Beyond Midnight

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  ****

  Mrs. Lagor was wiping her son's hands with her fifth or sixth wet wipe.

  "Don't put your hands in your mouth, Alexander. How many times must I tell you? And after you touch the swings or the slide or anything else, you must come right back so that I can wipe your hands clean. Germs, Alexander! They're everywhere."

  "That's so true," said Peaches, pausing alongside during Mrs. Lagor's little sermon. "Between all these terrible viruses and scary bacteria, I don't know how we're going to keep our children safe."

  Mrs. Lagor looked up from her son's sticky hands. "I'm glad to hear you say that," she told Peaches. "Everyone thinks I'm paranoid, but—well, really. Read the papers."

  "Exactly.''

  "You look familiar," said Mrs. Lagor, tossing the used towelette into a trash can. "Have we met?"

  "I don't think so," said Peaches in her friendly, outgoing way. "I would've remembered someone with the same standards that I have." Smiling, she reached into her canvas carryall and pulled out a giant-sized container of moist towelettes.

  It was like exchanging a secret handshake. Mrs. Lagor gave her a conspiratorial look and said, "Isn't it terrible? Flesh-eating bacteria! Rabies! Lyme! Hanta! Ebola! E-coli! MRSA! Who can keep up with it anymore?"

  "I know, I know," said Peaches. "And yet we must. I can't understand how some people can be so casual about these threats. Maybe they're just too busy to pay attention."

  "Other parents may be too busy, but I'm not. I've made a point of having no other demands on my time. My son ...."

  She turned to Alexander and said, "You can play for a bit more. But no roughhousing. And don't play with Tyler. We don't like him." Turning back to Peaches, Mrs. Lagor finished her thought. "My son," she said calmly, "is my life."

  You didn't have to be a rocket scientist to be able to figure that out, Peaches knew. She'd been watching the woman haul out one wet wipe after another, disinfecting everything in sight. A quick trip back to Nat's car for the container of towelettes there, and Peaches had her entrée into a conversation with Mrs. Lagor.

  She remembered the day Alexander hurled his little blue train engine at Nat in the lobby of The Open Door; how suspicious and hostile Mrs. Lagor had seemed of Nat in particular and the world in general. She was exactly the kind of mother Peaches was looking for.

  They chatted for a while about the dangerous times they lived in, and then Peaches said casually, "And let's not forget television. Look what it teaches today's kids: sex, violence, perversion. Is it any wonder that teenagers are so twisted nowadays?"

  "You don't have to tell me," said Mrs. Lagor without taking her gaze from her son. "Alexander! No, no, no! No jumping!"

  She added, "Alexander has teenage cousins who live in Boston, and I must say, they scare me to death. Fortunately we rarely visit."

  Peaches chose her next words with care. "I think the problem with teenagers is that they have no one at home to watch over them. Their parents both work—either by choice or by need—and the kids are left to roam."

  "Yes. That's exactly the problem."

  "And it doesn't matter if the parents themselves are good or bad people." Peaches lowered her voice and inclined her head to Mrs. Lagor's ear. "For example. Do you see that girl in the black dress?"

  "The one in the straw hat and work boots?" asked Mrs. Lagor, clearly disapproving of Becky's taste in clothes. "How could I miss her?"

  "Someone just told me that she was arrested for spray painting a statue in town."

  "Awful creature! Wait. I know her ...."

  "That's not the worst of it. I understand that the symbol she painted—her mother went back at once to wipe it away—was a star with two points in the ascendant."

  Mrs. Lagor gasped. "Two points!" She added in a whisper, "What does that mean?"

  "Well, it's pretty common knowledge," said Peaches, plucking a towelette from her big yellow container. She beckoned to Katie to come away from the box-castle and get cleaned up. "I saw it on the news once." She lowered her voice still more. "A pentagram with two points up ... is the sign of Satan."

  Mrs. Lagor clapped her hand to her mouth. "Oh my God," she croaked. "A cult."

  "You think so, too?" asked Peaches with a distressed look on her face. "I did wonder."

  Mrs. Lagor gasped again. "Now I recognize her. She's the director's daughter. Betty—"

  "Becky."

  "—Becky Evett. Oh dear God. She watches the little ones all the time. And now that I think of it, she always wears black. Look at her now, playing ring around the rosy with them. For all we know, it's some kind of ritual. Someone should do something!"

  "There's no proof," Peaches reminded her. "The markings were cleaned up too fast."

  Mrs. Lagor gave her a wide-eyed look. "Doesn't that tell you something? Anyway, I can find out. My husband's a contractor; he knows everyone in Salem. Wait till he hears about this. I never should've let him talk me into this place. It's not even convenient."

  She looked around restlessly. It was obvious that the news was burning a hole in her tongue.

  Peaches decided to free Mrs. Lagor to do her mischief. "I promised the person who told me this that I wouldn't say anything," she told the goggle-eyed mother, "so—"

  "Naturally. I understand."

  Of course you do, you self-righteous blabbermouth. And it won't make a damn bit of difference, will it?

  Peaches laid her hand lightly on the woman's arm. "Thank you so much," she said in a confidential murmur. "I feel such relief, now that I've been able to tell someone. It's a terrible thing to have to keep to oneself."

  "Well, something's going to have to be done about it," said Mrs. Lagor grimly. "But don't worry," she added. "I won't bring you into it."

  You couldn't if you tried, thought Peaches. But she smiled bravely and said, "Thank God for parents like you."

  ****

  Peaches was chatting with a young mother when a child exploded in a howl of pain that ripped through the laughter like the crack of thunder.

  "Oh, dear," said Peaches with a gasp. "Not a scraped knee, that's for sure."

  A few seconds later, they had their answer. One of the toddlers had fallen and gashed her leg on a piece of broken glass that lay hidden in the grass.

  "Oh, no," Peaches said, visibly upset. "She must not have picked up all the pieces."

  The young mother wanted to know: "Pieces of what?"

  "It was nothing, really; a little gift I brought back with me from England. It had such an interesting history, and I thought Mrs. Evett would be charmed by it."

  She added lightly, "Have you ever heard of a witch ball?"

  Naturally the mother had not. Peaches said, "It's a glass ball that folklorists say you hang in your home to protect you from evil. I thought it was a quaint, rather pretty little gift. I was surprised, and a little hurt, that Mrs. Evett didn't agree. She seemed quite upset—almost offended—when I handed it to her."

  "Really? That's so rude," said the mother, surprised.

  Peaches shrugged and said, "Well, whatever. She dropped it as if it were a hot coal, so of course it shattered—it was very fragile—and I suppose one of the pieces got separated from the rest."

  There wasn't a doubt in Peaches's mind that it had; she'd dropped it precisely where someone was bound to roll over it. It was even easier than making sure the glass ball slipped through Helen's hand.

  The mother—young, pretty, and usefully naive— frowned and said, "Well, if there's broken glass around, I think we should've been told." She went off to collect her child and spread the warning.

  Peaches turned to check on Nat. He was behind her, with Katie in tow.

  "Would you mind taking over, Peach? I want to ask Helen if anyone needs a ride to the emergency room."

  "Someone said it was just a scratch," Peaches said in a quick lie. "And the parents are here, after alL"

  "Not the dad, and he's got the car," he said shortly, and walked off.

  Peaches stared after
him. This morning a cook, now a chauffeur. What the hell next?

  ****

  Helen had finished bandaging poor Sarah and was saying good-bye to the little girl and her mother when Nat strode in with an offer of a ride.

  "Ah, thanks," she said with more emotion than she'd intended. "But James's parents were leaving now, anyway."

  "How bad was it?"

  "Deep enough to bleed, not big enough for stitches, thank God. I still feel awful about it. I had Becky go over the grass so carefully. That's why we never allow glass outside," she said, disgusted with herself.

  "Hey, c'mon," he said, surprised by her intensity. "Don't go beating yourself up over this. Accidents happen."

  She wondered whether he'd feel that way if it were Katie who'd fallen on the shard. "I don't believe in accidents," she said stubbornly. "Ask my kids."

  He smiled and said, "I keep forgetting. You're a psychology major. I suppose you think the shard got overlooked on purpose. Isn't that what Freud would say?"

  "Laugh if you want to, Nat, but I mean it. I take this place absolutely seriously." She put the bandages and antiseptic back into the medicine locker that was built into the bathroom of her office.

  "I still don't know how I could've dropped it," she said, closing the locker door. "I was so aware that it was glass—"

  "Stop," he said, touching his finger lightly to her lips. "Stop."

  Helen looked into his eyes, so blue, so intense under the shock of brown hair, and said, "Okay. You're right. I will let it go." She took a deep breath and forced herself to sound light. "So other than the bloodcurdling screams, did you have a nice time?"

  "Yeah," he said, sounding surprised by his own answer. "I did. This has been the first full day off I've had in a long time."

  "Now wait. Be fair. Subtract the time you spent cooking."

  "Why? That was fun."

  "Plus, the day's not over," she reminded him. "You may yet end up in your study."

  He had an oddly serene smile on his face. "I have no desire."

  "Yeah, but the ... the ... stock market opens bright and early tomorrow," she said, totally hung up on the way he'd said "desire."

  "It'll open whether I work tonight or not," he said without lowering his gaze from hers.

  They were apparently in some kind of contest. He wanted to show he could be ordinary; she was determined to make him prove it.

  So she hit him with the big one. "Your shareholders," she murmured in a low, perverse taunt.

  "Oh. Them." He sighed heavily, like the old woman who lived in a shoe. "Well ... I do have my eye on a new company. It has a good price-earnings ratio ... a high barrier to entry ... and an ability to generate a lot of cash. I think."

  "You think?"

  He shrugged. "Corporate managers lie."

  "No!" She was truly shocked.

  "They do. You look pretty when your face gets flushed that way. So we ask the same questions over and over, and then we search through the answers for inconsistencies. That's what I'd planned to do tonight."

  "Oh," she said, flushing still more as he drew nearer. "And now?"

  "—I'm not so sure. What are you doing tonight?"

  Her back was to the heavy paneled door, originally designed for a bank officer's privy. In a faint, faint voice, she said, "You're asking me to help you look for lies in your notes?"

  He laughed softly. "You, spot a lie? I doubt it." He leaned his arm on the door, over her head. He wasn't exactly cornering her; but he wasn't exactly not cornering her.

  He began to lower his mouth to hers in a kiss. Helen could've mumbled something perfectly reasonable about it being the wrong place for that sort of thing, but instead she blurted, "I can't do this! It would be cheating!"

  That made him blink. "Cheating? On whom?"

  "On ... on Linda. On her spirit—the memory of her, I mean."

  "That's nuts—and more than a little ironic," he added. He surprised Helen by tilting her chin up and going through with the kiss; but there was an edge to it that made her back away from it perceptibly.

  With a quick, exasperated exhale he said, "Look. We need to put some things behind us. And we will. But for now—can't you see?" he said in a voice that begged for understanding. "I'm attracted to you because you are so scrupulous."

  He cradled her face in both his hands and said softly, "You're a breath of fresh, clean air in my life, Helen. Everything else is stale and dirty."

  "That's so cynical," she said to him, distressed. "You have Katie, for one thing. And besides," she felt bound to add, "you don't know me enough to say if I'm fresh or if I'm stale."

  And yet she knew—with hardly any specifics at all— that she loved him.

  "Let me find out who and what you are, then," he said simply. "Let me spend time with you."

  She laughed at that. "Time! The one thing you don't have to spend!"

  "Now who's the cynic?"

  Flushing, she said, "You're right. I'm prejudging."

  "This evening. After the social. We'll meet for supper at Genevieve's. I'd come over to pick you up, but I'm afraid that Russ'd bar the door."

  "He'll get over that," Helen said without much hope.

  "He's going to have to."

  Nat was still less than a breath away when they heard a loudly polite knock on the outside wall of the office. Helen's daughter popped into the doorway and said, "Hi! Sorry to bother you, but everyone's leaving—all at the same time, it looks like—and I thought you'd want to be there for the farewells."

  Becky was looking directly at her mother, pretending that Nat was nowhere around. It took real ingenuity.

  "Thanks, honey," Helen said. Turning to Nat, she said, "Will you excuse me?" She waved pointlessly at the biggest bookcase in the office and said, "I think the book you want is over there."

  "Seven?" he asked, ignoring her improvisation.

  "Yes, okay."

  She beat a retreat with Becky, who surprised her by having other things than Nathaniel Byrne on her mind.

  "I'm sorry about the glass, Mom," she said, obviously taking Sarah's injury personally. "We went over and over the grass. Stupid gift—I wish she'd left it on the other side of the ocean!"

  "Ocean? What ocean?"

  "Elaine told me that Peaches got the glass ball when she was in London," Becky explained.

  "Huh. She must not have heard right. I had the impression that Peaches bought it especially for me."

  "Since when are you two such chums?"

  "Beats me," Helen said, shrugging. "A bribe, so I'll be extra nice to Katie?"

  They had reached the graveled parking area, where the last few rhododendron blossoms were barely hanging on. Becky was right: Things did have the look of a stampede. Parents were hurrying their children along as if a thunderstorm were on the way.

  "Janet must be doing a brisk business at the sink," Helen said as she watched a steady stream of parents leave the basement kitchen with clean Tupperware tucked under their arms.

  The good-byes seemed hurried and perfunctory. Helen was disappointed. Just about everyone seemed to have someplace to go, something to do. True, it was four o'clock, but the Ice Cream Social always ran late.

  "Everything's like that nowadays, Mom," Becky said to console her. "You know how you used to ferry us all around, all day, until I got my driver's license. These kids just aren't old enough to drive themselves around yet."

  "Neither is Russ," said Helen suddenly. "So what's he doing behind the wheel of Nat's Porsche?"

  Becky laughed nervously and said, "The door was unlocked?"

  "I'll brain that kid," said Helen, making a bolt for her son. She stopped short when she saw Nat saunter up to his car, apparently amused to see a monkey impersonating a human being inside. Helen couldn't hear what Nat said, but she could tell, even from a distance, that Russ was mortified at having been caught drooling in the driver's seat.

  She watched as her son shook his head at something Nat said, then, without looking up, got out of th
e front seat and melted away.

  She wanted to shout, "Don't slouch, danm it! Stand up straight and take your reprimand like a man!"

  Instead she found herself uttering a silent, flippant prayer: Please don't let Russ ever steal the Porsche. Please. Any car but that one.

  Chapter 19

  Helen returned to find a disturbing message on her machine: the Baers were withdrawing their daughter Molly from the summer session. No reason was given, no apology made. It was a complete about-face from their enthusiasm that afternoon. Mrs. Baer's voice sounded timid, almost fearful, as if she were afraid Helen was going to hunt her down and scratch out her eyes.

  "For Pete's sake, it's your choice," Helen muttered at the machine.

  She played the message several times, then made a quick return call. No answer. In the meantime she was already half an hour late for her rendezvous at Genevieve's. After taking out a couple of Stouffer's frozen dinners for the kids, Helen sped away in her Volvo, feeling a little like Bonnie going off to meet Clyde.

  The line for Genevieve's went out the door. Couples milled around the two iron benches, both full, that had been placed under the awning of the restaurant for the inevitable summer overflow. Type As did not care for lines; Helen expected Nat to be long gone.

  Once again he surprised her. True, he was looking at his watch and true, he was drumming his fingers on his thigh—but he was still there. And when he looked up and saw her and his face creased into a relieved and ardent grin—well, she loved him, that's all.

  "Sorry, sorry, sorry," she said, once for every fifteen minutes of her delay. "It always takes longer than I remember to clean up after the Social."

  "Are you late? I hadn't noticed," he said with self-mocking humor. He glanced at the crowd with no enthusiasm, then said, "Why don't we pass? I've got a bellyache from too much Toasted Almond Sauce anyway. You're probably not hungry, either?"

  "Not very," she said, and hoped he couldn't hear her stomach growling.

  Apparently he could. Smiling, he added, "On my way in I did see a clam shack on the Wharf."

  "Great."

  He steered her across and down Derby Street in the direction of the array of shops and eateries on Pickering Wharf, the jewel in the crown of Salem's waterfront redevelopment.