Chinese Handcuffs

by Chris Crutcher

  No more.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, dear,” Mrs. Ryder said now. “Maybe we should talk about it.”

  Stacy shook her head. “There’s nothing more to talk about. I’m tired of everyone at school treating me like some kind of saint for helping my parents out in this ‘time of crisis.’ That’s what Mr. Caldwell called it the other day. A ‘time of crisis.’ I’m like some kind of tragic heroine or something.”

  “There are worse things,” her mother said.

  “Like having people know you slept with a drug addict and he probably killed himself because you told him you were pregnant?”

  Mrs. Ryder put her fingers to her temples, massaging them gently. Her job in this family was to still the waters, keep an even keel. That wasn’t always easy, but her presentation of calm in any storm was a powerful tool in that regard. “There’s more to it than that, Stacy. We’ve talked about this.”

  Stacy sat next to Ryan with her breakfast. She hadn’t expected her mother’s blessing, merely felt she should let her know before carrying out her plan. “Well, anyway,” she said, “that’s what I’m thinking. You and Dad going anywhere this weekend?”

  What Dillon loved about Stacy Ryder as much as anything was her capriciousness. From the time they were small children she delighted—and sometimes horrified—him with her off-the-wall actions, seemingly performed without the slightest regard for the consequences. Years back at the traveling carnival, after she had slipped those Chinese handcuffs over his finger, allowing his sister to escape into the crowd, she had given no thought whatever to the harassment Dillon would face when his mother caught up to him, which as he remembered, was substantial. Even back before that, in first grade, she had pulled off an impulsive move so cold-blooded even Dillon began to fear her. On a day in December that started out below zero Fahrenheit and seemed to get colder, the kids spent morning recess indoors, playing games and coloring. Stacy and a kid named Johnny McMasters got into a squabble over who was going to use the yellow first, and Stacy won out, having by far the better grip. Johnny evened the score a few minutes later with a hard shot between the shoulder blades, and before Stacy could lay waste to him, the teacher stepped in and stopped it.

  During afternoon recess, when the temperature had finally crawled a little closer to zero, several of the more hearty students bundled up and went out onto the playground with the teacher’s aide, and Stacy challenged them all to follow the leader through a little obstacle course she had set up, which ended with a rung-by-rung trip across the playground high bars. Stacy made it all the way across, a substantial feat for a first grader whose grip was eroded considerably from the thick wool mittens covering her hands, but most of the rest of the kids fell to the snow after the first or second rung. Dillon made it all the way, and Johnny McMasters, a sinewy little whippet with tenacity to match his revenge quotient, was now about halfway but losing his grip.

  “Hold on,” Stacy yelled. “Just rest a minute. You can make it.”

  Johnny, having forgotten the morning fracas, listened intently. “I’m slipping,” he grunted. “My hands are slipping.”

  Stacy stood directly below him. “Try to pull yourself up,” she said. “Slip your elbows over the rungs. Then you can rest while you hang there.”

  Dillon saw a look pass over Stacy’s face as she coaxed Johnny on. He wondered why she was helping her earlier assailant, knowing from personal experience that was definitely not Stacy-like.

  Miraculously, and with a little help from Stacy pushing up on his feet, Johnny pulled himself up far enough to slide his arm over the rung and support himself by the crook of his elbow, then follow suit with his other arm. He dangled there at the center of the rungs, adjusting his mittens and resting his hands to continue the journey.

  “Wanna do something neat?” Stacy asked from below.

  “What?” Johnny yelled back.

  “Put your tongue on the bar.”

  “What?”

  “Put your tongue on the bar. It’s like a Popsicle.”

  Johnny stuck out his tongue, which was instantly welded to the freezing bar.

  Stacy turned and walked toward the school, where the teacher’s aide was calling them all in.

  Dillon was caught—wide eyed—between walking back to the teacher with Stacy, which he wanted to do, and trying to help Johnny, who could soon be hanging by the tongue, screaming bloody murder. He chose the former but halfway across the playground stopped and said, “Stace. We can’t just leave him.”

  Stacy turned around and yelled back, as loud as she could, “Just let go and drop, you big baby.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Ryder spent some after-school conference time for that one. The teacher’s aide was so angry she saved the piece of skin left stuck to the frozen bar and presented it to them when they came to get Stacy, and it was a long time before anyone played with her after school or on weekends. She at least tied the Guinness world record for time grounded by a child under prison age. But she was adamant through it all that circumstances being the same, she’d do it again, exactly the same.

  Not only was she capricious, but she stuck by her impulses.

  Stacy walked into the school office and stood quietly behind Linda Moore, the first-period student office aide, who read the morning bulletin over the intercom to the homeroom classes. Stacy waited patiently, glancing down at the prepared speech she had written in case she got the jitters and couldn’t remember what she wanted to say.

  “Preliminary cheerleader tryouts for next year will be held in the gym immediately after school on Friday,” Linda read. “Single male teachers wishing to apply for judgeships should meet Mr. Caldwell behind the school at noon today. Bring money.”

  What a throwback, Stacy thought. I wonder how long it’ll be before the National Organization for Women finds a terrorist to come take him out.

  “And finally,” Linda read on, “there will be a pep assembly in the gym Friday morning to help spur the girls’ hoopsters through the district tournament, which begins Friday night out at Three Forks Community College. Bring noise.” Linda reached to flip the mike off, but Stacy touched her shoulder.

  “Mr. Caldwell wants me to read this,” she said, and Linda stepped away from the mike.

  Stacy took a deep breath and scanned the written copy in her hand, crumpled it, and put her mouth next to the mike. “One last-minute announcement,” she said.

  Dillon sat in his homeroom, reading a book called The Ultimate Athlete that had been recommended by Coach. A lot of it seemed aerie fairie and “Twilight Zone”-ish, but Coach had told him it was worth it to read through all that to get to some exceptional concentration techniques. Even if he were too closed-minded to accept the concepts, she said, challenging him as usual, he could get some good out of the concrete exercises, ones especially relevant for long-distance runners and swimmers and the like. Especially good for Ironmen, Coach had said.

  His head snapped up when he heard Stacy’s voice, and he reached back to the seat behind him and tapped Jennifer on the arm. “Isn’t that Stace?”

  “This is Stacy Ryder,” the voice over the intercom said, “and I bring news of a hoax that has been perpetrated upon you.”

  Dillon squeezed Jennifer’s arm and gritted his teeth. “I think I’m about to become an uncle.”

  “Most of you who know me,” Stacy went on, “know my parents recently adopted a baby because our relatives, the baby’s supposed parents, couldn’t care for it. Well, there was no adoption. No careless South Dakota cousin and no twilight-years parenthood for my folks. The kid is mine. Signed, sealed, and painfully delivered. His daddy was a drug addict, but he’s got a class set of grandparents on both sides, so I think he has a pretty good chance. If you see Dillon Hemingway in the halls today, you might want to congratulate him on his uncleship. And by the way, Dillon, if you haven’t been given another three-day vacation and you’re out there in intercom land, you best hurry your butt to the phone and tell your poppa so he doesn�
�t have to get the news from some overzealous administrator.

  “Thanks, Linda. How do you turn this thing off?” floated over the intercom as, back in the office, Stacy turned away from the intercom. Linda reached over and flipped the switch, then stood staring at Stacy.

  Stacy shrugged.

  Linda said, “Did Mr. Caldwell really want you to read that?”

  Stacy shrugged again.

  “That took guts.”

  “The truth will set me free, right?” Stacy said. She turned and walked out the door toward her first-period class.

  CHAPTER 12

  Dear Preston,

  Well, the big wheel keeps on turnin’—and gathering speed. I keep going back to what Coach said about responses and all, and I figure it’s pretty easy coming up with wisdom while you’re hanging out in her office shootin’ the crap and folding clothes, but it’s another thing altogether to act in any kind of “right” way, if there is such a thing.

  I can’t get Jen and her stepdad out of my head. I’ve tried everything. I’ve tried to run it out, swim it out, drown it out with MTV; but nothing helps, and nothing changes it. I think I said before I’ve got a motion picture brain, and I just keep seeing it over and over.

  I tried to find out what I can do about it, but without being able to say anything specific, it’s hard to get information. I called Child Protective Services, but the lady there said she couldn’t help me unless I was willing to give names and some details. She did say if I don’t want to report it myself, I could tell a teacher or counselor or administrator at school, that they were legally required to report child abuse or neglect. That didn’t help me as much as it hurt me because if I were going to go for advice, it would be to Coach, but if I do that, she would be under the gun to call it in. The fine for failure to report is ten thousand dollars, so Coach could be out some serious summer vacation money.

  And then there’s the part about sticking my nose in other people’s business, a practice you mentioned a time or two if I remember right. Jen was crystal clear she didn’t want me messing in this at all. Since she tried to get help before and got only trouble, I’m the only person she’s told. If I tell, my trust is down the toilet. I have to trust her to know what’s best for her; I mean, she’s been there. And I know how I feel when someone gets into my stuff uninvited. On the other hand, this isn’t the same as someone spying on my training schedule or starting rumors about who I like or don’t like. It isn’t even the same as people sticking their noses into my private stuff about you. This is ongoing. It’s ongoing, and it’s uglier than anything I can think of. For me, it’s like knowing my best friend is standing knee-deep in a nest of rattlesnakes and I’m just watching her be poisoned. Actually it’s more like knowing how bad things were for you and not being able to do anything about it.

  So everyplace I’ve turned there’s been a block. I went back to Jen, and she simply wouldn’t discuss it anymore. I can’t tell Stacy because you know she’d go off and do something to Jen’s stepdad—like make him stick his tongue on a freezing playground bar.

  Maybe not his tongue . . .

  Dad would want to go the rational way, which is through the law, and so would Coach. Truth is, I’d go along with any of those things if I could just know I was not making things worse, that Jen wouldn’t go right down the same road she’s been down before.

  So I figured since Caldwell has been so generous to me with all the three-day vacations, I should take one on my own, give him a rest. Actually I took only one day—told Dad I was sick this morning, waited for him to head out to work, hopped into your van, and drove to St. Mary’s College out there on the river. There’s a guy in their psychology department who’s supposed to be one of the leading authorities in the Northwest on child abuse and particularly on sexual victims and offenders. He’s semifamous and has been on TV and radio around here fairly regularly for the past two years, usually when there’s a series of rapes or other outlandish sexual shenanigans that the cops need help with, so it was no big detective deal for me to figure out he might be able to help.

  I must be living right because when I walked into the outer offices of the psych department and asked to see him, the secretary rang his number, and he was out to greet me in seconds, without even knowing why I was there. I knew he was probably in the same reporting position as Coach, and I wanted to keep it abstract, so I started to go with some theoretical bullshit, like I was writing a research paper or something; but it was a stupid lie I knew I couldn’t hold, and I gave it up quick.

  “Actually,” I said, starting anew, “I have a friend, and her stepdad is messing with her. I promised I wouldn’t give her name or anything, or tell anyone, but it’s driving me nuts.”

  He invited me into his office, and I was instantly comfortable with him. His name is Dr. Newcomb, and there is nothing physically outstanding about him other than the way he dresses. He wears glasses, he’s of medium height and weight and coloring, and he wears the clothes you’d expect him to wear—a jacket and slacks—but they look like he picked them up off the stairs on his way out the door. I mean, they look like he sends them out to get them wrinkled.

  Anyway, he motioned for me to sit down. “She needs to tell someone,” he said. “That’s the only way things like this get stopped.”

  I gave him the whole story—without names, of course—about how he was a bigwig who couldn’t be touched, how Jen had tried once before and made her life all the more miserable. Dr. Newcomb asked a lot of questions, some of which I knew the answers to and others that I didn’t, so when I stopped talking, I figured he knew as much about it as anyone. I sort of expected him to give me the standard line about how if no one steps forward, there’s no way to help and all that, but he didn’t.

  He said, “That’s the trouble with the protection system sometimes. Everyone who works in it is backed up to last year. A good lawyer can go in and turn things upside down, and the state can’t afford the time or energy to take him on. I hate to say it, but this system doesn’t protect rich kids the way it does poor kids.”

  “So what can I do?”

  “You probably can’t do anything. Your friend has to be willing to do something, including take this guy on. I hate to say it, but you’re probably smart not to report it. CPS would investigate, but if the lawyer made enough noise or the girl backed down even a little, they’d close it. Then she’s stuck holding the bag. And the way you describe him, this guy sounds mean. And dangerous.”

  “Actually, that’s not my description,” I said. “It’s hers.”

  Dr. Newcomb nodded. “Tell you what I can offer,” he said. “If you can get her to come see me, and I’m convinced she’s telling the truth, I’ll go after him myself. I’m considered the expert in this town, so I have a little more clout than a lot of folks. See if you can at least get her to talk. She doesn’t have to give me her last name unless she wants to; that way I can’t report it if she doesn’t feel safe.”

  That was as good news as I’d heard since Jen told me about this nightmare. I knew she’d be mad as hell at me for getting into it at all, but if she could get past that, there might be a chance. I thanked the doctor and got up to leave.

  “There are a few things you should know if this is your girl friend,” he said.

  I stopped. “She is. Sort of. I want her to be, I think.”

  He nodded. “I’ll bet it’s been confusing.”

  “It’s been confusing.”

  “You need to know that she sees relationships very differently from other people, particularly if there’s anything remotely sexual about them. She’s spent her life being invaded—unable to protect her body, that one part of her most of us have control over. I could go into all kinds of detail about the confusion she has and her complete lack of trust, but it would be too much for you to take in. What I will say is, if the two of you ever decide to have a real relationship, don’t try to do it without help. You can’t repair that kind of damage without a lot of therapy.”
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  Boy, that’s what I needed to hear, Pres. I needed to hear that even if this all does work out, I could still be in for the screwball love affair of the decade. God, I’m sending away for a blow-up doll. I told him that. Except for the part about the doll.

  “Believe it,” he said, and he leveled his eyes on mine, and I almost thought I felt a push from inside. Whatever it was, it was powerful. “Believe it.”

  I nodded. “I do believe it. Thanks.”

  I started on out the door, but turned back out of curiosity. “What makes a guy do things like this?” I asked. “I mean, something must have happened to him. . . .”

  Dr. Newcomb put his hand in the air. “I’m sure his childhood was filled with monstrous acts against him, Dillon,” he said, “but don’t even think about it. When a dog turns rabid it doesn’t do you a bit of good to think about when he was a puppy. That’s my job, not yours.”

  I plan to hit Jen with all that, but not right now. It helps me to know there might be a way out of all this, so that quiets the beasts in my head, but the district tournament starts tonight, and if I brought up something with even the remotest possibility of screwing up her concentration on that, she’d rip out my innards and dine on them.

  Stacy bowled over the troops the other day, announced her motherhood during homeroom bulletin and let the chips fall where they may, as they say. You’re famous once again, little big brother. The world now knows you live on. She got a few looks in the hallowed halls, but everyone who said anything supported her. I think people do have some inner respect for the truth, even if it’s about hard things—things they don’t like to look at. They may not always agree with it, and they may not really want to hear it, but when you tell it and stand by it big and strong, not many will mess with it. Maybe that’s a good thing about humans. Quick! Write it down.