Wicked Angel (4 page)

“Don’t you dare, don’t you dare!” she panted savagely. “Don’t you dare touch him, Mark Saint! Let go of him! He’ll have a convulsion! You’ll kill him, I tell you, you’ll kill him!”

Alice leaned against the wall and shut her eyes and felt sick. Then she heard two hard cracks, almost like shots, one after another, over the screaming of mother and son. And now only Kathy was screaming. Alice opened her eyes.

Kathy was lifting the boy in her arms. Her opened mouth emitted senseless whine after whine and her eyes were dazed and distended. Angelo’s cheeks were reddening darkly, but he was silent. He was touching his face, tentatively, and staring without a blink at his father, whose hand was still lifted after the blows.

Then Alice fled, throwing open the door and running down the walk to her little, old car down the street near the curb. She ran as from a most dreadful sight; her heart pounded with speed and pain.

CHAPTER TWO

Alice Knowles came out into a fine spring snow, like drifting sand. It was cool and refreshing against her tired face. She was almost the last teacher to leave the school; a few children were screaming in the adjacent playgrounds, and the sound of their voices was like the scrape of steel against her eardrums. She was so very tired! She had once asked an older teacher, who was thankfully reaching the age of retirement, if children in the first grade had been so wearing and exhausting in her day, and the teacher, very promptly, had replied in the negative. Twenty-five years ago, she had said, when she had taught first grade, it was expected that boys and girls of five and six would behave themselves, conduct themselves respectfully toward their teachers, dress themselves in cold weather and put on their own arctics, and be interested, or at least quiet, at their desks. “Why, they could read very well at the end of the first year!” the teacher had exclaimed. “Now they can’t read even in the fifth grade. I don’t know. Are we getting more inferior children, in this mass education business, or are parents now more stupid and careless and indifferent than they used to be? I sometimes look at the parents during PTA meetings, and they always have something to say in big, loud voices, and they don’t say anything! They want the teachers to be full-time baby-sitters, child psychologists, play-leaders, chorus-trainers, nursemaids and child-adorers. Especially they want the teachers to worship their children, as if there had never been any such magnificent kids in the world before! Education? Discipline? Those are non-essentials. And vet these people have the audacity to blame the schools for their children’s delinquency. ignorance and inability to learn! At our salaries, too! Give the kids marble halls and sports, and the heck with subject matter! It isn’t our fault; it’s the parents’. People get just what they want, and deserve.”

But teachers did not deserve the kind of children who were noisily and impudently filling the schoolrooms these days. They did not deserve children of six who were unable to do even the most elementary things for themselves. They did not deserve children who screamed and threatened at the slightest attempt to impose discipline, and who bounded and bounced in their seats, and shrieked and giggled during attempts to teach them. Why did anyone want to be a teacher? Alice thought. It isn’t the salary, which is disgracefully small. I like children; I think teaching is the noblest thing in the world, and most teachers think that, too. But the parents have degraded it to the meanest occupation, and the least worthy.

As she did very often, Alice gravely considered leaving the school system. She was well-educated; she had taken a business course in addition to her liberal arts course. She could obtain a position in an office at much more than she was receiving in the schools, various benefits, paid vacations, and in the company of intelligent adults. Why, then, did she stay? Was it a sense of duty toward these masses of young pulpy humans—overgrown, overfed, overindulged, overstuffed with vitamins, slopping with milk—and a sense of duty to the world of the future? If no one attempted to undo the mischief of stupid parents then America, in a decade or two, would be filled with soft and whining men and women ripe for any harsh dictatorship that would guide and rule them, feed and house them, at the expense of their immortal souls and the continuing existence of their free country.

People ignorantly talked of the “few hours and long vacations” of teachers, and their “security.” It was true that Alice and the other teachers were ostensibly at liberty after three o’clock. But that was only the beginning of their real work, such as correcting papers, planning lessons, and extra study. If any teacher worked less than ten hours a day then she was a remarkable specimen; she did not exist to Alice’s knowledge. The summer holidays were either a period of prostrated attempts to rest, or of working in other employment to make up for the meager salaries, or of studying in institutions in order to become better teachers. Teachers were often criticized for wanness and drabness. “Do they expect us to be glamour girls after tussling with their children for hours?” Alice once asked an older teacher. “And do they expect us to be able to afford French models on our salaries?”

The girl slowly descended the broad white stone stairs of the school, while the spring snow compassionately soothed her tense and weary face. She looked behind her at the school, a fine, rich, two-story building of rosy brick, very modern, very expensive, with tessellated floors, washrooms a Caesar would have envied, gymnasiums fit for kings, a swimming pool of aquamarine tiles, schoolrooms as comfortable and charming as drawing rooms, and a small theater which would have excited envy in actors on Broadway. But Alice’s salary, in her first year, was less than four thousand dollars a year, after the deductions for pension, taxes, and sundries. And she and the other teacher paid eighty dollars a month for their tiny third-floor apartment under the roof, sharing a bathroom, very primitive, with two other teachers in another apartment. We’re damn fools, thought Alice, with anger. We should demand twice as much money as we’re getting; we should demand that parents respect our authority and keep out of our business; we should demand less extravagant school plants: we should demand that no extracurricular activities be asked of us, so that we have the time and energy to devote ourselves to pure teaching, and nothing else. Schools aren’t “happiness centers.” They are places to teach the young the rigors of reality. the disciplines of living, and above all, as much subject matter as possible.

A few teachers passed her; they were too tired to stop for gossip; they merely exchanged tight white smiles with the girl. Some were old, shabby and bent. Some were beginning to show the intense strain after a few years of teaching; some were as young and confused and rebellious as herself. But all were tired.

Sometimes a visiting psychiatrist would lecture the teachers sternly. They must teach the children “life-adiustment. happiness, social amenities, group cooperation.” They must be “alert” for emotional problems among their charges. These were complex days, the psychiatrist would say, letting his quelling eyes rove over the silent women. A child must have a center of security, love and happiness in his school, in the midst of the world’s storm and rage and insecurity. What the fool doesn’t remember, or know, thought Alice, who knew her history well, is that the world has always been full of storm and rage and insecurity, from its very birth, and that somehow, and with strength and courage and fortitude, the children of the past managed to survive and create civilizations and art and science and maintain and build churches and enforce both the laws of God and men. They learned their first disciplines, their first responsibilities to the world in which they lived, in school. But the parents had demanded a more “modern” approach to teaching, and they had it, and they also had undisciplined, weak, screeching, and exigent children, ripe for crime, for dominance by the unprincipled strong, for atheism. When and where did this adoration for “The Children” begin? Who had told them they were the most important creatures in the world? There was another ominous sign in the schools these days: many of the boys and girls were exhibiting the traits of Alice’s own nephew, Angelo Bruce Saint.

Sighing, shifting the books and papers on her arm, Alice walked down the street to a drugstore where she could buy a badly needed cup of coffee. She wished to delay, as long as possible, the return to the chill and dreary apartment in which she lived. The drugstore was already filled with howling boys and girls of all ages, swarming from booth to booth, spilling over the soda counters, snatching comic books from each other, shrilling, laughing, running. Why weren’t those great boys and girls in their early teens at home, helping their mothers or earning their own spending money at some neighborhood job? All were overlarge, overweight, overdressed, rosy, empty-eyed, and grinning. This was a lower-middle-class neighborhood; the children looked like the offspring of millionaires, due to the stupid self-sacrifice and vanity of hardworking parents. When they were older, and the great hard world of reality impinged upon them, they would bawl like bewildered and angry calves, demanding of their neighbors and government the same benefits and indulgences they had enjoyed in their schools and homes. To the ruin of America.

Alice was young and strong, and not much older than the bigger boys and girls, and she elbowed a youth and his girl out of the way in the race to the one empty booth. They scowled at her. She sat down and put her books and papers on the table, and looked formidably at the two who hovered indignantly close by. Her stare intimidated them; grumbling and sulky, they moved away, muttering about “teachers.” She ordered coffee and two doughnuts, and leaned her weary cheek on her hand as she waited. She closed her gritty eyes and tried not to hear the din in the store.

A man’s voice said in surprise and pleasure, “Why, hello, Allie!” She started and looked up, to see Mark Saint, with his briefcase, standing beside her table. He stood there, tall and thin and vibrant, his dark skin flushed with cold, his crisp dark hair sprinkled with snow. Alice’s heart rose on a painful yet joyous surge. She had not seen her brother-in-law since last August, eight months ago. She could not speak; she could only smile. He sat down opposite her, and looked at her with affection.

“Just dropped in for a prescription, and there you were,” he said. “How are you, Allie?”

“Fine, Mark.” The uproar in the drugstore faded from Alice’s consciousness. A fine trembling ran over her flesh. The girl came with the coffee and doughnuts, and Mark ordered coffee for himself. Mark said, in a low voice of solicitude, “You look tired, Allie. Anything wrong?”

“No. It’s just school,” said Alice. An uncomfortable color began to rise in her pale cheeks. “How—how is Kathy? And Angelo?”

“Fine.” A closed expression appeared on his face as he bent his head and stirred his coffee. “Why haven’t you been around, Allie? We didn’t even see you at Thanksgiving or Christmas. Kathy told me your friend, the other teacher, had asked you to spend the holidays with her and her parents in Boston. But you could have come in at other times. After all, we’re the only family you have.”

He lifted his head suddenly and regarded her with his piercing hazel eyes. Alice hastily glanced away. “I’ll come in soon,” she murmured. “It’s just I’ve been so busy.”

Mark was silent. It was Elsie, on the eve of her leaving the Saint household, who had come to him to tell him candidly that Kathy had called Alice, after that wild day in August, and had hysterically accused her of many crimes, among them of hating her child, plotting jealously against her child, abusing her child, and attempting to create dissension between husband and wife. Kathy had then forbidden her home to her sister in the future. “I never want to see you again!” she had screamed. “There’s always strain and trouble after you’ve been here, and my nerves are too delicate, and Angel is too sensitive for such things!”

Alice was also thinking, now, of that telephone call. She was not aware that Mark knew of it. Then at Thanksgiving, and then again at Christmas, Kathy had written her gushing and complaining notes, accusing her of neglect, and inviting her as usual for the holidays. Her lack of sensitivity had appalled Alice, who had made polite excuses. But it was Kathy who spoke constantly to Mark of Alice’s coldness and lack of affection for her “family.” Was she impervious, and incapable of empathy and understanding, or had her call to Alice been merely a hysterical reaction to the events of that August day? Mark often asked himself, as did Alice herself.

“You know Kathy,” said Mark quietly, bending toward Alice. “You shouldn’t take her seriously. You’re her only sister; she loves you, you know, Allie.”

“Oh, of course,” said Alice, with increasing discomfort. “I’ll drop in soon, Mark.” But she had no such intention. It would take a long time before her wounds would be healed.

“I insisted on sending Angelo to nursery school last September,” said Mark. “And I’m insisting on calling him by his middle name—Bruce.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful about the nursery school,” said Alice. She paused. “But Angelo is a beautiful name. Why Bruce?”

Mark sipped his coffee. “The kids laughed at him in school. They called him Angel Saint. Kids can be very cruel, you know. Angel Saint! I suppose that’s what Kathy had in mind when she named him. But listen to how it sounds, for a boy!”

Alice smiled. “Well, it does sound a little fanciful and precious. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry. Yes, ‘Bruce’ is better. How does Kathy like that?”

“She still calls him Angel, at home.” Mark grinned. “I’m hoping she’ll get over it, as he grows older.”

“And–Bruce? How does he like to be called Bruce?”

Mark did not look at her. “He doesn’t. But that doesn’t matter. That’s his name from here on. A. Bruce Saint.”

“Does he like the nursery school?”

Mark was silent so long, and his expression was so remote and brooding that Alice thought he had not heard her. And then he said, flatly, “He isn’t at the school any longer.”

“Oh.” Alice waited. She saw dark trouble on Mark’s face, and she wanted to put out her hand and place it over the thin clever hand near hers. Dear Mark! Dearest Mark!