Stranger in the House

by MacDonald, Patricia

  “Hi, darling. When did you get up? I didn’t hear you.”

  “Just now,” said Tracy. “Where’s Daddy?”

  That was quick, Anna thought. She sighed. “He’s not here.”

  Tracy picked up an orange from the basket on the table and started to peel it. “Did he go early?” she asked casually. She pulled out a section and slipped it into her mouth. She watched her mother warily.

  Anna could sense the tension in Tracy’s stance. For a second she realized that Tracy knew instinctively that something was wrong. She wondered how the child could be so perceptive, but at the same instant she understood, with a heavy heart, that Tracy had been bred on calamity. She must have a presentiment for it, based on experience. There was no point in trying to conceal the truth from her. Anna sat down carefully in one of the kitchen chairs and laid her hands, palms down, on the tabletop. She was not sure how to begin.

  Tracy saved her the trouble. “What happened?” she asked in a matter-of-fact tone, but Anna could hear a tremor in her voice.

  “Tracy, your father and I had an argument last night, and he decided to go away for a little while.”

  “What do you mean?” Tracy asked incredulously. “You mean, he moved out?”

  Anna was poised to deny it. Then her shoulders slumped, and she nodded. “For a little while.” She mitigated the admission.

  “What’s a little while?” Tracy cried. “When’s he coming home?”

  Anna was silent for a moment. Then she replied, “I don’t know.”

  Tracy spit an orange pit into her hand. “You mean, never,” she said.

  “I mean, I don’t know.”

  “He just left, like that? He didn’t even say good-bye to me.”

  “You were sleeping. He didn’t want to wake you. You’ll see him, Tracy. It’s not you he’s mad at.”

  “What did you do?” Tracy asked accusingly. Then she blurted out, “I can’t believe this.” Tears spurted to her eyes, and she angrily wiped them away.

  Anna stared sadly at her daughter, who was trying to be defiant about this, her latest loss. What have I done to you? Anna thought. “Tracy, I’m sorry. I know you’re going to feel as if I’m to blame, and I know how much you care for him; but I did what I had to do, and I’d do it again if I had the chance. I’m going to try to make your father see that, but if I can’t…well, I don’t know.”

  “Did what? What did you do to make him leave?”

  Anna considered claiming that it was private. She felt too tired to face her daughter’s reaction and the cementing of her conviction that her mother was to blame for all her misery. But perhaps there had already been too many things kept inside. Anna drew a deep breath.

  “Your father was very angry at me for what I did yesterday.”

  “What do you mean? For finding that guy?”

  “Not for finding him. For going to see him. I went to see him without telling Daddy what I was going to do. You heard the whole thing yesterday.”

  “Yeah, I heard it,” she said. “He was going to tell you something about Paul.”

  “Yes,” said Anna carefully. “I knew he was wanted by the police but that didn’t stop me. I knew that he wanted money for the information about Paul, and I planned to give it to him. Without telling your father.”

  “Is Daddy mad about the money?”

  “No, darling. He is mad because he thinks I acted recklessly. He feels that I didn’t give any thought to his feelings, or to yours for that matter. That I just went ahead and did it without caring about the two of you. That’s not true, but he didn’t believe me.”

  Tracy inserted another orange section into her mouth and then sucked on it thoughtfully. “I don’t get it.”

  Anna looked up at her.

  “Did he think we should have come with you? How could we do that?”

  “No, he meant that if something had happened to me, I mean, if Rambo had been lying and done something to me…that I just took a dangerous chance…for Paul’s sake.”

  Tracy nodded and picked another pit off her tongue. She deposited the pits in her hand into the trash. Then she wiped her hand on her T-shirt. “Yeah, but you had to try to find out what he knew about Paul,” she said simply.

  Anna felt momentarily stunned by the unexpected endorsement. She looked up at her daughter with her mouth open. Then she bit her lip. “Yes,” she said. “That’s what I thought.” She started to say more but stopped, afraid to break the fragile understanding with a load of explanations.

  Tracy sank down into a chair beside Anna and rested her head in her hands. “This sucks,” she groaned.

  Gingerly Anna placed a hand on Tracy’s back and rubbed it in a circular motion. Tracy let her do it.

  “It’ll be all right,” Anna assured her softly. “We’ll make him understand. Don’t worry,” she promised, gathering determination as she spoke. “You’ll see.”

  Boarding the morning commuter train was like stepping through the open door of an inferno. Edward gasped and stepped back as the blast of heat hit him. Behind him, a pileup of briefcase-toting commuters began, and he could hear their murmured complaints. A trainman in a blue uniform came trudging up the center aisle of the car, bawling, “Step inside, plenty of seats, watch the closing doors.”

  Edward stood still, glaring at the conductor, as some of the other men slid by him, grumbling and flattening themselves against the seats. The conductor glanced at him and then shook his head, anticipating his complaint. “I know all about it,” the conductor said in a bored voice. “Nothing I can do. The whole train’s like this—a steam bath.”

  Edward bristled at the man’s casual attitude about the breakdown in the air-conditioning, but it was clear that the conductor just didn’t care. Complaining under his breath, Edward marched down the aisle, settled himself in the window seat, and began removing his jacket. He hated driving into Manhattan, but this was insufferable. He should have called a town car to take him into town today. Too late now, he thought.

  Edward instinctively smoothed out the fabric of his suit to prevent it from being wrinkled by the man who sat down heavily in the seat next to him. He arranged his jacket carefully before glancing over at the man in the adjoining seat and stifled a groan when he recognized Harold Stern, a member of his country club. Harold had made his money in the department store business, and Edward did not consider him suitable for membership in his club. Edward looked quickly away and pretended not to see him.

  “Hello, Edward,” said Harold, disregarding the snub. “It’s hot in here today, isn’t it?”

  Edward gave him a mirthless smile of assent, and the two sat in silence for a moment.

  “Hey,” Harold said as Edward began to open his copy of The Wall Street Journal, “this whole thing with Tom Lange’s family is really incredible, isn’t it. You’re pretty friendly with them, aren’t you?”

  Edward gave Harold a rather patronizing nod. “We have been neighbors for some time, of course. The boy’s coming home, you mean.”

  “Well, and then his wife’s finding the kidnapper yesterday. They say he killed himself. My God.”

  “Anna found…that man?”

  “My wife heard about it on the radio last night.”

  Sweat broke out at Edward’s hairline. “I don’t understand. How could Anna…?”

  “I don’t know the details. There might be something in this morning’s paper, though. They love anything sensational, especially in the suburbs.” Harold snapped open his briefcase and pulled out a copy of the Daily News. “My wife told me I’d better bring it home tonight so she can read about it. I just got it at the station.”

  Edward watched in horrified fascination as his seat-mate pored through the scandal-ridden stories in the front of the paper.

  “Here it is,” Harold cried. “Page three.”

  “Let me see,” said Edward urgently.

  “Just a second,” Harold said, frowning as he read.

  “Let me see it,” Edward demanded in a s
hrill voice. Harold looked up at him in surprise.

  “They’re our friends. It upsets me terribly,” Edward explained, tugging the paper from Harold’s hands.

  Harold released the tabloid, and Edward stared down at the account in the newspaper, the details just sketchy enough to leave his own fate hanging in the balance. Edward’s face paled as he read, and the words seemed to throb in front of him. For an instant he imagined a phalanx of policemen waiting to meet him as he stepped off the train at Grand Central Station. His heart was pounding, and the gnawing in his stomach was almost audible.

  Harold Stern watched Edward as he stared at the paper. “God,” he said. “You look awful. Are you all right?”

  Edward gripped the paper, the ink staining his dampened fingers black. “I’m all right. Shocking news,” he mumbled.

  “Well, it could be worse. At least nobody got hurt. Except that nut.”

  “It’s this heat,” said Edward, handing him back the paper and turning toward the window. How could Anna have found Rambo? She must have spoken to him at some point. And how much had Rambo told her? He had to get back to Connecticut and find out. He would not even leave Grand Central Station. He would just turn around and take the next train out. If the police were not already waiting for him, he reminded himself.

  13

  A phone rang, and Anna looked up sharply as the nurse behind the desk answered it and spoke in a low tone. Anna’s restless gaze strayed around the doctor’s waiting room. Over in one corner a pair of neatly dressed girls with strawberry-blonde hair were squabbling desultorily over a jigsaw puzzle. In a chair beside them a man with red hair, dressed in khakis and a Lacoste shirt, alternated between glancing at the door and consulting his watch. In a chair by the window a heavyset woman in a flowered dress was leafing through a People magazine, raising her eyes occasionally between pages.

  Anna sighed and looked up at the clock. It had been nearly forty minutes since Paul went into the examining room of their family doctor. She wondered what Dr. Derwent could be doing with him all that time.

  “Mrs. Lange,” the nurse called out pleasantly as she returned the phone to the cradle, “Dr. Derwent would like to talk to you in his office.” The nurse gestured toward the closed office door. Anna smiled wanly at her and got up from the sofa; her legs felt numb beneath her. One of the children by the jigsaw puzzle began to cry.

  Anna passed through the office door and into the diploma-and-book-lined room that the doctor used for conferences. She sat down nervously in a black leather chair beside the desk and waited. In a moment the door opened, and the plain, bespectacled face of the doctor appeared in the doorway. He gave Anna’s shoulder a squeeze before he sat down in his chair. “Paul will be out in a few minutes, Anna,” he said. “He’s getting dressed.”

  Anna tried in vain to read the familiar but expressionless face. “How is he, Doctor?” she asked, steeling herself for any response.

  Dr. Derwent leaned back in his chair. “Well, I did a number of tests on him today, and we won’t have all the results of those tests for several days, of course.”

  Anna knotted her fingers together and stared at them. “I understand.”

  “But from what I have seen of him this morning, I would say that you have nothing to worry about.”

  Anna’s head jerked up and her eyes widened in disbelief. “He’s all right?” she whispered.

  The doctor raised a cautionary hand. “I’m not a specialist in this area, as you know. But the presence of a tumor on the brain is something that can often be detected by examining the patient’s eyes, testing his reflexes. Paul seems perfectly fine. I’m sending his blood work to the lab, and I want him to have an EEG. But what I’ve seen so far looks quite normal. Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you this without all the results; but I want to put your mind at rest about all this.”

  “But I don’t understand,” said Anna, “The headaches and fainting spells. The nausea…”

  “Well, there are a lot of reasons for a person to have headaches which are not organic, Anna. The boy has been under a lot of stress. It’s clear that he is exhausted. He needs to get some rest.”

  “He has nightmares,” she said.

  “I can give him something to help him sleep. And I do think you should bring him over to the hospital tomorrow afternoon to have these other tests done on him.”

  Anna gave him a puzzled look. “I just don’t know what to think.”

  “Anna, you should feel free to take him to a specialist if that will make you feel any better. I’ll give you a referral and I won’t be insulted. But I feel pretty confident about this.”

  Anna shook her head and gave him a crooked smile. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am, Doctor. This is wonderful news.”

  Dr. Derwent smiled. “Glad to be the bearer of good tidings.”

  Anna rose shakily from her chair. “I’ll have those tests done on him right away.”

  “Anna,” said the doctor, getting up from behind his desk, “you might want to have the boy talk to a psychologist or a counselor or something. This whole thing may have an emotional origin. And I think the situation certainly calls for it.”

  “I suggested it to Tom before he even came home,” she said. “He didn’t really go for the idea. He thought we should just let things get back to normal without a lot of interference from outsiders.”

  “Suggest it to him again,” the doctor advised. “Tell him I said so.”

  Anna nodded, not wanting to get into the fact that Tom had left home. She walked out of his conference room and back to the waiting room in a kind of daze.

  All right. He’s all right. Anna waited for the unexpected verdict to penetrate, but she felt numb all over. She had created a wall of readiness around her heart, so that she could tolerate whatever the doctor had to say without collapsing. She had endured for all these years, and she was not about to collapse now.

  He is fine, she repeated to herself. No brain tumor. You were so well prepared for the worst that now you can’t even grasp the good news. Anna looked up and saw that the others in the waiting room were eyeing her curiously.

  She tried to force a smile, as if to let them know that she was happy with the news. I am happy, she reminded herself. He’s all right. It’s over. There’s nothing more to fear. For a moment she wondered if everything Thomas accused her of was true. Maybe she needed the anxiety, just to survive. Maybe worrying was an end in itself, a way of life that she throve on. She should be hugging herself for joy. At that thought a tiny stab of happiness and relief suddenly pierced through her.

  It’s just a delayed reaction, she told herself. You’ll feel it when you get home. I’ll take him to a movie, she thought, or anything he wants.

  But if the boy was not ill, she thought, why had Rambo said his life was in danger?

  “Hi,” said a quiet voice.

  Anna started and looked into the drawn face of her son. “Paul!” she exclaimed. “How do you feel?”

  “All right,” he said. “Can we go now?”

  Thomas studied the array of muted silk ties that stood on the men’s accessories counter. He held one between his thumb and forefinger and stared blankly at it. Then he let it drop and turned away.

  He stood in the aisle between the two glass counters as women with their shopping bags brushed by him. His eyes traveled to the gilt clock above the elevators, and he tried to calculate how much of his lunch hour was left before he had to get back. But the numbers on the clock did not seem to make sense to him, and he felt as if he were in a stupor. A determined-looking young woman in an olive green jumpsuit squeezed by him, muttering, “Excuse me,” in an irritated tone. Her perfume remained in her wake, and Thomas recognized the scent with a start. It was the perfume he had chosen for Anna on their anniversary some years ago, and she had worn it ever since on special occasions.

  “I think this one will go,” said Gail, coming around beside him and examining a silk tie with a maroon stripe in it. She looked up at Tho
mas’s bewildered expression and smiled. “What’s the matter? You look shell-shocked.”

  “It’s so crowded.”

  “It’s always like this at lunchtime,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  “What about the tie? You know you need something to go with that gray suit. You said so yourself.”

  Thomas shrugged. “I guess my mind was elsewhere when I was packing.”

  Gail felt a cold little knot form in her stomach at the faraway look in his eyes. She trained her eyes on the tie in her hand and spoke briskly. “Well, what about this one? This would go.”

  Thomas looked down at the tie in her hand without enthusiasm. “Yeah. That’s fine. Let’s buy it and get out of here,” he said. He reached in his jacket for his wallet, but Gail brushed it off.

  “I’ll put it on my charge,” she said brightly. “A present.”

  Thomas smiled briefly at her.

  “You wait outside,” she said, shooing him.

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll be over at Saint Pat’s.” He watched her line up at the counter where a primly dressed saleslady with glasses on a chain around her neck was talking calmly into the store telephone. He threaded his way through the throngs of shoppers and pushed through the revolving door out onto Fifth Avenue.

  The crush on the sidewalk was nearly as bad as it had been in the store, but he heaved a sigh of relief to be outside. He inhaled the humid summer air, heavy with the smell of burned hot pretzels and automobile exhaust.

  Thomas crossed the street over to St. Patrick’s Cathedral and sat down on the steps outside, heedless of his well-pressed suit. On the opposite corner, a black man in a red knit cap was running a game of three-card monte for a crowd of gullible passersby. Behind him, a Latino family posed proudly at the portals of the great cathedral to have their pictures snapped.