Stranglehold (41 page)

It was a waste. It was a goddamn crime.

The reporter could despair for her and feel for her and knew that she would do exactly that in anger and in cold print for the audience of a major national magazine just a couple of weeks from now. But Lydia
Danse
was not despairing.

She's done the right thing, the reporter thought. And she knows it. No matter what anybody thinks.

There's a nobility in that.

There's grace.

The reporter realized that Lydia
Danse
was gazing deeply into the reporter's own troubled eyes and knew that the interview was over.

Ruth watched him from her armchair in front of the television. He was working on his homework at the dining room table. Erasing with a pencil.

Persevere
, she thought. That's right
. Persevere
.

He'd grown taller in the year since it happened—taller and skinnier. She thought the skinniness suited him as it had suited Arthur at that age and didn't fuss when he left a bit of the food on his plate at dinnertime. Just so long as he ate a little something, she was happy.

In fact she was having no trouble at all with him these days. Oh, he was still too quiet, he still stumbled into furniture not looking where he was going sometimes, but the stuttering had stopped and she was thankful for that because the stuttering, to be honest, had always embarrassed her. His work was going well at school. He was diligent and respectful.

He was a good boy.

The same way Arthur was a good boy.

Most of the time he was.

The only problem she had with Robert was—and it didn't happen nearly so often now, but god knows at her age once a month was still quite enough to frazzle her—the only problem she had was this messing the bed at night. She'd wake up in the morning or even in the middle of the night sometimes to a smell like something had crawled up into her house and died. And there would be the boy, sleeping in his own shit or else stripping the sheets off the bed or else just sitting there looking sad and guilty.

She made him wash his sheets when it happened and kept plastic on to protect the mattress underneath at all times. But she wasn't buying any diapers for him. She wasn't spending money on diapers for a nine-year-old.

She'd have to find some way to break him of the habit. And soon.

She couldn't stand the god-awful stink when it happened. It wasn't correct.

It wasn't sanitary.

And it wasn't necessary.

He was far too old for dunking.

She'd have to find some other way.

Of course there was always what had worked with Arthur what helped to put him back in line when he was out of line—on those rare occasions. But the world was different now than it was when Arthur was a boy and people were a lot more nosy. Teachers were nosy and they had counselors at school who were nosy and even other parents got nosy a whole lot of the time. She'd heard stories. People who had their kids taken away from them by the goddamn county. She'd have to be careful.

She'd have to use it where it wouldn't show.

A thin peeled stick. Birch.

It had always worked for Arthur.

And then afterwards in the darkness of his bedroom she'd go to him and hold him close to her breast and feel his sweet warm tears soak through her housedress and she'd rock him and tell him that it was all right now, it was over, that he was her boy, her good boy, her one and only child and the love of her life, forever, never mind old Harry, never mind anybody because nobody else in the world mattered the way he mattered—they belonged to one another forever there in the sight of God and she would stroke him, stroke him, stroke him
.