Runner (34 page)

After a week she said to Ruby, "Richard hasn't been to see me."

"Do you want him to?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Has he asked if I was okay?"

"Sure. I told him you were fine."

Christine came to the part that worried her. "Has he been to see Robert?"

"That he did," said Ruby. "The first day. Or at least the second. He came in and looked him over."

"He hasn't been alone with him, has he?"

"No. He knows nothing at all about babies. He's not going to be the sort of father who changes a diaper. Get that out of your mind."

At around that time they began to grant Christine more freedom. She was allowed to sit with Ruby, Robert, and the Mexican woman in the gardens, and sometimes to walk with them on the grass or dip her feet in the pool. The one thing that nobody would ever allow Christine to do was be outside with the baby alone.

"Why don't you let me be alone outside with Robert?"

"Too much sun isn't good for him."

"Or for anybody else. We're never outside for long, and he's always shaded."

Ruby eyed Christine wearily. "Let's just say it helps the rest of us to feel at ease. If he's inside, you can wander around out here pretty much as you please. We know you won't go anywhere. The gate is locked anyway."

"Then what are you worried about?"

"Honey, this is for your own good. For everybody's good. You must know that I have some control over certain things around here, but not others."

"Then who does have control of them?"

"Mostly my husband, Andy. But there are complicated issues here. Everybody has his own set of concerns. Getting into trouble, for instance. Richard and his hired people have a say in those areas, whether I want them to or not. None of them wants to be vulnerable, and I don't think any of them will tolerate much risk."

"They didn't mind the risk of kidnapping me."

"If you were to take off and run to the police, then by the time you got back, Robert wouldn't be here anymore."

"You mean they'd kill him?"

"I mean exactly what I said. I didn't say dead. I said gone. His crib and his toys and his clothes would be gone. You would never, ever know what became of him." She stared at her with what looked a lot like compassion. "I think you and I have got to team up and be sure that never happens. Don't you?"

It was only a few days after that conversation that the rules changed again. Christine was still nursing Robert every couple of hours, and soon it felt like too much work for someone to hear the baby cry, pick him up, and carry him down the hall, unlock the room,
and bring him to Christine. They let Robert stay with her. She liked it much better that way. At first she did what she was told and had Robert sleep in his crib until he woke up crying for milk, but then she brought him to bed with her and kept him there until daylight.

She got up one day and began to take stock of the world outside Robert. She needed to escape—now more than ever before. Now that he had been born, the Beales really didn't need her. She was a threat to them, a dangerous person who just might sneak out of her room sometime and get them arrested. The two women, Claudia and Sybil, were longing to be allowed to murder her. Richard certainly had no affection for her anymore, and he didn't even seem to have a sexual interest in her.

It occurred to her that there was a way, and a time, to escape. She realized now that she had been foolish to try so hard when she was nine months pregnant. There never had been a way out then. Everyone had been watching her, expecting her to try. Even if she had made it out of this room into the sunlight, there was no way a woman near the end of a pregnancy was going to outrun anybody who thought his life might depend on catching her.

But now Robert had arrived and changed everything around him. Ruby and Andy Beale were absolutely enthralled. Nothing mattered to them anymore except their grandson. Ruby never talked about Richard anymore, and barely noticed Christine. She would come into the room and head straight for Robert, not even looking directly at Christine even though she was nursing him.

Richard was still lurking around the premises part of the time. He went to work as usual, and Christine was under the impression that he still slept at the house where he and she had lived together. But he was sometimes visible through the window or down the hall in the late afternoon or evening. He would sit at the outdoor table
smoking cigarettes with the Mexican woman. Other times he would be on the back lawn talking to Steve Demming, Pete Tilton, Claudia, and Sybil. The two men just came here to meet with him, but the two women were here all the time. Apparently they had moved in to guard Christine, but they seemed to spend more and more time with Richard. Once the three of them went swimming in the pool, and it occurred to Christine that it was the only time she had seen anyone go near it, although she had been here for two weeks.

She realized that people weren't very interested in her anymore. They were only watching Robert. And they were all so arrogant and sure of themselves. She needed to keep them that way.

During the night Christine got everything ready—two receiving blankets, two one-piece outfits, two little knit caps. Andy and Ruby had begun bringing toys when Christine arrived, and Robert was still just "the baby," a theoretical person who might be male or might be female. One of the toys was a cute baby doll. When Christine had seen it, she had wondered if Ruby had lost whatever weak hold on reality she'd had. No child would be able to play with that for two years or more. The odd thing was that now that Robert was born, the doll seemed to bear a faint resemblance to him. It had the same light skin and the same cap of dark hair. Christine supposed that Ruby had looked at her and at Richard and made a fairly accurate guess at what the baby was going to look like. She hadn't done as well at guessing the sex.

At ten in the morning Christine opened the window of her room. She had dressed the doll and wrapped it in a blue receiving blanket, then put the little stocking cap on it. She opened the window, looked to be sure nobody was outside, pushed the doll between the bars, and let it drop to the ground behind the thick shrubs. Then she closed the window again.

She fed Robert, dressed him in a one-piece suit exactly like the suit she had put on the doll, and wrapped him in an identical blue receiving blanket. At ten-thirty Ruby came to her room just as she had been doing for the past few days.

Ruby said, "Our boy is looking pretty good, isn't he?"

"Robert
is doing great," said Christine. Sometimes it had occurred to her that Ruby said things that appeared to test her acceptance of her life of captivity, but were really meant to test her sincerity. If Christine had suddenly acted as though she was getting used to this, then Ruby would have known she was about to try something. She had to be very careful with Ruby.

Ruby said, "Want to take him out for a while?"

"I don't know," said Christine. "Is it hot out there? I don't want him in the sun."

"So sit in the shade with him. A little fresh air and indirect sunlight will be good for both of you." Ruby held the door open. As Christine walked to the doorway past her, Ruby said just above a whisper, "And if you don't mind my saying it, honey, there's nothing wrong with a little exercise for you, either. The sooner you get rid of that weight, the better things will seem. Nobody feels her best with an ass like a tugboat."

Christine carried Robert down the hall. Her jaw muscles were working, but she didn't realize it until the muscles suddenly felt tired. She artificially relaxed them and blew a breath out through her teeth. When she reached the first sliding glass door she opened it and stepped outside.

Christine walked toward the back of the yard, keeping Robert's face in the shade of her shoulder. When she got a few yards from the house she realized that Ruby had followed her.

Ruby said, "I hope I didn't hurt your feelings, Chris."

Christine gave her a look she hoped was withering. "What hurts
me is being a prisoner. I don't really care what any of you think about my ass."

Ruby pursed her lips and moved closer. "I apologize. Sometimes I'm a little too quick to talk without thinking. But I'm just trying to be your friend. I've been watching Richard. It's possible he's gotten over the shock of everything that's happened, and he'd be receptive to some sort of reconciliation if you made the right move."

"I didn't do anything to him—before I was kidnapped or after. If he's unhappy, that's his fault."

"That's not the point. Robert deserves a father. Don't you want to know why I think he might be interested?"

Christine shrugged. "No, but if you want to tell me, I can't stop you."

"I saw him watching you with Robert yesterday. He was in the house while you were out here. He didn't come out to talk to you or anything, but I could see there was something going on in his mind. The two of you just looked so pretty—you with Robert in your arms around sunset. You and I talked about this before. I know that you cared about him once. Loved him, even."

"You mean I'm supposed to try to get Richard to take me back?"

"I know that isn't on your agenda right now," Ruby said. "But sometime you might feel less bitter. You've also got to realize that looking your best isn't giving in to anybody. It gives you the power." She patted Christine's shoulder and stepped back. "Well, I've got to get going. I've got shopping to do, and the cook wants some help picking out dinners for the next few days. We've got so many more people living here now."

Christine began to feel her heart beating faster and faster as Ruby crossed the lawn. Could she be forgetting that Christine was alone out here with the baby in her arms?

Ruby went inside and started to close the door, but before she
could do it, Sybil and Claudia both slithered outside and started across the yard toward her. As they came she could see their eyes were like the eyes of cops, full of suspicion and yet detached, confident that they would detect her hidden intentions and be able to block them. They turned their heads this way and that to scan the yard to be sure Christine was alone, then stared at her to be sure she wasn't up to something and wasn't planning to move.

The fact that they would be the ones to watch her this time made her frightened, but she also felt eager. Fooling them would make her revenge even better. Then she wondered if she had been unconsciously feeling reluctant to fool Ruby, or maybe afraid she'd have to hurt her to get away.

As Sybil and Claudia stepped in her direction, Christine pretended not to notice them. She held Robert and turned to walk along the grassy edge of the garden, being sure to turn only to the right so when they arrived she was innocently moving away from the gap in the hedges that led to the driveway.

Sybil stationed herself between Christine and the driveway, and Claudia stopped about twenty feet away, ready to move to the right or left if Christine changed course. Christine kept her face close to Robert's, and murmured to him musically about the green grass and the blue sky and what a beautiful boy he was. And she kept walking. But she could see from their dull expressions and their slouching posture that Claudia and Sybil were already finding this guard duty dull. Christine would pit her love of Robert and her determination to escape against the two women's ability to fight their boredom and laziness.

She knew that they would tire of this job in a few minutes. It had surprised her at first to see that Sybil and Claudia had absolutely no interest in Robert. Most women were fascinated with new
born babies, wanted to look at them and touch them and hold them, but these two didn't. The only attention they paid to Robert was the attention necessary to keep him and Christine imprisoned at this house.

Christine kept walking, looking at Robert's face and cooing to him, and that was something she already knew she could do for hours at a time. She never looked at the two women, never talked to them, but kept herself intensely aware of where each of them was.

Christine kept at it for an hour and a half before the two women decided it wasn't necessary to stand while she walked. They sat down, Claudia beside the gap in the hedge and Sybil near the spot where the grass gave way to the grove of trees. Christine waited, and gradually the two began to let their eyes stray and look elsewhere—at the house, the gardens, and each other. When she saw them step close together so they could talk, Christine slowly made the course of her movements take her closer to the house. She picked a poppy at the edge of the lawn and held it up so Robert could see the bright orange flower. She sat on an Adirondack chair overlooking the pool and concentrated on keeping the sun out of Robert's eyes and off his baby skin. She knew that thinking about him would make her able to outlast Sybil and Claudia. Robert was awake, and it seemed to Christine that he was looking with curiosity at the light and shadows as the wind made the trees sway back and forth near the buildings.

The two women were more comfortable now that Christine was away from the forbidden places—the gap in the hedge, which Christine could now see was an open wrought-iron gate, and the pathway around the garage to the cars. As long as the pair were between her and those places, they felt comfortable enough to sit talking. When Robert cried for milk they looked up for a second, saw Christine lifting her shirt to nurse him, and looked away again.

After Robert was fed, Christine began to walk again, holding him upright to burp him with his face resting on a cloth diaper on her shoulder. This time she walked along the side of the house. Robert was happy and full, and after a few minutes he fell asleep. Christine continued walking along in the shade of the house looking in the windows at the deserted rooms, and then came to the barred window of her own room. She used the diaper from her shoulder to wipe a little milk off Robert's lip, but then dropped the diaper. She knelt down, and checked to be sure she was behind the Adirondack chairs and out of sight of the women.

Christine's heart began to speed up as she lay her beautiful, perfect son in his blue blanket on the bed of cedar chips under her window, picked up the diaper and the baby doll wrapped in the same kind of blue blanket, cradled it in her arms just the way she had cradled Robert, and walked along the side of the house in the direction of the sliding door.