Day of Reckoning, Page 3

  She thought to herself: Fix the dinner anyway. Maybe they won’t have eaten. She glanced at her watch and shook her head. Tommy is always famished after school.

  For a few minutes she busied herself with pots and pans, checking the temperature on the oven. She went into the eating alcove and checked the five place settings. An idea struck her, and she briskly marched back into the kitchen and opened a drawer, quickly seizing an extra knife, fork, and spoon. She grabbed a plate and glass from a shelf, a place mat from behind another cabinet door. There, she thought, and arranged the setting. When Dad gets here he will see that I’ve set a place for him, as well. Maybe then he’ll feel guilty about stuffing Tommy with cheeseburgers.

  She surveyed her work, then heard a car. Relief filled her, and she marched back into the living room, this time gingerly pulling the curtain aside, not wanting to be spotted spying on them, but thinking: For the hundredth time I’ll have to tell Dad that if he wants to take Tommy somewhere, it’s fine—he just has to let me know.

  But he’s done this before, and I wasn’t so nervous. She shook her head as if she could shake loose from her feelings by force.

  She stared out again, and cursed as she saw the headlights cruise past on the street and pull into a driveway up the block.

  Damn!

  She looked at her watch again.

  Laughter came from upstairs, and she decided to see if perhaps the twins had taken some message and forgotten to pass it on. That made such sense that she was surprised she hadn’t thought of it in the first place. She glanced out again at the empty street, then pounded up the stairwell.

  “Hey, Lauren, Karen?”

  “In here, Mom.”

  She opened the door to their room and found them spread out amidst sheets of notepaper and textbooks.

  “Mom, did you have to do homework in high school?”

  She smiled. “Of course. Why?”

  “I mean when you were a senior, like us.”

  “Of course again.”

  “It doesn’t seem right. I mean, we’re going to college next year and I don’t see why we should have to fool around with all this rinky-dink assignment stuff. Ten math problems. I feel like I’ve been doing ten math problems every night since I was a baby.”

  Karen started giggling and cut her mother off before she could answer.

  “Well, Lauren, if you tried getting the answers right, maybe you’d do better than a B-minus.”

  “They’re just numbers. They’re not as important as words. And what did you get on your last English test, anyway?”

  “That’s not fair. It was on Bleak House, and you know I hadn’t finished it, because you took my copy!”

  Lauren took a small pillow and threw it at her sister, who laughed and tossed it back. Both shots missed.

  Megan held up her hand. “Peace!” she announced.

  The twins turned toward her, and she was pierced again by the sameness of their eyes, their hair, the way they looked in unison up at her. What magic they are, she thought. They can feel each other’s feelings, think each other’s ideas, salve each other’s hurts so easily. They are never alone.

  “Look,” Megan said. “Did either of you talk to Grandfather today? He picked up Tommy at school and they’re not back yet. I was just wondering whether he gave you guys a message about being late.”

  She tried to keep anxiety from her voice.

  Both Karen and Lauren shook their heads.

  “No,” said Karen. She had been the first by ninety seconds, and now always seemed to be the first to speak. “Are you worried?”

  “No, no, no, it’s just not like your grandfather not to let somebody know if they were going to the mall.”

  “Well,” said Lauren, “it’s not exactly like he would call, either. Grandfather just does things, you know. It’s like he still thinks the entire world is his courtroom, and he just does what he wants because he’s in charge.”

  It was said without bitterness, pure reportage.

  Megan smiled. “It does seem like he thinks that sometimes, doesn’t it?”

  “He treats Tommy special,” Karen added.

  “Tommy is special.”

  “I know, but—”

  “No buts. He is.”

  “Well, sometimes it seems as if we get taken for granted and he gets all the special treatment.”

  This was an old, but legitimate, complaint.

  “Karen, you know that it’s not the same thing. The reason that everyone is treated differently is because everyone has different needs. Tommy’s just got more needs than you guys. We’ve talked about this before.”

  “I know.”

  “Are you worried something might have happened?” Lauren asked.

  “No, just worried the same way I’d be worried if you guys didn’t come home from school on schedule. See, that’s the same.”

  But she recognized that for a lie. She wondered why she felt more vulnerable with her son than with her daughters. It should be the other way around. Everything’s backward.

  “Would you like us to go over to the mall and try to find them? I bet I know where they are.”

  “Sure,” said Karen. “At the arcade, playing that space invaders game. We’ll go, Mom, come right back?”

  She shook her head. “No, no, they’ll be along. And anyway, finish that homework. No television unless it’s done.”

  The twins grumbled and she closed the door.

  Megan walked into her bedroom and stripped off her skirt and stockings, tossing on a faded pair of jeans. She hung her blouse in the closet and slipped into a sweater, then pulled on an old pair of jogging shoes and went over to the window. Even in the darkness, she could still see farther from upstairs. The street remained frustratingly quiet. From her vantage point she could see into the Wakefields’ living room across the street. Shapes were moving inside. She turned and saw that the Mayers’ two cars were parked in their driveway next door. She peered down the street again and checked her watch. Late, she thought. Very late.

  Something within her seemed to boil up and she felt hot. Late, late, late was all she could think. She sat down hard on the edge of the bed.

  Where?

  She felt a need to do something, reached out for the telephone, and dialed 911.

  “Greenfield police and fire.”

  “Hello, this is Mrs. Richards on Queensbury Road. This isn’t an emergency or anything, I don’t think, but I wonder . . . you see, my son and father are late coming back from school. He picked him up today and they usually come straight home, right along South Street and then Route I16 and I was worrying and thought—”

  The voice interrupted with an experienced quickness. “We have no reported accidents this evening. No traffic tieups in those locations, either. No ambulances dispatched. No patrol cars dispatched to anything. I haven’t monitored any state police activity, either, except for a three-car out on the interstate near Deerfield.”

  “No, no, that wouldn’t be them. That’s the wrong direction. Thank you.”

  “No problem.”

  The line went dead and she hung up the phone feeling slightly foolish, but slightly relieved as well. Worry was replaced with irritation again, a much improved sensation.

  “This time I’ll skin his hide,” she said out loud. “I don’t care if he is seventy-one years old and a judge.”

  She stood up and smoothed out the bedspread where she’d been sitting. She went back to the window.

  Where? she thought again. By forming the word it was as if in her mind, she opened the box of worry again.

  She returned to the bedside phone and dialed her husband’s number. There was no answer. At least he’s on his way, she thought, and that was reassuring.

  She moved about the room, thinking a
bout where she should go next. Downstairs, check on the dinner.

  But as she moved out from her bedroom, a flash of color from behind the door in Tommy’s room caught the corner of her eye. She went over and saw a pile of red sweaters and blue jeans, dirty socks and underwear, all rolled up into a bundle and thrust out of the way. He’ll never learn to use a laundry hamper. It’s simply beyond him. For an instant she hesitated and remembered: We thought everything was beyond him once. She refused to let all the nights of defeat and despair fill her. Now we’re winning, she thought. We’re finally winning. Now it seems that nothing may be beyond him. She realized she had allowed herself to indulge for the first time in the most common of parental fantasies, imagining what their child would become when he grew up. He will grow up, she thought. He will become something. She let her eyes wander about the room, over to the barely made bed, the toys and books and oddities that slowly fill any boy’s room, so much junk that masquerades as so many small treasures. She tried to find some evidence of Tommy’s problems, but there was none. She thought: Don’t let that fool you. They’re there. But they’re leaving. She remembered one doctor suggesting years before that they pad his room, in case he turned violent. Thank God we always listened to ourselves.

  She sat down on his bed and idly picked up a toy soldier. He was always brave as a soldier. All the tests, the pokings and proddings, EEGs and sensory stimulation tests. He suffered through them all. It was easy for Duncan and me. All we had to do was worry. He was the one who showed us bravery.

  She put the toy down.

  Where is he?

  Damn!

  She stood up sharply, marched downstairs, and went to the front door. She flung it open and stepped out into the cold night air, standing there until the cold scoured her arms and legs.

  Where?

  She walked back inside and grabbed the hall table.

  Cut out the histrionics, she thought. You’re just going to be embarrassed in a couple of minutes when they come running through the front door, shouting for dinner.

  The admonition steadied her, momentarily. Then the misshapen fear floated about inside her again.

  She walked to the stairwell and called up, “Girls!”

  She heard Karen and Lauren answer.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I just wanted to let you know dinner is pretty soon.”

  It was a halfhearted lie. She had just wanted to hear their voices for a moment, to be persuaded that they were safe.

  This is foolish, she thought.

  No, it’s not. They’re very, very late.

  She went to the kitchen telephone, dialed 91, and stopped. Her finger hesitated over the last digit. She sat down, the phone still in hand. And then, like a flash of light in a dark room, she heard a car pull to a stop in the driveway.

  Relief filled her. She slapped the phone back down on the hook and quick-marched to the front door, opened it to the night and saw her husband—not her child, trailed by her father—striding toward her.

  “Duncan!” she called out.

  He covered the ground between them in three leaps.

  Even in the weak light thrown through the open door, she could see his eyes were red.

  “Duncan! Oh, my God! Something’s wrong! Tommy! What’s happened? Is he okay? Where’s Dad?”

  “I think they’re okay,” Duncan said. “I think. Oh, God, Megan— they’re gone. They took them. It’s all over. Everything.”

  “Who took them? What do you mean?” She fought for control.

  “I’ve been so stupid,” Duncan said. He wasn’t talking to his wife, but to the night and the flow of years. “All these years, and I thought it was over—just a bad memory, or maybe a bad dream. It never happened, that’s what I thought. What a goddamn fool.”

  Megan used what she thought was every bit of strength to prevent herself from screaming.

  “Tell me!” she said, her voice rising. “Where’s Tommy? Where’s my father? Where are they?”

  Duncan looked at her. “The past,” he said quietly. He dropped his arms and pushed past her into the house, turning in the doorway.

  “Nineteen sixty-eight.”

  He turned and pounded once on the wall.

  “You remember that year? You remember what happened then?”

  She nodded and felt as if her entire life stopped in that moment. A hundred awful images flooded into her head and she closed her eyes to try to block them away. Dizzy, she blinked her eyes open and stared at her husband.

  They stood then, slightly apart, unable to touch, in the weak doorway light that battled the darkness outside. They did not really understand anything, except that the disaster they had thought was lost and would never find them had overtaken them by the heels and wrapped its great tentacles about them.

  2

  LODI, CALIFORNIA. SEPTEMBER 1968

  Shortly after dawn, the brigade awoke.

  Early-morning light insinuated itself through the heavy curtains hung over the windows, piercing into the corners of the small, one-story wooden frame house as the occupants moved about with the stiffness of the hour. A teakettle started to whistle in the kitchen. There was some grunting as mattresses were taken from the center of the living room floor and shoved against a wall. Sleeping bags were rolled. The toilet flushed repeatedly. Someone kicked over a half-empty bottle of beer, and its contents splashed across the floor, accompanied by a curse. A raucous laugh came from the rear of the house. The heavy leftover smell of cigarettes and angry speech from the night before remained in the stuffy, still air.

  Olivia Barrow, who had taken the nom de guerre Tanya, went to one of the front windows and pulled back the curtain from the edge just slightly. Her eyes traveled up and down the dusty street outside, searching for signs of surveillance. Each person that entered her view was inspected; each vehicle that passed, examined. She looked first for anything out of the ordinary—the newspaper delivery truck that paused, the derelict in the doorway who seemed more alert than stuporous. Then she searched for anything in the street that seemed too ordinary—the street-sweeping truck, the line at the bus stop. She let her eyes rest on each element, waiting, looking for some telltale sign. Finally, satisfied that they were not being watched, she shut the curtain and walked to the center of the living room.

  She pushed aside a stack of old newspapers and trash. For a moment she surveyed the living quarters. Political tracts and military handbooks on weapons and explosives were piled in a corner, which she called the library; the walls were an odd pastiche of handwritten revolutionary slogans and rock and roll posters. She eyed The Jefferson Airplane idly.

  Olivia was oblivious to half the clutter and filth, the inevitable result of too many people living together in a small, cheap, and anonymous place. Actually, she liked the limited confines of the house. There are no little places to hide secrets, she thought. Secrets are weakness. We should all be naked together. It makes the army more disciplined, and discipline is strength. Taking the .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol she held in her hand, she quickly slapped back on the gun’s action, chambering a round with a distinctive clicking sound that penetrated all the morning fuzzy bad tastes and exhaustions and gained the instant attention of the six other people in the apartment. She loved the snapping-to that followed the sound of a gun being readied to fire. The classic attention-getter. “It’s time for the morning prayer,” she said in a loud voice.

  There were shuffling sounds and the metallic noise of weapons being checked, as each of the other members of the group searched and found their designated arms, then moved into a circle in the center of the room. There were two other women and four men. Two of the men wore beards and hair that hung to their shoulders; two were black and wore bushy afro haircuts. They were dressed in a motley collection of blue jeans and army fatigues. One of the black men wore a bright headband and
sported a gold tooth when he smiled. One of the white men had a red scar on his throat. Both women were dark-haired and pale. They all placed their weapons—several handguns, two shotguns, a Browning semiautomatic rifle—on the floor in the center of the circle. Then they joined hands and Olivia began to intone:

  “We are the new Amerika,” she said, coming down hard on the last syllable, delighting in the flow of rhetoric off her tongue. “Black, brown, red, white, yellow, women, men, children, we are all equal. We have risen from the ashes of the old. We are the Phoenix Brigade, the light-bearers of the new society. We stand against the pig fascist racist sexist antique war money-loving values of our fathers and signal the new horizon. Today is Day One of the new world. The world we forge with guns and bullets out of the corrupt carcass of this rancid society. The future belongs to us, the believers in true justice. We are the new Amerika!”

  The entire group repeated it together: “We are the new Amerika!”

  “The future is?”

  “Ours!”

  “Today is?”

  “Day One!”

  “We are?”

  “The Phoenix Brigade!”

  “What do we bring?”

  “Guns and bullets!”

  “The future belongs?”

  “To us!”

  “Death to the Pigs!”

  “Death to the Pigs!”

  Olivia held her pistol high and shook it in the air above her head. “All right!” she exclaimed. “All right!”

  There was a moment’s silence while the group remained still, eyes cast up toward where Olivia waved the gun. Then one of the women dropped her hands to her sides and whispered a muffled, “Excuse me!” The woman stepped abruptly over the pile of weapons, and, starting to rush, broke through the circle on the opposite side. Her sneakers slapped on the linoleum as she dashed down a hallway and into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

  The others remained in the living room, staring after her.

  Olivia spoke first: “Hey, math-man, better check on your squeeze.” Her tone was edged with derision.