by Tom Perrotta
“Please,” Ronald James McGorvey had said, in this tremulous, almost beseeching voice that made no sense to her, as if she were the one calling the shots. “Don’t run away from me.”
She let go of Lucy and turned slowly, preparing herself to scream like she’d never screamed before, only to discover that her assailant was in a pitiful state. He was rocking back and forth on his heels with a dazed expression on his face, broken arm pressed across his chest like he was about to recite the pledge of allegiance.
“Do you need help?” she asked him.
“I just wanna talk to someone,” he said, his bottom lip quivering.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m listening.”
“I lost my mother!” he wailed, stepping forward and throwing his arm around her neck. “Just this afternoon!”
She tried a second time to step away from him, but he had a handful of her shirt and wasn’t letting go. Her whole shoulder felt wet, almost like he was drooling on her.
“It’s hard,” she said, squinting in the direction of the empty parking lot, her impatience with Todd suddenly metastasizing into anger. “It’s really hard.”
McGorvey lifted his head to look at her, his eyes swollen with grief behind his thick glasses. She had to make a conscious effort not to avert her gaze.
“I didn’t even say good-bye.” His voice was calmer now, only cracking on the last word. “She was dead when I got there.”
“It’s okay,” Sarah said, glancing over her shoulder to check on Lucy. She was still sleeping in the motionless swing, thank God, oblivious to the world. “I’m sure she knew how you felt about her.”
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
Sarah didn’t answer, distracted by the sight of a silver minivan pulling into the parking lot, its headlights sweeping across the playground. At almost the same moment, she heard a siren in the distance and footsteps approaching from the soccer field. She turned quickly, hope surging through her body with such force that it almost knocked her down. But instead of Todd it was Mary Ann who emerged from the darkness. She stopped at the edge of the playground, where the wood chips met the grass, and stood there for a moment with a lit cigarette in her hand and the strangest look on her face.
“Sarah?” She sounded more puzzled than angry. “Why are you doing that?”
Before she could reply, McGorvey stepped out of her arms and turned toward the parking lot. A man—he was too stocky to be Todd—was running toward them at a furious clip, like he had an important message to deliver.
“Oh great,” said McGorvey. “Now he’s gonna break my other arm.”
Just for a second, Todd thought he must be at a football game. He was lying on his back on the hard ground, and DeWayne was staring down at him with a concerned expression.
“Todd?” he said. “Can you hear me?”
It couldn’t have been a football game, though. DeWayne was wearing his police uniform, hat and all, and some kids were standing a bit behind him, wearing unbuckled helmets.
Oh shit, he thought. The skateboard.
He tried to sit up, but DeWayne restrained him, pressing gently on his shoulder.
“Don’t move. The ambulance is on its way.”
“It’s okay. I’m fine.”
“You sure? Can you move your fingers and toes?”
Todd tested his digits.
“Everything’s okay,” he said. “Everything except my head.”
DeWayne shook his head. “Least it’s nothing important.”
It was a little more difficult than Todd expected to shift into a sitting position. When the dizzy spell passed, he reached up to rub his sore jaw, and was startled to find blood on his hand.
“Jesus,” he said. “What happened to me?”
“You had an intimate encounter with the street,” DeWayne informed him. “These kids say you’ve been out cold for the past five minutes.”
“You caught some monster air,” G. chimed in, with real admiration in his voice.
“Dude, you were fucking awesome,” echoed the gruff-voiced kid. “Like that ski jumper on TV.”
DeWayne shooed the kids away, telling them to give the man some breathing room, or better yet, get on home to their parents.
“No more skateboarding tonight,” he said. “Why don’t you clear out of here.”
The kids grumbled a little, but began to disperse, leaving Todd and DeWayne alone in the street. It was coming back to him now, the amazing sensation of rolling down the wheelchair ramp, gathering speed, his feet rooted to the board, as if this were the way he’d been meant to travel through the world. The launch platform wasn’t much higher than a curb, but it was steeply pitched, and he must have hit it with more momentum than he’d realized. Even through the thrumming pain in his head, he held on to a vivid memory of finding himself suddenly aloft, his arms spread wide, his body suspended above the street. And then pitching sideways, rolling over until he was staring straight up at the sky, floating on a cushion of air. The only thing he didn’t remember was hitting the ground.
“How you feeling?” DeWayne asked.
“Okay,” said Todd. “A little woozy.”
Fingering a tender bump on his skull, he flashed on Sarah, wondering if she’d left the playground. He hated to think of her still standing there in the dark, wondering what the hell had happened to him.
“They’re probably gonna take you to the hospital. Don’t like to take no chances with head injuries.”
Todd nodded. It was painful to admit it, but the main thing he felt right now was an overwhelming sense of relief to be here in the street with DeWayne, instead of in the car with Sarah, rushing down the highway into the next big mistake of his adult life. Sure, he felt guilty for disappointing her, for making her wait around for nothing, for promising something he couldn’t deliver. But what he suddenly understood—it seemed so obvious now, as if the truth had been jarred loose when his body hit the pavement—was that he’d never actually wanted to start a new life with her in the first place. What he loved most about Sarah was how beautifully she fit into his old one, distracting him from his imperfect marriage and the tedious obligations of child care, supercharging the dull summer days with a sweet illicit thrill. Outside of that context, he couldn’t imagine them ever being as happy with each other as they’d been this summer.
“Hey, DeWayne,” he said. “You think I’d make a good cop?”
DeWayne studied him for a moment, apparently trying to decide if it was a serious question.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, raising his voice to compete with the bloopy siren of the approaching ambulance. “You could patrol the town on your skateboard.”
Sarah felt like a fool. When she saw Larry Moon sprinting toward the playground, she’d let herself believe that Todd had sent him, that he was coming to deliver a message to her. But he went straight for McGorvey, grabbing him roughly by the collar.
“You sonofabitch!” he said, his voice trembling with rage. “Didn’t I tell you to stay away from playgrounds? Didn’t I?”
McGorvey nodded politely, as if responding to a civil question.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The apology just seemed to make Moon angrier.
“Sorry?” He cuffed McGorvey hard on the side of his head. “You’re a sorry piece of shit is what you are.”
McGorvey just continued nodding, as if he were in complete agreement with this assessment of his character. Moon raised his hand again, but Sarah stepped in front of him before he could strike another blow.
“Would you just leave him alone?” she said. “He wasn’t hurting anybody.”
Mary Ann chose that moment to step beneath the crossbar of the swing set and join the group. She smiled cheerfully, taking an awkward puff on her cigarette and blowing out a mouthful of smoke right away, as if she hadn’t yet mastered the art of inhaling.
“They were sharing a tender moment,” she explained to Moon. “Until we so rudely i
nterrupted.”
You bitch from hell, Sarah thought.
“His mother just died, okay? He’s upset.”
As if to confirm this report, McGorvey sniffled and rubbed a hand across a cheek.
“Oh, you’re upset, are you?” Moon taunted McGorvey. “Well, now you know how they felt. Except a million times worse.”
“How who felt?” said Mary Ann.
“The parents of that little girl. The one he killed. I bet they were pretty upset.”
McGorvey hung his head. Sarah wanted to tell Moon to stop hounding the man, to just leave him in peace for one single day, but McGorvey spoke up before she had a chance.
“I didn’t want to hurt her,” he muttered, still staring at the ground. “She made me.”
“What?” Moon cupped a hand around his ear as if he wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “What did you just say?”
McGorvey looked up. He held his good arm out like an actor, the way he had at the Town Pool on the day of the electrical storm.
“I didn’t want to,” he repeated in a wounded tone. “She said she was gonna tell on me.”
“She was gonna tell on you?” Moon repeated incredulously. “You killed a little girl because she was gonna tell on you?”
McGorvey lowered his arm. A strange whimper escaped from his throat. He shifted his gaze from Moon to Mary Ann to Sarah, as if searching for a more sympathetic listener.
“I didn’t want to get in trouble.” McGorvey’s voice trailed off as he said this, as if he suddenly realized how ridiculous it sounded.
“Did you hear that?” Moon asked Sarah and Mary Ann in an excited voice. “Did you hear what he just said? You two are witnesses.”
“I heard it,” said Mary Ann.
Sarah nodded. She wasn’t sure a hearsay confession would hold up in court, but she didn’t say so. She just watched silently as Moon clapped McGorvey on the back, almost like he was offering his congratulations.
“Oh-ho, man. You are so fucked.”
McGorvey shook his head.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “I’m fucked any way you look at it.”
A stunned silence descended upon the playground, a hush so sudden and profound that Sarah was momentarily startled by the sound of her own breathing. She stared at McGorvey with an open-mouthed expression of bewilderment that would have seemed unthinkably rude under any other circumstances, trying to comprehend the fact that this harmless-looking man—this man she’d just hugged—was a murderer.
Of a child.
More out of embarrassment than anything else, Sarah turned away from him to check on her daughter, who was still dozing peacefully in the swing, her head slumped to one side, her lips parted as if she were about to speak.
Poor girl, Sarah thought, reaching out to brush a strand of hair away from Lucy’s clammy cheek. I’m all you have.
She knew she’d been a bad mother, that she’d signed on for a job that demanded more of her than she knew how to give. If she’d been alone, she might have gotten down on her knees to beg her daughter’s forgiveness.
I’ll do better, she promised the sleeping child. I have to.
Sarah smelled chocolate on Lucy’s breath as she leaned forward to plant a soft kiss on the tip of her cute little nose. A vision came to her as her lips touched Lucy’s skin, a sudden vivid awareness of the life they’d lead together from here on out, the hothouse intimacy of a single mother and her only child, the two of them sharing everything, breathing the same air, inflicting their moods on each other, best friends and bitter rivals, competing for attention, relying on each other for companionship and emotional support, forming the intense, convoluted, and probably unhealthy bond that for better and worse would become the center of both of their identities, fodder for years of therapy, if they could ever figure out a way to pay for it. It wasn’t going to be an easy future, Sarah understood that, but it felt real to her—so palpable and close at hand, so in keeping with what she knew of her own life—that it almost seemed inevitable, the place they’d been heading all along. It was enough to make her wonder how she’d ever managed to believe in the alternate version, the one where the Prom King came and made everything better.
She smoothed Lucy’s hair again, then turned back around, rejoining the circle of adults, none of whom had spoken for some time. What was there to say, really, after someone had confessed to a murder? Another endless minute ticked by before McGorvey finally addressed Mary Ann.
“Mind if I bum a cigarette?”
With a certain reluctance, Mary Ann reached into her purse and withdrew a pack of Camel Lights.
“Since when do you smoke?” Sarah asked her.
“I don’t,” said Mary Ann, taking another amateurish drag. “This is just a one-time thing.”
“Got an extra?” Sarah asked.
Mary Ann extended the pack first to her, and then, out of politeness, to Moon. He waved her off, but then suddenly reconsidered.
“Ah, what the hell,” he said.
The four of them stood in a circle on the playground, smoking and exchanging furtive glances. Every couple of puffs, Sarah reached back and gave Lucy’s swing a gentle push.
“Hey, Ronnie,” Moon said, after a long interval of silence.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” He sounded sincere. “I wish it hadn’t happened like that.”
“Thank you,” said McGorvey. “She was a good woman. Took good care of me.”
Mary Ann dropped her cigarette on the ground and stepped on it with unnecessary vigor. McGorvey turned to Sarah.
“Can I ask you something?” he said. “I mean, I wouldn’t want you to take this wrong, but it’s not such a great idea to be out here with your kid after dark.”
“Yeah,” said Moon. “I was kinda wondering about that myself.”
“You want to know what I’m doing here?” Sarah said, as if she hadn’t understood the question.
Moon and McGorvey nodded, while Mary Ann looked on with an oddly sympathetic expression. Sarah started to speak, but instead of words, only a small, embarrassed giggle escaped from her mouth. How could she explain? She was here because she’d kissed a man in this very spot, and tasted happiness for the first time in her adult life. She was here because he said he’d run away with her, and she believed him—believed, for a few brief, intensely sweet moments, that she was something special, one of the lucky ones, a character in a love story with a happy ending.
Also by Tom Perrotta
Joe College
Election
The Wishbones
Bad Haircut:
Stories of the Seventies
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank my editor, Elizabeth Beier, for excellent advice just when I needed it, and my agent, Maria Massie, for her insight and good humor. Dori Weintraub and Sylvie Rabineau also provided valuable assistance. My wife, Mary Granfield, was, as always, the best first reader I could ask for. Mainly, though, I’d like to thank Nina and Luke for letting me tag along at the playground.
LITTLE CHILDREN. Copyright © 2004 by Tom Perrotta. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perrotta, Tom. 1961–
Little children / Tom Perrotta.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-0782-8
1. Parent and child—Fiction. 2. Child molesters—Fiction. 3. Married people—Fiction. 4. Suburban life—Fiction. 5. Adultery—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.E6948L57 2003
813'.54—dc22
2003015947
DON’T MISS THESE BOOKS BY TOM PERROTTA
CONTINUE READING FOR AN EXCERPT OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
&nb
sp; THE LEFTOVERS
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE LEFTOVERS. Copyright © 2011 by Tom Perrotta. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perrotta, Tom.
The leftovers / Tom Perrotta.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4299-0782-8
1. Life change events—Fiction. 2. Psychological fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.E6948L44 2011
813'.54—dc22 2011019509
Prologue
LAURIE GARVEY HADN’T BEEN RAISED to believe in the Rapture. She hadn’t been raised to believe in much of anything, except the foolishness of belief itself.
We’re agnostics, she used to tell her kids, back when they were little and needed a way to define themselves to their Catholic and Jewish and Unitarian friends. We don’t know if there’s a God, and nobody else does, either. They might say they do, but they really don’t.
The first time she’d heard about the Rapture, she was a freshman in college, taking a class called Intro to World Religions. The phenomenon the professor described seemed like a joke to her, hordes of Christians floating out of their clothes, rising up through the roofs of their houses and cars to meet Jesus in the sky, everyone else standing around with their mouths hanging open, wondering where all the good people had gone. The theology remained murky to her, even after she read the section on “Premillennial Dispensationalism” in her textbook, all that mumbo jumbo about Armageddon and the Antichrist and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It felt like religious kitsch, as tacky as a black velvet painting, the kind of fantasy that appealed to people who ate too much fried food, spanked their kids, and had no problem with the theory that their loving God invented AIDS to punish the gays. Every once in a while, in the years that followed, she’d spot someone reading one of the Left Behind books in an airport or on a train, and feel a twinge of pity, and even a little bit of tenderness, for the poor sucker who had nothing better to read, and nothing else to do, except sit around dreaming about the end of the world.