Esther was small in her class and young, like Roy had been. And she was the last in a family of big boys, boys who had a lot of balls. It was a family that made itself known. Muddy knew the boys and steered Roy out of their purview, sensing things would not go well, no alliance there, no mutual interests, those big Kinder boys with the heavy shoulders, all of them. But the girl, she had her mother’s heart. She had a face like a snake charmer drawing all the best nuances, all the little mental dances, out of the mothers. The mothers looked at her and thought, Not smart, not pretty, and smiled watching her face anyway, big round eyes full of feeling, and they would chuckle, seeing something of themselves there, and they liked her for that, they all did, before the incident, which wasn’t large but stayed with them and changed their minds, except for Muddy, who was deeper.
Of course the incident was sexual, a kindergarten sex scandal. The mothers hovered and even briefly demanded the child be removed. She was a public contaminant. But Muddy Cohn intervened, she’d said a word or two as a favor to Sylvia Kinder, and the whole thing, tiny, was forgotten at the top. But not in the minds of the mothers. They never looked for their own generous, unsatisfied hearts in the homely face again.
Here it is: In the lavatory for the smallest schoolgirls, kinder-gartners through second-graders, Esther was found with a sky-blue crayon pushed very slightly into her tiny vagina. The crime? It didn’t appear to be a new trick. Who told her she had a vagina?
Esther’s kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Lopato, always too worried for her own good, a heart attack in the making, had the misfortune of an unruly class that year, a bunch of gangsters, seventeen boys and seven girls. She’d complained to the principal, Mr. Haberman, for a redistribution of gender. Nothing doing.
Mrs. Lopato, harassed, sick to death of all the shoving and pushing, couldn’t sleep at night. At four in the morning she scrubbed her spotless living room while Mr. Lopato slept. She scrubbed and schemed, but in the daylight, driving her black Ford into the teachers’ lot, she remembered, wearily, that kindness was the teacher’s mightiest weapon. She climbed out of the too low driver’s seat and straightened her plaid wool skirt on heavy thighs, thighs that made her tired to contemplate. Mrs. Lopato was close to thirty-nine, thirty-nine in April and childless. Kindergarten was beginning to be a strain. Soon after this day she’d decide to quit altogether and leave Mr. Lopato and move to southern California. She’d learn to serve Bloody Marys on Sunday mornings on a small deck jutting out over the Pacific Rim. It was beautiful there, and when she thought of the Bronx, which she seldom did, it was as if that part of her life were completed, she thought of little ugly Esther Kinder and her blue crayon and she thanked her.
But before the good news, the bad. There was a lot of mischief that day in Mrs. Lopato’s kindergarten classroom. And why, she thought for the thousandth time, had she been given a room into which sunlight crept for about thirty minutes a day, a basement room for tiny children, whose idea was this? Mrs. Busansky, with a class of twelve girls and eight boys, all quiet geniuses, what could it matter to her, but Mrs. Busansky had the room upstairs that was practically an atrium. And what did Mr. Haberman, the principal, say when she complained? Close to amenities. What amenities? The boiler room? Children don’t learn in a basement.
On this day, the boys were laying siege to the coat closet, and finally Mrs. Lopato put her foot down, detention, detention for everyone, in the middle of the school day. And what exactly was detention? Detention was nothing, the absence of everything: learning, movement, fun. A strong measure perhaps for kindergarten, but necessary. Every day the class would have detention until they could learn to behave. Somehow Mrs. Lopato was able to enforce this. The children sat, heads down on their tiny desks. Mrs. Lopato turned out the lights and sat down at her own desk, which looked like an ocean liner compared to theirs. She sat on her teacher’s wooden chair, and her wool skirt scratched at her heavy thighs, and she felt the trembling weariness of too little sleep for too many nights and closed her eyes. When she awoke, a shocked four minutes later, nothing had changed. The children were still in their seats, heads down. Some had fallen asleep too in the dark, hot room. As Mrs. Lopato’s panic subsided, she noticed an empty chair in the girls’ row. Sheila, Carol, Becky, Helen, Sarah, Judy, Esther. Esther?
There was a rule. A rule she remembered even now: Never leave the classroom unattended. So sent her most reliable boy with a note to Mr. Haberman. Come, she wrote, bring Mrs. Felix and Moe, the handyman. Her worst fear—the boiler room. She imagined little Esther burned beyond recognition, her poor face, it was too awful. Too awful, the door was never locked. And Moe had never been forced to do so. Why? Well, this would be a terrible lesson for them all.
The principal arrived in the darkened classroom and raised his nearly hairless eyebrows. What’s going on here, the brows asked, and Mrs. Lopato took charge, she knew how to handle this. She gestured to Mrs. Felix with round hand motions to sit at the big desk. She took the principal and the handyman into the hallway. The boiler room, she whispered, a child is missing. What’s with the lights, Mr. Haberman asked, some problem with the electricals? She ignored him, he was a foul man who shaved his own eyebrows. She led the way to the boiler room, stopping to let Moe precede her when she reached the wide-open metal door. She could smell herself. She stank like an old blanket. She could taste blood in the back of her throat.
Nothing, Moe said, you’re nuts. She was relieved. Okay, where? Mrs. Lopato felt almost lighthearted, as if she’d mastered a fancy dance step. The child wasn’t burned or maimed, the situation was turning radically for the better. Esther was in the building. She had to be, Moe kept all the outside doors locked. The men skulked along the cement corridor, looking left and right, as if the child were leaning against the wall and they just needed to look harder. Idiots, thought Mrs. Lopato. Mr. Haberman pushed through the swing door of the lavatory for the littlest girls. He had that kind of authority in his own school, and soon, very soon, before Moe could even say Holy Jesus—the other thing that stayed with Mrs. Lopato, the mystery of that utterance—the primary mystery was solved. Little Esther had her underpants, a thick cream-colored cotton—too heavy for a little girl, thought Mrs. Lopato, germs could roost in such hot, heavy underpants—these were down around Esther’s bony ankles as she sat on the tile floor, a dusty place, Moe dealt in half-measures as a cleaner as in all else. Esther’s knees fell out to the side, in a position that Mrs. Lopato would later learn, in southern California, was a variant of the goddess position in yoga. So the view was clear to Esther’s tiny vagina and the crayon there. Esther’s hands rested on the floor beside her hips. And she smiled calmly at the adults shivering above her.
Here’s the worst part: Without consultation, Mr. Haberman bent down and removed the crayon, put it in his pocket, and left the room. Esther began to wail, a shrieking, mournful cry that Mrs. Lopato on the occasional lonely night over the Pacific tries to remember, thinks she should remember, but can’t. She only remembers the face: ugly, crushed, lonely for life. Esther Kinder.
Now Roy watched Esther leaning into the placid face of the senator’s wife, Ruth Harbottle, looking like a vision of Halloween. Esther was his friend. She was his date. Roy was wondering if there were going to be any speeches, because that would be interesting. Nate was here. No speech happening, he looked too calm. Albert? Nope. Roy pondered his own cummerbund, released his throat once more from his collar. He was thinking he’d do it. It was the right crowd.
He didn’t say anything to Esther, who might get flustered and flap her crazy arms. He stood up and walked to the window, where he was backdropped by Corinthian columns, very classical. He touched the hand of God as a goodwill gesture to the host, who owed him a lot of money. No throat clearing, instead he compressed his mouth and looked irritated, and that got people’s attention. A little ribbing about the state of his bowels, which struck Esther as unbearably funny. Ruth Harbottle did a little simulated back patting, then led Esther off to a powder room. No
w Roy heard the news about his sexual prowess. This seemed to produce a bad taste in his mouth, his lips puffed out as if he were checking his teeth, and then they parted while his tongue explored the lower left quadrant. Roy had a very thick tongue. Very pink. The room went quiet, Roy touched the hand of God again, said, Have we met? And he was off.
He was going to tell a story, so he started in right away with the groundwork, and this bothered his stomach, this need to do it right: There’s a friend of mine who is in trouble.
That’s the definition of a friend of yours!
This from Albert, who should be keeping his mouth shut, who should be grateful down to his pathetic joint that he was here at all. Then let me say, this is a friend I don’t deserve to have. No one countered this. Some people looked at Albert. He was not as smart as he needed to be most of the time. A weak guy, carried along. So this friend has a beautiful wife, Roy said, two beautiful children, a boy and a girl—a son and a daughter. And the wife? She looks like a movie star, but not a fake, the real thing, a lady. Okay, good.
Esther returned from the powder room, chastened. Mrs. Har-bottle held her by the wrist. Roy winked at her and smiled. Esther nodded back, took a long drink of water, then signaled the serving woman for more. Good, nice, perfect. So this movie-star wife is a dream to my friend. She grew up by the seashore with a nanny and a gardener and blond curly hair like Shirley Temple that the nanny does up in a different ribbon every day. Roy gave the serving woman the tiniest glance. She summed it up. And my friend sees this beauty, is introduced to her by a priest, for godsakes, on her seventeenth birthday. And it doesn’t matter that his father hasn’t held a job in a decade, and that his mother is raising his eight brothers by sheer will. They haven’t seen a loose nickel in the house since the Depression. Doesn’t matter. He sees her. All is equal. He gets a summer job at a local seaside resort hotel tending bar. On Sunday nights he bribes the concierge to send three quarters of his earnings to his mother by Western Union, and uses the rest to take out the girl. Everything goes.
A year or so later the two are married. Very nicely. The priest who made the introduction does the honors. And when they come home from Bermuda, the girl’s father sets up his new son-in-law as a vice president. And that’s when we meet.
What is he? Vice president of your ass?
Roy didn’t blink. Like a bird’s, his head swiveled toward the perceived noise of this comment. No, said Roy, directly to Mrs. Har-bottle, as if it were she who’d spoken, as if she’d asked for a little clarification. Roy almost addressed her by name, almost said: Ruth, dear, he was the director of marketing for a company that made safe products for children, things that wouldn’t warp their minds or burst into flames or break and do bodily harm. But that would be overkill. So he just looked into Ruth Harbottle’s eyes and said, Toys, a toy company. And within the year he’d bought his mother a house and was picking up the mortgage. Still the father never budged from the divan, didn’t need to.
So what happens? The perfect setup, you know it. Two kids, girl, boy, a house on the water, everyone’s happy, boy gets sick. Roy paused. He needed to say this right. He rested his thumb on the hand of God and tapped for a moment. His tongue checked again into the lower left quadrant. A kind of sick we barely know about. (This delivered to Senator Harbottle.) A kind of sick our government is just beginning to fund the answers to. And what next? This man, my friend, who is beside himself, as is his wife, though they are keeping the illness low-key, not too many people know, these two are in a kind of hell. But the good officers of the United States Attorney’s office, Southern District, ignore that. They come to my friend, as they have come to so many others, others who by the way have not refused their invitation to testify. Roy didn’t need to look at Albert to let this sink in, everyone knew that story. And when these officers, in a judge’s chambers, ask my friend if he prefers to testify against me or to lose his good standing, that’s the vernacular, he declines to testify. In fact, it goes further, he takes the stand on my behalf. You know this guy. I don’t need to say his name. No need to mention names (this directly to Esther). So he takes the stand. And right after he steps down, he is arrested, on the spot, by federal marshals. This is a man, a loyal friend, the sole support of his mother, a loving husband, the father to a son who is gravely ill.
There was a long silence. Roy turned to the window, looked at the spotlit steps of the museum, it was pretty true what he’d said, mostly true, some telescoping here, some timing adjustment there. A couple of dramatic embellishments. It was close to ten o’clock. The cars sped below on Fifth Avenue when they got the chance. Roy turned back to the quiet room and said: And now that boy is dying and my friend is in jail, and nothing can be done. What kind of country is this where honesty and hard work and decency are punished like that. You tell me.
In the morning all the papers ran the story as if it were hard news. Roy sipped iced tea. He hadn’t mentioned any names, made a point of that, but there was Will Clemens, spelled correctly, in boldface in every edition. A big mistake. A problem. But not one he could solve today. He’d call Charlie Peeko after noon and see if the boat was fixed yet. But only after twelve o’clock; he’d give the captain a chance to get it right.
June 4
The phone rang like crazy, but nothing from Will. Did he read the paper? Kay didn’t know. The first thing she did was try to reach him. She went through the warden’s office but got no further than a secretary, tired and unhelpful. Will would be very angry, Kay knew. He was on a business trip. And Bo was being tested for allergies. That’s what they’d told almost everyone except, of course, the school, the first-aid squad, and the Maguires.
All day, lots of calls from odd people: the golf pro, Will’s tailor, the owner of the hardware store, both town newspapers, Cecilia Gardella, chair of the local American Cancer Society. She wondered if Kay would speak at a luncheon.
Will’s mother, Rita, had phoned, beside herself, and now she was on a train out of Baltimore on her way to Rumson. Nothing from Kay’s father, and that silence made her sad. Even though he was cruising to some uncharted place off the coast of Sweden, even so, she’d rehearsed the vocabulary all day in her head. She could explain. He would understand if she told him everything. But now she was too wiped out.
Kay wrapped a dish towel around the receiver and dropped it on the kitchen table. Then eyed the buzzing lump, uncertain. Maybe she should keep the line open. What if the hospital tried to call? Maybe just five minutes of peace and then she’d put it back on. Five minutes. Carmen slipped by with a stack of freshly ironed sheets. Her father’s housekeeper was on loan until the little buster rallied. Before Carmen left for the day, she’d cut up citrus fruit and bake a chicken.
Kay stepped out on the porch, pulled the door shut behind her, curled up in the corner chair, hugged a throw pillow tight to her chest. It smelled like onion grass. Lou-Lou probably had her feet all over it when Kay wasn’t looking. Down across the water, Hank Ruddy steered his boat smack into the dock, a real moron. Basic spatial calculations eluded him. Her father was a true sailor. When would he take her sailing again, she missed that. They could go to Nantucket, sail off toward the blues, just like when she was a little girl. Pure heaven. But lately she brought a set of problems with her that he seemed unwilling to discuss. Ever since her mother died, he couldn’t talk about illness, ever, not at all. So instead, he sent Carmen to do the laundry. And when Bo was first diagnosed, misdiagnosed, Kay said allergies, perhaps severe, and her father opened a line of credit. No questions asked, and she’d been grateful. But now she wanted his questions, she was ready, she needed to give him some answers.
I’m ready now, missus. Carmen stood with her purse on her arm. Oh my God. Where had all the time gone? Kay said, Good night, Carmen. Thank you. And ran into the kitchen to reconnect the telephone. She jabbed at the cradle a couple of times until she got a dial tone, then called Gert Maguire: I’m so sorry. I think I was abducted or something. Maybe Hank Ruddy swept me away and
I didn’t notice.
You’d notice. Don’t worry, Lou-Lou’s fine. She’s watching some crap with the boys. You want her home?
Definitely. And Rita’s coming.
Tonight?
Carmen made a chicken, I think.
I’ll send something with Lou-Lou. No, I’ll walk her over.
I’m building a monument to you right now.
Kay tapped at the phone again and dialed the hospital, hard to get through this late in the afternoon. They started serving dinner at four. Finally someone answered, breathless, and Kay asked to speak to Hollis, Bo’s favorite nurse. Just listening to all the grind and screech made her throat constrict. What was wrong with her, had she fallen asleep? Hollis came on the line: Hey Mrs. C.! How’re you doing? She sounded happy to hear from Kay. Amazing.
Is everything okay? she asked, grateful for that happy voice, relieved, jealous, grateful. Is Bo okay?
Fine. Better. He ate a lot of dinner. He seems a little quiet.
Quiet? She’d come home very late the night before to be with Lou-Lou after all the upheaval, but Lou-Lou was at Gert’s as usual, and she, Kay, was nowhere. Not with her son, her daughter, her husband, her father, herself. She tried to listen to the good woman who was speaking.
Yes, quiet, Hollis said. Easy. Sleepy.
Why sleepy.
A tiny fever, but it’s down, much lower. He’s better already.
Oh boy. I’ll be right back in tomorrow. Will I see you, Hollis?
I’ll be here.
His grandmother will come with me. Probably. I’m not sure.
Well, good. Don’t worry, Kay. Do you want to speak to Bo?
Yes. Yes.
Always early, everywhere she went, Rita Clemens stood on the platform at the Red Bank train station and watched the commuters’ wives drive up, park (engine idling), apply lipsticks, subdue children. The southbound 5:38 approached with a double hoot and clattering of gates. A sprig of music poured out of an Oldsmobile and was drowned out by the arriving locomotive. A swarm of men, some young and handsome, pointed faces to the cars. Women stepped onto the curb, pretty legs bare, bright lips curved to kiss the air. Others sat tight, looked over their shoulders for the quickest way out of this mess.
Wavemaker II Page 2