School Days

Chapter 59

BEFORE I MOVED M Y CAR, I reached in and took the keys out of Beth's. When Garner was gone, I walked back to the picnic table, sat across from her, and put the keys on the table.

She didn't speak. Neither did I. We listened to the steady sound of traffic from the pike. A burly woman in pink shorts and a white T-shirt walked a very small fuzzy white dog near us. I smiled at the dog. The dog paid me no attention.

"What do you see in him?" I said after a while.

Beth Ann looked at the table and shook her head.

"He's kind of soft and dumpy," I said. "But he's very annoying."

Beth Ann shook her head again. It might have been disagreement. It might have been regret. The white dog accomplished its mission on the small plot of grass, and the burly woman took it away. She was wearing some sort of sandals with elevated soles, and she walked with a lumbering wobble. From my inside coat pocket I took a copy of the photograph I'd found in Beth Ann's freezer and placed it on the table in front of her, next to her keys. She looked down at it without any reaction for a moment. Then she said, "It was you," and turned the photo facedown on the table, and put her face into her hands and moaned. I didn't say anything. No one was near us. I sat, quietly listening to the traffic and the wind and the occasional scraps of conversation that the wind brought us from people as they walked to their cars. The cooking smell from the restaurant was strong.

"You have it too," she said finally.

"Too?" I said.

"He has a copy."

"Garner?"

"Yes."

I sat back. It wasn't that I couldn't think of questions. I thought of too many, and they were all jockeying for position. With her face still pressed into her hands, Beth Ann said, "It's not what you think."

"I think it's a picture of you naked with Jared Clark when he was even younger than he is now."

She kept her face in her hands and shook her head again.

"Oh, God," she said.

While she was contemplating whatever ruins she saw in the palms of her hands, I got my questions sequenced.

"Garner has a copy of this picture?"

Face in hands, she nodded.

"How did he get it?"

"He ... he's so weird," she said. "At night, sometimes he goes through the school, searching lockers."

"What lockers," I said.

"Student lockers, faculty lockers. I don't know why. He said he was making sure there were no drugs or guns or anything."

"You believe that."

She shook her head.

"What do you believe?" I said.

No hurry, plenty of time, ask all the questions, keep the strands straight, one strand at a time.

"He's sick."

"And it excites him to prowl?"

She nodded.

"Did he find this picture in your locker or Jared's?" I said.

"Jared's."

"And what use has he put it to?" I said.

She kept her face in her hands.

"What use?"

"Is that what you see in him?"

"He's a disgusting little prick," she said.

I nodded.

"He makes me . . ." She shook her head.

"If you have sex with him," I said, "he won't tell."

She inhaled audibly. I waited. She exhaled even more audibly, as if she'd been running.

"Yes," she said.

"How long has this been going on?"

"Two years."

"Which makes the photograph more than two years old," I said.

"Yes.

"So Jared was how old when it was taken."

She was silent.

"Fifteen?" I said.

She shook her head.

"How old?" I said.

"Fourteen."

"So tell me about that," I said.

She was silent again, framing her thoughts, no doubt.

"Take your time," I said.

She did. But finally, she raised her face and looked at me. Her eyes were red, but she wasn't crying. The bright sunlight penetrated her makeup, and underneath it she looked haggard and older than she was.

"It's not what you think," she said.

"It rarely is," I said.

"Do you believe in love, Mr. Spenser?"

"I do."

She had full eye contact with me, and she leaned a little toward me when she spoke.

"Jared and I love each other," she said.

"How nice," I said.

"Do you find that so hard to believe that someone like me would love a boy such as he?"

"I do," I said.

She smiled sadly. She was regrouping swiftly.

"I do too," she said. "And yet ... and yet it's true."

"Are you aware that he is retarded?" I said.

"He absolutely is not," she said. "You think I wouldn't know?"

"Yes," I said. "I think you wouldn't know."

"He's reticent perhaps, a kind of dreamy poetic reticence."

"The best kind," I said.

"It began," Beth Ann said, "when he was sent to me by one of his teachers. They felt he was withdrawn. He was so quiet in class."

"To what did you attribute that?"

"Do you understand psychology, Mr. Spenser?"

"I've been in love for a long time with one of the great shrinks in America," I said. "I've absorbed a little."

"So you do believe in love."

"Yes."

"There's a medical condition," Beth Ann said, "called failure to flourish. Have you heard of that?"

"Yes."

"Jared has the emotional and psychological equivalent of that disease," she said.

"Caused by?" I said.

"A lack of mattering. A lack of centrality. No one thought he was important. He lacked self-esteem. He wasn't loved sufficiently."

I had been listening with my hands pressed together and my fingertips against my chin. I pointed at her with my pressed hands.

"And you had a cure," I said.

"You ... however you make it sound," Beth Ann said. "Yes. I felt that if I could love him enough, I could bring him to a fully realized life."

"Worked out good so far," I said.

It was as if she hadn't heard me. And maybe she hadn't. She seemed deeply engaged in spinning her web.

"And in the process," she said, "I came to love him, as I know he loved me."

I nodded.

"Who took the picture?" I said.

"Jared. He had one of those new digital cameras."

"The kind you hook up to a computer?" I said.

"Yes. It had a timer attachment."

"Did you have sex?"

"Then, when the picture was taken?"

"Then," I said, "later. Anytime. Were you having sex with Jared."

"We made love," Beth Ann said with great dignity.

"Did you get to spend time together aside from making love?" I said.

"It was difficult, as you might imagine. The prejudices of the middle class are fearful, as you may know. We took our time, and our passion, when we could."

"And you saw no hint of functional retardation?" I said.

"No. Of course not. His grades were good. He may have seemed slow to some because he talked slowly. But he talked slowly because he thought so deeply."

"As so many fourteen-year-olds do," I said.

"He is unusual far beyond his chronological age," Beth Ann said.

"Good point," I said. "Most kids his age are not in jail for murder."

"You can believe what you wish," she said, and sat back so that her breasts pushed against her sweater.

Whoops.

"Unless your degrees are fraudulent," I said, "you would be in a position better than mine to understand how unlikely it is that a woman like you would fall in love with a boy like Jared."

She pointed her breasts at me. Both barrels.

"You think it's impossible?" she said.

"Few things are impossible," I said. "I think it is improbable."

"So what would be your explanation?"

"I'd guess some sort of psychosexual pathology on your part," I said.

"That's disgusting."

"So what happened?" I said.

"Happened?"

"To the relationship."

"Garner made me break it off," she said.

"He refused to share?"

"That, too, is disgusting," she said.

"But true?"

"Yes. He said I had to stop seeing Jared or he'd destroy me professionally."

"With the picture," I said.

"Yes."

"Did you tell Jared?"

"I tried to be as kind as I could be," she said. "I told him the school knew of our relationship, and we would have to stop seeing each other for a while."

"How'd he take it?"

"How do you think he would take it. He was devastated."

"Do you suppose that made him go off on the school?"

"I don't know what to think," she said.

"You didn't rush to his rescue when he did go off," I said.

"What could I do?"

"You might have shared what you knew."

"How could I help him by destroying myself?" she said.

Her whole bearing had intensified, as if she had been rehydrated. I had a private bet with myself where we were going.

"You might have avoided describing him to me in terms of a classic school shooter. Isolated. Bullied unmercifully. That kind of thing."

"He'd already confessed and been arrested," she said.

She was starting to breathe more heavily, and her breasts moved as if rebelling against the sweater.

"I didn't see what good it would do to call attention to myself."

"You know anything about Wendell Grant?" I said.

"Nothing," she said. "I don't believe I ever spoke with him."

I picked the photograph up off the table and put it back in my inside pocket.

"What are you going to do?" she said.

"I don't know," I said.

"Do you suppose you could make Royce give me back my picture?"

"Probably," I said.

"Would you give me back your copy?"

"No."

"It's all I have of Jared," she said.

"You've probably had too much of Jared already," I said.

Her eyes widened and her voice softened. I could hear her breathing.

"I need your help," she said.

"You do," I said.

"Can't you help me," she said.

"Probably not," I said

"I don't like my arrangement with Royce," she said. "But I do it because he makes me."

"Uh-huh. "

"I want to escape from him," she said.

"Uh-huh."

"I would like an arrangement with you," she said.

"I need time to work on my poetic depth," I said and stood up. "I'll get back to you."