Dying for Chocolate

29.

I lunged toward her. “You bitch!” I screamed. “Where’s my son?”

Just before my hands reached Adele’s neck she grabbed her cane and whacked me across the stomach. I doubled over with pain. My stomach heaved. The cane lashed my back. The living room blurred as I crash-landed on the floor. Pain surged through my body. I vomited on the Oriental rug.

Adele stood over me and caned my arm. She screeched, “Get up!”

It was so hard. Everything hurt: my stomach, my back, my innards.

“Move!” she yelled. She flailed at my legs with the cane. “Get down to that bathroom!”

I moved. “Tom!” I cried as I limped, furious at my physical weakness. “Tom! Bo! Help me!”

“Shut up!” said Adele as she prodded my calves. “Bo can’t hear you. I put Valium in his scotch. And your policeman friend may be dead. One hopes.”

Desperately, I whirled to attack her. But she caught me across the shoulders with the cane. Pain shot through my body. I fell against the wall outside the bathroom. She poked the bathroom door open.

I peered in. Tom was on the floor. His big body was curled tightly in the fetal position. Prods from Adele elicited a few moans. He rolled over and lifted his face. It was pallid, an awful yellow. His eyes beseeched me.

“Get in there!” howled Adele as she cracked me across the ankles. The woman was strong. I lost my balance and put my hands out to avoid hitting my head on the tile floor.

Adele hovered overhead, a fuzzy-faced helicopter. “You just don’t understand,” she said as she closed the door. I heard her wedge something under the knob and then tap-step away.

I turned to Schulz. His eyes were glazed with pain.

He whispered, “I think I’m going to die.”

“You’re not,” I told him with as much firmness as I could muster. Fire consumed my insides. The poison had to be diluted with water immediately, I knew that. I cupped my hand under the faucet and brought handful after handful of water to Schulz’s mouth, then to mine. Ten, twenty, thirty handfuis of water. My body burned with pain. In some distant part of my brain I heard Adele slam a door. She was leaving the house. Leaving us to die. Who would be blamed? The general? Me? Pierre the critic would have a field day with this one.

I swallowed more water, squeezed my eyes shut, and summoned a mental picture of Arch. I had to find him. I had to. Find, find, find. I repeated this mantra while I got down on my hands and knees and peered under the bathroom door.

Bathroom doors can’t be locked from the outside. To keep us in, Adele had anchored the general’s portable door jam under the knob. I could just see the rubber end of the extended pole on the wooden hallway floor. It was no comfort to think her fingerprints might be on the top of the jam.

I closed my eyes and saw Arch. I tried to think about what the general had told me about the door jam. The wedged pole made it impossible for an intruder to push a door open. The trick, the general had said, was to put the jam under a door that opened toward you.

I rolled over. I was not going to try to push the bathroom door out. It was constructed to open inward, so it would not swing out to hit anyone passing in the hall.

“I just wouldn’t understand, huh?” I said weakly as I delicately turned the knob, pulled on the door, and heard the jam clatter on the hall floor. “I don’t think so.”

I hauled up on my elbows, whispered a prayer that Schulz, who was groaning weakly, would understand why I was abandoning him, and dragged myself down the hallway. Spasms of nausea tore through my body. I crawled toward the garage. Twice on my way I had to stop to be sick.

I had thought Adele was my friend. I had wanted it. I had imagined we were confidantes. And now I was paying the price of my own self-deception, with the poisonous drug mistakenly taken when you tried to make people love you.

I kept my head up as I crawled. I visualized ice, coolness, anything to get my mind off of what was really happening inside my abdomen. I visualized Arch.

The garage door was open. I dragged my body across the gritty floor. Each movement was a struggle, getting into the van, hauling myself up, opening the glove compartment. My hand closed around my trusty safety kit. I prayed thanks and swallowed some ipecac.

When I had made my torturous way back to the bathroom I asked Schulz to try to get up on his elbows. I cradled his head under my elbow. His face was awash in sweat.

Before he would take the ipecac, he murmured, “If I die, I want you to know how I feel about you.”

“I know how you feel about me. Swallow.”

He did. I was sick into the toilet and then I held him around the torso while he was sick. It didn’t take long, but it was horrible. If Schulz and I could go through this together, we could weather anything. I stood up shakily, then helped him to his feet.

“I’m going to look for Arch,” I said once I had rinsed my mouth out with tap water.

“The heck you say,” he said feebly. He grasped the side of the marble basin and tried to steady himself. “I’m calling the department. Get help to track down Adele Farquhar. Get a medic here for you, me, and the general.”

I didn’t say anything. I was shaky but okay, and there was no time to wait for the Furman County Sheriff’s Department to muster itself up to Aspen Meadow. I needed more water, and then I was going to look for Arch, whether Tom Schulz liked it or not.

I limped shakily out to the porch. Bo’s face was extremely pale. His snores sounded like a small propeller-plane engine. I shook his shoulder. Nothing. The automatic timer flicked on the pool lights. It was 9:00 P.M. The murky, phosphorescent half-spheres on the walls of the empty pool cast an eerie pall across the patio. I heard Schulz wobble to the kitchen, then murmur into the phone. I moved slowly to the living room and picked up a bottle of Perrier from the bar. I didn’t have any weapons, so I threw the general’s toolbox into the van. Wrenches and Perrier: yuppie defense. I roared down the driveway.

Where could Arch be? Why had Adele seemed so sure he would die tonight? Where you won’t be able to save him this time.

The pool.

I peeled off in the direction of Elk Park Prep.

I was so used to that road I could whip around its curves and drink bottled water at the same time. The Perrier was a necessity to help dissipate whatever poison lingered in my system. I knew from reading about Spanish fly that some people became much sicker than others, and it didn’t necessarily depend on the dose. This would explain why Schulz had been sick before me. I shook my head from side to side. My brain felt woozy. I ordered myself to sharpen up. My sensibilities might be the only thing to save Arch.

Luckily, some vestige of mental sharpness kicked in just when the van careened around the last curve and came up on the school entrance. I had to slam on the brakes to avoid smashing into the electrified gate.

I cursed mightily and stepped gingerly out of the van. The gate was armed and the stone wall was too high to scale. I wished every flower behind Elk Park Prep’s deer-proof gate would burn in hell or be eaten by a marauding herd of wild animals.

I stared at the electrified wires. I couldn’t risk touching it: I had heard too many stories of electric shock throwing unsuspecting humans for first-and-ten yardage. But I had to get through. Short of breaking the power circuit. . . But why break it? Why not keep it? I walked back to the van and got the general’s wire cutters and my jumper cables.

I hustled back to the gate and began to attach the jumper cables to the wire. I thought that I would have given a year’s supply of unsalted butter for the presence of a rocket scientist. Ten years’ worth for an electrical engineer.

I clipped the wire and didn’t die. Hallelujah. I cut savagely at the fence, tore out the hole I’d made, and began to run up to the school. I didn’t want them— whoever they were—to hear me coming.

There were no infrared security lights here to detect human approach. Why should there be? They had electricity to keep Bambi out. Still, the shadows of trees cast long, fingered shadows across the road and made my heart pound in my chest. Voices carried through the night air from the pool site. Every fifteen yards up the driveway, short lanterns on poles shed disks of yellow light. Poppies and bluebells waved in the night breeze like fairy-sentries on their mounds. I focused straight ahead and walked fast until I was at the wire fence surrounding the construction area.

Another damn fence.

I knew it was six feet exactly, and that it was required by building code when a pool was under construction. If you wanted to get in easily, you had to go through the gate, now closed and locked. Adele had somehow wea-seled the code out of the construction workers, because I could see Arch. I could hear him splashing and calling to someone who was holding a flashlight and either reading or writing in a notebook next to the gate. But who was it? There was no car in the parking lot. The voice I could hear was female. If Adele was around, she was not visible. I listened and then recognized the voice: Sissy.

Arch had known something was wrong. Why was he playing? Or was he?

On the far side of the pool area behind the newly installed diving board, a small mountain of dirt bordered the concrete deck. The chain-link fence ran behind the dirt pile. On that side, the area behind the fence fell away sharply. I could hide behind that ridge, but what good would it do me? I had to get through the chain-link fence. Arch had signaled he was in trouble. Maybe Sissy had some kind of weapon. I didn’t want to find out by feeling it against my skull.

I scanned the school grounds. The dark silhouette of the old hotel building rose ominously over the parking lots. Here and there in the darkness, floodlights shed tents of light. The tall evergreens that peppered the campus whooshed in the night wind.

I crouched like an Indian and stumbled over to behind the fence. From where I was hidden, I could not see Arch. I gripped the wire cutters and began to clip. Arch must have been over by Sissy. Their voices were somewhat distant. They began to argue. “You . . . you . . .” Arch was saying. I couldn’t make the rest of it out.

Then she said sharply, loudly, the way you do when you want to change the subject, “Forget about it! You have to do this thing with the manacles! Adele doesn’t want another messed-up magic trick in her pool!”

Arch shrieked, “I don’t want to! My mom wouldn’t want me—”

“Shut up, scaredy-cat. Besides, if you don’t do it, Adele’s going to fire your mother! Is that what you want?”

I ran through the soft dirt to where I could see them. Dim light from a distant floodlamp cast long, thin shadows across the concrete deck. Sissy leaned over and appeared to be rummaging in a bag. Her notebook was on the ground, papers askew. Did she have a weapon? I couldn’t tell. Arch had his back to her. He put his hands behind him. Sissy took out a stick and two pieces of rope. My heart stopped.

The Chinese manacles. Arch’s favorite trick. The magician appears to be shackled at the wrists with the ropes, which are threaded back through the tube and drawn tight by one or more assistants. The trick is that a tiny piece of string attaches the ropes. When the trick is done right, the assistant who puts the magician into the shackle breaks the string by appearing to pull the ropes taut. Sissy accompanied the cuffed Arch over to the diving board.

I clawed madly at the dirt to get back around to the fence. Blood beat in my ears. I sent clods of soil flying. God, help me, I begged as I cut as fast as I could. I could not imagine what Adele had used to replace the string inside the manacles.

“I think you need to be over here next to me while I’m doing this,” came Arch’s voice, much closer now. He must have been on the diving board. Sissy said something indistinguishable. “Okay!” cried Arch. “You pull it tight and then I’ll go off the board. Then it’ll look like I get out of them underwater.”

“Oh, all right,” came Sissy’s voice.

I clipped the last two wires and ripped out the hunk of fence just as a splash erupted from the pool. Seconds ticked off in my head—one, two, three, four, five—as I tore up the dirt mound behind the diving board. Sissy, fully clothed, was still standing on the board. I leaped up on the board and pushed her into the water. She shrieked before splashing in.

Arch’s head emerged from the water. He sputtered and coughed. Yelled, “I can’t seem to get them off!” His voice was full of panic.

The water was like ink. I jumped away from the board and Arch’s voice. The cold was a shock. Once in the water, I couldn’t see a thing. Fear seized my body. Arch was thrashing nearby. Sissy was yelling, “Who is it?” but I had no intention of answering. I swam to where I thought Arch was. With my arms rigid in front of me, I dove. I was hoping to reach Arch, but only nicked the bottom of the pool. I brought my legs to the pool floor and pushed upward. Sissy had scrambled out of the pool. I heard her voice but could not see her. A few feet behind me, Arch surfaced and yelped. I lunged for him.

“It’s me, it’s me, it’s me!” I screamed when I had hold of one of his arms.

He was screaming and thrashing in a complete panic. “Mom!” he sobbed. “Mom! I can’t get out of these things!”

I put my arm across his chest. Treading water madly, I pushed up on his head and shoulders so they were above the water. With his arms locked in the handcuffs, Arch’s body was heavy, hard to grip. He thrashed against the constraints and gagged helplessly on the water.

“Hold still! Stop moving!” I yelled. The water raged with his kicking and jerking. I couldn’t hold on to him. My hair fell like cold seaweed over my eyes and I was blinded. A sudden unwanted memory of being caught by the undertow on the Jersey shore rolled over me. The dark water had sucked me down like a muscled giant, and I had had the very clear thought, at age eleven, that I was about to die.

My lungs burned as I heaved up again and caught Arch under his armpits. Come on, honey, come on, I sent my thoughts to him the way I had prayed in childbirth. If we can just get through the next five minutes, I thought, if we can just get through . . .

His slippery body quieted. His cough was still ragged, but he had stopped fighting the water so hard. I began a one-armed crawl to the side. Slowly, slowly, I kicked and pulled and fought off sheer panic. My eyes burned. I swallowed the heavily chlorinated water. I couldn’t see the pool’s edge, but in a minute my head cracked the cement.

“Okay, carefully, carefully,” I said to Arch. He shook loose from me, his hands still bound, and walked suddenly up the submerged concrete steps.

“Goldy, it’s you!” said an astonished, shivering Sissy. “What happened in there? Did you push me in? What happened to Arch?”

I glanced around at my son. Despite the burn from the chlorine, my eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. He had crouched down to bring his hands close to his feet. Savagely, he tromped on the bamboo pole with its ropes that pinned his wrists. Within a moment the bamboo broke and he wriggled his arms free.

Sissy’s hands were empty. No weapon. “Get a towel,” I ordered her, unwilling for the moment to accuse her of attempted murder or being an accessory thereto. Her face puzzled, she silently handed me a couple of small towels. I wrapped” both of them around Arch, who was sniffling hard and coughing.

“Mom, I was trying to get away from her! I thought if I could get out of the manacles quickly, I’d be able to run away!”

“It’s okay, Arch, it’s okay.” I grabbed a tarpaulin that was covering some pipes, then picked up one of the pipes. I looked around to where Sissy had been sitting. No weapon there, either—nothing but the bag, her flashlight, and her school notebook.

“Let’s all get back to the van,” I said. I reached the long-handled flashlight before Sissy could get it. “I don’t want to be here if Adele comes back. And don’t touch me or Arch,” I warned Sissy fiercely as I brandished the pipe and the flashlight. She gaped at me.

Arch said, “But, Mom, you have to look at her notebook! You have to—”

“What we have to do is get out of here,” I said curtly. Sissy marched sulkily in front of us. When we were all in the van I turned the heat to high and handed Arch the pipe and flashlight. He knew what to do with them if he needed to. Greeted by a rush of cool air from a cold engine, I turned to Sissy as we lurched forward.

“You want to tell me why you’re here?”

“I was taking care of Arch,” she whined. “Just until Adele got back with you. I don’t know what happened to her.” She added, “She was paying me to keep him there.”

“Did that include drowning him?”

“No!” she exclaimed. “Of course not! Adele gave me the bag with the tricks and just told me to make sure he practiced with the Chinese manacles tonight. That’s all.”

“And what about pushing me into the glass case at the café? Did she pay you for that, too, you little bitch?”

Sissy snorted. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you!” she protested. “I was just supposed to warn you off. She’s Julian’s mother! She told me! She could do so much for him financially, for his future and everything. She said you were screwing it up!”

I heard Arch gasp and cough upon hearing about Julian’s parentage.

“And yes,” Sissy was saying, “she paid me to push you. She said it would save you from being hurt.”

I was so angry I didn’t even want to talk to her. I said, “Arch? Did you see Adele with Brian Harrington out by the pool last night?”

Sissy caught her breath. Arch snuffled mightily, then coughed again. He said, “Yeah, I guess. So what? I thought she’d tell on me for turning off the security system and sneaking in late from the pool. When she didn’t, I didn’t tell on her, either.”

Ah, playground morality. I said, “You know she fixed your manacles not to work? You should have told me you saw her!” I could hear the scolding in my voice so I stopped. I was so happy to see Arch alive, I couldn’t imagine bawling him out.

Arch coughed and tried to clear his throat repeatedly as we jounced and swerved along the road to Aspen Meadow. Whenever he stopped coughing, he sniveled and shivered. Where was I supposed to take him? I felt bad about Schulz. I knew I had to go back and check on him at the Farquhars. Arch’s clean, dry clothes would be there, too. But I would only go in if the entire Furman County Sheriff’s Department assured me it was safe.

“Maman,” said Arch with a loud sniff. “Comment s’appelle felle?”

“Oh, Arch,” I said, “I’m in no mood—”

Sissy said, “This isn’t fair. My father’s the only one in my family who speaks French.”

Arch coughed. He insisted, “Comment s’appelle feller

What was Sissy’s name? What kind of question was that? I took a deep breath.

I said, “Elle s’appelle Sissy.”

“Et le surnom?” Arch persisted. “En français, s’il vous plaît. “

I shook my head. Too much stuff going on in one evening. I was not in the mood, not in the mood . . .

Slowly, my mind shifted French gears. I pulled the car over onto a narrow slice of shoulder. I turned with great deliberateness to Sissy. What was the word for stone in French?

I glared at the teenager sitting next to me.

I said, “Pierre.”