Night of Reunion: A Novel

by Michael Allegretto

  Sarah was by far the best of the three. She was a better-than-average skater, she knew. After all, she’d been skating since she was Brian’s age. But she always felt humbled when she skated here, because this was where Dorothy Hamill and Scott Hamilton, among others, had trained on their way to the Winter Olympics. However, it wasn’t technical achievement that Sarah sought when she put on skates. What she loved was the freedom of movement and the feeling of floating through air.

  They stayed on the ice for nearly an hour. By then they were all beginning to feel a bit tired, so they made their way to the seats where they’d left their shoes and coats.

  Brian had his skates off and his shoes on almost before Sarah and Alex had sat down. He grabbed his coat and walked to the railing surrounding the ice, joining the other people who watched the skaters. Sarah smiled, remembering how she had always been reluctant to leave the skating rink when she’d been Brian’s age. However, she winced when she pulled off her skates. Her feet were tired, and she was glad that they were through skating for the day.

  She slipped into her shoes while Alex tied together each pair of skates by their laces. Sarah picked up her purse and coat, then looked around her.

  “Have we got everything?”

  “I think so,” Alex said. “Where’s Brian?”

  “He’s right over—”

  Sarah stopped when she realized that Brian was no longer standing at the railing.

  “He was there a minute ago,” she said, a note of worry in her voice.

  They searched the grandstands and the walkway around the ice. Brian was not in the arena. Nor was he in the lobby, where several people stood in line to buy admission tickets. They separately checked inside the rest rooms. When they stepped back into the lobby and looked at each other, Sarah could see panic in Alex’s eyes. He pushed through the outer glass doors, with Sarah close behind him.

  And there was Brian on the path by the lake.

  He was not alone.

  Walking beside him was the same woman Sarah had seen earlier. Her left hand was on her purse, which hung by a strap from her shoulder. Her right hand rested lightly on the back of Brian’s head. She was leading him away.

  12

  ALEX, THAT’S THE WOMAN who was fol—”

  Before Sarah could finish, Alex dropped the skates and ran toward the woman and Brian. Sarah ran after him.

  “Get away from my son!” Alex yelled.

  The woman started to turn just as Alex came up behind her, grabbed the shoulder of her coat, and spun her around with such force that her purse went flying, along with a sack of bread crumbs. Brian looked on, stunned.

  A moment later, Sarah ran up and got her first close look at the woman’s face and saw that she was easily in her sixties. The myopic eyes behind her glasses were wide, and her mouth was open in surprise and fear.

  Alex, too, looked surprised. But he hesitated for only a moment before demanding, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “The boy—” the woman said, pointing a trembling finger toward the lake, “he wanted to feed the geese. …”

  “Oh, my God,” Sarah whispered under her breath.

  “Martha!”

  Sarah turned and saw an elderly man hurrying anxiously toward them, dropping a sack of bread crumbs along the way. He pushed past Alex and held the woman by both arms.

  “Martha, are you all right? What happened?”

  “This man,” she said, “grabbed me and nearly knocked me down.”

  The old man turned an angry face toward Alex, whose own face, Sarah noted, was red with embarrassment and shame.

  “Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” Alex said. “Please forgive—”

  Alex stepped toward the couple, and the man stuck out his arm, palm forward, to ward him off.

  “Stay away from us,” he said angrily.

  “The little boy—” the woman said, looking down at Brian, “he asked me if he could feed the geese. I said of course. I didn’t see the harm …”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” Alex said, a slight tremor in his voice. “I … thought you were someone else.”

  “Get away from us.” The man’s voice was a mixture of anger and disgust. “If you don’t, I’m going to get the police.” Then he turned toward his wife, and his tone softened. “Are you sure you’re all right, Martha?”

  “Yes … yes, I think so.”

  Alex started to apologize again, and Sarah put her hand on his arm.

  “Come on, Alex,” she said gently.

  “I’m sorry.” Alex looked toward the couple, then shifted his gaze to Sarah’s eyes. “I thought she was …”

  “I know. I did, too.” Sarah said. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Sarah and Alex and Brian walked toward the ice area, all of them slightly shaken, as if they were leaving the scene of an accident. Sarah glanced back once and saw the man pick up the woman’s purse and brush off the snow.

  Brian looked up at his father, tears of confusion in his eyes.

  “Dad, why did you do that?”

  “Your father just …” Sarah began.

  “I made a mistake,” Alex said softly.

  As soon as they got home, Brian went upstairs to play in his room. Alex sat at the kitchen table while Sarah put a kettle on the stove. She set the table with mugs, napkins, spoons, a tin of tea bags, and a bowl of sugar.

  Alex stared down at his hands and said, “I can’t believe I lost my head like that.”

  “It was partly my fault,” Sarah said.

  “No.”

  “I told you that woman had been following us when really she was doing nothing. Just feeding the geese.”

  Alex shook his head.

  “You could have said nothing,” he said, “and it wouldn’t have mattered. When I saw her from behind, her size, her hair, leading Brian away, I … I thought it was Christine. I’ve never felt such rage, Sarah. It blinded me. I was ready to—” He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them and looked up at her. “Thank God I didn’t hurt that poor woman.”

  Sarah stepped behind Alex’s chair and gently rubbed his neck. It felt knotted with muscle.

  “It was stupid of me to lose control,” Alex said. “Frank O’Hara was right. The best thing for us to do is carry on with our lives and forget about Christine Helstrum. Besides, she’s probably dead.”

  The kettle whimpered, then screamed.

  Sarah turned off the burner, brought the kettle to the table, and poured steaming water into their mugs.

  “I agree,” she said. “It won’t do either of us any good to jump at ghosts. We’ve got more important things to think about.” She set the kettle on the stove, then sat at the table and moved her tea bag around in the cup with a spoon. “For instance,” she said, trying to put some cheer back into her voice, “Christmas cards and party invitations. What do you say? Do you feel up to it?”

  “Sure,” he said, reaching for her hand, a faint smile on his lips. “But first I want to go up and speak to Brian for a minute. I owe him an apology, or at least an explanation.”

  “About Christine?” Sarah sounded concerned.

  “No,” Alex said, “I’ll leave her out of it.”

  Brian took the butcher knife from his toy chest.

  He thought back to last night when he’d carried it to his room and almost been caught by his mother. In fact, he’d barely managed to slide it beneath the bed and climb under the covers before she’d come in to ask why he’d been up. He’d said he’d been getting a drink of water. That was a fib, and he knew it, and he knew it was wrong and that he could be punished for it. But he also knew that taking the knife was more serious, more wrong. So after his mother had kissed him good night and gone back to her bedroom, he’d hidden the knife in his toy chest and covered it with several layers of playthings.

  Besides, he thought, I’m not gonna keep it.

  He held the thick wooden handle in both hands and raised his arms so that the light played off the blade.

  I’m jus
t gonna borrow it for a little while.

  He laid the knife lengthwise on the long piece of cardboard. He was pleased to see that his drawing surface was just long enough to accommodate it. Then he pulled the cap from his black drawing pen, knelt down, and began to trace the handle of the knife.

  Brian heard Alex’s voice.

  He froze, his left hand pressed flat on the knife handle, his right hand holding the pen. His mouth was open, and his eyes were riveted on the open bedroom door.

  The voice faded.

  Brian rose and walked out of his bedroom to the empty U-shaped hallway. He wondered if his father was upstairs. His eyes scanned the open doors: his parents’ bedroom to his left, his father’s den straight ahead at one corner of the U, the guest bedroom next to that, the bathroom next to that at the other corner of the U, and the large sitting room across the open stairwell from where he stood.

  Then he heard his father’s voice again. Brian stood at the railing and looked down the stairs. He realized that the voice had drifted up the stairwell. Then he heard his mother, and he knew for sure that they were both down there, probably in the kitchen.

  Brian went back to his room and stood for a moment in the doorway. The cardboard and the long butcher knife were in plain view in the middle of the floor. He closed the door behind him. But he realized that with the door closed he wouldn’t be able to hear if anyone came up the stairs and walked to his room.

  He opened the door. Then he dragged the cardboard and the knife around to the far side of his bed, out of view from the doorway. Now if anyone came upstairs, he’d be ready to push the knife under the bed.

  Once again he began to trace the handle of the knife with his drawing pen. The handle had a round knob that bulged forward from the bottom, and then it was smooth and straight up to the bottom edge of the blade. The bottom of the blade jutted out several inches from the handle and then began its long, gentle curve up to the point.

  As Brian began to trace the cutting edge of the blade, his pen seemed to stick to the cardboard. He examined the cardboard and then the pen. There was a notch cut into the side of the plastic pen. He realized now why the pen hadn’t moved smoothly—the knife blade was cutting into it. And for the first time since he’d taken the knife, he realized how sharp and dangerous it was.

  He carefully finished tracing the cutting edge of the blade. Then he flipped the knife over, positioned it just right, and began retracing the cutting edge so that his cardboard sword would be double-edged.

  Suddenly he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and his head jerked up.

  But it was only Patches. The big orange-and-white cat meowed and sniffed at the cardboard and the point of the knife blade.

  “Watch out or you might cut your nose,” Brian said.

  Patches walked stiff-legged around the cardboard, eyeing it suspiciously, then rubbed up against Brian with his tail in the air. Brian tried to ignore the cat and finish his tracing.

  “What are you doing, Brian?”

  Brian looked over his bed. His father stood in the bedroom doorway.

  “Uh, nothing,” Brian said, and pushed the knife under the bed. “Just playing.”

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Brian was certain that his father had seen the knife and was going to get mad at him. But it was something else entirely. He wanted to talk some more about the woman by the lake today. Brian didn’t quite understand what it was all about, so he just nodded a few times and said, “Yeah.”

  Then his father was finished and got up to leave the room. Brian saw his eyes fall on the stack of cardboard pieces in the corner.

  “How’s your Sword of Power coming?” Alex asked.

  “Okay, I guess.”

  Alex walked over and picked up the cardboard sheets and began shuffling through them.

  “Not bad,” he said. Then he saw the piece lying beside Brian’s bed. “Is that your latest one?”

  “Yes.”

  Alex stepped to the bed and bent down to retrieve the cardboard. Brian didn’t move or even breathe. If his father saw the knife under the bed, it was all over. He wasn’t sure what his father would do to him. He seemed to remember being spanked very hard several times, but he thought that was a long time ago by Ted. He tried to remember what Alex did when he got angry, but he couldn’t remember ever seeing him angry. Except today, when he’d grabbed that woman.

  “Hey, this is really good,” Alex said, holding up the cardboard with the tracing of the double-edged sword.

  “Thanks, Dad,” Brian said. He was watching Patches pawing at something under the bed.

  “How did you manage to get the lines curved so nice?”

  “I, um, sort of traced it.”

  “Well, you did a good job. Would you like me to cut it out for you now?”

  “I can do it,” Brian said, thinking of the box cutter that he had hidden away but mostly just wishing that his father wasn’t here right now. Then he remembered that he wasn’t supposed to have the box cutter any more than he was supposed to have the knife.

  “Maybe you should let me.”

  “Okay,” Brian said quickly.

  He helped his father pick up all the pieces of cardboard, and he was greatly relieved to follow him out of the bedroom.

  Alex tossed and turned in his sleep that night, keeping Sarah awake.

  She knew what was troubling him: the scene today at the Broadmoor. It troubled her, too. Not just that he’d nearly attacked an old woman, which was disturbing enough, but that his actions had been so totally out of character for him. He was warm and emotional, of course, but also solid and logical. Thoughtful. She could depend on that quality in him. In fact, she knew, in the short time that they’d been married, she’d come to depend on almost everything about him. Not financially dependent, of course, but emotionally, psychologically.

  That’s it, she thought with a wry smile. I’m psychologically addicted to him.

  This was something new for her, since she’d never felt that close to Ted Saunders, even when their marriage was going smoothly. And during her three years of being a single parent—after her divorce from Ted and before she’d married Alex—she’d become totally self-reliant, quite able to take care of herself and her son. Her friends all praised her for being able to “make it on her own,” to carry on without having to rely on some man, to get by without needing someone.

  She’d begun to believe it herself—that she could get by with what she had and that she didn’t need anything else in her life.

  Not the child-support payments which came sporadically from Ted. Not sex, which she’d thought she’d long for, but didn’t, after her separation from Ted. And not more love—Brian gave her all she’d ever need.

  Then she’d met Alex. And her life, which she’d thought had been just fine, had somehow become easier, better.

  And now she needed him. She counted on him. Not just for the “big” things, like making the house payments or taking care of her and Brian when they’d both come down with the flu or simply loving her. She counted on him for the “little” things as well: starting the lawn mower and listening to her complain about a rude store clerk and holding Brian’s hand when the three of them went for a walk. The more she was with him, she realized, the more she’d grown to need him. And she knew in her heart that he needed her just as much.

  Maybe that’s not such a good thing, she thought, staring up at the dark ceiling. Maybe it weakens you to give up so much of your self-reliance.

  She turned her head and looked at Alex stirring in his sleep beside her. She smiled in the darkness and reached out and touched his back.

  But we’re stronger together, she thought, stronger than either of us was apart.

  Besides, she knew, Alex would always be there for her. It wasn’t that she needed him to lean on. But it was comforting to know that he was there if she did need him. He was solid and strong and logical. She’d never doubted that for a minute.

  Until toda
y.

  When he’d gone after that woman, it had been like watching a stranger, a reckless and violent man. Of course, he’d thought that Brian had been in danger, that the woman was Christine Helstrum.

  But she wasn’t Christine. She was just an old woman who’d been feeding the geese, and Alex had nearly thrown her to the ground. It had been a terrible thing for Sarah to witness. More than witness—to be a part of. Because she believed that she would have done the same thing had not Alex been there.

  What would they have done, she wondered, if the woman had been Christine?

  As disturbing as that was to her, she had a thought that frightened her even more:

  What would Christine have done?

  13

  SHE HUDDLED IN THE dark, eating.

  She felt pleased with herself. And why shouldn’t she? After all, she had everything she needed: a safe hiding place, all the food she could steal, and an easy way to get into Alex’s house.

  I could kill them right now, she thought, licking crumbs from her fingers. I could get into the house right now and kill them in their beds.

  That thought doubly pleased her. But it also troubled her, because she knew that once they were dead, the game would end.

  Like with the mice, she thought.

  She remembered setting out crumbs for them and then waiting, holding perfectly still for hours, waiting for them to come out of hiding, to test the air with their tiny pink noses, and finally to creep closer, close enough for her to snatch. First one. And then another. Three in all. But after she’d caught three, the little game had been over.

  Although it had given her the idea for the real game.

  She smiled now, remembering snipping off their heads with the hedge clippers and putting them on the seat of the car. She wondered if the three of them had gotten the joke.

  Three blind mice.

  See how they run, she thought.

  She stretched out her legs on the floor and leaned back against the wall.

  “They all ran after the farmer’s wife,” she sang softly in the dark.

  “Who cut off their heads with a carving knife.”