Suffer the Children (39 page)

The cat looked up at her and mewed.

“Oh, all right, come on,” Elizabeth said, opening the front door. The cat bounded out into the bright spring sunlight.

Elizabeth, seeing Ray Norton’s car still parked on the Point Road by the field, dedded to go over to the woods and watch the construction. She had avoided the woods for years, until she had had to walk the property
with the real-estate agent she had listed it with. Even then she had not felt comfortable about the woods or the embankment. But now, with the construction work going on and the area bustling with activity, it had lost its threat, and she found she enjoyed going there.

She found Ray Norton sitting with his back to a tree, patiently watching the work.

“May I join you?” She smiled.

The old policeman looked up in surprise. “Well, look who’s here,” he said. “Since when are young Congers allowed to play out here?” His eyes were twinkling, and Elizabeth laughed softly.

“Not that young any more,” she said. “And besides, it’s all different since they took over.” She made a gesture that encompassed all the men and machinery around them.

“Hmph,” Norton snorted. “If you ask me, it was better the way it was.”

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth mused. “I know I shouldn’t say it, but I’m kind of glad it’s all happening. For the first time in my life I feel comfortable out here.” She stared out to sea for a moment, then spoke again.

“Mr. Norton, do you suppose there ever really was anything out here?”

“For instance?” Norton countered.

“Oh, the cave, I suppose. I know you’ve been searching for it for years, and you’ve never found it, but you think it’s here somewhere, don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” the old man said. “For a long time I didn’t believe it was here, then I did believe it Now I don’t know what I think. I guess when you get to be my age that’s normal. At least I hope it is, because it’s the way I am.”

“Will you be coming back?” Elizabeth asked him. “I mean, when all this building is done and there are people living here. Will you still come out each spring to look around?”

Norton shook his head. “I doubt it For one thing,
I’ll be retired by this time next year. And for another, this place just won’t be the same. If I don’t find what I’m looking for this year, I won’t find it.”

Elizabeth stood up and patted the old man on the back.

“You’ll find it,” she reassured him. “Whatever it is, if it’s here you’ll find it.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to get going,” she said. Norton looked at her curiously.

“Sarah’s coming home today,” she explained. “Just for a visit, to see how it goes. But it’ll be the first time in fifteen years.” She paused, then winked at Norton. “And I didn’t even clean up the kitchen,” she added. “I thought it would be homier that way.” She turned and started back through the woods, picking her way carefully through the brambles. Twice she caught her foot. She’d be glad when it was all cleared away.

The old policeman watched her until she had disappeared into the trees, then turned his attention back to the workmen.

So she’s coming home, he thought. Well, that’s nice.

If he was going to find anything after all these years, he was going to find it today. He made himself comfortable and kept on watching. It was all right; he didn’t have anything better to do. When he thought about it Ray Norton realized that he hadn’t had anything better to do for fifteen years.

Three hours later, as Ray Norton looked on, one of the pile drivers setting the foundations for the apartment complex broke through the roof of the upper cavern. The light of day shined dimly down on the gates of hell.

Ocean Crest Institute, which had dropped the word “Mental” from its name several years ago, sprawled over twenty-five acres of woods and lawns on a bluff above the Atlantic. It looked as much like a resort hotel as its management could make it, and it was able to keep its costs within reason only through the grace of an enormous endowment that had accumulated over the years from the bequests of wealthy families grateful for the care and discretion that Ocean Crest had shown their members whose eccentricities had gone beyond the harmless. No bars marred the view from the windows of Ocean Crest; instead, bulletproof glass had been installed in the units that housed those patients deemed to be dangerous. Sarah Conger had lived in one of those units for four years, never knowing that she could not have left by one of the windows. She had never tried. Residents of Ocean Crest rarely tried to leave; if they ever wandered off, it was usually through confusion, not a desire to escape.

After the first four years Sarah Conger had been moved out of the security unit and into a small house that she shared with three other adolescent girls and a housemother. An outsider, not knowing that all the girls were victims of mental disorders, would have thought them only unusually quiet. There were rarely any outbursts of any kind from the girls. Rather, they lived as close to a normal life as Ocean Crest could make for them. The director, Dr. Lawrence Felding, was totally
committed to the idea that the mentally ill need “asylum,” not treatment If you want someone to be normal, Dr. Felding maintained, you have to treat him as though he is. People, he had discovered, tend to live up to nonverbal expectations much more readily than to stated orders.

On the other hand, Dr. Felding saw to it that very little at Ocean Crest was left to chance. What he had done was develop a level of planned spontaneity that seemed to work for his patients. Often residents of Ocean Crest were surprised to discover that a friend known for months, or even years, whom they had always assumed to be another resident, was a psychiatrist. The doctors of Ocean Crest happily conducted therapy over card games, picnics, and “chance” meetings in lounges.

It was only when residents were being considered for discharge that formal meetings were held with doctors. And after fifteen years at Ocean Crest, Sarah Conger was starting to have formal meetings with her doctors.

“How does it feel to be going home?” Larry Felding was asking her.

Sarah lit a cigarette nervously and shook the match out before answering. “It doesn’t feel like going home at all,” she said. “I’ve spent more than half my life here. This is home.”

Larry Felding laughed easily. “Careful. If you say that in the wrong place, people will say you’re getting institutionalized.”

Sarah grinned at him, and Larry Felding remembered all the years when Sarah Conger had never grinned, had simply sat mutely staring out at the sea, her face expressionless. Her silence had been complete for three years, and it had been another five before she had begun to speak in complete sentences. When she had been at Ocean Crest for ten years she finally smiled, and it was then that Felding had begun to be hopeful that she would eventually recover. For the last year or so it had
been rare that Sarah Conger was not grinning. Her good humor faded now only when someone tried to talk to her about the events that had occurred just before she had come to Ocean Crest. Then her grin would fade, and she would become uncomfortable. She could not remember what had happened. Larry Felding was sorry that he was going to have to kill that grin now, but he didn’t see any way out of it.

“While you’re at home, Sarah,” he said, “I want you to try to remember.”

“Remember?” Sarah said, the grin predictably fading. “Remember what?” Felding looked at her over the top of his half glasses, and Sarah squirmed. “All right,” she said. “I know what you’re talking about and I won’t pretend I don’t And I know I have to remember all of it.” Then her smile sneaked back onto her face. “Of course,” she said slyly, “if I don’t remember, I can’t be discharged, can I?”

“No,” Felding replied, examining his fingernails. “But I could always kick you out for malingering, couldn’t I?”

“Not you,” Sarah said complacently. “You couldn’t kick a squirrel out of here.” Then she turned serious again. “I think I’m afraid to remember, Larry. I really think that’s what it is.”

“Bully for you,” Felding commented. “After fifteen years you’ve finally discovered that we don’t face what we’re afraid to face. Shall I put that on your chart?” Then he leaned forward and the banter left his voice. “Of course you’re afraid, Sarah. When you do remember, it’s not going to be pleasant. In fact, I’m afraid it’s going to be very unpleasant But you won’t remember all of it at once. It’ll come back to you in bits and pieces, like the day in the woods with your father. You won’t have to face it all at once. But you have to face it Otherwise we won’t ever be able to call you ‘well,’ whatever that means. So while you’re at home I want you to try to remember what happened.”

“All right,” Sarah said reluctantly. “I’ll try. But I’m
not going to promise anything. Is there anything special I should do? Anything that might help to jog my memory?”

Felding shrugged. “Who knows? You might try wandering around in the woods or the field.”

“The woods are being torn down,” Sarah said. “Elizabeth had to sell them off to keep this place going, remember?” Her infectious grin was back, and Larry Felding decided not to disturb it again. He sighed in mock embarrassment.

“I know,” he said. “But I have to pay for my Rolls-Royces some way.” He stared out the window at the battered Chevy that was technically his, but which everyone at Ocean Crest used as a sort of public transportation system. He saw another car pulling into the slot next to his.

“Speaking of Elizabeth, here she is. Are you ready?”

“I’ll go get my bag,” Sarah said, standing up. “I suppose you’ll want to have your usual private chat with the family.”

“You’ve been here too long,” Felding said sourly. “You’re catching on to how this place works.” Sarah winked at him, and he smiled back at her. “Tell Elizabeth to come in, will you?”

“Okay. How long shall I take to get my bag? The usual ten minutes?”

“Get out of here!” Felding cried, and Sarah fled, giggling to herself. She met Elizabeth in the hall.

“Hi,” she said. “Larry wants to talk to you, but I think I just upset him. Go in and calm him down.” Still laughing, she left the building and started across the lawn to the house she had been living in for the last five years.

Elizabeth tapped lightly on the open door and stuck her head inside. Felding’s eyes were twinkling when he looked at her.

“Come in,” he said, waving. “I just kicked your sister out.”

“She said she’d upset you. What happened?” Elizabeth wasn’t sure whether she should be concerned. When Felding laughed, she relaxed.

“Sometimes I almost wish for the old days when she didn’t say anything at all. She takes a very strange pleasure in needling me. Was she like that when she was a child?”

“From the day she was born. She was sassy, but she was happy. It made it all the harder when she got sick. She was so different all of a sudden.” She was silent for a moment, remembering. Then she shook off the memory and met Dr. Felding’s eyes. “Sarah said you wanted to talk to me?”

“Yes. I always like to have a little chat with a resident’s family before they go home for the first time. To prepare them for anything that might happen.”

“And something might happen with Sarah?” Elizabeth asked anxiously.

“I don’t know.” Dr. Felding was frank. “It all depends, really, on Sarah.”

“Sarah? I don’t understand.”

“I’ve asked her to do something while she’s home,” Felding explained. “I’ve told her that I want her to use the time to try to remember what happened that day she walked out of the woods.”

“I see,” Elizabeth said noncommittally. “Is there anything you’d like me to do?”

“Only if you want to.”

“If it’ll help Sarah, I’ll do anything,” Elizabeth said earnestly. “You know that.”

“Well, you don’t need to sound so serious. I don’t have anything terrible in mind. Tell me, is the house much different from when Sarah left?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “That house hasn’t changed much in generations, let alone years.” Then her expression clouded over a little. “Except for Sarah’s room,” she said, half apologetically. “Mother painted it and got rid of all of Sarah’s things.”

Felding’s face fell a little. “What do you mean when you say ‘got rid of’?” he asked.

“If it’s important,” Elizabeth reassured him, “they’re all still there. In our family ‘get rid of’ means put in the attic. I’m sure all of Sarah’s things are up there. Is it important?”

“It’s hard to say. It could be. What I’d like you to do is go through all of Sarah’s old things with her. Make an adventure out of it.”

“It would be.” Elizabeth smiled. “I haven’t been up in that attic in years. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve been up there since Sarah came here.” She thought for a moment. “Once, maybe, but that’s all.”

“Then it should be fun,” Felding said. “Who knows what you’ll find up there. And something might jog Sarah’s memory.”

“I feel sorry for her, in a way. That was a terrible day. I don’t remember too much about it myself. Just seeing Sarah across the field, all covered with—” She fell silent, as if forcing the memory from her mind. “Well,” she said shortly, “anyway, I feel sorry for her. I suppose she does have to remember it all, but it seems a shame, after all these years, digging it up again.”

“I know,” Felding said gently. “But it has to be done.”

He heard feet in the hall outside and glanced at the clock. Exactly ten minutes. Sarah was back.

“It looks just the same,” Sarah said as Elizabeth turned into the long driveway that led to the house. “Only smaller. I remembered it as being much bigger than it is.”

“They say that always happens with a house you only remember as a child. The house doesn’t get smaller, but you get bigger. The result is the same. You don’t feel bigger, so things must have gotten smaller.”

She parked the car in the garage, and they began
Walking to the house. Without realizing it, Elizabeth had adopted her father’s old custom of using only the front door, and she headed in that direction now.

“Just like Father,” Sarah commented. When Elizabeth looked at her curiously, Sarah went on. “Don’t you remember? He would never use any door except the front door. It was practically a ceremony.”