She dropped back down to the blanket. “Trust me.”

“Are you coming?” I asked at the door.

“Go. Sometimes you are such a child.”

Squeezing through the exit, I wondered if it was a mistake. I did not like arguing with Speck or leaving her there by herself, but she had spent many days on her own away from camp. My thoughts bounced back and forth between the two choices, and perhaps my worries over Speck affected my sense of direction, for I found myself quite lost soon after abandoning her. Each new turn brought unfamiliar streets and strange houses, and in my haste to escape, I became more hopelessly disoriented. At an edge of town, a grove of trees invited me into its warm cloak, and there I picked a trail from three options, following its twists and turns. In hindsight, I should have stayed put until the sun had fully risen, so that it could serve as compass, but at the time, my thoughts were clouded by questions. What had she been thinking, planning, doing for my birthday? How was I to grow older, be a man, stuck eternally in this small, useless body? The waning sliver moon dipped and disappeared.

A small creek, not more than a trickle, bisected the path. I decided to follow the water. Tracing a creek at dawn can be a peaceful experience, and those woods had appeared so often in my dreams as to be as familiar to me as my own name. The creek itself ran beneath a stony road, and the road led me to a solitary farmhouse. From the culvert, I saw the roof and circled round to the back as the first sunrays bathed the porch in gold.

Some trick of light gave the house an unfinished appearance, as if caught in a dream between night and day. I half expected my mother to come through the door, calling me home for dinner. As the light brought it into focus, the house took on a more welcoming character, its windows losing their menacing stare, its door less and less like a hungry mouth. I stepped out of the forest and onto the lawn, leaving a dark wake behind me on the wet grass. The door swung open suddenly, petrifying me on the spot. A man came down the stairs, pausing on the next-to-bottom step to light a cigarette. Wrapped in a blue robe, the figure took one step forward, then lifted his foot, startled by the moisture. He laughed and cursed softly.

The specter still did not notice me, though we faced each other—he at the edge of the house, and I at the edge of the forest. I wanted to turn around and see what he was looking for, but I stood frozen as a hare as the daybreak lifted around us. From the lawn, a chill rose in wisps of fog. He drew closer, and I held my breath. Not a dozen steps between us, he stopped. The cigarette fell from his fingers. He took one more step toward me. His brow creased with worry. His thin hair blew in the breeze. An eternity passed as his eyes danced in their sockets. His lips trembled when he opened his mouth to speak.

“And we? Envy?”

The words coming to me did not make sense.

“Is a chew? Atchoo? Can a bee, Houston?”

The sounds he made hurt my ears. At that moment, I wished to be sleeping in Speck’s arms again. He knelt on the damp grass and spread out his arms as if he expected me to run to him. But I was confused and did not know if he meant me harm, so I turned and sprinted, as fast as I could go. The monstrous gargle from his throat followed me deep into the forest until, as suddenly, the strange words stopped, yet I kept running all the way home.

•                    CHAPTER 13                    •

T
he ringing phone began to sound like a mad song before someone mercifully answered. Far down the hall, I was in my dorm room that night with a coed, trying to stay focused on her bare skin. Moments later, a rap on my door, a curious pause, and then the knock intensified to a thundering, which scared the poor girl so that she nearly fell off of me.

“What is it? I’m busy. Can’t you see the necktie on the doorknob?”

“Henry Day?” On the other side of the door, a voice cracked and trembled. “It’s your mother on the telephone.”

“Tell her I’m out.”

The voice lowered an octave. “I’m really sorry, Henry, but you need to take this call.”

I pulled on pants and a sweater, opened the door, and brushed past the boy, who was staring at the floor. “Someone better’ve died.”

It was my father. My mother mentioned the car, so naturally, in my shock, I assumed there had been an accident. Upon returning home, I learned the real story through a word here, raised eyebrows, and innuendo. He had shot himself in the head, sitting in the car at a stoplight not four blocks away from the college. There was no note, nothing explained. Only my name and dorm room number on the back of a business card tucked in a cigarette pack with one remaining Camel.

I spent the days before the funeral trying to make sense of the suicide. Since that awful morning when he saw something in the yard, he drank more heavily, though alcoholics, in my experience, prefer the long and slow pour rather than the quick and irreversible bang. It wasn’t the drink that killed him, but something else. While he may have had suspicions, he could not have figured out the truth about me. My deceptions were too careful and clever, yet in my infrequent encounters with the man since leaving for college, he had acted cold, distant, and unyielding. Some private demons plagued him, but I felt no compassion. With one bullet, he had abandoned my mother and sisters, and I could never forgive him. Those few days leading up to the funeral, and the service itself, hardened my opinion that his selfishness had rotted our family to the roots.

With good grace, my mother, more confused than distraught, bore the brunt of making arrangements. She convinced the local priest, no doubt abetted by her weekly contributions over many years, to allow my father to be buried in the church’s graveyard despite the suicide. There could be no Mass, of course, and for this she bore some resentment, but her anger shielded her from other emotions. The twins, now fourteen, were more prone to tears, and at the funeral home they keened like two banshees over the closed coffin. I would not cry for him. He was not my father, after all, and coming as it did in the spring semester of my sophomore year, his death was supremely ill-timed. I cursed the fair weather of the day we buried him, and a throng of people who came from miles around to pay their respects astonished me.

As was the custom in our town, we walked from the mortuary to the church along the length of Main Street. A bright new hearse crawled ahead of us, and a cortege of more than a hundred people trailed behind. My mother and sisters and I led the grim parade.

“Who are all these people?” I whispered to my mother.

She looked straight ahead and spoke in a loud, clear voice. “Your father had many friends. From the army, from his job, people he helped along the way. You only knew part of the story. There’s more to a salmon than the fin.”

In the shade of new leaves, we put him in the ground and covered him with dirt. Robins and thrushes sang in the bushes. Behind her black veil, my mother did not weep, but stood in the sunshine, stoic as a soldier. Seeing her there, I could not help but hate him for doing this to her, to the girls, to our friends and family, and to me. We did not speak of him as I drove my mother and sisters back to the house to receive condolences.

Women from church welcomed us in hushed tones. The house felt more cool and quiet than it did in the dead of night. On the dining room table lay tokens of community spirit—the noodle casseroles, pigs in blankets, cold fried chicken, egg salad, potato salad, Jell-O salad with shaved carrots, and a half-dozen pies. On the sideboard, new mixers and bottles of soda stood next to gin and scotch and rum and a tub of ice. Flowers from the funeral home perfumed the air, and the percolator bubbled madly. My mother chatted with her neighbors, asking about each dish and making gracious compliments to the particular cooks. Mary sat at one end of the sofa, picking at the lint on her skirt, and Elizabeth perched on the opposite end, watching the front door for visitors. An hour after we arrived, the first guests showed up—men who had worked with my father, stiff and formal in their good suits. One by one, they pressed envelopes filled with money into my mother’s palm and gave her awkward hugs. My mother’s friend Charlie flew in from Philadelphia, but he had missed the interment. He looked askance at me when I took his hat, as if I were a stranger. A couple of old soldiers dropped by, specters from a past that no one else knew. They huddled in the corner, lamenting good ole Billy.

I soon tired of them all, for the reception reminded me of those post-recital gatherings, only more somber and pointless. Out on the porch, I took off my black jacket, loosened my necktie, and nursed a rum and Coke. The greened trees rustled in the intermittent breeze, and the sunshine gently warmed the meandering afternoon. From the house, the guests produced a murmur that rose and fell consistent as the ocean, and every so often, a quick peal of laughter rose to remind us that no one is irreplaceable. I lit a Camel and stared at the new grass.

She appeared at my side, redolent of jasmine, her scent betraying her stealth. A quick sideways glance and an even briefer smile, then we both resumed our inspection of the lawn and the dark woods beyond. Her black dress was trimmed at the collar and cuffs in white, for she followed the smart fashion, twice removed from the haute couture of Mrs. Kennedy. But Tess Wodehouse managed to copy the style without looking foolish. Perhaps it was her quiet poise as we stood at the rail. Any other girl my age would have felt the necessity to speak, but she left it to me to decide the moment for conversation.

“It was nice of you to come. I haven’t seen you since when? Grade school?”

“I’m so sorry, Henry.”

I flicked my cigarette into the yard and took a sip from my drink.

“I heard you once at a recital downtown,” she said, “four or five years ago. There was a big to-do afterward with a ranting lady in a red coat. Remember how gently your father treated her? As if she weren’t crazy at all, but a person whose memory had come undone. I think my daddy would have told her to buzz off, and my mother probably’d have punched her on the nose. I admired your father that night.”

While I remembered the woman in red, I had not remembered Tess from that night, had not seen or thought of her in ages. In my mind, she was still a little tomboy. I set down my glass and invited her, with a sweeping gesture, to a nearby chair. With a demure and becoming grace, she took the seat next to me, our knees nearly touching, and I stared at her as if in a trance. She was the girl who had wet her pants in second grade, the girl who had beaten me at the fifty-yard dash in sixth grade. When I went off to the public high school in town, she took the bus to the Catholic girls’ school in the other direction. Vanished. Those intervening years had shaped her into a beautiful young woman.

“Do you still play piano?” she asked. “I hear you’re up in the city at college. Are you studying music?”

“Composition,” I told her. “For orchestra and chamber music. I gave up performing the piano. Couldn’t ever get comfortable in front of people. You?”

“I’m nearly finished for my LPN—licensed practical nurse. But I’d like to get a master’s in social work, too. All depends.”

“Depends on what?”

She looked away, toward the door. “On whether I get married or not. Depends on my boyfriend, I guess.”

“You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”

She leaned to me, her face inches from mine, and mouthed the words:
I’m not.

“Why is that?” I whispered back.

As if a light clicked on behind her eyes, she brightened. “There’s so much I want to do. Help those in need. See the world. Fall in love.”

The boyfriend came looking for her, the screen door slapping the frame behind him. Grinning at having found her, he had an uncanny effect upon me, as if I had met him somewhere long ago, but I could not place his face. I could not shake the feeling that we knew each other, but he was from the opposite side of town. His appearance spooked me, as if I were seeing a ghost or a stranger drawn from another century. Tess scrambled to her feet and nestled into his side. He stuck out a paw and waited a beat for my handshake.

“Brian Ungerland,” he said. “Sorry for your loss.”

I muttered my thanks and resumed my observation of the unchanging lawn. Only Tess’s voice brought me back to the world. “Good luck with your compositions, Henry,” she said. “I’ll look in the record store for you.” She steered Brian toward the door. “Sorry we had to renew our friendship under these circumstances.”

As they left, I called out, “I hope you get what you want, Tess, and don’t get what you don’t.” She smiled at me over her shoulder.

After all the visitors had departed, my mother joined me on the porch. In the kitchen, Mary and Elizabeth fussed over the covered dishes and the empty glasses in the sink. The final moments of the funeral day, we watched crows gather in the treetops before evening fell. They flew in from miles away, strutted like cassocked priests on the lawn before leaping into the branches to become invisible.

“I don’t know how I’ll manage, Henry.” She sat in the rocker, not looking at me.

I sipped another rum and Coke. A dirge played in the background of my imagination.

She sighed when I did not reply. “We’ve enough to get by. The house is nearly ours, and your father’s savings will last awhile. I’ll have to find work, though the Lord knows how.”

“The twins could help.”

“The girls? If I had to count on those two to help with so much as a glass of water, I would be dead of thirst. They are nothing but trouble now, Henry.” As if the notion had just occurred to her, she quickened her rocking. “It will be enough to keep them out of ruining their reputations. Those two.”

I drained the glass and fished a wrinkled cigarette from my pocket.

She looked away. “You might have to stay home for a while. Just until I can get on my feet. Do you think you could stay?”

“I guess I could miss another week.”

She walked over to me and grabbed my arms. “Henry, I need you here. Stay for a few months, and we’ll save up the money. Then you can go back and finish up. You’re young. It will seem long, but it won’t be.”

“Mom, it’s the middle of the semester.”

“I know, I know. But you’ll stay with your mother?” She stared till I nodded. “That’s a good boy.”

I
ended up staying much longer than a few months. My return home lasted for a few years, and the interruption of my studies changed my life. My father hadn’t left enough money for me to finish college, and my mother floundered with the girls, who were still in high school. So I got a job. My friend Oscar Love, back from a tour of duty with the navy, bought an abandoned store off Linnean Street with his savings and a loan from the Farmers & Merchants. With help from his father and brother, he converted the place into a bar with a stage barely big enough for a four-piece combo, and we moved the piano from my mother’s house. A couple of guys from the area were good enough to round out a band. Jimmy Cummings played the drums, with George Knoll on bass or guitar. We called ourselves The Coverboys, because that’s all we played, and when I wasn’t pretending to be Gene Pitney or Frankie Valli, I would tend bar a few other nights of the week. The gig at Oscar’s Bar got me out of the house; plus, the few extra dollars enabled me to help out the family. My old friends would drop in, applaud my return to playing piano, but I loathed performing. That first year back, Tess showed up with Brian or a girlfriend a couple of times. Seeing her there reminded me of the dreams I had deferred.

“You were a mystery man,” Tess told me one night between sets. “Or mystery boy, I should say, back in grade school. As if you were somewhere totally different from the rest of us.”

I shrugged my shoulders and played the first measures from “Strangers in the Night.” She laughed and rolled her eyes. “Seriously, though, Henry, you were a stranger. Aloof. Above it all.”

“Is that right? I certainly should have been nicer to you.”

“Oh, go on.” She was tipsy and grinning. “You were always in another world.”

Her boyfriend beckoned, and she was gone. I missed her. She was about the only good thing that happened as the result of my forced homecoming, my reluctant return to the piano. Late that night, I went home thinking about her, wondering how serious her relationship was and how to steal her away from the guy with the déjà vu face.

Tending bar and playing piano kept me out late at night. My mother and sisters were long asleep, and I ate a cold dinner alone at three in the morning. That night, something stirred in the yard outside the kitchen window. A flash through the glass, visible for an instant, that looked sort of like a head of hair. I took my plate into the living room and turned on the television to
The Third Man
on the late, late movie. After the scene where Holly Martins first spies Harry Lime in the doorway, I fell asleep in my father’s chair, only to wake up in the depths before dawn, sweating and cold, petrified that I was back in the forest again amid those devils.