Hush (13 page)

and bred in Bentman with a bottom as big as a barge." All of which was true.

Jack liked her outgoing nature and thought she worked well with people; but what

had started to bother him was her suspicious nature, a quality he'd always

admired when she dealt with insurance claims but found less endearing now that

he was trying to carry on an affair right under her nose. And if Ruth knew, then

the whole town knew, and if there was one thing Jack knew it was that he didn't

want Celia to know. He'd met any number of women who could make him violate his

vows, but none who had seriously tempted him to leave his wife. Helen was no

exception. He expected her back any minute. This had become their routine of

late: Helen would leave. Ruth would leave. Helen would return.
And there she was, tapping on the rear door. When he unlocked it, she reached

out and kissed him before he could even swing it shut. His eyes frantically

searched the alley for anyone passing by as her tongue sought out his weak spots

and made them come alive. She spoke with that soft voice of hers, and he felt

her breath warm and moist against his neck.
"I can't stand it, being so close to you all day long and not touching you."
Not that Helen ever really let those working hours go to waste. No, not hardly.

Even with Ruth no more than ten feet away and with customers at the front

counter she would swing her chair around and let Jack have a good long look up

her legs. Sometimes she wore the sheerest panties, and sometimes she didn't wear

anything at all. At first he reveled in her bold playfulness, but the spectacle

had proved less pleasing as his fear of discovery had grown.
He laid his hands on her shoulders and backed away a half step.
"We need to talk."
"What do you mean? You told her, didn't you?"
"Yes, I told her." He remembered sitting on the deck, casually mentioning the

Trout River trip to Celia, asking her to come along for the weekend, when he

knew she was on call. It had been a cheap ploy that still made him feel guilty.

He was tired of deceiving her, especially now that they were actually planning

to have children. It felt...unseemly. And, well, to be honest, Jack had to admit

that there was another reason he was having second thoughts about this affair,

maybe even the most important one: his libido just wasn't what it used to be,

and since he'd started up with Helen he'd had trouble getting it up with Celia.
He caressed her youthful shoulders and tried to put aside how much he liked the

feel of her silk blouse.
"But I'm really not...comfortable...with what's been going on."
Helen nibbled his neck and ran her hands down his body until her fingertips

brushed lightly against the front of his pants. Up and down. Up ...
"What are you talking about, sweetie?"...and down. "I told Ralph I was going to

my sister's, and you've set it up with Celia. Come on, don't go losing your

nerve now."
"It's not that, it's just that maybe we ought to slow down a little."
"Okay, Jack," she whispered, "we can slow down, after this weekend." Her fingers

fled to his chest, brushed aside his tie. "But not before."
He thought he'd heard the slightest hint of anger, but couldn't be sure because

she pulled his face close to hers, stared intently into his eyes, and kissed

him. The front of his pants came even more fully to life, and his hands turned

greedy for the profits of touch. As he put his arms around her and lifted her

skirt, he moved her gracefully to the side until he caught her near-naked

reflection in the mirror by the bathroom door. She wore sheer gray pantyhose

that rose like a veil to her waist and revealed all the sweet dark shadings of

sex.
She opened his zipper slowly. Jack could feel the tug and tease of the silver

teeth separating, and her fingers inching down the length of him.
"Until then I'm going to wear you out, mister, or die trying."
She reached inside, and he delighted in those first few movements. Then she bent

over just long enough to kiss the moist tip. "Okay, Buster Brown, hand it over."
Buster Brown. Jack couldn't figure this. Women always had nicknames for him. Why

was that? He'd been called Moon, Bear, Jigs, and now Buster Brown. Only Celia

had refrained from giving him a pet name.
He let go of Helen's skirt, and with great regret watched the hem fall to her

thighs. She stepped away and waited, and he stood there feeling foolish with his

private parts so publicly displayed. But she was smiling at him and he realized

once again that she had the most amazingly full lips he had ever kissed, and she

kept them quite red. He had never known a woman who applied lipstick as often as

she did. At the most appropriate moments too. She said she did it to "accent the

act." Indeed.
Hand it over. It didn't feel right to him, a betrayal that cut deep; but even

the first time, when they'd made love in the walk-in vault and their breath had

echoed loudly in that closed space, she had paused to ask for it. No woman had

ever made such a request, and there had been more than a few. He'd even thought

of saying no, but hadn't wanted to destroy the mood, so he'd taken off his

wedding ring and handed it to her.
He took it off once more.
19
Despite the unseasonably high temperatures, Celia did start wearing long sleeves

to work. Not that they proved necessary. On Tuesday Davy remained quiet, kept to

himself, and never tried to bite her or anyone else. He actually behaved better

than the other children. They had been riled up by his arrival, which wasn't at

all unusual: as soon as the kids saw the pecking order up for grabs, they

started jockeying for position. But Davy appeared as oblivious to them as he was

to the adults who now studied his behavior. Celia would have been more concerned

about his unresponsiveness if he hadn't applied himself so diligently during

their afternoon session.
After he left her office, it occurred to Celia that he might benefit from

homework. She gathered up some supplies and planned to talk to him after the

children met with Tony and the teacher at the end of the day.
A half hour later she joined Ethan, who had pulled "van duty," and watched for

Davy as the children poured down the front steps and fled to the parking area

where the driver waited for them. She spotted Davy slogging along at the back of

the pack, head down, knapsack dragging on the ground, and called to him softly.

He continued trudging along and didn't stop until she tapped him on the

shoulder.
"Davy, would you step aside for a minute?"
He looked up slowly.
"I thought you might like these. Just for fun."
She handed him a sketchbook and a box of colored pencils, both of which he

immediately clutched to his chest.
"Draw anything you want, you're good at it, Davy."
His eyes fell to the ground shyly, which expressed more emotion than he'd shown

all day, and he hurried away, his knapsack still bumping along the path.
Ethan turned to Celia. "Is he really good?"
"Actually, he is." She watched the van until the driver shut the door behind

Davy. "He's got a pretty good sense of composition, and so far he's been willing

to draw anything I ask. I mean, he's no Picasso, but he could be a good little

artist with the right direction."
Ethan cocked his head and smiled. "Which Mrs. G., no doubt, could provide?"
"I think so." Celia saw the van pull away and started back to the building. "I

wish someone had worked with me when I was that age. All I did were pencil

drawings and doodles and a little bit of painting before I got to college. Then

an instructor finally pulled me aside and told me I was good at it."
"Like you did with Davy?"
"Right. And it made all the difference in the world." Celia stopped at the

steps. "But art's a tough field, and the other art majors had a real jump on

me."
Ethan paused alongside her. "I don't know, from what I've seen you're a pretty

good artist. And don't forget Grandma Moses. She didn't start painting until her

dotage."
Celia frowned. "Have you ever actually seen her work?"
"No."
"Well, when you do you may find that as dotage art it really excels."
"Oh."
Celia scooted up the front steps feeling nimble and naughty, girlish and faintly

flirtatious because she was all too aware that she was giving Ethan plenty of

time to scope out her butt. She turned around when she reached the top.
"But thanks for the encouragement anyway. If I'm lucky maybe someone will

discover me in my dotage."
Ethan locked eyes with her and smiled.
"Maybe somebody already has."
20
The kid's got that new pad, those new pencils too. No bite marks. She must think

he's something, giving him stuff like that.
But he's still watching that Batman video, the one I gave him. Always got that

on, no matter what, morning to night if I let him. Except now he's drawing too.

What the hell is he drawing?
As the minutes passed, Chet's curiosity grew. It was like a snake curling around

his brain, choking off every thought but what that kid was up to. He had to see,

had to. It might be me. He might be drawing me.
He stood over Davy and looked down, and right then could've laughed. He's even

drawing Batman. The kid's got Batman on the brain. Chet could make out the mask,

the cape, and those big gloves. But he stopped smiling almost as soon as he

began because it occurred to him that there might be other things in the picture

that he couldn't see. Dead giveaway kinds of things.
He kneeled down and stared at it closely and tried to see it like she would. But

he'd be damned to hell and back if he could see anything but Batman. But that

didn't make him feel a whole lot better because you can't see fingerprints

either. You walk in a room, you see the body, you see the blood, but you don't

see those secret things that detectives see. Maybe it's the same thing with her.

Like I told her yesterday, You're a detective, and she said no, tried to play it

down, but she could be, and Davy could be putting all kinds of things down on

that paper for her, stuff that only she can see.
He had a mind to take the pad away. Stick it in a fire and burn it up. The whole

thing made him sick. He just wanted to be left alone with the boy. And then she

came along. But if he burned it up she'd just give him a new one. He knew the

type. They had a never-ending supply of pads and pencils and smiles and Good

Mornings, and they just kept throwing them at the world. The only thing you

could do with her type was take care of the smile, and that would take care of

all the other stuff. You get a woman like that to stop smiling and you had them

beat. Give her a good scare, the kind she'd never forget. He tapped his pocket,

the one with the razor sitting right over his heart. That'll stop her smiling.
He leaned a little closer to Davy's picture and shook his head. It's not that

good. It's even got a hole in it. Look at that, will you. A tiny one right

there, right in the middle. Kid's got a filthy mind.
21
The following morning at recess Celia spotted Davy at the picnic table under the

old oak. He was drawing in his sketchbook, apparently oblivious to the taunts

the other children tossed at one another during a game of kickball.
"That's Batman, isn't it?"
She sat beside him, and when he looked up he might have smiled. The movement of

his lips was subtle and ended too soon for her to be sure.
"The way you've drawn him it looks like he could fly if he wanted to." She

pointed to Batman's cape. "Like I bet you could talk to me if you really wanted

to."
Davy's eyes never lifted from the page, and his pencil idled in his hand.
Celia's finger lingered on Batman's cape before she ran it down over the rest of

his body. As she passed over Batman's crotch she felt the tear in the page. She

hadn't been sure it was there because of the blotchy mix of sunlight and

shadows, but she'd found it, a hole right in the blackest part.
"Do you mind?" Celia flipped through more than a dozen pages of Batman pictures,

each with a darkly shaded crotch, each with that perplexing hole.
"May I have one of these? They're really good."
Davy nodded, and she took quiet delight in his first obvious response to her.
She carefully tore out the page and made a point of admiring it again, though

most of her attention was drawn to the black hole.
She pointed to a rosebush in the flower bed that bordered the Center.
"Do you see those pretty flowers over there?"
Davy looked up from his pad; he'd already begun to work on a another Batman.
"I'd like you to play a pretend game with me, okay? I'd like you to draw a

rosebush for me, but I want you to pretend that you are the rosebush. You have

to really think about this one and decide if you're a tall rosebush, or a short

one, if you have flowers and what color they are, because rosebushes come in all

kinds of colors. And think about whether you have thorns and roots. Are they

long and straight or do they twist around? And where are you if you're a

rosebush? Do you live in a park or at the seashore, or a home? You decide, Davy.

That's what's so much fun about this game, you can be any kind of rosebush you

want to be."
He stared at the roses, yellow, like the trim on the Center, then started on his

drawing. In black.
*
She felt great driving home. Okay, so she didn't have Davy talking yet but he

was drawing, and he'd taken her every suggestion. He'd worked on the rosebush