“Good question, Eugene. You’re coming back.” His father sat back and sipped his coffee. Then he leaned forward, tilting his head and taking on his teaching face, a face characterized by eyes that looked off as though he were reading cue cards. He also had that pedantic tone in his voice. “Evil is sickness, Eugene. Most people don’t understand. Misbehavior, antisocial behavior, delinquent behavior, whatever you want to call it, is a sickness. Something goes wrong in here,” he said, pointing to his temple.
“Psychologists, psychiatrists, have been groping for ways to cure it. They are like blind men in a maze. Some go rushing down Freudian tunnels, reading and interpreting symbols on the walls.”
“If they’re blind, how can they read?” he asked quickly.
His father smiled. “That’s what I want to know. That’s very perceptive of you, Eugene. The whole thing is ridiculous. Imagine trying to talk someone out of having cancer. It’s a disease. And so is evil, understand?”
He nodded. “I was evil?”
“I’m afraid so, Eugene. During the next day or so, I’m going to let you find your way back so you can see what you were and what you did, and then we’ll go on with your treatment—with less resistance on your part, I hope. Of course, you must understand that I am feeling my way about, too. Nothing’s perfect yet. There are some flaws in the process, flaws I’m discovering out there.” He gestured toward the window and the development below.
“But,” he said, leaning back again, “on the whole, things are going very well, very well, indeed. Right, Mildred?”
“Whatever you say, Doctor,” Mildred said.
He laughed. “That’s what I like about Mildred,” he said, turning back to Eugene. “She’s devoid of any feelings that might influence her behavior. Mildred’s indifference is her biggest asset, at least for me.”
“Can I walk through the woods today?” he asked.
“No, I don’t think so. Not yet, Eugene. I want you to go into my office and read things, things about yourself. I’ll be back later this afternoon, and we’ll talk about them. Then we’ll see. Go on, finish your breakfast. I’m glad you’re hungry.”
He looked down at his spoon, and then brought it to his mouth. For a while, his father just watched him. Then he went back to his room to finish dressing for work. Before he left, he stopped in on him and the nurse.
“Stay close to him,” he told her. “And record anything significant.”
“Okay,” she said.
“You should give yourself a shave, Eugene,” he told him. “A breakdown in personal hygiene is a symptom of sickness, evil sickness. That’s why so many people, adults, I should say, hate these filthy looking rock stars. We know inherently that they are rotting away inside, and that rot is contagious. Understand?”
He nodded.
“I think you might be making progress,” he said. “And if you make enough of it, you’re going to become useful again, useful to me.” He smiled. “I’ve got to drive through my laboratory and check on the animals,” he added. Mildred laughed and shook her head. “Watch him closely today,” he said, then left.
“I’ll go shave,” he said.
“Fine,” Mildred said. “Only don’t do it with your toothbrush,” she added as he walked out of the kitchen and went to the bathroom.
Shaving was harder than he’d anticipated. He had to look at himself in the mirror, and the sight of his own face, a face he now clearly understood as his own, was terrifying. It was like standing face to face, inches apart, from a known killer who at any time might make him the next victim. He worked quickly, never taking his eyes off himself, set to flee if the image in that mirror came at him.
When he was finished, he put the electric razor down quickly and fled from the bathroom as though it had caught fire.
She was waiting for him in the hallway. “Calm down,” she said. “And follow me.”
She took him to his father’s office.
“Sit here,” she commanded, and he took a seat in the leather chair by the standing lamp. Then she retrieved a folder from the file cabinet and brought it to him. He looked up at her as she thrust it into his hands. “It’s your file; he refers to you as patient 001.”
“How many patients does he have now?” he asked.
“Quite a few. Just look out the window and you’ll see the waiting room,” she added with a chilling smile. “Your father has a sense of humor, too, you know. I bet you didn’t know that.”
He shrugged. He didn’t know that. At least, he’d never thought of his father as a funny man.
“Sure,” she said. “Sometimes he does things, or, I should say, has things done, for humorous reasons. Of course, he’s proving something to himself, demonstrating something. The other day…the other day,” she said, holding her stomach as if her laughter pained her, “everyone here was wearing something blue.” She laughed as though she’d just delivered the punch line to a terrific joke. Only he didn’t understand why it was so funny. “What’s wrong with blue?” he asked.
She laughed harder and pointed at him. “What’s wrong with blue! I like that. What’s wrong with blue?” She laughed on. “Go on,” she said, catching her breath. “Read. I’ll be back in a few moments. What’s wrong with blue?”
Her laughter filled the hallway. He listened until she was gone.
Then, he took a deep breath and opened the folder.
They were all waiting for her at the bottom of the hill, right before the main entrance—a cluster of about a dozen teenagers. All the boys were dressed in slacks, short-sleeved shirts, and ties. The girls were wearing blouses and skirts, and their hair was neatly brushed or pinned. Everyone carried a notebook. Some of the boys had briefcases.
As soon as she appeared at the top of the knoll, they turned toward her in one motion, as though the move were choreographed. She stopped and stared down at them. Unsmiling, they gaped at her. She wore a long sweat shirt that reached below her knees, with tights and sneakers. She had put mousse in her hair and had blow-dried it, giving it a fuller look. Her mother had wanted her to wipe off the eye shadow and blush. They had compromised when she’d agreed to wear a bra.
“Good morning,” Brad said, stepping out of the bunch.
From the first day Justine had met teenagers from Elysian Fields, she’d been amused and intrigued by the manner in which they huddled so closely together. They reminded her of pigeons crowding together in the park when people cast peanuts at them. Sometimes, the girls held hands when they walked.
“Hi,” she said.
“We were waiting for you,” Janet Bernie said. “You have to get here about five minutes earlier. It’s important that we get to school on time—especially the first day.”
Justine stared at her. Usually teenage girls did not intimidate her. She had met tough types in New York City, but this girl was different, harder in another sense. She looked young, but acted old. It was almost as if an adult had been placed in a teenager’s body. Justine felt as though she had just been reprimanded by a teacher.
“You don’t have to wait for me,” she said, lifting her voice dramatically.
“Oh, but we want to,” Janet Bernie said, stepping forward. Her eyes widened with such odd sincerity that Justine could only stare. The girl sounded frantic about it. “We always have so much to talk about on the way to school, right, Lois?” Janet turned to Lois Wilson, who had been standing quietly to the side, observing Justine.
“Yes,” she said with a sudden enthusiasm to match Janet’s. “That’s right.”
“Let’s get started,” Steven Duke said. Justine saw how excited Brad’s younger brother was. He moved in place like an impatient race horse, frustrated with the wait in the starting gate.
When Justine joined the pack, Brad introduced three other boys she had not yet met, and Janet introduced two other girls, Stacy Weinberger and Martha Lowe. They were both sophomores, although she couldn’t imagine that they were her age. They seemed so much younger. Also, both girls seemed shy, as th
ey stared away whenever she glanced at them.
She checked out the boys. None of them were really unattractive, but Justine wasn’t impressed with any of them, any more than she had been initially impressed with Brad. The only thing that kept her interested in him now was his apparent leadership role. They were all waiting for his signal to move on. When he said, “Okay,” they started for the gate.
“I feel like I’m in a wagon train,” she said with a laugh. She looked to the girls, expecting one of them to smile with understanding, but they all gaped at her as though she spoke a different language. Justine was struck by the notion that all the kids wore the same, masklike expression. No one was willing to risk a reaction or comment without first confirming it with the group. Except for Lois. She scrutinized Justine differently and seemed more alert. Justine wanted to fall back to walk with her, but Brad had taken a position at her side.
Justine noticed that all of the teenagers carried themselves in the same way. Their posture was nearly perfect; their gait was in sync. They all held their books the same way, too. It was as if they had all attended the same class to learn the proper way to stand, walk, and talk.
The day guard at the security booth stepped out to greet them. Justine noticed that he looked at her with special interest as if he had been given the assignment of monitoring her behavior. His intense glare made her uncomfortable, but she didn’t show it. When the others said good morning to him, practically singing it, she remained silent and simply glared back at him as they passed the booth. She didn’t have to turn around to know that he was still watching her walk away.
Brad was the only one who spoke to her during the walk to school, telling her how she would get a locker, what was expected of her in homeroom, why some of her teachers were nicer than others.
After they had walked a few dozen yards from the front gate, Justine began to relax. It was as though a heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She had a feeling of freedom and looseness in her body. The tightness in her arms and torso eased. She swung her arms and turned her shoulders with more abandon, feeling more like her old self.
She took a deep breath and looked about. Colors, sounds, even scents had an old familiarity. The world around her didn’t seem as new and as different as it had since she and her parents had moved to Elysian Fields. She imagined all this was happening because she was excited about going to a new school and because she was regaining her self-confidence.
Looking at Brad in his sharply coordinated outfit, Justine had to admit he was a very good-looking boy. Even though she wasn’t completely impressed with him, she decided he was worth some effort. Maybe she could loosen him up a bit.
“You going with anyone?” she asked him.
“Going?” He looked confused, as if the word was never used in that sense. Was he dense? she wondered.
“Have a girl friend?”
“Oh.” He looked back at Janet Bernie, and then shook his head. “No, not really.” He seemed to anticipate her line of questioning, so he deliberately walked faster to move ahead of the bunch.
“Don’t tell me you don’t like girls,” she teased.
“I didn’t say that.” He looked serious. “We’re just too young to get seriously involved with anyone.”
“Who says you have to be serious about it?” The look on his face made her laugh. He was cute, she decided. “Why don’t you drive to school? That way, you could pick me up in the morning, and we wouldn’t have to leave so early.”
“It’s not that far.”
“That’s not the point. It’s nice to be able to talk privately sometimes.” She moved closer to him, but he didn’t respond. “Can’t you get your father to loan you the car?”
“Oh, yes. Whenever I need it, I ask.”
“So?”
“I don’t need it to go to school.”
“Jesus.”
“You shouldn’t say that,” he said quickly. He looked at the teenagers behind him again. “Some people get offended when you take the Lord’s name in vain,” he added softly.
“Are you and your parents very religious?” she asked, keeping her voice a few decibels above a whisper.
“No, it’s not that.” He looked troubled by the need to explain. The struggle was revealed in his face, in the way he squeezed his eyes and frowned.
“So what do you say when you’re pissed off?”
He slowed down, and she saw that he was recalling something.
“Whenever I’m angry at someone or something, I use a number from one to ten to correspond to how important I think it is,” he replied in a singsong manner.
“What?” She smiled quizzically. “I didn’t understand.”
“If it’s very important, I’ll say, ‘ten.’ If I say ‘three’ or ‘four,’ I know I’m getting myself excited over a relatively minor thing. Then I’ll try to step back and evaluate it intelligently.”
“What if it’s a high number?”
“Then I’ll start to think of ways to correct or solve the situation,” he said, as though the solution was obvious.
“Who taught you that?” she asked, still holding a half smile on her face. She didn’t know whether he was kidding or not.
“Dr. Lawrence,” he said.
“Oh, during your sessions with him?” He nodded quickly. “What do you do, just sit and tell him everything that’s bothering you?” she asked, recalling Mindy’s descriptions of her sessions with the school psychologist.
“I suppose,” he said.
“Suppose? Why, don’t you remember what you do when you’re with him?”
He shrugged.
“I guess he’s not so impressive after all, if you can’t even remember what you and he do.”
“Dr. Lawrence is very impressive,” he said quickly.
“What about his son? You ever meet his son?”
Before responding, Brad looked back to check on how close the others were. “No, never.”
“How impressive can he be, if he can’t even help his own son?” Justine asked and smirked.
Brad stopped walking. “I said he was very impressive.”
He looked like a spoiled little boy, stubbornly refusing to accept his parents’ denial of his request. She started to laugh at him and stopped. The others were all gaping at her angrily, all except Lois, who looked more curious than angry.
“Big deal,” she said, and then added, “Jesus.” She laughed nervously.
His grimace faded. Then, suddenly, he said, “ten,” and her laughter ended abruptly. The look in his face and the faces of the others were sobering. Sensing the underlying anger in expressions, she took a deep breath.
They started to form a circle around her. As they moved, they kept so closely to one another that their arms and hips touched. Their eyes intense, the pupils darkening and losing color. Mouths writhed, lips twisting like worms trapped on dry concrete.
“Forget it,” she said quickly to Brad. “Let’s get to this wonderful school.”
She started away. When she looked back, she saw that the others hesitated until Brad moved to catch up with her.
“I’ll teach you the technique,” he said, his voice much softer, “so you won’t ever get angry again.”
She looked at him and realized he was indeed doing what he said he would—he was looking for a solution to the problem that had caused his “ten.”
Part of her wanted to laugh, but part of her was intrigued. Brad was smiling, and he did have such a nice smile when he wanted to.
“Great,” she said. “Why is everyone so damn serious about Dr. Lawrence?” she asked. When he didn’t respond, she became sarcastic. “I can’t wait to hear all the techniques he’s taught you. Tell me more,” she said.
He turned and saw she wasn’t serious. “Maybe he’ll have to teach them to you himself,” he said. But instead of a promising possibility, his words sounded more like a threat.
Justine couldn’t help being impressed with the school. Although the building was t
en years old, it looked brand new. The classrooms were bright and clean; the halls were spotless. Her teachers didn’t seem as burdened and pressured as the staff at her other school. She didn’t sense the familiar tensions in the air, tensions she had come to expect between students and members of the faculty. Of course, some were more relaxed than others.
Mr. Spiegel, her homeroom teacher and her English teacher, was erudite. Simply listening to him take attendance and discuss the rules and procedures was a vocabulary lesson. He made homeroom seem like a fascinating interlude. In fact, when she looked around the classroom, she couldn’t believe that the teenagers from Elysian Fields were actually taking notes. What did they expect? she wondered, a test on how to behave in homeroom every morning?
She was happy to see that most of the other students from Sandburg Creek and its surroundings were not like the teenagers of Elysian Fields. These kids dressed more like she dressed and acted as carefree as her friends in New York—despite the sanitized atmosphere in the school. She was more comfortable talking with them.
However, they all grew suspicious once they learned she lived in Elysian Fields. She understood that in their minds she was “one of them.” She assumed that meant another rich kid, so she did her best to play down her home and background. Instead, she talked about her life in the city.
She did her best to avoid the Elysian Field teenagers, but she found that almost impossible to do, mainly because of the subtle way they surrounded her. They reminded her of mother hens protecting their chicks. As soon as she would enter a classroom and take a seat, the teenagers from Elysian Fields who were in that class sat behind, in front, and next to her. After every class, they waited for her or walked beside her. When she deliberately avoided them and started to talk to other students, they still hovered about, making the other students conscious of their presence. Usually, the other kids fled from her because of them.
All the while she sensed that Lois Wilson was trying to get a private word with her. Finally, just before the lunch period ended and they were all headed back to class, Lois came up beside her.
Perfect Little Angels Page 8