Wildwood (30 page)

Authors: Drusilla Campbell

BOOK: Wildwood

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“I must go. Really.” Hannah hurried down the path. “I have company waiting.”

She ran across the parking lot and jerked open the door of the Volvo. Getting in she hit her hip on the steering wheel and cursed and then her slippery fingers fumbled with the keys.

Billy Phillips shoved his hot hand under her Brownie shirt and touched her breast and giggled, a greasy-haired, pimply sound that made Hannah’s stomach lurch. He grabbed her hand and pulled it down to his crotch. What was she feeling? What was that? She looked down and saw the hard bulge of his penis straining against the zipper of his jeans. She jumped back with a jerk and when he came at her she put up both hands and shoved as hard as she could against his chest. He lost balance and his arms pinwheeled. His breath—quick shallow inhales, body at a backward slant, heels digging into the mulch of oak and bay and his eyes getting round and white and his mouth round and pink and then he wasn’t there anymore and after she heard his body hit the rocks, she heard his voice.
Help.
She inched forward and peered over the saddle of roots down at the creek.

“Hannah.” Father Joe was coming toward her.

She waved her hand in his direction. As she pulled out of the parking place in front of Brian’s potting shed, she saw the caretaker bustling toward her with a tray of seedlings in his arms. She kept driving and he gestured for her to stop.

She folded in the middle.

“Glad I caught you, Mrs. Tarwater.” Brian held out a flat of impatiens seedlings, lemon-green and limp. “I thought you might find a place for these up at your place. Poor wee fellas need your touch. Think you can help them?”

Help them.

Help me.
Billy Phillips lay on his back, his arms and legs spread wide. His eyes were open and his lips were moving.
Help. Me.
She watched his mouth make the words a third time. His arm move a little and his hand lifted toward her.
Help.

She turned her back on him.

Help.
She heard him say it one more time before she covered her ears with her hands and began to cry. When she cried she couldn’t hear his voice.

“You okay, Mrs. Tarwater?”

She looked at the tiny plants but instead of seeing them bent and feeble as they were, she saw them growing strong and tall on firm stalks, their leaves spread flat and wide to capture the light. She saw them blossoming in vibrant red and the sweetest, softest baby girl pink.

It came to her then what she must do about Angel.

Tuesday

J
eanne dreamed she was with her son at Bluegang, swinging on the rope. Huge goldfish swam below her, kissing the surface of the silvery water. They stood on their tails and turned like dancers while their great unblinking eyes stared up at her.
Go ahead,
James cried, only now he had become her dead brother, Michael.
Let go of the rope, Jeanne. Let go.
She did it.

Jeanne sat up in bed. “I dreamed I was flying.”

Teddy stuck his head out the bathroom door, his face half covered with shaving cream. “Did you say something?”

She lay back and closed her eyes. For a split second after waking she had understood—as Einstein must have, in one stunning moment, suddenly and with his whole being, comprehended relativity—that the secret of human flight had nothing to do with wings or hollow bones or loft; no equations were involved. It was simple and elegant as sun reflected on water. A switch existed in her mind, and that was that. In the nanosecond after waking she had known where that switch was found and how to lift it.

“Are you planning to go to work?” Teddy’s tone was not quite sarcastic. Since her explosion the day before his manner had been careful.

She threw back the covers and slipped her feet into the slippers set beside each other next to the bed. She reached for her dressing gown and found it at the end of the bed where she laid it every night.

“I talked to Simon Weed’s secretary,” she said. “He’s in Tokyo until tomorrow night. But she said he’d be at the school late Thursday without fail.”

“I still think we can handle the boy.”

Jeanne shot him a look.

“You want to coddle him, Jeanne. We need to work out a plan of firm and consistent guidance.”

She shook her head. “I’m going to tell Simon Weed to take his son out of school, hire a tutor and then keep the boy with him as much as possible. I’m also going to write him a refund check for his tuition.”

Teddy’s head jutted forward. “You can’t do that. You’ll be setting a precedent. It says in the agreement he signed that tuition checks aren’t refundable. We can’t change the rules for Simon Weed.”

She walked past him, into the bathroom. Standing at the vanity mirror, she smoothed cream into her skin while Teddy watched.

“Tucker and his stupid rope drills,” she said. “Hilltop isn’t a Marine Corps boot camp. I want you to tell him that.”

“None of the other boys have trouble—”

“None of the other boys found their mother hanging from a hayloft.”

“We’ve been through this before.”

“And the pitiful thing is, Teddy, Adam tried to climb the rope. Tucker goaded him until he had no other choice.”

“How was he supposed to know—”

“You saw the advisory I sent out. Everyone on staff got a copy.” She spoke through a mouthful of toothpaste. “It said Adam Weed had been severely traumatized and should be handled carefully. If Tucker ever emptied his mailbox—”

“Can we at least agree the kid goes back to his own room today?”

“No.” She spat into the sink. “I want him in the infirmary where the nurse can keep an eye on him. I’ll tell her to give him some audiotapes. Robby can visit him.”

“Why not bring him over here? Put him in the guest room and give him his meals on a tray? Maybe you’d like to wait on the little prince yourself.”

She turned her back and lifted her nightgown over her head. Before he spoke she felt his eyes on her.

“You’re still a good-looking woman, Jeanne.” She did not like his tone of voice, the purr that was under it. She stepped into her panties and hooked her bra behind her back.

“Good-looking as Liz?”

“She’s a little intense for my taste.”

They regarded their images side by side in the big mirror over the dresser. She in her bra and panties, he in a brocade dressing gown with velvet lapels. Like some decadent nineteenth-century count.

“I’ll be glad when she’s gone. You’ve been in a snit since she arrived. I miss my old Jeanne.”

She chuckled. “I’ll bet you do.”

“Did you hear yourself? That tone?”

“What about Margie Scolero?” Margie and her husband operated the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Willow Glen and lived up Overlook Road.

“What about her?”

“She’s not intense. She’s Ms.
Town & Country
perfect size eight, trim as a toenail.”

“So?”

“So, I’m trying to figure out what turns you on. Liz is intense but you came on to her Saturday night. And last Christmas at Martarano’s party, you pushed Ms. Perfect down on the bed and climbed on.”

“Where do you get this shit?”

“Be man enough to admit to your own hard-ons, Teddy.”

He gawked at her language.

“I saw you with Margie. I was getting our coats and went in the spare room by accident. You hadn’t even bothered to close the door.”

“Oh, that! That didn’t mean anything.” Teddy rolled his eyes and laughed. “I was drunk, Jeanne. Those things happen when people drink too much. Besides, Margie’s a prick teaser.”

“Liz too?”

“If she told you I made a pass, then she lied, and she’s sicker than I imagined. She’s jealous. She wants to make trouble between you and me.” He watched her debate which sweater to wear. “The red one. It brings out the color in your skin.”

She chose the black and pulled it over her head.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to believe Liz before me?” He looked yellowish around the mouth and eyes as if he had eaten something that didn’t agree. “You hurt me, Jeanne. You really do. After all these years . . .”

She eyed him speculatively. “I don’t think I could hurt you if I put a gun to your head.”

His mouth opened, then closed. “I don’t have to put up with this, you know.”

“You’re right, Teddy, you don’t.” The balls of her feet tingled. “As a matter of fact, I don’t think you should put up with me or the school anymore.” She rested her hand on the dresser top to steady herself. “From what you’ve told me in the last twenty-four hours, you don’t really want to be here so why don’t you just pack a bag and go?”

“Careful, Jeanne.” Moisture appeared on Teddy’s upper lip. “Watch what you say. You might not like the consequences.”

“You don’t like me, you don’t like the school, and you never wanted to be a teacher in the first place. You were meant for the stage so go on, do it. Move to New York.”

“We’ve been together a long time, Jeanne. We’ve built something worthwhile here.”

His voice dropped a note, took on a velvety menace; and she felt like prey, a pheasant discovered in the high grass where it had nested, safely camouflaged its whole life, caught now in the gaze of a mountain lion.

He said, “Don’t start something you can’t finish. If I were to leave you, I wouldn’t come back. You should think about what that would mean. You know you can’t run this school alone. Sooner or later someone’ll get wise to that phony degree.”

“Maybe I’ll throw the degree out. Maybe I’ll sell the school. Gail said some Tibetan monks are looking for a retreat. Why not Hilltop?”

He snorted. “You wouldn’t do that.”

“Wouldn’t I?” Jeanne giggled. “I think I could do anything, Teddy. If I wanted to.”
Even fly.

Her amusement was a slap in the face though she saw him struggle to keep from showing it. He charged away from her and dressed fast, talking through his teeth about how little she knew of the world and how she didn’t have what it took to succeed without him. He ripped the paper strip off his laundered shirt and flagged it at her.

“You’re bright, Jeanne. You’re diligent and you’re orderly. I’ll give you those qualities. But you know who gets the prizes? The one with flair.” He snapped his black-and-white checked suspenders down on his shoulders and shrugged his arms into an unstructured sports coat of gray-green wool. He adjusted his floral tie and smoothed back his luxuriant hair with the flat of his hand.

“You’re right, Teddy. You definitely have flair. I’m rigid, yes, and not very imaginative. I admit it. But I wasn’t always this way.” She said the words and did not believe them herself. In truth she had been hiding in the tall grass all her life. But it had become worse after she married. The stakes were so high, the possibility of shame and scorn had felt like a death threat sometimes. She had spent years hunkered down, holding her breath. “The day I married you, I started discounting myself, giving myself away in bits and pieces: my degree, my baby . . .”

“Jesus Christ, Jeanne, is that what this is about? No one forced you—”

She left him looking at himself in the long mirror and walked through the shadowy living room and out onto the side patio where the morning smelled of dust and oleander. From the school she heard the eight o’clock bells. What would it be like to begin the day without them? She passed through the gap in the hedge and approached the rose cloister. The day before Mr. Ashizawa had pruned every plant to the wood. Jeanne liked what she saw. With its garden of sticks, unplanted borders and stiff grass the school landscape had a wide-open, bony beauty. Nowhere to hide. She was going to sit in the cloister and think about Teddy and James and Bluegang until the clutter in her mind was pruned away and only the truth remained. The sky was full of birds moving south at this season. She would watch them and try to figure out how they did it.

Hilltop’s eight o’clock bells were ringing as Liz stepped onto the patio with her second cup of coffee. She thought about Jeanne getting ready for another day with Teddy, and the sadness that had been with her since yesterday rose in her throat and she had to swallow hard to keep the tears down. Hannah stood near the oak looking up.

“Sheep in the sky. Mom used to say that meant rain. She was usually wrong but she kept on saying it.” Without glancing at Liz she went back into the kitchen.

Liz had expected this visit to Rinconada to be a difficult one, but the difficulty so far exceeded her expectations it might as well be something altogether different. Less like a potholed road, more like driving backwards over a line of parking garage spikes. But yesterday’s conversation with Jeanne had redeemed it a little. She and Jeanne understood each other now as they hadn’t before. But, oh God, Hannah. What to do about Hannah? Liz followed her inside.

Hannah knelt on the kitchen floor, half inside a low cupboard.

“We have to talk,” Liz said to Hannah’s back. “You keep walking away from me but sooner or later—”

“Sooner or later it’ll be done and over with. What’s to talk about?” The depths of the cupboard muffled her voice. “Your mind’s made up, isn’t it?”

“I don’t mean the abortion.”

Hannah pulled out of the cupboard and looked at her. “I have other things to think about today.” She stuck her head and shoulders back in the cupboard.

“What’re you burrowing for?”

“A gizmo to make baby food. A little plastic thingie.”

Liz wanted to scream. Instead she accumulated eggs, cheese, a green onion and a bit of tomato on the counter. She said with false brightness, “Shall I make you an omelet? They’re my specialty.”

The response from the cabinet was an echoing triumph. “I knew it!” Hannah held aloft her trophy, a small white plastic food grinder.

“Early Cuisinart?”

“You put the cooked food, zucchini or peas or whatever, in here and then slide this thing on top and press down while you turn the handle. Comes out pureed. Simplest thing in the world. I used it for Eddie.”

“Speaking of Eddie,” Liz cracked an egg on the edge of a ceramic bowl, “we had a good talk yesterday. He’s a terrific kid.”

Hannah put a baby bottle and the food mill into a cardboard box.

“I’m amazed. You still have all that baby stuff.”

“I never expected to stop at two,” Hannah said. “There’s a car seat and a crib in the attic.”

“Why did you stop? At two?”

Two deep lines formed between Hannah’s eyes. She spoke distractedly. “I don’t think we meant to. It just kind of. . . happened.” She sorted through a stack of neatly folded baby clothes. Liz watched the way her hands lingered, stroking the nap on a pair of velveteen short pants with an embroidered bib front.

“What did you talk about?” Hannah asked.

“Who?”

“You and Eddie.”

“I should let him tell you.”

Hannah laughed shortly. “You’re kidding, of course.” She walked into the laundry room and emerged a moment later dragging a cooler with a blue top.

“Are we having a picnic?”

“I’m taking some stuff to Resurrection House.”

“He calls it Erection House.”

“Isn’t he clever.”