The Story of Beautiful Girl (35 page)

“And it didn’t bother you to know that had happened?”

“I’d like to say it did. The person I am now would be tormented immediately and wouldn’t care about a job, a friend, anything. Wouldn’t have even been part of it.”

“So you just let it go?”

“For a long time.”

“No pangs of conscience at all?”

“Sadly, no.”

“Not even when she ran off with Number Forty-two?”

He sighed and shook his head.

“How could you not?” Kate said, almost screaming.

“It was a breakout. They didn’t happen much, but… no, it didn’t get me thinking.”

“It didn’t.”

“Please, Kate.”

“Why do you think she broke out?”

“She’d found someone who could get her over the wall. I mean, I guess I realized she must have been scared—”

“You thought she left because she was
scared
?”

“Well… yeah.”

“You didn’t consider any other reason?”

He stared at her. “What are you suggesting?”

“Why were those pages missing in her file?”

“You went to her file?”

“Of course I did. You might have broken the rules for fun and games, but some of us had better reasons. And the pages from that whole episode—her breakout and her return—were gone. Did you take them?”

He lifted his head and nodded.

“Why?”

“Because if there was any record that we lost a resident—”

“
Lost?
You found Lynnie. You brought her back.”

“Right. But we lost Forty-two that night.”

“Why didn’t you take
his
file?”

“I did.”

She hadn’t known that. She’d never thought to look for his file. Only Lynnie’s.

“You
took his file
?”

“That’s correct.”

“I can’t believe it. So there’s no record he even existed?”

“Look, if it had come out that we’d let a resident escape and never found him, there was no way Luke would have kept his current job. We didn’t want him to get more of a swelled head than he already had, and our night of chaos did make him hold off on his political ambitions. But by the time Forty-two disappeared, we’d realized that if Luke went down as the head of the School, things would be ruined for us, too.”

“And what did you do with Forty-two’s file?”

“I held on to it while I tried to find him.”

“Find
him
?”

“Is that so strange?”

“What did you do to find him?”

“From Lynnie’s file I got the old lady’s name. I wanted her to tell me where he was, but by the time I went out to her farm, she’d disappeared. Then I thought he might have holed up in her barn or woods or something, only I couldn’t find him. I realized the
place was being overseen by some kid from town, so I tried to get something out of him. The Hansberry boy, lived in the pharmacy with his parents. Got nothing.”

“So what did you do?”

“Well’s Bottom was a small place back then. Once Luke found out the old lady was selling her place, and the Hansberry boy was looking after it, he asked the postmaster to let him know if any letters sent to the Hansberrys were from her.”

“You
spied
on the
mail
?”

“Not me. It was bigger than me then. Luke was doing it. He even sent that driver of his, Edgar, to go to any return addresses.”

“All this to find Forty-two?”

“It just seemed odd, the old lady disappearing the morning after Forty-two slipped away from us. We thought he might have abducted her.”

“You know he wouldn’t have done that.”

“Or she was protecting him. Either way, they were linked somehow, so finding her meant finding him.”

“And”—she worked hard to make her voice sound sincere—“did you?”

“The one time Edgar got close, at some hotel in New York, she got away.”

“And then?”

“And then there weren’t any more return addresses from her. We gave up.”

“What do you think happened?”

“To Forty-two?”

She nodded.

“I think about it a lot. Probably froze to death in the woods that winter.”

“That’s what you think?”

“I’ve had lots of thoughts since I got sober and can look at
things with a clear eye. I don’t know what happened to him. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.”

“He didn’t deserve what happened to him. He was a wonderful man.” She shook her head, thinking of how she’d arrange the secret meetings with Lynnie in her office. “He liked Lynnie. He gave her bouquets of feathers.”

Clarence had no response. Kate said, “Is that it?”

“It’s why I came here, yes. I wanted to apologize to someone about it.”

“Why not just go to Lynnie?”

“I… I went to the School the day it closed. I thought of saying something, but I wasn’t sober yet. I wasn’t ready.”

“Why not go now?”

He fumbled, then said, “It’s been so long. I don’t want to confuse her.”

“Why not go to the police?”

“The police?”

“It’s a crime, Clarence. You helped someone commit a crime.”

“It was twenty-five years ago.”

“So you won’t go to the police?”

He looked stricken. “I’m in a new life now. I work for a school system. I help kids who’ve got family problems, substance problems, and try to keep them in school. I’ve got a wife and a kid. Something like this—it could ruin me.”

“You could have kept it to yourself.”

“I have, for a long time. I just—Kate, you don’t know what it’s like, living with the knowledge that you let something like that happen.”

“That’s true.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

“No, I’m glad to get the full story.”

His face relaxed a bit.

“So is that it?” she asked, feeling her brow grow even more tense.

He nodded and then said, “I do have one more question.”

“So do I.”

“You do?”

“Clarence,” she said, and she looked at him with a level gaze, “I want you to be perfectly straight with me. Don’t you think there was a reason Lynnie ran off just when she did?”

He looked at her with shock. “What are you saying?”

“Count it. Count backwards. She ran off in November.”

His eyes flickered. “No.”

“Clarence”—and she was filled with rage toward him, and guilt over all she had not done, and sorrow for everyone else—“do the math.”

“You can’t be telling me—”

“It’s true.”

“Twenty-five years!”

“That’s right.”

“Where is it? He—she? Where?”

“She.”

“Oh, my God. Where is she? With Forty-two?”

“Forty-two is dead. He drowned that night.”

“Dear Lord.”

“My friends gave him a service, but his body was never found.”

“Then where is she?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I did for a long time. She was with the old lady. Martha. And Martha made sure Eva Hansberry always knew where they were. And for the longest time they were on the run—from you. She stopped putting return addresses on the envelopes, but kept the letters coming until the girl was fourteen.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No, Clarence.”

“You don’t know anything more about the child after that?”

“The last I knew, there was a chance she’d be moving to somewhere near Denver. Wherever she ended up, she was given a good life. A better life than her mother’s.”

He was bent over now, as if in pain. His head was in his hands.

Kate felt her whole body shaking and turned again toward the door. Geraldine and Irwin were now standing outside, watching. She’d been here so long, she’d forgotten she was at work. Mr. Todd and Mr. Eskridge had probably played several matches by now. It was well past time for Mrs. Ilana’s stroll through the garden. Kate was twenty-five years late.

“Clarence,” she said, turning back to look down at the top of his bald head, his fingers splayed over his scalp, “you had another question?”

He dropped his hands to his lap. Then he lifted his head. “I don’t need to ask it.”

“I doubt I’ll ever see you again, so you should just ask me now.”

He looked away. She watched his gaze travel back in time, where he no doubt found a person who had once looked like him. Then he blanched and said, “I was going to ask if you hate me.”

Kate looked down at him. “I’m not the person you should be worried about.” She turned and walked away.

Heading back inside the building, Kate stormed past Geraldine and Irwin, holding up her hand so they wouldn’t ask anything. She continued through the doors and down the hall toward the solarium, her body stiff with fury. Poor Lynnie! All this time she’d been living with such a horrific experience! That was why she’d needed to hide the baby. That was why Forty-two had broken her out—and died!

Kate reached the sunny room only to find it empty. She looked at her watch. She’d lost track of time; the Westbrook residents had gone back to their dining areas for lunch, and she needed to return to her duties. But possessed by a rage so great she could not move, she peered into the midday light streaming through the windows and asked herself:
What should I do now?
And in response she felt that familiar push inside: the force she told others was her intuition, but she knew was the will of God. It did not, though, tell her what to do. It told her she needed to confess.

She stumbled back, appalled. She put her hand to her heart, wishing it were not true. Then she lifted her head with a deep cry she’d held in for so many years. She had been part of a world where slapping and spitting and name-calling and restraining and “copping a feel” went on day after day, season after season, resident after resident. Although Kate had never engaged in a single act of cruelty, and although she’d devoted herself to protecting and supporting all the people she served, she’d done nothing to stop what was happening. How many residents besides Lynnie had been assaulted in unspeakable ways? How many people besides Kate had stifled their conscience? How many mouths had stayed shut—for so long—while the least of these suffered immeasurably?

She fell to her knees and prayed for forgiveness.

She didn’t need to talk it over with Scott. She didn’t even need to go home.

The moment Kate’s shift ended, she drove to the nearest pay phone. As she got out of her car in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven and hurried over, she thought about how she’d begun working at the School as an act of penance. Now she would be doing another.

The phone rang five times before it was picked up.

“’Lo?” a woman’s voice said on the other end.

A television was playing loudly in the background.

“I’m trying to reach Lynnie,” Kate said. “Please tell her Kate is calling.”

The person walked away. It wasn’t Doreen anymore. Lynnie had moved twice into other group homes, and the roommates kept changing.

“Kate!” Lynnie said when she grabbed the phone.

“Lynnie,” Kate said, so relieved to hear the happiness in her voice. “I haven’t seen you in such a long time.”

“Nine years,” Lynnie said.

“That’s right. And guess what? I have something I need to do soon in Pennsylvania. Maybe even next week. Is it all right with you if I come visit?”

1993

L
ook up, Kate,” Lynnie said.

They were standing inside the Capitol building in Harrisburg, in the enormous domed room whose name Lynnie still had trouble pronouncing: “rotunda.”

Lynnie had first seen the rotunda five Octobers ago, when she attended a conference here in the State Capitol and learned about becoming a self-advocate. Since then, as she’d returned every year to the conference, she’d become familiar with this grand lobby and its marble floor, painted murals, sweeping staircase, stained glass, and jaw-droppingly high ceiling. Today she would finally get her chance to go deep inside the building to speak to legislators—another word Lynnie found difficult to say—when they held a hearing at three o’clock.

Now, though, it was only nine thirty. Lynnie had brought Kate here early, leaving behind the conference at the hotel, because she and Kate were doing something else before the hearing.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Lynnie said to Kate as they stood in the entrance to the lobby, tilting their heads back to look up.

“Yes. I can see why you wanted to come here first.”

“Beautiful” was once the biggest word Lynnie had ever said. Her speech therapist, Andrea, had told her,
After you master that, the sky’s the limit.
She wasn’t quite right—Lynnie did not cross a
language threshold with “beautiful.” She was still far from knowing all the words that could express her observations and insights, even in her own mind, and when she was able to say the ones that fit her modest vocabulary, her mouth still struggled. But Andrea was right that once Lynnie achieved “beautiful,” she’d develop a new confidence. Since then, she’d improved her enunciation and pace, grown bolder about the length and quantity of her sentences, and become more in control of her volume. She’d even learned some “add-ons,” as Andrea called them, like standing an “appropriate” distance from people when you’re in a conversation. So, incredibly, Lynnie had been able to get a job that required speaking, as a receptionist for BridgeWays, the agency that ran the group home where she lived.