Take my face (4 page)

Cathy McDermott rubbed her new tattoo. "It itches . . . There's nothing more like that, is there?"

"No questions," Anne said sternly.

It was now 7:30; the boys would be arriving at any minute. The pledges were instructed in their duties; the members retired to the kitchen for Cokes.

At eight o'clock, two cars arrived almost simultaneously. The boys piled out, climbed noisily up on the porch.

Julie opened the door with a flourish, stepped back, knelt submissively as the boys marched in. Cathy, Lucia Small, and Dean Pendry performed low curtsies, ushered them into the room.

Anne, looking through a crack in the door, whispered, "They've been drinking." She giggled.

Beaming aimlessly in all directions, Robert steered himself into a chair in the corner. He was still clasping his jug of sherry; to display his innate deviltry, he lifted the bottle and took a gulp.

"Robert," said Julie, "you'd better stop that, you'll be so pie-eyed you won't know what you're doing."

"I know what I'm doing," said Robert, and indeed he did; never before had he felt so astonishingly rational. He reached an arm out for Julie, who sprang back.

"Easy, Robert," called Bob Goble. "That's for later."

The nine members made their entry. The pledges stood to the side, bowing deeply. Anne turned, flourished her arm in a regal gesture. "Slaves! Serve the ceremonial banquet!"

"Oh, boy! We eat!" cried Babe Bazzari. "What-cha got?"

The pledges came crouching in with sandwiches, potato chips, Cokes, and a case of canned beer.

"In case somebody was thirsty," said Barbara, slanting a look at Robert.

"A noble sentiment!" said Omar Williams, the flashy left halfback. Omar was a great admirer of Robert's; he felt in Robert something of the old crusader spirit, a ruthless hell-for-leather recklessness.

Robert, totally unaware that anyone respected or admired him, sat quietly eating his second sandwich, and drinking beer.

Somebody asked what was the program for the evening; Barbara asked provocatively what they wanted to do.

"Hell," said John Strykos, "this here is an initiation; we figure you girls want to be initiated."

"You forget," said Anne with dignity, "that this is a serious occasion—a Tri-Gamma initiation."

"Let's drink to the initiation and hope it takes."

"If you like. Make mine a Coke."

"Aw, come on. Take a slug of the sherry. It's good!"

"No, sir. You drink it if you like it so much."

Robert, in the corner, took a drink; and presently realized it had been a mistake. His head was spinning; the room was bright and dim at the same time. Maybe if he walked around—or better, rested a moment or so in the other room . . .

He rose to his feet, staggered out through the hall and into one of the bedrooms. Somebody ran after him: one of the girls. He never knew who it was.

"It's not in here, Robert—in fact, there isn't any. Water's shut off. You'll have to go outside."

"Just want to rest," Robert mumbled in a thick voice. "Just want to sit down a few minutes."

"Oh. Well, there's nothing but the floor . . . If you want to go outside, that door opens on the porch."

"Thanks." Robert sat down hard, his back to the wall, his head down over his chest.

From the living room came a jumble of sound: voices, laughing, music from a portable radio, the shuffle of feet dancing . . .

Anne said, "Now we're going to have a command performance—a real talent show! Tri-Gamma has just acquired four lovely young ladies, and tonight—just for tonight—they'll do anything you ask them."

"Anything, eh?" John Strykos said. "Within certain limits. After all, this is the Tri-Gamma."

"Okay, let's see them dance the cancan." Julie, Cathy, Lucia, and Dean danced their interpretation of the cancan.

"Now they can do a strip-tease." "I don't know how," said Julie simply. "There's nothing to it. You just take off your clothes."

"That's outside the limits," said Dorothy Duncan.

"Well, they can do a strip-tease without taking their clothes off. Just pretending."

"Well—I suppose it's part of their education." The four girls went awkwardly through the motions of throwing off their clothes.

"Now," said Bob Goble, "they've all got to go in the other room and kiss Robert."

Robert was feeling better. He was drawing deep breaths; his head felt securely anchored on his neck. Out in the living room he heard a great laugh, some voices raised in protest, other voices arguing. He heard footsteps in the hall; the door

opened. Cathy McDermott came in holding a candle, followed by Dean Pendry and Lucia Small. Julie, opening cans of beer in the kitchen, had been delayed. Robert closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.

There was silence. He felt their eyes on his face. The blood began to pound in his scars. He heard Cathy whisper, "He's out. Dead drunk."

Robert breathed a little harder, and fought the temptation to open his eyes.

"Listen," said Lucia in a whisper, "let's go back and say we kissed him. We don't need to do it."

"Gaaa," said Dean. "I just couldn't take it." "I couldn't, either," said Cathy. "Anybody but Robert. Simply anybody."

Fires were lighting inside Robert's brain; he wanted to jump up, to smite, curse, hurt . . .

Cathy said anxiously, "He is drunk, isn't he? I thought I saw his face move."

"Hurry," said Lucia. "Here, rub lipstick on him."

"You do it," giggled Cathy. "I don't want to touch him."

"Oh, we don't need the lipstick. Let's go back. And remember, we've got to make faces, and act disgusted . . ."

He heard them leave the room, and he jumped to his feet, pressed back against the wall, staring

into the blackness. Something hard and hot began to move up into his brain. He clenched and unclenched his hands, feeling the muscles twist in his arms.

It was all so clear, suddenly. He'd sensed it a long time—but now it was like crystal. They hated him. And he hated them . . .

Julie came into the room, holding a candle. She looked at him and grinned sheepishly.

"They told me you were asleep."

"I'm not asleep."

She came a hesitant step nearer. "I'm supposed to kiss you."

Robert took a great breath; all the oxygen in the world entered his lungs, his blood stream; it rang up into his head. The dream . . . The dream . . . He remembered the dream . . .

"Julie, put down the candle."

"Oh—Robert—let's not make this too involved."

A bitter voice muttered inside Robert's brain. Remember the dream? sang another voice. The blood pumped in his ears. He stepped forward. Julie said, "Robert, look out! The candle!"

Robert spoke in a thick, rapid voice. "What are you staring at?"

"You, of course." She laughed nervously.

"Don't like my face, do you?"

"Well—it could be improved."

"Yeah. I guess so."

"Oh, Robert, you shouldn't talk like that. I've got to kiss you . . . Stand still ..."

In the living room, John Strykos noticed that Julie had been gone quite a while. "Robert seems to be making the grade."

Bob Goble, looking out the window, said, "Gripes! It's the law!"

A car with glaring red searchlights had quietly pulled into the driveway.

"Ditch the sherry," said John. "Hide the beer."

"Let's get outa here," said Babe Bazzari.

"Is this all of you?" Sheriff Hartmann asked Dorothy Duncan.

"This is all," she said with great dignity. "We're not doing anything wrong; this is my father's house."

"All but Robert and Julie," said Barbara.

The sheriff sent a man into the house to check.

Three or four minutes later the deputy called the sheriff to the house. After a minute, he came out. He seemed excited. "Okay. Give your names to the deputy, and go home, do you hear? Go home!"

"But what about Julie—and Robert?"

The sheriff smiled sourly. "You kids go home."

The hearing was conducted at a closed session of the juvenile court. Darrell Hovard had signed the complaint in his first flood of fury, with the image of Julie's tear-swollen face stamped on his mind.

Julie, after a medical examination and a good cry, seemed to have suffered small physical damage and certainly less psychological trauma than either Darrell or Margaret Hovard.

Judge Theresa Kleiderle, presiding at juvenile court, remanded Robert to the Las Lomas Detention Home until his majority.

"You got off lucky, kid," said the beetle-browed deputy sheriff. "In this state it's the gas chamber. Yeah, you got off easy."

"Yeah," said Robert.

Elsbeth had not been able to visit him in the jail; the fabric of her life had suddenly separated into shreds and ravels. She gave in to a fit of hysterics and was hustled to emergency hospital. During treatment a swelling on her lower abdomen was noticed, which under examination proved to be a tumor. Luckily Elsbeth was covered by health insurance sponsored by Hegen-bels, and there would be no medical bills.

The deputy took Robert to see his mother before they set out for Las Lomas. Robert was aghast to find her so drawn and pale, such a pitiful bundle of bones under the white coverlet.

"Be a good boy, Robert. Always remember ..."

"Yes, Mother," said Robert. He and the deputy caught the afternoon train.

At school there was a clatter of talk. Julie dealt with the excited questions calmly enough. She said that Robert had merely tried to get fresh; that she had her hands full holding him off. She seemed so casual and unruffled that the event was no more than a nine-day wonder.

By Christmas, Robert was hardly more than a name; at the end of the school year he was almost forgotten.

Julie was elected vice-president of the sophomore class; she began going steady with Dale Hemet.

If anything troubled her easygoing young mind, it was a wisp of recollection from the far past. She asked Darrell Hovard about it. "Daddy —do you remember a long time ago? I was steering the car. We ran into something and you wouldn't let me look ..."

Darrell Hovard put down his newspaper.

"Did we run into Robert then?"

Hovard made a gruff sound in his throat, and nodded.

"Is that why he has a scarred face?"

Darrell Hovard uttered a genial laugh. "Well, there was an accident. Robert was as much to blame as we were."

"But I was driving?"

"You had your hand on the wheel."

Julie sat trying to remember. Little by little, the moment came back. She felt the tingle of excitement, peering over the dash, her arms up, holding the wheel. She saw the red scooter, the blue shirt—and ahead the stone pillars of Jamaica Arch. Rather than take the chance of scratching her daddy's car, she had cut close to the boy. Close, close. A clatter and a thump, and suddenly her daddy was taking the wheel, and holding her head down.

That evening, Julie and Cathy McDermott walked down to the public library, to get reference books for an English theme. Julie, rummaging around the shelves, noticed the bound files of the San Giorgio Herald-Republican. She stopped short. It was the forty-one Cadillac, she thought. That means it must have been before forty-six that's when we got the new one . . . When I was taking piano lessons from Mrs. McKinley, Daddy used to meet me and I'd steer part of the way home; that was when I was eight. In nineteen forty-four. It must be nineteen forty-four, at the end of summer.

She took the second volume for 1944 to a desk. In the issue for July 17, on page 2, she found an article and a picture of Robert Struvel, repro-

duced from a portrait Elsbeth had had taken the year before.

Julie studied the photograph. Her face was quiet, her forehead clear; it would have been impossible to divine her thoughts.

The Las Lomas Detention Home for Boys was a new institution, not six months old. There was no overt restraint, no bars. The dormitories were large and bright; the commissary was more like a cafeteria than a mess hall. The slogan was "Rehabilitation, not Recrimination"; great stress was put on vocational training; the staff included two psychiatrists and a number of motherly matrons.

Robert made no trouble. Mrs. Fador, the matron in charge of his dormitory, considered him a model inmate. But there was something about Robert that made her uneasy.

One day, while talking to Dr. O'Brien, the head psychologist, she mentioned Robert. "He's like a great brooding hole into nowhere," she told O'Brien.

"Come, come," Dr. O'Brien said, smiling. "You're getting intuitive in your old age."

"No," she insisted.

"Let's see . . . He's the boy with the horrible face. Let's take a look at his background." Dr. O'Brien went to the files, pulled out the folder

tabbed "Robert Struve," read in silence. "Hmmph," he said, pinching his chin, "it seems a shame to let a kid go through life with a face like that."

"At San Quentin," said Mrs. Fador, "they do plastic surgery on the inmates all the time."

The psychiatrist sighed. "This isn't San Quentin .. . We just don't have the facilities."

"Sacramento's only thirty miles away."

The psychiatrist picked up the phone and called the director.

The next day Mrs. Fador brought Robert into the psychiatrist's office. She had her arm around his shoulders. "Robert's just had some bad news. Some very bad news."

"What's the trouble?" Dr. O'Brien asked. He was young; he had not yet learned to insulate himself from his work.

"My mother just died," said Robert.

"Oh . . . I'm sorry, Robert."

Robert nodded, blinking.

The psychiatrist cocked a professional eye. "Well, Robert—I've got some good news for you. It doesn't balance your bad news. But it'll help."

"What's that?"

"I've made arrangements for you to go into plastic surgery."

Robert stood utterly still. His voice was colorless, uninterested; as if the psychiatrist had of-

fered him a cigarette. "No, thanks ... I got by pretty well before. I guess I can again."

The psychiatrist nodded with easy offhanded-ness to match Robert's. "Well, just as you like. Think it over."