“No, sir.”
“Sure about that?”
“Yes.”
I stood on the sidewalk as he turned around and drove slowly back toward downtown. When the car was out of sight, I hurried the last block to my house, climbed the unlit front steps, and silently opened the front door.
The house was dark, save for the cold glow coming from the kitchen. I could hear water running. The clock on the mantel said it was a quarter to ten, past my bedtime by more than an hour. I was uncertain how aware they would have been of my absence—it was possible that, in the heat of their argument, they would have assumed I had merely gone up to bed and stayed there. But then again, my mother might be worried about me, and would want to know I was home safe.
I decided that, on balance, it was best to sneak up to my room. If my mother thought I was out, she would have had the porch light on, and would have been looking for me through the front window. I crept down the hall and hurried past the archway that led to the dining room.
There, however, I stopped. It was possible to see through the archway, across the dining room, and through a second archway to the kitchen, and I had caught a glimpse of my mother in her familiar position in front of the sink. She didn’t turn—the sound of the running water had obscured my footsteps. But something about the scene didn’t appear right, and I leaned back for another look.
The dining room table still had not been cleared, though the candles were out, and several glasses had been knocked over, staining the tablecloth. In addition, the tablecloth was crooked, hanging almost to the ground at one corner, and some dishes and silverware had fallen, spattering the floor with food and shards of porcelain. This was unusual, of course. But it was
my mother’s appearance that was most strange. I was accustomed to seeing her bent over in a laborer’s stance, her head hung, her shoulders rolling, arms working at the dishes. She had been, of all things, a golf prodigy in high school—in fact, had dropped out in order to join the tournament circuit, in the hope of becoming a professional—but, according to family lore, had chosen my father over the greens, and put away her clubs for good. I had always been impressed by my mother’s athleticism, and her willingness to have abandoned her ambitions for the smaller accomplishments of home. But now I was given to doubt, for the first time, whether this life was what she really had wanted. She stood motionless at the sink, her head high, as though she were staring out the window. The window, however, was curtained. The honey-colored chignon into which she had arranged her hair was half-undone across one shoulder, and she was leaning slightly to one side.
I watched for a good minute, expecting her to break out of her reverie and return to work. But nothing happened. The water was running at full blast, making quite a racket in the otherwise silent house, and I began to grow nervous.
“Mother?” I said.
There was no response. I walked into the dining room and made my slow way around the table, warning her of my presence. “I’m home,” I called out. “I’m sorry I’m so late.”
I peered into the kitchen. Up close, her stillness seemed even stranger. I could see now that her dress hung crookedly across her shoulders, and the heel of one of her shoes was missing. That accounted for the lean.
“Mother?”
I entered the kitchen, treading heavily, so as not to shock her when I tapped her shoulder. Soon I was standing beside her, looking up.
“Mother!” Her right hand was hanging beside her, and I took it in mine. It was cold. She didn’t look at me.
Her left hand was in the sink, under the water. It alarmed me at first to notice that only the hot was turned on—I thought she must be burning. A few plates and forks were stacked under the flow, and her hand lay on top, the water cascading over it. I reached out and moved the faucet over to the opposite sink. It, too, was ice cold. I turned off the water and pulled my mother’s hand out.
She had begun to tremble. I ran my hands up her arms—she was freezing!
“Here, Mother.” I pulled the wooden stool out from under the small table the telephone sat on, and placed it behind her. I told her to sit. She didn’t seem to hear me. I pushed her gently, reached up and pushed her shoulders, and she sank slowly, trembling, until she landed on the stool. “Stay there,” I said. I ran to the living room, turned up the thermostat, and removed the knitted afghan from the sofa. Back in the kitchen, I wrapped it around her shoulders. Then I took the box of matches from the drawer, turned on the oven, and lit the pilot light. I left the door open—she was sitting right beside it. I heard the furnace clank on beneath us and roar to life.
She was blinking now, and seemed to have noticed me.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “You had your hand under cold water.”
Her face was shaking now, too, and her shoulders. Her eyes were full of tears.
“Stay here, Mother,” I said. “I’ll clean up for you.”
I left her there, and went into the dining room. I picked up the debris from the floor, and collected all the plates, glasses, and silverware. I removed the tablecloth and took it downstairs and put it in the washing machine. Then I came back and cleaned up the fallen food, including a bit that had somehow gotten stuck on the wall. Perhaps that had been my doing. I turned the water back on in the sink, and washed the dishes, taking periodic breaks to warm my hands over the oven door.
All the while, my mother watched me in silence. She stopped crying after a few minutes and just watched, her eyes following me around the room. I tried to smile at her every now and then. She seemed to appreciate the work I was doing, or trying to do—I was not yet fully adept at housework, as I am now—but there was something in her gaze that was unfriendly. I couldn’t put my finger on it. When the dishes were finished, I went downstairs again and transferred the tablecloth to the dryer, then I returned to the kitchen and took the broom out of the closet.
“Stop it,” my mother said.
She was no longer shivering. The afghan had slipped off one of her shoulders, revealing a mark I hadn’t noticed before: a livid bruise on her neck, just above the clavicle.
“I’m almost finished,” I said.
“Stop it, Eric, please.”
I didn’t understand. I waited for further instruction, but when none came, I put the broom away and turned off the oven. My mother was still watching me with that slightly hostile, perhaps fearful expression. I tried to think of what I had done to displease her, but came up with nothing. So I went to her and embraced her.
I felt her entire body wince underneath the afghan. She patted me, perfunctorily.
“Go to bed, Eric. It’s very late.” Her voice was terribly dry and faint.
“Did you like the way I cleaned up?” I asked, embarrassed even as the words left my mouth.
“Yes, thank you.”
“I’m sorry I spit food at dinner.”
Her only response was a slow nod, which trailed off into a very direct and very discomfiting stare.
“Mother?”
“You know what you are?” she said, her voice flat. “You are your father’s son.” She blinked. “You should go to bed now.”
I paused a long moment before obeying, climbing the stairs to my room in some confusion and unease. When I arrived, I found a small, dark object inhabiting a shallow depression in my pillow. It was the toy locomotive.
The following Saturday morning, my father woke me at the break of dawn. “Get dressed,” he said. “You’re going to see Doctor Stiles.”
FIFTEEN
I woke slowly, as if rising to the surface of a very deep lake. I could feel a pressure gradually lifting, only for it to be supplanted by nausea, faint at first, then increasingly intense. Light gathered, my head throbbed, and soon I found myself violently sick. I heard the sound of rain and could smell its tang, and I shivered. My vision was blurred. I squeezed my eyes shut, blinked, worked away the haze until I could see my surroundings.
I was inside a wooden cage—the same cage, in fact, that I had
noticed on my way into the compound. Rusted iron shackles ringed my wrists and ankles, and my body was naked. And though I lay on my back on the cage’s floor, my shackles were chained to its ceiling, and my limbs were suspended several inches above the ground. My fingers and toes were cold and numb, and my privates had shrunk to a tiny ball of exposed flesh. I felt terribly weak and very thirsty.
I tugged at the chains, but nothing in the resistance I felt suggested that any was liable to break. Furthermore, my movement had the effect of draining what little energy I possessed, revealing in its wake a deep soreness that pervaded every muscle. My thoughts, too, were dull and uncomprehending, and I struggled to remember what I had been doing that led me here. I recalled a fire in a darkened room, but that was all. I coughed now, as though from a memory of smoke, and my throat felt raw.
“Hello, Eric,” came a voice from behind me.
I was startled, and jerked suddenly against the chains, sending another wave of pain washing through my body. I tipped my head back and saw a tall, stooped figure making its way around the cage. It was a man, very old, carrying a wooden chair. The chair was simple, spattered with many colors of paint, and roughened around the edges of the seat by irregular slots, as though someone had been using it as a sawhorse. He set the chair on the flagstones at my feet, lowered himself onto it, and stared at me, his thin, tan hands folded between his bony knees. He wore a torn but close-fitting V-neck sweater and a pair of faded and stained khaki pants. His feet were filthy and bare and his short white hair stood up on his head in all directions.
The old man was Professor Avery Stiles, of course. His face was the same, and when I saw it, I remembered the events that led to my capture, along with the grim reminiscences I indulged as I fell unconscious. I gasped for breath. Doctor Stiles smiled, a gentle, sad expression that nevertheless appeared to harbor great strength. He opened his mouth to speak.
“What do you want from me?” I demanded, and his eyebrows rose, as though with approval at my interruption.
“I might ask you the same, Eric.”
“I don’t understand.” My voice was wet and strangled. I turned my head and spat.
He cocked his head, blinking. Then he straightened, leaned back, and crossed his arms over his chest. Through the sweater I could see his biceps, thin and stringy. His jaw moved involuntarily.
“I was sorry,” he said, “to hear about your parents.”
I merely stared. When ten seconds or so had passed, he appeared mildly surprised and, again incongruously, somehow pleased.
“I had thought your father was a kindred soul,” he went on. “But it appears I was mistaken. A tragedy.”
I tried to speak, but all that emerged was a low, spitting growl.
After a moment’s thought, he leaned forward, gripping his knees. “I understood that your father possessed a great hidden well of anger. But I never imagined he might commit such an act.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “She was a lovely woman, your mother.”
“Her death,” I managed at last, “was an accident.”
Again the eyebrows went up. “And his own?”
“He couldn’t bear the guilt.”
As I said this, I recalled the bruise I had seen on my mother’s neck, and felt a shiver of revulsion run through me. Professor Stiles studied my movement with a clinical eye.
“Uncomfortable, Eric?”
I said nothing.
“You should be able to free yourself, you know.”
Again, I offered no response.
He held out his palms, his long arms like the wings of some great, ancient bird. “I have confidence in you, Eric. You’ll find a way.”
I gathered my strength and tried to spit at him. But my dehydration was too advanced. Furthermore I sensed that, even had I been successful, he would barely have noticed. His imperviousness was absolute.
He studied me for some seconds, his face knotted with curiosity, and apparent, but surely false, concern. He stroked his white-bristled chin in a parody of deep thought. He leaned forward farther still, until his narrow face was framed by two of the wooden bars.
“Eric,” he said, “I think you need to ask yourself what it is, exactly, you’re doing here.”
I began to feel myself growing tired and nauseous again. I inhaled deeply, to clear my head, but the only tangible result was dizziness. I coughed, gasped, and then failed to suppress an enormous yawn. “You came,” I said. “To me. To my house.”
But Professor Stiles was shaking his head. “No, Eric. You need to understand the real reason you’re here. Not simply to these woods. Home. Why did you come back to Gerrysburg?”
“That’s none of your concern,” I managed. I could no longer lift my head to see him.
“Where did you live before this, Eric? Why did you leave the place you were before?”
“That’s … ” I muttered. “You …” But I could no longer speak, my exhaustion was so profound. Tears gathered in my eyes and rolled down the sides of my head.
Before I fell unconscious, I saw him get up and walk away.
I believe that my first visit to him was in his office at the college. Not the building where I encountered Professor Lydia Bulgakov—a different, older, smaller structure that, as far as I know, is no longer even standing. I recall that the room was taller than it was wide, with windows that stretched floor to ceiling and looked out upon a tree-covered hill that rose up and out of sight. It was my father, of course, who delivered me there, and I remember that he was uncharacteristically subdued, as if in awe. I had, as I’ve described, seen him indulge in some chummy banter with people in the past, and had known him to brood, or to explode into anger. But I had never seen this state—one of muted respect. Of course I followed suit.
Professor Stiles sat at a large wooden desk that took up a full quarter of the room, its veneer bubbled and peeling and thick with dust. He peered out at us through a canyon formed by a dozen high piles of heavy books, each appearing likely to fall at any moment. His smile when he saw us was wide and humorless and accompanied by a simple nod of acknowledgment.
“Eric,” my father said quietly, “sit down.” And he pointed to an arrangement of two chairs that stood in a bookcase-lined corner of the room. One was simple and wooden and appeared uncomfortable; the other was large, and thickly upholstered with worn leather. I chose the leather chair, of course, and slid onto it, tipping my head back to examine the incomprehensible titles on the spines of the Professor’s books.
My father spoke quietly to Professor Stiles about when he ought to return for me, and a moment later he caught my attention at the door. He said goodbye and told me he would be back soon, and I thought I detected a momentary expression of worry on his heavy, rather tired-looking face. I nodded, he nodded, and he was gone, the heavy door falling shut behind him.
With the door closed, the silence in the room was total. In spite of the windows, it seemed entirely cut off from the outside world. I stared at the door for a moment—a curled and yellow poster on the back bore an etching of some spear-bearing warrior at the wall of a city, a dead man crumpled at his feet.
I then noticed a marked change in the air of the office.
Professor Stiles had stood up behind the desk, and he stared at me now, over the towers of books, with something that appeared to me like hatred. His hair, thin even then, stood up in mad black spikes, and his face glowed faintly with some obscure emotion. I cringed, sinking back into the leather chair.
A few scant seconds later, and with nothing but two long steps, he had crossed the room and struck me, open-handed, across the face.
I was too stunned to cry out, too frightened to move. Professor Stiles leaned over me like a great bird or dinosaur, his deep brown eyes drilling into mine, and snarled, “What are you doing”
Surely there was a correct answer. I stammered. “I … I …”
“Get off that chair.”
I jumped down without hesitation. My legs trembled; the floorboards creake
d beneath my feet. The Professor grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me down into the other chair, the wooden one, which was spattered with paint and squeaked and leaned under my negligible weight.
“In this office,” he said with quiet and terrifying intensity, “you do precisely what you are told to do, and nothing more. Did I tell you to sit down?”
“No,” I whispered.
“Then why did you sit down, Eric?”
The answer, of course, was that my father had told me to. But it was clear that my father held no sway here, not now, not ever, and that, for the foreseeable future—an hour, but an eternity to me—I would answer entirely to the authority of Professor Stiles. I said, “I… I don ’t know.”
“In this room,” he said, straightening, “you do everything for a reason. And that reason is that I told you to do it. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Excellent.” And with that word, he seemed suddenly to soften. His shoulders relaxed, the creases in his face smoothed out, and his hands found the pockets of his slacks. Beneath the fabric, his bony fingers danced and twitched. “So!” he said, with a smile. “Would you like something to eat?”
Lunch, in fact, was more than an hour away, and I was indeed quite hungry. Still cowed, I merely nodded to indicate my desire.
The Professor strode out the door, and returned a minute later carrying a small china plate. On it lay a fork and a square of frosted cake. “Our department secretary, Mrs. Choate, had a birthday today,” he explained. “We celebrated with a bit of cake!” He handed the plate to me, then settled into the leather chair with a satisfied sigh. I forked off a small piece of the cake, and put it in my mouth.
I’d barely had time to taste it when the Professor leaped from his chair, lunged across the space between us, and again struck me on the face, this time knocking the cake from my mouth and the plate and fork from my hands. He had hit me harder this time, and a bloom of dull pain spread through my jaw. I was unable to restrain myself from crying.
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