014218182X (20 page)

At the faculty meeting Skander had been no help, sitting silently and appearing downcast. But a few teachers had contributed: Ted Wrigley and Kate, Bill Dolittle and Betty Sherman. Roger Bennett had been almost garrulous but he hadn’t said anything substantive—that is, his purpose had been to show that he was still sorry for knocking Hawthorne down during the basketball game, which only made Hawthorne wonder if it had been an accident after all.

That was where Hawthorne was with his thinking when he saw Kate in the parking lot. Briefly, he wondered whether Kate had put the picture on his desk as a gift, but the very unlikelihood of that struck him as evidence of his distraction. Still, he believed he could benefit from her point of view. He also found her attractive. It made him realize that he wanted a face to insert between him and the faces of his wife and daughter, if only for an hour or so. And then he asked himself what right he had to rest. What right did he have to turn away from them?

Despite his uncertainty, Hawthorne called to Kate. She wore a red mackinaw, almost as if she wanted to be noticed. Soon they were walking along a path in the woods past the playing fields. Hawthorne spoke about the picture, how it showed his wife and daughter on Christmas day. He described coming back from the teachers’ lounge and finding it on his desk. As he talked, he realized he had been badly frightened. Kate listened to him carefully as their feet scuffed through the fallen leaves. The muted sunlight through the trees made it seem they were walking within a vast Japanese lantern.

“And you thought I might have put it there?” she asked.

“I didn’t know. But if it was meant as a friendly gesture, then it might have been done by—”

“By someone you’ve been friendly with,” said Kate, laughing. “No, I didn’t do it. Didn’t anybody notice anything? There wasn’t a note? What about Mrs. Hayes, did she see someone?”

“No, and that’s another problem. She’s resigned.” Hawthorne explained that she had been made anxious by the computers but he hoped to persuade her to come back.

“How difficult.” Kate carried a backpack slung over one shoulder.

“She didn’t give the computers a real chance. I’d meant to spend more time with her but what with one thing and another it wasn’t possible, so I was going to help her this week.”

“And what if she couldn’t learn?” It was Kate’s habit to look at a person out of the corner of her eye when she spoke, only half turning her head and not facing the other person directly.

“Then I’d hire someone to work under her. I told her that this afternoon on the phone but she wouldn’t rethink her decision. She said the office was too small for two people. I’ll write the board. If she won’t change her mind, then perhaps they can give her a special tribute for her years of service as well as some improved retirement package, or at least a bonus.”

“Who’ll take her place?”

“Fritz says he knows of a person who might work out.”

Half a dozen crows seemed engaged in an argument among the pines. The maple leaves under their feet were bright yellows and oranges. Occasionally, Kate would pick one up, study it, and carry it a while before letting it flutter back to the ground.

“Did you ask Fritz about the photograph?” asked Kate.

“If he’d put it there, he would have told me. To tell the truth, I find the whole business incredible.” He was about to tell her about Ambrose Stark’s appearance, then decided not to. It already struck him as too peculiar, as if it had been a hallucination.

“Do you think it’s connected to whoever put those clippings in our mailboxes?”

“I don’t know.” Hawthorne took off his glasses and polished them on his tie. Without his glasses the colors of the trees became a spectacular blur.

“I felt bad calling you about George.” Kate laughed abruptly. “Especially since nothing’s happened.”

“I was glad that you felt comfortable enough to alert me. You still think he’ll call?”

“He could easily show up. If he’s drinking, there’s no telling what he might do. All of this should be terrific material for your book.”

Hawthorne stopped and put a hand on her arm. “Believe me, there is no book. I came here to keep Bishop’s Hill from going out of business, not to write anything.”

“Everyone’s talking about it. They think that’s why you took the job, to write about dysfunctional education. I was looking forward to it.”

Hawthorne began walking again. “Then you’ll have to be disappointed. I don’t belong to that world anymore.” Hawthorne worried that his tone had been unnecessarily harsh, and he tried to soften it. “By the way, I’ve taken over the coaching of the swim team, but I may not be able to make all of the practices. Is that something you might help me with? I could probably take you off some other stuff—mail room and lunch duty.”

Kate appeared to consider. “My son’s home in the afternoon. It would probably mean more baby-sitting, but I think I could manage it. I used to swim a lot. That’s where I met George. We both swam at UNH. He got booted off the team for drinking. I should have taken it as a warning.” Kate began to talk about her marriage and George’s jealousy. In part she wanted to show Hawthorne that she hadn’t telephoned him out of foolishness, that George could easily make a scene. She described his temper and his drinking and how she was forced to stay in this area because of his visiting rights.

As they walked and Hawthorne listened, he knew that shortly they would talk about his own marriage and the death of his wife and daughter. Not only was it the place where his thoughts always went, it was the place where all conversations sooner or later arrived, as if anyone’s pleasant remark or idle discussion of the weather was only a way of getting to what interested them most, the horrific deaths of Meg and Lily. It was like watching a ball roll down a hill: eventually this subject—the lowest part of all talk—would be reached. He could almost feel Meg and Lily waiting in the wings for their turn onstage. Yes, he too had been married. Yes, something awful had happened.

Yet, when he began to talk about Wyndham, it was almost with relief, as if his purpose in life was to tell that story over and over. To tell it until its last shard had been pulled from him. As he listened to himself, he realized that the story sounded practiced as it changed from event and recollection into language, as if each retelling were an attempt to scrub away the awfulness.

“The boy, Stanley Carpasso, had been at Wyndham for over three years. That may have been the problem. The usual stay at a treatment center is two. But he’d had a rough time. He was eleven when he came. He’d already been in four foster homes and was very destructive. He had no relatives and his father was unknown. His mother had been a prostitute and she’d died of AIDS. He became extremely fond of me. In fact, after the first six months or so, I was the only person who didn’t become a victim of his tantrums. So it appeared I was doing him some good. That in itself seemed reason enough to keep him there longer. At first he was friendly with my wife and daughter and the affection he had for me extended to them as well. But with puberty he began to change. Not that he obviously came to dislike Meg and Lily, but he was jealous of them. He concealed this as best as he could, but when I was late to an appointment or when I was simply busy with my own family he resented it. And those feelings increased.

“Unfortunately, I wasn’t sufficiently aware of them. I was busy, and when I saw him, he seemed the same as ever. No, that’s not right; he’d sometimes complain about my family. He even asked why I didn’t adopt him, why he couldn’t live with us. His foster home experiences had been disasters, but he said that wouldn’t happen if I took him in. He promised to be an angel. That was his word, an angel. However, I couldn’t do it. Partly I was skeptical and partly it’s bad practice to take in a favorite. I mean, all the kids wanted a home—perhaps not a real home but some ideal impossibility of their imagination. And if I’d taken Stanley in, it would have created a series of damaging expectations and disappointments for the others.

“So I tried to wean him from me, having him talk to other psychologists and seeing him less often. I probably should have had him transferred to another facility altogether, but his conduct with me didn’t seem to change, at least on the surface. Because of his feelings for me, he couldn’t let himself think the fault was mine. He couldn’t believe that I had made a decision to reject him. So he blamed my wife and daughter. Not all at once, of course. But over a period of a few months he started believing that, without them in his path, I’d have no hesitation about adopting him. I see now it was a mistake to live at the school. I don’t mean that ironically. By living there I wanted to present an example of what a home could be. I didn’t realize it could make some of the children envious and bitter. With Stanley, it made him murderous. He thought he could set a fire that would kill Meg and Lily but that would also seem accidental, so he wouldn’t be blamed.”

“That’s awful,” said Kate.

“Yes,” said Hawthorne. He thought how in his many retellings of this story he had simplified it until it was just the bare bones of what had really happened. He wondered if he would ever tell Kate the more complete version and he looked at her quickly, her cheeks flushed from their walk, her black hair damp along the scalp line, her red coat unzipped and fluttering in the breeze. He found her very pretty, and his response to this was guilt.

“And how were you burned?”

Again Hawthorne presented the censored account. “Our quarters were separated from the rest of the school by a hallway. The fire started around ten at night. I’d been at a dinner meeting . . .” He paused, recalling Chip’s remark about “the cute psychologist.” Claire de Lune. Certainly Kate would realize that Claire was missing from the story. “Stanley knew that, of course. When I got back, the building was on fire. The hallway was burning. I tried to get through and . . .” Hawthorne raised his arm as if gesturing with the scar tissue itself. “But I couldn’t. Luckily, a fireman dragged me out.”

“How terrible.” They had stopped and Kate was staring at him.

For a moment it seemed that Hawthorne could see the flames, could even hear Meg’s screams. No, it wasn’t simply screaming, it was his name she was screaming.

“My wife and daughter died of smoke inhalation, mercifully, I expect.”

Another lie. Hawthorne looked at the multicolored leaves at his feet and thought he would fall, tumble out of sanity into a deep and benign unconsciousness. He took hold of himself. But he thought, Wouldn’t falling be better in the long run? Wouldn’t it stop all this thinking? And suddenly in his recollection he saw Meg and Lily as they had appeared in the picture on his desk—standing before the Christmas tree in their matching green robes. Who had put it there?

They were at the edge of the parking lot and began walking again. It was approaching five-thirty.

“If something ever happened to Todd,” said Kate, “I don’t think I’d get over it.”

Hawthorne nodded. Many people told him things like that.

“I don’t expect I have, at least not yet. Now I’m in a different place, a different part of the country. And time, you know, makes a difference, just like they say. You think it never will, but things fade. Their faces aren’t as clear to me now.” Hawthorne stopped. It wouldn’t do to weep. He watched two chipmunks pursuing each other around the base of an old oak. He heard chickadees. Ahead of him he saw the white bell tower on top of Emerson Hall. He had heard that the view from up there was breathtaking. They began passing between the parked cars. Hawthorne was still looking at the ground, while Kate was watching him, trying to read his expression. As a result, neither of them saw Chip Campbell until he was about six feet away. He wore an old leather jacket and he was swaying slightly.

“I forgot to give you something before I left,” said Chip. “It’s for your book.”

Hawthorne had just time enough to see that the other man was drunk before Chip hit him in the jaw, knocking him against a parked car so he banged his head on the door.

“Chip, don’t!” Kate screamed at the same time.

Hawthorne was on his hands and knees staring down at the asphalt. His glasses had fallen off. There was shouting that he couldn’t understand. Looking up into the unfocused blur, he thought he saw not Chip but Frank LeBrun in his white jacket. LeBrun was holding someone. There was a loud grunt. Hawthorne felt around for his glasses, then found them and put them on. Looking up again, he saw that LeBrun had grabbed Chip around the neck and was holding him tight, choking him.

“Stop it!” said Kate.

Hawthorne, still dazed, got to his feet, pulling himself up by grabbing the back bumper of a pickup. He couldn’t understand where LeBrun had come from.

LeBrun shook Chip, then, holding him with one hand, brought the other back in a fist.

“Stop it,” said Kate. “Jim, make him stop.”

Chip raised an arm to protect himself but LeBrun hit him in the nose. Hawthorne swayed toward LeBrun, wiping the blood from his face.

“Frank, stop!” he called. Hawthorne grabbed LeBrun and dragged him back.

Ferociously, LeBrun turned on him. There were splotches of blood on LeBrun’s white jacket.

“Are you going to beat me too, Frank?” Hawthorne managed to say, speaking as calmly as he could. He was close enough to smell the garlic on LeBrun’s breath.

LeBrun’s brow contorted with fierce intention. From somewhere out of sight, Chip was groaning.

“That’s enough, don’t you think, Frank?” asked Hawthorne.

LeBrun seemed about to say something, then abruptly turned away and stared off toward the woods with his back to them all.

Hawthorne put a hand on LeBrun’s shoulder. “That’s all right. You got excited.”

LeBrun jerked away and Hawthorne again put his hand on the man’s shoulder.

After a moment LeBrun said, “Dumb, you know? I just don’t catch on.”

“What do you mean?” asked Hawthorne. “You were trying to help. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“What d’you call a Canuck with an IQ of 167?”

Hawthorne didn’t answer and LeBrun said nothing else but kept staring at the woods. Kate had given Chip a handkerchief. He knelt on the asphalt and wiped the blood from his nose. The sleeve of his leather jacket was torn. “Jesus, Jesus,” he kept repeating.