The Pact Page 6

  Gus scrubbed her hands over her face. "I'd be lying," she said.

  "You'd be making it hurt less," Melanie answered, and without wanting to, both women thought of what James had done, and why.

  CHRIS WAS WAITING on the porch steps when Gus got home. "Daddy says Charlie's dead," he announced.

  "I know," Gus said. "I'm sorry."

  "Are we going to put him in a lifeguard?"

  "A graveyard?" Gus frowned. What had James done with the dog? "I don't think so, honey. Daddy probably buried Charlie somewhere in the woods."

  "Is Charlie an angel now?"

  Gus thought about the springer, who had always seemed to have wings on his feet. "Yeah. I think he is."

  Chris rubbed his nose. "So when will we see him again?"

  "Not till we get to Heaven," Gus said. "Not for a long time."

  She looked up at Chris, his cheeks silver with tears. Impulsively, she went into the house, Chris trailing her. There, Gus went into the bathroom and packed up her toothbrush and shampoo, her Bic razors and her apricot perfume. She wrapped these in her cotton nightgown and set them on the bed. Then she haphazardly pulled clothes from drawers and hangers. "How would you like it," she asked Chris, "if we lived with Em for a while?"

  GUS AND CHRIS SLEPT in the Gold guest room, a narrow space beside the veterinary examination quarters with a double bed, a rickety dresser, and a pervasive odor of alcohol. Aware of how awkward this was, and the imposition, Gus went to bed at eight o'clock when she settled Christopher in. She lay in the dark beside him, and she tried not to think about James.

  Michael and Melanie had not said a thing. Not that they could have; anything mentioned would have come out wrong, anyway. To his credit, James had phoned four times. Twice, he'd walked all the way over, only to hear Gus shouting from a room within the Gold house that she didn't want to see him.

  Gus waited until she could no longer hear water running through the pipes upstairs. She counted Chris's even breathing and then she gently eased herself up off the bed. She walked down the hall to the den, where the pushbuttons of the telephone were glowing in the dark.

  James answered on the third ring. "Hello," he said groggily.

  "It's me."

  "Gus." She could hear him coming awake in starts, sitting up, huddling the phone closer. "I wish you'd come home."

  "Where did you bury him?"

  "In the woods. Back by the stone wall. I'll take you there if you want."

  "I just want to know," Gus said, "so I can tell Chris." She had no intention of telling Chris, really. The reason she wanted to know was that she feared, in ways she could barely articulate to herself, walking in the woods several years from now after a rainstorm and finding a skeleton.

  "I didn't do this to hurt him. I don't care about the goddamned carpet. If I could trade that in and get Charlie back healthy, you know I'd do it."

  "But you didn't," she said. "Did you?" She gently set the receiver back in its cradle and pressed her knuckles to her mouth. It was a moment before she realized Michael was standing in front of her.

  He was wearing sweatpants with a hole in the knee, and a faded Tufts T-shirt. "I heard noises," he explained. "I came down to make sure you were all right."

  "All right," Gus said, turning the word over. She thought of Melanie's precision for words, and of what James had said that morning: The dog died. But the dog hadn't really, when you got right down to it. The dog was killed. There was a difference.

  "I'm not all right," she said. "I'm not even fifty percent right."

  She felt Michael's hand on her arm. "He did what he thought was best, Gus. He even took Charlie out hunting beforehand." He knelt down beside Gus. "When Charlie died, he was with the person he loved most. I could have given him a shot, but I couldn't have made him as happy before I did it." He stood up, tugged at her hands. "Got to sleep," he said, and he led her back to the guest room, his hand riding light and warm on the small of her back.

  THE NEXT DAY, Melanie and Gus took the children to the pond. Chris and Emily rushed toward the water while their mothers were still setting up the towels and beach chairs and coolers. Suddenly, a whistle sounded from the lifeguard's deck. A strong, tanned teenager in a red suit jumped into the pond, stroking quickly toward the rock. Melanie and Gus stilled in their beach chairs, paralyzed by the same sudden realization: They could not see their children.

  Then Emily appeared, led by a woman they did not know. In the murky blue water was a slow-turning oval, trapped beneath the surface. The lifeguard dove under and reemerged, swiftly split the water before him and dragged his quarry onto the sand.

  Chris lay perfectly still, his face white, his chest flat. Gus shoved her way through the crowd, unable to speak, unable to do anything but fall bonelessly to the ground a few feet away from her son. The teenager leaned down, sealed Chris's lips with his own, breathed life.

  Chris's head turned to the side, and he vomited up water. Gasping, starting to cry, he reached past the lifeguard to the safety of Gus's arms. The teenager stood up. "He should be all right, ma'am," the boy said. "The little girl? His friend? She slipped off the rocks and he jumped in to get her. Problem was, she landed in a spot where she could stand. Your son didn't."

  "Mom," Chris said.

  Gus turned to the lifeguard, shaking. "I'm sorry. Thank you."

  "No problem," the boy said, and walked back to the whitewashed stand.

  "Mom," Chris said, and then more insistently, "Mom!" He framed his hands, fish-cold and trembling, on both sides of her face.

  "What?" Gus said, her heart so full it was heavy on the baby inside. "What is it?"

  "I saw him," Chris said, his eyes shining. "I saw Charlie again."

  THAT AFTERNOON GUS and Chris moved back to the Harte household. They carried their toiletries and clothes up the stairs. With some careful unpacking and casual rearranging, by nightfall--when James came home from the hospital and checked on his sleeping son and saw his wife waiting in bed--it seemed as though they had never left.

  THIS TIME DURING THE NIGHTMARE Gus managed to hurl the keys farther than she ever had before, under another vehicle that was parked all the way across the street. She unstrapped her seat belt and got to the baby's door, managed to unlatch her and drag her free as she heard the footsteps behind her again.

  "You bastard!" Gus yelled, for the first time fighting back in this nightmare. She kicked the tire. She looked into the back seat, expecting to see Chris's face as they squealed away, but instead she saw her husband reach into the rear of the car to set him free. And she wondered why it had taken so long to notice that all this time, James had been sitting in the passenger seat.

  NOW

  November 1997

  "I'm hiring a lawyer for Chris," James announced Saturday, over dinner. The words erupted from him, like a belch, and he belatedly covered his mouth with his napkin as if he could take them back and declare them more politely.

  A lawyer. The serving platter dropped the last few inches from Gus's fingers, clattering on the table. "You what?"

  "I spoke confidentially to Gary Moorhouse about this. Remember him, from the Groton reunion? It was his suggestion."

  "But Chris didn't commit a crime. Being depressed is not a crime."

  Kate turned to her father, incredulous. "You mean they think Chris killed Emily?"

  "Absolutely not," Gus said, crossing her arms, suddenly shivering. "Chris doesn't need a lawyer. A psychiatrist, yes. But a lawyer ... "

  James nodded. "Gary said that when Chris told Detective Marrone it was a double suicide, he implicated himself. Just by saying there wasn't a third person, that it was just Em and him, turns the suspicion onto him."

  "That's crazy," Gus said.

  "Gus, I'm not saying Chris did what they think," James said softly. "But I think we ought to be prepared."

  "You will not," Gus said, her voice shaking, "hire a defense lawyer for a crime that never happened."

  "Gus--"

  "You will n
ot, James. I won't let you." Her arms went tighter around herself, almost meeting at the middle of her back. "If they find out we've gotten a lawyer, they'll think Chris has something to hide."

  "They already think that. They're doing an autopsy on Emily, and sending the gun in for tests. Look. You and I know what really happened. Chris knows what really happened. Shouldn't we get someone trained to let the police know what really happened?"

  "Nothing happened!" Gus yelled. She spun around, facing the kitchen. "Nothing happened," she repeated. Tell that, her conscience murmured, to Melanie.

  She suddenly remembered the day Chris woke up and wound his arms around her neck, and she realized that he no longer had the breath of a baby. It was stale and ordinary, not sweet and milky, and she had instinctively reared back from him, as if this had nothing to do with the transition to solid food but instead with the fact that this small, toddling body was now capable of holding in its sins.

  Gus took several deep breaths, then turned back toward the dining room table. Kate was bent like a willow stem over her plate, her tears collecting in its pale reflection. The serving platter remained untouched. And James's chair was empty.

  KATE STOOD UNEASILY in the doorway of her brother's hospital room, one hand resting on the knob in case he totally tripped out and became some kind of head case, like that kid with the greasy blond hair who'd been skulking behind a gurney when she came down the hall with her mom. Actually, she hadn't even wanted to come visit. Chris would be home on Tuesday. Plus, the doctors had said something about surrounding him with people who cared about him, but Kate didn't think that included herself. Most of her interactions with her older brother in the past year had been hostile: fighting over time in the bathroom, over entering a room without knocking first, over catching him with his hands under Emily's sweater.

  It freaked her out to think about Chris in a rubber room--well, not rubber exactly, but still. He looked different, with dark circles under his eyes and this hunted look, like everyone was out to get him. Certainly not like the swimming star who'd swum a two-minute butterfly last year. Kate felt a pang in her chest, and silently swore to let Chris have the bathroom first every morning. All those times she'd screamed at him to "Drop dead," and look at how close he had come.

  "Hey," Kate said, and she was embarrassed to see that her voice trembled. She glanced over her shoulder, but to her surprise her mother had disappeared. "How are you feeling?"

  Chris shrugged. "Like shit," he said.

  Kate bit her lip, trying to remember what her mother had said. Cheer him up. Don't discuss Emily. Make small talk. "We, uh, we won our soccer game."

  Chris lifted flat, dull eyes to her. He did not say a word but he did not have to. Emily's dead, Kate, he was sneering. You think I care about your stupid game?

  "I scored three goals," Kate stammered. Maybe if she didn't face him ... She turned toward the window, which overlooked the incinerator, spitting out thick black smoke. "God," she breathed. "I wouldn't give this view to someone who's suicidal."

  Chris made a sound; Kate whirled around and clapped her hand to her mouth. "Oh. I wasn't supposed to say that ... " she muttered, and then she realized Chris was smiling. She had made him smile.

  "What'd they tell you to talk to me about?" Chris asked.

  Kate sat down on the edge of the bed. "Anything to make you happy," she admitted.

  "What would make me happy," he said, "is knowing when the funeral's going to be."

  "Monday," Kate said, leaning back on her elbows, relaxing in this new, tentative trust. "But I'm absolutely, positively not supposed to tell you that."

  Chris let a slow smile painfully stretch his face. "Don't worry," he said. "I won't hold it against you."

  WHEN GUS AND JAMES entered Chris's room on Monday morning, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in an ill-fitting pair of blue chinos and the shirt he'd been wearing on Friday night. The bloodstains had been rinsed out, but lingered in the fabric like ghosts, shifting pink beneath the fluorescent lights. The gauze wrapping his head had been traded for a small butterfly bandage at his brow. His hair was damp, neatly combed. "Good," he said, coming to his feet. "Let's go."

  Gus stopped. "Go where?"

  "To the funeral," Chris said. "You didn't plan to leave me here?"

  Gus and James exchanged a look. That was exactly what they had been planning, at the recommendation of the adolescent psychiatric ward doctors, who had debated the pro of letting Chris grieve versus the con of touching a very raw nerve and reminding him that with Emily gone, he didn't want to be alive. Gus cleared her throat. "Em's funeral isn't today."

  Chris looked at her dark dress, at his father's civilian clothes. "I suppose you're going out dancing," he said. He came toward them with jerky, uncoordinated movements. "Kate told me," he explained. "And I'm going."

  "Honey," Gus said, reaching for his arm, "the doctors don't think this is a very good idea."

  "Fuck the doctors, Mom," he said, his voice cracking. He threw off her touch. "I want to see her. Before I can't see her ever again."

  "Chris," James said, "Emily's gone. Best put it behind you and get yourself healed."

  "Just like that?" Chris said, his words spinning higher, like threads of glass. "So if Mom died and you were stuck in the hospital the day of her funeral and the doctors told you that you were too sick to leave, you'd just roll over and go back to sleep?"

  "It's not the same," James said. "It's not like you have a broken leg."

  Chris rounded on them. "Why don't you just say it?" he yelled. "You think I'm going to watch Em get buried and throw myself off the nearest cliff!"

  "The day you're released, we can go to the cemetery," Gus promised.

  "You can't keep me here," Chris said, stalking to the door. James jumped up and grabbed his shoulders; he swatted his father away. "Let go," he panted.

  "Chris," James said, struggling. "Don't."

  "I can sign myself out."

  "They won't let you," Gus said. "They know today's the funeral."

  "You can't do this!" Chris shouted, jerking away from James and cuffing him on the jaw with his arm. James staggered back, holding his hand to his mouth, and Chris ran out of the room.

  Gus tore after him. "Stop him," she yelled to the nurses at the main desk. She heard a flurry of activity behind her, but she could not take her eyes off Chris. Not when the locked doors did not give way to his titan pulls; not when the orderlies twisted his arms behind his back and plunged a needle into his biceps; not when he slumped to the floor, with the glitter of accusations in his eyes and the taste of Emily's name on his lips.

  IT HAD BEEN MICHAEL'S PLAN to sit shiva following the burial service. Because Melanie had refused to have anything to do with the preparations, it had fallen to Michael to order bagels and lox, salads, coffee and cookies. Some neighbor--not Gus--had arranged the food on the dining room table by the time they returned from the cemetery.

  Melanie went straight upstairs with her bottle of Valium. Michael sat on the living room couch, accepting the condolences of his dentist, a veterinary colleague, some clients. Emily's friends.

  They approached in a pack, a swelling, amorphous mass that looked as if it might part at any minute to reveal his daughter in its center. "Mr. Gold," one girl said--Heather or Heidi, Michael thought--her sad eyes a faded liberty blue, "we don't know how this could have happened."

  She touched his hand, her own palm milk-soft. Her hand was the same size as Emily's.

  "I didn't see it either," Michael replied, realizing for the first time how true that was. On the surface, Em had been busy and bright, a beautiful tempest of a teenager. He'd liked what he'd seen, so he never thought to dig deeper. Too frightening to unearth the specters of drugs, of sex, of adult choices that he didn't yet want her to be making.

  He was still holding Heather's hand. Her fingernails were small ovals, pale seashells you might stash in a pocket. Michael raised the girl's hand to his face, and cradled it against his
cheek.

  The girl leaped backward, snatching away her hand, her fingers recoiling, her cheeks flushed. She turned away, swallowed immediately by a fold in the group of her friends.

  Michael cleared his throat, wanting to say something. But what? You reminded me of her. I was wishing you were my daughter. Nothing seemed right. He stood and made his way past well-wishers and teary relatives to the foyer. "Excuse me," he said in a commanding voice. He waited until every eye was turned toward him. "On behalf of Melanie and myself, I'd like to thank you for coming today. We, uh, appreciate your kind words and your support. Please stay as long as you like."

  And then, to the incredulous stares of fifty people who knew him well, Michael Gold left his own home.

  THERE WERE TWO visiting sessions in the locked psychiatric ward; one at nine-thirty in the morning, and one at three. Chris's mother not only managed to be there for both of them, but also sweet-talked the nurses into letting her stay past the allotted time for a visit, so that when he came back from speaking with a psychiatrist or taking a shower in the communal bathroom, he'd often find her still there and waiting.

  But when Chris woke up from his medically induced stupor on the day of Emily's funeral, his mother was not there. He didn't know if this was because it was not yet three, if the doctors had prohibited her visit in light of the morning drama, or if she was just plain scared to show up after screwing him over like that. He inched up in bed and scrubbed his hand over his face. The inside of his mouth felt like sandpaper and his mind was wheeling, as if a fly were spirographing around inside his head.

  A nurse carefully pushed open the door. "Oh, good," she said. "You're up. You have a visitor."

  If his mother was here to tell him about the funeral, he didn't want to see her. He wanted to know everything--the design of the bevel on the coffin, the lyrics of the prayers they had said for Em, the texture of the earth where she was buried. His mother could not possibly have remembered these details, and having to fill in the holes in her story would be worse than never hearing it at all.

  But as the nurse stepped out of the way, Emily's father came into the room. "Chris," he said, stopping awkwardly a foot away from the bed.