Shame (16 page)

“Happiness makes him feel guilty, as if he doesn’t deserve it.”

“Are you angry at him for not confiding in you?”

“Yes. But now I can understand how he thought he was doing the right thing.”

“Did you have a whirlwind courtship?”

Anna shook her head. “No. We fell in love right away, but it was a year before Cal asked me to marry him. And when he finally did ask me, I could see how conflicted he was. At the time
I thought it was just a guy thing. I only saw him that torn up two other times.”

“What happened on those occasions?”

“When he learned I was pregnant with Janet, Cal wanted me to get an abortion. For a time he was adamant. ‘It’s a bad world,’ he kept telling me. ‘It’s not a fit place to bring a child into.’ But I told him, ‘If a child is loved, the world isn’t so terrible.’ He kept coming back to me with his what-ifs, though. His favorite was, ‘What if the baby’s deformed? What if the baby isn’t right?’ He was terrified of that. I think he had the same fears with James, but by then he was head-over-heels in love with Janet, so he wasn’t quite as terrified.”

“What happened the other time he was upset?”

“Nothing really. It was so long ago....”

“I’d still like to hear about it.”

“I guess I remember it so vividly because it’s the only time I ever saw Cal cry.”

“What happened?”

“Cal was taking some junior college courses to please me. I had nagged him for what I thought was his own good. He was so smart, I couldn’t imagine him not excelling in, and enjoying, college.

“At first, everything seemed to be going fine, but one night I walked into the study and I found him sobbing. He tried to explain his tears away by saying he was just tired, but as I comforted him he opened up a little. He said he’d been reading something that bothered him. I didn’t pry; I knew better than that. I just held him, rocking him in my arms, and that’s when he opened up a little more. At the time it was hard making sense of what he said. He told me that his psychology class was studying nature-versus-nurture, and that he felt doomed either way. ‘My whole life’s been a Harlow experiment,’ he said, and then he stopped talking, sealing himself up again. I kneaded his shoulders, and chest, but he wouldn’t say anything else.

“I made him some cocoa and told him he needed a good night’s sleep. We went to bed, and we made love. I used to think I could take all of Cal’s troubles and make them explode between my legs. Eventually he slept, but I didn’t. Maybe I always counted on him being Cal the stoic, and maybe I’m partly to blame for the way he’s acted over the years. I don’t know. I only remember feeling that my world was a less secure place.

“I went downstairs in the middle of the night, and I saw that he’d left his psychology textbook open. I sat and started reading about Dr. Harry Harlow and his awful experiments with rhesus monkeys.”

“What kind of experiments?”

“He deprived young monkeys of their mothers and set up all sorts of artificial mother substitutes, but Harlow’s mothers weren’t designed for love. They looked like something created in Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. These were
mothers
who shot jets of compressed air at the baby monkeys that tried desperately to cling to them, air that almost separated their fur from their skin; these were
mothers
that rocked violently, bucking the babies to the floor; these were
mothers
designed to reject their babies, pushing them away with mechanical spikes until the little monkeys dropped to the concrete.”

“What was the point of the experiments?”

“I think it was to create monsters, because that’s what it did. The monkeys grew up to be very abnormal. They didn’t know how to be social. They attacked other monkeys for no reason, and they abused themselves. And when they became mothers, usually as a consequence of Harlow’s setting up a controlled rape, the results were tragic. Offspring were abused and killed.”

Anna shook her head. “I’m a nurse. I’ve seen a lot of pain and suffering. But the pictures accompanying the text really got to me. Despite all the rejection, the young monkeys kept trying to go back to their artificial mothers. So great was their need for nurturing, they were willing to endure the source of their pain
time and time again. I can still see their desperate faces. All they wanted was a little love.”

“Did you ever talk about this with Caleb?”

“No. It was something else we swept under the rug. That week Caleb stopped going to classes. He said formal education didn’t appeal to him.”

“Did you believe him?”

“No.”

Anna’s expression showed how conflicted she was. She didn’t want to be disloyal.

“But that doesn’t make Cal a liar or anything. I’m certain he had nothing to do with those women’s deaths. I know he’s innocent.”

The rising tone of her voice qualified her statement; a few moments later, so did Anna.

“I just wish he hadn’t closed off so much of himself to me and the kids. I’ve lived with Cal for eleven years, and there have been times I wondered if I ever really knew him. He’s this puzzle with all sorts of missing pieces.”

A puzzle that saw himself as a Harlow experiment, thought Elizabeth. But an experiment at what stage? Had Caleb seen himself as the rejected waif or the grown-up monster? By his own words Caleb had said he was doomed, but he had never specified whether his fate was as victim or victimizer. Maybe at the time he hadn’t known.

Maybe he still didn’t.

S
LEEP WOULDN’T COME.
The more Caleb pursued it, the more it eluded him. The room felt stuffy and cramped, and as time passed the bed and pillows became instruments of torture. Caleb missed Anna and the kids. Their absence made his chest feel empty, as if there were a hole there.

It felt like everything was closing in on him. He tried to control his claustrophobia but couldn’t. The pressure kept increasing. Finally he jumped off the bed, rushed over to the window, and pressed his head up against the screen, gulping in the night air. The thought of prison, of being shut in an even smaller room, made Caleb hyperventilate. He became lightheaded, and had to grab the window sill to avoid falling. But the walls still closed in....

“Cal? Is that your name? I mean your real name?”

The pack tightened their circle and cut off his escape. He looked around, desperate to find an opening. There wasn’t one.

“I haven’t heard an answer, Cal.”

Eddie McGlynn had picked on Caleb from his first day at the high school. McGlynn put his face close to Caleb’s, not more than two inches away, and waited for his answer with pretended interest.

“Cal or Caleb. Either one.”

“Either one,” said McGlynn. “Why, that’s mighty generous of you, Cal.”

He had never officially changed his name, had just dropped his first name of Gray and taken to using his middle name. Caleb had hoped the name change would put some distance between him and his father, that people would forget, but that had proved a false hope. The people of Concho County had long memories. Since his father’s conviction and execution, Caleb had always tried to be invisible, not to stand out, but few classmates allowed him to be anonymous. He was everyone’s favorite target. The boys growing up in Concho County were always beating him up.

The circle of man-boys closed in on Caleb. Most of those who surrounded him were a year or two older than his sixteen years. He looked around for teachers, for help, and saw Mr. Harriman the math teacher observe what was happening, only to close his door and pretend not to notice what was going on.

“If your real name’s Cal or Caleb,” Eddie said, “how’s come I’ve seen a different name on class lists and stuff?”

Caleb shook his head. “Don’t know,” he said.

“Now what’s that name I saw?” Eddie scratched his head, then reached for suspenders that weren’t there. His exaggerated mannerisms had his circle laughing. “Was some kind of color, I think. Pink maybe. Or Puce. Green, that’s what it was. No, it was Gray. That’s it. That’s the name I saw.”

Caleb shrugged his shoulders and tried to get by again, but the pack wouldn’t let him. They knew the fun was just beginning. “I got to get to lunch,” he said.

“What’s you going to eat?” Eddie asked. “Some pussy?”

Everyone in the circle snickered. The faces around Caleb took on a nightmarish quality. He was sport for hard eyes and mocking expressions and cruel mouths. There were pimples on most of the faces, as shiny and angry and eruptive as the boys themselves.

“Heard your daddy was a big one for playing with pussy. I mean he didn’t beat around the bush, did he?”

There were yelps of laughter, poking of elbows into ribs, and slaps on backs.

“Muff diving’s one thing, but your old man, Jeezuss, I heard one time he took a bite out of a beaver. What’d he think, one gash wasn’t enough?”

The crowd was growing. It wasn’t just the pack now. Cal’s classmates were gathering on the outskirts, watching, laughing. There for the spectacle. That made it hurt all the more. Over the years Caleb had worked hard on not showing any pain in public. Every night he did his exercises: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the most miserable of all? He called himself all manner of names, tried to harden anything that was soft in him and face up to his own self-hate with a stoic face. But this time his conditioning failed. He could feel his throat tightening, could feel the onset of tears.

“Your daddy was one sick puppy, wasn’t he, Cal?”

“I want to get by.”

Eddie pretended he hadn’t heard. “But he was a proud, sick puppy, wasn’t he, Cal? Couldn’t murder all those gals without leaving a signature, could he?”

Caleb feinted a move in one direction and then almost escaped through a space between two of the circle’s sentries, but he was caught and thrown back. Eddie put his face close to Cal’s once again.

“Your real first name’s Gray, isn’t it? Just like your daddy’s real name.”

Cal’s tears started to fall.

“Anybody got a hanky for Cal, here?” Eddie asked. His tone was anything but sympathetic. He was feeding on the other boy’s pain. The audience moved in a little closer.

“Ever see that movie about your old man on TV?” asked Eddie. “Not many people were shedding tears the night he fried.
There was partying big time. There was a crowd down at the prison and signs saying, ‘Thank God It’s Fryday.’ And there was one guy walking around handing out recipes for Shame Fried Fritters. Said if you ran a little short of your daddy’s bodily parts, you could always substitute skunk.”

Caleb put all his strength and anger into his right hand and sent it at McGlynn’s face, but the bigger boy managed to move back and escape the blow. It was the opportunity McGlynn had been waiting for, and he used it to start pummeling Caleb. He wasn’t alone. He never was. The other boys in the circle closed in and took turns throwing punches. Caleb started gasping, the wind knocked out of him. There was no way out....

Caleb pushed himself away from the window, away from the memory. Being weak embarrassed him. Pressing crowds still took away his breath, and whenever he felt boxed in, he had to stifle the impulse to run. Like now. He decided he needed to eat or drink something, excuse enough to get him out of the room.

The hardwood floors didn’t cooperate with his desire for silence. They announced his passage with creaks and groans. He felt his way forward in the darkness, moving down the hall and past the living room. The kitchen wasn’t as dark as the rest of the house. The sink window was curtained, but the light from the full moon pressed through the colored fabric, painting the kitchen a translucent tawny rose.

Lola’s refrigerator contained mostly juices and greens. In the back was a carton of nonfat milk. Caleb didn’t examine the featured missing child on the carton, afraid, he hated to admit, of finding himself. He opened a few old cabinets, tried unsuccessfully to keep the ancient hinges from squeaking, and at last found a glass. He’d leave Lola some money, he decided. The last thing he wanted was to feel beholden to his hostess.

Caleb was in no rush to get back to the confines of his room. There was a cat clock in the kitchen that kept him company while
he sipped the milk. The cat’s large eyes moved in time with its pendulum tail. He tried to hypnotize himself by watching the moving clock. No matter how many times he told himself that he was getting sleepy, the clock just kept telling him it was getting later. He kept thinking about Anna and the kids and the havoc his secret life was undoubtedly creating. Anna had always told everyone what a good father he was, but Caleb knew that good fathers didn’t run out on their children. Maybe he wasn’t much different from his own father. He shivered. Being like his father had always been his greatest fear.

The tightness in Caleb’s chest returned. Changing rooms hadn’t helped. The memories knew where to follow. Glass in hand, he started to retrace his steps back to his room. A voice emerged from the darkness of the living room. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Caleb held on to the glass, but only barely. Lola was seated in the corner, her figure scarcely visible in the shadows. She leaned forward in the easy chair, half of her materializing. She was wearing a sheer nightgown with a low, clinging décolletage that showed off her curves.
His
curves, Caleb remembered. He wished Lola had just remained a voice; her revealed flesh bothered him.