Silent Partner

29

He’d parked a big restored Triumph motorcycle in back of the Seville.

Two helmets, one candy-apple red, the other starred and striped, dangled from the handlebars. He put on the red one, climbed on, and kick-started the bike.

I said, “Who told you I was here? Wendy?”

He ran his hand over his bristle-top and tried to stare me down.

“We take care of each other, mister.”

He gave the bike gas, set off a dust storm in the dry weeds, then did a wheelie and peeled out. I jumped into the Seville, trailed him as quickly as I could, lost sight of him past the abandoned press, but found him a second later, headed back toward the village. I put on speed, caught up. We passed the mailbox that bore his family name, kept going until the schoolhouse, where he decelerated further and signaled right. He shot up the driveway, circled the playground, came to a halt at the schoolhouse steps.

He climbed the stairs, taking three at a time. I followed, noticed a wooden sign near the entrance.

WILLOW GLEN SCHOOL

ESTABLISHED 1938

ONCE PART OF THE BLALOCK RANCH

The letters were rustic and burned into the wood. Same style on the sign marking La Mar Road, a private road in Holmby Hills. As I stopped to take that in, Gabriel made it to the top of the stairs, threw open the door, and let it swing shut behind him. I ran up, caught it, and walked into a big, airy schoolroom that smelled of fingerpaint and pencil shavings. On the brightly painted walls were health and safety posters, crayon drawings. No apples. Blackboards hung on three walls, below Palmer penmanship guides. An American flag dangled over a large, round clock that put the time at 4:40. Facing each blackboard were about ten wooden school desks- the old-fashioned type, with narrow tops and inkwells.

A partners’ desk faced all three seating groups. A fair-haired woman holding a pencil sat behind it. Gabriel stood over her, whispering. When he saw me, he straightened and cleared his throat. The woman put the pencil down and looked up.

She appeared to be in her early forties, with short wavy hair and broad, square shoulders. She wore a short-sleeved white blouse. Her arms were tan, fleshy, ending in dainty, long-nailed hands.

Gabriel whispered something to her.

I said, “Hello,” and came closer.

She stood. Six feet or close to it, and older than a first impression suggested- late forties or early fifties. The white blouse was tucked into a knee-length brown linen skirt. She had heavy breasts, a thin, almost pinched waist that accentuated the breadth of her shoulders. Beneath the tan was a bed of ruddiness- a suggestion of the same coral tone that blanketed her son like some perpetual sunburn. She had a long, pleasant face enhanced by carefully applied makeup, full lips, and large, luminous, amber eyes. Her nose was prominent, her chin cleft and firmly set. An open face, strong and weathered.

“Hello,” she said, without warmth. “What can I do for you, sir?”

“I wanted to talk about Sharon Ransom. I’m Alex Delaware.”

Hearing my name changed her. She said, “Oh,” in a weaker voice.

“Mom,” said Gabriel, taking her arm.

“It’s all right, honey. Go back to the house and let me talk to this man.”

“No way, Mom. We don’t know him.”

“It’s all right, Gabe.”

“Mo-om.”

“Gabriel, if I tell you it’s all right, then it’s all right. Now kindly get back to the house and attend to your chores. The old Spartans back of the pumpkin patch need pruning. There’s still plenty of corn to husk, and the pumpkin vines need tying.”

He grunted, gave me the evil eye.

“Go, Gabey,” she said.

He removed his hand from her arm, shot me another glare, then pulled out his key ring and stomped out, muttering.

“Thank you, honey,” she called out just before the door closed.

When he was gone, she said, “We lost Mr. Leidecker last spring. Since then, Gabe’s been trying to replace his dad and I’m afraid he’s grown overly protective.”

“A good son,” I said.

“A wonderful one. But he’s still just a child. The first time people meet him, they’re overwhelmed by his size. They don’t realize that he’s only sixteen. I didn’t hear his bike start. Did you?”

“No.”

She walked to a window and yelled down: “I said back home, Gabriel Leidecker. Get those vines propped up by the time I get back or it’s curtains for you, kid.”

Protest noises floated up from below. She stood in the window, hands on hips. “Such a baby,” she said with affection. “Probably my fault- I was much harder on his brothers.”

“How many children do you have?”

“Five. Five boys. All married and gone except for Gabey. Subconsciously I probably want to keep him immature.”

She shouted, “Scoot!” and waved out the window. The rumble of the Triumph filtered up to us.

When the silence returned, she shook my hand and said, “I’m Helen Leidecker. Forgive me for not greeting you properly. Gabe didn’t tell me who you were or what you were about. Just that some city stranger was snooping around the Ransoms’ place and wanting to talk to me.” She pointed to the school desks. “If you don’t mind one of those, please sit down.”

“Brings back memories,” I said, squeezing behind a front-row seat.

“Oh, really? Did you attend a school like this?”

“We had more than one room, but the setting was similar.”

“Where was that, Dr. Delaware?”

Dr. Delaware. I hadn’t given her my title. “Missouri.”

“A midwesterner,” she said. “I’m originally from New York. If someone had told me I’d end up in a sleepy little hamlet like Willow Glen, I’d have thought it hilarious.”

“Where in New York?”

“Long Island. The Hamptons- not the wealthy part. My people serviced the idle rich.”

She went back behind her desk and sat.

“If you’re thirsty,” she said, “there’s a cooler full of drinks around back, but I’m afraid all we’ve got is milk, chocolate milk, or orange drink.” She smiled, got younger again. “I’ve repeated that so many times it’s etched indelibly into my brain.”

“No thanks,” I said. “I had a big lunch.”

“Wendy’s a wonderful cook, isn’t she?”

“Wonderful early warning system too.”

“As I said, Dr. Delaware, this is a sleepy little hamlet. Everyone knows everything about everybody.”

“Does that include knowledge of Shirlee and Jasper Ransom?”

“Especially them. They need special kindness.”

“Especially now,” I said.

Her face collapsed, as if suddenly filleted. “Oh, gosh,” she said, and opened a desk drawer. Taking out an embroidered handkerchief, she dabbed at her eyes. When she turned them on me again, grief had made them even larger.

“They don’t read the papers,” she said, “can barely read a primer. How am I going to tell them?”

I had no answer for that. I was weary of searching for answers. “Do they have other family?”

She shook her head. “She was all they had. And me. I’ve become their mother. I know I’m going to have to deal with it.”

She pressed the handkerchief to her face like a poultice.

“Please excuse me,” she said. “I’m as shaky as the day I read about it-that was a horror. I just can’t believe it. She was so beautiful, so alive.”

“Yes, she was.”

“For all intents and purposes I was the one who raised her. And now she’s gone, blotted out. As if she never existed in the first place. Such a damned, ugly waste. Thinking about it makes me angry at her. Which is unfair. It was her life. She never asked for what I gave her, never… Oh, I don’t know!”

She averted her face. Her makeup had started to run. She reminded me of a parade float the morning after.

I said, “It was her life. But she left a lot of people grieving.”

“This is more than grief,” she said. “I’ve just been through that. This is worse. I thought I knew her like a daughter, but all these years she must have been carrying around so much pain. I had no idea- she never expressed it.”

“No one knew,” I said. “She never really showed herself.”

She threw up her hands and let them drop like dead weights. “What could have been so terrible that she lost all hope?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m up here, Mrs. Leidecker.”

“Helen.”

“Alex.”

“Alex,” she said. “Alex Delaware. How strange to meet you after all these years. In a way I feel I know you. She told me all about you- how much she loved you. She considered you the one true love of her life, even though she knew it could never work out because of your sister. Despite that, she admired you so deeply for the way you devoted yourself to Joan.”

She must have read the shock on my face as pain and gave me a look rich with sympathy.

“Joan,” I said.

“The poor thing. How’s she doing?”

“About the same.”

She nodded sadly. “Sharon knew her condition would never really improve. But even though your commitment to Joan meant you could never commit fully to anyone else, she admired you for it. If anything, I’d say it intensified her love for you. She talked about you as if you were a saint. She felt that kind of family loyalty was so rare nowadays.”

“I’m hardly a saint,” I said.

“But you are a good man. And that old cliché remains valid as ever: They’re hard to find.” A faraway look came onto her face. “Mr. Leidecker was one. Taciturn, a stubborn Dutchman, but a heart of gold. Gabe has some of that goodness- he’s a kind boy. I only hope losing his dad so young doesn’t harden him.”

She stood up, walked over to one of the blackboards, and made a few cursory swipes with a rag. The effort seemed to exhaust her. She returned to her seat, straightened papers, and said, “It’s been a year for losses. Poor Shirlee and Jasper. I so dread telling them. It’s my own doing. I changed their lives; now the change has wrought tragedy.”

“There’s no reason to blame you-”

“Please,” she said gently. “I know it’s not rational, but I can’t help the way I feel. If I hadn’t gotten involved in their lives, things would have been different.”

“But not necessarily better.”

“Who knows,” she said. Her eyes had filled with tears. “Who knows.”

She looked at the clock on the wall. “I’ve been cooped up in here all afternoon grading papers. I could really use a stretch.”

“Me too.”

As we descended the schoolhouse steps I pointed to the wooden sign.

“The Blalock Ranch. Weren’t they into shipping, or something?”

“Steel and railroads. It was never really a ranch. Back in the twenties, they were competing with Southern Pacific for the rail lines connecting California with the rest of the country. They surveyed San Bernardino and Riverside for an inland route and bought up a good chunk of both counties- entire villages at a time. They paid top dollar to get Willow Glen land away from the apple farmers who’d homesteaded it since the Civil War. The result was a huge spread that they called a ranch. But they never grew or raised anything on it, just fenced it in and posted guards. And the railroad was never built- the Depression. After World War Two, they started selling some of the smaller parcels back to private people. But several of the big tracts were snapped up by another corporation.”

“Which one?”

She patted her hair. “Some aviation concern- the one run by that mad billionaire, Belding.” She smiled. “And that, Dr. Delaware, is your California history lesson for the day.”

We entered the playground, strolled past swings and slides, headed toward the forest that carpeted the foot of the mountains.

“Does Magna still own land here?” I asked.

“Plenty of it. But they won’t sell. People have tried. For all intents and purposes that keeps Willow Glen a backwater speck. Most of the old families have given up, sold out to rich doctors and lawyers who use the orchards for tax write-offs and run them down- capped irrigation lines, no pruning or fertilizing. Most of them don’t even bother to come up and harvest. In some places the earth’s turned hard and dry as cement. The few growers who’ve stayed have become suspicious and mistrustful- they’re convinced it’s all part of a conspiracy to run things down so the city folk can buy what’s left on the cheap and put up condominiums or something.”

“That’s what Wendy thought.”

“Her folks are newcomers, really pretty naïve. But you have to admire them for trying.”

“Who owns the land Jasper and Shirlee live on?”

“That’s Magna land.”

“Is that common knowledge?”

“Mr. Leidecker told me, and he was hardly a gossip.”

“How’d they end up there?”

“No one knows. According to Mr. Leidecker- I wasn’t living here then- they showed up at the general store to buy groceries back in 1956- back when there was a general store. When people tried to talk to them, Jasper waved his hands and grunted and she giggled. It was obvious they were retarded- children who’ll never grow up. The prevailing theory is that they escaped from some institution, maybe wandered away from a bus and ended up here by accident. People help them when it’s needed, but in general no one pays them much mind. They’re harmless.”

“Someone pays them mind,” I said. “Five hundred dollars a month.”

She gave a hand-in-the-cookie-jar look. “I beg your pardon.”

“I saw their bankbook. Sitting on top of the dresser.”

“On the dresser? What am I going to do with those two? I’ve told them so many times to keep that book hidden, tried to get them to let me keep it at my place. But they think it’s some kind of symbol of freedom, won’t part with it. They can get really stubborn when they want to. Jasper, especially. Did you see those wax-paper windows on their shacks? After all these years, he still refuses to have glass installed. Poor Shirlee freezes in the winter. Gabe and I have to bring down piles of blankets, and by the end of the season they’re mildewed beyond repair. The cold doesn’t seem to bother Jasper. Poor thing needs to be told to come in from the rain.”

She shook her head. “On top of the dresser. Not that anyone from around here would hurt them, but that’s a lot of money to advertise. Especially for two defenseless innocents.”

“Who sends it?” I asked.

“I’ve never been able to find out. It arrives, like clock-work, on the first of every month, posted from the central depot in Los Angeles. Plain white envelope, a typed address, no return. Shirlee has no clear concept of time, so she can’t say how long she’s been receiving it, only that it’s been a long time. There was a man- Ernest Halverson- used to deliver the mail until he retired in ’64. He thought he remembered envelopes arriving as early as 1956 or ’7, but he’d had a couple of strokes by the time I talked to him and his memory wasn’t perfect. All the other old-timers are long gone.”

“Was it always five hundred?”

“No. Used to be three, then four. It went up to five after Sharon left for college.”

“Thoughtful benefactor,” I said. “But how could they be expected to handle that kind of money?”

“They couldn’t. They were living like animals until we began taking care of them. Wandering into town every couple of weeks with two or three twenty-dollar bills, trying to buy groceries- they had no idea how to make change or how much things were worth. People are honest here; they never took advantage.”

“Wasn’t there curiosity about where they were getting the money?”

“I’m sure there was, but Willow Glen folk don’t pry. And no one realized how much money they were hoarding. Not until Sharon discovered it- thousands of dollars wadded up under the mattress, or just loose in a drawer. Jasper had used several of the bills for art projects- drawing mustaches on the faces, folding them into paper airplanes.”

“How old was Sharon when she made the discovery?”

“Almost seven. It was 1960. I remember the year because we had unusually hard winter rains. Those shacks were originally built for storage, with only a thin cement pad underneath, and I knew they’d be hit hard, so we went over- Mr. Leidecker and myself. Sure enough, it was dreadful. Their plot was half-flooded, boggy, the dirt running off like melted chocolate. Water had perforated the wax paper and was pouring in. Shirlee and Jasper were standing knee-deep in mud, scared and totally helpless. I didn’t see Sharon, went looking for her, and found her in her shack, standing on top of her bed wrapped in a blanket, shivering and shouting something about green soup. I had no idea what she was talking about. I took her in my arms to warm her, but she kept shouting about soup.

“When we got outside, Mr. Leidecker was pointing, all wide-eyed, at bits of green paper stuck in the mud and washing away in the flood. Money, lots of it. At first I thought it was play money- I’d given Sharon some board games- but it wasn’t. It was real. Between Mr. Leidecker and myself, we managed to salvage most of it- we hung the wet bills over our hearth to dry them, put them in a cigar box and kept them safe. First thing after the rains stopped, I drove Shirlee and Jasper down to Yucaipa and set up the bank account. I sign for everything, take a little out for expenses, make sure they save the rest. I’ve managed to teach them a little elementary math, how to budget, how to make change. Once they finally learn something, they can usually retain it. But they’ll never really understand what they’ve got- quite a tidy little nest egg. Along with Medi-Cal and Social Security, the two of them should be comfortable for the rest of their days.”

“How old are they?”

“I have no idea, because they don’t. They have no papers, didn’t even know their birthdays. The government had never heard of them, either. When we applied for Social Security and Medi-Cal, we estimated their ages, gave them birthdates.”

Miss New Year’s and Mr. Christmas.

“You applied when Sharon left for college.”

“Yes. I wanted to cover all bases.”

“How did you come up with Sharon’s birthdate?”

“She and I decided on one, when she was ten.” She smiled. “July Fourth. Her declaration of independence. I put 1953. I got a really good fix on her age from the doctor I took her to- bone-age X-rays, teeth, height and weight. She was somewhere between four and five.”

She and I had celebrated a different birthday. May 15. May 15, 1975. A rare splurge for dinner and dancing and lovemaking. Another fiction. I wondered what that date symbolized.

“Any possibility,” I asked, “that she was their biological child?”

“Unlikely. The doctor examined all of them and said Shirlee was almost certainly sterile. So where did she come from, right? For a while I lived with the nightmare that she was someone’s kidnapped baby. I went down to San Bernardino and checked six years’ worth of papers from all around the country, found a couple of cases that sounded possible, but when I followed them up, I learned that both of those children had been murdered. So her origins remain clouded. When you ask Shirlee about it, she just giggles and says Sharon was given to them.”

“She told me it was a secret.”

“That’s just a game with her- playing secret. They’re really just like children.”

“What’s the prevailing theory about how they got her?”

“There really isn’t one. Mind you, the doctor wasn’t absolutely certain Shirlee couldn’t conceive-‘highly unlikely’ was the way he put it. So I suppose anything’s possible. Though the notion of two poor souls like that producing something so exquisite is…” She trailed off. “No, Alex, I have no idea.”

“Sharon must have been curious about her roots.”

“You’d expect her to be, wouldn’t you? But she never really went through any identity search. Not even during adolescence. She knew she was different from Shirlee and Jasper but she loved them, accepted things the way they were. The only conflict I ever saw was the summer before she left for college. That was really hard for her- she was excited and frightened and tremendously guilty about abandoning them. She knew she was taking a giant step, and things would never be the same.”

She stopped, bent, picked up an oak leaf and twirled it between her fingers. The sky between the trees was darkening. Unintimidated by city lights, the stars were burning pinholes through the blackness.

“When’s the last time Sharon visited here?” I asked.

“A long time ago,” she said, making it sound like a confession. “Once she broke away, she found it very painful to return. That may sound callous, but her situation was unique.”

We walked on. The schoolroom windows shone through the dark: butter-colored rectangles. We hadn’t gone far, had been walking in circles.

“Her last visit,” she said, “was in 1974. She’d just graduated from college, had been accepted to graduate school, and was moving down to L.A. I threw a little party for her at my house. Mr. Leidecker and the boys wore starched white shirts and matching ties, and I bought new outfits for Shirlee and Jasper. Sharon arrived looking lovely, a real picture. She brought gifts for all of us, a handmade wooden checkers set for Shirlee and a tin of fancy colored pencils from England for Jasper. She also gave them a graduation picture- full cap and gown with an honors tassel.”

“I didn’t see that back at the shack.”

“No, somehow they managed to lose it. Just like the money. They never knew what they had, still don’t. You can understand why Sharon would have no place here. It’s a miracle she survived before I found her.”

“Shirlee did show me a letter. How often did she write?”

“Not regularly- what was the point? They’re only marginally literate. But she called me regularly, to see how they were doing. She really cared about them.”

She threw away the leaf. “It was so hard for her- please understand that. She really struggled with breaking away; the guilt was nearly overwhelming. I told her she was doing the right thing. What was the alternative? Being stuck forever as a caretaker?” She stopped. “Oh. I’m so sorry. That was thoughtless.”

For a moment I was puzzled by her embarrassment.

“Joan,” I said.

“I think your devotion is wonderful.”

I shrugged. Dr. Noble. “I’m comfortable with my choice.”

“Yes. Sharon said you were. And that’s my point. She had to make her own choices. She couldn’t be bound by some strange twist of fate.”

“When did she tell you about Joan?”

“About six months after the graduation party- her first year of grad school. She called to ask about Shirlee and Jasper, but she sounded troubled. I could tell something else was on her mind. I asked if she wanted to get together and to my surprise she said yes. We met for lunch in Redlands. She looked like a real professional woman, perfectly groomed, mature. But sad- a blue angel. I asked her why. She said she’d met the man of her dreams, spent a lot of time describing your virtues. I said, sounds like he’s perfect- why the long face? Then she told me about Joan, how it would never work out because of her.”

“Did she tell you what caused Joan’s problems?”

“The drowning? Oh, yes. How terrible, and you a little boy, watching.”

She touched my arm in a gesture of comfort. “She understood, Alex. She wasn’t bitter or angry.”

“Is that all that was troubling her?”

“That’s all she talked about.”

“When did you see her next?”

She bit her lip. “Never. That was the last time. She did continue to call. But less and less frequently. Half a year later, the calls stopped. But we got cards on Christmas, Fruit-of-the-Month packages.” She managed a weak smile. “Everything but the apples.”

Several yards later she said, “I understood. Though I’d helped her shed her old life, I was still part of it. She needed to make a complete break. Years later, when she got her Ph.D., she sent me an invitation to her commencement. She’d made it to the top, finally felt secure enough to reconnect.”

“Did you go?”

“No. It arrived late- the day after the ceremony. Mail mix-up, happens all the time on a rural route.”

No mail mix-up had prevented the monthly cash payments to the Ransoms. I said nothing.

“All those years,” she said, “I felt I understood her. Now I realize I was deluding myself. I barely knew her.”

We walked toward yellow windows. I said, “How did you and Sharon actually meet?”

“My old do-gooder busybody personality asserting itself. It was shortly after my marriage, right after Mr. Leidecker brought me back here, in 1957.”

She shook her head, said, “Thirty years,” then nothing else.

I said, “Moving from the big city to Willow Glen must have been pretty jarring for you.”

“Oh, it was. After college I got a position teaching at a private school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan- children of the rich. Nights, I volunteered at the USO- that’s where I met Mr. Leidecker. He was in the army, taking courses at City College courtesy of Uncle Sam. He came into the hall one night, looking absolutely forlorn. We struck up a conversation. He was very handsome, very sweet. So different from the fast, shallow men I’d been encountering in the city. When he talked about Willow Glen, he made it sound like paradise. He loved the land- his roots here run deep. His family came out from Pennsylvania for the Gold Rush. Got as far as Willow Glen and settled for Golden Delicious- he always used to say that. Two months later, I was married, a schoolmarm in a one-room school.”

We reached the stone building. She looked up at the sky. “My husband was a taciturn man, but he knew how to tell a tale. He played the guitar beautifully and sang like a dream. We made a good life together.”

“Sounds wonderful,” I said.

“Oh, it was. I came to love this place. The people here are solid and decent; the children are almost touchingly innocent- even more so before we got cable TV. But one always makes trade-offs. Once upon a time, I fancied myself an intellectual- not that I was, but I did love to attend poetry readings in Greenwich Village, visit art galleries, listen to the band-shell concerts in Central Park. I loved the whole city scene. New York was a lovely place, back then. Cleaner, safer. Ideas seemed to burst right out of the sidewalks.”

We were at the bottom of the schoolroom stairs. The light from above spilled over her face, lit flames in her eyes. Her hip brushed against mine. She moved away quickly and fluffed her hair.

“Willow Glen is a cultural desert,” she said, climbing. “I belong to four book clubs, subscribe to twenty monthly periodicals, but believe me, it’s no substitute. In the beginning I made Mr. Leidecker drive me to L.A. for the Philharmonic, San Diego for the Shakespeare Festival at the Old Globe. He did it without complaining, good soul that he was. But I knew he detested it- he never stayed awake through a single show- and eventually I stopped putting him through it. The only play I’ve seen in years is the one I write myself- the Christmas pageant that the children put on. ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ accompanied by my off-key piano thumping.”

She laughed. “At least the children enjoy it- they’re not very sophisticated around here. At home the emphasis is on making a living. Sharon was different. She had a rapacious mind, just loved to learn.”

“Amazing,” I said, “considering her home life.”

“Yes, truly amazing. Especially when you consider the state she was in when I first laid eyes on her. The way she blossomed was a miracle. I feel privileged to have been part of it. No matter how things turned out.”

She choked back tears, pushed the door, and walked quickly to her desk. I watched as she tidied up.

“How,” I repeated, “did the two of you actually meet?”

“Right after I got here, I kept hearing my pupils talk about a family of ‘retards’-their term, not mine- living out behind the old abandoned cider press. Two grown-ups and a little girl who ran around naked and chattered like a monkey. At first I thought it was just schoolyard fantasy, the kind of thing children love to make up. But when I mentioned it to Mr. Leidecker, he said, ‘Oh, sure. That’s Jasper and Shirlee Ransom. They’re feebleminded but harmless.’ Just shrugged it off, the old village idiot thing. ‘What about the child?’ I asked. ‘Is she feebleminded too? Why hasn’t she been enrolled in school? Has she been inoculated? Has anyone bothered to give her a decent checkup or seen to it that she gets proper nutrition?’ That made him stop and think and he got a bothered look on his face. ‘You know, Helen,’ he said, ‘I never much thought about that.’ He was ashamed- that’s the kind of man he was.

“The very next afternoon after school, I drove down the road, found the press, and went looking for them. It was just as the children had described: Tobacco Road. Those pathetic shacks- and they were a lot worse before we fixed them up. No indoor plumbing, electricity, or gas heat, water from an old hand pump with God knows what kind of organisms in it. Before we supplied the trees, just a dry dirt patch. Shirlee and Jasper just standing there, smiling at me, following me around but not putting up a lick of protest when I went into their shack. Inside, I got my first surprise. I’d expected chaos, but everything was scrubbed down with lye soap, extremely well-kept- all the clothes folded neatly, beds you could bounce a dime on. And the two of them are very diligent about their hygiene, though they do neglect their teeth.”

“Well-trained,” I said.

“Yes. As if someone had drilled the basics into them- which supports the institution theory. Unfortunately, that training didn’t extend to child care. Sharon was filthy, that gorgeous black hair so dusty it looked tan, all matted and tangled with burrs. The first time I laid eyes on her she was up in one of the willow trees, crouched on a limb, naked as a jay, with something shiny in her hands. Staring down with those huge blue eyes. Looking, indeed, like a little monkey. I asked Shirlee to have her come down. Shirlee called up to her-”

“Called her by her name?”

“Yes. Sharon. That we didn’t have to improvise. Shirlee kept calling, begging her to come down, but Sharon ignored her. It was clear there was no parental authority, they couldn’t control her. Finally, after I pretended to ignore her, she scampered down, kept her distance and stared at me. But not afraid- on the contrary, she seemed actually happy to see a new face. Then she did something that really took me by surprise. The shiny thing she’d been holding was an open jar of mayonnaise. She stuck one hand into it, scooped out a big glob, and began eating it. Flies smelled it and began crawling all over her. I took the jar away. She squawked, but not too loudly- she craved discipline. I put my arm around her. She seemed to like that. She smelled foul, looked like one of those feral children you hear about. But despite that, she was absolutely gorgeous- that face, those eyes.

“I sat her down on a stump, held up the mayo jar and said, ‘This is eaten with tuna or ham. Not by itself.’ Shirlee was listening. She started to giggle. Sharon took her cue, laughed, and ran her greasy hands through her hair. Then she said, ‘I like it by itself.’ Clear as a bell. It shocked me. I’d assumed she was retarded, too, had little or no speech. I took a close look at her and saw something- a quickness in her eyes, the way she responded to my movements. Definitely something upstairs. She was also very well coordinated: When I commented on what an excellent climber she was, she showed off for me, shinnied up the tree, did cartwheels and handstands. Shirlee and Jasper watched and clapped their hands. To them she was a toy.

“I asked them if I could take her with me for a few hours. They agreed without hesitation, even though they’d never met me. No parent-child bond, though they were clearly delighted with her, kissed and hugged her a lot before we left.”

“How did Sharon react to being taken away?”

“She wasn’t happy, but she didn’t fight it. She especially didn’t like it when I tried to cover her- with a blanket. Funny thing is, once she got used to clothes, she never liked to take them off- as if being naked reminded her of the way she’d been.”

I said, “I’m sure it did,” and thought of backseat love.

“She actually became quite a fashion plate- used to pore over my magazines and cut out the ones she liked. She never liked pants, only dresses.”

Fifties dresses.

I said, “What was it like the first time you brought her home?”

“She allowed me to take her by the hand, and climbed up into the car as if she’d ridden in one before. During the ride I tried to talk to her, but she just sat there, staring out the window. When we reached my house, she got out, squatted, and defecated on the driveway. When I gasped, she seemed genuinely surprised, as if doing that sort of thing was perfectly normal. It was obvious there’d been absolutely no limit-setting of any sort. I took her inside, sat her on the commode, washed her up, combed out the tangles- at that point she began screaming bloody murder. Then I dressed her in one of Mr. Leidecker’s old shirts, sat her down, and fed her a proper dinner. She ate like a lumberjack. Got off the chair and started to squat again. I hauled her into the bathroom, made her mind. That was the beginning. She knew I cared.”

“But she did talk fluently?”

“It was strange, uneven. Sometimes whole phrases would pour out, then she’d be at a loss to describe something simple. She had giant holes in her knowledge of the world. When she got frustrated she’d start to grunt and point like Jasper. But not in any sort of sign language- I was trained in American Sign, and neither she nor Jasper knew it, though I’ve taught him a little bit since. He has his own primitive language- when he bothers to communicate at all. That’s the environment she was living in before I found her.”

“From that to Ph.D.,” I said.

“I told you it was a miracle. She learned astonishingly quickly. Four months of steady drilling to get her talking properly, another three to teach her to read. She was ready for it, an empty glass waiting to be filled. The more time I spent with her, the clearer it became that not only wasn’t she retarded, she was gifted. Highly gifted.”

And previously educated. By someone who’d taught her about cars, whole phrases… then punched holes in her knowledge of the world.

Helen had stopped talking, was holding her hand to her mouth, breathing deeply. “All for nothing.”

She looked at the clock on the wall. “I’m sorry, I have to go now. I hitched a ride with Gabe. He bought me a helmet with his own money- how could I refuse? Poor thing’s probably beside himself, suspecting God knows what.”

“I’d be happy to give you a lift.”

She hesitated, then said, “All right. Give me a couple of minutes to close up.”