The Silver Glove (3 page)

Everybody wanted me to read the rest on Monday, and Mr. Petterick said he'd schedule it in. Lennie made me promise him personally that I would do it.

It was all very exciting and gratifying, and it was the last real fun I was to have for what felt like forever.

Time for my appointment with the shrink.

He sat in the old, oak swivel chair with scars all over the wood. His desk, more scarred oak, was piled with file folders in different colors. He had a couple of magazines open in front of him, as if he'd been reading two articles simultaneously.

He was wearing a very sleek gray suit. I couldn't help noticing his socks, which were gray with an electric blue stripe down them, and his black, shiny shoes. This was no ordinary, shabby, poverty-stricken school staffer. I was impressed.

I sat down, put my bookbag on the floor, and braced myself for the usual exploratory questions. He smiled at me and asked me how I was spending the money that I had been stealing from my mother.

My jaw dropped, leaving me literally speechless for about a minute. That's a longer time than you'd think.

The thing was, he was right. Lately, just now and then, I would sneak a quarter or two, or maybe even a whole dollar, from my mom's purse before she got up in the morning. I would tell myself that
a
, it was payment for extra chores and
b
, as soon as I could I would pay it back anyway. Mostly I did my best to forget it each time it happened, which was not easy. I mean, my mom and I get along a lot better than most kids and their mothers, so why was I taking this stupid risk of spoiling it all?

Mind you, in third grade I went through nearly a year of telling the most outrageous lies, and then it stopped; and I never figured that one out, either. I guess it was just a phase, and maybe that's what this was, too.

Anyway, filching quarters was not what I had expected to discuss with this guy Brightner. For one thing, how the dickens did he even know about it?

Into the ringing silence in his office I said squeakily, “What money?”

“The money you take out of her wallet in the mornings before she wakes up.”

“She told you that?” I said, playing outraged innocence over the pure panic I actually felt.

I was sure Mom hadn't said anything to this guy about my pilfering, because she didn't know about it herself. When my mother knows something about me that's bad and is supposed to be a secret, like that I've been to an all-night movie instead of sleeping over at Barb's or Megan's where I'm supposed to be, she gets this sad, tired look as if she's discovered I've been selling military secrets to Russia. She sits me down and starts to discuss my little deception very calmly and openly, and then we scream at each other for a while about different interpretations of the words “trust” and “privacy.” In the end we work out some kind of return to normal.

There had been no such scene about missing money, though. Besides, Dr. Brightner was brand-new. There hadn't been
time
for Mom to talk to him.

But if she hadn't told him about the money, how did he know? My mind raced.

Dr. Brightner read it.

“No,” he said. “She didn't tell me.” He let me think about that for a minute. I was feeling pretty sweaty by then.

“Have some candy,” he offered, leaning across the desk to shove a little plate of things that looked like tiny pink-, yellow-, and white-coated seeds at me. They smelled faintly like licorice. “You are kind of skinny for a girl your age. You're not one of these self-starvers, are you?”

I shook my head wordlessly.

“I'm glad to hear that.” He sat back again comfortably and quirked his eyebrows up. “Are you saving up the stolen money to run away, by any chance?”

“Runaways screw up their lives,” I said with as much haughtiness as I could muster. “I'm not that dumb.”

“Of course not,” he said soothingly. “But you did run off once before. It's in your school record.”

Well, I did once take a little time off for some urgent private business having to do with my grandmother and her magic. But nobody at school knew about that, and anyway, it was past and done with. What could it have to do with snitching change from Mom's purse now?

He let me think some more, which I did, sort of. We are talking good and scared here. I had to stop looking at Dr. Brightner because I had this awful feeling that he was reading my brain through my eyes.

I glanced around desperately. On his wall was a poster, framed: one of those meatloaf cats sitting on a stool and strumming a guitar. The words underneath—with notes to show that the cat was singing them—were about how he loved to eat “mousies.”

I knew who today's mousie was.

Dr. Brightner said, in that same rich, velvety drawl, “Maybe you were trying to get to Alaska that time, to see your father?”

I said, “My
father
? What for?”

“Do you miss your father?” Now he was starting to sound like a shrink, which was comforting, in a way.

“I don't know,” I said. “Not anymore. Not for a long time.”

“Sure you won't have some candy?” he said. “Take two, they're small. No calories. No? Suit yourself.” He grabbed the dish and popped a handful of the colored seeds into his own mouth. They crunched in his teeth. “A girl should have a father. Don't you think so, Tina?”

My name is Valentine, or Val for short, and I did not appreciate this guy using my baby-name that I don't use anymore. It didn't seem worth the effort to make a fuss about it, though. I was in a lot more trouble than that here.

He went on, “I think you and I and some older member of your family need to sit down together and talk about what happened when your father left. Maybe someone who wasn't directly involved but who was around and remembers how it was. Someone who could help us straighten things out.”

“What things?” I said.

“Oh, this and that.” He cocked his head consideringly. “You could bring your grandmother to see me. You do have a grandmother? I'm sure she knows as much as anybody about your family history. In fact, I bet she knows more than most people do about most things. I'd really enjoy the opportunity to have a chat with her.”

A quiver of irrational fear went through me. I mumbled, “I don't know where she is.”

“Don't you?” he said. “You're sure?”

“Well, sure I'm sure! She was in a retirement home in New Jersey, but she ran away. Nobody knows where she is.”

“That's a pity,” he said. He went very still, which felt weirdly menacing. Black darts seemed to flash out of his eyes at me. I had trouble breathing, as if his black looks were poisoning the air.

I couldn't think. All I wanted to do was get out of there. I grabbed my books and gabbled something about having to go study for my next class.

He got up and walked around his desk and around me, and he opened his office door for me, very ceremoniously. “Of course; but you'll let me know if you hear from your grandmother, won't you?”

I sidled out past him, smelling the faint cloud of licorice that hung around him. All the way down the hall I could feel him gazing thoughtfully after me, and what he was thinking I didn't want to know.

What had I ever done to this guy?

The rest of the day ground along the way a school day does. I convinced myself after a while that nothing special had happened, that I was under a strain and had sort of freaked, that's all.

Still, I cut drama club—I'd had enough drama for one day, thanks—and went home fast instead of hanging around outside with my friends or going for a soda.

Mom wasn't there. She'd left a message on the answering machine for me.

“Valli, I'll be late for dinner. The school psychologist called and asked me to see him. I hope this isn't going to lead to a showdown between you and me, which is the last thing either of us needs right now. Don't forget to pick up the clothes at the cleaners.”

Dr. Brightner wanted to talk to my mom? About what? The stealing, of course! Good grief, as if she didn't have enough on her mind already! I was stricken with guilt, not to mention sheer miserable embarrassment.

Maybe he would explain to her that lots of kids steal cash from their mothers at a certain stage. Maybe there was even a technical term for it among psychologists so they didn't have to lay it out to each other all over again every time they got together to talk about their victims behind their backs.

Or maybe he and Mom knew each other already, somehow, and she had in fact told him about the stealing and now that he'd met me, he wanted to make a report. There was nothing so terrible about that. Why did the whole thing make me feel so itchy?

Because my instincts are good, that's why, and in my heart I already knew that one way or another, this guy was bad, bad news.

 

3
The Claw

 

 

T
HROUGH THE WINDOW
at Kress's Old-Fashioned Cleaning I could see that the place was empty. There was just the long bare counter across the back half of the room, and the winding rack of clothes hanging in their plastic sleeves, and the old-fashioned cash register with the curlicues on it in polished brass, and an open copy of
Vogue
.

Probably Mr. Kress was in back. He prided himself on doing all his cleaning and pressing on the premises. There were prints of old New York on the walls. He kept the lighting low and mellow, which meant you had to squint to see that the
Vogue
was five months out of date, or that he hadn't gotten the stain out of your skirt, or exactly what he was charging for not having gotten the stain out of your skirt. These days when I spilled something in my lap, it was a major economic crisis.

Mom was of the opinion that Mr. Kress kept a crew of illegal immigrants working in the back room under sweat-shop conditions. This, she liked to point out (to me, not to Mr. Kress), would be the one really honestly old-fashioned aspect of his operation, the rest being pure, trendy hype. She said Kress's was an example of the galloping gentrification that was eating our neighborhood.

I felt grouchy and tired. I wished I was back in the noisy, plastic, fluorescent Eco-Wash Dry Cleaning Available on West 74th Street, where they farmed out your dry cleaning to some enormous central cleaning outfit and you took your chances on whether you'd ever see your clothes again. They had closed and opened up again as The Olde Salte Seller, a gourmet kitchen shop decked out like a ship-supply warehouse. So Kress's it was.

I opened the door and went inside.

“Mr. Kress?” I said.

No answer. The radio was playing very softly. And out of it came a voice that rooted me to the spot, as they say.

Dr. Brightner's ripe, rich tones said, “But you have to realize, Mrs. Marsh, that she's never really made her peace with her father's abandonment of you both.”

GOD. I was hearing Dr. Brightner talking to my mom. About me.

I could not move. Air slipped in and out of my open mouth in skinny little sips.

“My concern is that without a male figure to anchor her at this crucial time in her life she's liable to cut and run. Not all runaways are abused children, you know. Some of them are sensitive kids reacting to rather ordinary situations they don't feel they can cope with.”

Could they be having their meeting in the back room of the cleaners, for cripes' sake? And piping their conversation out front through Mr. Kress's stereo system? Was I just plain going crazy?

“Mr. Kress!” I screamed.

“There are all kinds of ways a kid can yell for help, you know,” the radio continued. “I think Tina's sullenness and total lack of cooperation with me today was that kind of signal. I don't mean to scare you, but I think it's realistic to think of her as a potential runaway, given her history and her problems.”

My problems! What problems? What kind of crap was he dishing out to my mom, anyway? He'd only seen me for ten minutes, for cripes' sake, and he'd done all the talking!

I had to get out of there.

I almost dislocated my arm, trying to yank the door open. It wouldn't budge. It was as solid as if it had been nailed shut.

And the big plate-glass window had changed. I couldn't see through it to the outside anymore. The glass had become a mirror, and in it, behind me, I saw something moving.

The mechanized clothes rack was turning all by itself. Not only turning. Advancing, coming closer to me.

No, I realized, that wasn't what was happening at all, of course not, it couldn't happen. The rack was trapped behind the long counter. What was happening was that I was walking backward, backing away from the mirror-window, toward the counter.

And the flap of the counter had silently raised itself, and as soon as I moved through that gap the chain of moving clothes was going to grab me up. I was going to get sandwiched in among the plastic-shrouded garments like just another empty dress on a hanger, and the rack would trundle me back into the darkness to someplace that didn't really exist, someplace I couldn't ever get home from.

That was why Dr. Brightner was talking about runaway kids to my mom. Because he knew I was about to disappear, just like Gran! Except, I reminded myself feverishly, he didn't have Gran, not if he'd been so hot to get me to bring her to him.

Why didn't I hear my mother's voice? There was only Brightner's, and in answer, a faint crackle of static. He
wanted
me to be scared. He wouldn't let me have the comfort of hearing Mom.

My legs walked backward another step. I couldn't look away from the mirror image of the moving rack behind me.

“Tell me something about you, Laura,” the voice from the radio went on. “May I call you Laura? Kids aren't the whole world, even though it may seem that way sometimes. It's no crime to give ourselves a little attention now and again, you know. To tell the truth, in my line of work I get lonely for some grown-up company myself.”