Teddy (The Pit)

by John Gault

  Let it go, Teddy. Please let it go.

  “I’m waiting, Jamie.”

  He’d have to make it up. He’d have to lie.

  “You know the girl in Playboy I showed you the other day,” he began, speaking quickly, “the one in the centerfold who liked Jamaican beef patties and sensitive men and who wanted to be an ambassador some day, well Sandy’s breasts are something like . . .”

  “Tits,” Teddy corrected.

  “Sandy’s . . . uh . . . tits are something like hers.” There, goddamn it! Jamie screwed the lid back on the jar and lifted the terrarium roof back into place.

  “I bet she has a nice pussy too, eh Jamie?”

  “Probably,” Jamie sighed. “Come on, we have to go upstairs now.”

  C H A P T E R

  8

  “In the very dark night of the soul,” Sandy muttered to herself, “it’s always three o’clock in the morning.” Or was it just “dark night” or maybe “darkest night?” What did it matter, anyway? In a few seconds it would be 3:01 A.M.

  “Uhh?” asked the man-sized lump in the bed beside her.

  “Nothing, Allan. Go back to sleep.” She stroked his back gently, and in a few seconds the even, sleeping-person’s breathing resumed.

  She wished the morning would come. And she wished that it wouldn’t. Yesterday had been just about as much as her mind could handle, and if there was any truth at all to Barbara Benjamin’s incredible confession, today would be worse. And tomorrow worse again. She hadn’t talked about her worries with Allan. Somehow it hadn’t seemed right; it would have been like betraying a trust. Barbara hadn’t sworn her to secrecy, but she felt sworn anyway. When they were making love—when was it, six-and-a-half hours ago?—Allan had sensed her detachment and had asked her what was wrong, but she had told him it was nothing for him to worry his pretty little head about and flashed a convincing smile. A few minutes later she’d faked a mild orgasm, which made her feel instantly guilty and a little cheap, and this hadn’t helped her overall mood one little bit.

  Then Allan had fallen asleep almost immediately, as he nearly always did when they made love, even when they did it in the morning, and she had lain awake, staring at the flickering shadows on the ceiling.

  For Christ’s sake, Sandy, get yourself together. He’s only a little boy. You’ve looked after little boys before, and some of them were hardly angels. Remember the Brenner kid, the one that ran away from home every day and you had to find him? And what about whatsisname, the one who shit the bed every night?

  Yeh, but there’s so much I don’t know about this one.

  Exactly. You don’t know.

  But his mother . . .

  Look, you thought she was weird right from the beginning, didn’t you? You didn’t feel really comfortable, did you? And the father, he was . . . uh . . . what? Maybe there’s nothing really wrong with the kid. Maybe it’s the parents. Maybe when they’re gone, he’ll be just fine.

  Maybe.

  You liked the kid, didn’t you?

  Yes, I did.

  So?

  So I don’t know, that’s all.

  I thought you wanted to be a psychologist some day. A fine psychologist you’d make: one patient’d start screaming or drooling or get violent and you’d be running out of the room. Are you really sure, like you keep saying, that you’re not in psych to try to come to terms with your own emotional problems, your mood swings, your yo-yoing? Come on, O’Reilly, you’re twenty-four years old and you’re supposed to be all grown up, so why don’t you start acting like it?

  I know. I will. I’ll try.

  Hours and hours of the same questions and answers, reworked and embroidered, but basically the same questions and answers. The next time she looked at the clock it was 4:25 A.M. and the sky outside the open window was beginning to lighten.

  Jamie, as usual, woke with his rigid penis in his hand. He wondered what—or who—he’d been dreaming about, and he wished again that he could remember his dreams. But he never could, even after Dr. Kelso had tried for so long to teach him how. “We can tell a lot about people’s problems from their dreams,” Dr. Kelso had said. “In fact, Jamie, lots of times it’s better to know what people dream at night than what they think in the daytime. What happens in a dream isn’t real, Jamie, but it tells us something. So you try to remember your dreams—write them down, if you can—and we’ll try to figure out what they are saying to us.” Jamie said he didn’t dream, but Dr. Kelso had explained that everybody dreams, that if you say you don’t dream, you are just not remembering them. Jamie believed that, at least the first part about everybody dreaming, and he tried very hard to remember his dreams. But he just couldn’t. Dr. Kelso had said that if it didn’t work after a few weeks, he would hypnotize Jamie—if that was all right with him and his parents—and had explained hypnosis to Jamie. Jamie had been looking forward to it, and then, before anything could happen, Tom came home one day and said they were moving again.

  “Miss Livingstone, I presume,” Teddy said, his button eyes directed at Jamie’s groin. There was a smirk on his face and a smirk in his voice.

  Jamie pulled his hand away quickly. His cheeks and ears began to burn. “I . . . uh . . . don’t know, Teddy. I never know.”

  “Had to be,” Teddy replied. “Or maybe it was your new friend. Sandy. Was that it, Jamie? Did you dream you were putting your thing in Sandy’s cunt?”

  “Noooo!” Jamie rolled out of the bed and away from the bear, propped there on the pillow, looking more and more self-satisfied. “Please, Teddy, please don’t!”

  “What’s the matter, Jamie, is she ugly? You told me she was beautiful, Jamie. You said she had tits like the girl in the magazine. You said she had a nice pussy, too . . .”

  “No! No, I never said that. I never saw . . .”

  “So you were lying. Were you lying about what we were going to do with Miss Livingstone too. Is that it? We haven’t talked about it for a while now, Jamie. Did you think I’d forget? You know I never forget.”

  Oh that. Jamie had been excited by the plan at first, but he’d had second thoughts; he couldn’t see any more how it could work, and he’d begun to hope that Teddy would forget about it. There was no point in arguing with Teddy. Teddy never listened to reason. Never. When Teddy really wanted something, he really wanted it. It had been Teddy’s idea to cut that picture out of the book and send it to Miss Livingstone with her head glued to it. Jamie had said that she’d know who’d done it, but Teddy wouldn’t budge. He didn’t care. Why should he care, nobody was going to blame him, nobody was going to believe that anything was a stuffed bear’s fault.

  “Tonight,” Teddy interrupted. “Let’s do it tonight.”

  No, Jamie thought, not tonight. Tonight Sandy will be here. She shouldn’t have to be alone her first night here. “Later on,” he said. “Next week, maybe.”

  “Oh sure,” Teddy replied, the words dripping with sarcasm. “And next week you’ll say the week after, or the week after that, and by that time we’ll be moving to Seattle. Tom and Barbara will come back next week and they’ll say they’ve found this new house and we’ll be gone.” He was beginning to sound less derisive and more desperate. “You’ve got to do it for me, Jamie. You promised.”

  Jamie, feeling safer, climbed back up onto the bed and turned Teddy slightly so that they were eye-to-eye. He stroked the bear soothingly. “Okay,” he said softly, “we’ll do it. We’ll do it Friday.” Teddy seemed to stiffen.

  “Friday’s better,” Jamie continued, speaking with more urgency. “There’s a party and dance at the school, and Abergail will be there and Miss Livingstone will be alone. And I’ll tell Sandy I’m going to the party, so why doesn’t she go out too. It’ll be easier on Friday, it’ll be better.”

  “Well, okay,” Teddy said, quite conciliatory now, “but you better keep your promise. Cross your heart and hope to die?” Jamie drew a line from his neck to his belly button, then intersected it with another line from his left nipple
to the right. He did so with the proper solemnity.

  Jamie had to pee, suddenly and urgently, but he didn’t want to tell Teddy. He didn’t feel like listening to whatever filthy remark Teddy would make about it this time.

  “I’ll be late for school,” he said. Jamie pulled on his tattered terrycloth bathrobe and crossed the big oval braided carpet toward the door. “I got to brush my teeth.”

  As he closed the bedroom door behind him he heard Teddy whisper, “If you shake it more than three times, you’re playing with it. Ha ha.”

  The slamming door saved her life. She’d been falling, sliding, tumbling down a long, black tunnel, faster and faster, and there was someone, something she could not see, right behind her. She could hear its terrible rasping breathing; she could feel the unspeakable evil of it . . .

  “Sandy?”

  What? Oh, it’s Jamie. Her heart was still pounding, and her eyes still unfocussed, and she lurched up from the couch not knowing whether or not her legs would support her. Jamie seemed faraway still, a dark figure against a muted-light field.

  “Are you okay?” the figure asked, taking on more form and definition.

  “Yeh, sure.” Still in her own personal twilight zone but surfacing rapidly, she turned away briefly to tuck her T-shirt back into her jeans and snap the metal tabs together. Finally, with undisguised embarassment, she fumbled out her apologies. “I’m sorry, Jamie. It’s noon, isn’t it? I’m sorry. After your mom and dad left, I just sort of . . . fell asleep. I didn’t sleep very much last night. I’m sorry.”

  Jamie didn’t move and he didn’t speak and there was a look on his face that she couldn’t quite analyze. She thought she knew, but she also thought she shouldn’t jump to any hasty conclusions. If she turned out to be right, it wouldn’t be all that hard to deal with. If she wasn’t exactly an expert in these matters, she wasn’t exactly a novice either. In fact, if her intuition was correct, the week or ten days would probably go by a lot more easily. Little boys are such wondrous creatures, she thought.

  “I’m sorry you didn’t sleep well,” Jamie said, watching intently as she struggled into her sandals. Then, in the same tone, he added, “Everything Barbara says about me isn’t always true, you know.”

  She stared. How did he know? Had he been listening? And how did he make the connection between what his mother said and the fact that I couldn’t sleep? Could he read her mind? No, nonsense! Still, she felt the undeniable need to sit for a minute; there didn’t seem to be enough blood in her head; she was dizzy, and the figure in the doorway was slipping in and out of focus. Then it was beside her, sitting, touching her lightly on the arm, and she could make out the look of concern on his face. “It’s okay, Sandy,” he said in a voice that she did not associate with him, a deeper voice, but not to her mind an unkind one. Well, she thought, he is almost a teenager.

  “Why don’t you just sit here a while?” the voice said. He sounds so mature! She glanced down, almost nervously, to make sure it was a twelve-year-old blond boy at her side. “I can make my own lunch.” It was Jamie’s voice again. Maybe she had imagined the mature voice, maybe she was still not quite awake. Her eyes stung and she could taste tinny bile in her mouth.

  “I often make my own lunch,” Jamie smiled brightly, bounding off the couch after one last loving, concerned pat. “I’ll make you some lunch too. Is a peanut butter sandwich all right?”

  She could have hugged him. Whatever his mother thought he was, whatever he might otherwise be, he was still a little boy—a beautiful little boy—who ate peanut butter sandwiches like every other beautiful little boy. Wondrous creatures. “I’ll tell you what,” she said, “you make the peanut butter sandwiches and I’ll make the lemonade. No, I’ll really go all out; I’ll make the limeade. You probably can’t tell just by looking at me, but my limeade has won prizes at state fairs all over America.”

  He laughed. They laughed together. You’re wrong about your son, Mrs. Benjamin; there’s nothing wrong with him that a little Tender Loving Care won’t fix.

  C H A P T E R

  9

  That night—Wednesday—they sat in the dark and watched a three-hour version of Dracula on PBS. Louis Jourdan was in it, and they agreed that he was very good in the part. Sandy had made popcorn and some more of her famous limeade, and they had tossed cushions on the floor and lain on their stomachs, side by side, until Van Helsing’s final triumph. A couple of times, in the really scary parts, Jamie had reached over and taken her hand, and she had very deliberately allowed him to do so. The second time she even squeezed back, letting him know that his touch was not unwelcome and that she considered touching a nice thing for friends to do.

  “What did you think?” she asked when the show was over.

  “It was great,” he said. Then, “My mother wouldn’t have let me watch it.”

  “But you said . . .”

  “I know. I lied. But it was just a little lie, Sandy, and I really did want to see it . . . My mother—Barbara—says I shouldn’t watch things like that. She says I already have too much imagination. She says I don’t need any new ideas in my head about monsters.”

  Sandy wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that, so she didn’t. Instead she gathered up the glasses and the popcorn bowl and took them to the kitchen. She bought a little more thinking time by washing the dishes immediately—bypassing the dishwasher, which she found just a bit too bourgeois for her student tastes anyway—and putting them away. When she returned to the living room, Jamie was where she’d left him, but on his back, hands behind his head, eyes closed.

  “You must be tired,” she said. “It is after eleven and tomorrow’s a school day, after all. I’m sorry I kept you up.”

  “Oh no, I really wanted to,” he said, opening his eyes wide to prove that he was indeed fully awake and, if need be, ready to watch another movie. “I’m not tired. Honest!”

  She could order him to bed, but it was better if she could make it fun. “Jamie,” she began, kneeling down beside him and gently pushing his hair back off his forehead, “I think I’m in enough trouble already here. I fell asleep on the couch, I didn’t make your lunch for you, and I’ve kept you up half the night watching horror movies . . .”

  He began to respond but she put a finger to his lips and made a silent shhh with her own. “Do you realize,” she continued, “that those are all grounds for dismissal, that I could get kicked out of the babysit . . . the . . . uh . . . housekeeper’s union?”

  “I’ll never tell,” he said, his face all serious. Then he caught her smile and went back to reassess what she had said, and he giggled. “We’ll make it a secret,” he said brightly. “It’ll be our secret, won’t it Sandy?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Our secret.”

  “I have other secrets,” he informed her, his eyes flitting around the room as if he believed that somehow Barbara and Tom would suddenly and magically appear and ruin everything. “Can I tell you some of my other secrets?”

  “Not now, Jamie. Now you have to go to bed and so do I. Two hours sleep just ain’t enough for a growing girl like me.” She saw the disappointment start to form on his face and tried to head it off as best she could. “Tell you what, Jamie: we’re going to be together for a week or longer, and I think we’re going to be good friends. I think maybe we are already good friends. Anyway, we’ll have lots of time for secrets. You can tell me some of yours, and I’ll tell you some of mine. Is it a deal?”

  “Sure. When?”

  “Tomorrow. The next day. The day after that . . .”

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” There was no reason for a simple question like that to throw her, so why did it happen that way, why did she feel that she shouldn’t answer the boy truthfully?

  “Come on, Jamie, you’re stalling. I’ve been in this business long enough to know when a kid is stalling.”

  “I’m not stalling,” he said, standing his ground, his expression steady. “You said we’d tell each other secrets. Is your boyfriend .
. .” He paused, and she could see that he was also trying to find the right words, that he was actually afraid of offending her.

  “I go out with a guy,” she said quickly, easing Jamie’s unnecessary pain. “I don’t know whether you’d call him a boyfriend or not. Where I grew up in Madison, we really didn’t have boyfriends and girlfriends. We had friends, and some were male and some female. I go out with a guy named Allan.” There!

  “Do you love him?”

  Sandy, you had better do something about this conversation before you get in too deep. But how? Have to be careful now, because I’m getting somewhere with this kid, this kid nobody is supposed to like. How do I say it?

  “I like him, Jamie. But I don’t love him. Like I said, we’re friends.”

  “And you and me, we’re friends too, aren’t we, Sandy?”

  “You bet we are, Jamie.” Then, more slowly and thoughtfully, she added: “Yes, we are friends.”

  “Great!” He hugged her and ran off upstairs before she even got a chance to hug him back.

  David was deeply involved in the intricate process of creating an art object, his only material a set of six swizzle sticks (three of them red) and his only equipment a glassed candle, its life almost spent, on the bar in front of him. Every so often, David treated himself to an evening of pleasant inebriation, and he refused, at least consciously, to provide an excuse for it.

  “Did you ever think of enrolling in art school?” the sort-of-familiar voice asked into his right ear.

  Normally he would have jumped a little and fumbled for words, but after six vodka-and-tonics, spaced over maybe two hours, he had no sense of surprise and the words were ready to roll mellifiuously off his tongue.

  “Why, Margaret Livingstone! Unless my memory eludes me, which is far from impossible, then it is incumbent upon me to inquire as to what a nice girl like you is doing in a place like this? Or perhaps you find my approach too direct? If so, let me beg forgiveness. I am at your mercy, my dear Margaret. Do with me what you will. Innkeeper, a drink for my friend. And,” he regarded his glass supiciously, “another for myself.