The Edge of Sleep (33 page)

As Becker looked at Karen, holding Jack’s other hand, the warm glow he felt expanded to include her. He not only loved this little boy; by extension, he also loved the mother. More than loved her. He felt toward her the same protective urge he felt toward Jack. He would marry her, they would raise the child together, and Becker would shield both of them from the world’s perils, great and small.

Becker gazed at Karen over the boy’s head. She looked back with a sour, pained expression.

As Jack released their hands and stepped up to the swimming counselor, frightened but eager to have the ordeal behind him, Becker was overwhelmed by the boy’s courage.

Becker put an arm possessively around Karen’s waist.

“Can he swim?”

Karen pretended to shift her weight and twisted, slipping away from Becker’s arm.

“Not well. He’s afraid of the water.”

Becker heard the nervousness in her voice.

“I can teach him,” he said.

“I’ll teach him,” she snapped, then tempered the remark by adding, “or they’ll teach him here ... They’re professionals.”

Jack stood at the end of the dock, his little face turned attentively to the counselor, listening to his instructions. He looked to Becker like a midget warrior being sent into battle.

“He’s brave. I couldn’t be that brave,” Becker said.

Karen gave him a puzzled look.

Jack turned from the counselor, took one look at the water and dived in, arms and legs flailing, landing on his stomach, his head and face arched backwards as if they could somehow avoid contact with the lake.

Becker gripped Karen’s arm and they watched, both holding their breath, as Jack struggled across the roped-off area enclosed within the rectangular wooden dock. He swam the first lap like a startled spaniel, head out of the water, hands and feet paddling beneath the surface. The return lap was supposed to be done with a breast stroke and Jack attacked it gamely, using a stroke that looked little different from the first one. When he gained the dock again, he held on to it for a moment, puffing.

Becker and Karen watched the counselor kneel down to talk with Jack, saw the boy nod his head to indicate that he was all right. After three deep breaths. Jack pushed off the dock into his version of the backstroke. His arms slapped at the water twice and then he sank beneath the surface. He was up again immediately, sputtering, arms still gyrating, then he sank again.

Becker started forward to save him, but Karen held him back.

“He’s in trouble,” Becker said.

“Don’t shame him.”

Jack had surfaced once more, still struggling. The counselor was now walking parallel to the boy, holding a long, flexible pole, ready to intercede if needed, but, remarkably, he was not needed. Progressing by fits and starts, more under water than on the surface. Jack was gaining the far side. It looked to Becker like a form of medieval trial by drowning, testing not the boy’s ability, but his tolerance for pain and terror.

Jack reached the dock at last, clinging to it with one hand, too tired to pull himself up, his face barely above the surface. The counselor knelt again and conferred with Jack, determining if he was ready for the final lap required by the test. Even from a distance Becker could see the exhaustion in the boy’s face.

“They’re not going to make him go again,” he said incredulously.

“Let Jack decide,” Karen said.

Becker was incredulous. He had not suspected her to be capable of such cruelty to her own child. “He can’t possibly do it again,” he said.

“It’s up to him.”

Becker fought an impulse to throw his hands in the air in surrender, to wave to the counselor and let him know it was over. It was only Karen’s steely control that made him stand where he was.

Jack turned to look at Karen and Becker, his mouth agape with the effort of breathing. Becker tried to smile, to let the boy know he had done enough, to give it up with honor. He was amazed to see Karen show a clenched fist of determination and encouragement.

“What will it prove?” he demanded.

“Whatever it proves,” she said, not turning to face him. She nodded her head at Jack, tightened her lips, once again showed the fist.

Jack turned back to the counselor, nodded, breathed again, then launched himself for the final lap. It was meant to be swum with the sidestroke, but it was obvious that Jack had no idea how to perform the maneuver. After sinking once, he came up again on his belly and reverted to the dog paddle that had served him on the first pass. He inched across the area between docks as if tethered to the far shore, fighting for every advance, paying for it with a loss of vitality and buoyancy, sinking, then rising again with less and less strength each time. It seemed to Becker like an ordeal that would never end. He marveled at his sudden vulnerability when it came to the boy, he was amazed at Karen’s coolness. If this was what it was like to be a parent, he didn’t know how anyone survived it.

When Jack gained the dock at last, he hung in the water for a full minute before accepting the counselor’s offer of assistance in getting out. After a hug and pat on the back from the counselor, who turned immediately to his next victim. Jack came toward Becker and Karen on wobbly legs, his face white, his nostrils pinched with fatigue. He was too tired to smile, but as his mother put her hand lightly on his shoulder and kissed his head, he looked into her face for confirmation of how he had done.

“Great job,” Becker said, taking his lead from Karen and restraining his enthusiasm. He wanted to lift the boy to his shoulders and parade him in triumph. “Well done.”

Jack continued to look to his mother for approval and Becker sensed a jab of jealousy.

“I cheated,” Jack said, still gasping for breath.

“I know,” Karen said.

“I didn’t do the sidestroke,” he said.

“I know.”

“Hell, that’s all right,” Becker blurted. “You’re only ten. You had to keep from drowning.”

Karen stopped him with a frosty look.

“Cheating isn’t all right,” she said. “You didn’t mean to say that.”

Karen and Jack turned back toward the road leading up the hill to the cabin. She kept her arm lightly on his shoulder until the boy pulled away and stepped ahead of her, getting his strength back, his confidence now soaring. There would be no more holding of hands this day.

Becker trailed them both, feeling excluded and hurt and angry with himself for being so.

They said goodbye at the cabin. Jack already restless and eager to have them gone. His bunkmates were talking about the swimming test and Jack wanted to join them. Karen’s farewell was warm but brief, nothing to embarrass him in front of his new friends. Becker wanted to kneel and take the boy in his arms, to whisper wise last minute words of advice and encouragement, but he sensed that Jack would be appalled by the display. At the end, he merely shook his hand and said goodbye. When Becker looked back, Jack was already involved with the other boys.

When they reached the car, Becker saw that Karen’s face was wet with tears although he had not heard a sound from her.

“What a wonderful kid,” she said.

Becker realized that for the first time he knew exactly what she meant.

Then she had fallen into the strange silence as they drove. He imagined her struggling against her tears. It would not have surprised him if she had turned the car around and headed back to the camp. Becker felt an overwhelming sympathy for her because he felt the same way, but he did not know how to express it to her in a manner that would help. They could be married while Jack was in camp, he thought, offering the boy a surprise when they came to rescue him in two weeks’ time. Or would it be better to have the boy at the ceremony?

Becker looked again at her troubled profile and placed a reassuring hand on her thigh.

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” he said.

Karen looked at him as if startled that he could read her thoughts.

“It’s just not going to work,” she said.

“We’ll make it.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“It’s going to be tough, but it’s only two weeks.”

“Two weeks?”

“Before we get him back.”

“I’m talking about us, John. You and me. We just don’t work together. It’s not working out. It’s nobody’s fault.” Becker stared at her, trying to make sense of her words. They seemed to have torn right through his stomach and the rest of him was falling through the hole they had caused.

“You’re trying your best,” she said. “You always try your best at everything you do. I love that about you, but it’s just too hard. It’s asking too much of you to step into a situation where you have to deal with me and Jack both at the same time. I should never have expected you to be able to deal with it all. It’s my fault.”

It sounded to Becker very much as if she were saying it was his fault, and it still made no sense.

“I should have known better in the first place.” She was talking rapidly now, the thoughts tumbling out, as if she could prevent him from entering in the discussion if she spoke her words fast enough. As if she could summarize the situation all by herself, tie it off and end it without any messy loose ends.

“You’re a single man, single by nature. I know you’ve been married, but look how that ended up—not that a failed marriage means you’re a failure. I’m no one to suggest that—but you’re a loner, John, you know that, you’ve said as much yourself. You have your own way of viewing the world, your own way of dealing with it. It works for you and that’s fine, but it’s not fair of me to expect you to toss that aside. You’ve spent a lifetime developing it, you shouldn’t have to change just because something else is required when you’re living with a woman and her child.” Becker stared numbly at her as she drove the car. He heard the words, understood the message, but couldn’t penetrate the camouflage to discover the reason. There was a ringing in his ears, a hollow sound to Karen’s voice that made everything seem unreal, otherworldly, as if he was watching the whole thing happening to somebody else. Some other poor uncomprehending schmuck was being dumped without just cause, not him.

“It’s just the best thing all around,” she was saying, and Becker realized he had not heard her for a few moments. He felt he must have missed something crucial, the causative link that would interpret everything else. He wondered if he should ask her to repeat herself. “And the timing is right, with Jack away. This way he won’t have to watch anything messy, that doesn’t do a child any good to have to listen to fighting and yelling. We’ll just get it over with and when he comes home from camp everything will be as good as new. We really get along best by ourselves anyway. Jack and I. I know you tried, but I think he was getting conflicting signals. Kids like things simple.”

Becker wondered if it was something about Jack. Was she jealous of Becker’s attentions to the boy? Did she want Jack all to herself? Had Jack’s hand in his at camp affected her as strongly as it had Becker, but in the wrong way? He thought there was an idea there that needed examination and he must get to it if the sinking in his stomach and the roaring in his ears ever stopped.

Karen glanced at Becker, the first time she had dared to really look at him since she began talking. He had slumped down in the seat, his eyes staring at the dashboard. Sullen, she thought. Lumpish and silent and not even troubling himself to talk back. He doesn’t even care enough to argue. Male. So hopelessly male. And it was just as well; it made the job that much easier. Let him sulk. They were all good at that; it seemed to come naturally to them. Her ex-husband had been a master at it, jumping inside himself and battening down the hatches at the first sign of emotional distress. In his case he had always simply walked away, literally walked right out of the room rather than sit down and talk. Becker was a captive in the car now and couldn’t walk, but she could see he was doing his equivalent of it.

“Do you have anything to say?” she asked, annoyed.

He took a long time to respond, as if summoned from a far place. When he spoke he did not look at her.

“Can I keep Jack?” he asked.

He made another sound, deep in his throat, that Karen thought might be laughter, or a sob.

Reggie had watched the man and woman load their suitcases into the trunk, then hurried to the cabin as soon as the car was out of the driveway. As she had suspected, they were gone for good. The wastebaskets were empty, the room clean. Even the bed was made, the spread neatly in place and tucked in at the bottom with crisp hospital corners. Nothing had been defaced, nothing stolen. Reggie felt oddly cheated that they had left her nothing to complain about.

“They had four days of rent left,” she explained to the two FBI agents who had returned minus the boy in the backseat. “But I figure they owe me that much for sheer aggravation.”

“Nothing to justify a warrant then.” the female agent said. She looked to the man for confirmation. He was hanging back, staring at the ground. He reminded Reggie of George and his hangdog look after he’d been scolded for something. Moping, aggrieved, and withdrawn. There and not there at the same time. Reggie felt a pang of sympathy for the officious young woman. Working with men was not worth the trouble most of the time. It was just easier to do things yourself.

“And you saw them leave, you say,” the woman asked.

“That’s right. Bold as brass, this time. Went out in broad daylight, and he wasn’t wearing any sunglasses either, ‘bad eyes’ or not.”

“Just the two of them? The man and the woman?”

“Who else?”

“No sign of the child?”

“He could have been lying down on the backseat, of course.”

“That’s true,” the woman said, clearly not believing Reggie. “But you said you watched them pack the car yourself. You would have noticed if a child got into the backseat, wouldn’t you?”

“If I was looking right at that exact moment. I have other things to do, you know. I wasn’t studying them or anything. They might have slipped several kids in that car while I was tending to business for all I know.”

“That’s true,” the agent said again, and again clearly not believing it. “But you have no reason to suppose they did?”