We Five (31 page)

Jane took a moment to reply. The words were freighted with such pain that she could hardly bring them to voice. “Then why do
you
?”

Tom smiled. “Because, my dippy darling, I and I alone have the capacity to ignore your repulsiveness in my mission of mercy. This is what I've always sought to do—from that first afternoon at Pemberton, Day when we discussed the photography session in Miss Colthurst's absence. I felt pity for you, working among all those pretty young women, and looking the way you did—the way you
do
.” Standing behind her, he moved his head slightly to the side to better see the reflected image Jane was beholding with a mixture of sadness and absolute horror. “I wanted to give you that thing you'll never have otherwise, because, speaking as a man, even ugly men have no use for ugly women. We men—let me speak frankly here—we know
our
worth is gauged not by the way we look, but by what we are capable of
doing
—the things we make of our lives. A woman's worth, on the other hand, is measured largely by her looks, her shape and carriage, by that sparkle in her eye—all of these things appealing to a man in a primal sort of way. This desire in the human male to seek out an ideal—it's the way we've evolved, how biology tells a man to be. A man doesn't go looking for a Jane. He seeks out a Molly or a Carrie. You know exactly what I mean. This is the quest. This is the game. The plain Janes of the world play no part in this game, in this ‘chase,' unless, of course, they get lucky. But I doubt you are ever going to get lucky, Jane. Look at yourself.”

Jane turned away. “I don't want to look at myself anymore.”

Tom turned Jane around so she was forced to look at
him
. “I wanted to give you something tonight, Jane. I wanted to show you what it was like to be with a man, so you'll have that one special memory to sustain you.”

The room was spinning, whirling about her. Jane was still very drunk and not used to this feeling; it had been a sort of twirling, pinwheel kind of dream, but now it had transmogrified itself into a terrible, ugly, formless nightmare. Yet as Tom was speaking to her in a soft and confiding voice, the ragged edges of the nightmare were being smoothed away. In their place was a form of tortuous, perverted kindness. Jane had a sense of the distortion. She had the feeling that what there was left of respect for self was being whittled away by the man who stood next to her, gauging her worth by his own selfish measure, leaving her a hollow reflection of who she used to be. And she was too weak to fight it. And she hated herself for it. She hated herself for submitting to him based on that singular desire to know what it would feel like in those next moments
to be loved
, even if the love wasn't real.

And in the end she became a helpless victim to that need, regardless of the price it cruelly exacted from her dignity.

Tom ran the back of his hand across Jane's wet cheek in a gesture which replicated what she had done only moments before to him. The act
represented
great tenderness of feeling, whether or not there was any sincerity behind it.

He dropped his voice to a seductive whisper. “I'm giving you the chance to see what the world would be like if you had been born beautiful. This is my gift to you, Jane.”

Jane's eyes brightened. Then in the next moment all the light went out. “But it would only be pretend.”

“Of course it would only be pretend. But won't we have fun with it all the same?”

Tom Katz took Jane to the sofa and undressed her and made carnal love to her. And all the while, he did not look at her. But she looked at him and imagined in those moments all the things she had imagined in all the hundreds, the thousands of moments of longing for an intimacy that had been denied to her.

And
then
when it was over…

But then
when it was over…

A most horrible thing: the thing he made her do.

After the two had dressed, or at least after she had covered her nakedness with her pretty pink silk chemise (purchased from the damaged-goods table in the basement of Pemberton, Day, because there was a long snag in it that could not be repaired), he stood up. He asked her to kneel before him.

She obeyed.

“Now look up at me. Look up at me, Jane. We aren't finished yet. There. That's a girl. I want you to thank me.”

It took a moment for her to form the words. “Thank you,” she mumbled. Her eyes had strayed. He snapped his fingers to return them to his face.

“Say it as if you mean it.”

“Thank you,” said Jane in a stronger voice. “Please go.”

“First, you must tell me that you'll always be grateful for what I've done for you today.”

Jane shook her head. “I'm not grateful. I want to die.”

“You'll be grateful once your head is clear and you've had time to think about it. I'm going now. You don't have to see me out. In fact, I'd rather you not. I'd like to remember you in parting—there on the floor, wanting more—begging me with your eyes for more.”

Jane shook her head again. The word was all but inaudible: “Go.”

Tom left. Jane did not move. She remained on her knees for several minutes, even as her kneecaps began to ache from the hardness of the oak floorboards. And then she lay herself down, lay on her side, pulling her knees up tight against her stomach. She closed her eyes. The room was no longer spinning. The cloud was lifting. She was thinking more cogently. She was thinking about what she'd just done—what she had
allowed
herself to do, what she had intentionally surrendered herself to.

This is how Ruth and Carrie found her. They went to her and knelt next to her, Ruth taking her carefully into her arms like the Madonna in the
Carracci Pietà.

“What did he do to you?” Carrie asked in a terrified whisper.

Jane didn't answer.

“Tell us what he did,” said Ruth. “Tell us, Jane. Did he do the thing we think he did?”

“Walk me to my bed, sisters. My legs are weak.”

Having tucked Jane into bed, Ruth put the question to her again.

Jane smiled and said, “You're so sweet to come.”

“But we came too late,” said Carrie softly. “If only Lyle had been here.”

“I'm here now,” said a voice at the door. Ruth and Carrie turned. Lyle was standing in the hallway just outside Jane's bedroom, his face hidden in shadow.

“Where were you?” snapped Ruth.

“I came as fast as I could. I saw her leave from the Fatted Pig saloon, and I came.”

“Did you
crawl
, you useless bastard?” cried Ruth. She had been running her hand through Jane's perspiration-drenched hair. Now her hand stopped so she could point accusingly at Jane's brother.

Carrie had begun to cry. “Oh stop it, Ruth. Just stop it. He cares about her. He's here. He came. He's here.”

Ruth turned back to Jane. “Tell us what happened.”

“I'll tell you, yes.”

Jane swallowed.

Lyle stepped into the room. His head was half bowed and he was holding his cap at his waist with both hands, with respect and reverence, as if he were visiting a deathbed or a body upon a bier.

Jane formed her words with great difficulty: “He raped me.”

“I thought so,” said Ruth, speaking for Carrie and Lyle as well.

“But it isn't what you think,” said Jane.

“What do you mean?”

“He—”

“Yes?”

“Raped—”

“Yes?”

“My heart, Ruth. He raped my
heart
.”

The blows came fast and furious, but they were clumsy and generally missed their mark. Pat was dodging them with some success, even as he snatched up his clothes and tried to find a way around the drunken, enraged man who looked at him with flaming, murderous eyes. Molly screamed at her father to stop. She screamed that she
wanted
Pat there, that she loved Pat and wanted to be with him.

Michael Osborne heard none of this. There was a fire in his head and it would not be put out until he had killed the young man who had come to his flat to take his daughter's heart away from him—to steal the only thing left of the family he once possessed in full.

And so he swung and largely missed, and picked up a rail-back chair and pitched it in Pat's direction, but it struck nothing but the wall, where it splintered into pieces. Molly didn't suspend her screams. Pat made it past the madman and into the front parlor (where Osborne saw his dental patients), and he very nearly made a clean escape with both life and limb intact when Molly's father overcame him, and with the kind of bodily strength that comes only to those for whom strength is sought to do the most incredible kind of good or the most incredible kind of bad, Michael Osborne shoved Pat toward the window with such terrific force that Molly's young lover was propelled through the shattering panes of glass and the brittle framework of the sash and out the window and directly into the smooth ceramic enamel of the enormous tooth, which swung wildly from the impact, and, though fixed to the projecting wrought-iron rod above, did not prevent Pat's plunge to the concrete sidewalk three floors below.

Where he lay.

Motionless.

Maggie was the last to hear what had happened. Ruth had tried to reach her by telephone all through the night, but she wasn't home. Maggie wasn't even in Zenith. The previous morning, and in spite of her mother's vociferous opposition, she'd put herself on the train to the Winnemac state capital, Galop de Vache, for the purpose of meeting Mr. and Mrs. Caster, the adoptive parents of the brother whose existence she'd only recently discovered. Maggie had done this even though Herbert Mobry had asked her to wait until after he'd had the chance to pay his own visit of inquiry to the Casters.

Herbert and Lucile Mobry hadn't known she'd gone—that is, not until Clara Barton told them. She told them over late-morning Denver sandwiches at Lily's Lunch Box on Chaloosa Street.

“The girl certainly has a mind of her own!” Lucile had marveled aloud.

“Oh, she's every bit as stubborn and willful as her father,” Clara exasperatedly agreed. “But what was I to do? Block the door with my body? She was put into such a foul mood when I confirmed it all. Yes, I could have told her years ago. But I never saw any purpose to it. Why should I give her one more reason to hate me?”

“Maggie doesn't hate you, not at all,” said Herbert, shaking his head in his wonted display of pastoral, avuncular understanding.

“There, there,” Lucile Mobry contributed. Clara had been a longstanding member of the congregation Herbert Mobry used to shepherd, and the Mobrys continued to feel responsible both for Clara's spiritual health and for her general sense of well-being.

“But traveling to Galop all alone—” Clara shook her head.

“Maggie's a big girl,” Herbert concluded. “One night alone in Galop will do her no harm. And once she's had the chance to talk to the Casters about her brother, she'll return to Zenith in amazingly good spirits. You'll see.”

Maggie didn't return in good spirits. Neither Mr. Caster nor Mrs. Caster happened to be in Galop de Vache during the brief period of her stay. From one of the Casters' forthcoming neighbors, Maggie discovered that her brother's adoptive parents were 330 miles away in Madison, Wisconsin, attending a convention of the Midwestern Association of Cheese Purveyors.

Even worse: Maggie had come home to discover the following note stick-pinned to the kitchen Hoosier cabinet:

Maggie telephoned the Tabernacle offices and was told by Miss Colthurst's assistant Miss Dowell that none of her friends would be coming in for choir rehearsal that day.

“Why?”

“You don't
know
why?”

“If I knew why, would I ask you why? Where's Miss Colthurst? May I speak with her?”

“Sister Vivian left not five minutes ago. She and Sister Lydia are on their way to Zenith General.”

“Who's in the hospital?” asked Maggie, now thrown into a panic.

“I don't know the young man. Someone is knocking on the door and I'm all alone this morning. Goodbye.”

As Maggie was hurrying to the door to catch the streetcar that would take her straight to Zenith General Hospital, the jingle of the telephone bell summoned her back to the instrument. Ruth was on the other end of the wire. “It's Pat Harrison, Maggie. He's badly hurt. I'll tell you all about it when you get here.”

“My mother left me a note. She said she was out looking for Mr. Osborne.”

There was a brief silence. Then Ruth said, “She might start by checking the city jail.”

Maggie found her four sisters on the fifth floor of Zenith General Hospital in the “Family and Friends Waiting Room.” There was now someone else besides Carrie's mother who had taken up residence on that floor. Pat had been brought in the night before with multiple broken bones, facial contusions, and internal hemorrhaging. The prognosis was dismal.

Carrie and Molly were blanch-faced and baggy-eyed, though both had been partially revived by carry-cups of coffee, which Ruth had brought up from Dunker's, an around-the-clock luncheon across the street.

Ruth was sitting next to Jane, holding her hand. Jane looked nearly as haggard as Carrie and Molly. Her other hand—the one not clasped by Ruth—was shaking with an almost palsy-like tremor. Maggie looked over the young women in the room as one surveys a field of battle in its aftermath. She had never seen her sisters so broken and battered. Especially Jane. In moments of crisis, it was the oldest of We Five who usually stepped forward to take the reins. It was Jane Higgins who devised the best course of action, Jane who rallied the troops, Jane who annealed resilience through her emotional strength and her unwavering affection for her sisters.