Saint Peter’s Wolf Page 3

  Carliss had been diagnosed as autistic at one point, but I no longer considered that a valid diagnosis. True, he lacked compassion, and yet he fully understood that there were human beings out here, and that his actions had consequences. I had come to believe that Carliss was a fine example of what Freud called the pitiless nature of children. His killing was the nearly normal act of childish brutality.

  I cleared my throat. “Yes, that would have been really more of a splash, wouldn’t it? That would be just what an antique book needs. A nice juicy frog. But I take it there were no frogs around.”

  No answer.

  Perhaps most children are monsters. I like children, but see them as foreign. Like most children, Carliss seemed exotic to me. He was a slim boy, with olive skin and dark hair. He was tall for his age and at the same time frail. He looked unlike Cherry, and not at all like his burly, shaggy, salesman father.

  He had always been cold toward me, competitive, suspicious. I admired dignity in children, in all people, really, and did not expect him to welcome me easily. But there are limits to what we can tolerate, even from people we have tried to love.

  But other thoughts, neon phrases, made me pause. This child. This still-innocent child. He is lost, lost within your walls. Find him. He needs you.

  I gazed around the room. There were posters for musical groups whose names I did not recognize, all of them sneering or showing teeth in a way that could only be interpreted as threatening. There were photographs of wrestlers in outlandish costumes causing real-looking agony with headlocks, arm twists, and body drops. There were pictures cut from magazines of weapons, tanks, submachine guns. There was a picture of a shark with blood all over its snout and teeth. There was a beautiful picture of a hydrogen bomb explosion.

  The shark caught my attention once again. Its naked power shook me.

  “We are going to start over,” I said. “I am going to call a man I know named Dr Beecher. He’s a very kind man, and he likes young people very much. He’s not just another psychologist. He can really help you. You can go see him—he’ll be your very own counselor, just like men and women have their very own counselors, and lawyers, and financial consultants. He’ll be your professional. I might go talk to him once or twice, but only if you say it’s okay, and if he does, too. He’ll be your man.”

  Carliss gazed at his gun.

  I would spend more time with him. I would get to know him. “How did you happen to find this rat?”

  A tiny shrug, indicating that to respond was not to be committed to any sort of emotion. “Outside.”

  “In the street?”

  The world’s most minute nod.

  “Had he been.…” I did not, on this day, like to use the following words. “Run over?”

  A tiny shrug. A tiny nod.

  Of course Carliss hadn’t actually killed a rat, I thought. What had entered my mind to even consider that possibility?

  “A female, probably,” I said. “The males are much larger.”

  Carliss had still not glanced at me. His posture was that of a person enduring an entirely odious interview. “I want to promise you something, Carliss. I don’t make promises easily. I’m going to help you. In any way I can. I promise.”

  But inside I howled, suddenly, alive with the feeling: this child, this wonderful, confused, angry child wants your attention. He needs you, and all you can do is drone about “promises.”

  Carliss wanted my attention. He was jealous of my collection. He wanted me. Take him in your arms, I commanded myself. Hug him. You’re a fool! This boy needs you, and all you can do is talk.

  I must have remembered my own boyhood. I must have remembered some time when I had been consumed by whatever feeling I had at the moment, anger, sadness, hope. I saw that I had wasted every day I had spent with this child.

  I took him in my arms. He was stiff, but he turned his face into my shirt in a way that told me that he accepted me, and needed me, and wanted to hide within my strength.

  My eyes were wet. I would help Carliss, I promised myself. I would make everything right for him.

  I believed it. I really thought that I would help him. And yet, after I left his room I did something I had not done before. I searched in my desk for the brass key which I had never bothered to use, and when I found it I put it on my key ring. I locked the door to my study. I did not like doing this. It meant that I was acknowledging that I did not trust Carliss. But it was true: I didn’t trust him. Some day I might. But not now.

  It also meant that I was still a gray, civilized man, and that I valued my collection more than I did Carliss’s soul. I had done a good deal of work with disturbed children. I knew children who had burned down houses, killing people in the process, released car brakes or loose roof tiles to cripple fathers, mothers, uncles, rival siblings.

  I hated myself for being so woodenly adult. I was a complete, finished product, an educated man, a man of taste, and all the savor had left my life. I needed Carliss. I could learn from him.

  But I sat at my desk like a man waiting for the phone to ring, or an alarm, drumming my fingers and trying to convince myself that I could help Carliss and at the same time continue to be the same muddle of rationality and obliviousness.

  It is not at all unusual for the children of a psychologist to be shrieking horors. It is as though a human being has only so much nurturing he can offer, and that a psychologist gives it all away at the office. I did not enjoy being a living cliché. I would change.

  But I hated myself for having failed again, for choosing the narrow, guarded route over the wider, open expanse of life. Go ahead, I told myself drily. Lock your treasures away.

  Cherry had collapsed on one of the living-room sofas. She opened one eye when I slipped into the room. “I promised Carliss that I’m going to help him,” I began.

  Cherry waved me silent like a woman so exhausted she could scarcely breathe. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.

  Her medication had made her stoical and weary. I was smart enough to be thankful. Whatever bad news she was about to tell me would wait for awhile.

  I looked upward, as though I could see through the plaster into Carliss’s room. Go talk to him again, I told myself. Go to him now. But I told myself the ancient, adult lie: there will be plenty of time for that.

  Even on this severe day I did not question the way I knew life to be. There was joy, and then, on other days, anguish. I never realized that we were not the only hunters. I never understood that there were entities in the world that collect humans as we collect works of art. I did not even know enough to be baffled. I was a cheerful realist. Patience and intelligence would, I believed, persevere.

  I thought I was having, simply, a bad day. I thought this afternoon was nothing more than an unconnected string of calamities. If the day had not been so difficult I would have tried to see it as nearly comical, in an ugly way. Even as my life withered away as I sat there beside Cherry, I never guessed that something foreign was working at my life, gnawing through it to reach my heart.

  Something that wanted my life, and was about to find it.

  Four

  That night I woke.

  What was it?

  A sound of some sort. A cry. I lay staring into the dark, thinking that there was something wrong and unable to determine what it was.

  There was no sound at all, now. Perhaps I had dreamed. I reviewed everything I could remember from the evening—Cherry taking another pill with a last swallow of Drambuie before rolling into bed, carefully determined not to tell me what was agonizing her. I had been unable to sleep, tossing, nearly rising again.

  But I had slept at last, and now there was something wrong. I listened, holding my breath. There it was: a wail, a cry, a voice like a call from another century. Cherry lay next to me, unmoving, unstirred even when I switched on the light. This cry was something from my own childhood, a sound like the sound of my own voice so long ago. I shrugged into my dressing gown.

  He was still
asleep, struggling, fighting. I spoke, a whisper, but he did not hear me.

  Then he sat up, flushed and panting, and looked around at the bedroom. He was sweating, and his eyes glanced here and there, seeing nothing.

  “It’s all right,” I said as gently as I could.

  A trapezoid of light fell over his bed, and he looked up as my shadow fell over him. He seemed to hear my words only several seconds after I spoke them, and even then he did not seem to understand me, or believe me.

  “Something was after me,” he said, his voice unsteady. This was a different Carliss than I usually saw. This Carliss was broken, afraid.

  Just then the only thing I wanted in the entire world was to comfort this child. And what could I tell him? The ancient, pithy hope that adults have offered children for millions of years. “Everything’s okay, Carliss. It was just a dream.”

  “I was stuck.” He spoke with something like annoyance at the machinations of the dream. “I couldn’t run.”

  I stepped on a plastic toy, some sort of monster shape clattering under my bare foot. “I have dreams like that.”

  “I couldn’t move my feet.” Again, he was mildly outraged that his psyche could serve up such a scenario.

  I rested my hand on his head. “But you got away,” I said, remembering my own nightmares, my own past dreams.

  “It caught me,” he said, as though returning to the world of sense was not enough. The dream lingered, outraging him. “I couldn’t do anything.”

  I sat on the bed. I put my arms around him, and I knew then that whatever happened I would protect Carliss. It was that simple: something about him made me more than a distracted adult. I was a man strengthened by love. All is well, something in my soul said to something in his. This is our refuge. Fear nothing.

  His voice was stronger. “I woke up on purpose.”

  “Smart move.”

  Carliss thought for a while, his forehead on my shoulder. “It was some kind of big man.”

  “A giant.”

  A minuscule nod.

  “He wanted to eat you, I suppose.”

  No answer.

  It’s the first nightmare, I wanted to tell him. The dream that our father, or some other adult male, has turned, and gone bad. Bad, and hungry. “I think everyone has a dream like that, at one time or another.”

  “Do you?”

  The question surprised me. Its directness, and its pertinence to what I had just been thinking. My own recurring nightmare was not quite like that, I nearly told him. Similar, but different in an essential way. What followed me was anything but human.

  “I do have bad dreams,” I told him. “I certainly do.”

  I drove Carliss to school the next morning, something Cherry usually did. She was sluggish this morning, lifting herself on one elbow only to fall back with a groan.

  The Academy of the Pacific was a series of buildings under tall columns of eucalyptus. Children kicked a soccer ball, jumped rope. I got out of the car and walked to the edge of the playground, following Carliss, who swung his pack onto the lawn and ran forward to kick the black and white ball high into the air.

  Children, I thought—just as one might stand at the edge of the surf and think: sea.

  Their bright voices were everywhere around me, but the children ignored me, as though a stump hulked on the playground, or a large empty barrel. That’s what I was to them, I realized. I was adult and foreign, part of a world they could not imagine and did not want to.

  It came back to me for a moment, how fine it was to play as they were playing. I ached to join them. It would be so easy to stride forward and kick the ball high into the air. Do it, I ordered myself. You can still play.

  I gazed down at the keys in my hand, at my leather-soled oxfords, my charcoal gray suit. I did not want to leave the field, but I forced myself to turn, and slowly found my way back to the car.

  Cherry was in the kitchen. I knew what was going to happen as soon as I saw her. She leaned against the kitchen sink, a coffee cup in her hand. She did not greet me, and I said nothing to her except to mention that traffic had not been bad, and that Carliss had made it to school with plenty of time to spare.

  Small talk, I said, feeling small as I made it.

  Her silence was fire. At last she spoke. “This is it.”

  She waited, and I was afraid to make a sound.

  “You can guess what I have to say,” she said sadly.

  “I’m not good at guessing,” I said. You do not, I told myself, want to hear this. But it was time. I poured myself some coffee. Her tone told me more than any language ever could articulate.

  I had been forestalling this conversation for too long, yet even now I turned away from her so I did not have to face her, and when I glanced down at my hands the coffee was shivering in its cup.

  “I admire you, Ben. You’re wise. Sensitive.”

  Coffee danced in the cup, and I had to set the cup down firmly on the counter and grip the edge of the counter hard, leaning against it, bracing myself for what was to come.

  “I can’t say it, but I have to say it.”

  She was waiting for me to permit her to continue. I must have nodded, or indicated by a slight change in posture that I was ready to hear whatever she had to tell.

  “I’ve been having an affair,” she said, her voice hoarse. “I love someone else, Ben. I can’t help myself. I hope you can forgive me. I’ve made up my mind to leave you.”

  She said this in a rush, a speech which she had to deliver before she faltered, her sentences choppy, abrupt.

  I closed my eyes. And knew. I saw everything, and put my hands to my head and dug my fingers into my hair.

  No! This can’t be true, I told myself, all the while I knew it was. Don’t buckle, I commanded myself. Stay steady. I was shivering, still, but a stunned calm came over me. Whatever happens, I knew I must not lose my temper. It was important to not say or do anything I might regret. I took a deep breath, and I let my hands drop to my side.

  Betrayal. Raw, ugly cheating had ruptured my home. My life. But I had seen it coming, and in my desire to avoid the sweaty honesty the truth required I had waited too long. I tried to speak, and could barely move my lips. I tried again. “It’s Orr,” I said.

  I heard her answer before she uttered it, and it reverberated after she had spoken. “Yes.”

  I struck the counter, once, with my fist, and a wine glass hidden in a cupboard sang, a high, crystal keen. Even now I must not say anything or do anything ugly. It was too late. Take this blow with dignity, I told myself. Stay steady.

  Aplomb. That’s what was needed. It was hard, shuddering as I was, struggling to control myself. I put my hand on her shoulder, and found myself wanting to comfort her as I had comforted Carliss the night before.

  But this was not a dream. I coughed, and shook myself, struggling to maintain some degree of composure, while what I really wanted to do was break up furniture, hurl crockery, and wail.

  And worse. I wanted to do really terrible things, and it was this flicker of violence that made me turn away, afraid of my own passions. I was furious. I was anguished beyond words.

  I coughed. “Thank you,” I said at last, my voice nearly a growl, “for being so honest with me.”

  “Honest,” she groaned.

  I did not blame her. I blamed the man I knew was responsible, the man who knew women as he knew life. All he had to do was stretch out his hand, and pleasure was his. How could he do that? How could he master so much of the world without any effort at all?

  This was going to be an interesting interview. Orr and I were going to have a little talk.

  Five

  Orr was the sort of man I had, quite secretly, always wanted to be. Everything he did was right. The way he put butter on bread, the way he laughed. The way he shut the door of his vintage MG, and danced up the stairs. His suits, the lock of blond hair falling over his just-back-from-Maui tan. People came into our sitting room and saw me: diffident, hopeful, beli
eving in optimism and hard work. Not bad-looking, with a smile a woman liked now and then, and a belief that with a little love and a little learning we can find our way.

  In me they saw a normal human being with realistic/leaning-to-hopeful views, a person who tried to avoid butter not because he was fat but because he worried. Bad things happened to people. I wanted to delay them happening to me. They looked at me and saw—a man.

  And then they saw Him. It wasn’t that Orr was merely blond and handsome, his presence was light itself. Golden, more than human. There was velocity to his smile, to his wink. He inspired faith in both men and women. Children instinctively ran to him to sit on his lap. Men stopped reading and wondered if perhaps the world wasn’t such a bad place, after all, if a man like that could walk into the waiting room and shake your hand.

  Orr was the movie star you couldn’t place, one you liked more than anything else on the screen. He was your favorite, the one you could remember from a dream or a book. “Who is that guy?” you would think, half knowing. Old people in the depths of geriatric depression heavy enough to crush submarines would sit up a little straighter and set the cane aside. Women would close the magazine, feeling—and suddenly looking—more alive. And more beautiful. Orr was life.

  He had stolen my business, taken my patients away, always with my permission, all professional and ethical niceties observed. Orr was never clumsy. I was left with a string of the most incorrigible melancholies on earth, a miserable, aching handful I painfully and compassionately tried to coax toward something like mental health, sensing that one day they, too, would succumb and fall into the orbit of Orr.

  Now he had stolen my wife. In a bitter way I looked forward to this conversation, this one blunder I believed I had discovered Orr in the midst of committing. I relished the chance, however galling it might be for me, to see him looking for a moment like an ordinary human being. He had done something wrong, something intolerable.