Suffer the Children (8 page)

“Well?” Rose said. Carl and Barbara Stevens looked at each other.

“It does have some problems,” Carl mused.

“And they’d be expensive problems, wouldn’t they?” Barbara added.

“Not expensive,” Rose said. “Very expensive. Count on putting in half again what you pay for it, and that
doesn’t include the plumbing. Also, it’s going to need rewiring within five years, and a new roof in two.”

“Honest, aren’t you,” Carl said with a grin.

Rose shrugged. “If I don’t tell you now, you’ll tell me later. And I wouldn’t want the next-door neighbors mad at me.”

“And they want how much for it?” Rose could see the wheels clicking in Carl’s mind.

“Fifty-two five. If the floor plan weren’t so weird they could get at least twice that.”

“Okay,” Carl said.

“Okay?” Rose repeated. “What does ‘okay’ mean?” Barbara laughed. “It means ‘Okay, we’ll buy it.’ ”

“At the asking price?” Rose said vacantly.

“At the asking price.”

Rose shook her head. “You’re both crazy. You asked me how much they wanted for it, not how much I thought you could get it for. Don’t you want to make them a lower offer?”

“Not particularly,” Carl said.

“I see,” Rose said numbly. “What am I saying? I don’t see at all. If you don’t mind my saying this, you’re taking all the fun out of it for me. I get paid to write offers and counteroffers, and make everybody think he got a good deal. I’ve never heard of selling a house for the asking price. In fact, I know darn well you could get it for less.”

Barbara nodded. “But it would take time. We don’t want to wait. We don’t want an escrow, and we don’t want to finance it. Well write you a check for it today. Can we move in this weekend?”

Rose nodded. “I suppose so,” she said slowly. “There’s no mortgage on it, so I guess there isn’t anything to it but transferring the title. That doesn’t take any time at all.”

Carl began laughing. “You look like we’ve just spoiled your entire day. Let’s go back to your office
and get this thing settled. Then well go home and pick up Jeff and bring him out here. Hell love the place. He loves the ocean, and he loves climbing. That bluff should make him very happy.”

Again Rose nodded. “Something’s wrong,” she said. “Selling a house like this isn’t supposed to be this easy. Why are you in such a hurry to move in?”

“We’re in a hurry,” Barbara said, “because we’ve been looking for a house for a year, we know exactly what we want, we have the money to buy it and the talent to fix it, and it’s just what we’re looking for. Also, Jeff is fourteen years old, and we want to get him started in school before it gets too far into the year. In another month all the cliques for this year will be formed, and Jeff will be out in the cold till next fall. So if we can’t move in next weekend, we probably won’t move in at all. Can you arrange it?”

“Sure,” Rose said. “There isn’t anything to arrange. Like I said, you’ve taken all the fun out of it for me.”

“Well,” Carl said, “we’ll do our best to make it up to you.”

On the way back to town, Rose decided she liked the Stevenses.

Martin Forager stood in front of Jack Conger’s desk, his eyes blazing. He kept his hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his plaid hunting jacket.

“I’m telling you, Conger,” he was saying, “it’s a disgrace. It’s been two days now, and nothing’s been done.” He turned to stare out the window. “Nothing,” he repeated.

“I’m sure Ray’s doing his best,” Jack began. Forager whirled.

“His best ain’t good enough. I don’t know what happened to my daughter, but I want to know.”

Jack looked up helplessly. Martin Forager was a big man. He had planted his fists on Jack’s desk and was leaning over him, glowering.

“I don’t see what I can do,” Jack said quietly.

“You can use your paper,” Forager snapped. “That’s what you can do. You can use it to light a fire under Ray Norton. Let him know that if he doesn’t do something, and do it fast, the people of this town are going to get rid of him.”

“I hardly think—” Jack started to say.

“I hardly think,” Forager mimicked. “It didn’t happen to your daughter, so why would you hardly think anything?”

Jack fought hard to control his temper. He began again.

“Just exactly what do you think happened to Anne?” he asked.

“Someone—” Martin Forager hesitated. “Did something to her,” he finished lamely.

“Did what?” Jack asked.

Forager began to look uncomfortable. “Well—I don’t know, really. But the doctor said …”

“The doctor said nothing much happened to her,” Jack said firmly. “He told me so himself, at your request. He examined her thoroughly, and apart from a few bruises, which she could have gotten in any one of a number of ways, she isn’t hurt. She certainly wasn’t molested.” He continued quickly, seeing the blood drain from Martin Forager’s face. “I know, you never said she was, but that’s what you’ve been thinking.” He dropped his hands into his lap and slumped back in his chair. “Hell, Marty, that’s what we’ve all been thinking. But apparently nothing happened. And you know how kids are. She came home late. Maybe nothing at all happened, and she made the whole thing up.” He held up a hand as he saw Forager’s temper begin to build again. “Don’t start up again, Martin. If the doctor’s report showed anything, anything at all I could get a handle on, I’d be raising as big a stink as you. But it doesn’t. Unless Anne starts talking about
what happened to her, there’s nothing any of us can do.”

Forager glared at him for a moment. “You mean like Sarah talks about what happened to her?” he snarled. He turned away, and was out of Jack’s office before he could see the effect of his words. Jack remained in his chair, waiting for his heart to stop pounding. He was shaking.

When Sylvia Bannister came into the inner office a few minutes later, Jack hadn’t moved. Sylvia started to put a file on the desk in front of him, but stopped when she saw his face.

“Jack?” she said. “Jack, are you all right?”

“I don’t know, Syl,” Jack said quietly. “Why don’t you close the door and sit down.” He looked up at her. “If you have time?”

“I always have time,” Sylvia replied, closing the door. She sat down in the chair in front of the desk and lit a cigarette. The beginnings of a smile came over Jack’s face.

“That’s almost automatic, isn’t it?” he said.

“What is?” she said, glancing around.

“The cigarette. Haven’t you ever noticed that you never light a cigarette in here when you know it’s business, but you always light one when you know it’s just going to be us talking? It’s as though you use the cigarette to change roles from secretary to friend.”

“Does it bother you?” Sylvia asked anxiously, looking at the cigarette with an embarrassment that was not like her. Jack shook his head.

“Not at all. I kind of enjoy it. It reassures me that you can read me like a book.”

Sylvia relaxed again. “Then I’ll try not to remember it every time I do it You shouldn’t have mentioned it; now I’ll be self-conscious about it.”

“Not you.” Jack grinned. “You’re the least self-conscious person I’ve ever met.”

“Well,” Sylvia said shortly, beginning to feel that
Jack was avoiding whatever it was he wanted to talk about. “Instead of talking about my many, varied, and questionable virtues, why don’t we talk about you? What happened?”

Jack shrugged. “I’m not sure anything did, really. Martin Forager just said something to me that shook me. Something about Sarah.”

Sylvia drew on her cigarette and let the smoke out slowly, choosing her words. “Exactly what did he say?” she said softly. Jack recounted the conversation he had just had. When he was finished, Sylvia reflected quietly before she spoke.

“I think that’s what’s called a shot in the dark, Jack. He didn’t even know what he was saying,” she continued, as Jack looked unconvinced. “Jack, nobody in this town, including you, your wife, or me, knows what happened to Sarah.
Nobody
knows. But you have to face it. Sarah doesn’t talk any more, and she goes to White Oaks, and everybody in town knows what kind of school it is. So there’s bound to be speculation, and some of it’s bound to focus on you.”

Jack nodded. “I know. Just one more thing to worry about.”

“One more? What else is there?”

“Well, there’s the situation between Rose and me.”

Sylvia wasn’t at all sure she wanted to hear any more, but she knew she would. If only I wasn’t so damned—fond—of him, she thought. She had almost used the word “love,” but had shied away from it. Yet she knew there wasn’t any use in shying away from it. She did love Jack Conger, and she knew it. Not that it made any difference. She had come to grips with being in love with her boss a long time ago, and it helped to know that he loved her too, in a certain way. Not a sexual way. That he had always reserved for Rose, and Sylvia was just as happy that he did. She wasn’t sure she could handle an affair, and she was very sure that she didn’t want to try. She liked things the way they were. In the
office, she and Jack were close. They moved from a business relationship to a personal one and back again many times each day, and each was in tune with the moods and feelings of the other. It was, she supposed, like a marriage in some ways, except that it lasted only eight hours a day. Bach afternoon Jack went home to his family, and she went home to her cat. For eight hours a day she had a job she loved and a man she loved. It was usually enough. But sometimes, like right now, she wished he wouldn’t tell her everything, that he would hold back a little of himself from her; On the other hand, she knew that for the past year he really hadn’t had anybody else. Not since the day he had carried Sarah out of the woods.

“Are things getting worse?” she said.

“I’m not sure if ‘worse’ is the word. What’s your definition of ‘worse’? Rose is starting to hate me, but why shouldn’t she? My drinking seems to be getting a little worse, but not so you could notice. And then there’s Sarah. Sylvia,” he said, and the desperation in his voice was almost tangible. “Why can’t I remember what happened that day?”

“You were drunk,” Sylvia said. “People black out sometimes.” She put it bluntly, but her tone held no condemnation, only understanding.

“But I’ve never blacked out before,” he said. “Never. It makes me wonder exactly what I did to her in the woods. What did I do that I won’t let myself remember?”

Sylvia lit another cigarette, and when she spoke her voice was gentle. “Jack, what’s the use of killing yourself over it? If you’d done what you think you did, the doctors would have known immediately. There would have been some kind of damage to”—she groped for a word, then decided that he might as well hear it out loud—“her vagina. You didn’t rape her, Jack.”

The word hit him like a physical blow. “I never thought—”

“Yes you did,” Sylvia interrupted him. “That’s exactly what you thought, and it’s exactly what you’ve always thought. And if you want the truth, that’s probably what’s at the root of your worries. Maybe Rose thinks it has to do with money and liquor. I don’t know what she thinks, and frankly, I don’t care. It’s what you think that counts. And you think you raped Sarah. Well, you didn’t, and you can’t keep torturing yourself by thinking you did. It’s over, Jack, and you’ve got to forget it. Maybe if you can forget it, you can stop drinking.”

Jack avoided her eyes, staring instead at the blotter on his desk. He saw the note on the calendar, the note reminding him to go to White Oaks on Thursday afternoon.

“It’s hard to forget it,” he said, “when I have to face Sarah every day.”

Sylvia nodded. “Of course it is. That’s why the doctors suggested that she be institutionalized for a while. It wasn’t just for her, you know. It was for you, too. It’s hard to forget something when you’re faced with reminders every day. Particularly reminders like Sarah.”

“I can’t put her away,” Jack said miserably. “Not after what I did to her.”

Sylvia came around behind him and put her hands on his shoulders. She felt the knots in the muscles, and began working to relax them.

“You’re too hard on yourself, Jack,” she said softly. “Much too hard. Let it go.” But she knew he wouldn’t.

Neither of them spoke until Rose turned the car into the gates of the White Oaks School. Before them, an expanse of well-tended lawn rolled gently up a rise dotted with maple trees. A gardener rode back and forth across the leaf-strewn grounds on a midget tractor, his progress marked by exposed strips of lawn. Here and there stood piles of leaves, some of them intact, others already scattered by the group of children moving from one pile to the next, systematically rescattering the leaves. The gardener seemed not to notice but drove patiently onward. Rose smiled at the scene, but it only depressed Jack.

“I love this place,” Rose said. “It’s so beautiful, no matter what season it is.” When she heard no response from her husband, she continued. “I should think it would be good for the children, just being in a place like this.”

“If they even know where they are,” Jack said flatly. “You’d think the gardener would get upset with them, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose they hired him partly because he doesn’t get upset,” Rose replied. “I don’t suppose it’s an easy place to work. I admire the people who can do it.”

“I certainly couldn’t,” Jack said. “I don’t see how any of the people here can stand it Look over there.”

He pointed across the lawn to a spot where a small boy, not more than six or seven, sat under a tree. He had found a stick and was methodically tapping the
trank of the tree with it, with the regularity of a metronome. Rose stopped the car, and they watched him. He simply sat there, beating a steady rhythm on the tree trunk.

“The poor child,” Rose whispered, after several silent minutes had passed. “What do you suppose he thinks about? What do you suppose makes him that way?”

“Who knows,” Jack said uncomfortably. He watched the boy for a while, and finally his expression softened. “I’m sorry, Rose,” he said. “I don’t really hate this place. It’s just that it makes me feel so—so helpless. I see all these children, and they all seem to be part of another world, a world I can’t touch. And it tears me apart to think my own daughter is part of this world.”