Desperate Measures (3 page)

She had been a beautiful girl, as pretty as Rachel, but time had not treated her well; she had turned gray early, developed wrinkles, and here at home, more often than not kept her mouth tightly pursed, for fear of what she might say. Gus didn't understand girls, she thought as she got ready for bed. Girls her age… Thirteen. When she was thirteen she wouldn't have dreamed of having sex. The thought was unbidden, and she shuddered slightly, denying and accepting at once that Rachel might be trying out sex. And now Hilde Franz wanted to talk to her alone about Rachel.

When the children were little, Gus used to make them take down their pants and he would switch their legs now and then for transgressions, never really hard, not enough to call it a beating. Not really. Later, when they were bigger, he had used a strap, but not for a long time now. Earlier, Leona had been terrified that he would order Rachel to bring him the strap. He didn't understand that girls of thirteen could run away, become street children, sleep in the alleys, under bridges….

She was still awake when Gus came in at midnight. He never stayed up past ten, but that night it was midnight before he was ready to sleep. Leona was careful not to move, and he didn't touch her as he settled in. What had he been thinking? What was he going to do about the neighbor he called the devil freak? She was certain he would not let the matter rest, and just as certain that he would not tell her a thing. He never did.

Leona was as familiar a figure in the school as any of the teachers. She was the most faithful volunteer in the cafeteria, the library, out on the playground; she subbed for teachers when they were at meetings, chaperoned field trips, took charge of fund-raising, did whatever was needed. This year she was arranging the graduation ceremony. Cheerful, playful with the students, friendly with all the staff, she was always welcome, but if she was with Gus, it was as if a stranger inhabited her body. Then she hardly ever said a word or smiled.

Hilde had not looked forward to this meeting, and it was proving to be as awkward as she had feared. She had sympathy for Leona, who was probably ten years younger than she was and looked ten years older, and at the same time she wanted to shake some sense into her. She bit her lip every time she wanted to say what she was really thinking: Gus was not a good father; their children were not well adjusted; Rachel was sexually active and a candidate for a runaway adventure or a pregnancy….

“Have you talked with her about sex?” Hilde asked, gazing candidly at Leona. There had been sex-education classes for several years now; Gus had fought hard to keep them out, but he had lost that one. He had forbidden his daughter to attend, however, and that was his right.

“She's so young…” Leona said.

“She isn't too young. You saw the attendance record. She missed three whole days last month, and three times during the past two weeks she has cut her last-period class. She's going somewhere, Leona, and with someone. Talk to her.”

Leona blushed furiously and turned away, her lips tightly pursed.

Good Lord, Hilde thought in exasperation, the woman didn't know how to talk to her daughter, didn't know what to tell her. She stood up. “I'll be right back,” she said, and walked from her office to find a copy of the textbook they used for sex education.

“Take her on a ride, park somewhere, and read it together,” she said a few minutes later, pressing the book into Leona's hands. “Will you do that?”

Leona nodded miserably; she had dreaded this meeting even more than Hilde had, and she had not learned anything she hadn't already known, she had to admit to herself. Back in March she had met Rachel at the door one afternoon and told her to go wash her face before her father came in. She had seen the traces of poorly removed makeup; daughters couldn't hide from their mothers. Since then Rachel had done a better job at cleaning herself before she reached home. Leona had found her hidden stash of makeup and had not said a word. Girls liked to fix themselves up, do their hair, tryout this and that, she had told herself. Then she had seen the wild, excited look in Rachel's eyes one day in April….

Walking home from her meeting with Hilde, she felt the book as if it were a ten-pound weight around her heart. During the fight over sex-education classes, Gus had raged, enlisted others to help do battle, and, when they lost, had stormed at the PTA meeting:

“Fornication is a sin that will send them to hell! That's all they need to know before they get married.”

She stopped walking at the waterfall, which had only a trickle now. It sounded like a dripping faucet. Ahead, pulling into Dr. Minick's driveway, was a deputy sheriff's car, with Gus in the passenger seat.

For Graham Minick the move to Oregon had been a blessing; he had known he was tired, just not how tired. In retrospect, he could recognize that he had not simply been fatigued, but clinically depressed for a long time. After retiring, he had done all the things he had said he wanted to do, had written several books that had been well received, had explored the state thoroughly with Alex, had started painting again. The year they arrived in Oregon, he had applied for a license to practice medicine in the state, knowing that Alex would need doctoring now and then. Alex was his only patient, although he had acted in an emergency or two over the years. In every way, he was in better shape than he had been fourteen years earlier, and now when he became tired, it was justifiable. A mountain goat would tire following Alex from crag to crag.

There had been rough times, not unexpectedly, but they had weathered them. During the early years he had worried about what would become of Alex if anything happened to him, Minick, but he had not had that concern for a long time. Alex could take care of himself. Once a year Alex's parents came for a visit; they stayed for two days and left again. Twice he had taken Alex back to Jack Waverly's hospital for what they called touch-up work, but basically he looked much the same as when Dr. Minick first met him. He still avoided people, but he went out in public when he had to. He had a driver's license; Dr. Minick had insisted. What if he had an accident and someone had to drive him to a hospital? It had been an ordeal for Alex to have his picture taken, but he had done it. Now he often drove Dr. Minick to the shopping center, where he waited in the van reading a book.

That day, when Gus and the deputy drove up to the house, Dr. Minick was in his study writing a letter. He left the computer to answer the doorbell. As he passed Alex's open door, he could see him at his drawing board, pretending he was not aware that someone had come to call.

Minick knew Gus Marchand, and ignored him as the deputy said, “Dr. Minick? I'm Calvin Strohm, deputy sheriff. Can we step in and have a few words with you?” He was young, no more than thirty, and he looked very embarrassed and even a little frightened.

“You're welcome to come in,” Graham said. He motioned toward Gus. “He stays out.”

“I'm making a formal complaint against your… your patient,” Gus said harshly.

“All right, but you can't come into my house.”

The deputy looked agonized, and Minick motioned him to come along and opened the door wider. When Gus started to move forward also, he blocked his way, ushered the deputy inside, and closed the door.

“Now, what can I do for you?” he asked then, leading the way into the living room. It was a room much to his liking—clean, with good tan leather-covered sofa and chairs, books and newspapers everywhere, and no frills. Three of his paintings were on the walls, landscapes, amateurish but sincere. Alex had hung them over his protests, which had not been all that strong.

The deputy shuffled his feet, then said, “Actually, I guess I need to speak to your patient. Alexander Feldman?”

“He is not my patient, Deputy Strohm. Alex is my friend.” Alex appeared in the doorway of his studio then. He was wearing his baseball cap, but he faced the deputy. “I'm Alex Feldman. What do you want?”

The deputy stared, a look of revulsion on his face; he cleared his throat, then turned toward Dr. Minick, as if speaking to him. “Mr. Marchand says you're stalking his daughter, intimidating her.”

“I'm not.”

“He says you watch her every day when she goes home from school, that you scare her the way you watch her.”

“Gus Marchand is a fool and an idiot. I have every right to watch people who pass by this property, but it happens that I don't watch his little girl. Go ask her in person. Go to school and ask her.” He stepped back inside his studio and closed the door hard.

Ah, Dr. Minick thought, he had seen the girl in the red car, also; Minick could point out exactly where she and her boyfriend parked in the woods between his house and Marchand's place. “That's it,” he said. “You made the complaint, and he answered to it. If Gus Marchand wants to take it further, it's his move.”

He escorted the deputy to the door, then stood and watched as he and Gus walked toward the car. Gus jerked around and came back to the porch.

“Tell that freak that I'm not letting this go. I intend to put forty houses on that tract of land, give him some company when he's out spying on little girls. I'm not done with this!”

Dr. Minick closed the door and turned to see Alex in the living room, the good side of his face contorted in a grimace.

“Can he do that?” Alex asked.

“No way. Land-use laws won't let him do anything like that. Don't worry about it, he just had to get in the last word.”

Alex didn't move for a few seconds, then he wheeled around and strode into the kitchen, where he picked up his sunglasses and rammed them on, then went out through the back door.

He had fulfilled the promise of the good fairy who had blessed him with a fine physique; he was tall, with broad shoulders, a body like his father's, and he was never sick. Years earlier he had said he would never go outside without sunglasses because a kid might come across him and think the bogeyman was real. He never did leave the house without them, regardless of rain or sunshine. Now, Dr. Minick knew, he would go up into the woods behind the house and hang out somewhere up there for an hour, two hours, more. That was what he did when he was upset. No more violence, no trashing of anything, but he had to be outside and alone. Possibly he had to become Xander for a while.

Actually Alex had not flown away as Xander that day. He hadn't been Xander in years, not sine he penned him down. He thought of the phrase and repeated it in his mind: penned him down. That was exactly right: he had created a comic strip with a superhero of sorts named Xander, and after that he had never assumed the role again. Sometimes he went up into the woods as Alex, often with a sketchpad in his backpack, and sometimes he became Alexander again. Today he was Alex.

For fourteen years as Alexander, he had been despised, scorned, reviled, hated, and filled with self-hatred. Then for a couple of years he had alternated between being Alexander and Alex until finally Alex had sent Alexander packing. He hadn't broken anything on purpose in years, hadn't screamed at and cursed Graham Minick in years; he had days and even weeks at a time when he forgot Alexander entirely, and at those times he felt good, confident, proud of what he had accomplished with his pen, and unafraid. And that was the best part, not being afraid. But he was well aware that when others looked at him, like that deputy today, they saw Alexander, the devil. He knew they were ready to believe he was guilty of whatever he was accused of.

One day when Daniel Marchand was still little, eight or nine, he had stopped out front where Alex was cutting brambles. He had yelled, “Hey, devil freak, take off your cap. Let me see where they cut your horns off.”

Alex had made it a point after that never to be out near the road when the kids were due home from school. And now that twit of a girl accused him of spying on her, and everyone would believe it. He kicked a log viciously, then continued to climb the hill.

It got steeper as he went, rocky, with tree roots underfoot, everything wet and dripping, and fog settling down lower and lower as the day lengthened. His thighs were throbbing and he was sweating Alexander out through his pores. He had been frightened and alarmed by his reaction to the deputy sheriff's accusation. His first impulse had been to go outside and beat Gus Marchand to a pulp.

Finally he had to stop and lean against a tree to catch his breath in ragged gasps. What really terrified him was the awareness that Alexander was still there, not dead, not buried, but inside him, ready to spring out again.

One week later Hilde was in the outer office at school, talking with several teachers, greeting students as they came in with notes requesting passes, excusing absences, dealing with the many reasons students had to stop by the office before classes started. They were all getting antsy, she knew, with summer vacation coming in two weeks, starting finals this week, fear of high school, graduation plans….

Suddenly Gus Marchand stomped into the office, his face scarlet and so contorted that it looked demonic. “You, Miss Fancy, you've gone too far! Sneaking filth like this to a little girl! You've turned this school into a cesspool of filth and corruption!” He slammed the sex-education book on the counter. “Look at those little girls painted like harlots! Half naked! Where do you draw the line? What do you say no to? I tell you this, you're finished here! If it's the last thing I do, I'll see you replaced by someone with a sense of decency.”

The students and teachers alike had frozen with his entrance; no one moved. Two girls looked terrified and, behind the counter, Nola had turned ghostly pale.

“Mr. Marchand,” Hilde said, “please, come into the office and discuss this.”

“We haven't got anything to discuss. You're done here. I'll have you investigated from the day you were born.”

Hilde felt herself get light-headed with his words, and tried to control her expression. Something showed.