The Sopaths (5 page)

“It doesn’t. You have skills I lack. You are practical in ways that I am not. You are right: I need you to shore me up in my hour of crisis. You need me similarly. We surely have little in common apart from the horror of our losses, but for now we are good for each other. Until that situation changes, stay here. Please.”

“Thank you. I confess to being strangely drawn to you, apart from the mutual convenience.”

He smiled. “Women tend to be drawn to me. I don’t know why, but more than one at work has hinted that she would be available if I were interested. Of course I have not taken advantage of them.”

She gazed at him with an indefinable expression. “May I kiss you?”

He realized that for her such a kiss was more significant than sex, despite kissing having become part of their sexual interaction, because it signaled her true feeling. The fact that she asked was similarly significant. She was signaling its importance to her.

He stood up. “Let’s kiss each other.”

She stood and joined him. They kissed. She was firm and yielding, fitting herself perfectly to him, and her lips seemed to be on fire. His desire was rekindled, as perhaps she intended. Yet he felt the first spark of something that would challenge their agreement that there was no real love in their relationship.

CHAPTER 3

They went together to Sylvia’s house. She was busy trying to calm two children. “They’re just in,” Sylvia said. “Police brought them. Two different families. Both freaked out.”

“Maybe we can help,” Abner said.

Sylvia became fully aware of him. “Yesterday—you took the woman home.”

“Me,” Bunty agreed. “We worked it out.”

The little girl was about five, with a wild tangle of dark hair. She looked startlingly like Bunty. She took one look at Abner and ran to him.

He picked her up and held her, and she cried into his chest. Again, what else could he do?

Meanwhile Bunty went to the boy, who was about six. She put her arms about him and kissed the top of his tousled blond head. He too dissolved into tears.

“You seem to have the touch, both of you,” Sylvia said. “Do you want to take them home?”

Startled, Abner exchanged a glance with Bunty. She nodded.

Thus suddenly and simply, they were driving home with the two children strapped into the rear car seats. The children had really chosen them, and they had accepted.

At the house, Bunty took over. “What’s your name?” she asked the boy.

“Clark.”

“Yours?” she asked the girl.

“Dreda.”

“Clark and Dreda, what happened to you was too horrible to talk about. You are here now, and we will take care of you. We lost our families the same way: sopaths.”

“Sopaths!” the girl cried, shrinking away.

“So we understand. We don’t blame you. Now how about some chocolate ice cream?”

That got both children’s attention. Soon they were eating dishes of it.

“You’re a wonder,” Abner murmured behind Bunty.

“This is my sphere of expertise,” she murmured back.

But both children remained tight after eating and having their faces wiped. “They’re afraid to let go,” Abner said. “We have to reassure them.”

Bunty tried. “It’s okay to cry,” she told the children.

But they didn’t. They had cried before, but not now. “They think they’re being adopted out,” Abner said. “They don’t want to make a bad impression.”

“Understandable. But how do we reassure them?”

“I think the nuclear option.”

“You have the nerve to try it?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll try.” He faced the children. “You are each survivors of sopaths. You don’t have to tell what happened. But I will explain about us.”

The two gazed at him.

He took a breath. “There was a sopath in my family. She killed her brother.” He saw the boy wince. He had seen similar. “Then she killed her mother.” Both winced. “Then she tried to kill me. I picked her up by the feet and cracked her head into a wall, and she died. I killed my daughter. I hate it, but I did. She was a sopath.”

Dreda wailed. Then she came to Abner. He picked her up and held her close.

“And I killed my son,” Bunty said. “By throwing him in a fire. He was a sopath too.”

“I had to do it,” Clark whispered.

“Because he was a sopath,” Bunty said.

“Yes.”

“He tried to kill you.”

“I had a knife. I was afraid of him. He was smaller than me, but, but--”

“Merciless,” Abner supplied.

“When he tried to stab me, I stabbed him first.”

“You had to,” Bunty said. “He was a sopath.”

Now he cried. She took him in, comforting him.

“It was the same with you?” Abner asked Dreda. “You don’t have to answer.”

“He tried to—do a bad thing,” the girl sobbed.

“He tried to kill you?”

“No. He—he always wanted to see me bare. I wouldn’t let him. Mom protected me. But then he killed Mom.”

“And you had no more protection,” Abner said, trying to control his shudder.

“He had a knife. I was afraid, and took off my dress. He got bare too. He had a—his thing was hard, sticking out. He held me down and tried to put it in me, between my legs.”

Her brother had gotten a random erection, and tried to rape her? “How old was he?” Abner asked.

“Seven.”

It was possibly normal curiosity. Boys did wonder what was supposed to be special about girls. Maybe the boy had seen a sex video, and tried to emulate it. When he had his erection, and opportunity. “How far did he get?” Abner asked carefully.

“It wouldn’t go in. It was too big. He pushed harder. It hurt. I screamed, but he didn’t care. He dropped the knife and used his hand to push his thing in. Then it really hurt. I screamed and screamed, but he wouldn’t stop. So I grabbed the knife and jammed it into his neck. Then he stopped. There was blood all over. I got away. He died. I killed him.”

“That is called self-defense,” Abner said.

“But he wasn’t trying to kill me. Just to get his thing into me. If I’d let him, he would have gone away. Like when he wanted my candy. If I gave it to him, he went away. He said it was because he liked me. I should have let him put his thing in. But it hurt too bad.”

“He tried to rape you,” Abner said. “You defended yourself. You were right to do that.”

“But if he liked me--”

Abner spoke very carefully. “Sopaths don’t like anybody. They only use them. He liked the idea of raping you. Most little boys don’t care about sex, but some do. It makes them feel good. Even if it makes the girls feel bad. He was wrong to try. You were right to stop him. Even if he died.”

“I was?”

“You were,” Bunty agreed. “He said he liked you so you wouldn’t fight him. So he could do what he wanted. Because it’s hard to do when a girl is fighting it. He was using you.”

“He just wanted the candy,” Abner said. “Your body was like a kind of candy.”

“Little girls are like candy!” Dreda exclaimed.

“In some respects,” Bunty agreed, smiling. “And little boys can be like snakes.”

Dreda smiled back. The crisis had passed, for now.

Then they remembered Clark. He had heard the whole sequence. That could be mischief.

“You never tried that with a girl, did you?” Abner asked him.

“No,” Clark said, horrified. “I knew it was wrong.”

“It is wrong for children,” Bunty said. “When they grow up, and know what they are doing, and the woman agrees, then it is all right. Then it doesn’t hurt.”

“So you don’t hate me,” Dreda said.

“We don’t hate you,” Abner said. “You did what we all did. You killed a sopath. That’s the end of it.”

Both children looked relieved.

“Now let me show you your rooms,” Bunty said.

“But I don’t want to be alone,” Dreda protested.

Oops. It was understandable, but could they afford to let the children spend nights with the adults?

Bunty handled it. “Did your folks let you sleep with your parents?”

“No,” Dreda said uncomfortably.

“Because they had adult things to do at night, and you needed to learn to sleep by yourself.”

“Yes. But then my brother came.”

There was the crux. “The sopath.”

“Yes. Because he knew I was alone.”

There was a potent argument. She had excellent reason not to like being alone. Bunty looked pleadingly at Abner.

“There are no sopaths here,” he said. “It is sopaths you fear, not boys.”

“Yes.”

“Would you share a room with Clark?”

She looked at the boy assessingly. She knew his history was similar to hers. “Yes.”

Half there. Abner turned to the boy. “Would you share a room with Dreda? So the two of you are not alone?”

“Yes. I shared with my sister.” He squirmed. “I wasn’t supposed to peek when she washed. But I did.”

Abner smiled. “So did I, when I was small. It’s a boy thing.”

“A man thing,” Bunty said with half a smile.

“Boys peek at girls,” Abner said. “Men peek at women. They’re interesting. But you can’t touch.”

“Yes.”

“And you pretend not to notice,” Bunty said. “And she’ll pretend not to peek at you.”

Clark was surprised. “Girls peek?”

“We do. But not as much.”

“You told!” Dreda reproved her.

Both Abner and Bunty had to repress smiles.

“Not as much?” Clark asked.

“Girls are just more interesting than boys,” Abner explained. “So boys peek more. You know that.”

The boy nodded, satisfied.

“Dreda is not your sister,” Abner concluded. “But for now maybe you should think of her as one.”

“You’re not my father,” Clark said surprisingly.

There was more than one way to interpret that statement. Abner chose the one that fit his purpose. “True. I am not. None of us are related to each other. But you may if you wish think of me as your father, and Bunty as your mother. We are thinking of you as our children. We have all lost our families, and now this is all we have.”

“But will you take us back to Pariah tomorrow?”

“No!” Abner said. Then he looked at Bunty.

“No,” she agreed. “We are an artificial family. A pretend family. We won’t send you away until you want to go.”

Thus was another decision made. “We’ll go back to Pariah as a family,” Abner said. “We will stay together.”

Both children relaxed visibly. They had feared being isolated again. Then Dreda came to hug Abner, and Clark hugged Bunty. Abner discovered to his surprise that he was just as relieved as the children were. He dreaded the prospect of being alone with his grief, and this kept him from that.

Bunty set about preparing them for a residence in what had been Jasper’s room. Abner sat heavily on the couch, unwinding, continuing his thought. They had become an impromptu family, and he was not dismayed. The children filled a raw hole in his life, as did Bunty. In fact a significant part of it was that this meant that Bunty would remain here indefinitely, playing the role of wife and mother. Running the household, keeping things in order, being company. Giving him sex. He felt guilty acknowledging it, but he did crave it. All of it. Maybe he was in a state of rebound, not just in love, but in the whole family. Still, it felt right.

Bunty and the children reappeared. Clark was dressed in Jasper’s clothes, which fit well, they being the same age. Dreda wore more of Jasper’s clothes, cinched to fit her smaller frame. Abner looked askance.

“Two things,” Bunty said briskly. “Your little girl was three, and Dreda is five, so she’s too big for that clothing. And yours was the sopath. We don’t want to touch her things.”

Poison. He had to agree. Abner spread his hands. “Of course. You can take Dreda shopping for her own things.”

“This afternoon,” Bunty agreed. Then she paused. “I will have to borrow some money.”

Because she had nothing. “We’ll all go. I’ll pay for anything we need. Tomorrow we’ll see about getting your ID restored so you can function on your own.”

“Thank you.”

It was in one sense an entirely typical family afternoon with two parents seeing to the needs of two children. In another sense it was refreshingly strange, as the four of them integrated despite their disparate origins. All he had to do was follow Bunty’s cues. Abner really appreciated it.

Things ran late, so they stopped at a fast food place for dinner. It was fun.

That night, the children safely in bed, Bunty embraced him and kissed him ardently. “You were wonderful!”

“You were the wonderful one,” he said. “You handled everything.”

“You supported me completely, and I don’t mean just monetarily. You gave me legitimacy.”

“You
are
legitimate.”

“I’m a lost woman you took in. Then you let me take in the children. You have been more than kind.”

He was embarrassed by her gratitude. “Well, you flashed me with your legs. What else could I do?”

“Shut up.” She wrapped those legs about him, and they were in the throes of fantastic sex.

“Seriously,” she said when it abated. “Can you afford all this? We spent a fair amount of money today, and it promises to continue.”

“I have a good job. As long as I keep that, I can afford it.”

“You will keep it,” she said firmly. “But about the children: you know we can’t just throw them back into the water. You and I alone could have split up the moment I got my identity back. But when we took them in, it became more complicated. You had to know that.”

“I did know that. But their need was dire. And you—Bunty, I know we agreed not to speak of love, and it will be some time before we come to terms emotionally with our dreadful losses. But I seem to be in the process of rebounding rapidly, and already I care for you more than I should. The children in effect lock you in, and I think that’s what I want.”

“Romeo and Juliet.”

“What?”

“Romeo had just lost his love when he met Juliet. It was rebound.”

“And they died!”

“But
we
don’t have to. My point is that rebound love is no shame. We have a lot of emotion in flux. We’ll never get our original loves back, so we can afford to let it take us.”

“But you explained how cynically you played me from the start, to secure your welfare for the moment. Where is your true emotion, Bunty?”

“I did play you,” she agreed. “But now I’m looking beyond the moment, and you remain an excellent prospect. I’m in rebound too, Abner. It may not be real, but it feels like nascent love. I won’t fight it if you don’t. Planned love can work just as well as random love, perhaps better. I think we can make it together. This afternoon was confirmation.”

“So you do feel for me.”

“I do. I’ve always been honest with you, and I am being honest now.”

It was a confirmation he had desperately needed. “You are about due for your collapse. May I join you in that?”

“Oh, yes.”

They lay embraced, and both broke into sobs of grief. It was weirdly refreshing.

And there were the children standing by the bed, alarmed. They had heard the sobbing and came to investigate, being excruciatingly sensitive to family mischief. What could they have thought was happening? That the adults were fighting each other?

“We were making love, the way your parents did,” Bunty told them. “That’s why we’re bare. But then we remembered.”

Abner made a decision. “Just for this hour, join us,” he said. “We are crying for our lost families. You lost yours too. Cry with us. It’s okay to cry. We all need to express our grief.”