Tenderness (10 page)

“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 need 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.

Now in Aunt Phoebe’s house, he finished breakfast with the last swallow of the sweet coffee, disappointed to realize that somehow he had adapted to the bitter brew of the facility. He looked up at his aunt, really seeing her for the first time since his childhood. She was tall and thin, a combination of sharp angles: jawline, cheekbones, and nose. But her eyes were mild, light blue, and always seemed as if dazzled by light, on the edge of tears.

She had never married, wore fancy dresses and high heels even when she went off to work at Essex Plastics, where she was supervisor of the assembling department. She went to the hairdresser every Friday evening. Bright lipstick, thickly applied, disguised her thin lips. She wore high heels even when she did the housework, and she clicked across the floor in the high heels now as she went to the window in the living room.

“They’re out there again,” she called to Eric.

He joined her at the window but was careful to keep out of sight. Three vans, emblazoned with television logos, were parked at the curb across the street. Thirty or so people, young and old, milled around on the sidewalk, carrying the usual signs. Some of them stared glumly at the house, eyes dull and resentful. Others wore eager expressions, smiled and waved, in the hope probably that Eric was looking out.

A bald-headed man wearing a white T-shirt and jeans stepped out of a television van and aimed a camcorder at the house, focusing finally at the window where Eric and Aunt Phoebe stood. Aware of zoom lenses, Eric drew away and pulled his aunt with him.

“What’s the matter with all those people?” Aunt Phoebe said. “Don’t they have better things to do?”

“They’ll go away after a while,” Eric said.

And so will I
.

“Come with me, Eric,” she said, leading him to the parlor. They sat across from each other, a small strongbox on the coffee table. She reached into the box and pulled out a blue bankbook, which she handed to him.

“I deposited the insurance money at First National downtown,” she said. “As you know, Eric, I was executor of the estate and also the trustee. The
money is in both our names, but it’s yours to do with as you please. A bit over fifteen thousand dollars.”