Suffer the Children (12 page)

“Oh, Sarah,” Elizabeth was saying, a little louder now. “I wish you could come with me, really I do, but you simply can’t. It’ll only be a few minutes.” There was another wail from Sarah. “Sarah, let go. I’m going to be late if I don’t leave now.”

When Mrs. Goodrich appeared in the front hallway, Elizabeth was valiantly trying to free herself from Sarah’s grasp. The smaller girl held on to Elizabeth’s wrist with both hands, and Elizabeth was making no headway at all. Each time she pried one hand loose, the other would grasp her anew. She saw Mrs. Goodrich, and signaled to her to hurry.

“Help,” she said, keeping her voice as light as she could. “Just hang on to her till I get out of sight, and she’ll be all right.”

Mrs. Goodrich seized Sarah and held her firmly while Elizabeth put on her coat. “You hurry along now,” the woman said. “The sooner you’re gone, the easier time I’ll have. Not that I’m saying I don’t like having you around,” she added.

“I know,” Elizabeth grinned. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

Elizabeth went to the front door, opened it, turned to wave to Sarah, then closed the door behind her. She tried not to listen as she heard Sarah’s voice rise in a howl of anguish. Instead, she concentrated on the trees
that lined the driveway. By the time she reached the Point Road, she’d almost convinced herself that Sarah had stopped her howling.

Behind her the battle that was raging was a strange one. Sarah’s outraged screams filled the house, and she struggled, twisting and squirming in Mrs. Goodrich’s arms. Her face set, the old woman drew every measure of strength she possessed to hang on as tightly as she dared, and hold the child without hurting her. Mrs. Goodrich saw no point in trying to talk to Sarah. She was sure the child would never hear her above her own din, and it would only be wasting her strength to try. Grimly, she held on.

Then Sarah bit her. The housekeeper felt the teeth sink into her hand, into the fleshy part at the base of the thumb. She steeled herself against the pain and lifted Sarah off the floor. She carried the child to a window and turned so that Sarah could see out Sarah stopped howling.

Mrs. Goodrich set her down then, and examined the thumb. The skin was broken, but not badly.

“It’s been a long time since a child did that to me,” Mrs. Goodrich noted out loud. Sarah, her attention diverted from the window and the empty driveway beyond, stared up into the housekeeper’s face. Looking down into the huge, empty brown eyes, a surge of pity swept over the old woman. She slowly knelt down and put her arms around the child. “But I don’t suppose you meant anything by it, did you? And you’re not rabid, so there’s no real harm done.” She continued to hold the child, soothing her until she heard the van coming up the driveway. Then she hauled herself to her feet and, taking Sarah by the hand, led her back to the front door. Sarah stood docilely while Mrs. Goodrich bundled her into her coat, and made no objection when George Diller led her to the van. Mrs. Goodrich stood by the door and watched the van till it was out of sight. She didn’t wave; she was too tired
from the struggle, and she didn’t really think Sarah would see it anyway. When the driveway was empty once again, she closed the door slowly and retreated to her kitchen, where she bathed the injured hand, winced as she applied iodine, and bandaged it. Then she remembered the cat.

She was sure it was a waste of time, but she had agreed to make a search for Cecil, and she would. She decided to get the long climb to the attic out of the way first and work down from there. Getting to the second floor was no problem; she was used to that She carried the key to the attic door in her pocket, but instinctively tried the door as she reached for the key. The key dropped back into her pocket as the door opened, revealing the steep staircase. “Supposed to be locked,” she muttered to herself, pausing a moment to rest before tackling the stairs that led to the attic. As she climbed, she tried to remember the last time anybody had been up here. A month ago, when they had brought down the old portrait. She went into the attic and closed the door behind her.

“Cecil?” she called. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty …”

Elizabeth was halfway into town when she saw Kathy Burton walking ahead of her.

“Kathy?” she yelled. The girl ahead of her stopped and turned around. “Wait up,” Elizabeth called. She ran until she caught up with her friend.

“What are you doing out here?” she said when she was abreast of Kathy.

“I was baby-sitting last night,” Kathy said. “At the Nortons’.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “They’re weird,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s so much older than she is …” Elizabeth trailed off, mulling the peculiarities of her elders. Then another thought occurred to her.

“Your mother lets you baby-sit there?”

“Sure,” Kathy said curiously. “Why wouldn’t she?”

“I mean after what happened to Aune Forager …”

“Oh, that,” Kathy shrugged. “My mother says nothing happened to her at all. She says she’s a liar.”

Elizabeth nodded. “That’s what my dad thinks, too. But I’m not sure he believes it.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “He’s just acting strange.” She looked around, and pointed to a bird that swooped from a nearby tree. “Look,” she said, “a jay.”

Kathy followed her gesture, but missed the bird. “You sure are lucky, living out here,” she said. “That’s why I like to sit for the Nortons. I can stay over and walk back in the morning.”

“I wish there was a bus,” Elizabeth said. “It gets boring after a while.”

“I wouldn’t get tired of it if I lived out here,” Kathy said confidently. “It must be fun to be able to go exploring any time you want to.”

Elizabeth nodded, but her attention was no longer on Kathy.

A rabbit had flashed across the road ahead of the girls, and as Elizabeth watched it a strange expression crossed her face. She stopped, and seemed to be grasping at an elusive thought.

“There’s a place,” she whispered.

“What?” Kathy asked.

“A secret place,” Elizabeth went on. She turned to Kathy and stared intensely into her eyes. “Would you like to go there sometime?”

Kathy’s eyes widened. “What kind of place?”

“If I told you it wouldn’t be secret any more, would it?

If I take you there, you have to promise never to tell anybody about it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t,” Kathy said, the excitement of sharing a secret bringing a quiver to her voice. “It would be just ours.”

Elizabeth seemed on the verge of saying something more when she heard the sound of a vehicle approaching from behind them. She pulled Kathy off the road, and the two of them waited while the White Oaks van passed them. George Diller waved and tooted the horn as he passed. From the back of the van the girls could see Sarah, her face pressed against the rear window of the vehicle, until the bus took a curve in the road, moving out of sight When the van was gone, Elizabeth stopped waving, and she and Kathy once again began walking.

“What’s wrong with her?” Kathy asked.

“Who?”

“Sarah,” Kathy said.

“Who said something’s the matter with her?” Elizabeth said defensively. It upset her to be asked questions about her sister.

“My mother,” Kathy said matter-of-factly. “She said Sarah’s crazy.”

Elizabeth stared at the ground for a while before she spoke again.

“I don’t think you should talk that way about Sarah.”

“Well, is she crazy?” Kathy pressed.

“No,” Elizabeth said.

“Then why does she go to White Oaks? That’s a place for crazy kids. They come from all over the country to go there.”

“And they live there, don’t they?” Elizabeth pointed out. “If Sarah was crazy, wouldn’t she have to live there too?”

Kathy thought it over. “Well, if she’s not crazy, why does she go there at all?”

Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Something happened to her about a year ago. She was in the woods, and she fell or something. And now she can’t talk. If she went to school in town, everybody would laugh at her. But she’ll be all right, as soon as she starts talking again.”

The two girls walked in silence for a while, and it wasn’t until they were into town that either of them spoke again.

“Does Sarah know about the secret place?” Kathy said suddenly.

Elizabeth shook her head. “And you won’t either, if you don’t stop asking questions about it. It’s a place you have to be. You can’t talk about it.”

“Will you show me?” Kathy asked defiantly.

“If you stop talking about it,” Elizabeth countered. “It’s a very special place, just for me. But I suppose I could take you there, since you’re a friend of mine.”

“When?”

But Elizabeth didn’t answer. Instead, she gave her friend a mysterious look, then disappeared into the school.

Mrs. Goodrich spent nearly an hour in the attic, only part of it looking for Cecil. A quick inspection convinced her that the cat was not there, and she was about to go back downstairs when something caught her eye. She wasn’t sure what it was—something out of place, or something missing, or something there that shouldn’t have been there. She paused and looked around. For a long time she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. It was more a feeling than anything tangible. As if someone had been here and moved things around, then returned them to their original places. Except that there was still an air in the attic. An air of having been disturbed.

The old woman began looking around more carefully, realizing as she did that the attic was as much the storehouse of her memories as it was the repository of the Conger family’s castoffs. All the things that Congers had used and forgotten about were scattered around the attic—things that they had forgotten about but that Mrs. Goodrich had not. Her hand caressed the cradle that had been used for so many Conger
babies—Sarah most recently, but Elizabeth before her, and their father before them. She wondered how many generations of Conger babies had slept in that cradle. And then she noticed that the intricate hand carving contained not a particle of dust. That was what had struck her about the attic: no dust. Everything that should have been covered with dust was clean.

She spent the next hour in the attic, looking for the dirt that should have been there. But it was not there, nor was Cecil.

Early in the afternoon she decided that, wherever the cat was, he was not in the house.

He’ll come back, she thought. When he’s a mind to.

“Are you sorry yet?”

Rose asked the question as she peered over the edge of her highball glass at Barbara Stevens. She had been right; she did like the Stevenses, and was looking forward to several years of happy neighborliness. Opposite her, sitting next to Carl, Barbara stared right back at her.

“Sorry?” she said. “Sorry we bought the house?”

“Well,” Rose said, her eyes wandering through the ugly square living room, now filled with packed boxes and disarranged furniture, “I told you it was a mess. And it sure is.”

Barbara laughed, and the sound seemed to make the room less ugly. “It isn’t all that bad. There are lots of possibilities.” Rose was sure she heard a touch of uncertainty in the words.

“Name one.” It was a challenge.

“Carl has dozens,” Barbara said, neatly avoiding the hook. “I’ll take over after the remodeling is done.”

“In other words,” Carl put in, “never. Barbara is thoroughly convinced that ‘remodeling’ includes paint, paper, and, if she can persuade me, new furniture. Then, when it’s all finished, she comes out of her studio, looks around, and says, ‘My, we have done wonders with this place, haven’t we?’ ”

“Now, it’s not that bad at all,” Barbara protested. “Besides, you know damned well that you think an architect should have full control of everything that
goes into a building, from the day the ground is broken until the day the building is torn down.” She turned her attention to Rose and winked. “He even has stipulations in his contracts to carry his instructions forth unto the fourth generation. The sins of the fathers may not be visited on the sons, but they’re sure going to have to live with them.”

“Enough,” Carl said, standing up and brandishing a bottle that the three of them had half killed. “Any more, anybody, or shall we call it a day?”

Rose glanced at her watch, and it struck her that she had spent a lot more time here than she had intended. But it had been fun, and she’d found out a lot more about the old house than she had ever known. The three of them had spent most of the day exploring it from top to bottom, and the Stevenses were now well acquainted with the Barneses’ lighting system, which had allowed some rooms to be lit only from other rooms. Some rooms, which Rose explained had been the children’s, were without any switches at all, and the three of them had speculated that the Barneses had actually and literally kept some of their children in the dark on occasion. The day had gone fast, and it was close to four. Rose stood up.

“There’s one more thing I should show you,” she said pensively, “and I’d like to do it this afternoon.”

Carl’s brows rose curiously. “Sounds important.”

“It may be, and it may not be. You’ll know better than I, since I haven’t met Jeff yet.”

“Jeff?” Barbara echoed, now totally mystified. “What does he have to do with it?”

“Nothing, I hope,” Rose said. “That’s why I’d like to tell you about it now, before he gets here. Come on.”

She led Carl and Barbara out of the house on the ocean side. There was a path leading along the cliff to the south, and it was along this path that Rose took the Stevenses.

“There should be primroses,” Carl remarked. Barbara
smiled at him appreciatively, but Rose appeared not to have heard the remark. She strode forward, and they walked for about a hundred feet before she stopped.

“There,” she said, pointing.

Carl and Barbara stared out to sea, their eyes sweeping the horizon. The ocean was clear of boats and ships, an expanse of gray-green water broken only by the horizon and Conger’s Point jutting out to sea another hundred yards south of them.

“It’s beautiful,” Barbara said. “But I don’t know what I’m looking for.”