The Crystal Child (15 page)

“And what would you say?”

“That I’m very fond of Julia, as she is of me.  But I imagine that simply reinforces the crime, doesn’t it?”

“Would you say Julia seduced you?”

“Not at all.”

“You bear her no grudge?”

“Of course not.  I feel deeply sorry for her.”

“You know how upset your parents are.”  Aaron shrugged.  “If they have their way,” Briggs reminded him, “she’ll lose her license to practice medicine.”

“Pity.”

“She’ll go to prison.”

“Can I do anything to prevent that?”

“Perhaps, if you were willing to take the stand and speak for her.”

“Have I that right?  I believe my parents would object.  And the almighty calendar says they’re older.”

***

“Of course there’ll be a trial.” Jake said, straining not to shout.  “What did you think would happen?”

“You mean she could go to jail?” Alex asked, half choking on the words.

“She
will
go to jail.  They don’t let sex offenders walk away.”  His face was dark with wounded fury, his vexation directed at Alex for making him say these things.

“But you didn’t tell me she’d go to jail.”

“You should have thought of that before you spilled the beans.”

That sounded like an accusation. 
His fault
that his mother had been disgraced.  “But you made me tell you,” Alex protested.  “You didn’t say you’d go to the cops.”

“I didn’t go to the cops.  I informed the Laceys.”

“But you knew they’d go to the cops, didn’t you?”

“They had a right to make that choice.”

“No! Not if it means sending Mom to jail.  I didn’t want her to go to jail.”

“It’s got nothing to do with what you want — or what I want.  This is the law we’re talking about.”

The law
.  Alex wondered what that was supposed to mean to him.  What did it mean to his father?  The tears were coming now. Alex made no effort to hold them back.  Jake, relenting, said, “I’ll do my best to keep you out of this.”

“What about Mom?  Can’t you keep her out of jail?  You’re a big-shot lawyer.  You got all kinds of millionaire crooks off.  Why not Mom?”

It was all Jake could do to keep from slapping him.  “You’re being stupid.  Stop saying stupid things.”

At that point Jake stomped out of the room, putting an end to the only conversation he and Alex were to have about the crisis that was tearing the family apart.

***

God, it was ugly!  How long was she going to keep at it, tormenting herself, struggling to be released?  Yes, that was it. 
Released.
 As if from hideous agony. 
Let me go
, I could hear her body saying.  But she went on.

What did I expect?  I wanted so much from her, to lose myself in her.  She owed me that.  But there was no pleasure.  She was fighting her own body, driving herself, wanting something she could not reach.  There came a point, all I felt for her was pity.  Pity and revulsion.  I should have asked her to spare herself. 
Stop,
I wanted to say.  Why didn’t I?  But that moment of elation, that brief physical spark — she wanted it so desperately, it would have been cruel to deny that to her.

Watching her, I realized: there was something else, something underneath wanting to emerge, something she was only caricaturing, a bad imitation.   How did I know?  A memory, was it?  Yes, a memory, but not mine.  Is that possible?  To carry a memory not my own?  A memory older than me?  As old as time.  Deep inside.   A memory in the molecules. 
That’s
what Forrester is missing.  Not a code, but a memory.  The exploding brightness, actually too brilliant to be light, a wave of incandescence, blinding, stupefying.  We take time into us, all time, all the way back. Doors unlocking in every cell, in the coiling acids, the tiniest electrical links.
There is a world inside.
Folded away, an ancient vastness.  Falling, I was falling into it, falling out of time back toward the brightness.  How sad for her, never to know that vastness, that light.

***

“That’s no eleven-year-old boy,” Briggs insisted to Julia after his interview with Aaron.  “What is it about him?  He makes me feel like dirt under his shoes.”

“He’s different.  He’s one of a kind in the whole of human history.”

“Thank God! The kid is absolutely spooky. Smug, arrogant, older than his years.  Impossible to like.  He offered to put in a good word for you, but I’m not sure that would help coming from him.  On the other hand, if we put him on the stand that may win you some sympathy from the jury.  He’s bound to come across as an evil little brat.  My purpose would be to bring that out in order to turn the jury against him.  They might still convict you of molestation, but they won’t be able to think of him as an angelic little boy.”

Julia refused.  “I don’t want him treated that way.  You’d be making a monster of him.”

“Isn’t that what he is?”

“No!  He’s a wonder of nature.”

Briggs shook his head. “I won’t ask you why this happened.  Maybe you don’t know yourself.  But I admit to not understanding what my client is all about.”

“I saved him.  He’s my one claim to success.”

“And now he’s going to ruin you.  I didn’t want to tell you, but when I questioned him, I wasn’t convinced he really cared what happened to you.”

“Then all the more reason to leave him alone,” Julia answered.  “Let me take my chances.”

The trial was predictable.  The prosecution opened with Aaron’s mother and father.  The Laceys reviewed Julia’s efforts to take their son away from them.  At first they thought her motives were purely medical.  Now they believed she was acting under the influence of an unnatural sexual fixation.  Briggs disputed none of the allegations against Julia.  Instead, he called fourteen character witnesses, most of them medical colleagues. Their praise for Julia was unanimous and spirited, but every one of them floundered when it came to explaining how the woman they regarded so highly could seduce a little boy.  Unanimously they insisted nothing like that could have happened.  If it had, they could see it only as an act of madness.  The case never went to the jury.  When Briggs told her Alex was going to be deposed and showed her the questions he would be asked, she said, “Don’t let that happen.  Do anything.  Give them anything.”

“Very well,” Briggs said.  “Then that’s it.  Game over.  We throw ourselves on the mercy of the court.”

He entered a plea of guilty and left it to the judge, who had shown nothing but chilly disapproval throughout the trial, to decide the sentence. The result was better than he expected.  One year of hard time at the women’s facility at Stockton, four years probation, and a one-hundred-thousand-dollar fine.  That her medical license would be revoked went without saying.  Asked if she had any final words for the court to hear, Julia thought carefully, then said, “I have learned, to my sincere regret, that there are forces inside us that are stronger than reason.  I acted recklessly and unethically, but never with the intention of harming.  However you may disapprove of my love for Aaron — and I know you must — it is real.  But I apologize to him and to his parents and hope I may one day have their forgiveness.”

***

On the day Julia was sentenced to prison, Todd and Louise Lacey returned home from court satisfied that they had done their parental duty.  The guilt they felt for having entrusted their son to Julia’s care would never fade, but they had done all they could to see their son’s violator punished.  It was all they could offer Aaron, that and their continued love.  But the child they found waiting for them when the trial ended showed no gratitude. Instead Aaron was as sullen as if Julia’s punishment had been his own.  He made no secret of the fact that he saw his home as a prison and his parents as his jailers.  For the next several days, he retreated into a sullen silence, rarely leaving his room, eating little, refusing to explain his feelings.  “Give him time, he’ll get over it,” Todd Lacey said.  But it was a feeble remark; he had no idea what he meant by it.  What was he waiting for Aaron to get over?  He would have said an emotional trauma inflicted on him by a depraved woman.  But Aaron himself showed no sign of being wounded, no hint of regret for anything that had happened between him and Julia.  He was, if anything, more assertively petulant than ever.

Still, they could see no alternative to treating their son as the victim of a vicious crime.  Did they have to argue with him to prove they had done what good parents are expected to do?  When at last, in their exasperation, they did press their point, he responded as if they had betrayed him, as if he understood better than they did what the right and wrong of the matter was.  “If you expect me to thank you,” he said with cool deliberation, “you’ll wait a long time.  You interfered in my private life.  You took Julia away.  I never asked you to do that.  You never cared what I wanted.”  It was not the words that chilled them as much as the undisguised insolence behind them and the unforgiving stare in his eyes. The boy they brought to Julia Stein never talked like this.  There was a forcefulness and a cutting precision to all he said that often left them unable to reply.  His manner was that of a grown man stating his rights.  They in turn became resentful for his lack of appreciation, and so the circle went round.

The Laceys had convinced themselves that somehow Aaron’s bizarre behavior must be due to Julia.  She had traumatized him, perhaps permanently warped his personality.  In the process she had stolen his loyalty from them.  His infatuation with her — the result of cunning seduction — had grown into a mania.  They lived in the hope of seeing that change.  Meanwhile, they laid plans to move from the area, seeking to put more physical distance between themselves and Julia.  Todd even put out feelers for jobs in other countries: Canada, the UK, the Netherlands.  As time went by, Aaron grew more belligerent and more unmanageable.  He refused to go to school, even to the best private schools they could find.  “You expect me to sit in classes with kids?” he sneered.  “Next you’ll want me to try out for the cheer-leading squad.”

His reluctance to attend school was not all that surprising.  That problem had been with them since he came back from the clinic.  They knew that while Aaron was still under Julia’s care his intellectual development had been extraordinary, almost troubling in its precociousness.  He insisted that he needed no teachers.  His reading, especially in biology, was far beyond anything schools could offer.  Still the Laceys could not imagine denying their son a good education.  They offered to find tutors for him; Aaron showed no interest, but they persevered.  The first, a graduate student from Berkeley, was a quiet and pleasant young man named Jason, an English literature major.

Jason presented himself with a certain casual charm they felt might win Aaron over.  Bright and sensitive with an excellent academic record, he had much to offer.  He was well-traveled, played classical piano, and had a strong interest in film.  To their surprised relief, Aaron warmed to Jason almost at once, and for the next few months, became far more compliant than he had been since the trial.  He and Jason spent entire days away from the house, visiting museums, taking in movies and theater, or on wilderness excursions that might last over night.  Todd and Louise were never certain how much education was taking place, but they welcomed having somebody take their brooding son off their hands, even if it were for nothing more than palling around.

***

So now I have a baby sitter.  Jason is pleasant enough to have around, makes good conversation.  He’s a little stiff and shy, blushes easily.  Attractive in a boyish way.  He makes me want to tease him.  I give him a big hug when we meet, pull his arm around me in the movies.  Last Tuesday I talked him  into visiting a gallery on Union Street, a photography exhibit.  All very kinky, mostly male nudes in weird postures.  Puerile stuff, but puerile erotica is for adults only. Jason got me past the door to see the mysteries within. That was a minor victory.  “Let’s say we were at the museum,” I told him as we left.  We’ve gotten to the lying stage in record time.  He agreed.  I rewarded him with a chummy kiss.  He almost caught fire with embarrassment.  “I’m not gay,” he rushed to tell me.

“Me neither,” I said.  He probably wanted me to explain that, but I didn’t.  Maybe because I couldn’t.  I know the rules, but the rules make no sense.  Close your eyes and how can you tell whom you’re kissing?  And what difference does it make?

***

On the surface, the relationship looked encouraging, but Todd soon found himself troubled.  “Am I looking for things to worry about?” he asked his wife.  “Why am I so uneasy?”  Many times he asked, “Do you think this is working?  Do you think Jason is right for him?”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” his wife insisted.  “They’re being guys together.”

“But Aaron’s only twelve.  Is that old enough to be a guy?”  Louise tried to be as positive as possible about Aaron and his tutor. It was only by accident that she happened upon them one afternoon at the rear of a Sausalito bookstore, Aaron, Jason, and one other man of Jason’s age.  Watching from a distance, she realized they were poring over gay magazines, sharing the pictures they found, making comments under their breath, smirking.  She had no better evidence for suspecting that Jason was out to seduce Aaron, but as soon as she mentioned what she had seen to her husband, he insisted they find another tutor.

Todd gave no reason for firing Jason beyond a clear show of disapproval.  “You may know what I’m concerned about,” he said. “If you don’t ask me for an explanation I won’t ask you for one.”

Jason took his dismissal with a contrite acceptance, as if he were confessing his guilt.  “I don’t think you’d like to hear the explanation I have to offer,” he said.  Todd had placed a check on the desk between them, a final paycheck, but Jason left it there unclaimed.  At the door, he turned.  “Have you ever seen a Venus Fly Trap — you know, the carnivorous flower?  So very beautiful, its victims can’t resist going after the nectar.  You ought to paste a warning sign across Aaron’s chest.  ‘Beware.  Lethal beauty.’ ”

Aaron’s response was far less satisfactory.  “I suppose you think he’s gay,” Aaron said accusingly after Jason called to bid him good-bye.

“What else should we think?”

“Maybe you think I’m gay.”  He asked with a wry, teasing smile.

“I don’t know,” Todd answered.  “Are you?”

“Let’s see, that would make me bi-sexual, wouldn’t it?  After all, you did have Julia Stein jailed for humping me, and I believe she’s female.”

Todd bristled.  “Don’t give me smart-ass answers.  Have you been having an affair with Jason?”

“If I were, I wouldn’t tell you.  You’d have him locked up too.”

“Aaron,” Todd pleaded, “can’t you understand that we have a responsibility toward you?  Don’t you want us to care what happens to you?”

“It strikes me that all you’re out to do is to police my sex life.  Why should I help you do that?”  Then, giving a nasty twist to the words, “And what do you think you know about sex anyway?  I doubt you ever got beyond the post-marital missionary position.”

***

How much more of this can I stand?  The watching, the constant watching. Poor Julia!  It must be the same for her in prison.  Except nobody expects anything of her except to serve her time.  I’m the bird in the gilded cage, the gorgeous bird. 
Sing, pretty bird!  Sing for Mommy and Daddy!
  If only they would lay back and let me get through this.

The shining boy comes to me every night now, calling me to follow.  Ahead of us, a light in the forest, as if the sun itself were waiting there for us.  When we arrive, I see that the light rises from the ground, something buried, but too bright to be blotted out.  “You must un-Earth it,” the boy tells me.  “You must free it of the Earth.”

I begin to dig with my hands.  The Earth comes away easily for me, great mounds of it.  And I see that there is a city beneath us.  Sheets and planes of crystal emerge, the walls of great towers, the pavement of broad streets.  Soaring buildings on all sides.  I enter the city.  I know this is my home.

***

The Laceys waited a month, then hired another tutor for Aaron, this time an older woman.  Paulette was French, a part-time language teacher at one of the better private schools.  In her early forties, she was married, with two children.  She was a prim, sober-faced little woman, a demure dresser with rather too rigid a manner.  She insisted on being addressed as “Mme. Verlaine” and required Aaron to wear a shirt and tie when they met for lessons.  The Laceys did not expect Aaron to like her, but they had given up trying to guess what Aaron might like.  They settled stubbornly for doing their duty and providing him with a trustworthy teacher.

Their choice worked out better than they might have predicted.  Mme. Verlaine could offer Aaron little in the way of science or mathematics, but he did not care about that.  He was learning those subjects on his own.  He seemed content to learn what she had to offer, which was mainly literature, especially the French classics.  He also valued learning all the French Mme. Verlaine could teach him.  She in turn seemed to mellow as the months passed, losing much of her austerity.  His parents noticed that Aaron had begun to call her “Paulette” and to exchange amusing, private remarks with her in French.  He had also stopped wearing the shirt and tie, except when Mme. Verlaine took him to French restaurants or French movies on what she thought of as field trips.  Mme. Verlaine said she was teaching Aaron about French culture, but the outings began to look more like dates.  At a certain point, when she left the house, she would brush a kiss across Aaron’s cheek.  Once, glancing over Aaron’s shoulder and seeing Todd observe the gesture, she blushed and quickly looked away.

“What’s going on?” Todd asked suspiciously when Mme. Verlaine was gone.

“
Honi soit qui mal y pense,
” Aaron answered with the impudent smile Todd had come to hate.

“Don’t try to …” Todd began at a shout.

Aaron cut him short with a curt reply.  “The answer is no.”

“No, what?”

“No, we’re not fucking.  Isn’t that what you want to know?  Isn’t that all that really matters to you?”

Todd and Louise grew more watchful.  Louise, pausing outside the door of Aaron’s room, could hear giggling and whispers inside.  She was certain she heard Mme. Verlaine use the word
“cherie
.”  When Aaron walked her to her car, they held hands.  The good-bye kisses, though still only a polite buss on the cheek, were accompanied by an embrace that was lasting longer each time Paulette visited.  Too long for Todd.  “This is like a nightmare,” he complained.  “We can’t supervise their every move.”  He was on the brink of asking Mme. Verlaine to meet him for a private consultation when she called and asked to talk to him.

“I will not be coming to see Aaron again,” she said.  Her voice sounded forced and stiff, a woman fighting to keep herself under control.  “I have other obligations.  I hope you will understand.”

“No, I don’t understand,” Todd answered angrily.  “We’re paying you a very good fee.”

“It is not the money, Mr. Lacey.”

“Then what?  I thought you were pleased with Aaron’s progress.  You seem to be great friends.”

The remark flustered her.  “Ah, well, that is true.”

“In fact, you seem to be growing rather affectionate.  I’d hoped to talk to you about that.”  There was no answer.  “Mme. Verlaine?”

Her voice became more taut, now with a note of resentment.  “Mr. Lacey, was there not a trial last year?  It was in the newspapers, yes?  Your son and a doctor, a woman.  You did not tell me about this when you hired me.”  There was an accusatory undertone in her voice, as if she had been deceived.

“That’s in the past.  Something we would prefer to have Aaron forget.  What has that got to do with now?”

“No, Mr. Lacey, it isn’t in the past.  I must be frank with you.  Talk to Aaron.  You will see.  He understands more than you know.”  She allowed a pause to follow.  Then:  “Aaron is not an ordinary boy.”

Todd came away from the conversation shaken.  He had no choice but to accept Mme. Verlaine’s resignation, but he was angry and bewildered.  When he told his wife what she had said, he expected the same reaction.  Instead Louise gave a sigh of acquiescence.  “It’s Aaron.  Don’t you see that?”

“What do you mean?”

“These things that have happened, it wasn’t because of Mme. Verlaine or Jason.  Even before that, I don’t think it was because of Julia Stein.  Of course, she went too far, she shouldn’t have … but Mme. Verlaine is right.  Aaron isn’t ordinary.”

“You’re blaming him for being molested?”

“No, not blaming.  It’s nothing he can help.  Haven’t you sensed it?  Aaron has an attraction.”  She said the words as if she were confessing to something she had been holding back.  “It’s the way he’s become.  I don’t think that’s Julia Stein’s fault.  It’s something that’s not right in a child, but it’s there.”  She paused as if she were asking what her own words meant.  And then, with a shudder, “He’s so beautiful.  Beauty like that — it can be hypnotic.”

Todd glared at her, a fiercely querying stare.  “Don’t tell me you’re thinking of him the way Julia did.”