Beyond Midnight

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  She turned to Russ's pal. "I assume," she added dryly, "that the sleepover at your house is off for tonight, Scotty?"

  Scott stared at his Nikes. "Yeah, I guess so."

  "Is someone picking you up?" she asked him, looking him over. He was tired but unhurt. He must've been wearing his seat belt, then. Another hero.

  Without looking at her, Scotty said, "This is the hospital my mom works at. I'm waiting for her to get off her shift."

  "Where's your dad?" It was an intrusive question, but Helen didn't care.

  "He had to fill in for someone at the mall."

  So having a father didn't make a difference after all. A kid could screw up brilliantly with or without one.

  "You should've let me know that your parents weren't going to be home tonight, Scotty," she said sternly.

  The boy squirmed. "It wasn't for long."

  "It doesn't take long!"

  "Ma-a-a. . ." came Russ's tired bleat of protest. Helen brought herself up short. Best not travel down that road tonight. She was upset. They were upset. It was all she could do not to bang their heads together. "I'll be—"

  She was going to say, "in touch with your mother," but she denied herself the satisfaction of even that small threat. "Good night, then," she said wearily.

  After hobbling to his feet, Russ made a fierce attempt to keep ahead of her as they began the long process of checking themselves out of the hospital. She decided he was keeping his distance because he didn't want to risk a reprimand in public, which was fine with her. It gave her the breathing space she needed to get herself under control.

  Once he was settled in the car, however, he surprised her by saying, "I suppose you want all the gory details."

  The truth was, she assumed she'd have to pull the gory details out of him one by one. Nonetheless, she said, "No. Not tonight."

  They drove in silence for a bit. Then he blurted, "Oh, why don't we just get it over with! What's the sense of dragging it out?"

  Did he really want to confess and apologize? She wished. No, it was more likely that he'd worked up a defense worthy of F. Lee Bailey, and he wanted to use his material while it was still fresh in his mind.

  She wasn't going to give him the satisfaction. "No. Tomorrow, I said."

  He fell back into sulky silence. Once home, he refused her help managing the front steps; but he had such a hard time with them that Helen insisted he sleep on the sofabed in the family room.

  "Either that, or go up the stairs on your fanny."

  "No way!" he said with a truly offended scowl.

  So that was that. The family began to disperse. Aunt Mary's tense vigil was over; pale and exhausted, she headed across the hall to her own apartment. Becky had the wisdom to confine herself to a brief word or two of sympathy for her brother. Her only question was: "Would you like your music?"

  "Yeah—no," Russ said. Everyone knew he didn't allow Becky in his room.

  Still, the deprivation showed in his face, along with the flat-out pain. Before this, Russ had never suffered anything but bumps and scrapes in his life. This was new, this fleeting brush with his own breakability.

  "I'll get you a pair of shorts and a T-shirt," Helen said briskly, though she wanted desperately to hug and comfort him. "And I'll put them in the downstairs bathroom for you. Do you want your own pillows?"

  "No—yeah." It meant his mother would be going into his room, but it couldn't be helped. He did want those pillows.

  Helen went upstairs and, ignoring the DO NOT DISTURB sign on his door, into his bedroom. The room was a mess, of course, but even she could see that the mess had a rhythm to it. When you threw open the door you saw closet, bookcase, desk, computer—things you were permitted to see. Over in the corner, far to the right of the door, that's where the bed, the music, the locked trunk, and the shrine were. It was almost a room within a room, a place where Russ Evett could be himself, away from any possible ambush by nosy relatives.

  She walked over to his bed, resisting the urge to pick up dirty clothing along the way, and got both pillows, cased in a black and purple pattern that Russ had picked out himself. She lifted the pillows to her nose and smelled: They were due, but not overdue, for a wash.

  She began to leave, then paused in front of the shrine. It was all still there, more or less as Russ had arranged it after his father's funeral. The candid eight-by-ten shot of Hank in uniform, arms folded across his chest, as he leaned against the hood of his state trooper's car; the badge; the Ray-Ban sunglasses; even the flag that the family had been given at the funeral, still in its reverential folds—it was all there, carefully arranged atop the small three-drawer chest that once held Hank's handkerchiefs and socks and not-quite-worn-out wallets.

  He loved you so much, she thought, touching her fingers to her lips and then to the photograph. What if it's not enough?

  She sighed, then scooped up Russ's CD player and a few scattered CDs from his desk and went downstairs.

  "Here you go," she said, tossing the pillows on the opened-out sofa bed. "And I thought you might want this," she added, placing the player and disks on the small table alongside. "Is there anything else I can get you, Russ?"

  "No."

  "A sandwich?" she ventured. "You must be hungry."

  "No."

  It was her cue to get out and leave him with his thoughts, but she kept on hugging the stage. "A glass of milk? And some cookies, maybe?"

  She should leave. Truly. "I'll bring you a glass of water, in case you get thirsty in the night."

  "No."

  Wincing, she said, "Suit yourself. If you need anything, just yell. I'll keep my bedroom door open tonight. Don't worry about your medication. I'll wake you when it's time.''

  He was silent. She couldn't begin to imagine what he must be thinking. Suddenly exhausted by the scope of his willingness to shut her out, she began to leave the room at last.

  "Ma?"

  Helen stopped in the doorway and glanced back casually. "Yes?"

  "Thanks. For the player."

  She smiled, despite her resolve not to. "It was a toss-up between that and your math book. Good-night, Russ."

  ****

  A week later, Helen was in the Tuesday-Thursday class for threes and fours, subbing for a sick teacher, when she spied Nathaniel Byrne through the glass square of the closed classroom door.

  It was only by chance that she happened to glance up from the circle of children that fanned out to her left and right. She was on her knees, too immersed in the lesson to have noticed him before; but she had the sense that he'd been standing there a while.

  Nobody had told her that Byrne was coming to observe, which meant that Janet must have arranged something on the spot for him. Helen at first assumed that he was on his way to the observation deck, discreetly tucked alongside another of the classes, so that he could get that close-up look he'd missed his first time around.

  But no. Once he made eye contact with her, he decided to let himself in—which simply wasn't done. Not in her preschool, anyway. As he came inside Helen shot him a warning look, meant to keep him in the shadows, and went back to her finger-puppets. She was teaching a lesson in toddler-science, which meant that the children were joining in and asking questions; she had no attention to spare for the casually dressed dad with the big pink "Visitor" flower stuck on his windbreaker.

  The kitty finger-puppet on Helen's left hand was hunched over a seagull feather and a tablespoon. "Hmm," the kitty puppet said, scratching its head, "I wonder which is heavier, the feather or the spoon?"

  Naturally all the children had opinions, not all of them correct (the feather was a really big one that Helen had found on the beach during her first walk of the year there). The kitty finger-puppet lifted the objects and appeared to weigh first one, then the other, then passed them around for the boys and girls to do the same.

  It was a hands-on experiment in weights and measures; but if Nathaniel Byrne was expecting to see Helen teaching the difference between grams an
d ounces, he'd come to the wrong place.

  She stole a look at him every so often as the kitty and puppy puppets picked up different pairs of objects—cotton balls and ball bearings, baseballs and Wiffle balls, carrots and wrenches—and then tried to guess which weighed more between them.

  Byrne, hands in his pockets, had taken up a post alongside a big plastic castle with its knob-headed knights and cone-gowned princesses, the most popular toy in the class. Probably he wouldn't want to know that every boy-child in the room enjoyed the jousting knights, and every girl- child there loved the fairy princesses—but it was a fact. Helen considered telling him later, then smiled grimly to herself and thought, Better not. He'll tell me it's my fault.

  The teacher's assistant, one of the children's mothers, was at Byrne's end of the room gathering up the floppy stuffed toys for their periodic run through the washer and dryer. Not a shy woman, she went up to Byrne and whispered a few words to him. He gave her a not-quite-friendly smile—probably she'd demanded to see his social security card as well as a picture ID—and then he stepped aside to let her pass with her armful of stuffies.

  Disaster. He backed straight into the plastic castle, with its knights so carefully positioned on the parapets, its ladies so safe and secure inside the walls, and sent the whole damn fantasy flying.

  The noise wasn't as bad as little Jeffrey's dismay when he saw someone mucking up his project. Jeffrey got to his feet with a horrified look and slapped his fists to his thighs. "You bwoke it!" he cried.

  He turned to his teacher and, just in case she hadn't noticed, reported the crime directly to her. "He bwoke it!"

  "He didn't really, Jeffrey, he just knocked it over a little," said Helen. "I'll tell you what. Why don't some of us spend the rest of the time setting up the castle again? Okay? That way we'll know that everything is fine. And the rest of us can have extra toy time today."

  It was called going with the flow; either that, or struggle through science time with a bunch of upset, distracted toddlers, thanks to Mr. Bigfeet.

  The guy just doesn't have the touch, Helen decided. Some fathers did—Hank did—but others...

  She returned Byrne's sheepish look with an unamused one of her own and proceeded to settle the children into the new routine while the assistant, sighing, unpacked the hamper of stuffed toys for them.

  Obviously Byrne was a hotshot in his chosen career; you didn't become Mutual Fund Manager of the Year by sitting around on Saturday morning making balloon animals for all the kids in the neighborhood. But generally, it was Helen's experience that young children and Type-A personalities didn't mix. To relate to a three-year-old, you had to believe—or be able to pretend—that life went on forever and that you could linger over the fun parts and run away from the scary parts.

  She suspected that Nathaniel Byrne wasn't good at lingering and that he didn't have much fun. Even more disheartening was her sense that he might actually enjoy the scary parts: the risk, the uncertainty, the impossible situations that his career threw his way. Who else could thrive in a world where financial ruin was a real possibility? She shuddered at the thought of what he did for a living with people's hard-earned money; that kind of responsibility was not for her.

  In the meantime Byrne had the sense to keep out of her way. Until the end of the session he didn't make a peep. After their first curious glances, the children paid no more attention to him than they did to the broom locker. Eventually the buzzer sounded, the door was thrown open, and the mothers began to collect their own.

  Only after the last of the children had exited did Helen turn her attention to Byrne.

  He came up to her with hand extended. "Thanks for putting up with me," he said seriously. "I learned a lot."

  His courtesy disarmed her completely. She'd been about to say, "Don't you ever crash a class again without express permission from the teacher." Instead, she practically apologized as she said, "I wasn't expecting you," and shook his hand.

  "I know. That's my fault. A meeting got cancelled and I decided to head home early to catch up on some research; it's a luxury to have the place to myself. Somehow or other, I ended up detouring here instead. I don't know whether it was guilt or insecurity driving me."

  Instantly Helen said, "So Katie did end up in Switzerland, then?"

  It wasn't the best choice of words. Some of the light went out of his eyes as he said defensively, "It's not as if I sent her off to Siberia. Her grandmother has a fabulous place. And Katie has Peaches at her side all day long."

  Helen shrugged unhappily as she loaded her science props into a canvas carryall. "You know the situation better than I do, of course."

  So why did she feel so convinced it was wrong? The cleaning lady came in then, with her disinfectant and her sponges, to wipe down tables and toys and anywhere else that germs liked to play.

  Byrne and Helen were in her way, so Helen said, "If you have any questions. . .

  "Just one," he said. "Will you be teaching Katie?"

  "Unfortunately, no. I'm a full-time administrator now, unless there's a pinch, like today."

  He looked genuinely disappointed, which sent a funny little surge through Helen, and then he said, "That's too bad. I can see that the kids like and respect you."

  "They trust me. But they trust the other teachers too, Mr. Byrne; we have a wonderful staff." She began to ease him out of the room so that the cleaning lady could get on with her job. At some point he too was going to have to trust Helen and her staff; she wondered whether it would ever happen.

  They stood for an awkward moment in the hall while he peeled off the giant visitor sticker from his windbreaker. She was able to study his hands. Becky was right: He didn't chop his own wood.

  "I've never worn pink before," he said lightly as he folded the sticky side onto itself. "Do you suppose your secretary did it on purpose?"

  There was no doubt. "Oh, it was probably a random choice," said Helen as she marched him along.

  But he dug in his heels. "Look, Mrs. Evett ... since I'm here, I wonder if you'd—look, can we go somewhere for a cup of coffee?" he asked, obviously at a loss as to protocol. "I'd love to be able to talk to you about Katie, about some of the things I should do to make the transition easier for her."

  Helen glanced at her watch and said, "Ah, I'm afraid I can't. My son was injured in an accident the other day, and we're due at the doctor's before long."

  He looked appropriately concerned. "Nothing serious, I hope?"

  "It looks worse than it is," she admitted. "He's on crutches, but the last I saw, he and his sister were having a sword-fight with them."

  Byrne laughed then, a sudden, nervous explosion of sound, as if he somehow felt guilty about it. "They sound close," he said.

  "Only in the sense that their bedrooms are across the hall from one another," Helen quipped. "No. I shouldn't say that. They're close, I think. I've seen each of them defend the other fiercely, but they do it behind one another's backs, you know?"

  "Actually," he admitted, "I don't know. I was an only child. You?"

  "I had a brother, but he was raised with my father in L.A. He died twelve years ago."

  It was odd, to be standing in front of her office sharing family history with a stranger. Even Janet didn't know she'd had a brother. What exactly was going on here?

  She glanced at her watch again, then said, "You know, I have some books in my office on toddlers. It sounds silly to have to read up on how to handle 'em—parents are convinced they should know this stuff instinctively—but really, you'd find the books a great help."

  "Madame, I would be forever in your debt," Byrne said, bowing low. It was an ironic, grandiose gesture and, considering that it turned several mothers' heads, an annoying one. She would've preferred a simple thank you.

  Helen led Byrne into her office and quickly pulled down several books on the toddler years and swung around to hand them to him. But she did it so hurriedly that the top book slid off the others and dropped to the floor. They b
oth stooped down to retrieve it, nearly knocking their heads together in the process. It was an awkward, but hardly extraordinary, little incident. Helen was not prepared for the look of pain on his face when they stood up again.

  "Enchantra?" he asked.

  "Ench—? No, no," she said. "I don't use that."

  The pain turned to puzzlement. "Funny. My wife always wore it. I thought I knew the scent. I was sure I caught a whiff just now."

  "No. I wear plain old Chanel No. Five," Helen said faintly. "Here's your book," she added, all but kicking him out of her office. "Enjoy the reading."

  "Yeah ... well ... thanks again," he said with a distracted frown. "I'll return these as quick as I can."

  Byrne left then, but Helen stayed behind for a few minutes, because her heart was pounding far too wildly for her to think about hitting the road.

  She'd thrown out her bottle of Enchantra days ago.

  Chapter 9

  It must've clung to this dress, Helen told herself. When it spilled out of the bottle last week.

  It was a reasonable theory until she remembered that she'd picked up the dress from the cleaners the day before and had left it hanging on the downstairs peg-rack overnight.

  The scent wasn't on the dress; it wasn't on her underwear. The smell of Enchantra wasn't from Helen. Period.

  From whom, then?

  She pushed the question violently away. It landed in the same creepy, crawly corner as the others for which she had no answers.

  Who was doing the tapping?

  Who had screamed at the doctor? (It couldn't have been her.)

  Who had railed at her family?

  Who had given her the vicious, unbearable headache that had battered her for weeks?

  Who?

  Helen didn't know. She decided she didn't want to know, as she drove the historic one-way streets from the preschool to her house. More accurately, she didn't want to believe that someone—or thing—was behind the series of unexplained events that had come and gone over the last two months. It was much more rational to believe that those events were random and ordinary and most of all, unconnected.