Only Alien on the Planet (14 page)

The second we pulled up in front of Caulder's house, his mother came out on the porch, one hand up, shading her eyes against the front light.

“Oh-oh,” Caulder said. And if it was possible, my stomach did one more ugly twist. Caulder stopped the engine and got out.

“Park it,” his mother said. “And then you better get in here.”

He got back into the car, slowly, and we shared an awful look.

“I guess he got home,” Caulder said, starting the car back up.

“Let's
hope
he did,” I said. I could hear blood on the road in Mrs. Pretiger's voice.

Caulder pulled the car up into the driveway. “You better go home,” he said to me as we got out. “I'll call you when she gets finished with me.”

“I should come,” I said.

“Go home,” he told me, “and wash your face.”

When the phone finally rang, it nearly scared me to death. I'd been curled up in a corner of the couch, chilling and freezing in spite of the quilt I'd wrapped around myself. Miserable. My parents weren't home yet; for once I was glad. The boys were already in bed and the house was still as death.

“How you doing?” Caulder's voice sounded tired.

“Not great,” I said. “What happened?”

“Smitty got home way before we did,” Caulder said. “He nearly froze to death on the way. And by the time he got home,
he was really crazy. His mom called over here, thinking I could tell her what was wrong, but, of course, we weren't home yet. She told my mom that Smitty was up in his room, throwing things around. Then, while they were talking, he came down and started pacing around from room to room, waiting for her to get off the phone. Mrs. Tibbs said his hair was standing all up, like he'd been pulling on it or something. She was crying when she called.

“She called about three more times, looking for us. My mom called Hally's, trying to find us, but we weren't at the party either.”

I moaned. “So, is he okay now?”

“Actually he's gone.”

“
Gone? “

“The last time his mother called, she said they were taking him over to the university clinic.”

I didn't say anything. I just kept shivering.

“He wanted them to, Gin,” Caulder said. “He wrote down the name of the psychologist himself, and he handed his mother the phone. My mom is really mad at me. She was just worried for a long time tonight.”

I felt so cold.

“I guess I got what I wanted,” he said before he hung up. “I hope he lives through it.”

It was not an easy night for me.

I heard my parents come in, heard them messing around in the kitchen. They were louder than usual, laughing a lot. It was
comforting, knowing they were there, and I wished I could just get up and go in and talk to them about everything.

But it was too late for that. I wouldn't even know how to start. What was I going to say—"While you guys were off doing whatever it was you were doing, I got involved with this dysfunctional mentally ill kid, and last night, I made a sexual move on him that finally drove him over the edge and now he's in the mental hospital?”

I turned over on my side, feeling sick to my stomach.
Why did I kiss him? Why did I have to kiss him?
At the very least, it had been a bad decision. If it had ever actually
been
a decision. And, no question, there were going to be terrible consequences. Everybody was going to have to know what finally set him off. They were going to have to know about me and what I'd done.

This was a nightmare.

And it was all my fault.

E
verybody stared at me when I came down for breakfast. I didn't have to look to know my face was swollen and my eyes were still red.

“You all right?” my father asked me, looking concerned.

“Fine,” I said.

“Are you sure?” he asked me. It's actually kind of a coded question. It means
I know you're not fine, but I'm willing to respect your privacy—just remember, no matter what, you can talk to me.
But I wasn't much comforted, because I wasn't at all sure I deserved that kind of courtesy.

“You'll be glad to know, at least I hope you will be—” my mother announced, flicking a look at me, and exchanging one with my dad, “that we're finally finished. Christianson Graphic Design is now up and running.”

“So, now we can buy food?” Charlie asked, grinning.

“Eat all the pancakes you want,” Mother said generously. “And after you finish, we've got boxes to unpack, and pictures to hang, screens to scrape, and storm windows to get up—”

James stared at mother, his fork halfway to his mouth.

“Welcome home,” Dad said, grinning.

Caulder showed up about halfway through breakfast. We made a place for him, but he wasn't any more hungry than I was. He also looked almost as bad as I did. There were some more quick looks exchanged between my parents.

“Did something happen?” I asked.

“Dr. Woodhouse called,” he said, glancing around the table at the rest of my family.

“They don't know,” I said.

“Know what?” James asked, then he did a little jump, like somebody'd kicked him under the table.

“She wants to talk to us,” Caulder went on. “She wanted to know if we could come by later this afternoon.”

I pushed my plate away.

“I told her we'd come,” he said.

“And where is this you're going?” my father asked, carefully disinterested.

“The university clinic,” I said, looking at Caulder. Now my hands were shaking.

“The Mental Health Studies Clinic,” Caulder amended.

“Oh?” my mother said, her voice perfectly casual.

“It's about Smitty Tibbs,” Caulder said. “He finally went off the deep end last night.” He flicked his eyes across mine. That was all he was going to say.

My mother had dropped her hands into her lap. Her face cleared a bit. “That's too bad,” she said quietly. “Are you two all right?”

I nodded. Then I shrugged.

“We just have to go and talk to his psychologist,” I said. I kept my eyes on my pancakes.

“Well, maybe you can help him,” Dad said, and I could feel him watching me. You could almost hear what my parents were thinking—
Something's very wrong here. Something we should know about. We were wrong to leave them on their own for so long.

“Maybe we can help,” I said, but my voice didn't sound right. Maybe if my parents had been around more, I might have been talking to them all along, and things might have been different. Maybe they could've helped me to see things more clearly. Maybe not. Maybe this was just something I had to work through on my own. Except it wasn't like I was in this all alone.

Charlie was watching my face. He smiled me forgiveness—and he didn't even know what was wrong.

The clinic was a big, impressive, modern building—lots of dark glass and red brick. The trees out front softened the institutional face of it a little, but I was still sick, going up the walk to the door. I took Caulder's hand. I know mine was cold and damp. I couldn't feel his at all.

We stopped at the front desk, and I let Caulder talk to the woman behind it. She directed us to Dr. Woodhouse's office. I wondered if she'd been told to watch for us. I wondered where Smitty was, if he was okay. My hands felt like they were going to sleep.

I should have been home with my family, doing family things and finally settling in. I'd waited a long time for that. But here I was, walking down a corridor in a place that was as cold to me as the moon, as cold as a trap.

“We don't have to do this,” I said to Caulder.

“For Smitty,” he said.

“For Smitty,” I echoed, feeling the trap close.

The psychologist's office door had no window. It was just a plain wooden door with a nameplate hung on it. Caulder knocked. I didn't hear an answer, but he opened the door and waited, politely, for me to go first. In my heart, I cursed his manners.

It was a warm-looking office; my father would have called it country appointed: chair railing, dark wallpaper with a tiny light print, plants, old prints, unhospital-like comfortable chairs.

The doctor was seated behind a large oak desk. The Tibbses were sitting in two of the chairs, off to the side. When I saw them there, I wanted to back out the door and run. Another two chairs were pulled up more or less in front of the desk so that they faced both Dr. Woodhouse and the Tibbses. These chairs were for us. Not a comfortable situation.

The doctor looked tired. Mrs. Tibbs's face was as swollen as mine, and it was hard looking. Mr. Tibbs was angry; it was in his eyes, and all over his body. They hadn't looked at us when we came in, and they still weren't looking at me. My hands were hard on the arms of my chair, and I kept my eyes fixed on the desk.

“Thank you for coming,” the doctor said. Her voice was low and calm. I was thinking,
she's a psychologist—she can probably see right through me.

“How's Smitty?” Caulder asked. I glanced up at the doctor. She had a nice face.

“I think he'll probably be just fine,” she said. It was a careful answer. I wanted to ask her where Smitty was, if we could see him—but with the Tibbses there, I couldn't speak.

“If you'll forgive me,” she said, “I'm going to get down to business.” She looked at me, and I dropped my eyes. “I need to understand,” she said, “how you two view your relationships with Smitty.”

“We're friends,” Caulder said.

Mrs. Tibbs made this wry little noise. I knew what she meant by it. She didn't believe anybody could really be Smitty's friend.

“Okay,” Dr. Woodhouse said. Then she turned to me. “What about you, Ginny?” she asked. Her voice hadn't nailed me to the wall—but the question itself had.

“This is all my fault,” I said. There wasn't any point in prolonging things. But I couldn't say any more.

The doctor was studying my face. I couldn't stand it. “Is there something wrong with me?” The question burst out of me. “Does the way I feel about him mean that I'm—is it wrong?”

Mrs. Tibbs drew in her breath.

But I was looking at the doctor. I needed an answer. Because I hadn't understood my feelings for a long time now, not from the beginning—not about last night, or if I felt the same way now, or about what was going to happen after this.

“Do you care about him, Ginny?” the doctor asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I mean, I care about what happens to him. Is that the same thing?” There was a box of Kleenex on her desk. She gave it a little push in my direction.

“I think it's good to care about people, don't you, Ginny?” she asked. She smiled at me. “I guess, what I need to know is,” she said, “if you two are willing to help him.”

“Absolutely,” Caulder said, answering so certainly for both of us.

But I was still sitting there, shocked; she'd moved right past me. I'd been so certain I was the crux of the whole thing, and she'd passed me right by.

“Now, understand,” the doctor said. “If you get involved with this, you're going to have to consider it an absolute commitment. We have to keep Smitty's emotional environment as stable as we can for the next little while. I can't have you jumping in and out on me.”

“No problem,” Caulder said. “What do we need to do?”

I looked at him blankly. That word she'd said—commitment. It had kind of disconnected my brain.

The doctor looked at the Tibbses. Mr. Tibbs glanced at his wife and then nodded at the doctor. Mrs. Tibbs got up and left the room.

“Well, first you need to understand some things.” Dr. Woodhouse folded her hands on the desk top. “We had a long talk with Smitty last night. I know that sounds pretty incredible, and no, it wasn't easy for any of us.”

She rubbed the tips of her fingers over her eyes. “He told us a lot of things, including his own version of what happened at the swimming pool—I understand you're acquainted with the story.”

Caulder nodded, staring at her.

“We can't tell at this point how close Smitty's perceptions come to reality. So, let me caution you that what I'm going to
tell you is
his
side of the last fifteen years. I don't yet know how accurate any of this actually is.” She looked at us, waiting for a sign we understood.

“Okay,” Caulder said slowly. We were moving a little bit too fast for him too.

“Okay,” the doctor said, and she placed her two hands flat on the top of her desk. “I don't know how much you know about abuse.”

I didn't want to hear this.

More than anything in the world, I didn't want to have to hear this.

But she went right ahead and told us. She told us all about how Russell drowned two-year-old Smitty in the pool when nobody was looking. About how Smitty never told anybody because Russell had hung over his bed in the hospital and told him he'd kill him again if Smitty ever said another word to anybody. Dying once had evidently been enough. And Russell had said all that—
done
all that—right under his parents' noses. He didn't stop there either. He punished Smitty every day of his life; little miseries, tiny tortures, making himself Smitty's only envoy to the rest of the world. He'd even made Smitty believe he'd put a bomb in Smitty's brain, a bomb that would go off if Smitty ever said a word or touched anybody when Russell wasn't around. All this mixed with
such
brotherly love—just enough patting to keep a little boy completely enslaved.