by Paul Lederer
‘Sarah was Raymond’s darling, his little angel. She could do no wrong. From the day she was born he fussed over her. Had her diaper been changed? Didn’t she feel warm? When she was older, Raymond spent hours brushing her hair. He bought her extravagant gifts … all up until she was four years old, of course.’
‘When she quit speaking?’
‘Yes.’ Trish nodded. ‘But when she was a baby, Raymond lavished her with – well, with Raymond you couldn’t call it affection – but with attention. Eric became totally alienated then. He was afraid at school, afraid at home. He would do anything to avoid the house; Raymond hadn’t quit picking on him for a second. When Sarah quit talking, Raymond couldn’t adjust to that at all. He couldn’t accept it although he refused to take the child to a doctor. In his mind it was a weakness, an unnatural weakness. He shunned the girl as he had shunned Eric. I suppose that it was natural that Eric and Sarah should grow very close together then. When they were little they used to hold hands everywhere they went. It was very sweet and pathetic at once if you knew their background. Of course that period didn’t last long. Raymond put an abrupt halt to it.’
‘But why? Don asked in confusion, ‘and what could it have been that happened to Sarah when she was four? You must know.’
‘No, sir.’ Trish said, ‘I don’t. Of course in later years we all came to the same conclusion, that…’
The front door opened, a freshening gust of wind shifted the curtains, and Sarah came in, backlit by the crimson sunset. The big white dog followed her. Sarah closed the door carefully and walked past them, drifting soundlessly toward a dark-paneled corridor. She had a yellow daffodil in her hand.
‘Sarah,’ Don said, rising from his chair. ‘I was wondering when you’d be back.’
She walked on, not so much as glancing at him.
Don stepped that way, but Trish placed a restraining hand on his arm.
‘Leave her alone. It’s that time of the evening. She’ll be back in a little while.’
Not understanding, Don watched as Sarah continued along the dark corridor, opened a door and turned on a faint light, proceeding down some steps, apparently to a basement.
‘What is she doing?’ Don asked.
‘It’s a little ritual she has. I tried to break her out of it in any way I could think of … I suppose it doesn’t matter now, does it?’
‘What sort of ritual?’
Trish didn’t answer, but returned to her last little bit of packing, tossing a few odds and ends into the bag.
Don seated himself again, keeping his eyes on the hallway where Sarah had vanished. A faint yellow light from below smeared the high ceiling of the corridor. The old white dog rested itself on the floor next to Don and pushed at his hand with its nose. Don scratched Poppsy’s head absently.
‘What’s going to become of the dog? Poppsy?’ he asked.
‘Look at the old thing,’ Trish answered, ‘what do you think?’
‘Oh, sure,’ Don said roughly. ‘Anywhere where people are disposable….’
‘If you want the mangy old bitch, take her!’ Trish snapped. When Don didn’t answer her, she shrugged as if to say: ‘you see?’
‘What in the world is Sarah doing?’ Don wondered aloud.
‘Do you want to know?’ Trish asked harshly. ‘You want to know everything, don’t you, busybody?’
‘Yes.’ Don’s voice was pitched very low. He looked up at the faded woman before him. ‘I do want to know.’
‘All right,’ Trish said. Her eyes locked with Don’s. ‘I’ll tell you then.’ Her voice was hoarse and broken, ‘She’s down in the basement visiting her baby!’
‘She’s what?’ Don’s face went blank. His thoughts snarled upon themselves, lacking logical progression. Could Trish have actually said that, meant it? ‘I don’t understand you,’ he said.
‘Her dead baby. It’s buried in the basement,’ Trish said, turning her back deliberately as she pretended to finish packing. ‘Now are you happy, busybody?’
‘In the basement?’ Don said, struggling to order his confused thoughts. His mouth went very dry. His vision was not quite focused. A baby buried down there. Not on a grassy knoll beneath a wide-spreading tree, nor in the peaceful town graveyard. In a basement!
‘Yes.’ Trish turned to face him again. Her composure had returned. ‘We decided it was for the best.’
‘Why? What had happened?’
‘It was born dead,’ Trish said.
‘But still…’
‘It was her brother, Eric’s baby!’ Trish said, the words gushing forth. Perhaps she was building toward her longed-for catharsis. ‘We couldn’t report it, don’t you see? We kept Sarah at home. Raymond was desperately afraid of scandal. His business … what there was left of it, would have been destroyed. Ellen was terrified of moral censure. She had few friends, but she had her dignity.’
‘You all conspired to break the law.’
‘Yes,’ Trish answered without a trace of guilt, ‘it had to be done. Raymond would have demanded it if we didn’t agree, and we did agree. Incest is an abominable act.’
‘You are sure…?’
‘Yes, we are sure. Raymond found Eric in bed with his sister.’
‘But that doesn’t necessarily mean.…’
‘There were signs. Blood … signs.’ Trish again looked into the past. ‘Raymond beat the boy senseless. His fury was terrible, just terrible. Slamming Eric against the wall, beating him with his fists until Eric’s eyes were closed and his nose broken.’
Don had seen the marks of a fresh beating on Eric’s face that morning. He knew now where they must have come from.
Trish said, ‘We realized then what must have happened to Sarah when she was still a little girl. The two children were too close. Eric had obviously been molesting Sarah in various ways for years. She loved her brother. She could not speak out against him, and so she refused to speak at all.’
‘Is that what the psychiatrist told you?’
‘No. We never told the psychiatrist about it.’
‘But why? It might have helped Sarah. You had the doctor working in the dark. Why?’
‘It’s none of your business. It’s a family shame.’
‘That makes no sense,’ Don said.
‘It’s not your family. Ellen would never have told the doctors. Nor would I,’ she added.
‘But all of you.…’ Don shut up. It was pointless to argue with the woman. Don was not as shocked by incest, by the home delivery, and silent burial of the dead infant, as by their refusal to share with the doctors the one key to Sarah’s door of silence.
‘Why?’ Don asked, only of himself, but Trish heard him.
‘They’d have to know about the baby then, wouldn’t they?
Trish turned her back again, this time quite definitely, and she closed her suitcase with the same finality, locking it with a tiny key from her chain.
Her attitude underwent a rapid change. He was no longer welcome; he was being dismissed. The conversation had gone too far, probably farther than she had intended and that only because she was severing herself from the house and all of its related concerns.
‘I told you that I’m waiting for a cab. It should be here shortly now. When Sarah comes back, take her into town. You can’t leave her here alone. If you can’t find any of the family, try the lawyer’s. His name is Dennison. I’ll give you his address.’ She spoke rapid-fire as if giving a series of last minute instructions before leaving on vacation. There was no inflection in her voice. None.
Don tried again. ‘Listen, if you can give me another minute? Isn’t it a little late now for all of you to be guarding the past and its secrets? You’re all worried about contracts and checks and timetables. What about helping Sarah?’
‘No one can help Sarah.’
‘Maybe.…’
‘Are you going to help her?’ Trish interrupted acidly. ‘You? Who are you anyway? Are you a psychiatrist? Some kind of doctor, a social worker? You don’t look like it to m
e.’
‘No, of course not, I….’
‘I know,’ Trish said in a fatigued voice. ‘You just want to help, maybe take care of Sarah.’
‘Yes, of course I’d like to.’
‘Are you a rich man, then, Mr March?’
‘Hardly, I only….’
Trish paced, waving an impatient hand in the air. Once she looked out of the window for her taxi. She came back and bent over him, her dark eyes riveting and filled with challenge.
‘Are you rich enough to pay a psychiatrist’s bills – for who knows how many years? To hire a nurse for Sarah? Someone to cook while you’re working; to clean her up? To watch her so she doesn’t wander off alone? Or hurt herself? I did those things for five years,’ she said, putting her fingertips to her bosom, ‘and you couldn’t pay me enough to do it for another five years.’ She straightened up and looked down at Don, her hands on her heavy hips, her round face in shadow. ‘What do you do for a living anyway?’
‘I’m a photographer,’ Don answered, and Trish waved her hands skyward. A brief scornful laugh exploded in the room.
‘God help us! A photographer! An artistic, sensitive soul. Dead-ass broke, I’ll wager. Maybe you have worked out a plan to get your hands on some of the money Sarah’s come into.’ When Don didn’t answer, Trish said, ‘Listen, Mr March, you’ve had your cheap entertainment for the day. Saved you the price of a movie ticket. You can take your moral superiority and shove it up your ass! If you’ve satisfied your vague charitable impulse, you can take Sarah back to town like I told you … oh, shit!’
This, because a yellow taxicab had just pulled up in front of the house, lights on against the dusk. The driver tooted his horn. Trish crossed quickly to the kitchen door and called out, ‘Just a minute! I’m coming!’
She hurried back for her luggage cases, slipping into a black jacket that matched her skirt en route. Don picked up one of the suitcases. Beyond the open kitchen door, he could see the taxi driver, arms folded, standing beside the open trunk of his cab.
Trish gestured, ‘That’s the only door to the house that’s been left open. I have to lock it up. I’d better get Sarah now.’
But Sarah had already returned. She stood silently in the shadows, watching. Trish saw her and started on her way out of the door. Don followed her, handing the suitcase he held to the driver who waited impatiently.
Trish gave him further instructions, ‘Pull the door shut on your way out. It’ll latch.’
The cabbie put the suitcases into the trunk compartment and closed the lid.
‘Put the dog outside. You – you leave here right now before someone else comes by and finds you alone with Sarah. Do you understand me? Take her back to town. I gave you Dennison’s address, didn’t I?’
‘Yes. I’ll take care of her,’ Don answered and Trish studied his face for a moment, her own expression softening.
‘Yes. I believe you will…’
The taxi driver had gotten back in behind the wheel and he started the engine.
‘You know, Mr March,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I almost….’ The cabbie gunned the engine. ‘I’ve got to go.’
Trish lowered herself heavily into the rear seat of the taxi and Don closed the door for her. Through the open window, Trish said in parting, ‘Stay away from Raymond Tucker whatever you do. You don’t know him, what he’s capable of. I do.’
And then the taxi was rolling away through the dense shadows the overhanging oak trees cast against the earth of the driveway. Don heard Trish say something loudly about the bus station to the driver. Then the red tail-lights of the cab were swallowed by the distance and there was only dust sifting slowly through the air. Aunt Trish was gone.
Don turned to walk slowly back toward the house where Sarah, her hands loosely clasped before her, watched and waited and wondered. Don approached her in a mental daze. What in hell was he supposed to do? The girl now was completely alone in the world.
Sarah’s smile was different now in a way he couldn’t define. More ingenuous, perhaps, more distant after her visit to the basement. But her face, lit by the fading sunset, was radiant. She was so unconsciously beautiful that Don’s heart ached. He stepped onto the sagging porch.
‘You’d better go and get one of your own coats, or a heavy sweater. Hurry. We have to leave right away.’ In response to the question in her eyes, he said, ‘Well, we still haven’t found your mother after all of this, have we? We have to keep looking.’
Sarah went into the house. He saw her ascending a dark and narrow staircase. Poppsy had come out to sniff at Don again, re-examining this new human.
She was a little while in returning. Don had a nearly irresistible impulse to go down into the basement while she was gone, but it would be a violation of Sarah’s sanctum, of her private world, or so he saw it. Instead, he waited patiently for her return, watching the last distant glow of the sunset on the sea as it returned to night darkness, his ears alert for the sound of an approaching car.
‘Ready?’
Sarah had returned, wearing a hooded green cotton-coat with frog buttons which matched her dress not at all. Her manner had changed again; her smile was broad and free. She was off on another great adventure. She crouched to stroke Poppsy and kiss the dog’s broad, shaggy head.
‘Poppsy will be all right,’ Don assured her. ‘She’s had her food and there’s water for her.’ He closed the kitchen door, checked it to make sure it had latched, and returned to the old yellow and white station wagon with Sarah.
‘I’ll stop at a telephone booth and try calling the lawyer’s office. It’s late, but he might still be in. I don’t know where else to start looking now.’
If the rather confusing day troubled Sarah now, she showed no signs of it. She slipped trustingly into the front seat beside Don, waved goodbye to Poppsy and leaned back as Don started the station wagon and began driving slowly back toward town in the purple evening.
‘I give up. That’s enough of this shit!’ he told the woman with him. Raymond Tucker rounded the corner and they seated themselves on a wooden bench in front of a drugstore. His feet were killing him, Sarah was nowhere to be found and there was no sign of the boys. They still hadn’t finished executing the contracts for the sale of the property – Raymond’s only reason for returning to this miserable town in the first place – and it was growing dark. Just beyond the opposite curb, the beach began. People with umbrellas and coolers, towels and blankets were straggling home against the dull violet of the twilight sky. Raymond stared toward the sea, his jaw clenched tightly.
Ellen, the woman beside him, rested with her head hanging limply like a heavy rose past its prime. She was beyond weariness in some hell where all the demons strangled and scratched and pounded on her skull. Her head throbbed like some heavy, soundless church bell. The pills the doctor had given her were doing no good; she needed a handful of aspirins washed down with a pint of bourbon. That would cure the shakes, ease the pain and erase her weariness at once.
She looked at Raymond’s eerily lit sundown face. His profile was still strong, and he was still a handsome man, she reflected. His hand rested beside hers on the bench and her index finger curled and lifted like an inchworm, but she dared not reach out and touch him.
‘Let’s go,’ Raymond said abruptly. ‘We’ve go to get those god damned papers signed.’
‘But Sarah.…’
‘Now you’re worried about Sarah?’ Raymond demanded sarcastically, and Ellen shrank away from him.
They heard a shout, and a passing cab swung to the curb with a shriek of brakes. Edward leaped from the back seat of the taxi, his hair tousled, his suit crumpled and unbuttoned.
‘Here you are!’ he said breathlessly. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere!’
‘Where’s Eric?’
‘I don’t know. Still looking for Sarah, I suppose. I have Eric’s signatures, but now Sarah is gone again.’ He ran a harried hand through his hair. How had this simple plan become so undone?
&
nbsp; ‘What do you mean again?’ Raymond demanded, rising to face his son.
‘What?’ Edward was taken briefly aback.
‘You said Sarah was missing again. What did you mean?’
‘Oh. Well, she was at some photographer’s place, but she was gone before Eric and I got there.’
‘What photographer?’ Raymond roared. People on the pavement turned their heads to look at him.
‘I don’t know…’ Edward said. ‘Some guy named March. He told us that he’d found Sarah sitting in the rain and took her home.’
‘Where is he now?’ Raymond demanded.
Edward shrugged feebly, ‘I don’t know. I just swung by his place a few minutes ago, checking. He’s gone now, too.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Raymond swore softly. ‘I thought at least one of my kids was born with some brains.’
‘What did you want me to do?’ Edward asked with some heat. ‘Sarah wasn’t there! I’ve spent most of the day looking for her and trying to track you two down.’
‘We have to find her,’ Ellen said. A touch of hysteria wavered through her voice. ‘Maybe we should split up.…’
‘You’re not splitting up from anyone,’ Raymond said. ‘I don’t have time to go out searching through any more bars or any more hospitals. Send your cab off, Edward. I’ll go back and get the Buick. Call the cops while I’m gone, report Sarah missing. Have them meet us at Dennison’s.’
‘All right, sure.’ It seemed the best way. Call the police – no, call Dennison first and tell him that the three of them were on their way and the contracts would definitely be signed by all parties today.
Raymond Tucker strode back up the street, tall and angular. People gave way at his approach. Edward returned to the cab, leaned to shove a few bills through the window to the driver, and entered the drugstore, looking for a telephone. Ellen, who had been wistfully studying a corner bar’s enticing neon summons, followed her son.
Ellen looked aimlessly through the racks of greeting cards in the drugstore. She could see Edward in the old-fashioned wooden telephone booth, speaking to someone. Soundlessly behind the glass, his lips moved, his expression tightened and then appeared relieved again. He fished in his pockets for change and dialed another number, looking up briefly toward his mother.
