Day of Wrath (9 page)

Mildred answered the door on my third knock. And when
she saw who it was, she ducked her head.

"Are we still on speaking terms?" she said quietly.

"I'm sorry about this morning," I told her. "It was the
boy's murder. It shook me up."

She looked at me with surprise. "I wouldn't think that
a man like you could be upset by such things."

"
Men like me can be upset by any number of things."

"You're an odd person, Harry," she said. "It's taken me
a while to see it, because when something's odd, I generally assume that
it's me." She held out her hand and said, "Truce?"

"Truce."

"Well, come in then. Don't let's give the neighbors anything
more to talk about."

I stepped into the room.

"Nothing's happened to Robbie?" she said, the moment after
she'd shut the door.

I told her no.

"It's only that you look . . . I don't know, you look
so discouraged."

"It's just the job, Mildred," I said.

"Yes," she said after a moment. "I suppose it must be
difficult. Have you found something out? Something new?"

"I've been to the police and I've been to the Community
Service, so there will be a lot more people looking for Robbie."

"But have you learned anything more about where she is?"

I had to tell her the truth. "No, I haven't."

A sickly, stricken look crossed her face, whitening the
corners of her downturned mouth and making her nostrils contract and her
pale green eyes glitter. For a moment I thought she was going to pass out.
When I moved to support her, she jerked away from me, folding her arms
across her thin chest and hugging herself tightly. "I have this terrible
feeling that she's dead," she said in an anguished voice. "Here." She grabbed
her blouse and twisted it with her hand. "I'm afraid my daughter is dead."

"We have no proof of that," I said.

"She was with Bobby Caldwell!" she almost shouted at me.
"Isn't that proof enough? He got her into terrible, terrible trouble. I'm
sure of it."

"We don't know that," I said again.

"I don't think I could stand it," Mildred said. "To see
Robbie . . . like the Caldwell boy." Her face had gone white and panicky.

I moved toward her and she backed away, knocking a glass
ashtray off an end table and onto the carpet.

"Oh, my God!" she cried out and her hands fluttered about
her face. "Oh, Cod, look at what you made me do!"

She fell to her knees and cradled the ashtray to her breast.
"Oh, God," she groaned.

"Mildred," I said gently. "For all we know, your daughter
is in a shelter."

She looked up at me—her red eyes streaming with tears-and
shook her head. Her face had that strained, saturated look of overexposure.
The look of someone who's been out in merciless weather for far too long.
She was on the edge of her own emotional limits and I had the feeling that
if I didn't say or do something to sober her up she might break down completely.

"
Wherever Robbie is," I heard myself say, "I'll find her
and bring her home to you. I promise you, Mildred. I'll find her."

I bent down beside her and whispered, "It's going to be
all right." Then I put my arms around her and held her. After a time, I
took a handkerchief from my pocket and wiped off her face.

"
I thought you didn't like me," she said with surprise.

"I don't dislike you," I said, trying to find a way to
explain it—what I'd been feeling for two days. "It's this street. I grew
up on a street like this. I know it too well."

"Why do you hate it?"

I helped her to her feet. She was still clutching the
glass ashtray to her breast. I pulled it away and put it back on the end
table.

"I don't hate it," I said. "I just don't agree with it."

She laughed weakly. "I don't think you're being honest."

"
Perhaps not," I said. "Are you all right?"

She shook her head. "No, I feel awful."

"I'm sorry if what I said this morning—if it upset you."

"It's not you, Harry." She took a deep breath and said,
"Maybe I'd better lie down for a bit."

"Do you want me to call anyone? A neighbor?"

"
There's no one to call," she said simply. "If you'd stay
here, just for a bit. Until I fell asleep?"

"All right. I wanted to look through Robbie's room again,
anyway."

We turned to the stairs like an old married couple retiring
for the night.

"I'm sorry I broke down," she said. "It won't happen again."

When we got to the bedroom, she pressed my arm.

"Thanks," she said. "I'll be O.K. now. I just needed a
shoulder to cry on, I guess. I'll be fine." She turned to the door, then
looked back at me. "I don't think you disagree with it, Harry. The street
and all this." She gestured about her. "I think you're disappointed in
it. And that's a very different thing. You seem to be a man who is easily
disappointed in people. You must have very high standards."

"
For everyone but myself," I said with a laugh.

"No," she said earnestly. "I don't believe that. You're
idealistic, which is what makes you such an odd man. As for me . . . I
just want things to be the way they were. I just want my daughter back."

She stepped into the bedroom and closed the door behind
her. I spent an hour going through Robbie's things one more time. But I
wasn't thinking about the girl as I looked over the books and the jewelry
and the clothing. I was thinking about her mother, who was lying in a bed
in the adjoining room, trying to make sense out of the jumbled materials
of her own life—trying to piece it all back together, as if it were one
of her china cups.

She'd come close to breaking down an hour before. So close
it had worried me. I wasn't in the business of keeping other people sane.
I knew that. But I'd acted as if I were, partly because the woman had needed
reassurance, partly because I'd felt guilty for the way I'd treated her
earlier that morning, and partly because it had been the only thing to
do. It had been thoroughly unprofessional to pretend there was no reason
to worry about Robbie's welfare.

The whole business left me feeling vaguely conspiratorial,
as if I'd committed myself to a scheme to keep Mildred from learning the
truth about her daughter—not just the truth about what had happened to
her, but the truth about what had happened to their relationship. Mildred
only wanted things to be the same as they were; the truth was that they
could never be the same again. Not after what had happened to Bobby Caldwell.
Not after what she'd begun to discover about Robbie. And not after what
Robbie had probably learned about herself.
 

I DIDN'T FIND ANYTHING NEW IN ROBBIE'S ROOM. I spent a
few minutes thumbing through the Gurdjieff and the Hueben books. The one
looked like it had barely been opened; the other had been thoroughly read
and underscored, as if Robbie had been prepping for an exam in sex education.
It would have been easy to make a good deal out of that, if I hadn't dimly
remembered my own adolescence and all those nights spent squinting over
art books and medical texts in my father's study. That was how I picked
up my sex education—ogling paintings by Rubens and nude photographs of
hebephrenics. It's no wonder you're an odd man, Harry, I said to myself.

The hash pipe and the papers had been purchased at The
Head Shop in Mt. Adams. Thumbnail price tags were still attached to each.
There was no store label in the T-shirt or on any of the other items. I
put them all back in the cardboard box, put the box in the closet, and
closed the sliding door. The house was still and sleepy, save for the faint
hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen.

I tiptoed past Mildred's bedroom and down the stairs.
Outside, everything was still and sleepy, too. The boys had gone in from
the playfield. And the street was deserted, except for a tall, gray-haired
priest sweepmg dust from the cobbled stairs leading to the school. I watched
him for a moment—lean, black, intent—bent to his work as if the sweeping
actually meant something, as if he wouldn't have to do the same thing again
the next afternoon when the boys trudged in from the playfields. He finished
with a flourish, tamping the broom stoutly on the stone then putting his
hands to his hips with the air of a man well satisfied with what he'd done.
He went inside and I turned back to the street, back to my job.

I walked up the sidewalk to the Rostow home. Past the
plaster Negro with his wide-eyed, bedevilled look. And up to the paneled
door. Madge Rostow answered my knock.

She had a plaid scarf on her head and a plaid apron on
over her blouse and pants. Little taify-colored curls had escaped from
under the scarf and a big lock was dangling in the middle of her face.
She blew it out of her eyes with an exhausted huff and smiled at me wearily.

"You caught me in the middle of house cleaning," she said.
"Thursday is my day to sweep and dust."

"I just wanted to speak to Sylvia for a minute."

She nodded smartly-like a second lieutenant's salute.

"Sure. Come in."

I walked into the living room and sat down on the
edge of the couch. Madge went over to the staircase and
shouted, "Syl?"

"What do you want?" the girl shouted back.

Madge Rostow flashed me an apologetic smile, then turned
back to the staircase with something like vengeance in her eyes. "Get down
here!" she commanded.

"
Aw, Mom," the girl called out.

Madge turned back to me. "We read about Bobby Caldwell.
My Lord, it's hard to believe that that could happen on this street. I
mean, you usually read about those things happening in Covington or Milford
or some godawful place. But on Eastlawn Drive!" She shook her head disbelievingly.
"It didn't have anything to do with Robbie, did it? That would just be
too horrible, if Robbie . . . Mildred must be a nervous wreck."

"She's in a pretty bad way," I said.

Madge Rostow pulled the scarf off of her head and her
hair bobbed once, as if it were suspended on a heavy spring, then settled
into a permanent wave. "I'm going to go talk to her," she said with concern.
"I tried calling her earlier this morning, but the line was busy."

I started to tell her that Mildred was sleeping, then
checked myself. Mildred needed the company and, besides, I wanted Sylvia
to myself. The Rostow woman walked to the door just as her daughter came
downstairs.

The girl had a bottle of Coke in her left hand. When she
saw me sitting there, she froze and looked beseechingly at her mother.

"Mom," she whined. "I don't want to talk to him."

"Don't be ridiculous," Madge Rostow said. "I'm going next
door and if I come back and find out that you've been rude, I'm going to
ground you for the week."

"
Mom!" the girl cried.

But Madge was already out the door and down the walk.

Sylvia Rostow stared after her mother for a moment, then
turned slowly back to me. She stood on the landing, pivoting on one bare
foot—her right hand on the bannister, her left holding the Coke bottle.
She had the same smug, arrogant look on her face that she'd had the day
before. Only this time I thought I saw a bit of fear in her eyes. It made
her whole posture look slightly unnatural, like the pose of a fourteen-year-old
model trying to look all grown up. She stood on the landing for another
couple of seconds, then sashayed into the living room. She was wearing
blue denim overalls and a pink bib-collar blouse. She collapsed on one
of the chairs, boosted the Coke to her mouth, and pretended to sip on it.
But her eyes didn't leave my face.

"You read about Bobby, didn't you?" I said.

She nodded—the Coke still at her lips. She pulled the
bottle away suddenly, with a smacking noise, and rubbed her round mouth.
"I don't have to talk to you," she said with bravado. "I don't want to.
And I don't have to."

"Do you know who did that to him, Sylvia? Who cut him
up like that?"

"I told you," she said. "I don't want to talk about that."

"Would you rather talk to the police?" I asked.

Her plump round face went white. "What do you mean the
police? What do I have to do with it?"

"You were a friend of Bobby's, weren't you? The police
will want to talk to his friends."

She pulled herself up in the chair and tried to smile
at me. "I wasn't his friend," she said almost gaily. "You've got the wrong
idea, if you think I was his friend. Robbie was his friend. She's the one
you should talk to."

"
Only she's a little hard to find at the moment, Sylvia.
You know that."

"So?" she said. "What am I—her keeper or something?
Go talk to her, why don't you? And just leave me out of it."

"What are you frightened of, Sylvia?" I said. "What's
scaring you?"