Tenderness

by Robert Cormier

  “All kinds of stuff,” I said. “My mother is a nut about birthdays. She always goes overboard. A big cake and candles to blow out. One year she hired a clown to perform at my party, another we celebrated at McDonald’s with all the kids in the neighborhood.”

  I was talking fast because I was lying, of course. If you talk fast, it’s easier to lie. And I always liked lying because you can let your imagination go and don’t have to stick with the facts.

  His smile changed, became softer, with a kind of sadness in it.

  “Didn’t you get any presents at all? Didn’t you have a cake at least?” His voice gentle, tender.

  At that moment, I thought, He knows me, he can see right into my soul, and I felt as if we had been friends for a long time.

  “I don’t need a cake, anyway,” I said. “That’s for little kids. I used to like cakes once but not anymore. I’d just as soon have a bag of peanuts.”

  He just kept looking at me.

  “My mother is very nice,” I said. “She loves me very much. She just gets forgetful once in a while.”

  He shrugged my words away, lifting his shoulders, and a lock of blond hair fell across his forehead. He pushed it back in place with long, beautiful fingers.

  “You shouldn’t be out here all by yourself,” he said. “What are you doing here, anyway?” As if suddenly angry with my presence.

  “It’s a shortcut.”

  I almost told him I was wandering lonely as a cloud, thinking that he might understand. Instead, I said, “What are you doing here?”

  I was about to ask him about the girl when the roar of motorcycle engines burst through the air, coming at us as if we were under attack, dust kicking up, brakes screeching.

  Five or six bikes pulled up and surrounded us, the riders with leather jackets and brass studs, dark glasses hiding their eyes.

  “Hey, little girl,” one of them called to me, a rider with red shaggy hair leaking out of his helmet.

  Their engines purred now, the bikes slanted, bikers’ legs angled on the dirt, dust settling, the bikes like mechanical horses under them, straining to gallop away.

  A biker with a tattoo of a coiled snake on his arm leaned away from his handlebars and reached for me, his glove black and gleaming with brass knuckles.

  “Leave her alone,” the guy called out.

  The bikers turned their attention to him.

  The guy was outnumbered and he looked frail and vulnerable standing alone, but his eyes were hard now and not shining but glittering and his chin was firm and his lips thin against his teeth.

  The biker with the shaggy hair squinted at him and spit something brown and juicy onto the dirt.

  “We was just fooling around,” he said. “We got better things to do.…”

  He lifted his hand, signaling to the others, and stepped down hard on the pedal, the motorcycle buckling under him, the front wheel leaping in the air.

  “Let’s go,” he bellowed, his voice hoarse and rough but clear above the roaring of the engines.

  More dust raised, as if a bomb had exploded, engines booming, war cries and yelps, and away they went, kicking up dirt, whooping and hollering.

  As the dust settled, I began to cough, my throat dry and scratchy. I looked at him through the dust, like a brown mist, wanting to tell him that he’d been very brave. Gallant, in fact. I loved gallant, an old-fashioned word that you only see in books.

  “Better get going, Lori,” he said. “Before something else happens.”

  His words and his voice stopped me and I did not move. Probably could not move. Because his eyes were not dancing anymore and the gentleness, the sadness were back in them.

  “What else could happen?” I asked, wanting to add, I’m safe with you. How could anything else happen?

  “Get going,” he said, dismissing me, as if no longer interested, discarding me like a used Kleenex.

  He turned away, flexing his fingers, then slapping them against his thighs, as if his fingers were apart from his body and he had no control over them. “You shouldn’t come out in the woods like this,” he said, scolding, as he looked over his shoulder at me.

  I started walking away, feeling more lonely than ever, lonelier even than a cloud, as if I had lost something dear to me that I would never find again.

  After a few paces, I stopped and looked back, but he was gone and the spot where he had been standing was a lonesome place.

  I ran all the way home, like the little piggy in the nursery rhyme, not crying wee-wee-wee but hot tears on my cheeks, anyway.

  Now those eyes of Eric Poole on television have caught and trapped me and I know that I must stay in Wickburg and track him down and end this new fixation the way I ended my fixation with Throb.

  Remembering that day by the railroad tracks, I know that this fixation on Eric Poole is more than that, it’s as if we made a connection that was broken when the bikers came, and that we must meet again. He was so gallant when he stood against the bikers that day, protecting me like a knight without armor.

  I close the door of the diner, leaving behind the smell of fried food and the harsh white lights and the giggling of the girls, and I step out into the streets of Wickburg.

  Wickburg is like coming home again because my mother and I lived here for almost three years, the longest we ever stayed in one place.

  We lived on the third floor of the three-decker on The Hill, looking down on the city. I didn’t have any best friends in Wickburg but a gang of older guys and girls let me follow them around if I kept my distance and my mouth shut. The reason they didn’t mind my company is because they’d send me into stores to cop stuff for them. I was successful at copping stuff because I looked sweet and innocent, Rory Adams said. Rory was the leader of the gang. He was tall and good-looking.

  Rory said I should go to Hollywood and be a child star and grow up to be another Marilyn Monroe. The gang was like a family, with Rory almost a father to us all. A small plump girl named Crystal absolutely adored him, ready to do his slightest bidding. Bantam, a skinny runt of a kid who pretended to be tough, acted like Rory’s bodyguard, always walking ahead of us, like he was scouting the territory, clearing the way for Rory.

  Anyway, Rory and the gang taught me about living on the streets, the safe places and the bad places, taught me how to break into locked cars, showed me that secret doorway for the ConCenter stars, and told me about Harmony House. That’s my destination as I walk through the twilight streets of Wickburg as the sun disappears behind the city’s jagged skyline.

  Harmony House is where pregnant teenagers end up when they have no place else to go. They don’t yell at you or preach to you there. In fact, they make you feel special. I heard all this when Crystal became pregnant and was thrown out of her house by her father, who realized he couldn’t beat her up anymore in her condition. After she had the baby and gave it up for adoption—she never told us whether it was a boy or a girl—she described how wonderful she was treated at Harmony House, and I sat on the edges of the gang, thinking about that baby and about Crystal and vowing that I would never give up my baby if I ever had one. But I also felt bad for Crystal. She always looked as if someone was about to hit her when she did something stupid like flirting with the new young cop on the beat, which called his attention to the gang. But Rory never hit her hard, just a slap or two.

  I make my way toward Harmony House, hurrying against the descending darkness. I have enough money to stay in one of the motels on Lower Main but I don’t want to spend money unnecessarily and those motels are seedy and rundown looking. Places like the Marriott and Sheraton are off-limits because I don’t have a suitcase and do not look at all like a career girl. I look exactly like what I am: a runaway.

  I can fake it easily for a night or two at Harmony House. There would not be a physical examination right away, and I can make a quick getaway before that happens.

  A woman opens the door a minute or two after I ring the doorbell. She has gray hair like a grandmother b
ut a young, sweet face and it’s hard to tell how old she is.

  “Welcome to Harmony House,” she says. As she leads me to an office off the main hallway, she tells me that her name is Phyllis Kentall and that I can call her Phyllis, all the girls do. She sits at a desk and writes down my name and address, which I fake, of course. I always use the name Brittany Allison when I go on the road and have a card made out in that name, the kind of card that comes in a wallet you buy. She smiles at me and her teeth are white and glossy, like her string of pearls.

  “You look hot and tired, Brittany,” she says, closing the book. “I’ll take you upstairs, where you can bathe”—such a nice, soothing word—“and then you can come down and join the other girls in the television room.”

  She touches my elbow as we leave the office and pats my shoulder as she leaves me at the door to my room. Handing me a key, she warns, “Keep your room locked at all times. The girls here are very nice, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  The room is neat and plain, venetian blinds on the window and a white bedspread and no rug on the floor. I fill the bathtub and soak in the warm water, thinking of the long day, from the time I hitched a ride with Mr. Walter Clayton to that terrible kiss with Throb, and I tell myself I must find an envelope and send the credit cards and license back to Mr. Clayton. In the bed, I fall asleep so suddenly that it’s like somebody turned off the lights in my mind.

  Nobody wakes me the next morning, and I sleep until almost ten o’clock. Downstairs in the kitchen, a plump, pleasant woman introduces herself as Mrs. Hornsby and pours me a glass of milk and fixes me a bowl of Special K. I prefer donuts and coffee for breakfast but thank her anyway. She hums as she keeps busy, although she does not look like she belongs there. The kitchen is all glass and stainless steel, and Mrs. Hornsby wears a yellow apron decorated with daisies and bustles around like she is a mother of a bunch of small children instead of a cook for pregnant teenagers.

  Later, I wander into the large living room and meet three girls in various stages of pregnancy. Chantelle, Tiffany, and Debbie. Chantelle’s stomach is enormous, and she sits with her legs spread out and her face, the color of the mahogany piano in the corner, is moist with perspiration as she lifts a hand in greeting, as if every moment is an effort. Tiffany does not look pregnant—she’s tiny and dark, with delicate features like a figurine in a gift shoppe, and I wonder if she is faking it, too, like me. Her eyes inspect me coolly—does she suspect I’m also a fake? Debbie is so huge that she probably always looks pregnant, and her smile is as wide as a doorway.

  They are watching an old I Love Lucy on television, and turn back to Lucy dressed up as a bag lady as soon as we introduce ourselves. Miss Kentall joins us, and after Lucy has managed to calm Desi down at the end of the program, she beckons me to follow her into her office. She seats herself behind her desk, looks at me for a few heartbeats, then says:

  “You’re not pregnant, are you, Brittany? I can tell, you know. A pregnant girl has an air about her. You’re a very sweet person, but definitely not pregnant.”

  “That’s right,” I say, the color warm in my cheeks.

  “And your name’s not Brittany, either, is it?”

  I nod my head. There is a time to lie and a time to tell the truth, and Miss Kentall is too smart and wise for me to keep on pretending.

  “You’re a runaway, aren’t you?”

  I let my silence provide the answer.

  “What’s your name?” she asks.

  “Lori.”

  I don’t tell her my family name because I want to remain anonymous, which is the only way I can keep my freedom, even in Harmony House.

  “How old are you, Lori?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Why did you run away?” Before I can answer, she asks, “Did you run away from an abuse situation?”

  Her voice is gentle, and I realize that she’s trying to make it easier for me to tell my story.

  I tell her about my mother and Gary and how Gary is a nice guy, good to my mother, and how he touched me on top but very tenderly and how I was afraid that something would happen to hurt my mother and spoil it all for her.

  “Your mother must be worried,” she says.

  “I left her a note. She thinks I’m staying with friends here in Wickburg. We used to live here awhile back.”

  “Have you called her since you arrived?”

  I shake my head.

  “Don’t you think you should call her? Tell her you’re safe?”

  “I was going to call her soon.” A kind of lie: I planned to call her sooner or later but later rather than sooner.

  “Tell you what, Lori,” she says. “If you call your mother, I can let you stay here for a few days. I need someone to help around the place—make the beds, dust and clean—and give Mrs. Hornsby a hand in the kitchen. The pregnant girls are not required to help out. I can only pay minimum wages, but you’ll have a place to sleep and food to eat.”

  “Thank you,” I say, hoping that my voice conveys how much I appreciate staying at Harmony House. Now I can make it my headquarters while I pursue my fixation on Eric Poole.

  Eric Poole woke as usual, instantly alert, as if his slumbering mind had been impatiently waiting for this moment. He lay in bed, arms straight at his sides, the same position in which he had fallen asleep.

  He knew immediately that something was wrong. Not wrong, different. The sun streamed into the room from his left instead of his right. Ruffled white curtains instead of the facility’s beige venetian blinds. Paintings on the walls: summer and winter scenes like the kind you see on calendars.

  Aromas filled the air, a woman’s delicate scent, perfume or soap and, finally, the invading smell of coffee brewing and something in the oven, corn muffins maybe, that Aunt Phoebe baked for him when he visited her as a small boy.

  The smells, the white curtains, the pictures on the walls were such a contrast to the bare, antiseptic room of the facility that he was almost dizzy as he sat on the edge of the bed.

  In the kitchen he enjoyed the warm corn muffins soaked with melting butter. Sugar and cream in the coffee, almost too sweet after the black acid-tasting coffee of the past three years.

  Aunt Phoebe hovered near the table, wearing a fancy white apron, lace at the edges. He concentrated on the food, aware of being watched, unlike the facility, where he’d felt invisible most of the time.

  “I’m so glad you’re here, Eric,” Aunt Phoebe said, pouring more coffee.

  She was either a terrific actress or actually happy for his presence in her house. It did not matter which. This house was a place for him to pass the time he needed to prepare himself for what lay ahead.

  Last night, after dinner, they had sat down to watch television together. A news report flashed the scene earlier that day when he’d left the facility, crowds greeting his departure, followed by a shot of the house in which they were sitting. Weird, he thought, looking at TV which is looking back at you as you sit there. An announcer’s voice said, “We tried to talk to Phoebe Barns, the aunt with whom Eric Poole will be living, but she refused to comment on how it will feel to have a murd—” She reached for the remote control and could not find it, and by the time she located it, the word murderer had long since blazed in the room.

  “I’m sorry, Eric,” she said as the tube went dark.

  “Don’t be sorry, Aunt Phoebe. And don’t be afraid. I’d never do anything to hurt you. Or make you sorry you took me in.” Trying not to think of Rudy, the canary.

  Eric knew that he would never harm Aunt Phoebe. First of all, there would be no tenderness in the act. Second, he would be spelling his own doom if he did such a thing. When he stepped out of the facility yesterday, he had spotted the old lieutenant in a doorway across the street, a solitary figure apart from everyone else: the television crews, the guards, the crowd of people gathering either to support or to protest his freedom. He knew immediately that he would have to be extra careful, would have to bide his time, would ne
ed patience. But he also knew that the lieutenant could not follow him forever. Other cases would claim his attention. As for the crowd, they would tire of interfering with his life after a while and go back to their own petty, stupid lives. Another big story would come along. An explosion killing innocent people, preferably children, or the assassination of a beloved figure would take the spotlight away from him sooner or later and free him to do what he needed to do.

  Meanwhile, the flurry of activity caused by his departure privately amused him as he ducked away from the television cameras and ignored the questions hurled at him as he crossed the sidewalk. He paid no attention to the cries from the crowd and glanced, without expression, at all the signs—WE LUV U, ERIC … DROP DEAD, KILLA—even though they irritated him. He hated words that were purposely misspelled, like lite for light, brite for bright, and, of course, luv for love.

  A black car, hired by his Aunt Phoebe, waited for him at the curb, and a driver in a black suit held the door open for him, as the crowd fell back, giving him room, resigned to the obvious fact that he was not going to talk. A teenage girl with a daisy tattooed above one eye flung herself at him and kissed him on the cheek, throwing him off balance, her perfume strong and sickening. “I love you, Eric,” she called as guards pulled her away, and he wiped moisture from his cheek, relieved that she did not wear lipstick and had not left her mark on him. Before stepping inside the car, he paused and looked at the crowd, ready for this moment he had anticipated for such a long time. The crowd fell silent, and stopped shoving and pushing. He looked around, savoring the moment, the dazzle of sunshine on windowpanes, the sweetness of the air as he inhaled. Then he smiled, the sad, wistful smile he had practiced before the mirror, the little-boy smile that he knew would appear later on television screens and the front pages of newspapers. A smile for all the stupid people out there with bleeding hearts for killers. Then he slipped into the backseat of the car.

  After the driver closed the door, he could not resist glancing out the window at the doorway across the street. The lieutenant was still there, a frail old man who looked as if a gust of wind would blow him away. Eric gave him a short, sharp salute of triumph, then sank back into the seat as the driver pulled away.