An Act of Love

by Nancy Thayer

  “He brought a girl with him!” Linda exclaimed, sounding as if she were talking to a preschooler. “Alison Cartwright. Do you know her?” When Emily didn’t respond, Linda babbled on. “She’s lovely. Good sense of humor. She lives in New York. Bruce will get to see her when he goes to New York with Whit. Maybe that’s why he wanted to go to New York with Whit. I mean he hasn’t been close to Whit before this year, and suddenly … Emily, I wish you would talk to me. I’m so worried about you.”

  Owen said, “Emily, we want to help you. We’ll do anything we can to help you.”

  “Please, honey,” Linda urged. “If you could just talk to us … Emily, you’re my brave, strong darling girl! What could be so bad—”

  Emily stood up so fast her chair fell over. “Leave me alone!” she shouted. “I don’t want to talk to you! Can’t you get that?” She glared at them, teeth bared, hands clenched. “I don’t want to talk to you ever again! I don’t want to see you ever again. I hate you!” Her mother’s face withered, her eyes were full of pain. Emily ran from the room.

  Beldon found her in her little cell of a room. She was crying again, the horrible retching, ripping-up crying that she sometimes thought would eviscerate her with its strength. Beldon shut the door and leaned against it. “You okay?”

  “No, I’m not okay!” Emily yelled. “Does it look like I’m fucking okay? I want to die, all right? I don’t want to live another moment!”

  “Why don’t you lie down and rest a bit? We’ve got adolescent group/young adult in half an hour.”

  “I don’t want to be in your stupid group! I don’t want to be anywhere!” She dragged her fingernails down her cheeks, drawing blood. “I just want to die. Why won’t you let me die?”

  “Oh, honey, now look what you’ve done,” Beldon said, coming over and taking her hands in his.

  Sitting next to her on the bed, he wrapped his arms around her and held her while she cried. He was so large and strong and sexless. Emily wanted to dissolve into his body.

  After a while, when she’d exhausted herself, Beldon said, “I’m going to get a nurse now to put some ointment on those scratches. We don’t want you getting infected. And she’ll give you something to help you rest a bit.”

  “Make her give me a lot,” Emily said. She collapsed onto the bed. The pain in her belly was so great she wanted to gnaw it out with her teeth. Her hands burrowed under her sweatshirt. She clawed at the flesh of her fat stomach. That pain was clear, brilliant; it distracted her from the other pain. For a while.

  After a while a fat old nurse came in with two pills and a paper cup of water. Emily sat up to take them, then sat docilely as the nurse gently washed her face and dotted it with antiseptic cream. The nurse smelled like vanilla and was restfully quiet. She didn’t say a word, but hummed a waltzy kind of tune under her breath. When she left, Emily curled up on her bed in a fetal position, saying to herself, “It will stop soon. It will stop.”

  And in a while the pills took effect and she slept. At some point she was aware that Keith stuck his head in the door. “Hey.” He gave her the thumbs-up sign. “Looks like you got some good drugs. Way to go.”

  Later the humming nurse came in to escort her to the bathroom where she listlessly pretended to brush her teeth, then back to her cell where she helped Emily change out of her clothes and into her pajamas. Then she tucked Emily into bed as if she were a child. Emily knew that if the old nurse had a clue about how filthy Emily really was, she wouldn’t treat her so gently. She wouldn’t even touch her.

  All the rooms of the Academy Inn had a kind of old-sweater-and-lavender smell that over the years had become so familiar to Linda that it was homey, and in the very early morning light sifting through the curtains, she floated on the tide of wakefulness, incorporating that aroma into her dream.

  In her dream she and Owen and Emily and Bruce as well were together at Linda’s grandmother’s house and in the logic of dreams Linda was young, even younger than Emily, which made a kind of sense, because her grandmother had died when she was thirteen. They were waiting for her grandmother’s cinnamon buns to come from the oven. They were safe. They were all safe. Her grandmother’s cat was purring erratically and Linda knew with the liquid knowledge of the dream that the noise was really Owen snoring in the bed next to hers.

  The phone rang, shattering the dream.

  Linda lurched upright in bed, her heart thrashing in her chest.

  She stared at the instrument on the bedside table. Its imperative shrill was different from those on the farm, more electric, a kind of electronic bleat.

  The clock on the bedside table said 7:30.

  Owen picked up the phone.

  Chapter Seven

  The blood hammered so loudly in Linda’s ears that for a moment she couldn’t hear, could only see Owen’s face, which was like thunder.

  Owen slammed down the phone. “That wasn’t about Emily. That was Dean Lorimer. About Bruce.”

  “Bruce?”

  “There’s been an incident at school. Last night Bruce assaulted Jorge Avila and beat him up. There were witnesses. They say Jorge hit Bruce, too, but in self-defense; Bruce started it. Because of what’s going on with Emily, they waited until this morning to notify us. They want us to come to the school as soon as we can.”

  “Good Lord. That’s not like Bruce. He’s the least violent boy I know.”

  Throwing back the covers, Owen said, “Not anymore.”

  Hastily they dressed and hurried to the dining room to grab Styrofoam cups of coffee, which they drank as they drove to Hedden Academy.

  When they arrived at Tuttle Hall Mrs. Echevera immediately announced them to Bob Lorimer. They entered his inner sanctum to find Bruce waiting, slumped in a chair, all elbows and knees and ears. His right eye was black and swollen; his upper lip was cut and puffy. He looked exhausted.

  Lorimer reached across the desk to shake the McFarlands’ hands with great solemnity, part of a ritual, Owen suspected, meant to indicate to Bruce that the three adults were allies. They all sat.

  Owen looked at his son and asked, “What happened?”

  Bruce stared at the floor. His parents stared at him.

  Over the past four years Bruce had gone through many radical physical transformations, the most dramatic during his second year at Hedden, when he grew his hair past his shoulders and let it fall over his forehead so that it veiled his face. Owen and Linda hadn’t made an issue of it and neither had the school, because he was proving to be an exemplary student. This summer while outwardly Bruce resembled his friends more than ever before with his J.F.K. Jr. haircut and clothes, he seemed somehow lost in those clothes. Part of this was from his adherence to the current style: at Hedden the boys were not allowed to wear blue jeans, although, oddly enough, the girls were, and except during sports were required to tuck their polo or button-down cotton shirts into their khakis or flannels or trousers, so for all the boys it was a symbol of rebellion to wear their shirttails out. This led to their buying shirts of larger sizes so that when the shirttails were out, they were aggressively out, like flags or banners of independence hanging nearly to their knees. Also they wore their pants low on their hips so that the hems dragged on the ground, to be eventually ripped and worn and ragged, which coordinated with their scuffed, ripped, and withered leather loafers; Bruce bought a new pair of Top-Siders at the beginning of the year and tried his best to make them look old immediately. He was proudest of them when they were not merely worn but ravaged, so that the sole was a lacework of holes that flopped loose from the upper part of the shoe with every step. All the boys wore their shoes that way; one could hear them coming down the halls by the flapping.

  This morning Bruce wore a blue button-down oxford cloth shirt tucked into his khakis. With his bruised face he looked like a boxer in banker’s drag.

  Staring at Bruce, Lorimer said, “Last night around ten o’clock, Bruce went to Jorge Avila’s room, grabbed him up from his desk, shook him, called him a few insu
lting names, and punched him in the nose.” He shot a look at the McFarlands. “I have this from Jorge’s roommate, who witnessed the entire thing.” Looking back at Bruce, he continued, “Jorge tried to defend himself without actually entering into a brawl, but Bruce was persistent, and the two young men ended up exchanging several blows.”

  “Is Jorge okay?” Linda asked.

  Lorimer replied, “He’s all right. Bruised here and there.”

  “Bruce, what’s going on?” Owen demanded, his voice not unkind.

  Bruce didn’t reply.

  Lorimer said, “I’m sure you’re aware of the rules set down in the school handbook about altercations of this nature. Of course over the four years they’re here, young men do occasionally engage in this kind of dispute, and we try to overlook it, especially if the men can shake hands and apologize. But if it happens too often, we will find it necessary to suspend the instigator. Mr. Phillips, the dorm parent, heard the brawl, separated the young men, reported the incident to me. This morning I had both Bruce and Jorge in my office, and they apologized to each other and shook hands. But I’m not satisfied. I would like to know what caused Bruce to start the fight.”

  They waited. Bruce stared at the floor, his face adamantine. Linda knew that look well; she’d seen it on Owen’s face often. Both men could be monumentally stubborn.

  “Does it have anything to do with Emily?” Linda asked. Glancing at Lorimer, she explained, “Emily had a crush on Jorge.”

  Bruce wouldn’t reply.

  His voice lowering to a growl, Owen said, “Answer your stepmother, Bruce.”

  “No.” Bruce spoke to the floor.

  For a few long moments they all sat in an uncomfortable silence. Then Lorimer stood. “Very well. We don’t have any thumbscrews at this institution; we aren’t going to try to force Bruce to tell us what set him off. But I will tell Bruce, here in the presence of his parents, that if anything like this happens again, he will go directly before the disciplinary board, and my recommendation will be suspension. Which, I might remind you, would not look good on college applications. I won’t put up with violence and recalcitrance in any of my students. Bruce, you’re excused. Go to your class. Mrs. Echevera will give you a late slip.”

  Bruce rose, and without looking at his parents, slouched from the room.

  Lorimer shook his head. “I have no idea what’s going on,” he admitted. “I don’t need to tell you that this behavior isn’t typical of Bruce.”

  “It must involve Emily,” Linda said.

  “Perhaps. But maybe not. We’ve had many sets of siblings pass through Hedden Academy, Mrs. McFarland, and you’d be surprised at how separate their lives and their intrigues and dramas can be.” Pulling off his glasses and taking his handkerchief from his pocket, he polished them, put them back on, and said with a smile, as if he now could see the world more brightly, “How’s Emily?”

  Owen equivocated. “We’re taking it day by day.”

  “Well, good luck.” Lorimer rose and they were politely dismissed.

  The Basingstoke Café had always been a favorite place for breakfast for all four of them. The food was excellent, and over the years they had come to appreciate the high-backed booths that let them talk in privacy. Now Linda and Owen sat across from each other in a booth next to a window box of artificial geraniums, over plates of food they knew was delicious but scarcely had the heart to eat.

  “I don’t understand what’s going on with either one of them,” Owen said.

  “I’m sure Bruce beating up Jorge had something to do with Emily. It would be too much of a coincidence otherwise.”

  “Whatever his reason, his behavior was way out of bounds. The school might be indulgent but I’m in no mood to be. He’s not going to New York.”

  “Owen. Wait a moment. Let’s talk this over.”

  “What’s to talk over? Bruce beat someone up. He’s got to learn that his behavior has consequences.”

  “All right, I agree, but let it be different consequences. Owen, this trip means so much to him.”

  “He should have thought of that before he got into a fight.”

  Linda looked down at her plate and counted to ten. Then she said, “Eat something. We both need to eat something.”

  Whit Archibald was a fairly new friend of Bruce’s. Over the past three summers quite a few of Bruce’s gang from Hedden had come to stay on the McFarland farm in the summer, riding the old horses and hiking up the mountains and swimming in the pond. When Linda and Owen had met Whit at Parents’ Weekend in October, they’d been a bit surprised. A tall, handsome, poised young man, Whit could have posed for Ralph Lauren ads, and he seemed so much more sophisticated than Bruce that Owen and Linda were a bit baffled that Whit would want Bruce as his guest over Thanksgiving.

  There was no doubt that Bruce wanted to go. “Let it be my Christmas present,” he’d urged.

  “It would have to be,” Owen had replied. “Roundtrip plane fare to New York, money for cabs, we’re talking three hundred dollars.”

  “His parents will pay for theater tickets—”

  “No. We’ll give you money and you’ll pay for your own.”

  “Great! Then I can go!”

  Linda said, “I’m afraid you’ll get up to something wicked in the city.”

  Bruce laughed. “Linda, we’ll be with his parents every minute. Oh, it’ll be so cool! Thanks, you guys. You’re the best.”

  Now Linda took a deep breath. “Owen, there are several other ways to impress consequences on Bruce. But I don’t think we should take this trip away from him. He’s worked hard; he’s been an exemplary student for three and a half years now. Guys get in fights all the time. Remember your own adolescence, remember some of the stuff you told me you got up to, and I’m sure you didn’t tell me everything. Think of what some of his friends have done … pot, drinking, smoking in the bathrooms, hotel parties … Bruce hasn’t done any of that. I think he deserves some credit. Some points.”

  “You’re always too lenient,” Owen said.

  “You’re always too harsh,” Linda countered. “Make him muck out the stalls when he’s home for Christmas. Or cut a cord of wood. Something useful. Owen, I feel strongly about this.”

  “All right,” Owen said. “Fine.” After a moment’s thought, he added, “I have to bring him his dress coat.”

  “Let’s do it tomorrow. We have to be back at the hospital tomorrow evening for Family Group with Emily. If we get Bruce his clothes by late tomorrow morning, that should be time enough. Their vacation doesn’t start until noon.”

  “We might as well go home. There’s nothing left we can do for Emily today.”

  “Wait, Owen. I think there is something we can do.”

  “What?”

  “Talk to the people at the Methodist church. Find out if she confided in anyone there.”

  “Good idea.”

  “You could do that. While I talk to Jorge Avila.”

  “Why don’t we both talk to him?”

  “Because you would intimidate him.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Come on. You know he’d react differently if he spoke to me alone. If I enlisted his help in a nonthreatening way. He might be willing to tell me anything he knows about Emily. But with you standing there glowering …”

  “I won’t glower.”

  “Please. We’ll save time, too, if we do it separately.”

  “All right,” Owen conceded. He wasn’t pleased, but he could see Linda’s point. He was beginning to experience a bit of the old stag/young stag tension with Bruce; he’d only get Jorge’s back up if he questioned the young man about Emily. To say nothing of how his own blood would rise.

  They had weighed her and tapped her and cuffed her and taken more blood, as if through scientific analysis they could discover a suicide-provoking microbe that they’d extinguish with the proper antibiotic. Now Emily sat in yet another office, facing Dr. Brinton, the ward psychiatrist. A bald man with a bulging cr
anium, he looked almost extraterrestrial and the eyes behind his glasses were not kind. Why had they chosen this creep to interview her? He had little tiny bloodless lips. Couldn’t they see how spooky he was? Who would ever tell him anything?

  He asked, “Have you often had thoughts of suicide?”

  Perhaps if she answered some questions, he’d let her out of the room and away from him. Probably that was why they’d chosen him. She could lie. How would he know? Although if anyone had the power to read minds, this zombie did.

  “No.”

  “Have you ever harmed yourself before?”

  “No.”

  “Want to tell me about those scratches on your face?”

  Emily didn’t reply.

  His chair squeaked as he leaned back. “Do you have friends at Hedden?”

  “Of course.”

  “Close friends?”

  Emily nodded.

  “Do you confide in them?”

  She nodded again.

  “If they ask you—and know they will—why you attempted suicide, what will you tell them?”

  Emily looked down at her hands. The room seemed to swell with silence. “Maybe I won’t see them again.”

  “Don’t you want to see them again?”

  Emily shrugged.

  “I guess they’re not really close friends.”

  What right did he have to say something like that? She was trying to ignore his words, but they got to her, they were stirring her up inside.

  “So. No close friends at Hedden.” He wrote something down.

  Angry, she snapped, “I didn’t say that.”

  “How about your relationship with your parents and your brother?”

  “Stepbrother.”

  “Are you close to them?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “You and Bruce get along okay? Parents treat you both fairly?”

  This time she let the silence swell. The silence had no power, and Dr. Brinton had no power. Nothing mattered.

  “Emily, I’d like you to look at the picture and tell me what you see.”