The call from the superintendent of schools came at exactly 3:46 P.M., and although Nancy Quayde had been expecting it, she found she wasn't ready.
The phone on her desk rang, and she jumped. She looked up and saw Lisa nodding at her from the desk outside. She picked up.
“Carol Shegelmeyer is on the phone,” Lisa whispered, as if she suspected that Carol would be able to hear her if she talked loudly, even if she'd put Carol on hold. “She's clucking,” Lisa said, “and if you ask me, this isn't good. Do you want me to tell her that you've already gone?”
“Yes,” Nancy said, and then, “no. Wait. That's probably not a good idea. Did she say anything about what she wanted?”
“Just that she wanted to talk to you. I'd think it was obvious what the problem was. I mean, the police have been here today. She probably heard.”
“Probably,” Nancy agreed, thinking that if that were what Carol was worried about, there would be no problem. “Okay,” she said. “Listen. Give it about a minute and then put her through, okay?”
“Okay. But are you sure? There's no reason why you shouldn't have left for the day.”
“I almost never leave for the day before four, and Carol knows it. Give me a minute.”
Nancy put the phone back in the cradle and closed her eyes and put her head down in her hands. It was important to breathe regularly and without gulping. It was important to be calm. It was important to remember that this was not
a surprise. She'd known for hours that Carol was going to call sometime today. She'd known for hours what she needed to say and why. The trick was to stay in control.
The phone on her desk rang, and Nancy jumped. She took two long, steady breaths and picked up.
“Nancy?” Carol Stegelmeyer's voice said. “Is that you? This is Carol Stegelmeyer.”
Well, of course it is, Nancy thought. Who else would it be? Did Carol think Lisa didn't bother to announce who was on the phone, or that Nancy took calls without knowing who they were from?
“Yes,” Nancy said. “Yes. Carol. Hello. What can I do for you?”
“Well.” Carol sounded stumped, as if this were a difficult question. She was
such
a stupid woman. “Well,” Carol said again. “I've had a rather disturbing day. Do you know a Mr. Asch?”
Nancy stopped breathing. This was the worst-case scenario.
“Nancy?”
She'd been quiet too long. “Sorry,” she said. “I've got a hot cup of coffee and I keep forgetting how hot. Yes. Yes, of course I know a Mr. Asch, if you mean David Asch. He's the father of one of our students here.”
“Diane Asch,” Carol said.
“Yes, exactly, Diane Asch.”
“He said he talked to you today. Did he talk to you today?”
“He's talked to me on a number of occasions,” Nancy said. “Diane has been having some problems. She'sâwell, you know what I mean. She's one of those teenagers who's going through a particularly awkward phase, and she's somewhat abrasive and obnoxious in her manner, so the other studentsâ”
“Mr. Asch says they bully her. That they throw things at her and lock her in supply closets. I said that of course that wasn't possible, because if a student was ever to behave that way to any other student, then the student who
committed the offense would be suspended at the very least. That's right, isn't it? That's our policy.”
“Of course that's our policy.”
“Mr. Asch says that on several occasions you sided with the student doing the bullying. I don't remember the names off the top of my head. Lynn somebodyâ”
“Lynn, DeeDee, and Sharon. Yes, I know who they are. Diane Asch is obsessed with them. And I do mean obsessed.”
“Well, Nancy, if they really are bullying her, and physically attacking herâ”
“Oh, for God's sake. Lynn is captain of the varsity cheerleaders this year. DeeDee is president of the student council. Sharon has been a prom princess three times and probably will be prom queen in a couple of weeks. It's the same old story. Diane is awkward and heavy and she's got a face like a pizzaâ”
“Nancy.”
“There's no point in sugar-coating it, is there? I've tried several times to get David Asch to listen to reason. I've offered to make sure Diane sees a good counselor and that the district pays for it. He just won't listen to reason.”
“He feels,” Carol said slowly, “that, under the circumstances, if Diane goes to therapy it will only ratify the charges of these three girls that she's, well, that there's something wrong with her.”
“I see what you mean, but it's total hogwash. Lynn and DeeDee and Sharon aren't âcharging' Diane Asch with anything. Mostly, they're just leaving her alone. Oh, Carol, for God's sake. You know what these situations are like. She imagines insults where none exist. She follows them around until they explode at her, which maybe they shouldn't do, but it's perfectly human. She's a mess. She needs help. He won't let her get it.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Nancy began to twitch. Her throat was dry.
“He wasn't the only one who called,” Carol said finally. “There was a man who said he was from the
New York
Times
. He seems to be writing an article about Elizabeth Toliver, and he saysâ”
“What?”
“He says that there's a police record. A sealed police record. Showing that you were picked up on the night that boy died, whatever his name was, and that you'd been involved in an incident where you and some other girls nailed Elizabeth Toliver into an outhouse out at the park along with some snakes. I'm sorry I sound garbled. I really didn't understand the story.”
“If the police record is sealed, how did a man from the
New York Times
get to see it?”
“He says he's got a copy.”
“Which could be fake, or forged, or anything. A lot of people were in the park the night Michael Houseman died. Peggy was in the park the night Michael Houseman died. Chris Inglerod Barr was in the park the night Michael Houseman died. So what? What does it have to do with anything?”
“I don't think it's the death of that boy that's in contention,” Carol said. “I think it's this story about the outhouse.”
“I still don't understand what it has to do with anything,” Nancy said. By now, she was being patient only by an act of will. “All that happened over thirty years ago. What does that have to do with Diane Asch?”
“What they're going to do, as an angle on the story, is to say that you were always, uh, the word he used was vicious, I'm afraid, I did protest, butâ”
“Vicious,” Nancy said. “He said I was vicious. Then what?”
“That you were always vicious to kids who were out of the social swim and not very popular, and you still are that way, only now you're principal, so that's why you don't do something about the girls who are persecuting Diane Asch. I did protest, Nancy, I did. I think the whole thing is absurd, but he just went on and on about it. And I must
admit it's made me uneasy. Isn't there any way you can call these girls to account?”
“How can I call them to account if they haven't
done
anything?”
“Even if they haven't done anything, maybe you can call them in, you know, and have a meeting between them and Diane Asch and maybe her father, and call their parents in, tooâ”
“And their parents will quite rightly have a fit,” Nancy pointed out. “They'll scream bloody murder. And they won't be any more sympathetic to Diane Asch than I am.”
“I don't know,” Carol said. “If this gets into the papers, and people start saying that you play favorites among the students, the district might be put into the position of ordering an investigation, and if we did that, we'd have to suspend youâ”
“If you tried it, I'd sue your ass off.”
“I'm sure you could institute a lawsuit if you wanted to, Nancy, but you wouldn't win it and I don't think the district would settle out of court. We couldn't afford to do that with a case we'd probably win. And we would probably win it because everybody these days is very concerned about the states of mind the loners are in, and the students who don't quite fit, and those people, because of all the school shootings. Not that I think Diane Asch is in any danger of becoming a school shooterâ”
“She'd keel over from the kickback from a water pistol.”
“âbut you must see what I'm getting at. I wish you'd sit down and try to come up with some approach to this problem that didn't make all of us look bad. We really can't go to the press or the school board or the
Home News
saying that Diane Asch is some kind of paranoid psychotic, not unless you can prove she
is
a paranoid psychotic, which I don't think you canâ”
“No,” Nancy said. “She's not a paranoid psychotic. She's a fat, unattractive, whining, sniveling mass of insecurity complexes and it's no damned surprise to anybody who's paying attention that she has virtually no friends. We
can't just cave in to this kind of thing. What are we supposed to do next? Cancel the prom? Abolish the cheerleaders? Chuck the whole student council? What Diane Asch needs is a good swift kick in the pants. What her father needs is some reality therapy.”
“Yes,” Carol said. “Well. I just thought I'd better warn you. He may be calling you later. The man from the
New York Times
. You might want to decide what you're going to say.”
“Yes. All right. I will. Maybe I just won't take the call.”
“I don't think that would be advisable. He'd put it in his story, that you refused to talk to him. That wouldn't look good.”
“Fine, then. I'll talk to him.”
“It's really too bad things like this have to get blown so out of proportion,” Carol said. “Still, it's better to be safe. You must admit that. It's better to be safe.”
“It's better to be safe,” Nancy repeatedâand then she hung up. She didn't say good-bye. She didn't wish Carol a good day. She didn't make any of the soothing noises that had come to be standard practice on ending a telephone call. She just hung up.
A second later, she realized she was frozen in her chair. Her muscles would not move. Her head felt screwed into her neck. All she could think about was the afternoon Emma and Belinda had held Betsy Toliver down on the floor of the girls' room in the junior high wing of the old building and put lipstick all over her face, on her cheeks, on her eyelids, on her ears. They'd done it because they couldn't stand the fact that Betsy never wore any of the stuff, but now that Nancy thought of it she could see how right it had been, how
just
it had been. None of the teachers then would have dreamed of interfering with what they were doing.
Crap
, Nancy thought.
Then she got up and started throwing the things she needed for home into her attache' case.
Peggy Smith Kennedy had no idea why they had brought her to the hospital. It would have made more sense if they had sent her home to Stu. She was having a lot of difficulty holding on to time. She'd been sitting against the wall with that thing in her hand, and Emma had been spurting. Emma had been like a fountain of blood, spritzing thick red goo everywhere. The stain had spread along the front of her dress like the stain that spread across the front of the screen in that old Vincent Price movie.
The light changed in the room, and she shifted a little on her chair to get back into the center of it. She had been thinking that it would be nice to own a chair like this for her own living room. Stu always wrecked new furniture. She would like a new chair, and she would like flower boxes outside the windows at the front of the house, where she could plant pansies in the spring. When she was growing up and writing Stu's name all over her notebooks at school, she had had distinct fantasies about window boxes and pansies and big evergreen wreaths for the door at Christmas. It was odd. You never really thought about the important things. You never imagined paying the bills, or buying a car, or cleaning vomit up off the carpet in the bedroom hallway because Stu hadn't made it all the way to the bathroom before he'd started to throw up. You never thought about lying on your face on the linoleum in the kitchen with your right arm broken and your teeth aching where he had kicked them. You never thought about what it really meant to say you were in love.
The light in the room changed again, and Peggy shifted again, and then she realized that there was someone standing in the doorway.
The woman in the door seemed to lean forward. She was standing in shadow, and Peggy could not make out her features.
“Do you want something?” she called out to the form in the doorway. “Are you looking for somebody?”
“I'm sorry,” Betsy Toliver said. “I didn't mean to disturb you. I was just wondering how you were.”
It was not, Peggy thought, Betsy Toliver's voice as she remembered it. It was Betsy's voice from television, with its tinge of Britishness that probably came from living all those years in London. Peggy stabbed at her hair.
“You came all the way out here to see how I was doing?” she said.
Betsy came farther into the room. “Not all the way out to the hospital, no. I came out to the hospital to check on my mother. She's right down the hall.”
“I'm on the geriatric ward?”
“I don't think so. I think it's more of a general ward, really. Are you all right? They told me you'd been found in the same room as Emma, all banged up. I haven't been able to see Emma. She's still unconscious.”
“Is she on this floor, too?”
“No,” Betsy said. “She's in some special care unit. I asked the nurse.”
By now, Betsy was all the way into the room. Peggy could see her up close. Betsy was Betsy, but she wasn't Betsy at the same time. She still wore almost no makeup, and funny clothes, but even Peggy could see that these funny clothes were expensive, at least for Hollman. Maybe they were cheap for wherever it was Betsy lived now. Maybe Betsy hadn't really changed. Maybe.
“You look different,” Peggy said.
“Well, I suppose I should. It's been over thirty years.”
“I don't mean you look older. I mean you look different. I look older.”
“I look older, too. Believe me. If I don't, it must be the light.”
“You look different,” Peggy said again. She didn't bother to explain. She shouldn't have to explain. It should be clear. And explaining was too much work. “If you'd looked like that in school, we'd probably have loved you.
You'd have been the queen of everything. Except maybe Belinda. Belinda always hated you.”
“Yes. Well. I rather thought that emotion was general.”
Peggy flicked this away. “I have no idea what that means. I'm very tired.”
“I'm sorry. I'll let you be. I only wantedâ”
“They say Emma is going to be fine. You say she's in the intensive care unitâ”
“No, I didn't say that. I said she's in a special care unit. Those were the words the nurse used when I talked to her.”
“Whatever. They said downtown that she was going to be fine. Her fat saved her. That Mr. Demarkian said that. I heard him. Her fat saved her. It was so thick, the razor thing couldn't go all the way through her in one stroke, the way that it did with Chris. Do they all think you killed Chris?”
“No,” Betsy said. “Not as far as I can tell.”
“You'd think they would,” Peggy said, “with the body in your yard and everything. But then, you were never somebody who got in trouble. I remember that. You weren't popular but you didn't get in trouble. Not like some people. Do you think it isn't fair, the way schools are? That some people get in trouble all the time and others don't for doing the same things and it's all a lot of personalities and luck?”
“I think it's more a matter of reputation,” Betsy said. “People get reputations, and it's like those tags the characters had in Greek epics. Heraclitus the Wise. Andromachus the Malevolent. Once you have the tag, it never changes and it never disappears, and people think that's all you are.”
“Some people deserve it, though, the treatment they get. Some people really do do things that are wrong and harmful and bad.”
“Absolutely.”
“Nancy always thought you deserved it,” Peggy said. “She still does. Not that you deserve it now but that you deserved it then. She's a terrible person, really. She hates
weakness of any kind, except half the things she calls weak aren't, they're just human. She hates Stu. She thinks she knows what it's like in my marriage. Do you hate Stu?”
“I don't know him. I never did know him, not even when we were all growing up. Maris told me you'd married him.”
Peggy looked away. It was hard to look at Betsy. The clothes were nerve-wracking. Leather. Coach. Something expensive.
“Nobody knows what it's like in somebody else's marriage. Nobody can know. Everybody thinks Emma and George are all lovey-dovey and well suited to each other, but nobody knows. All kinds of things could be going on between them when they get themselves alone. He could be drinking up all the money they make. She could be having affairs on the side. I know you think it isn't possible because of her weight, but things like that have happened. The woman who ran the key booth at the mall had an affair with one of the janitors and she was married and he was black. Black. Do you remember when we used to call them Negroes? And nobody went to Kennanburg because there were too many of them there, and now there are twice as many and Hispanics, too, and everybody goes there anyway because you can't help it if you want to go to the hospital or get a copy of your birth certificate. I was always going to marry Stu. Everybody knew that. I knew that by the time I was five years old.”
“Yes,” Betsy said. “Well. I think they've pickled you in sedatives. You ought to get some rest.”
“If you really love somebody,” Peggy said, “if you really, really love them, you don't walk out on them because they've got a few imperfections. You love the imperfections. You cherish them. You
protect
them.”
“Sometimes you can't protect them.”
“You shouldn't have come back here,” Peggy said. “Belinda's right about one thing. It isn't fair. What happened to you and what happened to us. It isn't fair. The world is supposed to make sense. It has an obligation to. You should
have stayed in New York or Connecticut or wherever it is you live and left the rest of us alone.”
“I'll leave you alone now. You should rest, and I need to get back to where I'm staying.”
“You should have left us alone,” Peggy said, but she was talking to air. Betsy was gone. Maybe Betsy had never been there. She felt very drowsy.
It was true, Peggy thought. You didn't just walk out on somebody you loved because they weren't as perfect as you wanted them to be. If you did, it wasn't love. It was convenience, or sex, or prestige, or position, or even habit. Love is stronger than that. Love accepts the bad with the good. Love learns toâ
She was very tired. She couldn't keep her eyes open. Betsy had been right. They'd given her a lot of pills, a lot of sedatives. They'd been trying so hard to calm her down, and she hadn't been able to understand why. She hadn't been agitated. She hadn't even been restless. She was sitting so still, she could have been frozen into a stone. Besides, she didn't have anything to worry about.
Emma was all right. Emma would wake up, sooner or later, and tell everybody on earth who it was who had really attacked her.