The Lesson of Her Death (39 page)

When she didn’t answer, the deputy said, “Your mom’ll be pretty unhappy with me if I don’t bring you right now, like she asked. You don’t want her to have words with me, do you?”

It was true. If she didn’t come now, if she missed the appointment with Dr. Parker, her mother would be furious with the deputy. Sarah couldn’t stand the thought of anyone being mad because of her. People hated you when you made them mad, they laughed at you.

She looked around her once more. The Sunshine Man was gone now. He’d fled and was far away.

“Why you looking so sad, little lady?”

“I’m not sad.” Sarah walked through the grass. “Come this way. It’s easier.” She led him out of the tall grass into the strip of land beside the cow pasture and turned toward the house, certain that she and the Sunshine Man would never meet.

Diane had found a psychiatrist cartoon in a magazine and cut it out for Dr. Parker. It showed a little fish sitting in a chair holding a notebook. Next to him was a huge shark lying down on a couch and the little fish was saying to the shark, “Oh, no, it’s perfectly normal to want to eat your psychiatrist.” Diane kept studying the cartoon and not getting it. But the expression on the face of the shark was so funny she broke out in laughter.

Which wasn’t as loud as the laughter that escaped from Dr. Parker’s mouth when she looked at the clipping. Maybe the woman
did
have a sense of humor after all. Dr. Parker pinned the cartoon up on her bulletin board. Diane felt ecstatic, as if she’d been given a gold star at school.

Sarah was in the waiting room. Dr. Parker had asked to see Diane first today. By herself. This troubled Diane, who wondered what kind of bad news the woman had to report. But seeing the doctor laugh, she sensed this was no crisis. As Dr. Parker rummaged through her desk Diane told her about Ben Breck.

“Breck? I think I’ve heard of him. Let’s look him up.” She spun around in her chair and found a huge book. She opened it and flipped through. “Ah, here we go. He’s forty-one.… Impressive. Summa cum from Yale, ditto an M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology. Ph.D. in education from Chicago. He’s taught at a number of Ivy
League schools. Currently tenured at Chicago. Published extensively in the journals. Visiting at Auden, is he? Lucky you.”

“So I should take him up on it?”

“Cheap tutoring from an expert. I’d say there isn’t much of a choice there.”

“I’ve already told him I would.”

“I think you’ll see some dramatic improvements in Sarah.” The doctor looked at her watch. “This session will be very short, Mrs. Corde. A few minutes with you, a few with Sarah. I’m not going to charge you for the time.”

“My horoscope for this month must’ve said, ‘You will meet two generous therapists.’”

Dr. Parker’s sense of humor had been spent on the cartoon; she ignored the pleasantry and dug again with some irritation into the bottom of her desk drawer. Finally she extracted a small black box.

The doctor said, “You’re going to see Sarah carrying this around with her. Tell your husband and son to leave it alone. Don’t touch it, don’t listen to it, don’t ask her about it. Unless she says something first.”

Diane asked the most innocuous question she could think of. “Is it a tape recorder?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s it for?”

“I’m going to reconstruct Sarah’s self-esteem.”

“How?”

She answered tersely, “Sarah’s going to write a book.”

Diane smiled, a reflex. Then she decided that the joke was in poor taste and she frowned. Dr. Parker pushed the recorder, a blank cassette and an instruction book toward Diane, who scooped them up and held them helplessly. When the doctor said nothing more Diane said, “You’re not joking, are you?”

“Joking?” Dr. Parker looked as if Diane were the one making the tasteless comment. “Mrs. Corde, I’d think you’d know by now I rarely joke.”

Diane Corde believed that the perfection of children’s fingers was proof that God existed and she thought of this now watching her daughter hold the tape recorder, examining it with some small suspicion and turning it over in her pale hands. Diane unfolded a tattered copy of the instruction manual and took the recorder back. She set it on the living room coffee table. In her left hand she held two AA batteries and a new cassette.

“I think we should …” She examined the instruction sheet.

“Lemme,” Sarah said.

Diane read. “We have to—”

“Lemme.”

Click, click, click
. “There.”

Diane looked down. Sarah had the machine running and was pressing the Play and Record buttons simultaneously, saying, “Testing, testing.”

“How did you do that? Did you read the instructions?”

Sarah rewound the tape and pressed another button. Diane’s tinny voice repeated, “…
read the instructions?”

“Mom, come on. Like, it’s easy.” She looked at the recorder then back up to her mother. “Dr. Parker wants me to make up stories and put them in my book.”

“That’s what she said.”

“I don’t know what to write about. Maybe Buxter Fabricant?”

“I think Dr. Parker would like to hear that story. He’s the dog that became president, right?”

“I like Buxter—” Sarah scrunched her nose. “—but I already wrote that story. I could write, a story about Mrs. Drake Duck … , No, no, no! I’m going to write a story about Mrs. Beiderbug.”

“Sarah. Don’t make fun of people’s names.”

“It’s going to be a good story.” Sarah dropped the recorder in her Barbie backpack.

Jamie appeared in the doorway. He was eating a sandwich and carrying a glass of milk. From the way he was looking at Sarah, Diane knew he wanted to talk about something out of the girl’s presence. He turned and walked back into the kitchen. She heard the refrigerator door opening and the shuffle as he pulled out a plastic gallon jug of milk.

Diane stood up and walked into the kitchen. She took a package of chicken from the freezer and set it on a pad of paper towels, taking her time as she cut away the plastic wrapper. Jamie sat at the table and silently stared at his glass of milk, which he then gulped down. He stood, filled the glass again and returned to his chair. She thought it was odd that though Sarah had problems with language, speaking with Jamie was often far more difficult.

She asked, “Practice today?”

“Yeah. Later.”

“Then you have weight training?”

“Not today.”

There was nothing more she could do with the chicken and she decided to boil potatoes, because that would give her an excuse to stay in the kitchen for as long as he wanted her to be there. She began peeling. The silence was thick as oil smoke. Finally she said, “We know you didn’t have anything to do with it, Jamie.”

The prosecutor hadn’t presented the boy to the grand jury but he had warned the Cordes sternly that he would have to testify at Philip’s trial. And that there was a chance new evidence might arise implicating him further.

Jamie drank the milk like a man on a bender. He stood and she prayed he was just going to the refrigerator, not leaving the room. He poured another glass and sat down again. He asked, “Did Dad like look through my room or anything?”

“Did he what?”

When he didn’t repeat the question she said, “Your
father wouldn’t do that. If there was something bothering him he’d talk to you.”

“Uh-huh.” Her son sat with his head tilted, studying the glass. Diane wanted to tell him how much she loved him, how proud they were of him, how the incident at the pond—whatever had happened—was one of those ambiguous glitches in the complicated history of families that don’t touch the core of its love. Yet she was afraid to. She believed that if she did, the words would turn his heart as thick as his sculpted muscles and he would move further away from her.

Jamie—

Sarah appeared in the doorway. “He’s here, Mommy! Dr. Breck!”

Diane looked toward the living room and saw a car parked in the driveway. “Okay, I’ll be there in a minute.”

Sarah left and Diane said to her son, “Your father loves you.” She stood and ran a hand through his hair, feeling his neck muscles tense at this. He said nothing.

A
suspect had been arrested but Tom the pink-cheeked deputy was still taking his job seriously.

Nobody had relieved him of his command yet. Besides, he was hugely aware that somebody had gotten past him at least once and that Sarah had hightailed it into the woods right under his nose; he wasn’t letting Ben Breck put a foot on the front porch until he had the Queen’s okay.

Diane nodded. “It’s all right. He’s expected.” She turned to the man standing on the concrete walk. “Dr. Breck?”

“Call me Ben, please.” He walked past the deputy into the house.

Breck was over six feet tall, with dark, unruly hair laced with gray. Forty-one, she remembered Dr. Parker had said. He had boyish qualities—his voice and face, for instance—and you could see exactly what he had
looked like when he was twelve. He seemed to be in good shape but he was pale and this gave him the deceptive appearance of weakness. His eyes were dark. He wore black jeans and a tweed sports coat over a dark blue shirt. His hands were small and his fingers almost delicate. He slouched. Diane, accustomed to her husband’s military posture, was put off by this initially. Almost immediately though this aversion flipflopped and became pleasantly quirky. He carried a battered briefcase.

Diane motioned him to the couch. He glanced out the window. “Is there, uhm, something wrong?”

“Oh, the deputy? No, my husband’s a detective. He’s involved in the case where those girls were killed.”

“The students?”

“That’s right. The Sheriff’s Department sometimes has a deputy keeping an eye out on the houses of the investigators.”

Sarah bounded down the stairs and halted in the arched doorway to the living room, clutching her pink backpack and gazing at Breck. Diane noted that she had changed clothes and was now wearing her favorite T-shirt, bright blue and emblazoned with a seahorse. The girl brushed a long tail of hair from her face and said nothing.

“Sarah, this is Dr. Breck.”

“You’re my tutor.”

“That’s right. I’m pleased to meet you, Sarah,” Breck said.

To Diane’s surprise, the girl shook his hand.

Jamie walked quickly through the living room, wearing his biking shorts and a sweatshirt.

“Oh, Jamie …”

He glanced at the three people in the room and didn’t say a word. He left by the front door. She saw him leap on his bike and pedal quickly out of the driveway.