Hearts In Atlantis (28 page)

For a moment things stayed that way—it was as if they were playing Statues and “it” had just yelled
Freeze!
It was Carol who moved first, releasing Liz Garfield's waist and stepping back. Her sweaty hair hung in her eyes. Ted went toward her and reached out to put a hand on her shoulder.

“Don't touch her,” Liz said, but she spoke mechanically, without force. Whatever had flashed inside her at the sight of the child on Ted Brautigan's lap had faded a little, at least temporarily. She looked exhausted.

Nonetheless, Ted dropped his hand. “You're right,” he said.

Liz took a deep breath, held it, let it out. She looked at Bobby, then away. Bobby wished with all his heart
that she would put her hand out to him, help him a little, help him get up, just that, but she turned to Carol instead. Bobby got to his feet on his own.

“What happened here?” Liz asked Carol.

Although she was still crying and her words kept hitching as she struggled for breath, Carol told Bobby's mom about how the three big boys had found her in the park, and how at first it had seemed like just another one of their jokes, a bit meaner than most but still just a joke. Then Harry had really started hitting her while the others held her. The popping sound in her shoulder scared them and they ran away. She told Liz how Bobby had found her five or ten minutes later—she didn't know how long because the pain had been so bad—and carried her up here. And how Ted had fixed her arm, after giving her Bobby's belt to catch the pain with. She bent, picked up the belt, and showed Liz the tiny tooth-marks in it with a mixture of pride and embarrassment. “I didn't catch all of it, but I caught a lot.”

Liz only glanced at the belt before turning to Ted. “Why'd you tear her top off, chief?”

“It's
not
torn!” Bobby cried. He was suddenly furious with her. “He
cut
it off so he could look at her shoulder and fix it without hurting her! I brought him the scissors, for cripe's sake! Why are you so stupid, Mom? Why can't you see—”

She swung without turning, catching Bobby completely by surprise. The back of her open hand connected with the side of his face; her forefinger actually poked into his eye, sending a zag of pain deep into his head. His tears stopped as if the pump controlling them had suddenly shorted out.

“Don't you call me stupid, Bobby-O,” she said. “Not on your ever-loving tintype.”

Carol was looking fearfully at the hook-nosed witch who had come back in a taxi wearing Mrs. Garfield's clothes. Mrs. Garfield who had run and who had fought when she couldn't run anymore. But in the end they had taken what they wanted from her.

“You shouldn't hit Bobby,” Carol said. “He's not like those men.”

“Is he your boyfriend?” She laughed. “Yeah? Good for you! But I'll let you in on a secret, sweetheart—he's just like his daddy and your daddy and all the rest of them. Go in the bathroom. I'll clean you up and find something for you to wear.
Christ
what a mess!”

Carol looked at her a moment longer, then turned and went into the bathroom. Her bare back looked small and vulnerable. And white. So white in contrast to her brown arms.

“Carol!” Ted called after her. “Is it better now?” Bobby didn't think he was talking about her arm. Not this time.

“Yes,” she said without turning. “But I can still hear her, far away. She's screaming.”

“Who's screaming?” Liz asked. Carol didn't answer her. She went into the bathroom and closed the door. Liz looked at it for a moment, as if to make sure Carol wasn't going to pop back out again, then turned to Ted. “Who's screaming?”

Ted only looked at her warily, as if expecting another ICBM attack at any moment.

Liz began to smile. It was a smile Bobby knew: her I'm-losing-my-temper smile. Was it possible she had any left to lose? With her black eyes, broken nose,
and swollen lip, the smile made her look horrid: not his mother but some lunatic.

“Quite the Good Samaritan, aren't you? How many feels did you cop while you were fixing her up? She hasn't got much, but I bet you checked what you could, didn't you? Never miss an opportunity, right? Come on and fess up to your mamma.”

Bobby looked at her with growing despair. Carol had told her everything—all of the truth—
and it made no difference
. No difference! God!

“There is a dangerous adult in this room,” Ted said, “but it isn't me.”

She looked first uncomprehending, then incredulous, then furious. “How dare you?
How dare you?
”

“
He didn't do anything!
” Bobby screamed. “
Didn't you hear what Carol said? Didn't you—
”

“Shut your mouth,” she said, not looking at him. She looked only at Ted. “The cops are going to be very interested in you, I think. Don called Hartford on Friday, before . . . before. I asked him to. He has friends there. You never worked for the State of Connecticut, not in the Office of the Comptroller, not anywhere else. You were in jail, weren't you?”

“In a way I suppose I was,” Ted said. He seemed calmer now in spite of the blood flowing down the side of his face. He took the cigarettes out of his shirt pocket, looked at them, put them back. “But not the kind you're thinking of.”

And not in this world
, Bobby thought.

“What was it for?” she asked. “Making little girls feel better in the first degree?”

“I have something valuable,” Ted said. He reached up and tapped his temple. The finger he tapped with
came away dotted with blood. “There are others like me. And there are people whose job it is to catch us, keep us, and use us for . . . well, use us, leave it at that. I and two others escaped. One was caught, one was killed. Only I remain free. If, that is  . . .” He looked around. “ . . . you call this freedom.”

“You're crazy. Crazy old Brattigan, nuttier than a holiday fruitcake. I'm calling the police. Let them decide if they want to put you back in the jail you broke out of or in Danbury Asylum.” She bent, reached for the spilled phone.

“No, Mom!” Bobby said, and reached for her. “Don't—”

“
Bobby, no!
” Ted said sharply.

Bobby pulled back, looking first at his mom as she scooped up the phone, then at Ted.

“Not as she is now,” Ted told him. “As she is now, she can't stop biting.”

Liz Garfield gave Ted a brilliant, almost unspeakable smile—
Good try, you bastard
—and took the receiver off the cradle.

“What's happening?” Carol cried from the bathroom. “Can I come out now?”

“Not yet, darling,” Ted called back. “A little longer.”

Liz poked the telephone's cutoff buttons up and down. She stopped, listened, seemed satisfied. She began to dial. “We're going to find out who you are,” she said. She spoke in a strange, confiding tone. “That should be pretty interesting. And what you've done. That might be even more interesting.”

“If you call the police, they'll also find out who
you
are and what
you've
done,” Ted said.

She stopped dialing and looked at him. It was a
cunning sideways stare Bobby had never seen before. “What in God's name are you talking about?”

“A foolish woman who should have chosen better. A foolish woman who had seen enough of her boss to know better—who had overheard him and his cronies often enough to know better, to know that any ‘seminar' they attended mostly had to do with booze and sex-parties. Maybe a little reefer, as well. A foolish woman who let her greed overwhelm her good sense—”

“What do you know about being alone?” she cried. “
I have a son to raise!
” She looked at Bobby, as if remembering the son she had to raise for the first time in a little while.

“How much of this do you want him to hear?” Ted asked.

“You don't know anything. You can't.”

“I know
everything
. The question is, how much do you want Bobby to know? How much do you want your neighbors to know? If the police come and take me, they'll know what I know, that I promise you.” He paused. His pupils remained steady but his eyes seemed to grow. “I know
everything
. Believe me—don't put it to the test.”

“Why would you hurt me that way?”

“Given a choice I wouldn't. You have been hurt enough, by yourself as well as by others. Let me leave, that's all I'm asking you to do. I was leaving anyway. Let me leave. I did nothing but try to help.”

“Oh yes,” she said, and laughed. “
Help
. Her sitting on you practically naked.
Help
.”

“I would help
you
if I—”

“Oh yeah, and I know how.” She laughed again.

Bobby started to speak and saw Ted's eyes warning
him not to. Behind the bathroom door, water was now running into the sink. Liz lowered her head, thinking. At last she raised it again.

“All right,” she said, “here's what I'm going to do. I'll help Bobby's little
girlfriend
get cleaned up. I'll give her an aspirin and find something for her to wear home. While I'm doing those things, I'll ask her a few questions. If the answers are the right answers, you can go. Good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“Mom—”

Liz held up a hand like a traffic cop, silencing him. She was staring at Ted, who was looking back at her.

“I'll walk her home, I'll watch her go through her front door. What she decides to tell her mother is between the two of them. My job is to see her home safe, that's all. When it's done I'll walk down to the park and sit in the shade for a little while. I had a rough night last night.” She drew in breath and let it out in a dry and rueful sigh. “Very rough. So I'll go to the park and sit in the shade and think about what comes next. How I'm going to keep him and me out of the poorhouse.

“If I find you still here when I get back from the park, sweetheart, I
will
call the police . . . and don't you put
that
to the test. Say whatever you want. None of it's going to matter much to anyone if I say I walked into my apartment a few hours sooner than you expected and found you with your hand inside an eleven-year-old girl's shorts.”

Bobby stared at his mother in silent shock. She didn't see the stare; she was still looking at Ted, her swollen eyes fixed on him intently.

“If, on the other hand, I came back and you're
gone, bag and baggage, I won't have to call anyone or say anything.
Tout fini
.”

I'll go with you!
Bobby thought at Ted.
I don't care about the low men. I'd rather have a thousand low men in yellow coats looking for me—a
million—
than have to live with
her
anymore. I hate her!

“Well?” Liz asked.

“It's a deal. I'll be gone in an hour. Probably less.”

“No!” Bobby cried. When he'd awakened this morning he had been resigned to Ted's going—sad but resigned. Now it hurt all over again. Worse than before, even. “No!”

“Be quiet,” his mother said, still not looking at him.

“It's the only way, Bobby. You know that.” Ted looked up at Liz. “Take care of Carol. I'll talk to Bobby.”

“You're in no position to give orders,” Liz said, but she went. As she crossed to the bathroom, Bobby saw she was limping. A heel had broken off one of her shoes, but he didn't think that was the only reason she couldn't walk right. She knocked briefly on the bathroom door and then, without waiting for a response, slipped inside.

Bobby ran across the room, but when he tried to put his arms around Ted, the old man took his hands, squeezed them once briefly, then put them against Bobby's chest and let go.

“Take me with you,” Bobby said fiercely. “I'll help you look for them. Two sets of eyes are better than one. Take me with you!”

“I can't do that, but you can come with me as far as the kitchen, Bobby. Carol isn't the only one who needs to do some cleaning up.”

Ted rose from the chair and swayed on his feet for a
moment. Bobby reached out to steady him and Ted once more pushed his hand gently but firmly away. It hurt. Not as much as his mother's failure to help him up (or even look at him) after she had thrown him against the wall, but enough.

He walked with Ted to the kitchen, not touching him but close enough to grab him if he fell. Ted didn't fall. He looked at the hazy reflection of himself in the window over the sink, sighed, then turned on the water. He wet the dishcloth and began to wipe the blood off his cheek, checking his window-reflection every now and then for reference.

“Your mother needs you more now than she ever has before,” he said. “She needs someone she can trust.”

“She doesn't trust me. I don't think she even likes me.”

Ted's mouth tightened, and Bobby understood he had struck upon some truth Ted had seen in his mother's mind. Bobby
knew
she didn't like him, he
knew
that, so why were the tears threatening again?

Ted reached out for him, seemed to remember that was a bad idea, and went back to work with the dishcloth instead. “All right,” he said. “Perhaps she
doesn't
like you. If that's true, it isn't because of anything you did. It's because of what you
are
.”

“A boy,” he said bitterly. “A fucking
boy
.”

“And your father's son, don't forget that. But Bobby . . . whether she likes you or not, she loves you. Such a greeting-card that sounds, I know, but it's true. She loves you and she needs you. You're what she has. She's badly hurt right now—”