The River King

by Alice Hoffman

  Each time they were together, Betsy promised it would be the last. But this was a pledge she made to herself after he’d gone, and it was a rather flimsy pact. While Abe was beside her, she wanted him far too much to let him go. It was Abe who usually realized he had to leave, quickly, before the bells rang and the girls at St. Anne’s were awakened to find him in the hallway, shirt-tails out, boots in hand. How could Betsy let him go? Every time the wind tapped at her window glass, she wished that it might be him. She could hear him sometimes, out by the roses, watching her before he let himself in the front door, and the knowledge that he was there in the garden made her so light-headed she was willing to take risks she could not have imagined before. In time, she found that what happened between them at night was spilling into her daylight hours. While she taught her classes, while she showered, while she made coffee or kissed the man she was to marry, it was Abe she was thinking of.

  It was nearly the end of December when Betsy realized how dangerous a game she was playing. She knew then she would have to end it immediately. It was a cold morning and they’d stayed in bed too long, sleeping past the bells; by the time they awoke it was after nine. Snow had begun to fall, and a silvery light coursed through the window; perhaps this pale sky was the reason they’d been so reckless, for the girls in Betsy’s care were already dressed and on their way to classes. Betsy could hear the front door open and close as she lay there beside him. She recognized the sound of Maureen Brown giggling as the girl leaned over the porch railing to catch snowflakes on her tongue, and that awful Peggy Anthony’s high-pitched wail as her leather boots skidded on the icy steps. How easy it would have been for Abe and Betsy to be caught on this morning. Say Peggy Anthony broke her leg on the icy stair. Say Amy Elliot had one of her allergic reactions and came pounding on the door. How long would it take for the news to drift to Chalk House? Fifteen seconds? Twenty? How long exactly, before Betsy ruined her life?

  She had never told a lie in her life before this. She had never believed herself capable of such subterfuge, making up excuses not to see Eric, her deceit forming with such ease she surprised herself. All that she’d wanted, the security of her life here in Haddan, would be undone by her own hand, unless she stopped now. She called a locksmith that same afternoon. After the new electronic tronic lock had been installed on the front door, Betsy insisted upon a house meeting. Her girls were told in no uncertain terms not to give the code to either boyfriends or deliverymen. Betsy then had a dead bolt placed on the door to her own quarters as well, one that the locksmith had assured her was impenetrable, except to the most experienced thieves, the sort who would stop at nothing to get what they wanted.

  Abe came back the next night, an inky blue night, as deep and immeasurable as the farthest reaches of heaven. Betsy heard him in the garden, but instead of going to the window to wave, she drew the curtains. She imagined his confusion when he found that the old lock had been replaced; it was an act not only of self-preservation, but of cruelty, as well. Betsy knew this, but she couldn’t bring herself to face him. So she let him stand out there on the porch until, at last, he went away. Afterward, she did her best to avoid him. If a man even reminded her of Abel Grey, if he was tall or had blue eyes, Betsy went the other way, ducking behind hedges, fleeing the mini-mart before her purchases were rung up. She wouldn’t even go to the pharmacy for fear she might run into him. She spent every night with Eric, as if he were the remedy, the cure for a bothersome ailment, no different than a fever or a cold.

  Abe, however, was not so easy to dismiss. He had never envisioned himself as a man in love, but that was what he had turned out to be. He tried his best not to think about Betsy. He spent his days immersed in his job, gathering as much information about Gus Pierce as he could, telephoning the boy’s father in New York, going over his various school records, searching for a key to Gus’s intent. Why people did the things they did, whether it be on impulse or a premeditated act, was always a puzzle. The boy in the water, the shotgun hidden in his brother’s room, the locked door at St. Anne’s. In the evenings Abe left his files and drove past the school, far more wounded than he’d ever imagined he’d be. When Kelly Avon suggested they meet down at the Millstone, he declined; he remained in his parked car, there on school property, where he didn’t belong.

  The holiday season was approaching and luminous silver stars had been affixed to the stoplights to celebrate the season. At the Haddan School, white lights decorated the porch balustrades. On the night when Abe finally decided to confront Betsy, he knew it was a bad decision. A light snow had begun to fall; it was just after supper and the campus was bustling. Abe was bound to be seen, not that he cared. He thought about all the times he’d been called in to settle altercations he hadn’t understood: the heated fights of divorcing husbands and wives, the battles between brothers, the agony of thwarted lovers who had slit their exes’ tires in the parking lot of the Millstone. All of them had been people whose love for each other had turned sour, deteriorating into a need for revenge or justice and a desire to hurt whoever had wronged them. Now Abe knew what those people were after; it was somebody’s love they wanted, and they went after it the only way they knew how, exactly as he meant to do here tonight.

  Two girls were sitting on the porch steps, letting the snow fall down on them. Abe had to lurch over them in order to get to the door.

  “The combination is three, thirteen, thirty-three,” one of the girls on the porch told him, forgetting Betsy’s demand for security and caution.

  Abe punched in the code and let himself in. It was the free hour between supper and study hall, when most students had their radios blaring and the TV in the lounge was turned up. Abe bumped into one girl who was toting a bag of laundry and almost tripped over another who sat squarely in the hallway, nattering away on the pay phone, unaware of anyone who passed by. St. Anne’s seemed a very different place from the dark, silent house Abe was used to when he arrived in the middle of the night, not that the crowded corridors stopped him from going on to Betsy’s quarters.

  A dead bolt wasn’t always as invincible as locksmiths would have a buyer believe, not if a thief came prepared. Abe had brought along a small screwdriver he most often used to tighten the loose rearview mirror of his grandfather’s cruiser; in no time he had pried open the dead bolt, hoping that Betsy hadn’t paid much, since it was fairly worthless in warding off any serious criminal intent. Going into her rooms uninvited, Abe had the same itchy feeling he used to have as a kid. He was breathing hard, not quite believing what he’d done, his hands were shaking, exactly as they had whenever he broke into a house. What he needed was a cold beer and a friend to set him straight, but as he had neither, he went on, into her bedroom. He ran his hand over the lace runner on top of the bureau, then approached the night table. Betsy had every right not to see him anymore. Hadn’t he done the exact same thing dozens of times, not bothering to call some woman who’d made it clear she was interested, not even having the decency to explain himself? He held the earrings Betsy had left on the bureau, uncertain as to whether he wanted to understand her or punish her. Either way, he was not really surprised when he heard the door open. With his run of bad luck, he’d expected as much.

  Betsy could tell Abe was there right away; she knew it the way people say they know they are about to be hit by lightning, yet remain powerless to run, unable to avoid their fate. She panicked, as anyone might have when disparate parts of her life were about to crash into each other, certain to leave a path of anguish and debris. It was true that devotion could be lost as quickly as it was found, which was why some people insisted that love letters always be written in ink. How easy it was for even the sweetest words to evaporate, only to be rewritten as impulse and infatuation might dictate. How unfortunate that love could not be taught or trained, like a seal or a dog. Instead, it was a wolf on the prowl, with a mind of its own, and it made its own way, undeterred by the damage done. Love like this could turn honest people into liars and cheats, as
it now did to Betsy. She told Eric she needed to change out of her clothes, but it wasn’t the blue wool outfit she had worn to the dean’s for dinner that made her feel faint in these overheated rooms.

  “Can you open a few windows, too?” Betsy called as she went on to the bedroom, making sure to close the door behind her. She was burning hot and overwrought; she should not have had that drink at the dean’s house after the dinner to which Eric had insisted they go. She was dressed in unfamiliar clothes, with the unfamiliar taste of whiskey in her mouth, so that it seemed as though she were the stranger here and Abe, there at the edge of her bed, was the one who belonged.

  By now the snow outside was falling harder, but that didn’t stop Betsy from going to raise her bedroom window. The falling snow began to drift onto the carpet, but Betsy didn’t care. She had a prickly sensation up and down her spine. How well did she know this man in her room? How could she know what he might be capable of?

  “If you don’t change your clothes he’ll wonder why you lied to him,” Abe said.

  The only illumination came from beyond the window, due to the streetlamp and the brilliance of the snow. In such light everything appeared distant; it was as if Abe and Betsy and whatever had been between them had already moved into the past. “He’ll wonder what else you lied to him about.”

  “I haven’t lied to him!” Betsy was grateful for the cold air coming in through the window. She was burning with shame, the penance of her own deception. Although she had been the one to refuse him, she still remembered what it was like to kiss him, how such a simple act could turn her inside out.

  “I see. You just didn’t tell him the truth.” Abe would have laughed then, if he found such matters amusing. “Is that what you did when you were with me? You sidestepped the truth? Is that what happened between us?”

  They could hear Eric in the kitchen, putting up the kettle, opening cabinets as he searched for sugar and cups.

  “Nothing happened.” Betsy’s mouth burned. “There was nothing between us.”

  It was the one answer that could drive him away, and this was Betsy’s intent. Abe went out through the window; he banged his bad knee against the window frame, collecting a bruise that would ache for days. The campus was already covered with two or three inches of new snow, and the falling flakes were large and swirly, the mark of a storm that would last. By morning, traffic would be a mess; a heavy snowfall in Haddan never went by without at least one bad accident, usually up by the interstate, and one local boy injuring himself on a makeshift sled or a borrowed snowmobile.

  The snow was blinding as Abe walked away from St. Anne’s; all the same, he was reminded of the hot afternoon when his brother died. He’d recognized the same thing then, how quickly the future could become the past, moments melting into each other before anyone could reach out and change them. He’d gone over how it all might have happened differently if he’d run up the stairs. If he’d knocked on the door, if he’d barged right in; how it might have changed had he denied his brother’s request that morning and refused to go along to their grandfather’s farm. It had been the sort of summer day that shone and glittered in the dusty sunlight like a miracle, all blue heat and endless white clouds, stifling hot, so quiet Abe could hear himself breathing when Frank hoisted him up so Abe could climb through the window to get the gun.

  Afterward he’d had to do it again and again, compelled to repeat his thievery. At least these acts had stopped him from thinking, but now he was done with breaking into other people’s houses. It had never done any good anyway, he’d carried his pain around inside him; it was still here on this snowy night. Maybe that was why he decided to leave his car where it was, parked by the river, and walk home. Once he started, he just kept going, past his house and halfway to Hamilton, not returning until sometime near dawn when he hitched a ride back with a plow Kelly Avon’s little brother, Josh, was driving.

  The next day he went walking again, even though he was supposed to show up for work, and Doug Lauder, a patrolman who grumbled under the best circumstances, was forced to take his shift, stuck directing traffic outside town hall until his toes turned blue. Before long, people in town noticed that Abe had quit stargazing. Why, he didn’t even look up anymore as he walked through the village. He no longer whistled and his face was grim and he’d taken to being out at hours when decent people were all at home in bed. Several old-timers in town, Zeke Harris at the dry cleaner’s, and George Nichols over at the Millstone, remembered that Wright Grey had done the very same thing for a while, walking so many miles he’d worn down his boots and then had to take them into Hamilton to be resoled.

  Now it seemed that Abe had inherited this trait. Even when the weather took a turn for the worse, with ragged sleet and cold, blue ice, Abe kept at it. People would glance out their windows and there he’d be, on Main Street or on Elm, or over by Lovewell Lane; without even a dog as an excuse to slog through the slush. He had decided he would go on walking until he could figure things out. How was it, he wanted to know, that things could turn so quickly from love to locked doors? This was why he had resisted commitments for so long; he wasn’t constitutionally fit for love. He had fallen into it headfirst, just like those fools he’d always made fun of, Teddy Humphrey, for instance, who was so driven he didn’t care if he looked like an idiot; he’d park outside Nikki’s house and blast his car radio, hoping all the songs of heartbreak he played would remind her that love that had been lost could also be found.

  Abe pitied Teddy Humphrey, and now he pitied himself as well. Some days, he had a terrible feeling in the center of his chest that simply wouldn’t go away. He’d even gone over to the clinic in Hamilton to have it checked out, knowing that Mrs. Jeremy’s son, AJ, had been walloped with a heart attack two years earlier at the age of thirty-seven, but the nurses insisted nothing was wrong. Get yourself an antacid, they told him. Stop drinking so much coffee. Stop walking in such bad weather, and make sure to wear gloves and a scarf.

  Abe went directly from the clinic to the pharmacy. “What’s the difference between love and heartburn?” he asked Pete Byers, who was the one person in town who surely knew about such matters.

  “Give me a minute.” Pete, always a thoughtful man, assumed he’d need time to think it over. It seemed like a difficult riddle, but as it turned out, the answer didn’t take long. “I’ve got it,” he declared. “Nothing.”

  On that advice, Abe bought some Rolaids, which he swallowed right down, along with most of his pride. No wonder he hadn’t trusted anyone before; you never could tell what people would do, one minute they’d be smiling at you and the next they’d be gone, without so much as an explanation or a civil good-bye. There wasn’t a grown man on this planet who wound up with everything he wanted, so who was Abe to complain? He was still here, wasn’t he? He woke every morning to see the sky, he drank his coffee, scraped the ice from his front steps, waved to his neighbors. He wasn’t a boy who’d been cheated, who never got the chance to grow up and make his own decisions, right or wrong. The difference between tragedy and simple bad luck, after all, could be easily defined: it was possible to walk away from one, and that Abe would do, no matter how many miles it took or how many pairs of boots he wore through.

  THE WATCH AND THE LOAF

  SNOW FELL ALL THROUGH DECEMBER, covering the Christmas tree in front of town hall with a blanket of white that would not melt until the tree was taken down, as it was every year, on the Saturday after New Year’s. This was the season when the north wind slammed around town, tossing garbage cans into the street, shaking store awnings. The days were so short they were finished by four, at which point the sky turned black, and evenings were cold enough to freeze a person’s breath in the crystal-clear air. There seemed to be handfuls of stars tossed right above the rooftops in Haddan, keeping the town still alight at midnight. Some people joked that it would make sense to wear sunglasses after sundown, that’s how bright the snow was; it shone in the starlight, causing even the most serious people
to put aside all caution and restraint and jump into the biggest of the drifts.

  The boat shed at the Haddan School was unheated and drafty; it overlooked a bend in the frozen river, and although the building was closed until spring, that didn’t mean it went unused. On Friday nights kegs of beer were set up beside the tarp-covered kayaks and canoes, and several girls in the freshman class had already lost their innocence there beside the sculls. Although she was embarrassed to be like so many others, Carlin had spent a good deal of time in the boathouse with Harry, but by the end of the semester, all of that had changed. Now whenever she was with Harry, she would discover a stone in the pocket of Gus’s coat; some were black and some were white and others were a crystalline blue-gray, the color of the ice that formed in the shallows of the river. The floor of Carlin’s closet was now covered by a collection of such stones; they rattled every time she reached for her boots, and soon she noticed the stones turned clearer as the hour grew later, so that by midnight they were transparent, nearly invisible to the naked eye.

  When it came time for winter vacation, a group had arranged a weeklong trip to Harry’s family’s place in Vermont. It was assumed that Carlin would be going with them, and she didn’t let on that she was staying behind until the day before they were to leave.

  “You’re not serious.” Harry was deeply annoyed. “We made all the plans and now you’re not going?”

  They were his plans actually; still Carlin did her best to explain how difficult it would be for her to leave Haddan. Miss Davis could no longer rise from her chair and was often too tired for dinner, falling asleep at the table, her untouched plate before her. Miss Davis had been so grateful at Thanksgiving that Carlin didn’t feel she could leave her employer alone for the holidays.