Strangers (14 page)

Later, when he was alone with Kim (Marcy was too young to be allowed upstairs, so Michael and Beth took turns staying with her in half hour shifts in the main lobby) Michael did learn what had actually occurred. Kim, who had scraped arms and legs and no other marks to show for the accident, and who wanted to know if they could rent her a hospital television for the one night she’d be there, excitedly, but clearly, told her father about it.

The car struck the back wheel of her bicycle. Kim flew over the handlebars, landed on the highway, and “It was like I was doing all those somersaults.” She wound up rolling all the way to the grassy median and by the time “this old guy who zapped me” got to her, she was on her feet.

Incredible, Michael thought, the miracle that the intern had called it. But perhaps nothing was incredible, when it came to kids. One little creep drowns in a tablespoon of water, and the next day, you see in the paper that a kid decided it would be fun to jump off the Sears Tower and did so without harming a hair on his empty head.

Kim did want to know if she were going to be punished for riding across—well,
almost
riding across—394. Michael pretended to ponder the question a moment,
then
said, “Yes. As soon as you get home tomorrow, you’re on restriction. That means no bicycle riding.”

“Dad!” Kim protested, “Very funny. You know my bike got all squashed!”

“So I guess you can’t ride it, right?”

Kim glowered, sitting up in bed. “That’s not fair!”

Michael said, “Well, we’ll talk this over when we get you home.” He put up a hand, signaling the end of the discussion.

Before he left so Beth could begin her visit, Michael said, “You know
,
I bet you weren’t even scared when you were whizzing through the air like Superman.”

Kim’s face became serious and reflective. Quietly, she said, “No Dad, this one time I was scared.”

There would be a
next
time too, the time when she would know fear and finality.

That was The Stranger’s silent promise to himself and his child.

They left the hospital at 8:00, the end of visiting hours, and, with a stop at Burger King—they were all hungry—they didn’t pull into the drive until a quarter after nine. When they stepped inside, the telephone was ringing.

While Beth spoke to her mother—“Yes, Mom, yes, she’s okay now,”
Beth
sighed. “That’s right, Mom. You were right. No, I’m not saying you’re being an ‘I-told-you-so.’ I know you’re concerned, Mom…”—Michael told Marcy to get washed up and ready for bed.

Fifteen minutes later, Michael knocked on the door of his daughter’s bedroom. “Marcy?” He turned the knob and went in.

The bedroom, dimly lit by the lamp on the nightstand between the twin beds, was not so much a place the girls
shared
as it was two “half-a-rooms” divided by an invisible wall. Over the headboard of Kim’s, the bed nearer the door, was a poster, a close-up of soulfully ugly E.T.; above Marcy’s,
a
framed picture of three horses grazing peacefully. As always, there was the smell of pinewood chips and guinea pigs—Michael hated the insult to his nose—and in the aquarium—cage on the stand by the window, Kim’s brown and white cavy, Chopper, was whistling its unhappiness at being separated from his companion, Snowball, that Marcy was holding.

“We have to talk, Marcy,” Michael said.

Marcy slowly nodded. Wearing a pastel blue nightgown with a “rainy day umbrella,” design, she was sitting on her bed, her white guinea pig on her lap as she petted its head.

A girl and her guinea,
Michael thought.
How goddamned touching.

“Put Snowball back in the cage,” Michael said, thinking
before I smash him against the wall and watch him splatter!

“Yes, Daddy.”

Both of them sitting side, by side on the bed, Michael said, “Riding out on 394 today wasn’t your idea, was it, honey?”

Marcy shook her head.

“I didn’t think so,” Michael said, “but you knew what you and Kim were doing was wrong.”

“Yes, Daddy,” Marcy said, her voice only slightly louder than a whisper. “We shouldn’t have done it, and I shouldn’t have let Kim go there. I could’ve come right home and…” Marcy choked, “and told Mom and maybe Kim wouldn’t be in the hospital.”

Michael slipped an arm around Marcy’s shoulder. “That’s right, you love your sister and so you feel bad she was hurt. And your Mom and I love you kids, and we don’t want you to get hurt. That’s why we make rules to keep you safe. Do you understand that, honey?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

Now how was that for a “Father of the Year” speech?
Michael congratulated himself.

“You broke the rules, Marcy,” Michael said, “so you’re going to be punished. I’m going to spank you.”

In the Louden household, spanking was punishment for only the most serious misbehavior; that meant that every once in a while,
Kim
got paddled. Marcy, of course, never gave her parents cause to punish her that severely, and with Marcy a mere reproving word could bring tears to her eyes.

But this time…

“Oh, Daddy,” Marcy’s lower lip trembled and her eyes watered. “I really am sorry, so sorry…Please don’t spank me!”

Oh, Daddy! Christ! He hadn’t heard her pathetic, puling “Oh, Daddy” in what had to be at least a couple of hours!

He answered by laying her face down across his lap. Marcy whimpered tearfully.

Before he spanked her, he couldn’t resist. “This will hurt me more than it does you,” he said, and, at the last of a half-dozen stinging slaps to her bottom, he had to add, “You’ll thank me for this someday.”

— | — | —

EIGHT

IT WAS 5:30 in the morning when Beth awoke. The night had not been restful; she was too tense. She had slept, but it was an uneasy slumber that made her think she was seeing the oppressive, weighty blackness of the bedroom through her eyelids.

What is it?
she
asked herself in the two detached and disoriented way of those who have just emerged from unremembered dreams.
What is wrong, so terribly wrong?

Lying on her back, Beth had the sudden, scraped-nerve feeling that she was being watched. She turned her head and in the dark, saw Michael on his side, facing her, his eyes awake and aware.

“Michael?”

How long had he been looking at her without her knowing it?
she
wondered—and why should that upset her?

“Can’t sleep?” Michael asked softly.

“I guess not,” Beth said. “There’s so much going through my mind, and every time I try to figure out exactly what it is, it all slips away from me.”

“Want to talk, Beth?”

“I think so,” Beth said, “but I don’t know what it is I want to talk about.”

“That doesn’t matter. I’m a good listener. You know that. Say anything and we’ll go from there.”

Beth thought. “Everything, well, everything seems to be going wrong somehow.”

She paused. No, wrong was not exactly the word she meant, she explained. It seemed that suddenly everything was
changing,
changing in ways she did not understand. That frightened her. She had always felt secure, sometimes content, sometimes bored, but believing one day would be much like the next with its minor worries but no great fears, the ordinary small victories and defeats that made up life as usual. Now it seemed that the web of security that enfolded them all, the family—MichaelandBethandMarcyandKim—was being torn away. Zeller’s dog, then, the very next day, Kim’s accident…

But, Michael interjected; they had reason to be thankful, not fearful. After all, they’d come darned close to losing Kim, and, as it worked out, she’d be home from the hospital today, her own sassy,
ready
-to-raise-hell self.

“I guess,” Beth said, but she didn’t feel relief. It was as though the killing of Zeller’s dog and Kim’s accident—the
accident that Mom’s second
sight, intuition, psychic gift, whatever!
had
forecast!—
(And would Mom be providing new, dire predictions today, tomorrow, the day after?)—
were
inexplicably linked events in a chain of catastrophes destined to befall them.

That’s how she felt, anyway, and she had to admit it was not rational. But feelings didn’t have to be reasonable to be real, to be true, did they?

And. another change (for
the worse, of course, of course!)—
Marcy, their obedient, polite, model child—Beth was just sick, more over Marcy’s
punishment
than her crime. Beth believed in the disciplinary worth of a needed paddling, and a couple of times had warmed Kim’s bottom herself, not wanting to cast Michael in the “wait till your father gets home,” “Dad’s the one who hits” role, but physically punishing…now it was both girls—always upset her.

“Come on, Beth,” Michael said. “Don’t make more out of it than it is. Even the best kid goofs sometimes.” Beneath the covers, Michael put his hand on Beth’s hip. “Marcy did and she took her licks and that’s that. Besides, as guilty as she felt about the accident, a couple swats and a few tears put things back in balance for her. She got punished, so she knows we forgive her and now she can forgive herself.”

“I know you’re right. Everything you’re saying to me, I’ve already said to myself. But believing it is something else.” Beth sighed. “I guess things are okay and I’m letting my imagination run wild.”

“Honey,” Michael said, “it
has
been a rough couple of days. That’s not your imagination, and with all the stress of what’s happened, you have every reason to feel kind of shaky. I understand that.”

Knowing Michael understood and cared
did
help, Beth thought; it helped some, anyway.

“I don’t know,” Michael went on, “maybe this is a period of change in our lives, for whatever the reasons, but
there’s nothing written in the stars that says the changes are going to be all bad, is there?”

Beth felt otherwise but she answered, “No.”

“I mean, next week you’re going back to school. That’s a change for you, and it’s going to mean a change for all of us, but there’s nothing wrong with it.”

“You’re right,” Beth said.
He is right and I know he’s right and that is that,
she told herself, working at believing it.

Michael patted her hip. “I may not always be right, but I’m always the guy who loves you. Whatever changes come our way, we’ll handle them together, you and I.”

“Yes,” Beth said. Saying that simple word was an affirmation that made her feel better.

“Thanks,” she said.

“For what?”

“Being my early morning psychiatrist.”

Michael laughed. “The psychiatrist isn’t supposed to be in bed with his client, but as long as I am, are you in the mood for some additional therapy”—Michael moved his hand to her belly, then down—“shall we say, a consciousness-raising experience in sensory awareness?”

“You’re the doctor,” Beth said.

Through her gown, he petted the mound of her womanhood. He said, “I prescribe a deep, intramuscular love injection.”

“A wonder drug, Doctor?”