He didn't mind. It was something to do.
Though he wasn't real good at it.
He kept remembering his mom crying as she left and trying to smile, Mr. Sansom's hand on her arm leading her out the door. And thinking about that made him want to cry because why was she crying if she wasn't scared for him again?
I told, he thought.
I told on my dad. Is that why this is happening?
He kept worrying about tonight. About going to bed and sleeping and doing ... whatever.
He kept wondering what was going to happen to him next—how long he was really going to be here, whether he was going to get picked on eventually by some kid or maybe a whole bunch of kids and when it was going to happen. It almost had to happen.
They said it was only for a day or two.
He wasn't dumb. He knew a lot could happen in a day or two.
A lot of things he didn't want to happen.
So he wasn't too great at the peeling. He kept gouging holes out of the potatoes trying to get at the dark spots and breaking off the thin tops of carrots.
They smelled good, though. The carrots and potatoes did. They smelled like home and his own kitchen.
When? he thought. When will they get me out of here?
He listened to some of the other kids playing out back on the lawn outside through the kitchen door, the screams and the laughing. At least he knew you could laugh here.
Somebody out there could. Maybe that meant he could too. Eventually.
There were still a couple of hours before supper time. He wondered if, when he finished, he'd have the guts to go out and join in.
"Robert?"
Mrs. Strawn was standing in the doorway. There was gray in her hair and she wore thick black-rimmed glasses and her hips and belly were too big for the tight skirt she was wearing but his first feeling about her was that Mrs. Strawn was okay, that she was pretty nice.
"You have a visitor," she said. "Go rinse off your hands and you can finish up later."
He did as she said and stepped outside, following her through the hall into the living room.
He sat in an armchair with his back to them as they walked in so that Robert could see only his head and shoulders, but he knew who it was way before he turned and when he did turn his father was smiling.
That was wrong. He felt a wave of terror. Why was he smiling?
Didn't he know?
His father stood up.
"Hi, Robert," he said.
"Hi." It was all he could do to manage to get the word out.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Danse," said Mrs. Strawn. "But you know I have to stay here with you."
"I understand. That's fine. I just wanted to stop by and say hello and see how Robert was doing." He smiled again, bigger this time. "This is really quite a nice place you have here, Mrs. Strawn. You sure wouldn't know there were ... how many boys living here?"
"Twenty-one at the moment. We have three beds open right now."
He shook his head as though he couldn't quite believe it. "Well, you run a tight ship," he said. "It's amazing."
She smiled. "We try. Thank you."
He turned to Robert. "So. How you doing, son? I know this is a ... big adjustment for you. God knows it's got to be. I know it's not easy. I know it can't be easy."
"I'm ... I'm okay."
"Really?"
Robert nodded. Why was he asking all this?
Did he really care?
What was he doing here—and didn't he know?
"Anything I can do for you?"
"No. I mean, no thanks."
"Anything I can bring? You got your Game Boy? Stuff like that?"
He nodded again. He noticed that his father was scratching at his thumb with his index finger. Otherwise he looked completely calm, like nothing was going on here at all. It was weird. It was like this happened to him every day, going to visit his kid in some home.
"Well, if there's anything you need, you know where to phone me. He can make phone calls, can't he, Mrs. Strawn?"
"I'm afraid not, Mr. Danse. The bills would be a disaster. You'll have to phone him here. And then because of the court order ..." She looked embarrassed. "Because of the court order I'd have to be on the extension. You understand, I hope."
He seemed to want to ignore that last part.
"Sure, I understand," he said. "Twenty-one kids could make a lot of phone calls. I'll phone him, then. Any particular time of day?"
"Not before nine, please. And not after nine in the evening."
"Fine. No prob ... oh, damn it!"
He held up his thumb, turning it over and cupping it with the palm of his hand. Blood was flowing off it, running fast and hard down over his wrist.
"Oh, my Lord!"
"Could you ...? Where's the bathroom, Mrs. Strawn? I'm sorry ... I did this this morning putting in a new razor blade but I thought ..."
She pointed. "First door to your left."
"Could you get me something ... some paper towels maybe? Have you got a first-aid kit around or anything?"
"I'll be right back."
She hurried down the hall to the kitchen. His father took one step in the direction of the bathroom and then stopped and turned, pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around his finger, striding toward him, reaching over and grabbing Robert's arm with the other hand, squeezing his bicep hard, that nice easygoing look on his face slipping away and sliding into a fury he had never seen on anybody's face, ever.
He'd been scratching at the finger.
Robert had seen him.
It was just to get him alone.
He tried to pull away. Arthur jerked him roughly back.
He tried to cry out to Mrs. Strawn but his voice wouldn't work and then his father's words were a whispered rush washing over him like a cruel wind.
"You think I'm fucking stupid, Robert?" he hissed. "I told you what I was going to do and now I'm going to do it—unless you say you lied, Robert. You think I can't? You seriously want to fuck with me? Unless you tell them you lied and you tell them fast I'm going to skin your fucking mother while she's still alive and then I'm coming after YOU! You understand me?"
He squeezed the arm and then released him just as he thought the arm couldn't take any more, just as he thought he was going to break it, and then he moved off quickly to the bathroom.
Robert heard water running.
His legs were about to give way. He sat down trembling on the couch. Fell into it.
Mrs. Strawn came in from the kitchen with some paper towels and a first-aid kit and she didn't give him a glance. She walked to the bathroom and he heard the water go off again and then he heard them talking.
Nobody could protect him.
The realization was final.
His father could do what he wanted to, to both him and to his mother because his father could always outsmart them whenever he wanted and his father didn't care. He'd do anything.
He was the only one who knew that.
In spite of what his mom said, he was alone.
When they came out of the bathroom his father was smiling again holding up the thumb with a band-aid on it like it was some kind of thumbs-up thing and Mrs. Strawn was smiling too, completely fooled by the phony look on his father's face and the phony cut he'd made this morning just to get to him.
"All fixed," he said. "Thanks again, Mrs. Strawn. It's really good of you. I've got to go, Robbie. But I promise, I'll be in touch. Okay?"
And Robert knew he would. He'd be in touch. Forever and ever.
He always would.
Thirty-one
The Burden of Proof
"It's for you." Cindy held out the phone. "Owen Sansom."
Lydia took the telephone and Cindy went back to what she was doing—simultaneously preparing them a meal of chicken cacciatore, green beans and pasta, clearing her daughter Gail's toys and books off the kitchen table and sipping her second bottle of Miller Lite.
"I thought I'd find yo
u here," said Sansom. "God, Lydia, I hate to have to tell you this. But Robert's recanted."
"He's what?"
"He's recanted."
"Oh God, no!"
Cindy stopped everything, stood there with casserole dish in hand and stared at her.
"I just talked to Andrea Stone. She got a call half an hour ago from Lois Strawn at the shelter. Robert told her that everything he said to the state police was a lie. That he made up everything."
"I don't understand. Why? Why would he do that?"
"I don't know for sure but I've got a pretty good idea."
"Why?"
"You're not going to like this. Lois Strawn says he had a visitor earlier. Arthur. All very civil, she says—but Andrea had a bad feeling about it anyway. She asked if Strawn had left the room at any point. Seems that while they were talking Arthur opened up a cut on his finger and she went out to the kitchen for some towels and a Band-Aid. She was only gone a minute or two but hell, how long does it have to take? I can't prove it, but I'd bet anything Arthur threatened him."
"I'm going over there."
"That's a lousy idea. Even if you could get him to admit that Arthur threatened him, at this point it's going to look like coercion on your part. Like you're exerting undue pressure. Andrea Stone's over there right now, taking his statement to submit to Judge Burke. Let's see what she comes up with. And I don't care what he's saying now—those videotapes are still very convincing. Burke's going to have a damned hard time overlooking them. These were police experts doing the questioning and Burke knows it."
"So what am I supposed to do? Just sit here and hope and pray that he believes my son's first confession and not his second? Jesus!"
She felt Cindy's hand on her shoulder. Only then was she aware that she was shaking.
"I don't like it any more than you do, honestly. But ..."
"Arthur's not playing by the rules. Why the hell should we have to?"
She heard him sigh. "Lydia, I think you already know the answer to that. Think about it. You already all but admitted in court that you were willing to break the law in order to get what you wanted out of this. That's the way Burke sees it, anyway. He also sees you as prone to hysteria. Given that, the only way to do this is to go about it calmly and correctly and keep a low profile until we hear from him. Believe me, it's the only way."
"I'm taking him. Goddamn it! I'm ..."
"No, you're not. We haven't come this far so you and Robert can become a pair of fugitives! Listen to me. I want you to calm down. I want you to tell Cindy to pour you a drink—a stiff one—and I want you to stay there and hang tight until I hear from Andrea. Okay? I'll phone you right away as soon as I do. Promise me."
"Owen, I ..."
"Promise me, Lydia."
She felt old and weary, defeated—and sick with shame for feeling that way. She couldn't afford to feel defeated. Probably he was right. She had to summon the patience somehow and the strength and faith in some kind of future for them that would allow her to do this one more time.
"All right," she said. "All right, Owen."
"I'll call you as soon as I know."
She hung up the phone.
"Oh, honey," Cindy said, both hands on her shoulders now, not even knowing what was going on but getting it right, knowing somehow exactly how she was feeling and putting it perfectly—quietly and perfectly and succinctly into words.
"You do get the shit, don't you?"
Andrea Stone thought the instruction was unusual to say the least. When she returned to her office there was a message on her desk from Judge Burke, saying that he wanted to hear the tape of her interview with Robert Danse immediately. That he would still be in chambers.
And that he intended to make a ruling in the morning.
She phoned Owen Sansom and gave him the gist of it and then walked across the street to the courts building. The street was dark. She saw that one of the streetlights was out and it gave her a strange uneasy feeling as though someone had vandalized the light, knocked it out purposely, as though typical urban street crime had reached this far north into the boonies and from now on was going to be part of the lives of all of them.
When it was probably just a burned-out bulb.
She presented her ID to the guard and walked the dimly lit hall to the judge's chambers.
She found him sitting at his desk, turned to a VCR and television monitor, listening to Robert say, "He messes with me back here ... with this ..." She closed the door quietly and saw him push a button on the remote. The screen went black.
"Ms. Stone," he said.
She handed him the small voice-activated tape recorder. "The tape's inside?"
''Yes.''
He handled the recorder as though unfamiliar with this kind of gadget, turning it, frowning, looking at the control panel on the side and then putting it down in front of him on the big oak desk.
"So?" he said.
"Excuse me?"
"So how did it go? With the boy. How did you find him?"
"Upset," she said. "Nervous. Scared."
"Scared of what?"
"You're asking my opinion?"
"Yes, I am."
"I believe he's scared that he'll never see home again at this rate. And I believe that he's scared of his father." Burke nodded.
"I'll speak candidly, Ms. Stone. This doesn't surprise me. This videotape ... I've watched it half a dozen times ... both these interviews with him tend to be convincing."
"He recants it all on my tape, Your Honor."
"So I understand. After seeing his father."
"And according to Mrs. Strawn, seeing him alone. For a minute or two at least."
"Unfortunate. And this tape of yours—is this convincing too? Objectively speaking?"
"I have a problem with it."
"What's that?"
"He won't say why he supposedly lied to the psychologists in the first place. Why he would want to implicate his father. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me."
"Could it have been the mother? Coaching him?"
"I doubt it, Your Honor. I doubt it very much. I think he told them the truth down there."
"At this point I tend to agree. Despite what my feelings are regarding the mother's actions in the case, I ..."
"Your Honor ..."
He stopped her. "I understand that we don't agree on this, Ms. Stone. It's not the point. The point is, right now, the father."
"Yes, Your Honor."
He sighed. "I'll listen to the tape. Thanks for delivering it at this late hour. These cases demand a lot of all of us, it seems to me. Trying to do the appropriate thing for a child such as this, trying to prevent further damage." He smiled ruefully. "Late hours are the least of it. Anyhow, thank you, Ms. Stone. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Thank you, Your Honor."
As she stepped outside and quietly closed the door she heard her own voice coming from the other side, tinny and thin-sounding, from the tape.
The man was willing to do his homework, anyway.
She realized that despite what the judge had said about the credibility of the videotape she was still afraid for Robert Danse. Preventing further damage was a tricky thing. When there had been so much already.
She thought not for the first time that child abuse was a kind of parasite, one that digs in deep and painfully at first so that you can see its effects quite clearly if you happen to be looking. But then sometimes after a while the symptoms almost seemed to disappear. The insidious thing about a parasite was that you got used to it, the pain notwithstanding. The feeding of the abuser. The slow starvation of the victim. Both became routine. Part of the organization of the internal structure of life.
While all the time the thing inside grew and grew, the sheer need of it constantly expanding. And eventually—if it ever did come to light—leaving its famished, wasted host to fend for himself as best he could in order to seek whoever and whatever else had come in contact with it. Family, friends, marriages.
>
Getting inside them too.
Even courts. Even lawyers and judges.
The parasite didn't think. It fed.
And nothing was exempt.
There was no reason involved. No intelligence to speak of in the organism.
Only hunger.
It was up to them, to the social services system and the courts, to apply reason like a poultice to a wound made by long seasons of the lack of it—while they themselves already had the thing inside them too, had already been affected.
Some of them, like herself and Judge Burke, over and over again.
It changed them. One way or another.
She wondered if any of them were really up to the job. And how the judge would find tomorrow.
She walked to her car across the darkened street. An hour's drive from home, she thought, another hour maybe to get to bed. Already she wished for sleep.
There were times she'd thought she'd like to have a husband and kids of her own someday but this was not one of them. Not with this thing inside her.
I hope they get that goddamn light fixed by tomorrow, she thought.
We need some goddamn light here.
Thirty-two
Judgment
She saw the door open and Sansom, Wood and Stone emerge from the judge's chambers and got up from the bench. None of them looked happy. Wood paused and said something to the other two and then walked off alone down the corridor. Sansom and Stone glanced at her and then seemed to avoid her eyes as they approached her.
My God. How bad was it?
How much worse could it be?
She sat down again, unwilling to trust her legs a moment longer. Sansom sat to her left, Andrea Stone to her right.
"Nobody wins on this one," Sansom said. He shook his head. "God."
"Tell me." Her voice sounded strange to her, hoarse, as though she'd been shouting.
"The good news is that Arthur gets no unsupervised visits whatsoever. None. Apparently the judge believed the videotape, not the recant. For my money that's the only decent part of any of this. It gives us far more leverage on appeal and ..."