“Oh, well, let’s sit down at least,” Sharon said. They sat on the settee and watched Alex for a few moments.
“She didn’t want to talk about it,” Sharon said. “In fact, she was somewhat belligerent about it. I didn’t really get a chance to discuss it much. Today, she’s as pleasant as ever. It’s as if it never happened.”
“Children are like that. They can put terrible things out of their minds when they want to. Perhaps her infatuation wasn’t as intense as you had first thought.”
“Maybe not.”
“Did you see the story in today’s paper?”
“No. Was there anything new?”
“Mostly theories, I suppose. Whoever killed him knew him, or he felt comfortable enough to take them in the car with him. They’re unsure about why he was on that road. It wasn’t his usual route home. He was headed in this direction.”
“This direction? Yes, that’s right; it would be.”
“They say he was murdered between three and four in the afternoon. He usually remained after school for a while.”
“I know. I mean, that’s what Elizabeth said.”
“His wife hasn’t been very helpful yet. She’s too overwrought.”
“I can understand that,” Sharon said. One of the cats, Fluffy, came up from under the porch and climbed onto the railing. “Don’t call her to you, she’s shedding.”
“I think I’m going to get a cat. I’m sure there’s a mouse in the kitchen. Oh, by the way, where’s Dinky?” Sharon shook her head and looked down. “Still missing?”
“No,” she said. Her voice cracked.
“What happened?”
“Alex found him, drowned in the lake. Someone had tied a rope and a rock to his neck and thrown him in, poor thing.”
“Oh, my God.”
“He thinks it might have been some of the town children, jealous of the foster children.”
Tillie looked out over the lawn. Richard had taken out a six-foot stepladder and begun to paint the roof of the shed. Elizabeth paused in the wood staining and sat with her feet dangling over the edge of the dock.
“What a cruel thing to do! How did the children take it?”
“Like everything else—they look to Alex first and then react. They’ve developed his stoicism.”
“Really?”
“I’m not sure that…they should. Sometimes I feel they should be more like…like children.”
“I understand. It does seem hard to believe that town children would come up here to kill the dog. That’s quite brazen.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t suspect…any of them?” Tillie asked, lowering her voice even though no one else was close enough to hear.
“Why would they do it?”
“One might have been jealous of the other, of his closeness with the dog. I don’t want to put any bad thoughts into your head, but you yourself described some of the past history of these children. Any one of them sounds capable of it. I’m just telling you this for your own protection, Sharon. Everything looks marvelous here right now, but…”
“But you don’t know what it looks like at night.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing. I’ll certainly give what you said some thought. Are you sure I can’t get you something to drink? Tea, perhaps?”
“Well, I would like to go into the Manor. I used to love this house. Let’s have some tea and you can show me about, if that’s all right.”
Sharon looked out at Alex who had stopped working and turned their way as though he could hear what Tillie had said. For a moment she couldn’t decide what to do. She was tempted to say “some other time,” but she didn’t see how she could. Besides, she was intrigued with Tillie’s thoughts on Dinky’s death and she wanted to bounce a few more things off her. Of course, she wouldn’t mention the secret room. But she would talk around it. She looked out at Alex defiantly. Damnit, she needed another opinion. He would just have to understand.
“Of course. Let’s go in.”
They rose and went into the house. She half expected Alex to come in while they had tea and talked, but he didn’t.
She didn’t mention the secret meetings in Pa’s room and what Alex had buried there, but she told her about the strict regimen he had developed for the children and how loyal they were to the schedules and responsibilities he created for them.
“They sound explosive,” Tillie told her. “You can’t keep children so bottled up inside and expect them to behave normally. All work and no play…I don’t know,” she said, and then she added a thought that sent Sharon reeling into the depths of her own secret fears. “Maybe one of them killed Dinky out of frustration. My children were no angels, but they weren’t anything like this. I mean, they didn’t have these backgrounds, of course; but I remember once when Ben was confined to his room for a week every day after school. He had failed four subjects and Sol was furious. What Ben did was he took it out on his bike. He broke the wheels and bent the frame. Can you imagine? Later, he cried more about that than anything. Sol broke down and bought him a new bike, of course,” she added smiling.
“No one cried over Dinky but me,” Sharon said.
“Makes you wonder,” Tillie said. “Makes you wonder.”
After Tillie’s visit, Sharon felt a greater anxiety than before. Her suspicions and fears had been given a voice. Her older and wiser friend had basically confirmed her suspicions. She was convinced now that Alex himself was blind to what the children had become, blind to what he had created. Another, even more frightening idea occurred to her—maybe the children were smarter than he thought. They were connivers. Their lives, their difficult circumstances had made them that way. They had to be shrewd to exist. He thought that he was developing them into finer, stronger people, but what they were doing was using him, humoring him.
Sure, that made sense. Why else would they not reject that horrible secret room? She couldn’t comprehend how children that age would enjoy it. They probably thought that Alex was weird, but they played up to him to get him to give them whatever they wanted. Wasn’t he more than generous to them? They must have gotten together and decided on all this. That Richard, he was probably the leader.
They were laughing at him behind his back. She had to make him understand this. Alex was so intent on what he was doing, so dedicated to it that he couldn’t see how evil they were. They didn’t have to steal outright, but their thefts were just as real. This was why they shut her out, Sharon thought. They had seen early on that she could see through them. They had turned Alex against her; they isolated her whenever they wanted to because they understood that she could end it all.
She had to make Alex understand all this; she had to. The best place to start was with the dog. Tillie was right; town children wouldn’t have done it. It had to be one of them. Or, what was more horrible, all of them. Poor Dinky, innocent, unsuspecting, trusting them, had willingly gone with them to his own death. It infuriated her to think about it.
“That woman gone?” Alex said. He had come in through the back door. She had gone back into the house to sit in the living room and think. The children weren’t with him.
“Where are the children?”
“I gave them some money and sent them into town for hamburgers. They deserve it. They really went at it this morning.”
“They’re using you,” she said. It just came right out. Her mind was so full of these thoughts that there was no way to prevent the release.
“What?”
“They’re all little manipulators. You just don’t see it, Alex.”
“What kind of an idea is that? Who put such a thought in your head?”
“Listen to me, Alex. It doesn’t make sense that town children would have come up here to kill Dinky.”
His face reddened and his shoulders rose, making him look like some kind of giant bird. He looked physically intimidating, but she leaned forward on the couch, determined to get her ideas out before the children returned.
> “You’re accusing one of our own?”
“They’re not ours, Alex. Not really.”
“Maybe they’re not yours, but they’re mine. To even think they would do such a thing…it’s that woman. She put this idea into your head.”
“I was thinking it before she came, Alex.”
“So she did say something.”
“Alex, you’re too close to them to see the possibilities. You’ve got to remember what they were.”
“I don’t forget that for one moment,” he said. “Why do you think I’m with them as much as possible? Why do you think I’ve done all that I could? That you would think they would betray me…”
“Alex, all I’m trying to say is give it some thought.”
“To put such a thought in your head and for you to dare to say it.”
“Alex.”
“It’s you who continues to betray them, Sharon, by talking to that woman, that gossip, that spreader of evil, a person who revels in the misery of others, who lives only to see and hear terrible things.”
“That’s not true, Alex. She’s a dear old friend who only wants…”
“To destroy happiness in others. She can’t stand it. I know the type. I’ve seen them all my life. I forbid you to ever have her here again, do you understand. I absolutely forbid it. And if I ever hear that you’ve gone to her…”
“Alex, I’m not a child!”
“What else did you tell her?” he asked. His eyes grew smaller and he took a few steps closer. She sat back. Never could she recall his face so swollen with anger. He looked beside himself, out of control. He had clenched his hands into fists and he stared at her with cold hate. She sat back.
“Nothing else, Alex. Nothing. We talked about the work you were doing around the house, that’s all. She thinks it’s wonderful.”
“The children…would never…betray me,” he said. He looked as though it took all of his strength to utter the words. His body had become tight, his breath short.
“All right, Alex. All right. Forget it.” He didn’t retreat. He stood there staring down at her as though he were transfixed. She became quite frightened. “I’ve got to think of something else for supper,” she said quickly. “Now that you sent them to have meat for lunch.”
She got up, and using the preparation of dinner as an excuse, fled from him. When she looked back, he was still standing in the same spot, looking down at the couch as though she were still sitting there.
The house was filled with whispering. It seemed to come from every section, every room, through every opening, even through the very walls and floors. She could make out no words, but she could hear the sounds. She had gone up to the third floor to a room reserved for the storage of old things and she was sitting next to cartons full of pictures and memorabilia. They had driven her up here, sent her reeling back into the past to search for some comfort and to search for an escape. How she wished that her parents were still alive or that she had kept in touch with some old friends. She had no one really, no one but Alex, and now Alex had his children.
They had returned from their lunch in town eager to go back to work. There were many windows open in the house. She heard their shouts and their laughter as they came up the front path. Then she heard Alex go out to them, and all was silent. She went back to the living room to look out front to see why.
Alex had gathered them around the old wooden lawn bench and lawn chairs. Little Donald sat on the grass beside him, and Richard, Elizabeth, and Carl sat on the bench. It was obvious that they were listening intently to everything he said. Maybe he had finally given serious thought to what she had told him, she thought. Maybe he was trying to find out if any of them had hurt Dinky.
It was exactly that possibility that had come to her mind when he reentered the house with the children around him and called her to the den. When she got there, she found him seated in his chair, Pa’s old books beside him on the small, round wooden table, the children standing beside and behind him. Richard and Elizabeth stood at the back of the chair. Donald was at his feet and Carl was to his right, seated on the arm of the chair.
The curtains were drawn; the room was dimly lit. He had put on his record of the music and the chanting, but he turned the volume down so far that it was barely audible, more like the background music of a movie. When she stopped in the doorway and looked in on them, she thought they looked as though they were preparing to take a portrait picture. She half expected Alex to ask her to go get the camera and snap it.
“I told the children that you have something to say, something to ask them,” he said. “It’s important they hear it directly from you.”
“Alex.” She looked at each of their faces. Each child had the same expression—inscrutable except for the eyes. Their eyes were wide, bold, anticipatory. She had the feeling that as soon as she spoke, their faces would shatter like fine china, leaving only their eyes, which would all become of one color: black with hate. She felt the blood begin to drain from her face. A hot flush moved up her neck. Alex wore that pedantic look of a one-room schoolteacher waiting for his pupil to recite. Only she didn’t want to recite. She wanted to run from there.
“Well?” he said.
“What do you want me to say, Alex?”
“Tell them what you told me, what you and Tillie Zorankin think.”
“I didn’t say that. You’re twisting my words. This isn’t the way to handle it.”
“Oh? How should we handle it?”
“Not this way.”
“The children have a right to know, a right to be confronted. They understand and they’ve promised to be honest.”
“I don’t like this, Alex.”
“We have to do it, Sharon,” he said. She didn’t say anything. She was about to turn away and leave them. He sensed it and spoke up. “Sharon and Mrs. Zorankin think it’s highly probable that one of you killed Dinky,” he said. “Donald, why don’t you respond first?”
The little one looked up. The expression on his face had changed now. He looked as though he were about to cry.
“I wouldn’t hurt Dinky,” he said. “I love Dinky. He played with me all the time.”
“Carl?” Alex said.
“The dog was no problem. What would be the point of killing something that was no problem? If I were going to kill it, I wouldn’t drown it. I’d break its neck.”
Sharon took hold of the doorjamb and swallowed hard.
“Elizabeth?”
“The dog was precious. We loved it, Sharon. Almost as much as you did.”
“Just as much as you did,” Richard said, without waiting to be called. “We’re not juveniles getting our thrills from vandalism and sadistic activities.”
“Sharon?” Alex said.
“What do you want?” She could hardly talk. Her throat was so tight it strained when she said a few words.
“Are you satisfied or do you want written affidavits?”
“Oh God, Alex. Why did you do this?”
“I told you once and I’ll tell you again. We’re a family. If we have any problems, we’ve got to air them openly. The children understand that perfectly. Most important, we mustn’t let other people come in between us.” The damn music seemed to get louder on cue. She took a deep breath and turned away.
“I’ve got to get back to dinner,” she muttered, and ran from the room, from the dimness, from the music, from Alex and his children. She didn’t go back to the kitchen as she had said she would. Instead she had gone upstairs and kept going until she reached the room full of old things. Here, she let the tears come freely. They were both tears of fear and tears of sadness.
She held a picture of her mother up in front of her and recalled the day she’d told her she was going to marry Alex Gold. Her mother liked Alex’s mother; she’d often spent time with her, but she had disliked his father. “He’s a cruel man,” she said, and told Sharon about the time he once put Alex on a hot radiator to teach him a lesson. “He kept him there until it bu
rned his skin. He doesn’t fool me,” she’d gone on. “While he’s off babbling about some superstitious nonsense, his wife works herself to death. He’s lazy.”
“But Alex helps,” Sharon had said. “He works hard, too. He’s not like his father.”
“I don’t know,” her mother answered. “Are you so sure?”
“He cares for me…deeply,” Sharon said. “And we’re both…different.”
“Don’t say ‘different.’ You’re not different.”
“I don’t have as many friends as the other girls do, and I don’t think like they do. Alex understands me.”
“I don’t know,” her mother said. “It worries me to think of you living up there.”
“Oh Mother, I’m not afraid of the old man. He likes me, too. You’ll see. It’ll be all right; it’ll be good.”
“If it’s what you want, what you really want,” her mother had said. Her mother had wanted her to be happy. She wouldn’t have stood in her way, even if she had had serious misgivings. But maybe she should have, Sharon thought.
She went through other things, things she hadn’t looked at for years: her high school yearbook, old letters Leona Zorankin had written to her from college, a certificate she had won for the best high school English essay during her senior year, old magazines, and a letter that Alex had written to her after they had become engaged. She unfolded the crisp paper carefully and spread it out before her.
Part of it was romantic. He described the way he had felt when they had gone moonlight rowing on Echo Lake, but then there was that section that she had forgotten, that she hadn’t really paid much attention to at the time: the discussion of the spiritual importance of their marriage.
“There will be a time,” he said, “when we will become as one, one body, one soul, one mind. What I feel, you will feel, and what I know, you will know. This oneness will find itself expressed in our children. They will be formed from the good parts of us, and in the end they will teach us. We will be the children again.”
She remembered now why and how she had put all this aside. Alex could get so deep, so heavy with his philosophy and thought. She had liked to hear him talk; she loved the cadence in his voice, the melody of his words. To her it was poetry, even though she didn’t understand a great deal of it. She had pretended to understand as much as she could, and when she couldn’t understand, he was tolerant. “In time,” he had told her, “you will know what I know.”
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