Bethany's Sin Read online

  In Room 119, the classroom she was going to be using, Kay had stood at the lectern beneath the overhead fluorescent lighting and looked across the empty desks. She even practiced writing her name on the blackboard, in yellow chalk: Mrs. Reid. It still stunned her that what she’d dreamed about for so long was within reach. The chance for a full-time teaching job if her summer work was acceptable. Jesus, she thought. It’s not real. It can’t be. While Evan had worked on the mill journal in La Grange, she’d been teaching a couple of classes. at Clarke Community College and taking advanced courses herself in the afternoon. Her doctorate was still a long way off, but she’d decided she had plenty of time. She could settle in here, teach her algebra classes and maybe tutor some students in the afternoons, and work gradually toward her degree. No rush. After a long time she’d switched on the lights in Room 119 and walked along the linoleum-floored corridor to the soft-drink machine in the teachers’ lounge.

  As she drank her Coke at a table in the corner, she kept her eye on the door, and watched other teachers who came in for a cigarette or just a conversation break. There was an elderly woman who wore her white hair in a tight bun; she bought a grape drink and introduced herself as Mrs. Edith Marsh. She taught poetry and smiled sweetly at almost everything Kay said. Mr. Pierce came in and lit a cigarette, but he spoke with Kay for only a moment before sitting in a chair across the room and gazing out the window onto the nearly empty parking lot. A man in his thirties, wearing blue jeans and a dark blue sport coat, came in and lost a quarter to the soft-drink machine. Kay gave him change for a dollar, and the man puffed on a battered pipe and told her he was a professor in the classics department when she told him it would be her first semester. He wished her good luck and lost another quarter in the machine, and after that, threw up his hands in mock rage and stalked out of the room, leaving a trail of smoke.

  She’d returned to her office one last time, to try to figure out what sort of pictures to bring—still lifes? abstract posters? pastoral scenes?—and then had left the building. And now, reaching the limits of Bethany’s Sin and winding her way toward the Sunshine School nursery and kindergarten where she’d left Laurie for a few hours, she wondered who Gerald Meacham had been. A mathematics instructor, of course. A very fine, intelligent man, Dr. Wexler had said; Mr. Meacham had lived in Spangler. He’d either been fired or had left of his own accord, but there had been a strange look in Dr. Wexler’s eyes when she’d asked which. He seemed not to want to talk about the man. But why not? A scandal or something? Had Mr. Meacham been grading his tests with an eye glued to his female students’ skirts? Anyway, Kay thought, thank God for what had happened to Gerald Meacham; if she hadn’t gotten this teaching job, the family would be on the rocks by now.

  The Sunshine School was a yellow-and-white house on Blair Street; there was a fenced-in backyard, and as Kay got out of the car and walked up the pathway to the front door, she saw a few children swinging on jungle bars. She could hear their laughter, like the noise of brook water running across flat stones in cool forests. There had been a brook near her house when she was growing up, and she had called it her secret brook and gone there every day one summer to watch that water run. She had thrown rocks into it and made wishes. One for a happy life. Two for a handsome prince. Three for a beautiful castle to live in. The next winter the construction men came and began clearing for a new highway, and they swept away the pine and oak trees with machines that got hungry at six o’clock every morning. When she had gone back with the first touch of spring to make more wishes, concrete had been poured over her secret brook, and staring at the smooth concrete, she had the distinct and lasting thought that at that precise moment someone she didn’t know and would never know had laughed. Because that someone had stolen something that had belonged, at least for the fleeting days of a seven-year-old’s summer, to her.

  And perhaps, even then, she had become a little bitter. And a little afraid.

  She rang the doorbell; through the panes of clear glass in the door she could see some of the rooms within: walls covered with children’s drawings of horses, scare crows, stick-people, buildings, and cars; a small table ringed by six small chairs; a bookcase filled with Golden Books and Dr. Seuss Cat in the Hat stories; an aquarium with guppies. Two little girls, one dark-haired and the other with long, beautiful red hair, sat reading at the table, and now they were looking up at Kay. Through the hallway came a slender woman wearing a white, uniformlike pantsuit. She smiled at Kay and opened the door.

  Kay had met Mrs. Omarian, who operated the Sunshine School, on their last trip to Bethany’s Sin, before they’d left LaGrange for good. Mrs. Omarian, whose first name was Monica, looked to Kay to be about thirty; the woman had a friendly, attractive face framed by a full mane of dark hair, and she carried herself calmly, as if running a day-care center was indeed child’s play.

  When the door came open, Kay felt the cool touch of the air conditioning. It was very quiet inside the Sunshine School, as if all the children were napping somewhere.

  “Hi there,” Mrs. Omarian said. “How was your morning at school?”

  “Fine. Better than I expected.”

  “Were you nervous?”

  Kay smiled. “Very much so, I’m afraid.”

  “I guess that’s to be expected,” Mrs. Omarian said. She opened the door wider, and Kay stepped into the house. The two children at the table went back to their reading. “I taught for a few semesters at George Ross myself,” she told Kay.

  “Oh? In what department?”

  “Psychology, under Dr. Anderson. It was just an introductory course in child psychology, nothing very challenging. But fun, anyway.” She gave a quick shrug. “That was about four years ago, and I miss the academic life sometimes. The teachers’ conferences, luncheons, and all that.” She gazed at Kay without speaking for a few seconds. “I really envy you.”

  “I don’t see why. I’d say you have your hands full right here,” Kay said. “And you seem to be doing a good business.”

  “I am. There are more working mothers in Bethany’s Sin than you’d think. Just a minute and I’ll get Laurie; she’s in the back, playing.” Mrs. Omarian turned away from Kay and moved through a corridor to the back door. After another moment Kay felt a tingling sensation at the back of her neck, and she looked behind her.

  The little girl with red hair was staring at her. The other child was reading Black Beauty. The red-haired girl said, “Are you Laurie Reid’s mother?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I’m Amy Grantham.”

  “It’s good to meet you, Amy,” Kay said.

  The child was silent for a few seconds, but her eyes never left Kay’s. “Is Laurie new here?” she asked.

  “That’s right. We just moved to the village yesterday.”

  “It’s nice here,” Amy said. Her eyes were blue, like deep tunnels to the soul. They were unblinking. “My mommy says it’s the best place in the world.”

  Kay smiled. She heard footsteps in the corridor. Mrs. Omarian was holding Laurie’s hand.

  “Hi, honey,” Kay said, smoothing her little girl’s hair and giving her a kiss on the forehead. “Did you have good time today?”

  Laurie nodded. “We had fun. We played on the swings, and we played with some dolls and saw cartoons.”

  “Cartoons?” Kay said.

  “There’s a projector in the back,” Mrs. Omarian explained. “What did we see today, Laurie?”

  “Roadrunner. And chipmunks. And…Daffy Duck.”

  Mrs. Omarian smiled and winked at Kay over Laurie’s head. “That’s right.”

  “Well”—Kay took Laurie’s hand—“we’ve got to be going. Tell Mrs. Omarian we’ll see her again on Friday morning, all right?” They moved toward the front door.

  “’Bye, Laurie,” Amy Grantham said. The other little girl looked up and said good-bye, too.

  “’Bye,” Laurie said. “See you Friday.”

  At the front door Mrs. Omarian said, “That’s a b
eautifully behaved little girl you have there. If the others were as good as she is, I could watch shows like ‘Ryan’s Hope’ and ‘One Life to Live’ all day.”

  They said good-bye to Mrs. Omarian, and in another few minutes Kay was driving again toward McClain Terrace while Laurie talked about the other children she’d met. She seemed to have had a good time, and that pleased Kay because Laurie would be spending most of the summer there. Kay wished Laurie could have stayed at home with Evan, but she knew Evan was going to be putting together an office down in the basement and he’d want as much time as possible to work. So it was best that Laurie stayed at the Sunshine School.

  On the way home they passed a modernistic-looking brick building with a glass front, on a corner lot where the overhanging trees cast black shadow-shapes. A simple white-on-black sign outside read MABRY CLINIC. Kay knew it was what served as the hospital in Bethany’s Sin, but she’d never been inside and had never met any of the doctors. She’d been concerned about the quality of health care in the village when they’d first been thinking of moving, but Mrs. Giles has assured both her and Evan that the clinic was fully staffed and well equipped, and that Dr. Mabry, the director of the clinic, was the type of physician who insisted on house calls in emergency cases.

  Coming through the front door of their house, Kay heard the muffled machine-gun chatter of Evan’s battered black typewriter from the basement. Laurie went up to her room to play, and Kay opened the basement door and descended the staircase. Evan sat at the rolltop desk they’d bought at a garage sale several years before; it was nicked and scarred in places, and Evan had replaced three of the four legs, but he’d hand-sanded some of the worst spots and refinished it until it was a beautiful dark oak color that glowed beneath a couple of coats of varnish. he’d positioned the desk on the far side of the basement, near a screened window that he could pull up so he could both look out across the backyard and enjoy the fresh air. Boxes of books were piled up alongside him, awaiting the shelves he’d planned to build since the first day he’d stepped down into the basement and seen its possibilities. He’d brought down two framed posters—one a replica of a Graf Zeppelin travel poster from the thirties, and the other an authentic Harry Blackstone magic show ad, also a garage sale find—and hung them on either side of the window. A metallic desk lamp cast a pool of light over his right shoulder onto the paper in the typewriter, and beside him there was a pad of clean paper and several sheets of what he’d written that day. On the floor beside the desk was a wicker trash basket, and near that, a couple of pieces of crumpled paper. Kay stood behind him for a moment, watching him work. He would type a few lines and then stop, staring at the paper without moving. Then type a few more. Then, with a burst of speed, a dozen or more lines. Followed by silence.

  After a few minutes Evan suddenly straightened up in his chair. He seemed to be listening for something. And then he looked around at her, his eyes wide, and his sudden movement frightened her.

  “What is it?” Kay asked, taking a step backward.

  Evan’s eyes cleared at once. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. But the truth is, you scared the hell out of me. How long have you been standing there?”

  “Only a little while. I wanted to watch.”

  “I felt something down here with me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Did you have a good day? Meet everyone you’re supposed to meet?”

  She nodded and came over to him, putting her hands on his shoulders and kissing the top of his head, right on one of his funny cowlicks. She knew those cowlicks drove him nuts when he was trying to comb his hair, and usually he just gave up and let it go wild, which to her looked sexy. “I checked in with Dr. Wexler,” she said. “And I’ve even got my own office, too.”

  “Great,” he said, and motioned toward his desk. “Is it as plush as mine?”

  “What yours lacks in comfort it makes up for in charm,” she said, and kissed him again. “I had a very good day, Evan. I felt like I really belonged there.”

  “And you do,” he told her. “I’m very glad for you, and I’m proud of you.”

  She glanced over his shoulder at the paper in the type writer. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing, really. Just some writer’s doodling. I’ve been getting down on paper my first impressions of the village. You know, colors, sounds, smells—that sort of thing.”

  “Interesting.” She looked over the paper, saw it was an impression of the ring of flowers in the Circle. “That’s very nice. What are you doing it for?”

  “I’m playing with an idea,” Evan said. “There’s a small magazine in Philadelphia called Pennsylvania Progress, and from time to time it runs stories about the smaller towns in the state. History, type of people, businesses, outlook for the future. I was wondering if they’d consider something on Bethany’s Sin.”

  Kay grunted. “I think they probably would,” she said. “But you’re a newcomer here; how are you going to get your story together?”

  “Old-fashioned research,” Evan said. “And legwork. I’m sure there’s historical information at the library, and certainly a lot of the older people living here know something of the village’s beginnings.” He shrugged. “I don’t know; maybe it won’t go anywhere, maybe Progress wont buy it, but I think it’s worth working on.”

  “Then do it,” Kay said.

  He paused for a moment, looking at the paper in the typewriter. “Besides,” he said, looking back at her, “wouldn’t you be interested in finding out what the sin was?”

  “The sin? What sin?”

  “Whatever Bethany’s sin was. You’ll have to admit it’s an unusual and intriguing name for a village. I’d like to find the meaning behind it.”

  She smiled. “Maybe it has no meaning. Why should it?”

  “Why shouldn’t it? Most towns and cities are named after something specific. An event, a person, a season. Whatever. Take the name Bethany. A person’s name? First name or last name? I’d like to find out.”

  “Do you think the library would have that information?”

  “I don’t know. But I suppose that’s where I’ll start looking.”

  Kay fingered her husband’s hair. “What would you like for dinner? I’ve got pork chops in the refrigerator.”

  “Sounds like pork chops would be fine.”

  “Okay. That’s the menu for tonight, then. And I’d better get started on it, too. I like your idea about the story. Really I do.” She moved toward the staircase.

  “Good. I’m glad.” He turned back to his typewriter and sat in silence.

  She watched him for another moment, and when he began typing again, she went upstairs and through the den to the kitchen.

  After dinner they drove over to Broome’s Furniture in Westbury Mall, but most of that store’s goods were a little too expensive for them. They walked through the Mall for an hour or so, browsing in the shops, and Evan bought Kay and Laurie ice-cream cones at the Baskin-Robbins. Then there was a stop at the supermarket to buy groceries for the rest of the week, and they were on their way back to Bethany’s Sin on Highway 219, the head lights of the station wagon cutting yellow holes in the black curtain of night. Laurie said she could see stars, and Kay helped her count them. They passed a few cars and a large truck heading north, but as they neared the turn-off onto Ashaway, and Bethany’s Sin, Evan noticed that the traffic was sparse. It was very dark without the headlights of other cars to help light the way, and the trees and tangle of wild vegetation along the highway reminded Evan of impenetrable walls. The moon was white and full, like a luminous silver disk floating spiritlike above them. Laurie said it looked like the face of a princess who lived high among the stars and watched everything on earth. Kay smiled and stroked her hair, and Evan watched the road because something within him was drawing back. He tried to shrug it off, as one would shrug off the tightening of a muscle across the shoulder blades. The wind shrilled through the open windows; the headlights picked out the crushed carcass of a large dog on th
e side of the road. Its teeth glittered briefly, and the eyes were rotting black sockets. Evan instinctively turned the wheel, and it was then that Kay asked him if he were all right.

  “Yes,” he said, smiling. “I’m fine.” But in another few seconds the smile had faded and was gone. He narrowed his eyes slightly, feeling rather than seeing the twisted trees that bordered the road. Ahead, finally, was a blinking yellow light that marked the turn-off onto Ashaway. Evan slowed the station wagon and swung off to the left, and then they were moving past the cemetery with its tiers of tombstones. On the streets of Bethany’s Sin, lights burned in most of the houses; in a living room here, a bathroom, a bedroom, a kitchen. Porch lights glowed white or pale yellow. Evan felt comforted by the knowledge that the residents of Bethany’s Sin were settling down for the night: reading the newspaper, watching television, talking over what had happened during the day, preparing themselves for the next. He thought for an instant that he could see through those walls and observe the many families of Bethany’s Sin, all secure and comfortable in their attractive brick and wood homes, all going about the daily business of their lives. But something deeper within him nagged, and he couldn’t figure out what it was.

  After another moment, when they were a couple of streets away from McClain, Kay sighed and said, “It’s really quiet out tonight, isn’t it?”

  And then he knew.

  He slowed the car gradually. Kay looked at him, first amused, then irritated, then concerned. He pulled the car to the curb in front of a white, two-story house with a chimney. A light burned behind white curtains in a large picture window. The upstairs of the house was dark. Evan cut the engine and listened.

  “Daddy?” Laurie said from the backseat. “Why did you stop here?”

  “Shhhhhhh,” Evan whispered. Kay started to speak, but he shook his head. She watched his eyes, feeling a pincer of fear grab her guts.

  When she could no longer stand the silence she said, “What are you doing?”

  “Listening,” he said.

  “To what?”