Saint Peter’s Wolf (3 page)

Cherry met me. “I've already talked to him.”

“I want to see it.”

“It'll just upset you.”

“Cherry, what earthly good will it do to put it off? Can you imagine what I'm picturing in my mind?”

“Whatever you're imagining, Ben, the truth is worse.”

The medical encyclopedia is the size of a very fat slice of bread. It had been bound in London in the early nineteenth century, and the calfskin had aged to a tobacco-leaf gold. I was not careless, but I often left a treasured book out on my desk. To hide things is furtive and contrary to the spirit that makes me love books.

I approached the book feeling weak, each step slower until I stopped and could not move.

The book was fatter than when I had last seen it. There was a bump in it, and the small volume could not close completely around an obstruction.

I steadied myself, and stepped to the desk.

I stretched out my hands, wishing that I did not have to do this, that I would not have to see what had happened.

At the entry for “nematodes” was a squashed rat. Its eyes were open, two black seeds. Much of what had been inside the rat was now outside it, a scarlet bandana that flowed from between its teeth.

It was a small rat, dark gray, with a long pink hairless tail that drooped from the volume like an unusual bookmark.

“He's emotionally disturbed,” she whispered. “We've always known this.”

I sat trembling, aghast at what was before me. “Yes,” I agreed. “He's very unhappy.”

“I was hoping after the last time that it was out of his system. But he wants to tell you something. He wants so much to—”

“To hurt me. And he has.” But despite my shock and distaste for what I saw, at that very moment I had the strangest thrill. Imagine, I thought, being a child again. Imagine being able to scribble on this, ruin that, with no feeling of restraint. Imagine feeling that liberated.

“We've been a terrible burden for you, Ben.”

I should have paid closer attention to what she had just said, but at the moment, sad and dazed, I simply shook my head. I had a responsibility to Carliss that was more important than my affection for my books. “We'll send him to Beecher. He's the best child psychologist in California.”

“What are you going to do about the book?”

“The encyclopedia can wait. I want to talk to Carliss.”

“What will you say to him?”

I uttered what seemed like the deepest truth. “I don't know.”

“Please don't hurt him. He wants your attention, you know that.”

I looked up, surprised. “Of course I won't hurt him. What sort of person do you think I am?” Two years is not really long enough to discover all the back roads in another's emotional countryside. I was amazed, though, that Cherry had so little faith in me. It demonstrated once more that while I knew her fairly well, she did not know me at all.

Or, I asked myself, did I really know her? In the first days of our marriage we had delighted each other. We had both liked the same operas, the same fresh peaches, the same old movies, the same cool, fog-rich wind on the long walks we took together. It was a discovery for both of us, like breathing pure oxygen after a long swim underwater.

But then her career began to simmer. She was a political consultant, a whiz at publicity, press packets, television ads. A former mayor called her the “Einstein of demographics.” The phone began to ring. The calendar in the kitchen darkened with notes, phone numbers, names. I was always on my way to the airport, always in a hurry to get to an auction on time. She was always just back from a meeting, jotting notes as she listened to her answering machine. The time came when we did not know each other.

“Benjamin, you're so kind,” she was saying. “It stabs me here to see you so kind.” She put a hand over her breast.

She was given to emotional overstatement, but I could not understand why she expressed herself in exactly that way.

“Because,” she continued, “I have something to tell you. Something that's killing me. I'll never be able to talk about it.” She wept. “I've ruined our life.”

I was saturated with crisis, but I had enough feeling left to put my arms around Cherry and try to comfort her. I am an organized man, capable of focusing on one thing at a time. Just now I did not know what sort of crisis consumed my house, but I would set about quelling it step by step. The problem was that I did not know what first step to take.

“What he did to the book is my fault,” she said. “I've been neglecting him.”

Just like Cherry—either blind indifference or staggering guilt.

“I've been out of the house a lot lately,” she continued. “I've been.…” I did not like the way she searched for words. “Distracted. I should have told you this before. I waited too long. I can't stand myself. I'm going to explode.”

A bad feeling pricked me, a warning: you don't want to hear this.

I had been away during recent days, in Los Angeles for a conference and a visit with an expert on Degas. And before that I had been in New York, and before that I had given a paper in Chicago on symbolic castration. I blamed myself for neglecting Cherry and Carliss. I had been away too long, and even when I was here I was preoccupied with my collection or my thoughts. This had been a mistake. The words appeared in my mind like a homily framed and nailed to a wall: Nothing is more important than my family.

Say something rational, I told myself. Something sensible. You're supposed to know so much about the heart, the psyche, the human soul. “It's not your fault,” I offered.

“No,” she howled, “you don't understand!”

I stared at the rat. Like a conductor listening as first one instrument and then another strays out of tune in mid-symphony, I wanted to begin the day, my life—everything again. I took a deep breath.

“I can't tell you, Ben. I just can't. It'll kill you when I tell you.”

What, I asked without making a sound. But Cherry was gone, vanished, and I heard the distant rattle of a plastic lid, and capsules spilling with a faint, beady whisper. Her newest tranquilizer, her rod and her staff.

I closed my eyes. Be calm, I told myself. Use your powers of thought. Be logical. Be methodical. First talk to Carliss.

He was at his computer, shooting ducks. He shot three of them as I stood in the doorway, sighting two-handed, with his legs apart and imitating recoil, pulling the gun back hard after each shot. The video ducks rose, exploded, and spun down.

I cleared my throat. “I have seen the rat,” I said. I considered what I had just said, proud of such a cogent beginning. It had, I thought, a noble simplicity.

Another duck blew up.

“I wanted to tell you a little bit about the book that you have damaged.”

Another duck exploded.

“You didn't ruin it, exactly. But you did damage it. I know a scientist at a lab who can probably fix it. But it's an old book. An old book that I like a lot.”

More ducks, spinning through the air.

I stepped to the computer and fumbled, found the button, and the display went black. A high whine continued from the computer itself, and when I found that switch, the machine was silent.

Carliss continued to stare at the screen, holding his handgun.

I folded my arms. “If you wanted to shock me, or to get my attention, you succeeded. Here I am, Carliss. Talk to me.”

Maybe he expected me to rage and swear. His actual father, a man who flew in from Philadelphia on business, was a man I did not know well at all, the sort of man who seems obscure even when you know him. Perhaps he had raged and shaken his fist at' such times. Perhaps he would have beaten this quiet, brooding child. He was a salesman, but he had changed companies so often, selling disk drives for computers one week and the next California cognac, that he seemed to be several men at once.

He had been based briefly in San Francisco when he sold reading labs to elementary schools. He had always been out of town. That was when I began to see more and more of my neighbor, and then very much more, until by the time the husband called from New Jersey to have a heart-to-heart about a woman he had met, his wife was already entangled in what I had to imagine as my gill nets, an affair I felt vaguely guilty about except for the genuine love I felt for her.

I sat on the bed with Carliss. “How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Fine.” Not looking at me, a tight, noncommittal voice.

“How did you expect me to feel about seeing a squashed rat in one of my favorite books?”

One shoulder lifted one millimeter.

I pursed my lips. “I don't feel fine, exactly.”

“I should have used a frog.”

“A squashed frog?” I inquired, as though the subject were of only passing interest.

I could see, from behind, the very slight nod of his head.

For a moment I entered into the problem. What was, after all, more effective? I had to envy Carliss. Perhaps, I thought, he was right and I was entirely wrong, blinded by years of traffic jams and news bulletins. If you're sad or angry, take your choice: rat or frog.

Carliss had been diagnosed as autistic at one point, but I no longer considered that a valid diagnosis. True, he lacked compassion, and yet he fully understood that there were human beings out here, and that his actions had consequences. I had come to believe that Carliss was a fine example of what Freud called the pitiless nature of children. His killing was the nearly normal act of childish brutality.

I cleared my throat. “Yes, that would have been really more of a splash, wouldn't it? That would be just what an antique book needs. A nice juicy frog. But I take it there were no frogs around.”

No answer.

Perhaps most children are monsters. I like children, but see them as foreign. Like most children, Carliss seemed exotic to me. He was a slim boy, with olive skin and dark hair. He was tall for his age and at the same time frail. He looked unlike Cherry, and not at all like his burly, shaggy, salesman father.

He had always been cold toward me, competitive, suspicious. I admired dignity in children, in all people, really, and did not expect him to welcome me easily. But there are limits to what we can tolerate, even from people we have tried to love.

But other thoughts, neon phrases, made me pause. This child. This still-innocent child. He is lost, lost within your walls. Find him. He needs you.

I gazed around the room. There were posters for musical groups whose names I did not recognize, all of them sneering or showing teeth in a way that could only be interpreted as threatening. There were photographs of wrestlers in outlandish costumes causing real-looking agony with headlocks, arm twists, and body drops. There were pictures cut from magazines of weapons, tanks, submachine guns. There was a picture of a shark with blood all over its snout and teeth. There was a beautiful picture of a hydrogen bomb explosion.

The shark caught my attention once again. Its naked power shook me.

“We are going to start over,” I said. “I am going to call a man I know named Dr Beecher. He's a very kind man, and he likes young people very much. He's not just another psychologist. He can really help you. You can go see him—he'll be your very own counselor, just like men and women have their very own counselors, and lawyers, and financial consultants. He'll be your professional. I might go talk to him once or twice, but only if you say it's okay, and if he does, too. He'll be your man.”

Carliss gazed at his gun.

I would spend more time with him. I would get to know him. “How did you happen to find this rat?”

A tiny shrug, indicating that to respond was not to be committed to any sort of emotion. “Outside.”

“In the street?”

The world's most minute nod.

“Had he been.…” I did not, on this day, like to use the following words. “Run over?”

A tiny shrug. A tiny nod.

Of course Carliss hadn't actually killed a rat, I thought. What had entered my mind to even consider that possibility?

“A female, probably,” I said. “The males are much larger.”

Carliss had still not glanced at me. His posture was that of a person enduring an entirely odious interview. “I want to promise you something, Carliss. I don't make promises easily. I'm going to help you. In any way I can. I promise.”

But inside I howled, suddenly, alive with the feeling: this child, this wonderful, confused, angry child wants your attention. He needs you, and all you can do is drone about “promises.”

Carliss wanted my attention. He was jealous of my collection. He wanted me. Take him in your arms, I commanded myself. Hug him. You're a fool! This boy needs you, and all you can do is talk.

I must have remembered my own boyhood. I must have remembered some time when I had been consumed by whatever feeling I had at the moment, anger, sadness, hope. I saw that I had wasted every day I had spent with this child.

I took him in my arms. He was stiff, but he turned his face into my shirt in a way that told me that he accepted me, and needed me, and wanted to hide within my strength.

My eyes were wet. I would help Carliss, I promised myself. I would make everything right for him.

I believed it. I really thought that I would help him. And yet, after I left his room I did something I had not done before. I searched in my desk for the brass key which I had never bothered to use, and when I found it I put it on my key ring. I locked the door to my study. I did not like doing this. It meant that I was acknowledging that I did not trust Carliss. But it was true: I didn't trust him. Some day I might. But not now.

It also meant that I was still a gray, civilized man, and that I valued my collection more than I did Carliss's soul. I had done a good deal of work with disturbed children. I knew children who had burned down houses, killing people in the process, released car brakes or loose roof tiles to cripple fathers, mothers, uncles, rival siblings.