An Act of Love (9 page)

“Whatever his reason, his behavior was way out of bounds. The school might be indulgent but I’m in no mood to be. He’s not going to New York.”

“Owen. Wait a moment. Let’s talk this over.”

“What’s to talk over? Bruce beat someone up. He’s got to learn that his behavior has consequences.”

“All right, I agree, but let it be different consequences. Owen, this trip means so much to him.”

“He should have thought of that before he got into a fight.”

Linda looked down at her plate and counted to ten. Then she said, “Eat something. We both need to eat something.”

Whit Archibald was a fairly new friend of Bruce’s. Over the past three summers quite a few of Bruce’s gang from Hedden had come to stay on the McFarland farm in the summer, riding the old horses and hiking up the mountains and swimming in the pond. When Linda and Owen had met Whit at Parents’ Weekend in October, they’d been a bit surprised. A tall, handsome, poised young man, Whit could have posed for Ralph Lauren ads, and he seemed so much more sophisticated than Bruce that Owen and Linda were a bit baffled that Whit would want Bruce as his guest over Thanksgiving.

There was no doubt that Bruce wanted to go. “Let it be my Christmas present,” he’d urged.

“It would have to be,” Owen had replied. “Roundtrip plane fare to New York, money for cabs, we’re talking three hundred dollars.”

“His parents will pay for theater tickets—”

“No. We’ll give you money and you’ll pay for your own.”

“Great! Then I can go!”

Linda said, “I’m afraid you’ll get up to something wicked in the city.”

Bruce laughed. “Linda, we’ll be with his parents every minute. Oh, it’ll be so cool! Thanks, you guys. You’re the best.”

Now Linda took a deep breath. “Owen, there are several other ways to impress consequences on Bruce. But I don’t think we should take this trip away from him. He’s worked hard; he’s been an exemplary student for three and a half years now. Guys get in fights all the time. Remember your own adolescence, remember some of the stuff you told me you got up to, and I’m sure you didn’t tell me everything. Think of what some of his friends have done … pot, drinking, smoking in the bathrooms, hotel parties … Bruce hasn’t done any of that. I think he deserves some credit. Some points.”

“You’re always too lenient,” Owen said.

“You’re always too harsh,” Linda countered. “Make him muck out the stalls when he’s home for Christmas. Or cut a cord of wood. Something useful. Owen, I feel strongly about this.”

“All right,” Owen said. “Fine.” After a moment’s thought, he added, “I have to bring him his dress coat.”

“Let’s do it tomorrow. We have to be back at the hospital tomorrow evening for Family Group with Emily. If we get Bruce his clothes by late tomorrow morning, that should be time enough. Their vacation doesn’t start until noon.”

“We might as well go home. There’s nothing left we can do for Emily today.”

“Wait, Owen. I think there
is
something we can do.”

“What?”

“Talk to the people at the Methodist church. Find out if she confided in anyone there.”

“Good idea.”

“You could do that. While I talk to Jorge Avila.”

“Why don’t we
both
talk to him?”

“Because you would intimidate him.”

“I doubt it.”

“Come on. You know he’d react differently if he spoke to me alone. If I enlisted his help in a nonthreatening way. He might be willing to tell me anything he knows about Emily. But with you standing there glowering …”

“I won’t glower.”

“Please. We’ll save time, too, if we do it separately.”

“All right,” Owen conceded. He wasn’t pleased, but he could see Linda’s point. He was beginning to experience a bit of the old stag/young stag tension with Bruce; he’d
only get Jorge’s back up if he questioned the young man about Emily. To say nothing of how his own blood would rise.

They had weighed her
and tapped her and cuffed her and taken more blood, as if through scientific analysis they could discover a suicide-provoking microbe that they’d extinguish with the proper antibiotic. Now Emily sat in yet another office, facing Dr. Brinton, the ward psychiatrist. A bald man with a bulging cranium, he looked almost extraterrestrial and the eyes behind his glasses were not kind. Why had they chosen this creep to interview her? He had little tiny bloodless lips. Couldn’t they see how spooky he was? Who would ever tell
him
anything?

He asked, “Have you often had thoughts of suicide?”

Perhaps if she answered some questions, he’d let her out of the room and away from him. Probably that was why they’d chosen him. She could lie. How would he know? Although if anyone had the power to read minds, this zombie did.

“No.”

“Have you ever harmed yourself before?”

“No.”

“Want to tell me about those scratches on your face?”

Emily didn’t reply.

His chair squeaked as he leaned back. “Do you have friends at Hedden?”

“Of course.”

“Close friends?”

Emily nodded.

“Do you confide in them?”

She nodded again.

“If they ask you—and know they will—why you attempted suicide, what will you tell them?”

Emily looked down at her hands. The room seemed to swell with silence. “Maybe I won’t see them again.”

“Don’t you want to see them again?”

Emily shrugged.

“I guess they’re not really close friends.”

What right did he have to say something like that? She was trying to ignore his words, but they got to her, they were stirring her up inside.

“So. No close friends at Hedden.” He wrote something down.

Angry, she snapped, “I didn’t say that.”

“How about your relationship with your parents and your brother?”

“Stepbrother.”

“Are you close to them?”

She didn’t answer.

“You and Bruce get along okay? Parents treat you both fairly?”

This time she let the silence swell. The silence had no power, and Dr. Brinton had no power. Nothing mattered.

“Emily, I’d like you to look at the picture and tell me what you see.”

He was holding up a black-and-white abstract of a bunch of blobs. Did he think she was totally uneducated? That she didn’t know about Rorshachs?

“Julie Andrews in the
Sound of Music
.”

“And in this picture?”

“ ‘The Brady Bunch.’ ”

He displayed no impatience with her answers but continued through a set of ten, and when he was through, he swiveled in his chair to place the set on the table behind him. Then he turned back to face her.

“I’d say we’ve got a little issue avoidance going on.”

I’d say you look like Frankenstein’s brother.

“One more thing. We’ve got a little test we’d like you to take. I’m sure someone as smart as you will have no problem with it. It’s multiple choice. One answer only. We’d like, of course, for your answers to be honest. Take your time.”

Emily took the pencil and papers he handed her. She was sitting in a student’s desk with a writing table curling around her, and without a word she bent over the test.

I often feel I don’t belong in any group.

Always.    ——

Never.          ——

Sometimes.    ——

My friends keep secrets from me.

Never.          ——

Sometimes.   ——

Always.        ——

My body is ugly.

Yes.            ——

Parts of it.    ——

No, it’s just fine.  ——

As fast as she could, without reading the rest of the questions, Emily sped through the test, checking off the first line of every question. She handed it back to him.

He took it without looking at it and leaned his forearms on his desk, earnestly peering at her from beneath his Cro-Magnon bulge.

“I’d say you are as angry as you are sad.”

She felt her face flame.

“Further, I’d say you’re as angry with yourself as you are with anyone else. And you think no one can help. And you think you are the only person in the history of the entire universe who has ever had the particular problem you’re having.”

She glared at him.

“Isn’t that a little arrogant? A little solipsistic?”

“I don’t know what that word means.”

“Self-centered. Unaware of the rest of the world.”

She shrugged. “Fine, just add being solipsistic to the rest of my sins.”

“You’ve got
sins
? A pretty young girl like you?”

“Sometimes people are just born bad.”

“I see.
The Bad Seed
sort of thing.”

Emily nodded.

Dr. Brinton leaned back in his chair for a moment and stared at the ceiling, humming tunelessly. Emily wished there was a clock in the room.

“Now what bothers me,” he said, suddenly turning to her, “is that in these reports I’ve read, interviews with your parents and the dean of your school, I’ve come across nothing that indicates any kind of sinning on your part.”

Emily didn’t reply.

“No suspensions from school. Nothing but glowing remarks from your teachers. So what’s up? I mean, come on, help me out here.”

“Maybe it’s something in the future.”

“I see. Something that hasn’t happened yet, but will. Something bad, planted inside you.”

Emily nodded. “Like a time bomb.”

He looked sad. Shaking his head, he said, “What an awful burden you are bearing, carrying a time bomb within you, thinking you are the only one who can avert disaster.”

Emily wrapped her arms around her stomach. “I don’t want to talk any more.” Pain was swelling through her stomach and chest. “Please.”

Dr. Brinton stared at her a while, considering. When he looked at his watch, Emily felt oddly offended.

“All right. It’s almost time for the fitness hour anyway. We’ll talk again tomorrow.” He rose. “I’ll escort you to the exercise room.”

He rose, a tall, ungainly, Ichabod Crane of a man, all bones and joints. It couldn’t have been easy for him as a boy. He could never have been handsome. He couldn’t help having that bulging forehead, those little eyes. She thought of Kafka’s story they’d read part of in school, where the man turned into a cockroach. Dr. Brinton was like a cockroach turned into a man. He was hideous, as she was, and still a human being. There was almost comfort in that thought.

Chapter Eight

“Hey, Mrs. McFarland!”

Owen had dropped Linda at Hedden, and as she entered Bates Hall, Bruce’s good friend Pebe lumbered down the stairs toward her, a bulging backpack over his shoulders.

“Looking for Bruce?”

“Looking for Jorge, actually.”

Pebe seemed surprised. “I think he’s in his room. Want me to tell him you’re here?”

“That would be great.”

“You can wait in the lounge if you’d like.”

“I’ll do that.”

The lounge was a beautiful room, with long casement windows, a fireplace ornamented with marble wreaths and vines, mahogany paneling, a parquet floor. Over the years it had been democratized by its furnishings: several sofas and armchairs sagging and misshapen from use, card tables set up among the claw-footed antiques.

Crossing to the window, Linda gazed out at the lawn sweeping out to the woods, crisscrossed by streaks of shadow.

“Mrs. McFarland?”

Jorge entered, wearing khakis and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up over his muscular forearms. His black hair was freed of its band today and hung down around his face in an ebony curtain that partially obscured his puffy, blackened right eye but could not hide his split, swollen lip.

Linda shook his proffered hand. “Thanks for coming down, Jorge. I won’t take up much of your time.”

“How is Emily?”

“She’s going to have to stay in the hospital a while. We don’t know what her problem is. Can you help us?” When he didn’t answer at once, she gently pressed, “Anything. We would be so grateful.”

Jorge leaned one hip on the windowsill. The sun fell over his face like a spotlight.
His gaze was clear, direct. “I don’t know if this is significant.”

“Tell me.”

“Well. Last spring Emily and I became friendly. She’s really nice, Emily. Really smart.” His face softened. “We hung out together. We wrote a few times over the summer. Then this fall, we hung out together again. Saturday night, there was a dance here, and we danced. Then Sunday night we decided to meet in the woods for a cigarette—” Jorge glanced at Linda, judging how much this particular bit of information disturbed her.

“Go on.”

“Everyone does it. I mean, smokes, or if you’re part of a couple …” Jorge fiddled with his watchband, unfastening it and fastening it as if it were too tight. Looking at his wrist, he said, “I kissed her. She kissed me back. She wanted me to kiss her, I mean, she wouldn’t have gone to the woods with me if she didn’t. I mean, that’s why we go to the woods, everyone knows that.” Color was spotting his cheeks.

“I understand.” Linda kept her voice impassive.