Little Children (33 page)

This was
so
not the man Sarah wanted to be embracing right now. She tried to disengage, but he held on tightly with his one good arm, his ungainly body heaving against hers in great hiccupy sobs. It smelled like he hadn’t showered in a couple of days.

“Take it easy,” she whispered, turning her head to avoid contact with his wiry hair, her heart still pumping like crazy. “It’s gonna be okay.”

“No,” he replied, snorting and sniffling the way Lucy did when she was trying to regain control of herself after a tantrum. “It’s not…gonna…be…okay.”

He dropped his head onto her shoulder, his mouth alarmingly close to her breast. Patting him awkwardly on the shoulder blade, she tried to block out the unpleasant sensation of warm moisture seeping through the fabric of her shirt.

She took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm down a little. Distasteful as it was to be hugging a hygienically challenged child molester, it was way better than the other possibilities that had flashed through her mind when he’d materialized so swiftly and unexpectedly out of the darkness. She’d been momentarily paralyzed by the sight of him—more out of bewilderment than fear, she thought—but then her maternal instincts had kicked in. Rushing around to the front of the swing, she grabbed her daughter under the arms and tried to yank her out of the rubber seat, but Lucy had fallen asleep, and her dangling foot got caught in the opening. Sarah was frantically trying to extract it when she felt an oddly gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Please,” Ronald James McGorvey had said, in this tremulous, almost beseeching voice that made no sense to her, as if she were the one calling the shots. “Don’t run away from me.”

She let go of Lucy and turned slowly, preparing herself to scream like she’d never screamed before, only to discover that her assailant was in a pitiful state. He was rocking back and forth on his heels with a dazed expression on his face, broken arm pressed across his chest like he was about to recite the pledge of allegiance.

“Do you need help?” she asked him.

“I just wanna talk to someone,” he said, his bottom lip quivering.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m listening.”

“I lost my mother!” he wailed, stepping forward and throwing his arm around her neck. “Just this afternoon!”

She tried a second time to step away from him, but he had a handful of her shirt and wasn’t letting go. Her whole shoulder felt wet, almost like he was drooling on her.

“It’s hard,” she said, squinting in the direction of the empty parking lot, her impatience with Todd suddenly metastasizing into anger. “It’s really hard.”

McGorvey lifted his head to look at her, his eyes swollen with grief behind his thick glasses. She had to make a conscious effort not to avert her gaze.

“I didn’t even say good-bye.” His voice was calmer now, only cracking on the last word. “She was dead when I got there.”

“It’s okay,” Sarah said, glancing over her shoulder to check on Lucy. She was still sleeping in the motionless swing, thank God, oblivious to the world. “I’m sure she knew how you felt about her.”

“I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” he said. “I just don’t know.”

Sarah didn’t answer, distracted by the sight of a silver minivan pulling into the parking lot, its headlights sweeping across the playground. At almost the same moment, she heard a siren in the distance and footsteps approaching from the soccer field. She turned quickly, hope surging through her body with such force that it almost knocked her down. But instead of Todd it was Mary Ann who emerged from the darkness. She stopped at the edge of the playground, where the wood chips met the grass, and stood there for a moment with a lit cigarette in her hand and the strangest look on her face.

“Sarah?” She sounded more puzzled than angry. “Why are you doing that?”

Before she could reply, McGorvey stepped out of her arms and turned toward the parking lot. A man—he was too stocky to be Todd—was running toward them at a furious clip, like he had an important message to deliver.

“Oh great,” said McGorvey. “Now he’s gonna break my other arm.”

Just for a second, Todd thought he must be at a football game. He was lying on his back on the hard ground, and DeWayne was staring down at him with a concerned expression.

“Todd?” he said. “Can you hear me?”

It couldn’t have been a football game, though. DeWayne was wearing his police uniform, hat and all, and some kids were standing a bit behind him, wearing unbuckled helmets.

Oh shit,
he thought.
The skateboard.

He tried to sit up, but DeWayne restrained him, pressing gently on his shoulder.

“Don’t move. The ambulance is on its way.”

“It’s okay. I’m fine.”

“You sure? Can you move your fingers and toes?”

Todd tested his digits.

“Everything’s okay,” he said. “Everything except my head.”

DeWayne shook his head. “Least it’s nothing important.”

It was a little more difficult than Todd expected to shift into a sitting position. When the dizzy spell passed, he reached up to rub his sore jaw, and was startled to find blood on his hand.

“Jesus,” he said. “What happened to me?”

“You had an intimate encounter with the street,” DeWayne informed him. “These kids say you’ve been out cold for the past five minutes.”

“You caught some monster air,” G. chimed in, with real admiration in his voice.

“Dude, you were fucking awesome,” echoed the gruff-voiced kid. “Like that ski jumper on TV.”

DeWayne shooed the kids away, telling them to give the man some breathing room, or better yet, get on home to their parents.

“No more skateboarding tonight,” he said. “Why don’t you clear out of here.”

The kids grumbled a little, but began to disperse, leaving Todd and DeWayne alone in the street. It was coming back to him now, the amazing sensation of rolling down the wheelchair ramp, gathering speed, his feet rooted to the board, as if this were the way he’d been meant to travel through the world. The launch platform wasn’t much higher than a curb, but it was steeply pitched, and he must have hit it with more momentum than he’d realized. Even through the thrumming pain in his head, he held on to a vivid memory of finding himself suddenly aloft, his arms spread wide, his body suspended above the street. And then pitching sideways, rolling over until he was staring straight up at the sky, floating on a cushion of air. The only thing he didn’t remember was hitting the ground.

“How you feeling?” DeWayne asked.

“Okay,” said Todd. “A little woozy.”

Fingering a tender bump on his skull, he flashed on Sarah, wondering if she’d left the playground. He hated to think of her still standing there in the dark, wondering what the hell had happened to him.

“They’re probably gonna take you to the hospital. Don’t like to take no chances with head injuries.”

Todd nodded. It was painful to admit it, but the main thing he felt right now was an overwhelming sense of relief to be here in the street with DeWayne, instead of in the car with Sarah, rushing down the highway into the next big mistake of his adult life. Sure, he felt guilty for disappointing her, for making her wait around for nothing, for promising something he couldn’t deliver. But what he suddenly understood—it seemed so obvious now, as if the truth had been jarred loose when his body hit the pavement—was that he’d never actually wanted to start a
new
life with her in the first place. What he loved most about Sarah was how beautifully she fit into his old one, distracting him from his imperfect marriage and the tedious obligations of child care, supercharging the dull summer days with a sweet illicit thrill. Outside of that context, he couldn’t imagine them ever being as happy with each other as they’d been this summer.

“Hey, DeWayne,” he said. “You think I’d make a good cop?”

DeWayne studied him for a moment, apparently trying to decide if it was a serious question.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, raising his voice to compete with the bloopy siren of the approaching ambulance. “You could patrol the town on your skateboard.”

Sarah felt like a fool. When she saw Larry Moon sprinting toward the playground, she’d let herself believe that Todd had sent him, that he was coming to deliver a message to
her
. But he went straight for McGorvey, grabbing him roughly by the collar.

“You sonofabitch!” he said, his voice trembling with rage. “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from playgrounds? Didn’t I?”

McGorvey nodded politely, as if responding to a civil question.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

The apology just seemed to make Moon angrier.

“Sorry?” He cuffed McGorvey hard on the side of his head. “You’re a sorry piece of shit is what you are.”

McGorvey just continued nodding, as if he were in complete agreement with this assessment of his character. Moon raised his hand again, but Sarah stepped in front of him before he could strike another blow.

“Would you just leave him alone?” she said. “He wasn’t hurting anybody.”

Mary Ann chose that moment to step beneath the crossbar of the swing set and join the group. She smiled cheerfully, taking an awkward puff on her cigarette and blowing out a mouthful of smoke right away, as if she hadn’t yet mastered the art of inhaling.

“They were sharing a tender moment,” she explained to Moon. “Until we so rudely interrupted.”

You bitch from hell,
Sarah thought.

“His mother just died, okay? He’s upset.”

As if to confirm this report, McGorvey sniffled and rubbed a hand across a cheek.

“Oh, you’re upset, are you?” Moon taunted McGorvey. “Well, now you know how they felt. Except a million times worse.”

“How who felt?” said Mary Ann.

“The parents of that little girl. The one he killed. I bet they were pretty upset.”

McGorvey hung his head. Sarah wanted to tell Moon to stop hounding the man, to just leave him in peace for one single day, but McGorvey spoke up before she had a chance.

“I didn’t want to hurt her,” he muttered, still staring at the ground. “She made me.”

“What?” Moon cupped a hand around his ear as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “What did you just say?”

McGorvey looked up. He held his good arm out like an actor, the way he had at the Town Pool on the day of the electrical storm.

“I didn’t want to,” he repeated in a wounded tone. “She said she was gonna tell on me.”

“She was gonna tell on you?” Moon repeated incredulously. “You killed a little girl because she was gonna
tell on you?
”

McGorvey lowered his arm. A strange whimper escaped from his throat. He shifted his gaze from Moon to Mary Ann to Sarah, as if searching for a more sympathetic listener.

“I didn’t want to get in trouble.” McGorvey’s voice trailed off as he said this, as if he suddenly realized how ridiculous it sounded.

“Did you hear that?” Moon asked Sarah and Mary Ann in an excited voice. “Did you hear what he just said? You two are witnesses.”

“I heard it,” said Mary Ann.

Sarah nodded. She wasn’t sure a hearsay confession would hold up in court, but she didn’t say so. She just watched silently as Moon clapped McGorvey on the back, almost like he was offering his congratulations.