When No One Was Looking (17 page)

In the girls room, which Mr. Hammer had thoughtfully unlocked for her, Kathy found each of the glass soap dispensers empty and cleaned, ready to be filled for the coming year. She nearly cried in happiness when the last of them turned out to contain a white residue in its bottom. Kathy pumped at it, all the while sweating as much as in any match in the broiling sun. She could neither pump the soap out nor unscrew the globe,
but it’s better to have a broken soap dish than a broken bust of Lincoln,
she reasoned, and she cracked it open with a plastic toilet brush she found in the corner.

Kathy scooped out the dry soap and placed it in a little mound at the side of the sink. She carefully worked it with warm water until it attained a gluey consistency. “Just like real paste!” she told herself in her encouraging algebra-problem voice. Some of it she used to repair the handle of the toilet brush, some to repair the glass globe, and the rest she carried back into the principal’s office in a paper towel and lovingly applied it to the inside surfaces of Lincoln’s head. It held nicely this time, with hardly the appearance of a crack.
It should last all year,
Kathy told herself,
if nobody bumps it or lifts it.

But what if the principal tries to put it back on the top shelf?
Kathy asked herself as she sat down again.
What if it is an expensive antique? I can’t just say it fell down. Mrs. Diggins’ll be sure to find the book up there, and she’ll know it was me who took the exam in this office, and then I might even get Mr. Hammer into trouble if she finds out he was going to let me cheat!
Kathy was certain of one thing. She could do no more algebra with her imagination so rampantly on the loose.
I must solve this calmly and sensibly,
she decided.
All I have to do is get Lincoln back up there and the book back down.

Between the shelves and the window, behind the American flag, was a thin heating pipe. She thought she could shinny up it using one foot for balance on each bookshelf. But not holding a heavy, fragile lump of plaster of paris. But she
could
wrap the head in something carefully and hold it in her teeth for just those few seconds it took to climb. The only piece of cloth available save her shirt or shorts was the flag.
I know Mr. Hammer will come in if I take off my shirt. I know it,
she told herself, and so she removed the flag from its pole easily, as it was only stapled on.

It took her less than a minute to wrap the head and a few seconds more to get her balance and replace it perfectly in the dustless square from which it had fallen. On her way down she retrieved the algebra book.

The clock showed more than an hour and a quarter had passed.
Wasted!
Kathy scolded herself and resignedly looked up the answers to all the problems, allowing herself only a barely passing grade.

She was folding the flag as she had been taught to do in Girl Scouts when Mr. Hammer came back into the office. “I was just folding the flag, Mr. Hammer,” said Kathy.

Mr. Hammer peered at the flagpole.

“It came off,” Kathy added.

Mr. Hammer offered her a ride home as he slammed the office door and locked it behind them. On the shelf the bust came apart. “Place is falling to pieces,” he said sadly, watching it through the glass.

“I have my bicycle, thanks,” said Kathy.

Mr. Hammer tapped the pocket of his jacket where he’d placed Kathy’s exam. He smiled his big smile and winked at her. “Now you go play your heart out, honey. By next week you should be the New England champ.” Afterward Kathy wondered if everything would have turned out differently had Mr. Hammer not winked in the sly way he did.

“Mr. Hammer,” Kathy asked in just the voice she’d used to say
another
freight train, “could you give me back my test, please? I’m ashamed to say I cheated on it. I’d rather take a failing mark than have that on my conscience ... please, Mr. Hammer?”

“Now, honey ...
honey!
” he warned as he straight-armed Kathy away from his pocket. “We’re just going to talk about it, okay? Just talk about it first, all right? Now calm down. Settle down. We’re going to talk about it. Everything’s going to be okay. You’re under a lot of strain. I’ve seen this happen a hundred times in a pressure situation.”

“I’ve seen this happen a hundred times in a pressure situation,” said Mr. Hammer confidently to Kathy’s father and mother.

“I think the pill is doing her a little good,” said her mother. “Kathy, do you feel any better?”

“I feel ... groggy,” Kathy answered. “But no better, Mom.”

“That’s okay. You get something to eat and you’ll feel a hundred percent,” said Mr. Hammer.

Kathy blinked at him. He was sitting on the sofa in her living room, holding a drink between his large opened knees. He was smiling. “Quite a little fighter!” he said with a grin. “Now once again, Kathy,” he went on in a very warm and easy tone. Kathy watched her mother and father watching Mr. Hammer. What time was it? Evening. “Once again, honey. Two things have to be clear in your mind. One is that you never cheated on a tennis court, did you?”

“No, Mr. Hammer.”

“Of course not,” echoed her mother. “She doesn’t have to.”

“That’s what counts, isn’t it?” Mr. Hammer continued. “You think you cheated on the exam, Kathy, because you’re so worked up about the other thing. You’ve got a good little conscience there. I admire it. But you’re all upset. You cracked under too much heat, Kathy, and when people are upset, they do things and say things they don’t mean and that they’re sorry for afterward. Now trust me, and trust your mom and dad. We’re grown-up people, Kathy, with a lot of years behind us. You’ve only been a kid so far.”

Kathy’s feet were folded neatly beneath her on her favorite rose-covered chair. Mr. Hammer’s logic and his expression were like a thick flawless blanket. Warm and inviting. Impenetrable.

“Now only you know whether you fudged a little bit on the test, but what we all know, Kathy, your mom and dad and I, is that you had an unbelievable amount of pressure on you in Florida. You stood up to it incredibly. You had a lot of pressure today in a subject you hate. You’ve got a lot of pressure coming in two days with the Newport tournament. Now you add to that a lot of unfounded gossip and a big imagination, you’re going to come up with a little breakdown.”

“I haven’t had a breakdown,” said Kathy.

“Nobody takes a tranquilizer unless they’ve had a breakdown,” interrupted her mother.

“Will you please tell me, Mr. Hammer”—Kathy felt her voice rising—“how come you knew all that stuff about Oliver, right down to the kind of tacks he used?”

“Routine, honey. He comes from another town. Moves here for the summer. Police do a routine check. Happens a hundred times a week. I happen to know about it because the police chief, Dom D’Amico, is my wife’s brother-in-law. I knew you played ball with the fellow, and I wondered who he was. That’s all.”

“First you’re after Marty. Now it’s Oliver, isn’t it?”

“Nobody’s after anybody, Kathy,” he said sadly. “Nobody did anything to anybody. What you’ve heard is a lot of rumors.”

“I will not play,” said Kathy. “I won’t eat or sleep before Saturday unless everybody stops hiding stuff and comes out with it straight. I’ll hear it from you,” she added, “or I’ll find out for myself.”

“She’ll hear it from some other dingbat source, Ken,” said Kathy’s father.

Mr. Hammer leaned back on the sofa. He snapped his fingers softly. “Stubborn as a little mule,” he said, whistling between his big white teeth. “Well, that’s why she wins the big ones. Okay.”

“Please tell me what’s happening,” Kathy repeated.

“Kathy,” her mother broke in, “Ruth Gumm’s parents are trying to stir up a hornet’s nest.”

Mr. Hammer took over again, seeming to have decided what approach he would use. It was the friendly one. “
Hornet’s nest
isn’t the word for it,” he said, catching Kathy’s eyes with his own. “Kathy, I want you to listen hard now, okay? Just relax that active little brain of yours and listen. Please?”

“Okay.”

“First of all, these people—Don’t get me wrong. They lost their kid. They’re very, very upset about it. I understand just how they feel. But they didn’t go to the police, Kathy.”

“They didn’t?”

“No. They went straight to the head of the New England Lawn Tennis Association. Caroline Collins.
She
went to the police. Now again, maybe they weren’t thinking straight. Their daughter had a terrible accident. But it was an
accident,
Kathy. A terrible tragedy. But that doesn’t give them the right to pin it on someone else. To lay blame and try to find a scapegoat, does it?”

“Well ... no.”

“Do you think it gives them the right to upset many other people’s lives just because they’re upset?”

“Well ... Kathy began.

“You know, honey, sometimes grown-ups can act just like children. When a kid can’t accept a disappointment, what does he do? He lays on the floor and has a tantrum. He says, ‘My brother did it!’ He says
anything
to get around it! Well, in the face of personal loss and tragedy some people, adult people, do the same. Rather than living through a bad situation and facing up to it, letting time heal their wounds, they use up all their energy flying around like a chicken with its head cut off. Blaming, accusing, heedless of the feelings of others, they try and change what they can’t change. You know, my wife has a little what-d’ye-call-it, needlepoint thing on the wall of our kitchen. It says ‘God grant me the serenity to accept what I can’t change, the courage to change what I can change, and the wisdom to know the difference.’ That make any sense to you, Kathy?”

“I’ve seen them. The needlepoint samplers. I know what it means.”

“Okay, Kathy, now I’m going to ask
you
a tough question, and I want
you
to give me a truthful answer.”

“Yes, Mr. Hammer?”

“You think you’re ever, ever in your whole life going to be able to add two and two and two?”

“You mean math?” said Kathy, looking down at her hands.

“I mean math. Do you ever think you’ll play the violin in a concert?”

“No,” Kathy answered questioningly.

“You ever think you’re going to be a great ballerina?”

“No.”

“Do you think you’ll ever be any good, even good enough to pass first-year algebra, at math?”

“If I studied, maybe.”

“Did you spend all last year and all summer studying?”

“Yes, Mr. Hammer.”

“Did it do any good? Can you change it, Kathy? Can you change it? Can you learn the violin or ballet or math?”

“No.”

“Then accept it.”

Kathy was silent.

“Okay?” he asked.

“Okay,” she said unsurely.

“Now I’m going to explain something else nobody can change. When Police Chief D’Amico gets charges, when someone charges somebody with wrongdoing, the police have
no choice,
Kathy, but to pursue it. To investigate the charges. It’s the law. Now it’s my personal opinion that what happened is a terrible misunderstanding, but this is what has come down the pike so far. The cops have a specimen of red clay that the club manager wiped up off the pool-house floor. The pool water, at the time of the accident, was overchlorinated. After the autopsy Ruth Gumm’s parents went to Mrs. Collins at the NELTA. They thought you or somebody close to you had tried to harm their daughter because she had beaten you many times and was to play you the next day. Mrs. Collins went to the cops, and the cops came to Molina. He was very defensive. Thought they were accusing him of carelessness with his pool. He showed them the sponge with the clay on it and said the tennis pro over there had been messing around in the pool house and it must be her fault. Now it looks to me like your club manager wanted to get your tennis coach fired. He didn’t really think there was any funny business. He just wanted to clear his name from a negligence charge. There’s a feud going on between the two of them. Doesn’t look like the coach is too popular.”

“Marty?”

“You like her?”

“Without Marty I’d be nowhere.”

“Oh, come now, honey. Marty didn’t give you your talent. The good Lord did that.”

“I will not leave Marty.”

“Okay, okay. But just supposing this Marty person had decided to tip the match in your favor that day. Just supposing.”

“Marty would never do that,” said Kathy.

“We don’t know where she was the evening before. As a matter of fact anybody who spent the day at the Newton Country Club and got their feet full of that red clay could have gone into the pool house. To tell you the truth, D’Amico’s been too busy to do much about this yet. We do know where you were, Kathy, thank God.”

“She was at algebra and down at the public courts practicing,” said Kathy’s mother. “Just ask Mrs. Diggins. Ask Joe Potter.”

“I was at Fenway Park,” said Kathy.

“What?” asked her father in horror. The atmosphere in the room changed so suddenly Kathy became alarmed. “It’s okay,” she said. “I came home after the fifth inning. I didn’t want to be late, and the Yankees were winning anyway.”

“Oh, boyoboyoboyoboy,” said Mr. Hammer.

“You could have been raped! Mugged!” said her mother.

Mr. Hammer held up his hand for silence as if he were in a disorderly kindergarten. “Can you remember a bus driver, Kathy? Do you have a ticket stub?”

“No, sir.”

“Remember someone who sat next to you? Anything at all? Anybody see you? A guard? Did you talk to anybody?”

“No, sir.”

Again Mr. Hammer snapped his fingers softly and distractedly rubbed at his jaw. “Listen, listen, listen,” he said. “Kathy, we’ve got a completely wrong slant on this. There’s no homicide charge here. It was an accident no matter how you slice it. Nobody wanted to kill the poor girl. Even if what her parents say is true, that somebody did dump some chlorine in the pool, it was at worst a practical joke. Do you understand that?”

“She died,” said Kathy.

“She died of drowning, Kathy. Not of chlorine. Chlorine can’t kill anybody. She could have died in the ocean swallowing too much salt water if the salt water made her gag and closed up her throat and she couldn’t breathe. That happened to me once, snorkling off Jamaica. If I hadn’t been close to the boat and two fellows hadn’t dragged me out of the water, I would have drowned just because I swallowed too much salt water and it came up and I couldn’t control the spasm.”