In the Middle of the Night (8 page)

Too bad? Was a nice man?
Danger in those words.

John Paul snatched the newspaper from Mac’s hands, moaned as he saw the headline:

That night, he prayed for the soul of Mr. Zarbor and for all the children who died in the theater. He said a rosary, counting off the prayers on his fingers. Then another rosary and another, hundreds of
Notre Pères
and
Ave Marias
—he always said his prayers in French—until he slipped, finally, into sleep. Sleep which had somehow become a sweet and cherished friend.

Three days later, he was discharged from the hospital. His mother and father came to take him home. They fussed over him. His mother helped him dress, although he felt capable of dressing himself. She knelt to lace his shoes, which embarrassed him. His father kept touching him—his shoulder, his hair—as if to verify John Paul’s existence.

Finally, Ellie, the white-haired nurse, came with a wheelchair. “Hop in,” she said. “You’re getting a free ride.”

John Paul resisted. “I can walk,” he said. “I feel fine …”

“A rule of the hospital,” Ellie said, leading him to the wheelchair. “Everybody gets a ride to the front door.”

But as they began their journey down the corridor, they headed away from the bank of elevators leading to the first floor and the main entrance.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

He saw the uncertainty on his parents’ faces, saw
Ellie’s grim determination. “We’re going down the service elevator. To the back of the hospital. It’ll be quicker this way.”

“Why quicker?” he asked, suddenly alert, realizing that his parents had been more than concerned this morning. They’d been worried, tense, touching him, dressing him to cover their nervousness.

Nobody spoke.

The elevator doors opened, and they entered. They descended in silence. John Paul didn’t ask any more questions. He didn’t want to know the answers. He thought he knew, however, why they were avoiding the front of the hospital. He remembered the woman who had yelled accusations at him a few nights ago. Maybe she was waiting for him in the front of the building, with others like herself who blamed him for what happened at the theater.

The doors opened smoothly, silently. John Paul saw a police officer standing at the rear exit of the hospital. He beckoned to them, an old cop with a ruddy complexion, a grandfatherly kind of man. “The taxi is waiting,” he said. “Hurry, before they find out what’s happening.”

John Paul was wheeled to the doorway. His father helped him up from the wheelchair, although he needed no help. Ellie kissed him briefly on the cheek. “God be with you,” she said. “Poor boy …”

Through the doors and across the sidewalk and into the opened door of the taxi, his mother and father hurrying him inside. The taxi smelled of cigarette smoke. The driver, hunched over the wheel, did not look at them. “Hold on,” he muttered as the taxi shot away with squealing
tires, bursts of foul exhaust obliterating the smell of smoke.

As they turned the corner leading away from the hospital, John Paul looked out the rear window. A small crowd had gathered at the hospital’s front entrance, holding up signs and placards, like pickets at the scene of a strike. He could not read the crudely scrawled words from this distance. As he watched, the crowd began to scatter across the lawn, heading for the rear entrance which the taxi had left only moments before. They halted in their tracks, as if realizing they had been tricked. John Paul saw fists raised in anger, faces raw with rage.

“They think I’m guilty,” he said, knowing that the anger and rage were for him.

“You are not,” his mother said, pulling him to her.

But I must be, he thought miserably, as the taxi roared through the streets toward home.

I
n the next few days, John Paul wondered whether he had come home too soon. He was not sure. He had been eager to leave the hospital, to have his bandages removed, to get away from the deadly routine of blood tests, blood pressure readings and a thermometer stuck under his tongue three or four times a day. The food always looked delicious on the plate but was tasteless in his mouth. The open door to his room had made him nervous, especially after that woman had invaded it, yelling accusations at him.

But, once at home, he was restless, roaming the rooms like an alien in a place that had always been safe. Not that he had ever felt danger anywhere, either at home or on the streets or at Wickburg Regional. A different kind of safety was now involved. He groped for the word, searching through his English and French vocabulary, and found it at last—“security,” although he pronounced it aloud the
French way: “
sécurité
.” With the proper accents in place in his mind.

But no
sécurité
now. Even with his father sleeping away the morning—he still worked nights at the restaurant—and his mother busy with housework, he did not feel at ease. His headaches had stopped, his cuts and bruises healed. But he wondered whether something had happened to his mind that could not be cured. Something more than his mind, however. Something else entirely. Which he did not want to think about.

He told his mother: “I am going for a walk.”

She put down the big spoon with which she was stirring something in a pan on the stove. “Should you do that?”

“I will be going to school next week. Why not a walk this week? You told me I am pale. Maybe fresh air will help.” He did not use contractions with his mother.

She nodded, eyes sad. Since the tragedy, she wore sadness like a coat she could not take off.

The coldness of November greeted him as he stepped out of the house, and he raised the collar of his jacket. The sky, dark and low, pressed down upon him. Tree branches, stark and leafless, were like spiderwebs climbing against the grayness of the sky. Chilled and depressed, watching pieces of debris kicked across the sidewalk by a brisk wind, he almost went back into the house.

He headed for the Wickburg Memorial Library. Did not know he had left the house for this purpose until this moment, yet had known all along that he
had
to go, had to find out what had happened outside the hospital while he was a patient there.

Luckily, he did not have to spend time learning how to use the microfilm equipment. A cheerful librarian told him that the most recent newspapers had not yet been filmed, and she brought him all the newspapers for the past two weeks, placing them on a table in the reading room. She did not question why he was not in school.

An hour later, he stumbled out of the library. The headlines and stories raced through his mind as he made his way on wobbly legs up Main Street. He paused at a mailbox, leaning against it, his breath coming rapidly, dangerously, as if he had been running at a furious pace.

Lifting his face to the wind, he was grateful for having been in the hospital immediately after the tragedy, for having been spared the agony of those terrible days of rage and pain. Black headlines and story after story told of children trapped, children hurt, children dead. Pictures had been supplied by grieving families: first communions, school photos, family gatherings. Eager faces, shining eyes. A boy on Santa’s lap. A girl blowing out candles on a birthday cake. And there were pictures of funerals, too, of crowds outside churches, faces twisted with grief, eyes drowning with tears.

Then a shocking picture of himself, surrounded by happy children, all beaming at the camera, taken, apparently, in the lobby of the theater. He did not remember posing for the picture. He read the sentence under the photo: “Usher John Paul Colbert shown with children shortly before tragedy struck at the Globe Theater. Colbert
has been cleared of responsibility for the collapse of the balcony.”

As he made his way home, that was his one shred of comfort.
Cleared of responsibility.

But a very small and slender shred.

All those children had died.

And he had been a part of it.

A letter awaited him at home. His mother looked at him expectantly as she handed it over: he had never received a letter before. On his birthday, his mother and father always sent him a card in the mail, timing it to arrive on the correct date. But this was a
letter
, a long white envelope, delicate handwriting spelling out his name and address.

He weighed it in the palm of his hand, reluctant to open it.

He couldn’t imagine who could be writing to him.

He looked for the return address—none.

As he tore the envelope open carefully at one end, his father emerged from the bedroom, yawning, running his hand through sleep-rumpled hair.

“A letter for John Paul,” his mother announced to him, apprehension in her voice.

His parents watched as he withdrew a sheet of paper from the envelope. More delicate handwriting, and a faint whiff of perfume. A bouquet of blue flowers decorated the top right corner of the letter. An address in Wickburg took up the other corner.

Tilting the letter to the light from the window, he read the following:

He handed the letter to his mother and went to the window and looked out at the street. He did not want to look at his mother because he would have to confess that he could not recall being kind to Nina Citrone. He himself had been nervous that day, had tried to be helpful to everyone, answering questions, giving directions, trying to
appear calm in all the turmoil. He had been attracted to the blond girl, not the nervous one who could not stand still, always moving her hands, shuffling her feet.

“A nice letter, that,” his father said, looking over his wife’s shoulder. “We are proud of you, John Paul …”

“You must answer her,” his mother said. “
Demain
.”

Then, catching herself: “Tomorrow.”

Maybe the letter was an omen of good things coming at last, he thought that night as he prepared for bed.

Let me count the good things for a change, he thought, kneeling to say his prayers. I have not had a headache for three days. I will be going back to school on Monday. My name has been cleared, even though there were no big headlines announcing it. And a girl has written me a letter.

He had never had a girlfriend, had never gone on a date. Had worshipped girls from a distance but never approached them.

He said his prayers, the old prayers in French, praying, like Nina Citrone, for the children, and adding the soul of Mr. Zarbor. Slipping between the sheet and the blanket, he wondered about Nina Citrone’s nightmares. She saw the crashing of the balcony. His nightmares were different. Vague: the children screaming, someone yelling “fire,” a shadow chasing him. But the nightmare was not the worst part. The worst part came before he fell asleep or when he woke up in the middle of the night, when he heard again the noises in the balcony, what he had thought were rats scurrying through the rubbish and the junk. Maybe, if he had overcome his fear of rats and had gone up to the balcony, he might have found the weakness that caused it to collapse. He turned from the thought but, in the darkness
of the room, the sound came back to him, that strange pulling-away sound.

He placed his hands over his ears to shut it out. Impossible, of course, because the sound was inside his mind, and along with it was the knowledge that maybe he was guilty after all, that his refusal to investigate the balcony had led to the deaths of the children. Nightmares ended when you woke up. Guilt never ended, worst in the dark of night but with you all the time, day or night.

Alone in the house the next morning, he answered Nina Citrone’s letter. Poised with pen in hand and his mothers best stationery on the table, he did not know what to write. Actually, he knew why he was writing—to thank her for her letter—but how should he say it? Annoyed with himself, he wrote:

Dear Nina,

He did not really know her. Maybe he should call her Miss Citrone. He checked her letter. She had addressed him as John Paul.

That was safe. And proper.

He frowned, bothered by something. “Kind” seemed too stiff a word. He pondered this a moment, crossed out “kind” and replaced it with “nice,” then crossed out “nice” and resiored “kind.” He would have to copy the letter over. He sighed, troubled. Then found a solution:

So far, so good. Next:

Maybe he should not have mentioned nightmares. But he wanted to show her she was not alone in this. He would not mention his guilt, however. He had not mentioned his guilt to anyone.

He paused and put down the pen, unsure about what he would write next. Knew what he wanted to write but did not wish to appear too … he groped for the word and found it: “forward.” Then wrote the sentence anyway: