Beyond Midnight

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  "What the hell has gotten into you?" she demanded to know.

  "Nothing," said Russ in a whiny tone. "We were just goofing around until this dufus grabbed me by my shirt and wouldn't let go."

  "I wouldn't let go because the cop told us to hold it right there!" Becky shouted in her brother's face. She was furious.

  "I coulda made it! Everyone else did! But no-o-o, you've gotta be a guardian angel!"

  "You are so clueless, you moron! Don't you know what you've done? This could affect what college we go to! You moron!"

  "Stop it, both of you! Start from the beginning. Becky, you first. Russ, shut up. You'll get your turn after."

  Becky, who was shivering so much that Helen had to start the engine and turn on the heat, said, "I heard some whispering back and forth from Russ's window down to the side yard. So without turning on my light, I got up and peeked. Russell was climbing out of his window and down the trellis on the house. I saw him go out to the front and get into a black Bronco with wide gold stripes that was parked across the street."

  "It was a blue Bronco, snitch!" her brother interrupted.

  "Shhh! Go on, Becky."

  "I decided to follow him this time."

  "This time!" Helen said, mouth agape.

  Wincing, Becky went on with her tale. "But by the time I got my jeans on and sneaked down the stairs, they were gone. So I got in my car and I started driving around, looking for them. I knew they were up to something because I saw a dusty can of spray paint sticking out of Russ's backpack yesterday. I figured he got it out of the basement."

  "You nosy rat!"

  "Russell! Not another word!"

  "So then," Becky said, more resolutely than before, "I was driving through town and I saw the Bronco and I stopped where they couldn't see me. And I couldn't believe it when I saw them spraying graffiti on the statue. So I ran up to them to get Russ away, and then the patrol car came by, and then—well, you know the rest."

  Helen nodded grimly. "Russell? Let's hear it."

  "This never would've happened if she just minded her own business."

  That, apparently, was it: the sum total of his defense.

  "Excuse me? Roger Conant wouldn't be defaced if your sister had just stayed in bed?"

  "I don't mean that. I mean this," her son said, nodding sideways at the police station.

  "Well, this is about that, Russell Evett! And the sooner you connect crime with punishment, the better off you'll be. Because they don't have Nintendo in the slammer. Or an endless supply of chocolate-chip cookies. Or weekends off. Or sailing lessons. You'll never have your own car. They'll let you earn a high school equivalency, but I'm not so sure about med school," she said scathingly.

  He seized, arbitrarily, on that. "I don't wanna go to med school," he said. "That's your idea."

  "Well-l-l, I was wrong about that! I think I'll start pushing you into a law degree—because I know at least one fool you can take on as a client."

  Helen swung her look, burning with anger, at her daughter. "Make that two," she corrected.

  By now Becky wasn't bothering to hold back the tears. "Oh, Mom, can't we just go home? I want to go home."

  "Hold that thought the next time you're tempted to play Joan of Arc, young lady. Because furloughs from prison are hard to get!"

  "Please?" Becky said, weeping now.

  Despite her fury, Helen was in despair. The innocent one was showing remorse; the perpetrator, a sullen defiance. Was he missing a gene of some kind? How could she reach him?

  "All right," she said to Becky in a voice shaking with self-imposed calm. "We'll leave the Escort here overnight. You won't be needing it for the next few weeks, anyway."

  Resigned to the additional punishment, Becky fell back on the seat and closed her eyes. "Can't we just go home?" she moaned again.

  "No," said her mother grimly. "We have a job to do."

  Chapter 16

  Tourist mecca or not, before dawn the corner of Brown and Washington Square was usually empty. Helen hauled her kids, punchy with sleeplessness, out of the Volvo and handed them their tools.

  "Start scrubbing," she said in a hushed command.

  She helped them climb over the black stakes of the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the monument, an imposing bronze statue of the colonist who in 1626 led thirty men, women, and children to Salem from a failing colony in nearby Cape Ann. Poor Roger Conant. He was a mess.

  The graffiti, done in yellow and Day-Glo orange, was mostly confined to the deep folds of the pilgrim's cape. Russell Evett's first initial, done in a rounded, filled-in style, was all he'd had time to execute. One of the other boys had settled on that old favorite, the f-word; and someone else had been about to pillory a girl named Sarah.

  Under the lurid red glow pouring from the towering windows of the cathedral-like Witch Museum, Helen took over as lookout while her children cleaned up the damage to the maligned settler.

  She was as jumpy as a vandal. "For Pete's sake, hurry up," she said several times. The two did their best, which wasn't very good—not good enough for Helen, anyway. She jumped the fence herself and went at the paint on the settler's fingers with the vigor of an old-world housewife.

  When the inevitable squad car approached them on Brown Street, Helen nearly jumped out of her skin. It was too much: the red glow, the scowling pilgrim, the murky night, and now The Law. A career criminal, she wasn't. She climbed out of the fenced-in pen and went rushing up to the patrol car waving her arms in either surrender or apology, she wasn't sure which.

  Don't put on the siren, she begged silently. Don't make this any worse. She put her finger to her lips as she got closer to the police car; it was the motherly instinct at work.

  Mercifully, the patrol officer listened to her story without calling in reinforcements. When she finished, he said, "Be careful over the fence," and drove silently off.

  Relieved, Helen went back to gather up her equipment and her children and head on home, a mere mile away from the crime scene.

  In the car, Russ, still surging with adrenaline, said, "I bet someone called that cop! Both times!"

  Becky said, "Well, duh. What do you expect?"

  Russ said, "I dunno. It was like, just as exciting this time as before. More, even, b'cause, like, we didn't have to worry about being caught. I mean, not really worry. Because we were, like, on the right side?"

  For Russ it was a long, philosophical speech. Helen felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe he had the makings of a sheriff after all. She said, "We're just lucky the patrolman thought so. Or we'd all end up spending the night in the cage."

  After a few seconds Russ snorted and said, "Cool."

  It was a bonding moment.

  They piled out of the car in brighter light than they'd piled into it: Dawn had arrived. Obviously no one, including Helen, was in any shape for school; Helen sent her son and daughter off to bed with the promise that she'd call the school for them. Becky dragged herself off to her room, but Helen told her son to wait.

  At the foot of the stairs he turned to face her, wary and unsure what to expect.

  Ignoring the fact that he was in his no-hug years, Helen took her reluctant son in her arms and held him in a sighing embrace. If only she could make him understand; if only she could love him into a state of innocence again.

  She said, "I want you to promise me that you'll never sneak out of your room at night again." She held him at arm's length and looked into his green eyes, hollowed from lack of sleep. "Promise me? As a man?"

  His cheeks went pink; it was the first time she'd ever addressed him that way. "Yeah, okay."

  "All right. We've got to get through tomorrow in court. We'll do it together. If your father were here, he'd be there, too; you know that. Now get some sleep."

  Russ started up the stairs, then turned. "If Dad were here, he wouldn't have to," he said with depressing insight. And then he went to bed.

  ****

  The hearing went pretty much as the lieutenant in
charge had told Helen it would. No charges were filed; no scarlet letters were issued for her children to wear. Becky was let off the hook altogether; Russell was put in Salem's Diversion Program, intended to redirect troubled youths. His punishment—very fitting—was to raise and lower the flag in front of City Hall for a month.

  The results should have been comforting, but somehow they weren't. What if he should slip up? Helen felt as if they were all on probation. As a result she was subdued, and her children were subdued, that night at dinner. Helen had grounded them both Until Further Notice while she made up her mind what to do. She wanted to be fair; but she was feeling too dejected to be fair.

  All that changed when the doorbell rang.

  Helen, dressed for comfort in baggy slacks and an oversized T-shirt, was working at her downstairs desk when Russ came in and said, "It's that guy with the Porsche."

  The boy was trying to be discreet, but the guy with the Porsche was right behind him, standing in the doorway. "Thanks, Russ," Helen said, without even looking at her son. Her gaze was focused on Katie's father. Except she wasn't thinking of him as Katie's father. Or Linda's widowed husband. Or the Fund Manager of the Year. He was simply the man with whom she was falling in love. Looked at that way, he was utterly irresistible. It made her spirits soar just to have him in the room.

  Russ, who had nothing more to say or do, ducked around Nat on his way out, leaving behind a huge void of silence.

  "Hi." The word tumbled feather soft from Helen's lips.

  "I brought back your book," Nat said, lifting it up between them.

  "The book," she repeated, pretending she understood what the word book meant. She had no idea.

  "The primer?" he explained. "On toddler care?"

  "Oh, the book. Thanks. You've brought it back?"

  With a subdued smile, he lifted it up again for her to see.

  She'd lost her wits. Never mind Aunt Mary; she was the one who was in big trouble. She stood up and said, "You didn't have to rush through it for my sake. Did you make a special trip?"

  "Yes and no," he said as he walked over to the bookshelf from which the book had been removed. Sliding the volume into the gap that still remained, he said, "I was driving past your house, anyway—but I take a roundabout route from work so that I can drive past your house."

  "I—oh. Excuse me?"

  He turned and leaned back into the bookshelves and folded his arms across his chest. "Yes. I made a special trip. Yes."

  Now her heart was hammering.

  Flushing, she said inanely, "Well. Thank you."

  She realized that he was still wearing a suit. His tie was loosened and his hair was rumpled; obviously he'd been working late. "Have you eaten?" she asked, at the same time trying to figure out how to change into something more becoming.

  "No. Is that an offer or a rhetorical question?"

  "Would Katie still be waiting up for you at this hour?"

  "Will it make a difference if she is?"

  "Is either of us ever going to answer the other's question?"

  He laughed at that and said, "Katie's dead to the world by now. I said good-night to her on the phone before I left Boston. I know it doesn't look as if I'm getting any better at this, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm hiring more help at work. In fact, that's why I'm late tonight; the interview ran over."

  "That is good news," Helen said, truly pleased to hear it. "It calls for some kind of celebration. Would a sandwich and a beer be about right?"

  With a wry grin he said, "I hate to think what I'd have to do to earn a casserole and a glass of wine."

  "Hire three more analysts," she said promptly. "Come on, I think the kitchen's still open."

  With a fervent hope that Russ was under his headphones, Helen headed for the fridge with Nat in tow. She felt exactly as if she were sneaking a man into an all-girl dorm.

  This is stupid, she told herself. I'm the boss around here. My kitchen, my food, my—

  Son. "Yes, Russ?" she asked as the boy came skidding to a halt at the door to the kitchen.

  Russell glanced from his mother to the cookie cupboard to the man in front of it to the fridge to his mother again. "I'm hungry," he said warily. He looked like a coyote who'd wandered into a Sunday brunch.

  "I'm making Mr. Byrne a sandwich. Would you like me to make you one, too?"

  "No," he said with distinct coolness. "I'll get something myself." He settled for an unfinished bag of Doritos, grabbed a Pepsi, and went out without a word to either of them.

  As Helen emptied sandwich fixings from the refrigerator, Nat said flatly, "He has a problem with me."

  "Russ has a problem with everything," Helen said, trying to laugh it off. "It's a stage."

  "It's more than that, I think. He tries too hard to pretend I'm not here."

  Slicing off two thick hunks of sourdough bread, Helen said, "He's bored. He's angry. He's fourteen." For some unaccountable reason, she added, "He's an artiste. They're temperamental, you know."

  "Ah. He has artistic talent?"

  "He must think so," she said lightly. "He got yanked off the statue of Roger Conant the other night with a can of spray paint in his hand."

  "Uh-oh. Graffiti?"

  When Helen thought about it afterward, she wondered why she'd felt the urge to tell Nat about it. Maybe she was afraid the police were going to go blabbing to every stockbroker in town. Whatever the reason, she decided to make it all a joke. She described herself scrambling up the boulder and scrubbing the pilgrim's fingernails; her hysteria when she spotted the patrol car; her suspicious loitering the next day as she looked for telltale traces of Day-Glo orange on the statue. She made the story about herself, with Russ merely a bit player in it.

  When she finished, Nat was laughing and saying things like boys will be boys. He confessed, himself, to a desperate and so far unsatisfied urge to spray paint the huge Corita gas tank alongside Boston's Southeast Expressway.

  In short, he made Russell sound perfectly normal, and for that Helen would've been willing to go to bed with him on the spot. But that wasn't possible, so instead she placed a thick ham and cheese sandwich in front of him, and a tall, frosty beer, and said, "You've made my day, Nat. You'll never, never know how much."

  She sat alongside him, wearing a big, fat grin on her face. "Eat up," she said, drumming the palms of her hands on the wood enthusiastically. "There's more."

  He cocked his head and gave her a quirky little smile. "I like you like that. Especially the ponytail. It makes you less official, less authoritative, somehow."

  Her hand flew up to the rubber band; she'd forgotten about the ponytail. Damn! At least if her hair looked decent!

  She pulled the rubber band off and swung her black hair from side to side, freeing it. "I need all the authority I can get around here, Nat," she said, laughing. "Believe me."

  He had no answer to that; only a troubled, burning look. And then Helen's laugh subsided to a smile, and the smile softened to a slight tremble of her lips as he slid his hand behind her head and brought his mouth on hers in a soft, tentative kiss. The touch of his lips was shockingly real after the fantasy of it for so many weeks; Helen made a tiny sound, deep in her throat, mostly to convince herself that this time the kiss was not a conjured act in a silent dream.

  No. It was very, very real.

  No. "Nat—"

  "Don't tell me you didn't expect this," he whispered, tracing a soft line of kisses to her ear. "Don't."

  Her heart was racing. "If I did," she murmured, dropping her voice to match the secrecy in his, "what diff—"

  The squeak of running shoes in the hall brought her up short. She jerked her head back guiltily and sat up straight in her chair, just the way she'd nagged her kids to do a million times. Her cheeks, she knew, were flushed with embarrassment.

  Nat, on the other hand, seemed to have no problem being caught making out with a real live mom. He gave Russ a look that was friendly, open, and unconcerned. Technically, Nat wa
s right. They weren't doing anything illegal or immoral.

  Technically.

  Russell's own face was burning bright red as he finally broke out of his trance, turned on his heel, and fled.

  "Oh, perfect," Helen groaned, truly distressed. "Just what Russ needs: another reason to hate me."

  "Hey, c'mon—hate? Isn't that a little strong?"

  Helen smiled wanly. "Don't you remember how it was, being fourteen? You didn't merely approve or disapprove. You loved or you hated. There were no in-betweens."

  She glanced down the hall, somehow expecting Russ to come back with his father's badge and arrest them both. It was crazy, letting her son dictate her life this way. She resented it fiercely; and that made her feel even more guilty.

  "It's because of Hank, the way he died," she blurted. "It left us all emotionally crippled, one way or the other. The wounds are healed; but the scars ..."

  She shook her head, not trusting her voice. "The scars will always be there," she said at last. "I'm sorry," she added in a choked voice.

  "Shhh," Nat said, stroking her hair away from her downcast face. "Don't you think I understand? My wife died suddenly; violently."

  Helen looked up in pain. "It's true, then?" she asked, dismayed. "From an overdose? Of ergotamine?"

  He had to steel himself to answer her. "Yes."

  A shudder of revulsion went through her. "It can't be," she whispered. "It's not possible."

  "That's what I told myself," he said quietly.

  It was odd, the way he seemed to have to comfort her instead of the other way around. Helen murmured, "And yet ... you seem able to put it behind you."

  He sighed, then smiled a smile as bleak as Helen's had been. "I don't know about putting it behind me. I only know that when I'm with you, the pain is eased somehow. It's as if—oh, I don't know," he said, frustrated.

  He tried again. Taking one of Helen's hands in both of his, he said, "I feel as if you can explain her to me. Peaches tries—I grill her all the time—but it's you I've come to believe in."