Ronnie looked around to make sure no one was watching him, then bent down, reached inside the stroller, and took hold of one of the baby’s hands.
And Knew.
Knew so very clearly.
God, how he Knew.
He Knew that this baby’s name was Suzanne, and that she was loved—she was so loved; he Knew that Suzanne’s mother had never before gone off and left her alone like this in public, and that she was already cursing herself for having done so, but she had nearly two-hundred dollars in her purse and needed to get it back immediately; he Knew that both of Suzanne’s parents worried because she was such a quiet baby, and that her pediatrician was a secret alcoholic who would one day come close to killing one of his patients because he would prescribe the wrong antibiotics; but mostly what Ronnie Knew was this: that Suzanne was such a quiet, unsmiling baby because there was a tumor pressing on her stomach, a tumor that had not yet been diagnosed, and he Knew that by the time it would be diagnosed, it would be too late; that even if Suzanne’s mother were to come out of Kresge’s right this second and take her baby right to the hospital, it would do no good. The tumor had already caused other, smaller tumors to grow all over Suzanne’s insides, so even if the doctors were to cut out the tumor on her stomach and give her months of cobalt treatments, more would come along to take its place and Suzanne, the quiet, delicate, unsmiling baby, would not live to see her third birthday. And she would be scared and in great pain right up to the moment of her death—with neither Mommy nor Daddy there to hold her because both had been awake at her hospital bedside for nearly three straight days, and both had fallen asleep in their chairs, and Suzanne wouldn’t have the strength to cry out and awaken them.
She would die alone, without another’s loving touch on her skin, and she would be in agony, and she would be so very, very afraid.
Ronnie’s eyes filled with tears and he began crying like a little baby himself, because he Knew that he was the only person who could take Suzanne’s Hurting away. He hadn’t even planned on going by Kresge’s today—he was going to go to Carol’s Department Store instead—but something had turned him in this direction, and he Knew that it had been because Suzanne would be here.
He had to do it.
And he had to do it fast, before anyone noticed him, or before Suzanne’s mother came back outside.
He leaned farther into the stroller and kissed Suzanne; first on each cheek, then on her mouth. When he began to pull away, Suzanne reached up and gripped one of his fingers—his left index finger—and gave it a squeeze as a smile came to her face and her eyes began to sparkle. It was like she Knew, as well, and understood what he was going to do, and wanted to thank him for it.
“I love you,” said Ronnie. “And I’m so sorry…”
Suzanne giggled and squeezed his index finger again, then closed her eyes and let go.
He cupped her head between his hands, spluttered out another burst of grief, and did what had to be done.
Like with the bird, it was quick and painless. Suzanne had already known enough pain. She was with Jesus and the angels in Heaven now. She was happy, giggling, flying around with her new wings.
I love you, she whispered to Ronnie. You don’t have to be sorry. Thank you.
He was almost to the end of the block, lost among the throngs of shoppers, when Suzanne’s mother released a scream so loud, so shrill, so inhuman and raw in its shock and terror and grief and pain that it seemed like the entire city came to a stop because such a terrible, overpowering sound demanded that everything stop, and listen, and mark the moment, and always remember.
In the years to come, it would always be Suzanne to whom Ronnie would turn after taking the Hurting away from another child; it would always be Suzanne who would be there smiling at him, whispering how much she loved him, how it was okay; it would always be this quiet, fragile baby (who now couldn’t stop smiling) who would forgive him, each and every time.
* * *
By the time Lucy Thompson had met her future husband and married him and given birth to her daughter, Ronnie was sixteen and living in a group home near the East End of Cedar Hill. By then he had taken the Hurting away from seven children—all of them in pain, or living in fear: beaten by their parents, abused by relatives, raped by friends of the family…the horrors were numerous, and never-ceasing. With all of them, he Knew of no way out, and that each of them had been ruined forever. With each child Ronnie wept, and asked for both the child’s and Suzanne’s forgiveness; and, always, he received it.
After Suzanne, it occurred to him that there might be some people left behind who genuinely loved and cared about these children (although not enough to do anything to help them, assuming they even knew what was going on), so he began leaving notes with the bodies: I’m sorry.
And he signed every note: With Love, Uncle Ronnie.
“D’ya think it’s okay to do that?” he asked Suzanne.
Does it make it easier for you?
“Yeah, I think it does. I think…I think they need to know that I wasn’t being mean or nothing like that, y’know?”
I do, and I love you all the more for it. All of us love you, Ronnie. You made our Hurting stop.
“I wish I’d left a note for your mommy.”
Shhh, Ronnie; you don’t need to worry about that. I talk to her every night in her dreams. She knows I’m fine now. She’s not sad anymore, and neither am I. None of us are. You have to remember that, okay?
It helped—not much, but some. Despite the forgiveness and his talks with Suzanne and the others, his soul did not commune with the angels, did not fly on wings of song, did not feel cleansed or heroic or purified, but rather sat—as did he most of the time—in a sad, still, lightless isolated silence that could not be penetrated by any kindness or gesture of tenderness.
Sometimes there were those rare moments when the words of Suzanne and the others made him feel better, less evil, less like some kind of monster you saw in the movies on Chiller Theater on Friday nights.
But then he’d touch another child and feel their Hurting and see what was going to happen to them and Know there was no way to change it or make it better and he’d do what had to be done and then get sad and sick all over again.
Which is why, when his parents put him in the group home, he decided that he was never going to touch another human being again for as long as he lived.
No one ever suspected that he was “Uncle Ronnie,” the horrific child-murderer responsible for the deaths of seven children in as many years (they never knew that he’d killed Suzanne, so she was not included in the thick files that contained information on all his “victims”). The assumption on the parts of the police and FBI had been that they were dealing with an adult who had been severely abused as a child. It never occurred to any of them to look for a teenager.
Many of the people living in the home with Ronnie thought he was unfriendly because he never touched anyone, or wanted to be touched by any of them; but he was always willing to talk to them, or listen to them, or sit by quietly as they cried because once again their parents had failed to come to see them on Visiting Day. (Ronnie always thought of a way to make these others laugh and feel better when this happened to them—and it happened to a lot of them, the group home being the place where ree-tards and speds were tucked safely away where they couldn’t annoy, inconvenience, or embarrass their families.)
And then came the night of the Valentine’s Day dance.
Ronnie had never been so terrified in his life. He volunteered to serve punch or help with the records that were going to be played—anything that meant he wouldn’t have to touch someone—but the social worker who’d been assigned Ronnie’s case (a lovely, short, compassionate woman named Ruth) wouldn’t hear of it.
“Ronnie,” she said to him, “the whole point of this dance is for all of you to work on your social skills, understand?”
“But I do good in the workshop,” he replied. Which was the truth. Ronnie—like everyo
ne else who lived in the group home—was bussed five days a week to a sheltered workshop run by the Central Ohio Department for the Developmentally Disabled—better known as “Sped Central” by those who thought assigning it a mocking moniker to be clever.
Ronnie worked in Cell #5, one of the more advanced cells of the workshop—meaning that he was permitted to use tools such as hammers, nails, saws, and screwdrivers. Ronnie’s cell was always assigned the more complicated jobs, such as a big one they’d had a few months back assembling wooden shipping crates for a local manufacturer of small farming equipment. Because the work done at the sheltered workshop was considered by the state of Ohio as “training,” each person was paid a “training rate”—not by the hour but by the completed piece; in the case of the shipping crates (one of the best-paying jobs the cell had all year), twenty cents apiece.
The habilitation supervisor in charge of Ronnie’s cell was a former Marine sergeant named Pierce, who ran a very tight ship, and was damned proud that his cell consistently had the highest output-without-returns ratio of any in the workshop. If you worked Pierce’s cell, you worked straight through, non-stop, no chatting, made sure you were back before either of your ten-minute breaks were done, and took no longer than twenty-five minutes to eat your lunch. Ronnie loved it, because it gave him something else to think about besides the Hurting.
But Pierce wasn’t going to be around to help Ronnie—oh, Pierce would be at the dance, all right, but odds were he’d make Ronnie dance with a girl if he tried to hide behind a punch bowl or the record player.
And so Ronnie dipped into his savings and took out enough money to buy himself a new tie and pair of shoes ($24.97 altogether) and spent the first thirteen days that February in a constant state of near-panic.
He also started to get angry—not that he yelled at anyone, or treated others with discourtesy, or was snappish, nothing like that, no; he began to get angry at the unfairness he saw all around him.
It struck him as unfair that everyone in his cell worked nine hours a day, five days a week, always on their feet (some of them skipping both their ten-minute breaks and lunch because they wanted to make more money), and for all that work, all that effort, for all their sore feet and bloodshot eyes and tired backs, they would be handed a pay envelope every two weeks containing maybe, maybe twenty-five dollars if they’d really gotten it “…the hell in gear” as Pierce was fond of saying (twelve dollars or a little less was the usual amount, a whopping twenty-four dollars for a month’s labor); it struck him as unfair that everyone who lived in the group home hardly ever had any visitors, and that the social workers who came to take them out to the movies or for pizza twice a month always seemed distracted, as if there were something else they’d much rather be doing; it seemed unfair to him that anybody felt lonely or stupid or unloved or unwanted; and it really, really struck him as unfair that each and every child from whom he’d taken away the Hurting had somebody in their lives who could have done something to help, to make it better, but for whatever reasons didn’t.
But what made him the angriest, what tore him up whenever he thought about it for too long, what gave him bad dreams and stomach cramps and dark circles under his eyes, what haunted him most of all was the knowledge that the people who had inflicted this Hurting, who’d brought so much pain and misery into the world, who’d treated the children worse than they would have treated a stray dog, these people went unpunished and probably smiled a lot like everything was just fine and went to sleep at night to find nice dreams waiting for them.
And so Ronnie began to think of ways he could punish them, all of them.
And the worse the punishments he imagined for them, the bloodier, the more painful, the wider his smile became.
“Someday,” he whispered to Suzanne one night, “I’m gonna make all of ‘em real sorry for what they did. I don’t know how, exactly, but I’m gonna do it.”
My Ronnie doesn’t talk that way, he doesn’t think those things.
“But it ain’t fair!”
That’s not for you to decide, Ronnie. Can’t you just be happy that you’ve saved us? We’re happy here.
“I wanna be happy too,” he said, starting to cry and hating himself for it. “I don’t wanna have any more bad dreams or remember everything that done to all of you or…or watch how the other kids here get all sad when nobody comes on Visiting Day.”
Stop worrying about everyone else for one night, okay? You look very handsome in your new tie and shoes. Every girl there will want to dance with you.
Ronnie didn’t say anything to that.
Every girl there will want to dance with you.
That was precisely what he was afraid of.
* * *
The Valentine’s Day dance was a tradition at the Central Ohio Department for the Developmentally Disabled. Each year “clients” (that’s what they were called, not “patients” or “students” or “subjects”) from every group home, sheltered workshop, and special-education school in the county were invited (“required” would be the more appropriate word, but the Special Education Board felt it held too many negative connotations, so “invited” it was) to attend a “gala” celebration in the main ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Cedar Hill. For an entire week before the dance, classes from various schools and cells from assorted workshops gathered together decorating the space, making it look as romantic as possible. This year’s theme was “Evergreen,” after the Barbra Streisand song from the movie A Star Is Born. (Everyone else was putting on dances celebrating the Bicentennial, and a person can only take so much Red, White, and Blue before they start getting a headache—or, at least, Ronnie could only take so much, so even though he was terrified of the dance, he was at least glad they’d chosen other colors.) The drama department from Cedar Hill Senior High School donated a box of colored gels as well as loaned out a few of their stage and spot lights so that the ballroom would look extra classy.
Coupled with the opulent chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling, the ballroom looked like something out of a fantasy movie, and made all the attendees, even Ronnie, feel like real movie stars, maybe Al Pacino or Robert Redford or that guy who played in Rocky, and all the girls felt like Jane Fonda or Sissy Spacek.
It was actually kind of cool.
Ronnie did his best to monopolize the punch service, until one of the lady supervisors pulled him out from behind the table and made him dance with her. Ronnie was shocked to find that he felt nothing while doing this—at least, nothing bad. The supervisor was in a good mood and thinking only about happy things.
She then asked Ronnie if he’d go over and ask Vicki Flowers to dance with him. Vicki came from a different workshop and group home but Ronnie had seen her at a couple of events this past year, and she seemed nice even if she was a bit on the short and plump side.
Vicki had Down’s Syndrome and didn’t talk much, but she was always very sweet to people, and it made Ronnie feel good to see the way she smiled when he asked her to dance, like she’d been waiting all night for someone to invite her to come and join in on the fun. What made it even better was that, when he touched her, he saw her whole life as it had been, as it was, and as it would be…and it was great. Her parents (both in their early sixties, Vicki being a late-in-life baby) loved her more than anything and always hugged her and took her out to movies and for pizza and always made sure she had friends to play with and kept her clothes clean and made sure she had enough to eat, and it almost made Ronnie happy, seeing what a wonderful life Vicki had and was going to continue to have.
He was so relieved that, for the first time in years, he let his guard down and just decided to have a good time.
He also danced with Vicki for almost the rest of the night, ignoring the little snickers and whispers of “Vicki and Ronnie sittin’ in a tree…” because this was the best he’d felt in…well, ever.
So he danced with her, and didn’t care what the others thought.
With about fort
y-five minutes to go before the dance would be over, Ronnie knew (without her having to say so) that Vicki needed to go to bathroom, so he took her by the arm and walked her over to the doors and stood waiting while she went in. As he was standing there, another supervisor came over and asked him if he’d ask Arlene Sanders to dance—it seemed that almost nobody had asked her to dance all night, and she’d spent most of her money on a new dress.
Arlene worked in Cell #3 at Ronnie’s workshop, was kind of plain, and very, very shy—almost afraid of everyone. Ronnie was feeling pretty good at this point, so he walked over and offered his hand to Arlene (who was sitting in a folding chair along the wall, nobody sitting anywhere near her) and asked, “Would you dance with me?”
Arlene’s face didn’t exactly light up, but she looked happy enough. She didn’t take Ronnie’s hand right away, but rather stood up and followed him out onto the dance floor as the DJ began playing “Evergreen” for the third or fourth time that night (Ronnie had thought about maybe sneaking over there and breaking the damned record when the DJ was on a break, but then figured most of the girls here seemed to really like the song so that was probably a bad idea).
Ronnie turned to face Arlene, one arm at ten ‘o clock, the other at three (the way a gentleman danced with a lady) and Arlene—not meeting his gaze—stepped up to him and they began to dance—
—and no sooner had they made physical contact than Ronnie felt all the rage and sickness and sadness and Hurting slam into his gut like a sledgehammer, and he almost fell over but took a deep breath and pretended he’d just lost his balance, even tried making a joke out of it so that Arlene might smile, and she almost did, almost, but it took all of Ronnie’s self-control to keep a smile on his face and hold his body steady because there were these waves of fear coming from Arlene, fear and shame and misery and depression and loneliness and Hurting—God, so much Hurting—
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