The Tutor

by Peter Abrahams

  Ruby printed it out: 6.3 miles, which seemed like a lot, but not too complicated, all the directions fitting on one page. She folded it, stuck it in her pocket and went downstairs. No sign of Julian. She put on her blue jacket with the yellow trim, her yellow hat with the blue stars, wrote a note—Gone looking for Zippy, back soon—left it on the table and went into the garage. Ruby was disentangling her bike from the lawnmower when she spotted Jeanette’s Post-it note on the floor. She read it again: Here’s your ride, Rubester—use with care. J. P.S. That means a helmet.

  The first time she’d read that, Jeanette hadn’t been missing. Not quite true: no one knew she was missing. So she hadn’t given it much thought, just good old Jeanette, bringing back the bike. But when had she done it? Not before they left for Atlantis on Friday, so it had to be between them leaving for the Bahamas and Jeanette leaving for Killington. When had that been? Friday afternoon? Saturday morning? Probably no later than that, because she’d canceled archery for Saturday and Sunday, no point in canceling if she was going to be around anyway. But Ruby would have bet on Friday afternoon. Jeanette would want to squeeze every second out of a ski weekend. It was even possible she’d dropped off the bike on the way. And therefore? Ruby wasn’t sure. She hit the button and the garage door slid up.

  Julian was standing in the driveway, facing her. He had her note in his hand. Ruby stuck Jeanette’s Post-it in her jacket pocket, felt Zippy’s tag in there too.

  “I thought you were sick,” Julian said.

  “I’m feeling better all of a sudden,” Ruby said. “Ten times better.”

  “Your parents wouldn’t think this was a good idea.”

  “I’ll be right back,” said Ruby. “I’m only going around the block, maybe try Indian Ridge again.”

  “To what end?”

  “I’m not going to stop looking, Julian. He’s my dog.”

  He stepped aside. “Half an hour,” he said. “It wouldn’t be responsible of me to let you out any longer.”

  “Thanks,” said Ruby, pedaling past him. When she got to the street she paused, looked back. He was watching her, snowflakes landing gently in his hair. Maybe it was the snowflakes that reminded her, snowflakes being some distant cousin to salt, at least visually. She remembered getting on the bus the day she started “The Speckled Band”—must have been the same day Brandon got his SAT results, come to think of it, hard to forget the scene that night with Dewey’s mom—and how she’d glanced back like Lot’s wife. Had Mrs. Lot—Ms., no doubt, since she obviously had an independent streak—seen someone like Julian? Probably not. People back then must have been pretty gross-looking, what with the lack of grooming products, and Julian was very handsome.

  Ruby felt another one of those shifts in her mind. Friday. They’d been running late. He’d driven them to the airport. Then what? It raised a question, like one little volcano popping off.

  “Hey, Julian,” she said.

  “Yes?”

  “Did you happen to see Jeanette on Friday or Saturday?”

  Too far away to see some tiny reaction on his face, and if there was a big one, she missed it. “Jeanette?” he said after a moment or two. “I don’t understand.”

  “That’s when she must have brought my bike back,” Ruby said.

  “I didn’t see her,” Julian said. “But I wasn’t around much.”

  “No?”

  “I was out looking for Zippy.” He sounded a little offended.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Ruby pedaled off, following the MapQuest directions. Once she took off her mitten, felt in her pocket for Jeanette’s Post-it and Zippy’s tag: her two biggest cases, in there together.

  Julian watched till Ruby had turned up Indian Ridge, vanishing around the corner. He went back in the house. The bike. He’d forgotten all about it, worse, hadn’t even seen it as a point of vulnerability. No doubt the police were trying to trace Jeanette’s movements, discover who had seen her last, plodding through their checklist. Would they be interested in this visit? Oh, yes. But the police didn’t know. Only the girl knew. Was she smart enough to understand the importance of the bike, to act upon that understanding? Julian didn’t know. Until recently, he’d have said no. She was just a little girl, often annoying, independent, perhaps, but not especially clever. But now, just this morning, he wasn’t sure.

  Julian went upstairs, looked in her room, saw nothing unusual, checked the bathroom, then his own room. She’d said she was going back to bed and now she was out looking for the dog. She had indeed gone upstairs, but he’d found her at the sink in the bathroom, not in her bedroom. Also, he’d had the feeling she’d been in his room, was almost certain he’d heard her running in the hall as he came up. But not totally certain, despite the excellence of his hearing, of all his senses. He’d checked the room of course: looking up in the closet where the square he’d cut out of the ceiling was in place, its sawed-through outline, angle-cut to stay in place, invisible in the shadows; and under the bed, where nothing had changed. The desk, the chest of drawers—nothing out of place, no sign of prying eyes. He picked up Margie’s envelope, took out her letter and reread it, put it back.

  How infuriating this bike development was! Another example of characters developing their own plots, the worse one yet because now they were acting in concert, forming alliances against him. Perhaps not the worst: someone had found the crack vials, not inexpensive, in the lining of the varsity jacket and cut them out. Who? Not Brandon; Julian had established that to his satisfaction on the way to New York. The boy was an innocent, not smart enough—never would be—to fool him for a moment. Then who?

  Julian returned to the bathroom, splashed water on his own face. It seemed untroubled in the mirror; a credit to his self-possession. He went into her room, sat at her computer, hit a key. AOL came up. She had two screen names, RobinR@aol.com and Zippy37@aol.com. He tried RobinR, was asked for the password. Julian thought, but not long, five or ten seconds, then typed in Rubester. And was in.

  Julian went to History. The last site she’d visited was MapQuest. He went to MapQuest, hit the button for Last Search. Up came the directions to his own place, the carriage house at Gail Bender’s farm.

  Julian ran down the stairs, swung around the post toward the kitchen, on the way to his own bike in the garage. How far ahead could she be? The door, that busy door from the kitchen to the garage, opened just as he put his hand to it, and Linda came in.

  31

  “Oh,” said Linda, “you scared me.”

  She didn’t look scared. “My apologies,” Julian said, backing into the room. “Completely unintentional.”

  “I know that,” Linda said. She gave him a big smile. Why was her face so unusually pink? Why were her eyes so lively? What was she doing home at this hour?

  Linda set a bag of groceries on the counter. “I’ve brought some treats. How’s she doing?”

  The concerned working mom checking on the sick child: that hadn’t occurred to him. “Much better,” he said. “The fact is, she’s out looking for Zippy.” He had a sudden thought, somewhat alarming. “You might have seen her.”

  “No,” Linda said. She glanced out the window; a few light flakes were falling.

  “I was just going out to get her,” Julian said. But how would that work now that Linda was home? Characters again acting on their own, leading to plot complications without end. “Perhaps I could borrow your car for a few moments. She can’t have gone far.” But then what? A muscle twitched under his shirt.

  “Let her keep looking a little longer,” Linda said. “It’ll probably do her good.”

  “How would that be?”

  “Psychologically,” Linda said. “In terms of coming to some sort of closure—if we don’t get Zippy back, that is.” She looked him in the eye, a look of some intimacy, as though they were close. “What do you think, Julian—will we get him back?”

  “I’m hopeful,” he said.

  “I love your optimism. Did you know it’s one of
the basic characteristics of a leader?”

  “I wasn’t aware.”

  “According to a seminar I went to last fall.”

  He could see she was in the mood for one of those discussions that passed for intellectual in her circle. Julian wanted no intellectual discussion with her, now or ever. What he wanted was her car. A possible course of action had come to him, one that didn’t involve meeting Ruby at all. The essential point was not preventing her from entering the carriage house, but making sure that nothing she shouldn’t see was there. How long would it take her? An hour, probably more: a DRT problem. Slightly disguised, it might make a good exercise for Brandon: R leaves on a bicycle etc., how long after must J leave in a Jeep, given that etc., etc. Brandon would need his DRT shield; he himself required the Jeep.

  “We don’t want to risk Ruby’s cold getting worse, do we?” Julian said. “I could just kick myself, letting her out at all. Why don’t I—”

  “Stop worrying, Julian. She’ll be fine—Ruby’s pretty independent, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. But I appreciate your concern. The truth is, I appreciate how much you’ve helped in every way, today more than ever. I had some very good news this morning.”

  “Oh?”

  “Larry offered me a job—head of marketing at Skyway! All of Skyway, Julian. I’m a VP. I never dreamed. I’ll even be going to New York once a week.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “It never would have happened without you. La Rivière started it all. I feel very grateful.” Linda reached into the grocery bag. “Here’s some of that jam you like. Far from adequate, I know, but all I could think of.”

  Julian took it. Their hands grazed: did the grazing go on a little longer than necessary at her end? “How kind,” Julian said. A huge round thick-glass jar of jam, heavy on his palm, like a weapon. He needed the Jeep. Where were her maternal instincts? How to trigger them?

  “Ruby’s independence is a credit to you, no doubt,” he said, “but recklessness is another matter. Think for a moment of Toad.”

  “Toad?”

  “Of Toad Hall, who said, as I recall, at the beginning of one of his misadventures, ‘I wonder if this sort of car starts easily.’ ”

  “You’re referring to The Wind in the Willows?” Linda said.

  “It was my very favorite book as a boy,” Julian said. Perhaps he could have done without the very. Laying it on a little too thick; on the other hand, subtlety was so often wasted.

  Linda sat down, slowly, as though her legs were dying beneath her.

  “Is something wrong?” Julian said, putting down the jar.

  “No, not wrong exactly. I should have been prepared for this.”

  “For what?”

  She took a deep breath. “Ever since you arrived I’ve had the thought, couldn’t help it, that you’re the kind of man Adam would have grown up to be. And now, with you in his room, it’s almost as though . . .” She started to cry, composed herself. “He was such a helpful little boy, so kind. I love my other kids, of course, they’re wonderful, but they don’t have that gift.”

  Julian handed her a tissue from the box on the butcher block.

  “The Wind in the Willows,” she began, and burst into tears. She gazed up at him through the bleary mess, and some inner pain suddenly distorted her face, some thought or memory that must have been torture, reminding him in turn of an illustrated book of medieval torture he’d had as a boy, and before he could react, she fell forward and buried her face in his chest. “It was Adam’s favorite, too.” The words came out of her not as normal speech, but as torn things, literal sound bites. Julian felt them through his skin.

  “I’m sure that’s true of many children,” he said. He noticed that she dyed her hair: some of the roots were gray.

  Linda shook her head, her face still against him. Perhaps this was a moment for patting her on the back. And perhaps not. Then another surprise: he felt himself getting hard.

  “No,” she said, looking up at him now, breaking contact, making a huge effort to control herself, “it’s like fate or God has sent you, a little consolation at last. I don’t even deserve it.”

  He could read her watch upside down. Still time enough, and he’d never feel right about abandoning such a promising interview. “Why don’t you deserve consolation?” he said, realizing at that moment what a good priest he would have been; and now gave her that pat, nice and soft on the shoulder, stroking, consoling. There was no answer.

  “Everyone deserves consolation,” he said. The priesthood: what fun, confession most of all. “Except for the truly monstrous, I suppose, and you’re certainly not that.”

  “But I am.”

  “What nonsense. You’re a fine person.” More fun, saying things like that. The tutor and the priest: hadn’t the same man performed both roles at one time?

  “You’re so wrong,” Linda said. She was crying again, but silent, just the tears flowing steadily, as though some inner dam had failed.

  “What could you have possibly done to merit this self-laceration?” he said.

  “I can’t explain.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “It’s the same.”

  “Then how will you ever understand your own life?” Julian wasn’t satisfied with that question, a formulation more suited to the talk-show hostess than the man of the cloth.

  But it worked, got down deeper, because racking sobs came now and the racked look was back. “I understand my life all too well.”

  “In what way?”

  “I was responsible,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “Adam.”

  “I thought Adam died of leukemia.”

  “But first he broke his leg.”

  “Which didn’t heal properly, is that right? Leading to the discovery of the leukemia.”

  “Yes.”

  “A terrible tragedy,” Julian said, “and my heart aches for you, but how could it be your responsibility?”

  “It is, it is.” He stroked her more softly, in inverse proportion to the noise.

  “How can that be?” he said. And how gentle his voice, like a lullaby. “Didn’t he break his leg skiing? You didn’t beat him or anything?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I did.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Julian said.

  “Oh, Julian, you overestimate me, you really do. I did a terrible, terrible thing.” He got a little harder.

  “I can’t imagine you beating him.”

  “Not in a physical sense. But he died in a physical sense, didn’t he? Where do you think I was when he broke his leg?”

  “On the same trail? You collided?”

  “I wish that was true. I wish I could make that happen, be out there on the hill, falling down with him.” Tears still flowed, but her eyes had an inward look now, building some scene, perhaps, of an alternate and better history.

  “But?” said Julian.

  “I wasn’t even skiing.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Where I shouldn’t have been,” she said.

  “In the bar?” Julian said. “Completely understandable on a ski vacation. Why are you being so hard on yourself?”

  Her voice rose, partly in anger, partly at him. “I wasn’t in the bar.”

  “Then where?”

  The tortured look returned. Linda bit her lip, so hard a droplet of blood appeared. “You poor thing,” Julian said. Child would have been better, but he wasn’t a priest, after all. Good enough, however: new sounds came up from deep inside her, ragged and uncontrolled. He lowered his voice, made it almost inaudible, like a thought of her own. “Nothing could be that bad,” he said.

  Linda sagged, as though she had no strength left but for crying. Somewhere in the crying came a little phrase, almost lost. “I was back at the cabin.”

  He began to see. “It doesn’t matter where you were, Linda,” he said in that same low voice. “You didn’t do anything bad.”

  “But I did. Onl
y once in my life, but it happened when Adam fell.”

  He stroked her shoulder. “Don’t, Linda,” he crooned. “Don’t.”

  She shook herself free. “Stop being so nice to me. Don’t you understand? I was in Tom’s Jacuzzi.”

  She gazed up at him, blurred eyes waiting for his reaction. How biblical this was, and primitive, swift and disproportionate punishment for her transgression. “You know there is no causal relationship,” he said. “Forgive yourself. Scott must have forgiven you long ago.”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  Ah.

  “No one does.”

  “Then let us speak no more about it,” Julian said. “You forgive and I’ll forget.” That was truly beautiful. He leaned forward, kissed the top of her head—you put your lips together and then parted them with a smacking sound. Surely she was aware of his erection by now. Was she more interesting than he’d thought? He backed away, shirt-dampened. Perhaps things hadn’t gone so well with Gail on the carnal side, but he knew that no performance with this woman could ever go wrong. All he would have to do was think of that Jacuzzi scene and snap of the bone to stay hard as adamantine, adamantine being the fitting trope; he was very good.

  But all that could come at his leisure. He had lots of time—what interesting nocturnal wanderings lay ahead!—but everything depended on one specific timing challenge: reaching the carriage house before Ruby. He took the box of tissues off the butcher block and slid it across the table to her.

  “I’m worried about Ruby and I’d like to go get her,” he said, simple and plain.

  Linda dabbed at her eyes. She looked exhausted and used up, like a woman after a long, hard childbirth.

  “The keys are in the ignition,” she said.

  He started toward the door.

  “It was The Wind in the Willows,” Linda said, maybe to herself.