Life Penalty (2 page)

Cindy was much easier, as she had been in every respect since she was a baby. It took only a soft stroke of Gail’s hand across the child’s forehead to get her to open her big blue eyes. Immediately, Cindy’s arms would reach up and pull her mother to her, locking her in a warm, loving embrace. Gail would then go through the motions of trying to select something for her daughter to wear. Whatever she picked was invariably wrong, for Cindy, a child who was remarkably easygoing about every other aspect of her life, was unaccountably stubborn about what she wore. Many a day Gail would silently pray that Cindy’s teacher realized that the child dressed herself and that her mother was neither color-blind nor a hopeless eccentric. Today, despite the heat, Cindy had insisted on wearing a purple velvet dress which had been a gift from her grandparents and which was at least one size too small for her, because it was her favorite dress and she hadn’t worn it in a long time. When Gail pointed out that the reason she hadn’t worn it in so long was precisely because it was too small, Cindy merely fixed her mother with an icy stare and protruding lower lip, and waited for Gail’s inevitable capitulation.

By this time, Jack would be in the shower and the coffee would be ready, Breakfast was always noisy and rushed, and by the time everyone left the house at eight-thirty, Gail was ready for another cup of coffee and some time to relax and read the paper before straightening up the kitchen and then heading back upstairs to make the beds. Jack drove the kids to school on his way to work. Since both schools were in the neighborhood, both children walked home, Cindy always in the company of one of her classmates and the child’s nanny. Gail was always at home waiting for their return at approximately three-thirty. She then had almost half an hour to go over the events of their day with them before her student arrived for her lesson.

The hours while her daughters were away at school were spent the way most middle-class housewives spent them: running small errands, making phone calls, grocery shopping, the occasional appointment at the hairdresser’s, lunch with a friend, more errands, preparing dinner, waiting for her family to come home. If anyone had asked her to describe her life up until the moment she had turned the corner onto Tarlton Drive at exactly seventeen minutes past the hour of four on that sunny April afternoon, Gail Walton would have said that she was the face of average America, middle-aged, middle-class and middle-of-the-road. While she recognized that it was a description virtually all her friends would shun, it summed up everything Gail felt comfortable being.

She had no desire to stay young forever. Her own youth had been something less than spectacular. Shy and flat-chested, she had been largely spurned by the more popular cliques in high school, virtually ignored by the boys she admired. Only in her thirties had Gail begun to feel truly at home in her own skin. She was probably the only person she knew who actually looked forward to turning forty. So far, anyway, she had managed to avoid
the mid-life crises her neighbors all seemed to be suffering through. She was neither frustrated by her lot nor bored with her lack of ambition. She was well read, kept abreast of current affairs, and was increasingly confident of her ability to hold up her end of any conversation. She belonged to no political party, and had somehow managed to avoid being radicalized by the sixties and the war in Vietnam, possibly because of her natural shyness and an innate tendency to avoid any kind of overt confrontation. The only vaguely radical thing she had ever done was to leave college before her last year was completed to marry Mark Gallagher. She often regretted her lack of a university degree, but never enough to go back to school to get it. She belonged to no groups. She respected everyone’s right to be whatever he or she wished to be, and expected the same consideration from others. Her friends admired her inner peace, her seeming serenity. They sought out in her all that was normal. They asked for her advice; they relied on her common sense; they looked to her for the reassurance that all could be right with the world, and that if you were basically an honest individual, you would be justly rewarded. If asked to sum herself up on one word, Gail Walton would have chosen “content.” She was everything she had ever wanted to be.

And then it was seventeen minutes after the hour of four on an especially warm, sunny April day, and everything changed.

S
he saw the police cars as soon as she turned the corner, and knew immediately, instinctively, that they were parked in front of her house. Her first reaction was panic. She dropped the few parcels she was carrying and stood, unable to move, staring straight ahead, her breath holding her stomach in tightly, pressing into her back. In the next instant she was running toward her house, unmindful of the bags she had dropped, seeing only the police cars, knowing as she glanced down at her watch and saw that it was seventeen minutes after four, that for her time had stopped.

Later, much later, when the sedative they would give her was starting to take effect and her mind was hovering in the mid-ground between dreams and reality, her thoughts would keep returning to how her day had been spent, how things might have been different. That somehow it was her fault. She had changed the routine.

Lesley Jennings’ mother had called first thing in the morning, just after Jack and the girls had left, to tell her that Lesley had spent the better part of the night throwing up and must have picked up some flu bug at school and therefore would not be able to have her regular Friday afternoon piano lesson. Gail had commiserated with the young mother, remembering how upset she used to get
whenever Jennifer came down with anything, realizing how calm she was with Cindy, and telling the young woman what she was sure her doctor had already told her, to keep the child quiet and in bed, no solid foods and lots of liquids. Mrs. Jennings seemed grateful for the advice, confiding with obvious guilt that she was desperately trying to locate someone to come and stay with Lesley while she ran off to work. Gail told her about the daughter of a friend who had recently dropped out of school and might be interested in picking up a few extra dollars by baby-sitting, and again Mrs. Jennings was grateful, adding that she hoped Gail’s children would be spared the flu bug which seemed to be sweeping the Livingston school system, probably because of all the rain they’d been having lately and wasn’t it just typical that the child would get sick when it finally looked as if the weather was starting to break. Children were just little incubators for germs, Gail remembered thinking as she hung up the phone.

On impulse, and because it was such a surprisingly nice day, too nice to spend indoors, she had picked up the phone again and called her friend Nancy, the most frivolous of all her friends, frivolous because Gail doubted that a serious thought had ever passed through the woman’s head. She was forty-two years old; her husband had left her five years earlier for a younger woman, and now Nancy Carter divided her time between visits to her masseuse and tennis lessons at her club. She was an avid, no, a
fervent
consumer, and she was never happier than when spending money, specifically her ex-husband’s money. She was a follower of astrology, the occult and ESP. She believed that she could tell the future, although when her husband had announced his intention to leave her for the woman who regularly manicured his nails, she had been the only one in their immediate circle who was
surprised. She never read past the entertainment section of the newspaper, and would have been hard-pressed to name either of her state’s senators, although she knew all about Dustin Hoffman’s private life and Joan Collins’ rather more public affairs. Despite what her other close friend, Laura, referred to as Nancy’s lamentable lack of depth, Gail had always found her shallowness and utter self-absorption entertaining, and today a little light gossip and some heavy-duty shopping seemed just what the sunshine ordered. The girls needed some new spring clothes, and for that matter, so did she. Gail had reached Nancy just as she was about to leave the house for a reading with her psychic and they arranged to meet for lunch at Nero’s.

Lunch had been entertaining and fun. Gail didn’t have to contribute much. She just had to sit there and smile as Nancy did the talking. Nothing was required of her except to listen and look attentive. If Nancy said something about which she disagreed, she kept this to herself. Nancy was not interested in her opinions; she was interested only in her own. Gail thought as she listened to Nancy talk about her visit to the psychic that Nancy Carter was probably the most self-centered woman she had ever met. No matter what anyone said, no matter what was happening in the world, she would find some way to relate it to herself. If the talk turned to Indira Gandhi and the precarious political position she found herself in, Nancy Carter would say, “Oh, I know just how she feels. The same thing happened to me when I was running for president of my club.” It was her greatest failing as a human being and her greatest charm. Gail’s friend Laura professed shock at this attitude, rolling her eyes skyward at the slightest provocation whenever the three women were together, but Gail had long ago learned to accept the fact that if you wanted to talk to Nancy Carter, you talked
about
Nancy Carter.

Gail listened as Nancy explained that her psychic had told her she was suffering from lower back pain (not bothering to interrupt to tell her that most people over the age of forty suffered from some sort of lower back pain), knowing that for all the faults she could find to list about her friends, they could undoubtedly list an equal number where she was concerned. In the end, as with a marriage, a successful friendship depended upon accepting people for what they were. The only alternative was learning to live alone. Gail had never liked living alone. She liked having friends. She liked being part of a family.

Nancy had dragged her to shop at the Short Hills Mall. They went from store to store, ostensibly looking at clothes for Gail’s daughters, but Gail quickly noted that Nancy grew restless after only minutes in the girls’ or teen departments, and relaxed only when she found something that she herself could try on. The afternoon had proceeded at a faster pace than Gail had been prepared for, and when she looked down at her watch and saw that it was after three and that she could never be home in time for her daughters’ return, she had called the school and left a message for Jennifer to be sure to go right home so that someone would be there for Cindy. It was only after Nancy had rushed off to make a three-thirty hair appointment that Gail was able to accomplish any real shopping for herself and her children. Since Gail had not taken her car, and since the day was such a lovely one, she found herself walking a good part of the way home, turning the corner onto her street at just after four-fifteen. Normally, she would have been home by three-thirty. Normally, she would have been there for her children when they came home from school. Normally, by this hour, she would be halfway through her piano lesson, and thinking ahead to what the family would be doing over the weekend. But she had changed her routine.

“What’s going on here?” she cried, pushing against the cordon of police officers who blocked her front door.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you can’t go in there,” one officer said.

“This is my house,” she shouted. “I live here.”

“Mom!” she heard Jennifer yelling from inside. The front door flew open and Jennifer threw herself into her mother’s arms, sobbing hysterically.

Gail felt her entire body go ice-cold, then numb.

Where was Cindy?

“Where’s Cindy?” she asked in a voice she didn’t recognize.

“Mrs. Walton,” a voice said from somewhere beside her, “I think we better go inside.” She felt an arm around her shoulder, felt herself being drawn across the threshold of her front door.

“Where’s Cindy?” she said again, slightly louder. The hands led her into the living room and sat her down on the peach and green print sofa.

“We’ve called your husband. He’s on his way.”

“Where’s Cindy?” Gail screamed. Her eyes sought out those of her older daughter. “Where is she?”

“She didn’t come home,” Jennifer was crying. “I got home from school right away like you asked me to, and I waited but she didn’t come back. So I called Mrs. Hewitt’s to see if Linda was home yet, and her nanny said that Linda had gotten sick at school and she’d had to go pick her up early. She said she called to tell you but no one was home.”

“She must have gotten lost,” Gail said quickly, blocking out the knowledge that her house would not be filled with policemen had her younger child simply gotten lost on her way home from school. “She’s never gone home by herself before. I would never allow it.”

“Mrs. Walton,” the policeman beside her said gently,
“can you tell us what your daughter had on when she left for school this morning?”

Gail frantically looked around the room trying to picture what Cindy had been wearing, able only to see the child’s dark blond hair falling over her forehead and into her eyes, remembering that she had thought about clipping the bangs before they got so long that Cindy wouldn’t be able to see. She saw the laughing blue eyes, the once fat cheeks now slim and finely structured, the small, full mouth with its missing two bottom front teeth. And the purple velvet dress at least one size too small. “She was wearing a purple velvet dress with smocking across the front, and a little white lace collar,” Gail told them as quickly as she remembered. “I told her that it was too small and that it was too hot to wear velvet, but once she makes up her mind, there’s no talking to her, and so I just gave in and let her wear it.” She paused. Why had she told them that? She could see by their expressions that they had no interest in the suitability of the dress to the weather. “She was wearing white socks and red shoes,” Gail continued. “Party shoes. She didn’t like running shoes or shoes with laces. She only liked shoes with buckles. And dresses. She would never wear trousers. She was a very feminine little girl.” Gail’s hand flew to her mouth with the shock of what she had just said. She only
liked
shoes with buckles. She
was
a very feminine little girl. She had been talking about her daughter in the past tense. “Oh my God,” she moaned, falling back against the pillows, wanting to pass out, trying to will her body into oblivion. “Where’s my little girl?” she asked in a voice so low and distant it was barely audible.