Suffer the Children (18 page)

“Well, I suppose so,” Rose said, but she wasn’t sure it could. Dr. Belter heard the uneasiness in her voice.

“I’ll tell you what. If anything else happens, you call me, and I’ll be right out there. Otherwise, I’ll see you on Monday.”

“All right,” Rose agreed. “I suppose that’ll be fine. Thank you, Doctor.” She hung up the phone, and was about to tell Jack what had been arranged when she saw his eyes move from her own to a spot behind her and the blood drain from his face. She whirled around, not knowing what to expect.

It was Elizabeth, and she was a mess. The dress that had been so clean when she left the house was now filthy, covered with mud, and the muck was streaked over her face as well.

“My God,” Rose said. “What happened?”

“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said, and it was the voice of a small girl. “I was out by the quarry. I slipped in the mud.”

“What were you doing out there?” Jack demanded. “You could have killed yourself.”

Elizabeth seemed on the verge of tears. “I said I was sorry,” she repeated. “I’m all right It’s—it’s only mud.”

“That dress,” Rose snapped. “You’ve ruined that dress. Get it off immediately and give it to Mrs. Goodrich. Maybe she can save it.”

Elizabeth burst into tears and fled from the room. Rose watched her go, and doubted that Mrs. Goodrich would be able to save the dress. It looked to be as ruined as the afternoon. Rose, too, felt like crying.

“Oh, shit,” she said miserably.

“It’s only a dress,” Jack said soothingly.

“No it’s not,” Rose said. “It’s everything.” She felt the hopelessness sweep over her.

“And that’s where we are as of now,” Dr. Ciarles Belter concluded, closing the file in front of him. He glanced around the room, noting that Marie Montgomery looked unhappy and Josephine Wells looked annoyed. The three of them were waiting for Jack and Rose Conger, and Josephine Wells had suggested that it would be a good idea to review the entire file before their arrival. The mind of a bureaucrat, Dr. Belter had thought, but he had complied. Now he looked at Josephine Wells. “Any questions?”

“It strikes me,” Josie Wells said, and Dr. Belter noted to himself that things invariably “struck” Josie Wells, “that there must be a lot more going on here than we know about.”

Dr. Belter tried to keep his face straight, and did his best to nod gravely. “Go on,” he said, knowing that she would anyway.

“It strikes me,” Miss Wells said again, and this time Charles Belter had to fight down an impulse to do exactly that, “that we should be looking beyond Sarah as an individual, and trying, rather, to fathom the greater socio-psychological factors involved within the structure of the prime unit.”

“If you mean we should talk to her family,” Dr. Belter remarked drily, “that’s exactly what we’re about to do. If they ever get here.” He glanced at his watch and noted that it was still five minutes until the time
the Congers were due. He braced himself to tolerate further pontificating from the social worker.

“What I’m trying to say,” Miss Wells said, tapping her front teeth with the end of the Pentel she always carried, apparently for no other purpose, since she rarely took notes, “is that what we seem to have here is a clear case of regression.” Miss Wells, who felt that her Master of Social Welfare degree qualified her as a psychologist, a sociologist, and a sage, leaned back and looked pleased with herself.

“And?” Dr. Belter prompted.

“And therefore it strikes me that we should be trying to find out toward what she is regressing.”

Dr. Belter shot a glance to Mrs. Montgomery, but the teacher’s face was a bland mask of innocence. Marie Montgomery had discovered long ago that with Josie Wells it was best to sit quietly and listen. Any response was all too likely to carry Miss Wells further into the mazes of gobbledygpok that she mistook for erudition. Marie caught Dr. Belter’s glance, and wondered how he was planning to deal with the social worker’s impossible idea.

“I think you’re absolutely right,” Dr. Belter said gravely. “I suggest that you have copies made of the entire file immediately, and begin comparing common factors between the prenatal experience of Sarah and the postpartum depression futeriundus of her mother.” The doctor was pleased to see Josie Well’s Pentel scribble a word. He wondered how many books she would search before she finally decided there was no such word as “futeriundus.” Then it struck him that it was more likely she would simply attach a meaning to the word, and proceed to carry out his instructions. He sighed to himself and cursed the necessity of having a social worker in his midst. When he saw the Congers driving up to the building, his sigh became audible. He braced himself and put on a broad smile as they were
ushered into his office, so that neither of them was aware that he was, while greeting them, examining them minutely.

He noted the obvious strain in Rose’s face, the strain that had been growing there for a year. It didn’t seem any worse than the last time he had seen her, but there were other signs now, signs that her composure was wearing thin. Her hair, usually perfectly set, was beginning to show the first signs of disarray. Not that it was messy—not by any means; it simply wasn’t as perfect as usual. And there was a tiny spot on the jacket of her pants suit, a spot that most people would never notice but nevertheless a spot that Dr. Belter knew Rose Conger would not normally tolerate.

Jack, on the other hand, seemed totally unchanged. It should be showing, Dr. Belter thought. Unless he’s some sort of monster. But Charles Belter did not believe people were monsters, so he looked more closely. He found what he was looking for in Jack’s fingernails: He was beginning to chew cm them. Not enough so they looked chewed, but just slightly uneven, as if he would chew one, then smooth it out with a file, leaving it shorter than the others.

“Sit down,” Dr. Belter said warmly. “We’ve just been discussing Sarah. Since you didn’t call again, I gather yesterday was quiet?”

“Well,” Rose said, “I’m not sure what quiet is any more. If you mean nothing happened, nothing out of the ordinary, I suppose you could say nothing happened. But I’m afraid I have to say that I think she’s getting worse.”

“Rose!” Jack said. “I don’t think that’s fair.”

“No,” Rose said tiredly. “I know you don’t think it’s fair. And it may not be. I will grant you that I’m not a psychologist, and I will grant you that I have no training in the sort of disorders Sarah has. But I’m a mother, and I know how I feel And I feel worn out, and I feel
sick, and I feel my daughter isn’t getting any better—”

“That’s a lot different from getting worse,” Jack interjected.

“All right, maybe I’m wrong. You tell us,” she appealed to the doctor. Then she recounted the events of Saturday, leaving out none of the details. Dr. Belter listened carefully, as did the teacher and the social worker. When Rose was finished, he leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and seemed to be considering something. No one in the room spoke, and it passed through Jack’s mind that the doctor looked just like Santa Claus. Had he known of the thought, Dr. Belter would have been pleased.

Eventually he opened his eyes again, and turned to Marie Montgomery. “Any ideas?”

She shook her head. “Not at the moment Frankly, it doesn’t sound to me like Sarah’s getting worse.”

Jack’s eyes lit up. “No?” he said eagerly.

“Well,” Marie Montgomery said carefully, “it seems to me that the fact that she was able to concentrate on something as long as she did in order to get that collar onto your ankle indicates that she may be getting a little better. Granted, it was a macabre thing for her to do—at least, it seems so to us, but it may not have been macabre to her at all. It may have been something else entirely.” She reviewed the incident with the magazine and Sarah’s reaction to the pictures of cats. “She may have been trying to tell you something.”

“Such as?” Rose asked.

The teacher shrugged. “That’s the hard part. You have to remember that Sarah’s mind isn’t working the same way as yours and mine. There’s really no way for us to know what she was trying to communicate. But whatever it was, it must have been important She doesn’t normally spend that much time doing anything, let alone anything that takes the dexterity of fastening one of those plastic collars. They’re tricky.”

Dr. Belter nodded his head in agreement, and seemed
to come to a decision in his own mind. He spoke to his colleagues. “I think I’d better talk to the Congers alone, if you don’t mind.”

Josephine Wells started to protest, but Mrs. Montgomery was already on her feet “Of course,” she said, over the social worker’s voice. “If you need us, page us.” Before Josie could say anything, Marie Montgomery was pulling her out of the office. Dr. Belter waited until the door was closed before he spoke.

“You two are having a rough time of it, aren’t you?” he said at last Rose and Jade stared at him, each waiting for the other to speak. The silence lengthened, until Rose broke it.

“Yes,” she said, barely audibly. “We are. And it isn’t all Sarah.”

Dr. Belter’s head bobbed. “Not directly, anyway. Do you want to tell me what’s going on at your house?”

Rose waited for Jack to speak, but when he didn’t she began talking about their problems. As she talked she became aware of a strange detachment, as though she were talking about two other people, not herself and her husband. She recounted the fights and the cruelties they had inflicted on each other, and was surprised to discover that she was being Mr; she was presenting Jack’s side of things as well as her own. When she was finished, Dr. Belter turned to Jack.

“You want to add anything?”

“No,” Jack said. He smiled at his wife. “I have to hand it to you—I couldn’t have been that fair.”

“Mrs. Conger,” Dr. Belter said, “has it occurred to you that maybe you should be in therapy too?”

“What do you mean?” Rose said defensively.

Dr. Belter smiled easily. “Well, let’s face it Generally speaking, I consider emotional problems to be a communicable disease. If one person in a family is having problems, others usually are too, if for no other reason than that it is difficult to live with someone who is mentally ill. It is quite easy for someone with no
particularly severe problems to develop some severe problems simply because of the extra pressure involved in living with a person as disturbed as Sarah.”

“And you think I’m developing some severe problems?”

“Are you?” Dr. Belter tossed the question back to her.

Her initial impulse was to deny it, but Rose realized that she couldn’t, not if she was honest She remembered the moments of panic she was having, the tight feelings in her stomach, the sudden flashes of anger she felt, the way she had begun to overreact. An image came to her mind of Elizabeth fleeing from the study in tears, simply because Rose had yelled at her about getting her clothes dirty.

“You’re suggesting that I could use some therapy too?” she asked noncommittally.

“I’m suggesting that both of you could use some therapy. You don’t seem to be handling your problems very well, either of you, which is understandable, considering the circumstances. All I’m suggesting is that you both could use some help.”

“Maybe we should throw in Elizabeth, too, and qualify for a family discount,” Jack said. When the chuckle died away, Dr. Belter’s face took on a serious cast.

“What about Elizabeth?” he said.

“She’s incredible,” Rose said. “Other than when I yelled at her on Saturday for getting her dress dirty, she’s been an angel. She’s patient with Sarah, takes care of herself. Sometimes I wonder what I’d do without her.”

“She must be an amazing child,” Dr. Belter mused. “Generally, a child her age, with a sibling like Sarah, would show at least intermittent hostility toward the sick brother or sister. It’s because of the extra attention the sick one gets, of course, and it’s perfectly natural.”

“Well,” Rose said, “we’ve had none of that sort of thing.”

Jack grinned. “I guess Elizabeth is the only one of us who’s immune to the family curse.” He laughed, but his laughter faded when he noticed that the doctor had not joined him.

“Ah, yes,” Dr. Belter said, leaning back once more and closing his eyes. “The Conger family curse.”

“You’ve heard about it?” Jack said.

“Around Port Arbello, who hasn’t? As a matter of fact, I probably know more about your family curse than you do.”

“Oh?” Jack said guardedly. “How so?”

Dr. Belter smiled at him. “I make it a practice to find out everything I can about all my patients, and their families. So when I first met you people, I started snooping.”

“And what did you find?” Rose asked.

“A certain Reverend Caspar Winecliff,” Dr. Belter said, savoring the name.

“You mean the old Methodist minister?” Jack said, his brows arching. “We hardly know the man.”

“Ah, but he knows you,” the doctor intoned, enjoying the baffled looks on the Congers’ faces. Then he dropped the air of mystery.

“Actually, Caspar Winecliff simply has a passion for local legend and folklore, particularly with reference to New England curses and that sort of thing. My personal opinion is that he enjoys the subject because he thinks it’s wicked and flies in the face of his good Methodist background. If you ask me, he believes every word of every legend he’s ever heard, though of course he denies it. And the Conger legend happens to be his favorite.”

“You’re kidding,” Jack said. “I knew the legend wasn’t any great secret, but I didn’t know anybody was that interested in it.”

“I didn’t either, until I was down at the library one day asking some questions. I was hoping to find some old papers or something that would have the legend written up. They didn’t, but the librarian put me onto Caspar Winecliff. How much do you know about your legend?”

Jack recounted as much of it as he knew, and when he was finished the doctor nodded his head.

“That’s it, all right, except for the story about the little girl.”

Jack and Rose glanced at each other, and Dr. Belter thought he saw alarm in their eyes.

“What little girl?” Jack said apprehensively. For some reason, an image of the portrait in the study came to his mind.