The Kindness of Strangers (22 page)

People shook their heads, as if in disbelief. Sarah didn’t understand how the crowd could seem as angry at Jordan as they did at Mark and Courtney. She leaned her spinning head against the wall and prayed for the meeting to end.

But the questions went on and on.

Janet Porter stood up. “The paper this morning said that Courtney might get off scot-free if she pleads insanity.”

Kramble sighed, his exhalation amplified through the crowded room. “I can’t discuss details of this case. It’s an ongoing investigation.”

Another man in the auditorium stood up to say, “It wasn’t insanity. The paper said that since Courtney was the victim of sexual abuse, she may not have the capacity to know that her own behavior was bad for kids.”

A woman in the back row stood and shouted, “How can you not know it’s bad to have sex with a fourth-grader?”

Libby Carlisle hauled her giant-bellied self up from her chair and called out, “Courtney’s not in the movies, though.”

The man said, “She probably filmed it. She had that video camera everywhere she went!”

Too much outrage boiled in the room, and it needed a target. Instead of questions, people began standing simply to spout off. One man claimed that if he saw Mark Kendrick anywhere, he planned to shoot him. Another woman said she hoped they both got the electric chair, only to have ten other people leap up with “better” ideas: one of which was that they should be gang-raped and the video distributed for all to see.

The white sparkles crowded into Sarah’s vision. She left her spot on the wall and weaved toward the exit, the room going wavy, the white sparkles leaving only a small tunnel through which she could see. She fumbled through the crowd, terrified she’d faint before she made it outside. Her legs seemed to dissolve with each step, and the voices blurred into one roar. She flung open the same doors she’d entered through with too much force, and the bang rang out like a gunshot. She stumbled outside and gulped in the fresh air as if it were cold water. She half sat, half fell onto a step and put her head between her knees.

Gang-raped.
Educated people, people with children, had suggested that. How would that help Jordan or those other kids?

Sarah breathed in shallow pants. Sweat soaked her clothes; she was as drenched as the day she’d hauled Jordan out of the port-o-john. The breeze raised truth bumps on her wet skin. She remembered Jordan being seriously injured at a soccer game, knocked down in a tumble of arms and legs. Someone’s cleats had raked his thigh open badly enough to require eight stitches. He didn’t cry or show any signs of pain. Sarah even remembered the odd way he’d said, “There’s blood on my leg,” instead of, “I’m bleeding,” as if he were totally removed from the injury and the leg in question. How much training did that take?

Sarah kept her head down, concentrated on her breathing. The white sparkles dimmed, and she looked at the moss in the cracks of the cement steps between her feet. If only she’d known. Every part of her ached to go back in time to rescue that strange little boy.

The doors clunked open once behind her, then twice, and voices spilled down the stairs. The meeting must have ended. She knew she should stand up and go home—God knows she didn’t want to have to speak to anyone—but she felt incapable of moving just yet.

Someone patted her back. “Are you okay, sweetie?” She looked up to see Gwinn Whitacre and Libby Carlisle standing there.

Sarah tried to smile. “I got too hot. I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

It took several more rounds of “Are you sure?” and “Yes, thanks, really,” before Libby and Gwinn finally went on their way, Gwinn looking reluctant and concerned. Sarah made a mental note to send a thank-you note, or a pie, or something. She felt desperate to hang on to the few loyal friends she had. Sarah waved as Gwinn looked back once more.

“Sarah Laden?” That steady voice made her look up again. Robert Kramble stood beside her. “Are you okay? I saw you run out.”

He saw her? In the back of the gym? “I . . . I think I almost fainted.”

“Wait here,” he said, and turned to fight his way upstream through the exiting throng. His authoritative tone made Sarah want to get up and leave. He couldn’t just boss her around. But she put her head back down between her knees. She imagined herself invisible, floating above the crowd and its savage, ugly words.

“Here, Sarah.” Kramble’s voice returned. She lifted her head, and he offered her a cold Sprite. Sarah rubbed the can over her face and neck before popping it open and taking a swallow.

He handed her a wet paper towel. She set the Sprite down and pressed the towel to her cheek. The swarm of people parted around them on both sides.

Kramble sat beside her, his jacket over one arm. His sweat—which she had expected to stink—was almost pleasant, with a cilantro-like edge. The hair at his temples curled with dampness. Sarah lifted her own hair off her neck and placed the paper towel there. “Thank you,” she said. She rubbed her face.

“What happened to your hand?” Kramble asked.

Sarah pulled her hands from her face and stared at her palms, confused. He took her left hand and turned it over, pointing to the tiny scab and the blue bruise, now spread to the size of a quarter.

“Oh. A bird,” she said. “Defending its nest.”

He nodded and, to her relief, asked no more questions about it.

Sarah spread the fingers of her left hand wide and stared at it. Her hand went wavy, as the gym had moments ago. The white sparkles threatened to return as she remembered. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.

“What?”

“I just remembered. . . .” And she told him how two years ago, when Danny and Jordan were in the third grade, she volunteered in class during an art project. The kids were writing “I am” poems, describing themselves using similes and metaphors, and were to illustrate their poems with their own actual-size silhouettes, which Sarah and another mom traced onto big sheets of paper. They had the kids lie down and traced their outlines from head to toe. Jordan had refused. He’d said to Sarah, “I don’t want to draw my body,” and later had said in that spooky way he had of talking to no one in particular, “I hate bodies.”

Carlotta and her husband walked past Sarah and Kramble, down the stairs. Carlotta stared over her shoulder at Sarah talking to the cop.

Kramble followed Sarah’s gaze, then asked, “So did he ever do the drawing?”

Sarah nodded and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Kramble fumbled in his jacket and handed her a white cotton handkerchief. She stared a moment. Who used those anymore? She took it and patted her face. “Oh, God.” She sighed. “I was so exasperated with him. All the other kids were so into it. Some of the poems were great. Hadley—you know, the girl with the bike?—her poem started with ‘I am a rainy day with a smile,’ and she drew herself with raindrops dripping down out of her braids.”

Kramble grinned.

“And my son Danny, he wrote ‘I am black, a storm cloud,’ and he filled his body in with lightning streaks. See, this was just after . . . I mean, this was . . .”

“Your husband had just died,” Kramble said. “Danny was angry.”

Sarah nodded, new tears spilling down her face. Damn it, why was she being such a baby? She touched Roy’s wedding ring on its chain around her neck and pressed it against her breastbone. “The poem and the picture actually helped us talk about how angry we were that we lost him.” Kramble waited while she dabbed her eyes again and finally gave in and blew her nose on the handkerchief. “But Jordan . . . he finally let me trace him when he saw me trace a girl standing up. This girl had on a short skirt and didn’t want to lie down, so I taped the paper to the wall and traced her that way. And I saw him watching and asked if that would be okay, and he let me. But then”—her voice rose too high; she couldn’t control it—“once he had his outline, he filled in the entire body with handprints of red paint. No face, no clothes, just a body filled with handprints.”

She stared at her left hand again. “He
did
tell us. He told us over and over again. And we were too stupid to see it. I let this happen. I—”

“Shh,” Kramble said. He shifted to face her and reached, as if to take her hand, but pulled back. “You’d just lost a husband. You had two children of your own to look after. This is not your fault.”

She had wanted him to say that, but the words were not the comfort she expected. “Why do you do this?” she asked.

He cocked his head. “Do what?”

“This work. Sex abuse. How can you stand it?”

He faced forward again, looking out at the schoolyard. “I
can’t
stand it,” he said, as if that were the answer.

They sat in silence a moment. Most of the crowd had gone, and the clatter of folding chairs being stacked echoed from the gym behind them.

“I was around Jordan so often,” she said. “And if I’d only . . . I don’t know, if I’d only—”

“Only what? Name one thing you could have done, should have done.”

“Had a fucking clue,” Sarah snapped.

To her surprise, Kramble laughed, revealing that crooked front tooth.

“No, I mean it. All these signs.”

“They only seem like signs after the fact.”

“How do you think they found each other?”

“You mean the Kendricks?” Sarah’s abrupt changes of subject did not seem to ruffle him; it made her wonder if she could be bold enough to ask him what had happened to
him
.

Sarah nodded.

“I’m sure you read the papers.”

Sarah stared across the schoolyard, remembering that photo of Mark and Courtney in college, arms around that beaming little girl. The breeze chilled the sweat on Sarah’s neck. She shivered. Kramble picked up his jacket, and for a split second Sarah thought he was going to offer it to her, but he took a pack of cigarettes from the pocket instead.

She used to smoke in college, until she learned that smoking numbed one’s taste buds, which seemed detrimental to a chef. Not to mention she’d married a doctor who fanatically practiced what he preached. But she recalled how lovely a cigarette could be as one lingered after a fine meal and dessert. She watched Kramble light up and enjoyed the casual, familiar gestures. She almost asked for one but didn’t. The nicotine would make her dizzy.

Sarah pulled the paper towel—still damp but now warm—from under her hair. A teenager rode by on a bike and glanced at them. Sarah realized she and Kramble looked like a couple, idling here on the steps after everyone was gone.

She folded the paper towel into a square as she asked, “But . . . how on earth did they discover that they have this . . . this
thing
in common?”

He exhaled smoke in an angry rush. “We’ve seen that happen over and over again. It could take
us
weeks, even months, to diagnose a man as an incestuous father, but a female child molester can go out and find herself a child-molester husband like
that
”—he flicked his ash. “It’s as if they have letters painted on their foreheads that are invisible to everyone else.”

Sarah shook her head, trying to imagine it. “I mean, how does it first come up? What kind of offhand comment or . . . I don’t know what . . . could offer a hint? It boggles my mind.”

Kramble shrugged. “It happens. Think about it. There’s always a connection, some common interest. I mean, how did you meet
your
husband?”

Sarah blinked. “In . . . in college.”

“But how did you
meet
him, really, start a
relationship
with him?”

She thought a moment. “We lived across the hall from each other, in this dingy apartment building. This was when I was at the CIA.”

She saw his startled look and laughed. “That’s the Culinary Institute of America.”

He chuckled.

“Anyway, we said hi and stuff, and I thought he was cute; we’d talk if we ran into each other on the stairs or doing laundry in the basement, stuff like that.” As the words left her mouth, it was as if each one weighed a ton, leaving her lighter and lighter the more she talked. “But . . . oh, my God, you’re right. There was a connection, a . . . a recognition of something in common: in December he noticed my menorah. My parents had sent it to me, and I was feeling homesick, and I put it in my front window and lit the first candle. And he told me later he’d been wanting to ask me out, and when he saw that, he bought some challah and some wine and knocked on my door. And it was funny, because I happened to be baking my
own
challah right then, and I invited him in, and we tasted them both. And the stuff he’d bought was horrible, practically inedible . . . and mine, well, mine was
really
good. And it started snowing, this really pretty snowfall, and we went for a walk in the snow with the bottle of wine he’d brought. We kept passing it back and forth, hiding it under our coats, and we tried to feed the store-bought challah to some ducks, but they wouldn’t eat it either. . . .” She trailed off and didn’t tell Kramble how she made Roy dinner that very night, and they became lovers before they ever ate the meal. How Sarah’s butt and the backs of her thighs had been coated in flour from the kitchen counter. How so often their lovemaking revolved around food.