The Edge of Sleep (29 page)

The hostility in her tone was unmistakable and it pained and frightened the boy to hear someone treating his friend that way. There was another fear, less well defined that seemed to hover in the air, intensified in the seclusion of the bathroom, grew stronger still in the enclosed space of the tub behind the curtain. He had felt it in the first flurried moment following the initial knock on the door, felt it when Ash swept him into his arms, felt it when the big man pleaded—needlessly—for Bobby to remain quiet. It was a fear that was transmitted to him directly from Ash, but one that he harbored on his own, as well, and only now, trying to hear Ash speaking to the woman, did Bobby understand what the fear was. He was afraid of getting caught, of being found out. Ash’s fear. Dee’s fear was Bobby’s own. He crouched in the corner of the tub, as far from the door, and discovery, as he could get.

From his vantage point among the trees George could hear Reggie squawking at someone in cabin six, really going at it with the kind of rage she normally reserved for George himself. He had taken his stroll through the neighbor’s parking lot, making a return loop when he heard his wife’s voice rising in the distance. He reentered his woods just to the side of cabin six. He moved closer to the cabin now, careful to keep out of Reggie’s sight. He did not want to risk having that outrage turned directly at him. It was dangerous enough to witness it from a safe distance; a man could get hit with a stray invective even while hiding behind a tree.

George saw the door shut in her face. And then the volume really turned up. She used her key and pushed with all her weight against the door, but something was blocking it now. Whatever it was, if it had ears, George figured it would be deaf in a few seconds. Or it would wish it was.

Ash felt the woman pounding and kicking the door, each blow causing the wood to shudder and sending reverberations into his back, but she had no chance to force the door open against his weight. Her fury was obvious and vocal, but Ash did not know what else to do. Until Dee returned from work, he would keep the door closed. It was his only plan.

In the bathtub, Bobby strained to hear the drama in the other room. It was mostly the woman, but occasionally Ash would speak in his slower, lower tones. He could not understand what Ash was saying, but the woman’s angry, high-pitched voice came through the door clearly. She demanded to know what Ash was hiding and only slowly did it come to Bobby that she was referring to him. He was the thing being hidden. It was not simply that he was hiding in the way that Ash and Dee were hiding. He himself was the thing being hidden. It seemed like such a long time since Bobby had thought of himself that way. For weeks he had been a part of the family, sharing their excitements and their anxieties. Their situation had become his reality, and although he had not actually forgotten the world before he came to this room, it had ceased to have any reality for him.

Now, dimly at first and then with a building, accelerating, roaring clarity his old world came back to Bobby. A surge of nostalgia and homesickness swept through him with such power that he cried out involuntarily. The homesickness was followed by an emotion that had died even earlier—hope. There was a life beyond the door of the cabin, there was a world outside of Dee and Ash, and the voice of the woman yelling at the door was his connection with it. Bobby’s body trembled with the rush of emotion, a longing ache so strong it felt like fear. He stepped out of the tub just as the outside door closed and the woman’s voice was temporarily stilled. Easing the bathroom door open, Bobby put his ear to the crack. He could hear her this way. She was pounding on the door, still yelling, but with her voice now muted by the thickness of the wood. But she was still there, still trying to get in. There was still hope. Bobby clutched his good luck medal and squeezed his eyes shut as he willed the woman to batter the door down, to come charging in with police and weapons, to find him in the bathroom, to rescue him and carry him back to his own home, his real home. The possibility seemed so real, so palpably close, that Bobby began to cry. His crying was intermingled with exclamations of laughter as spasms of excitement wracked him.

Ash heard the strange gurgling sounds coming from the bathroom and wondered if the boy was sick. The woman on the other side of the door was weakening. There were longer pauses between efforts to force her way in, the righteousness of her demands sounded less convinced, but now Ash was confronted by this new phenomenon coming from the bathroom. He couldn’t leave the door to see what was wrong with Tommy, he knew that, however strong his urge to do so. He hoped the boy was all right. It was so unlike him to make noise of any kind. He barely spoke above a whisper these days, and his cries when Dee beat him were all properly muted by the pillow as Ash had taught him. This was one of the very best behaved of all the Tommys they had had, and Ash thought he loved him more than any of them. He hoped nothing was wrong with him.

The voice was gone! Bobby could no longer hear her. He silenced himself, holding his breath, but she was gone. Bobby burst from the bathroom, screaming.

“Help!” he cried, running toward the door. “I’m in here. I’m in here, help me!”

Ash stared, stunned, as the naked boy ran straight at him, then tried to run through him, over him.

Bobby threw himself at the door, clawing at the chain that held it closed, calling and calling.

“I’m in here! It’s me, it’s me! Help me, help me!”

Ash stood, lifting Bobby as he rose, pulling him from the door as he continued to cry out for help. He sought the boy’s mouth with his big hand as the boy called out “Please, please,” sobbing now. His face was wet with tears and mucus and as Ash silenced him and hugged his body to control him. Bobby struggled with a strength and desperation he had never shown before.

Ash knew it could not last long and shortly Bobby quit fighting and sagged against Ash’s body. Ash sat on the bed, his back against the headboard, and held Bobby against his chest.

“You promised to be quiet,” Ash said.

Bobby muttered something against Ash’s hand.

“You promised,” Ash said.

He looked down at the boy’s naked body held against his own. So pathetically thin, the flesh so close to the bone. So near the end.

“Dee will be disappointed,” Ash said.

The boy muttered something and twisted his head in Ash’s hand. Ash knew he was begging Ash not to tell. But Ash had to tell.

“I have to,” he said aloud.

There wasn’t any way he could lie to Dee, and that meant there wasn’t any way he could protect Bobby. Except one. There was always one way.

“Who do you love?” Ash asked. He did not remove his hand from Bobby’s mouth, but he knew the answer was “You. I love you. Ash.”

“I love you. Tommy,” Ash said. Then he added his real name. “I love you, Bobby.” Ash never forgot their real names. Dee never wanted to know them, but Ash never forgot. He wondered why that was.

Ash reached behind him and pulled a pillow away from the headboard. They would have to move again, now.

George watched Reggie storm back toward the office. So mad, he didn’t want to be within half a mile of her at the moment. Let her take her anger out on the cops or whoever she called—and she was certainly going to call someone; there was no chance she would just let this insult to her authority slide by unchallenged. If she found George she might well insist that he go over to cabin six and deal with it, but just what she expected him to do short of blowing the door open with a shotgun, George had no idea.

He waited until Reggie had reached the office before he moved, sliding deeper into the woods and then back toward the neighbor’s parking lot. As he went, he thought he heard a sound coming from cabin six. It was brief and terrifying, but then it was over. It had been so quick, so unpleasant in its implications, that George convinced himself he had not heard it at all.

Chapter 17

J
ACK RODE IN THE BACKSEAT
of the car along with a rolled-up sleeping bag, a security blanket, and a shopping bag full of books. The books had all been read before, which was why they were selected to come along to camp, they were proven favorites. A steamer trunk of clothing was in the trunk of the car, enough to sustain him without laundry for two weeks. Becker suspected that, in fact, the boy would probably make do with the same pair of jeans and perhaps two of the twelve T-shirts provided. Becker had helped prepare Jack for the adventure, using a laundry pen to inscribe the boy’s name in the collars of his shirts, the elastic of his shorts.

“In case your shorts run off by themselves and get lost, the police will know where they belong,” Becker had said to the boy at the time. Jack had laughed at the notion of his shorts wandering off on their own.

Karen was less amused. “No one’s going to get lost,” she said sharply. “Everything’s going to be fine. This is a very safe camp with excellent counselors.”

“Counselors have to sleep sometime,” Becker said. “Who knows what Jack’s shorts will get up to then?”

“They might go running off all by themselves,” Jack said, liking the idea. “They might go swimming ...” Karen silenced them both with a glare.

“Your shorts are not going anywhere without you, and you are not going anywhere without a counselor, is that clear?”

“I was just joking. Mom.”

“I am aware of that.”

“She’s laughing on the inside,” Becker said.

“I’m trying to impress certain notions of safe behavior on Jack. You’re not much help.”

Becker hung his head, chastened. He looked at Jack under his brows and winked. Jack rolled his eyes in playful conspiracy against his mother.

Karen saw it all. “I think you’re both a pair of baboons,” she declared.

It was a cue too obvious to overlook. Becker made a monkey face at Jack, who responded in kind. They were quickly walking like apes, scratching themselves, making hooting sounds. In the middle of their display Karen walked out of the room and slammed herself shut in the bedroom.

“She’s mad,” said Jack.

“She’s sad,” said Becker. “But she doesn’t want you to know it because she doesn’t want you to be sad, too. She wants you to have a wonderful time at camp.”

“Okay,” Jack said, uncertainly.

“Okay what?”

“I’ll have a wonderful time at camp.”

“Good idea,” said Becker. ‘That will make her very happy. The better time you have, the better she will feel.”

“She doesn’t act that way.”

“That’s because she’s conflicted.”

“What’s that?”

“Conflicted? Screwed up. It’s a grown-up thing, don’t worry about it.”

In the bedroom Becker, tried to comfort Karen, who was holding herself just on the teetering edge of crying without actually falling over into sobs and weeping. Her face would periodically turn bright red and puffy as if surely tears must flow, but then, with a physiological control Becker didn’t understand but admired, she would step back from the precipice, her face would clear, and the only residue would be a brighter, moister sheen to her eyes. It was as if she was reabsorbing the tears and having a really good cry inside.

“He’s going to be fine,” Becker said.

“How do you know?”

“He’ll be perfectly safe.”

“I know that.”

“It will be a good experience for him.”

“I know that.”

“It was your idea that he should go to camp.”

“Christ, I know that, Becker.”

She had been calling him Becker rather than John more frequently following the incident with the gun in Jack’s bedroom. They continued to make love with passion and tenderness, but outside of the bed they circled each other warily.

“You want me to tell you something you don’t know?” Becker asked.

“Only if it’s something good.”

“I don’t know anything about this that you don’t already know yourself.”

“I know that,” she said.

“Are you crying because you don’t want him to go ... ”

“I’m not crying.”

“Or are you crying because you do want him to go?”

“I’m crying because I’m a mother,” she said.

She allowed him to hold her, but she held herself more tightly. His embrace offered comfort to neither of them.

Now, as they rode north on 1-91 into Massachusetts, Karen seesawed back and forth between a steely efficiency that concerned itself with time and distance and other details of the trip, and a moist sentimentality. If she had been in the backseat rather than behind the steering wheel, Becker felt certain she would have had Jack on her lap. It was probably why she had steadfastly refused Becker’s offers to drive.

The car telephone emitted its muted ring.

“I should have turned it off,” Karen said, reaching for it. “I’m on my way to Jack’s camp, Malva,” she said, annoyed. She listened for a moment, then said wearily to Becker. “There’s another man in a motel with a boy.”

Since Karen had enlisted the aid of the state and local police, the Bureau had been alerted to possible suspects at the rate of six per day. At her request. Karen had been informed of all of them, and after they were investigated she had been immediately informed of the results. On several occasions she had gone to the motels herself. They had discovered fathers and sons, fathers and daughters who were mistaken for boys, men and men, high-school students up to mischief, lovers up to privacy, even a mannish-looking woman and her small dog. The effort had come to seem like an embarrassing waste of man-hours.

“Where is it?” Becker asked.

“Spencer.”

Becker glanced at the map, which had their route to camp highlighted in red ink.

“It’s on the way, about fifteen minutes from here,” he said.

Karen sighed. “I’m on my way to camp,” she said.

“We’re forty-five minutes ahead of schedule,” Becker said indifferently. “We can spend the time at a motel talking to a man and a midget ...”

“Or a ventriloquist and his dummy, or a woman with a small pony ...”

“Who has a pony?” Jack asked from the backseat, lifting his head from his book.