The World as I Found It (74 page)

What happened? he asked. Did a pipe burst?

Dora dropped her hand. He plugged the sink and left the water running.

Russell slouched against the door jamb. Who had him? They were supposed to be
watching
him.

Miss Gilmer had him. She said she
was
watching him. Dora closed her eyes, then said with a weary pass of the hand, It's a wreck downstairs as well. A ceiling collapsed — the room where Wittgenstein was to sleep. Of course, he denies it … Dora trailed off, then said almost imploringly, Bertie, I can't stand any more of this. We've got to get him out of here.

I'm trying, he said. But what can I do? The detective —

Forget the detective, she broke in. We can't wait for your detective to find his mother. It might take another month, and God knows what he'll do in the meantime. I'm frightened he'll set the house on fire or injure one of the children. He's beyond us. We've got to get some institution to take him — and I don't mean next week, either. I've a very bad feeling.

Russell was rubbing his face with his hand. I know, he said, looking up. You're right, but, my God, the expense! If the detective doesn't find his mother soon, he'll ruin us.

The boy in question was Rabe Peck, a fat, freckle-faced American boy of nine who had started at the school about six weeks ago — right about the time the new teacher did.

Even Russell had wondered if his distraction with the new teacher wasn't partly to blame for his poor judgment in admitting the boy to Beacon Hill. Dora wasn't the only one to suspect that his brain had been in his trousers that day. Miss Marmer, Russell's most senior teacher and current mistress, was also furious at him for the decision — doubly so that he had made it without consulting her.

One thing was certain: hard as it was to find a good child, it was often that much harder to find a bad child's parents or wheezy maiden aunt once one was desperate to give him back.

Rabe Peck wasn't the first such child they'd been stuck with. The teachers even had a name for these children — “hot potatoes.” Rabe Peck was some potato: to be exact, he was a six-stone hot potato with a club foot who liked to snuggle up to adults while making warm puppy noises — and then swipe their cigarettes. It was Rabe who had burned down the shed. In his short stay at the school, Rabe had so distinguished himself that the teachers had nicknamed him Rape. The children called the fat boy Puffo or Stiffer for the way he dragged his foot. Later, when his bed-wetting was discovered, they found an even crueler name: Wee-wee. Several of the boys had a way of saying the name so faintly under their breath, and at such a freak pitch, that it was almost inaudible to adult ears. It was pure torture for Rabe. A teacher would be calmly conducting a class when Rabe, for no apparent reason, would fly into a rage, screeching and bucking and throwing anything in reach. The boy couldn't stand teasing.

Rabe had shown little sign of his problems the day his mother brought him to Beacon Hill, arriving one morning in a hired car piled with baggage. Accompanying Mrs. Peck and her son was an older Negro woman wearing a worn blue suit and white gloves, with tightly rolled hair and skin so black it had a bluish gun-barrel cast to it. The woman hung back so as not to upstage her extravagant mistress, who fairly leapt from the car, exclaiming about the view, Look out there, Rabie. Id'nit lovely!

Standing discreetly behind them, a little smudged, the Negro woman, Mrs. Price, looked out over the countryside but didn't say a word. She politely declined Dora's offer to show her the school while Russell spoke with Mrs. Peck, just as she politely declined her offer of a glass of iced tea. Her accent was deep and her phrasing was emphatically precise and grammatical. Mrs. Price thought she would sit up on the porch, if that was all right. Do you want to sit with me while Mr. Russell speaks to your mother? Mrs. Price asked the boy. Standing like a lump by the car, the boy sullenly shook his head, his fat arms dangling like dead fish. Very well, then, said Mrs. Price, who then went up on the porch and sat down. Mrs. Price was obviously used to waiting. Stoical and sovereign, she carefully teased off her gloves and folded them on her lap, ignoring the open-mouthed stares of the other children, who then were drifting out. Most of them had never seen a colored person before.

Mrs. C. Randowne Peck of Columbia, South Carolina, was a plump whirlwind in white perched on two-tone patent pumps. Gay, petty, imperious, with a deep southern drawl, she was a remarkably unconscious woman who clearly was accustomed to doing exactly as she pleased. Hardly had she sat down in Russell's office than she pulled off her shoes and without a thought began rubbing her swollen red toes, all the while talking. She said she was very sorry, she'd forgotten the boy's report cards, then launched into a complicated explanation that Russell politely declined to hear, saying, That's quite all right. Oh, thank you, she said, emphasizing that she would wire the States and have complete transcripts of the boy's record promptly sent to the school. But then she remembered something else she'd brought and withdrew from her purse a letter from Miss March — Miss March of
Miss March's School in Savannah
? she asked, her voice rising in inflection. Oh, it's famous throughout the South. Rather progressive, too.

Russell took the letter that Miss March had written on her own engraved stationery, solemnly extolling Rabe's sterling qualities. Mrs. Peck, in turn, took Russell's questionnaire and with a gold-nibbed pen thoughtfully ran down the standard medical list, checking
No
to problems such as
Fainting Spells, Tantrums
and
Bed-wetting
. The Beacon Hill questionnaire also contained a box concerning marital status in which Mrs. Peck mischievously crossed out
Divorced
and wrote in “Remarried,” saying coquettishly, That sounds so very much nicer, don't you think, Mr. Russell? Russell laughed, then admitted that he was “remarried” himself. It never occurred to him to ask pert Mrs. Peck how many times she had remarried.

As a rule, Russell disliked Southerners, but in a peculiar way Mrs. Peck grew on him as the interview progressed. Though on the surface she seemed flighty and somewhat scatterbrained, he could see that this was something of a ruse. Beneath the patter, the woman was clearly quite shrewd, in charge of a successful importing business that she said required frequent travel, which unfortunately took her too often away from her sensitive son. Not, she hastened to add, that he would ever have any trouble reaching her through her London office. I'm always available, she said, withdrawing from a silver case a handsome engraved card that showed a quite substantial address in Belgravia. Mrs. Peck added, Miss March, God rest her soul, never had any trouble reaching me.

As for Rabe, he seemed quite bright and inquisitive, shy and eager to please — perhaps too eager, thought the schoolmaster, adding in his notes that he “might suffer from a lack of confidence.” The boy said he liked arithmetic and science. He also liked reading a whole lot, especially Dickens and books about animals. He really liked animals, he said. He wanted to be a veterinarian.

As for his queer high-pitched laugh and the way he squirmed in his seat during the interview — well, Russell did notice this, but he didn't find it especially alarming. The boy did seem a little shy around the other children, but this wasn't so unusual either, especially for a heavy boy with a game foot. Still, the foot wasn't all that severe, and Mrs. Peck did not fail to add that Rabie had two extra pairs of special built-up shoes, as well as a third pair specially made for athletics. She was ecstatic when Russell said, rather officially, that they would want to put the boy on a diet, providing, of course, that they decided to take him. Why, I agree with you one hundred percent! said Mrs. Peck. Then, unable to contain herself, she said how much she admired
Marriage and Morals
and his thought-provoking articles. Say what you will, Mr. Russell, she added impulsively, forward-looking Southerners are listening to you.

Wonderful! said Russell. Perhaps in that case they'll enact an anti-lynching law. That would certainly be very forward looking.

Forward looking, agreed Mrs. Peck carefully, but not very likely, I'm afraid.

They talked for a while about the South and the Scottsboro lynching case. Then Dora met with Mrs. Peck and the boy, but she was feeling unwell again and, after a few minutes, had to excuse herself. Russell, meanwhile, was too preoccupied with fantasies of Lily to spend much time weighing the decision. And really, Russell didn't have deep feelings either way about the boy. Actually, he thought he was being rather coldly practical about the matter. Summer was coming, and they would be short of students and short of money. The truth was, he was too strapped to be turning down a paying prospect.

Rabe cried when his mother kissed him good-bye. Mrs. Price also kissed the boy — pointed a warning finger at him, too. Later, Russell would find himself thinking about Mrs. Price, remembering how much more refined she seemed than her mistress, as if it had fallen on her to care for tarnished custom in the way she did the family silver. Then again, the family silver was probably in hock, because two weeks later Mrs. Peck's London bank returned her check for insufficient funds.

For a couple of weeks, the boy did a fairly good job of fooling everyone — everyone, that is, except Miss Marmer.

His bed-wetting was the first sign. Rabe had been there three days before it was discovered, but once discovered, it quickly worsened with the stress of discovery and the taunts from the other children. And soon there were other signs: the anger and manipulativeness, the fibs, fantasies and implausible stories.

Almost from the first, Miss Marmer felt there was something not right about him.

I'll say it again, she said out of the blue one night when she and Russell were making love, I think you've made a terrible mistake with that boy.

And I think you're being typically hasty, said the headmaster, undulating over her.

Au contraire
, she insisted. You're the hasty one — as usual. Slow down!

She could be acerbic and a know-it-all, Miss Marmer. Whatever her deficiencies in dealing with adults, though, she did know children. But Rabe wasn't the issue here; what Miss Marmer was really miffed about, Russell saw, was his growing preoccupation with the girl. Not that Miss Marmer ever would have overtly expressed jealousy, let alone emotional need. She was far too proud and independent for that. From the start, Miss Marmer had said that she knew there could be nothing enduring between them, and that that was exactly how she wanted it. Hadn't she told him that she shuddered at the thought of spending a weekend alone with him — with any man? She would feel as if she were suffocating.

But if Miss Marmer was not the marrying kind, neither was she, at thirty-eight, a celibate spinster. She loved sex, and by her account had had many affairs. She said she preferred being a mistress, which seemed so much more sexy and knowing, so much less claustrophobic than being some man's “cow.” It seemed to Russell that being a mistress — a temptress — better fit Miss Marmer's exaggerated romantic image of herself. No one knew what she
really
felt, she seemed to say, implying that within her small bosom there welled a vast gulf of solitude and great unknown passions that she would carry to her grave without ever divulging to anyone, especially a man. She adored the gush of opera. She was Madame Butterfly, she was Carmen and Isolde. She likewise adored the so terribly apt poems of that literary lioness Edna St. Vincent Millay. And, perversely, like many intensely private people, Miss Marmer was prone, in spite of herself, to say some queasily revealing things. Entering her claustrophobic, candlelit room late one night, Russell found her reclining in a long negligee with bowed sleeves, reading Poe's “Ligeia.” Oh, why did Poe, such
genius
, have to die so wretchedly, in a gutter? she asked rhetorically. Then, with a queer, self-satisfied smirk, she closed the book, confidently saying,
I
could have saved him.

For close to a year now, it had been almost perfect. Dora looked the other way and the solitary, faintly sibylline Miss Marmer asked only that he be punctual and
adagio
, then
andante
, then
presto
! Also, that he bite her rear end. Yes, Higgins aside, it had been rather all right until that girl had come along.

The boy, meanwhile, was exhibiting more disturbing signs. For instance, there was the way he would bite his arm when he was excited, gnawing it and shaking it like a flipper and laughing with wild glee. Then there was the way he liked to talk about death, especially gruesome death — fires, automobile wrecks, dismemberments and the like.

On the other hand, Rabe genuinely craved affection, and he was no fool in knowing where to seek it: once they put him on his diet, he attached himself like a barnacle to the cook, Mrs. Bride.

Mrs. Bride told Russell that she liked the boy, but there was an incident with him one day that she said had certainly made her wonder if the poor lad was not, well, troubled a bit. It happened in the kitchen. Watching Mrs. Bride sharpen her knives, Rabe asked if he might test the blade on his thumb the way she did.

I should have known better than to give it to him, Mrs. Bride told Russell. Oh, he was just aquiverin' with excitement, you know, like — like a dog about to get his supper.

Finally, reluctantly, well-meaning Mrs. Bride gave in, but for all her warnings, he immediately — and she thought purposely — drew the blade across his thumb. It cut me, it cut me! he squealed. OWWWwwwww … It was not a serious cut, but Mrs. Bride remembered how his eyes gorged at the bright beads of blood, then how he stared at her, almost drunkenly, as if the cut symbolized some special bond between them. Nor could she forget how he had thrust the thumb in his mouth, mournfully sucking it like a sour candy, before he jerked his head around to gnaw at his other arm, which had begun flopping uncontrollably. Well, sir, said Mrs. Bride, concluding her tale to the headmaster. I told him to stop — oh, I scolded him, I did. Well, I ran to fetch the gauze. It was awful. When I got back, his poor arm was covered with red teeth marks. I didn't know what to think, sir. I thought it must be the pain.