The Society of S

by Hubbard, Susan

  I thumbed through the book. “‘A woman’s body is a beautiful garden,’” I read aloud. “‘But this garden must be kept locked, and the key given only to her husband.’”

  “Do you believe that crap?” Kathleen threw down the hair gel, then picked up a mascara wand.

  I was still thinking about the image. “Well, in some ways our bodies are like gardens,” I said. “Look at you — shaving your legs and plucking your eyebrows and messing with your hair and all. It’s kind of like weeding.”

  Kathleen turned around and gave me her “Are you for real?” look: eyes bugged out, mouth open, head shaking. We both burst out laughing. But I thought what I’d said was true: in Kathleen’s world, appearance mattered more than almost anything. Her weight, her clothes, the shape of her eyebrows — these were matters of obsessive concern. In my world, other things mattered more than appearance, I thought, somewhat smugly.

  Kathleen turned back to the mirror. “Tonight will be special,” she said. “My horoscope said today is a red-letter day for me.”

  “Friday is green, not red.” I said it without thinking.

  Kathleen gave me another bug-eyed look, but I said quickly, “I didn’t know you read horoscopes.”

  “They’re the only thing worth reading in the daily paper,” she said. “But I bet people like you prefer the editorials.”

  I didn’t want to tell her the truth: at my house, no one read the daily paper. We didn’t even have a subscription.

  By the time we were ready to go to Ryan’s house, the buzzing in my head had returned, and my stomach was churning. “I don’t feel right,” I told Kathleen.

  She looked hard at me, and sick though I felt, I had to admire the thick tangle of her eyelashes and the impressive height of her hair.

  “You can’t miss the game tonight. We’re all going out on quests,” she said. “You need to eat something,”

  The thought of eating sent me straight to the McGarritt bathroom to vomit. When I’d finished, and rinsed my face and mouth, Kathleen burst in without knocking.

  “What is it, Ari?” she said. “Is it lupus?”

  In her eyes I saw concern, even love. “I really don’t know,” I said.

  But in a way I was lying. I had a strong hunch about the source of the problem. I’d forgotten to bring along my bottle of tonic. “May I borrow a toothbrush?”

  Michael met us in the hallway outside the bathroom, a quizzical look on his face. He’d left the door to his room open, and a monotonous voice was singing, “This world is full of fools. And I must be one…”

  Michael and Kathleen had an argument about whether I should stay at the McGarritts’ or go to Ryan’s house.

  I settled it. “I want to go home.” I felt like a fool.

  Kathleen’s face fell. “You’ll miss the quests.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told her. “But I won’t be any fun to be around if I’m sick.”

  A car horn honked outside. Kathleen’s friends had arrived to drive her to Ryan’s.

  “Go on, have fun,” I said. “Bite someone for me.”

  Michael drove me home. As usual, he was quiet. After a while, he said, “What’s wrong with you, Ari?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “My stomach tends to be delicate, I suppose.”

  “Do you have lupus?”

  “I don’t know.” I was sick of the words, and of the mosquito-like drone in my head.

  “Have you been tested?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The results were inconclusive.” I was looking out the car window at the trees, gleaming with ice, and the icicles hanging from the eaves of houses. In a few weeks Christmas lights would be strung everywhere. Another ritual that I won’t participate in, I thought with some bitterness.

  Michael pulled the car to the curb and parked. Then he reached for me, and without thinking I went into his arms. Something happened, something electric, and then came an explosion of emotion.

  Yes, I know that explosion isn’t the right word. Why is it so hard to write about feelings?

  All that matters here is to say it was my first real appreciation of our bodies. I recall at one point pulling back and looking at Michael in the streetlight, his neck so pale and strong-looking, and feeling the urge to burrow into him, to disappear in him. Does that make sense?

  Yet part of me remained disengaged, watching as our hands and mouths went crazy. Then I heard my own voice say, calmly, “I don’t intend to lose my virginity in the front seat of a car parked outside my father’s house.”

  It was such a prim little voice that it made me laugh. After a moment, Michael laughed, too. But when he stopped, his face and eyes were serious. Does he truly love me? I thought. Why?

  We said good-night, only good-night. No plans to meet the next day. No declarations of passion — our bodies had taken care of that.

  As I came inside, I looked automatically toward the living room. But its doors were open, and no lamps were lit. I realized my father hadn’t expected me back tonight, but somehow I’d thought he would be in his chair, as usual.

  Just as well he wasn’t around, I thought as I went up the staircase. One look at me, and he would have known how I’d spent the past hour.

  I paused in the corridor upstairs. But I felt nothing, no sense of any other’s presence. No one was watching me, that night.

  Chapter Six

  I awoke as if someone had called my name — opening my eyes, saying, “Yes?”

  My father was in the room. It was completely dark, but I felt his presence. He stood beside the doorway.

  “Ari,” he said. “Where were you last night?”

  I sat up, switched on the lamp next to my bed. The little birds jumped out of the darkness. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Mr. McGarritt telephoned a few minutes ago.” My father’s eyes were large and dark. He wore a suit and shirt, and I wondered: Has he been up all night? Doesn’t he wear pajamas?

  “It’s an odd time to call.” I didn’t want to hear any more. I sensed bad news coming.

  “Kathleen hasn’t come home yet,” he said. “Do you know where she might be?”

  And so I found myself telling my father about the role-playing game. “Some people are werewolves, and others are vampires,” I said. “Everyone goes around chanting spells and pretending to drink each other’s blood.”

  “How unseemly,” my father said, his voice dry.

  “And last night they were supposed to be going off on quests, whatever that means. They were meeting at Ryan’s house. I felt ill after Mass, and Michael drove me home.”

  “After Mass?”

  “Everyone was there,” I said. “The McGarritts, and even some kids from the role-playing. They go every weekend.”

  “I see,” he said, in a tone that implied he didn’t. “The werewolves and vampires pray and are absolved before they feed.”

  “It’s only a game,” I said.

  My father looked perplexed. “All right then, I’ll call Mr. McGarritt back and tell him what you said. He may want to talk to you himself, if Kathleen doesn’t come home soon.”

  “Doesn’t come home?” I said. “What time is it?”

  “Nearly four. Time for you to go back to sleep. I’m sorry that I had to wake you.”

  “They’re probably still playing,” I said, more to try to persuade myself than anything. It was dark and cold outside, and if they weren’t at Ryan’s house, where could they be?

  My father left, and I turned out the light. But I didn’t go back to sleep.

  Mrs. McGarritt wasn’t in the kitchen when I went downstairs that day. I made myself toast, and I was sitting at the table, eating, when my father came up from the basement.

  He sat down opposite me and didn’t speak at once. He watched me chew and swallow, and I tried to find some reassurance in his eyes.

  Finally he said, “They’ve found her.”

  Later that day I spoke with Mr. McGarritt, with the policemen who came to the house, and, after d
inner, with Michael.

  Kathleen had met the other role-players at Ryan’s house. Each went off on a quest — a sort of scavenger hunt, I gathered. Kath leen was to bring back a lawn ornament, preferably a gnome. Their deadline was midnight, and by that time everyone except Kathleen had reconvened in Ryan’s living room. The game broke up around one, and the players concluded that Kathleen had gone home early. At least that’s what Michael told me later, and what they told the police.

  The two policemen who came to our house sat awkwardly in the living room. They seemed apologetic, but their eyes scrutinized me, my father, and the furniture. I couldn’t tell them much, and they told us less.

  At some point one of them abruptly turned to my father. “What time was it when Ariella returned home?”

  “Ten-fifteen,” my father said.

  I didn’t look at him. I simply sat and wondered, How did he know?

  “You were here all evening, sir?”

  “Yes,” my father said. “As usual.”

  Michael’s voice on the phone that night was shaky. “It was Mr. Mitchell, Ryan’s dad, who found her,” he said. “She was in the greenhouse. I heard my dad tell Mom that she was lying there so peaceful-looking that Mr. Mitchell thought at first she was asleep. But when they moved her” — Michael began to sob — “they said everything fell apart.”

  I could barely hold the phone. I could see the scene: Kathleen lying amid the orchids, the purple fluorescence giving everything a blue-violet cast. I could see the odd tilt of her head, although Michael didn’t describe it. And her body was sprinkled with parsley from the little bag she’d worn as a talisman.

  When Michael could talk again, he said, “Mom’s a mess. I don’t think she’ll ever be herself again. And nobody is supposed to tell Bridget, but she knows something bad happened.”

  “What did happen?” I had to ask. “Who killed her?”

  “I don’t know. Nobody knows. The other kids have been questioned, and they all say they never saw her after the first part of the game. Ryan is hysterical.” He took jagged breaths between the words. “I swear I’ll find who did this and I’ll kill him myself.”

  I sat for a long time hearing Michael cry and rage and cry again, until we both were exhausted. Yet I knew that neither of us would sleep that night, or the night after that.

  A few days later I turned on my computer and did an Internet search for Kathleen McGarritt. I came up with more than 70,000 hits. In the weeks to come, the number grew to more than 700,000.

  The Saratoga Springs newspaper ran several articles portraying the role-players as a Satanic cult, suggesting that Kathleen’s death was a cult ritual. The editors printed few details about how she died, only that her body was found nearly bloodless and mutilated. They ran an editorial warning parents to keep their children away from role-playing games.

  Other media ran less judgmental stories, reporting the facts without speculating about the motivation for the crime.

  All of them agreed on one point: the identity of the murderer remained unknown. It was thought that she hadn’t been killed in the greenhouse, but in a yard nearby, where bloodstains and pieces of a broken plaster gnome had been found in the snow. The local police had called in the FBI to handle the investigation.

  If I hadn’t been sick that night, I thought, I’d have been with her. I might have prevented her death.

  Some of my search hits took me to MySpace.com, where three of Kathleen’s friends kept blogs that talked about her death. I skimmed them, not liking the details. One of them said her body had been “cut up like sushi.”

  The next weeks passed, somehow. After a few days, my father and I resumed lessons. We didn’t talk about Kathleen. One night he said, “Eileen McGarritt isn’t coming back. Mary Ellis Root will be cooking for you now.”

  Until that moment I’d never known Mrs. McG’s first name. “I prefer to cook for myself,” I said. In truth I had no appetite.

  “Very well,” he said.

  Once or twice a week Michael called. He wouldn’t be able to see me for a while, he said. The local media were hounding his family and Kathleen’s friends, and it was better for him to stay home. Meanwhile, the police and the FBI kept silent, except to say that there were “persons of interest” in the case.

  The McGarritts buried Kathleen. If there was a burial ceremony, they kept it private. A memorial service was held during the week before Christmas, and my father and I attended.

  They held it in the school gymnasium — the site of the Halloween dance. Only now, instead of crepe paper streamers, the room was decorated for Christmas. A trimmed evergreen stood close to the statue of Jesus at its entrance, and the smell of pine was strong. Someone had set a photograph of Kathleen on an easel — a posed picture taken when her hair was long — near an open book that we all signed as we came in. Then we sat in uncomfortable metal folding chairs.

  A priest stood at the front of the room, next to a white vase holding white roses, and he said things. I barely heard a word. I kept my eyes on the other people.

  Mrs. McG had lost weight, and her face seemed collapsed upon itself. She didn’t speak, and she didn’t touch anyone, even to shake hands. She simply sat and nodded occasionally. She looked like an old woman, I thought.

  Michael stared at me from across the room, but we didn’t have a chance to talk. The other McGarritts didn’t even make eye contact with me. Their faces were bonier than I remembered, and shadows lay beneath their eyes. Even little Bridget, who had finally been told about her sister’s death, looked thinner and forlorn. Next to her, Wally the dog sat, his head on his paws.

  Kathleen’s “pagan” friends wore suits and ties, and they looked miserable. They glanced at one other with suspicious eyes. I can’t begin to describe the tension in the room. The pink smell of the roses was sickening.

  People filed to the front and said things about Kathleen. Platitudes, mostly. How she would laugh, if she could hear them! Again, I paid little attention. I wasn’t going to speak. I couldn’t believe she was dead, and I wasn’t about to be a hypocrite — it was that simple.

  My father sat next to me and later stayed by my side as we filed out. He shook Mr. McGarritt’s hand and said something about how sorry we were. I didn’t say a word.

  Michael shot another look at me as we left, but I kept walking, like a zombie.

  As we were about to leave the school, my father suddenly steered me away from the door, to a side exit. Later, when we were in the car, I saw why: the front door was mobbed by photographers and television cameramen.

  My father started the car. I shivered, watching the media people surround Kathleen’s friends and family as they left the school. It had begun to snow: large flakes like bits of gauze drifted through the air. Two clung to the car window for seconds before they began to melt, trailing down the glass. I wanted to sit still and watch the snow, but the car began to move. I sat back in the leather seat, and my father drove us home.

  That night, we spent a silent hour pretending to read in the living room, and then I went upstairs to bed. I lay beneath the blankets, staring at nothing. Eventually I must have drifted into sleep, because I awoke with a start, once again thinking I’d heard someone call my name.

  “Ari?” A thin, high-pitched voice came from somewhere outside. “Ari?”

  I went to the window and pushed aside the heavy curtains. She stood below, bare feet in the snow, her black t-shirt torn, her figure lit by the lamppost in the driveway behind her. Worst was her head, which looked as if it had been pulled off and put back on at an impossible angle. She looked lopsided.

  “Ari?” Kathleen called. “Come out and play?” Her body swayed as she spoke.

  But it wasn’t her voice — it was pitched too high, and it was singsong.

  “Come out and play with me?” she said.

  I began to shake.

  Then my father strode out from the back entrance. “Go. Go back to your grave.” His voice wasn’t loud, but its power made me shak
e.

  Kathleen stood a moment longer, swaying slightly. Then she turned and walked away, jerking like a marionette, her head bent forward.

  My father didn’t look in my direction. He went back to the house. A few seconds later, he was in my room.

  Still shaking, I lay on the floor, knees to my chest, hugging myself as hard as I could.

  He let me cry for a while. Then he picked me up, as easily as if I were a baby, and he put me back in bed. He tucked the blankets around me. He pulled a chair close to the bed, and he sang to me. “Murucututu, detrás do Murundu.”

  I don’t know Portuguese, but understanding the lyrics didn’t matter at the time. His voice was low, almost a whisper. After a while I was able to stop crying. Eventually, he sang me to sleep.

  I awoke the next day dry-eyed and determined.

  When he came up to join me in the library that afternoon, I was ready. I waited until he’d sat down. Then I stood up and said, “Who am I, Father?”

  “You’re my daughter,” he said.

  I found myself noticing how beautiful his eyelashes were — as if he wanted me to notice, in order to distract me.

  I would not be distracted. “I want you to tell me how it happened — how I happened.”

  He didn’t speak for a minute or so. I stood still. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  “Then sit down,” he said, finally. “No, do. It’s a rather long story.”

  He began this way: “I have no way of knowing how much you’re like me, and how much like your mother.” His eyes moved to the window, to the shadowbox on the wall, then back to me. “Often, because of the way you think, I’ve thought you were more like me — and that in time, you’d know without being told what you need to know to survive.