The Boy Who Could Draw Tomorrow (12 page)

Miss Putnam was reaching her hand out to rest her fingertips on Peggy's knee.

"Has someone said that?"

"Well," Peggy said, and looked helplessly around the room. "He says
you
did. But of course he's just a little boy and you know how little boys—"

Miss Putnam patted Peggy's knee.

"Of
course
he's a little boy, my dear—and little boys, even the best little boys in the world, get some astonishingly curious notions. Believe me, Peggy, I'm the expert." Miss Putnam sat back in her chair and rolled her eyes at the ceiling, the fleshy crown of her nose puckering hideously.

"The very idea!" she snorted. "He claimed I restricted certain subjects? Oh Peggy, can you imagine? He's already the complete artist, already dreaming up his own fantastic versions of reality, interpreting the world through his own marvelously distorted perspective. Oh, he's an artist all right, the little devil!"

Peggy felt utterly at sea. Was it possible that this thoughtful, cultured young woman sitting before her and looking so sincerely concerned, so considerate, was really a monster? Wasn't she really just an ordinary teacher doing an ordinary job?

Peggy tried to remember what that other mother had said, something about how admired Miss Putnam was, how vastly she was to be preferred over Mrs. Booth, the other first-grade teacher. Perhaps Peggy had misjudged the woman terribly—just because . . . But, no, it wasn't her face only, or her being the teacher in that picture. Sam never lied. Then who had ripped that picture out of Sam's pad? Could Sam have done it himself?

Was it possible that everything, that all the horrible things that had been happening, would all disappear under careful examination? That everything was perfectly normal? That it just took someone clever to explain it?

Perhaps she
was
going crazy—just as Hal had suggested. How did you know if you were the crazy one? After all, if you were crazy, how could you tell?

When Peggy looked up from her lap, she saw Miss Putnam standing, her figure huge in the living room light, the briefcase rebuckled and again clutched to her chest.

"I'll just say hello to Sam, take a peek at his room, and then I'll run along," Miss Putnam announced. She looked down from her great height. "I've detained you long enough."

"Oh, of course," Peggy said, shrinking under the woman's scalding gaze. "It's this way. I know he'll be so pleased."

"Little boys," the big woman chuckled, as she started after Peggy into the foyer and followed her down the hall. "They're such little devils!"

As Peggy's cab careened madly down Park Avenue, she told herself for the millionth time that she had to stop indulging herself in all this hysterical nonsense. God knew Miss Putnam was not a particularly appealing personality—hardly anyone's fantasy of the ideal first-grade teacher, but she was surely no supernatural monster either.

After all, Sam had been pampered and adored his whole life long, and it was likely that even the mildest taste of plain old-fashioned discipline would throw him for a loop at first. What evidence had she, really, that there was anything more to Putnam than met the eye?

As for the sorry state of her marriage, well, Hal was certainly under inordinate stress on the job, and she was hardly being the nurturing and supportive wife that might enable him to unwind and be his old self at home. How could she possibly have imagined that he could ever be involved in anything that could possibly be harmful to Sam?

She felt just sick about Sarah Goldenson, but there, too, wasn't their entire conversation the product of two high-strung females feeding each other's paranoid and infantile anxieties?

Really, she, Peggy Cooper, was on her way to having it all—making it big in the toughest city in the world. And how had she reacted to her good fortune? With an utter loss of nerve! They said you had to be strong to survive in New York—maybe the higher you soared, the truer that was. In any case, she was going to put all this bullshit behind her, and start to enjoy herself. If Sam didn't shape up in the next month or so, she'd find a counselor for him—no doubt the school psychologist at St. Martin's could suggest someone.

She looked out the window at the grand buildings along Park, comparing some of them unfavorably with her own. She tried to spot canopies and doormen as they flashed by. They weren't so much, were they? Yes, her life was pretty damned fine, and it was high time she started appreciating it a little more. And letting Hal know it, too. Wasn't he working himself to death to give her everything she'd ever wanted? Just think—St. Martin's, and the teacher there already complimenting her on what a fine boy Sam was. And they were nice people, too, and not really so snooty at all.

Just look at her—the lovely cameo lying on her breast as she was being whisked along Park Avenue from her elegant Upper East Side residence to a party of show-business celebrities at the fabulous Four Seasons. And she herself a successful professional at the most glamorous store in the world. Wasn't it just what lots of women all over the country dreamed of and yearned for?

And how thoughtful Miss Putnam had been—
Victoria
had been—doing her best to make Val feel comfortable and proud. And even when she'd gone back into Sam's room, how sweet and kind and warm the woman had been, talking to Sam like an old pal. Honestly, she could have smacked him for the way he'd treated her. Manners. She'd have to work more on his manners. Wasn't he a St. Martin's boy, potentially one of the best Miss Putnam had ever come across?

The briefcase—
damn.
Too bad she'd forgotten it. She could see it in her mind's eye, leaning against the foot of Sam's worktable, forgotten.

Well, she'd just cart it along in the morning when she dropped Sam off at school. She hoped it wouldn't be a hardship for Miss Putnam to do without it tonight.

Victoria? Hi, it's Peggy. I do hope you didn't miss your briefcase too much last night. I didn't even notice it until long after you were gone; otherwise, I would have run after you. But when I was kissing Sam good night, there it was, big as life . . . I suppose I should have telephoned, looked up your number and called, but Mr. Cooper—Hal—he was waiting for me at the Four Seasons—
yes, she'd get that in, the Four Seasons—
and I was already running late . . .

The taxi slammed to a halt. Peggy looked up from her reverie and saw a brightly uniformed doorman leaning down with his face in the window.

"That's five dollars and sixty cents, lady," the cabdriver called through the money slot.

"Five dollars?" Peggy cried.

"And sixty cents," the driver added, letting the slot flip back.

***

At the counter there sat a blonde woman who sipped ever so daintily from her cup. Every so often she nipped a delicate bite from the English muffin, over whose lightly toasted halves butter was spread under the thinnest layer of marmalade. At intervals her head swiveled on its axis to regard the progress of the clock.

The clock was situated high on the rearmost wall where hurried patrons might conveniently keep an anxious eye on the time, for this was a coffee shop catering mainly to businessmen obliged to breakfast on the run. But it wasn't breakfast time now. Although the clock on the wall read eight-twenty, it had been twelve hours since the countermen had served the men who routinely crowded these stools, Upper East Siders whose wives routinely kept to their beds until long after their husbands had left for work.

As for the woman, who was at this moment the coffee shop's sole customer, her motions betrayed no excess of haste. Still, she kept observing the steady advance of the clock, immediately thereafter referring to her watch.

At length, when both the clock and her watch read half past the hour, the woman picked up her check, deposited a coin on the counter, and slid off the stool with impeccable grace.

She was very, very tall, and her carriage exaggerated her great height—for she held herself in a manner that imitated a plank of wood.

At the cash register she presented the check and a single dollar bill, her large palm unfolding to receive the coins that would be returned as change.

She took the coins and dipped her head as if to acknowledge the correctitude of the exchange. This gesture caused the bun balled at the back of her neck to glitter in the fluorescent light and the sharpened Mongol 482 skewering this knob of hair to bob like a lever that operated her head.

At the door, first turning again to read the time from the clock, the woman lifted her wristwatch into view before stepping out into the chill, autumn night.

For a brief moment she stood on the corner under the coffee shop's sign—the name Ramble's drawn out in thick, white script—and then she traversed Ninety-sixth Street and continued leisurely onward until she had gone a whole block south, her stroll carrying her past the darkened storefronts of a florist, a candy-vendor, a dry-cleaning establishment, and finally another coffee shop. At the intersection of Madison Avenue and Ninety-fifth Street the woman altered her direction and turned left, her immense frame seeming to expand as she ambled along this block.

Though Park Avenue was empty of traffic, she waited for the light to change before continuing her relentless progress east, crossing cautiously even so, her head pivoting north and then south as if to spot the sudden outbreak of a rash of speeding automobiles.

Her pace neither accelerated nor faltered as she stepped up onto the opposite curb, but proceeded with the same measured nonchalance until she had covered the remaining distance to the canopy whose dark green canvas vaulted the sidewalk midway up the block.

It was here that the woman stopped.

Two men in the gently lit lobby stood watching as the woman raised her hand, and then the younger of the two scurried forward to undo the latch that secured the lock.

The woman stepped inside and smiled politely by way of bestowing a proper greeting, the skin of the striking nose that flared from her bespectacled face distinctly crinkling along the fleshy patch between the topmost point and tip.

"Good evening," the woman said, her speech promptly identifying her as a person of unquestionable breeding. "You will remember I called by earlier. Miss Putnam of St. Martin's. Young Cooper's first-grade teacher."

The doorman nodded respectfully at the conclusion of each of these statements, his brain already poised to carry out whatever commands might follow.

"I seem," the woman said, frowning ruefully and darting a fingertip to the spectacles that were thus in danger of falling off, "I seem," she began again, "to have left behind my briefcase."

The doorman pursed his lips in a show of perfect comprehension, whereupon the woman spoke again.

"I do trust it will present no great difficulty 
if—"

But it was not necessary for the woman to press on with the completion of this sentence, for the doorman, first bowing with appropriate deference, acted with all dispatch.

"This way," he said with his finest accent, and then led her, on hushed footsteps, to the elevator that served the east-wing apartments.

***

It was like a riot inside. It was as if somebody had given the alert that terrorist bombers cruised overhead. It was a madhouse in which the lunatics had overturned their keepers and now roamed free, each exhibiting the aberration peculiar to his case.

"Hal, I don't believe this!" Peggy shouted over the din when he'd spotted her and was forcing his way through the other arrivals still jammed solid at the door.

He caught her by the elbow and pulled her along toward the stairs.

"I've got to check my coat!" she shouted.

"You kidding?" he shouted back, still pulling at her elbow as he shouldered toward the stairs. "Not a chance!"

She pushed her body against him as he fought his way across the floor and up the flights of stairs. On the second floor the press was slightly thinner and the noise quieter, a manageable roar. She put her hands to his waist and kept herself close in to him while he twisted left and right, excusing himself and shoving forward until he had steered her to a small alcove just off the lounge.

He kissed her quickly and a little harshly, and when he stood back and looked at her, she could see that his face was flushed with a certain wildness and that his eyes kept cutting away from her, as if he were impatient to get back out into the insanity careening around the floor.

"I thought this was going to be a dinner of some kind!"

"It got out of hand!" he shouted back. "But there's food, all right!"

"What if Pop has to get hold of us? They'll never find us in this!"

"Nothing to worry about! Sam's fine! Your dad can handle anything that comes up!"

"But
 
I
 
can't!" Peggy shouted. "I don't think I can handle much more of this!"

He laughed, his eyes sliding away to the people that streamed past the alcove. Peggy turned and saw men and women that were sometimes neither one nor the other, people of indeterminate gender whose butchered hair looked dyed with eggcoloring, some of them so grey and frail and skinny they might be corpses except that they moved.

"Hal, honey, I hate this kind of thing! You stay, and I'll go home!"

"Relax!" he shouted. "We're leaving here pretty soon and going to Regine's! Just The Six and some execs and a few key hangers-on. This here is for the media and the freaks!"

He looked at his watch.