Nursery Tale (3 page)

"Just one more month," Dick Wentis said.

Trudy Wentis nodded at what, after that month, would be her very spacious backyard. "I wouldn't mind pitching a tent out here today, just so we could get away from that damned apartment."

Her husband grinned. "At one time that apartment was our dream come true, don't you remember?"

She nodded reluctantly. "Things change, Dick." She glanced about. "I think our little wild man has run off."

Dick looked about, feigning puzzlement. "You think so?" He saw the place where the grass was parted slightly, saw the splash of dark hair, and the darker eyes. He looked away and gestured slightly to his left. He said, under his breath, "We're being watched, Trudy. No, don't look."

She grinned. "I think I know one little person who very much approves of this move, Dick."

"It's no more than he deserves, Trudy. I'm glad we can give this to him. I wish . . ." He paused; she sensed his mood change. "Never mind," he continued. "Let's collect him and head home." He looked back at the place in the weeds. "Sam?" he called. "Do you think it's time to go?" The parted grass came together again; the face vanished. "Sam, do you think it's time to go?"

"I'll get him," Trudy offered.

"Okay." He pointed. "He's right over there." He called again, "Sam, c'mon, now. It'll be dark soon." He noted the hint of urgency in his tone and wondered if it bordered on impatience. He hoped not. It had been months since he'd last lost his temper with the boy. "Sam, do you think it's time to head home?"

"He's not here," Trudy called. She was standing near the spot where Dick had seen the face in the weeds. "I thought you said he was here, Dick." Her voice was trembling. "Didn't you say he was here?"

Dick started toward her. "He was right where you're standing, for God's sake!" He quickened his gait; she saw the muscles on his face tighten. "If this is another one of his goddamned tricks—"

"Dick, please—"

He stopped beside her, looked down at the trampled grass, then to his right, his left. "Sam, do you think you'd like to go home now? Do you think that would be a good idea?" He waited a moment, got no response. "Sam, we'd like to go home. What do
you
want to do?"

"Go home," he heard. His head snapped to the right.

Trudy said, confused, "That wasn't him."

Dick's gaze settled on a clump of chokecherry bushes seventy-five feet to the south. He saw movement in the bushes. "Of course it was. He's over there."

Trudy looked. "I don't see him, Dick."

"Right there, for Christ's sake!"

And Sam Wentis appeared from the chokecherry bushes. He was smiling; he looked very happy. "Yes," he said, "I think this will be fun." He stepped out of the bushes; he was tall for a ten-year-old. Trudy supposed that, fully grown, he'd be well over six feet. And he was darkly, almost hypnotically good-looking.

He moved toward his adoptive parents at a loping, but oddly graceful quick walk, as if he had some important business to attend to, but not so important that he would let it get in the way of his private thoughts. Trudy found it difficult to be near him without feeling great sympathy for him—he seemed to carry a special kind of deep and aching fear around with him, and at times it demanded much more of his parents than they felt they could give.

When he was several yards from them, he turned abruptly to his right and started for the car. "Aren't you coming?" he said.

"Yes," said Dick Wentis.

"Of course," said Trudy Wentis, almost at the same time, and they both fell into stride beside him.

Larry and Dora Meade and their son Timmy

J
ohn Marsh had always put sentimentality on the same shelf as grief, religion, and even love, he supposed; it was all to be taken down only when it was absolutely necessary, and until then kept tightly locked up, because
living itself
was primarily a matter of keeping somewhere in the middle of all the highs and lows. And so, when the pang of sentimentality hit him (not, he thought, unlike the feeling he might experience after eating bad meat), he tried to push it away, because it was not just distasteful, it was also a stupid waste of his valuable time. But, at last, he had to admit, as he had admitted ten thousand times (and later denied), he was a slave to his emotions; they were far stronger than his intellect and, much of the time—now, for instance—they ran around inside him almost completely unchecked. And the big, hard bull of a man—the facade that people saw—fooled no one for very long.

He stopped his rattletrap Ford pickup on the soft shoulder of the road. He let the sentimentality sweep over him.

This was the first time in a decade and a half, ever since the fire, that he had come here. There had never been a reason, until recently; only the memories—most of them prickly and uncomfortable—and the spook stories told by nervous nellies and old men and sniggering little kids—stories that city folk might find entertaining, he supposed, but which had always been, in his estimation, just this side of outright lies. So, they had never been able to draw him back.

He hated what he saw now, on the land where the Griffins had lived and died. Hated the mounds of moist earth, the bulldozers, the yellow skeletons of houses. If only their proud new owners could look backward and see what they were replacing, what could never
be
replaced.

And then he thought, wouldn't it be something if all the spook stories were true? If Rachel and Paul Griffin—those beautiful, foolish people—still walked their land. If they still searched for whatever it was they had been searching for.

He found, suddenly, that anger was forcing itself into his sentimentality. Anger because there were no ghosts, because—said his rational view of the universe—there couldn't be. Anger that these new people and their big houses and bigger dreams trampled all over the dreams that Rachel and Paul had. Anger that there was nothing at all that he, John Marsh, could do but stand by and watch those dreams being covered over by sparkling green lawns and clay tennis courts and circular driveways. Then he thought that dreams were dying everywhere, all over the world. Who was he to be angered because the Griffins' dreams had died and someone else's dreams were coming true? He had no answer for that. But he was still angry.

"You work here?" the boy said. "You a plumber or somethin'?"

Marsh turned his head quickly to the left. He saw the boy—about ten years old, blond, gray-eyed, and dressed in bright new jeans, a red flannel shirt, and bright denim jacket (the little-adult look)—standing a couple yards from the truck. The boy had taken him by surprise. Marsh smiled ingratiatingly. "Why would you wanta know? You some kinda security guard?"

"Security guard?"

"Yeah. Somebody put you in charge of looking out for strangers?"

"Huh?" The boy was puzzled.

"Because," John Marsh went on, "you never know what a stranger's going to do. He might come in here and rob everyone. Didja ever think of that?"

The boy smiled. "Is that what you're going to do? You're gonna rob us?"

John Marsh laughed deeply, infectiously (it was a laugh that had gotten him the part of Santa Claus at the Penn Yann Elementary School every Christmas for the last five years—a role that, despite his W.C. Fields image of himself, he loved). "Well, I don't know," he answered. "You got anything to rob? You got a gold watch, or a pocketful of money?"

"No," the boy answered, his voice quivering a little.

"Then I guess I can't rob
you
, can I?"

"No," the boy said again. And then, from somewhere behind him, a sharp, high-pitched female voice called, "Timmy? Where are you, Timmy?"

The boy turned a little, toward the voice, but stayed quiet.

"That your Mom?" John Marsh asked.

The boy nodded. "Uh-huh."

"Don'tcha think you should answer her?"

The boy nodded again. "Uh-huh, I guess."

"Timmy?" The voice was closer; Marsh's view of its owner was hidden by tall weeds lining the roadside. "You answer me, young man. Right now!"

"Go ahead," Marsh coaxed. "Otherwise, she'll whup ya."

Once more the boy looked puzzled. "Now, she won't do that."

"Timmy Meade," the woman shouted—only yards away now—"you answer me this instant!"

And Marsh called, "Over here, Mrs. Meade."

A look of quick, intense anger passed from the boy to the man. Then the boy bolted into the tall weeds and was gone.

Marsh shook his head slowly, condemningly started mumbling to himself about respect, and discipline, and parental responsibility, when a tall, harshly good-looking brunette woman appeared at the roadside. She was dressed in very tight, white Levi's, white cotton shirt, and a white vinyl jacket. She stared hard and suspiciously at Marsh for a long moment. "Okay," she said at last, "where'd he go?"

Marsh considered a second; then, "Where'd
who
go?"

The woman raised an eyebrow. "I repeat,
where
did he go?"

Marsh grinned. "You talkin' about a little blond boy, 'bout ten years old? Had jeans on? You talking about him?"

"You know perfectly well that's who I'm talking about."

"Well then, I'm sorry, Mrs. Meade, but I haven't seen him."

The woman grinned back, viciously. "This is private property, you know."

"Not the road, Mrs. Meade. The road ain't private property."

"It sure as hell is! As of ten days ago, it became 'Reynolds Road.' A private road. There are signs." Her grin hardened. "Unless, of course, you're illiterate. Are you illiterate?"

John Marsh put his foot on the clutch, put the truck in gear. "I ain't illiterate," he said evenly, and he executed a K turn on the gravel road, stopped again, and retrieved a sheet of yellow paper from the sun visor. "Mrs. Meade?" he called. The woman looked questioningly at him. She said nothing. "Mrs. Meade?" he repeated.

"Yes?" she said stiffly.

He held the piece of yellow paper out the passenger window, waved it at her. "My name's Marsh. I'm an electrician. I was supposed to do some work for you." He let the paper flutter to the ground. "But I decided just a few minutes ago that I'm all booked up." He touched the accelerator gently and moved slowly away down Reynolds Road.

Dora Meade turned abruptly and disappeared into the tall weeds.

T
he first three young couples in Granada—The Meades, the McIntyres, the Wentises—were very much of a type, it was true. Bright young suburbanites with a taste for getting ahead, who liked being looked upon as "special," but who tried, to varying degrees, to carry that perception of status with humility. They all gave generously to the proper charities, they all belonged to one of the two major political parties, the men all held white-collar jobs. Which is not to say that these couples were indistinguishable, one from another.

There were, first of all, physical differences. Each of the women was attractive, but in differing ways. Dora Meade was dark, slim, and blatantly sexual; Trudy Wentis, with her penchant for faded blue jeans, and her shoulder-length auburn hair, and her quick, ingratiating smile, looked more like the girl next door; Janice McIntyre appeared friendly, but aloof, a young woman who knew, as if by instinct, what was good and worthy in life, and what was not. Her husband, Miles, for instance, was, she'd say, probably, the very best choice she could have made in a husband. He had a quick, inquiring intelligence, as she did; his instincts for the best in life—or at least for the best that was attainable—seemed to match hers; and if he was not as smoothly good-looking as some other men she had known, his angular face and piercing hazel eyes held far more strength and character than those other men, which, after all, she'd say—and believe—counted for much more than mere mannequin-like good looks. Of the three young couples in Granada, the McIntyres' relationship was probably the most secure.

Dora and Larry Meade were in a different boat entirely, and it was a boat that was sinking slowly, though each—for the sake of their son, Timmy—would have denied it. They got married at a very early age, and for the wrong reasons, and now, ten years later, their lives together had become more a matter of staying out of each other's way than anything else. Larry was a tall, lean, and at times exquisitely sensitive man who, Dora had said to her mother, shortly after the marriage began, "is like a big, grinning puppy dog, Mom." His deep sensitivity masked his great inner strength, and since Dora found it difficult—and therefore a waste of her time—to look beyond surface details, she had long since begun to view him as weak-willed, and "maybe" (a suspicion she had also shared with her mother, though much later on) "a trifle disposed toward homosexuality." Larry himself would have smiled easily at the suggestion, though he wouldn't have dismissed it out of hand; he dismissed no idea out of hand; he liked to think that he knew no one very well, especially himself. Life was more interesting that way.

Trudy and Dick Wentis were quite well matched. They respected each other, they joked with each other, their lovemaking—which took up many of their private hours—was filled with "creative kinkiness" (Trudy's phrase) that delighted them both. The child that dwells within all of us dwelt gleefully inside both of them. As did the adult. The only chink in the armor of their relationship was Dick's temper. It seemed to flare most violently when he was trying to cope with Sam, their adopted son. In the past few months, and with the help of a competent psychiatrist, he had come to realize that he was transforming his disappointment with Trudy, because she could not bear children, into anger at Sam, for obvious reasons. Much to Trudy's relief, the relationship between Dick and Sam had improved tremendously, although, she realized, it would probably be years, if ever, before it became a "normal" father-and-son relationship. She looked forward to that day. She thought that when it came she could finally set aside most of the guilt she felt for not being able to have children of her own.