Acts of Love (32 page)

“Sandy, open up. I need to talk to you.”

She hugged her knees, listening to him pound again.

For a moment, there was nothing, silence. Then she heard him at the back door, knocking on the glass pane. “We need to talk.”

Her own breath hummed through the room. She rose and began to pad slowly, quietly, down the stairs.

But by the time she opened the door, he was gone.

She watched his taillights streak down the block and fade in the dark.

 

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, she called him at his office. She gave his secretary a false name, Linda, the first thing that came into her mind.

“I need to see you,” she said as soon as he picked up.

“Yes. I need to see you, too.”

“Can you stop by on your way home from work?”

“Seven o'clock.” He hung up.

He took only one step inside, kept his coat on. “We can't do this anymore,” he spit out angrily. His eyes were radiant, charged.

“I know.” She was filled with an unexpected vibrant resentment at him for being the one to say it first, for stealing it from her, for rejecting her when it had been her intention to reject him.

He nodded, his hands in his pockets, but he did not move, did not leave.

She brushed her hair straight back, tangled it in her fingers.

“One thing,” he added. “I know I don't have to say this, but I will. No matter what, you must promise never to tell anyone,
anyone,
about this. Ever.”

“What do you think I am?”

He stared at her a moment. “Guilt does funny things to people. Gives some of them the need to confess.”

“But not you?”

“No,” he said simply. “I love Ann.”

“So do I.”

He frowned.

“Don't give me that shit,” she said. “I'd say we're about equal in the sin department.”

He smirked. “I haven't heard that word since my mother went through a brief religious phase when I was ten. Sin,” he said, tasting it, rolling it round his tongue, swallowing it.

She reached out suddenly and slapped his face with all her force.

His eyes watered, but he did not flinch. “If you ever do anything to hurt her, I'll kill you,” he said. He looked at her with his glistening eyes for a long moment and then turned slowly round and left.

 

O
NE WEEK LATER
, Ann called. “Listen,” she said, “I have a big favor to ask you.”

“Sure. What?”

“Can you stay with the girls for five days?”

“Okay.”

“Ted and I are going to Florida.” There was a silence. “It's his idea, really. He thinks it would help.”

“Help what?”

“Help us.”

“You don't sound convinced.”

“Maybe I'm not sure I want to help us, I don't know. Or maybe I'm scared of trying and failing.”

“When are you going?”

“Next week.”

“That soon?”

“It doesn't seem the kind of thing you put off. You either do it or you don't. So. Is it okay with you?”

“Sure.”

“Sandy, I should warn you. There's been some difficulty. With Julia.”

“What kind of difficulty?”

“I believe they call it ‘acting out' these days.” She laughed nervously. “She's been having trouble in school, with her teachers. They called us in last week. I don't know. Ted and I, well, it's been hard on the girls. That's one of the reasons I agreed to go away with him.”

“I'll do whatever you want.”

Ann took a deep breath. “Then wish me luck,” she said.

“Luck.”

S
ANDY SAT ON THE WINDOW SEAT
watching the dawn begin to break, black fading to yellow and finally to a pale peach light, like a bruise slowly healing. The cold pane chilled her forehead as she leaned against it and she shivered but did not move. A few feet away, John was snoring softly. His inhalations, exhalations, were like a metronome, steady and predictable and lonesome, in a deserted house. She looked over at him, wishing that he would sleep on like that forever, the morning eternally hovering just beyond the horizon.

Once more she rummaged through her options, stretching and splicing and picking at them, and finally discarding them. Despite what Ted had said earlier that evening behind the empty bleachers of Jasper's Field, she knew that her influence with Julia was nil, or, worse, negative, that Julia would purposely do precisely whatever Sandy told her not to. Ali, of course, was more malleable. But what, really, could Sandy say to her? Change your story, go back to him?

She shuddered.

Nausea rose in her belly, and she swallowed hard.

She could wake John right now—rise, walk to him across the cold, uncarpeted floor, shake him, tell him.

Lose him. Lose everything.

She pressed her palm against the foggy glass, drew an X, wiped it out. She thought of all the girls who drew hearts and arrows and boyfriends' initials on the windows of cars, schools—she had never been one of them.

John grunted in his sleep, snorted, and then resumed his soft snoring. She heard the newspaper slam onto the front steps, the girls begin to stir, the automatic coffeepot begin to grumble and drip, and still she sat, her legs cramped, her head chilled, immobile.

 

J
UDGE
C
ARRUTHERS
, who was nursing a rather stubborn midwinter cold, pulled a tissue out of the paisley box the bailiff had set before her and loudly blew her reddened nose. When she had tried two more times to clear her sinuses, she stuffed the wadded tissue deep into her robes and gradually straightened up, scanning the courtroom over the top of her narrow black-framed reading glasses. The jury, silent and expectant, shuffled in their seats, ostentatiously clicked open their pens, uncrossed their legs. The schoolteacher on the far end had cut off the ragged ends of her perm, and Judge Carruthers stopped for a moment to consider her new short hairdo before moving on to the rest of the crowded room, which stilled at her glance. Only Ted moved, subtly shifting his eyes to the rows behind him for one last look. The seat that Sandy had assumed at the start of the trial was empty. He turned back to the judge. She removed her reading glasses and banged her gavel. “The defense may call its first witness.”

Fisk nodded in the courtly manner he had come to assume with Judge Carruthers, a tip of his expensively groomed head, a flash of his eyes. It had worked with female judges in the past, this soupçon of gentlemanly deference, the veiled acknowledgment of chivalry, though it was always a risky proposition, and on one or two occasions offense had been taken at even the mildest of gallantries. He had been careful so far, reassessing and adjusting at each parry. He stood and rested his hands firmly on his desk. “The defense calls Mrs. Elaine Murphy.”

Mrs. Murphy rose from the first row and began her progress to the witness stand. Her cropped gray hair was newly shorn and matched her large silver cuff bracelets and earrings. She was wearing a brown corduroy dirndl skirt and sensible shoes.

“Mrs. Murphy,” Fisk began, “will you please state your occupation?”

“I have been the guidance counselor at the Hardison Middle School for the past eleven years.”

“And what does being the guidance counselor entail, Mrs. Murphy?”

“I see children in trouble. Teachers will refer difficult students to me, and I meet with them and their parents and try to find appropriate solutions.”

“And was it in that capacity that you first met Julia Waring?”

“Yes.”

“Can you describe the circumstances, please?”

“Of course. Julia had been having some difficulty in school for the past year. Her grades had dropped precipitously, always a marker for a smart child. There were reports of hostile exchanges with other students. She cheated on a social-studies test. And finally, she threw a metal file box at her teacher's head.”

“That's quite a list.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Murphy agreed.

Judge Carruthers sneezed loudly.

“God bless you,” Fisk said, smiling up at her.

She pursed her lips and reached for a tissue to stanch her running nose. “Continue,” she said brusquely.

Fisk nodded and returned to his witness. “Let's try to break that list down, shall we?”

“Of course.”

“Would you please elaborate on ‘hostile exchanges with other students'?”

Mrs. Murphy continued in her professionally patient voice. “Julia was verbally abusive at times. She insulted her peers, taunted them. I'd go so far as to say that in one case, she persecuted a boy.”

“Persecuted?”

“She called him a moron so frequently that his parents came in to discuss how upset he was. They actually considered transferring him to another school to escape her.”

At the word “moron” there were ripples of laughter in the courtroom, and Mrs. Murphy looked up censoriously.

“I am not talking about simple childish teasing here,” she added sternly. “There was a single-mindedness to Julia's behavior that was out of the ordinary. It had an almost obsessive quality.”

“And she also cheated on tests?”

“On one that I know of.”

“You said that she physically attacked one of her teachers?” Fisk allowed a pale hue of shock into his voice.

“Yes. Mrs. Barnard, her homeroom teacher. She threw a metal file box at her head.”

“What caused her to do that?”

Mrs. Murphy sighed. “The reasons, of course, would have to be considered multiple and historic. If you mean in the more immediate sense, Mrs. Barnard simply scolded Julia for not paying attention in homeroom.”

“So would it be fair to say that Julia dealt with frustration with physical violence?”

“In this instance, yes.”

“Would you say that Julia is an honest child?”

“I would not call cheating on tests a mark of honesty, Mr. Fisk.”

“Did you meet with Julia at this time to discuss her problems?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell us about that meeting? Specifically, what was Julia's attitude?”

“Julia was extremely resentful of authority. Because she is quite a bright child, she was capable of working a situation to what she perceived to be her advantage.”

“Can you explain what you mean by that?”

“Julia would answer certain questions however she believed you wanted them answered or however would be most advantageous to getting herself out of a difficult situation. To explain on the simplest level, if I asked, ‘Are you angry?' she would answer, ‘No,' despite the fact that this was obviously not the case. This type of deception is not uncommon in institutionalized patients, by the way.”

Fisk smiled, satisfied. “I have no further questions.”

Gary Reardon rose. He had a Calvinist's natural distaste for therapists and therapeutic jargon, which he struggled to overcome as he formulated his cross-examination. When he approached the witness now, it was with a stiff formality that seemed a rebuke to Mrs. Murphy's air of readily assumed psychological intimacy.

“Mrs. Murphy, do you see many children of divorce in your capacity as a guidance counselor?”

“More and more, unfortunately.”

“And do they not have a habit of going through a temporary slump as they adjust to the problems of their home lives?”

“Often.”

“So you would consider this normal?”

“I would consider it within the range of normal reaction.”

“Has Julia Waring ever lied to you personally?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Mrs. Murphy, did you not call her parents, Ann and Ted Waring, in for a conference to discuss certain of these incidents?”

“Of course. We always try to involve the parents when a child is in trouble.”

“And what was your impression of Ann and Ted Waring at the time? Did you think that there was trouble at home?”

“I certainly had that impression.”

“Was Ted Waring forthcoming about this?”

“No. I would say that on the contrary, he seemed rather defensive.”

“One last question, Mrs. Murphy. In your professional experience, is the kind of behavior you testified to on Julia's part often the response to violence in the home?”

“It can be.”

“I have no further questions.”

Judge Carruthers turned to Mrs. Murphy and looked down at her with glassy eyes. Her own youngest son had often found himself in the guidance counselor's office, most recently for throwing lit matches in the gym, and she did not remember kindly the afternoon she spent in the small school chair across from Mrs. Murphy's desk, trying not to laugh in the woman's solicitous and understanding face. “You may step down.”

 

H
E HADN'T COME
for over a week.

Julia hastily shoved her half-dissected frog into a plastic bag as soon as the last bell of the day rang and rushed from the biology lab to the front steps, but he wasn't there. She had called his number at home four times, listened to his eager voice on the machine,
Please leave your name and number and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Ciao!,
and hung up each time at the beep. She wondered if he knew that it was her. Could he tell by the sound of the ring, the beep, the tone of the hang-up? She had nothing specific to say to him. He wanted information, even she knew that, but she was not sure what morsel to offer up, did not know what would appease, intrigue, seduce. And what did she want, precisely? Perhaps just the sound of his voice, the taste of his tawny, salty finger.

She walked back into the school building and went to the phone booth outside the cafeteria, closed the old-fashioned wood-and-glass door, unfolded the paper with his number, and dialed the
Chronicle.
He picked up after the second ring.

“Hello? Gorrick here. Hello?”

She swallowed once. “Hello? This is Julia Waring.”

“Julia.” His voice was at once friendly, welcoming. “Hi.”

“Hi.”

Outside the phone booth, a boy from Julia's class leaned up and pressed his face to the glass pane until it was smashed in, grotesque, his nose and tongue a red swell of pores and steam. He knocked once, then ran away, laughing loudly. She frowned and turned her back.

“Julia? Are you still there?”

“Yes.”

“How are you?”

“You said if I ever had anything to talk to you about, I could call you.”

“Yes, of course. What is it?”

“Can I see you?”

“Sure. I can get to you in fifteen minutes. You're at school?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Wait for me, okay, Julia? You'll wait for me?”

“Yes.”

“I'm leaving right now.” He was, in fact, already standing, notepad and pen in hand.

Julia stopped off in the girls' bathroom on the main floor, and, for the first time in public, carefully applied the Raspberry Ice lipstick she had stolen to her full lips. She pushed her bob into the strict triangular line she insisted on and went to wait outside, sitting on the chain that bordered the front yard of the school. The cold metal links sank into her flesh as she swung back and forth, thinking of what she could tell him that would not disappoint, that would be just enough to hold him, make him come back, take her along. She watched as, eleven minutes later, the white Volvo pulled into the parking lot and Peter Gorrick climbed out. He was wearing a jacket she hadn't seen him in before, beige canvas with a chocolate leather collar. Her heart quickened as she rose and began to walk toward him, uncertain of where to look, shy of his eyes, so clearly watching her progress through the whole long five yards. He was smiling when they reached each other.

“How's tricks?” he asked.

“Okay,” she answered tentatively.

“You hungry? Do you want to go out for a hamburger?”

“Can we just go for a ride?”

“Sure.”

They walked to his car, and this time she let him open the door for her. She slid in, slid into this separate world of his, the spicy smell, particular just to him, the empty Coke can on the floor, the jumble of books on the back seat, the black-and-white-checked wool scarf draped over them, all dense with a symbolism that she would later, in her room, in the night, try endlessly to decipher. What books did he read? Had he bought the scarf himself, or had it been a gift? And if it had been a gift, who had given it to him? He got in beside her and began to drive away from the school. Once more, the car's dry and musty heat wrapped around the two of them as the outside blurred and passed the rolled-up windows.