The Boy Who Could Draw Tomorrow

She saw it now, the inking so huge through the glass it was like worms, some curving, some coiled. She moved the loup around, sliding it back and forth across the paper so that she could orient the eyes in relation to each other. The tiny circles Sam had drawn to form the pupils leaped up like thick black doughnuts, the paper at their centers like small fields of squashed white leaves.

She sat there in the roaring silence of minutes that lengthened into the howl of a stone-dead hour, again and again lowering her head to peer into the loup, again and again raising it to gape blindly at the blazing wall of tile.

Each time she bent her head to the loup, she begged God to make it change.

THE BOY WHO COULD DRAW TOMORROW

Quinn Sinclair

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Published by Dell Publishing Co., Inc. 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza New York, New York 10017

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

Dell ® TM 681510, Dell Publishing Co., Inc.

ISBN: 0-440-00745-3

Printed in the United States of America First printing—April 1984

Not a word will he disclose, Not a word of all he knows . . .

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

For A.A., INSPIRATION—NAY, BREATH

PROLOGUE

Watch him. Watch him as he does what he does. See that it is effortless, yet meticulous, and that it happens very fast.

First, he takes a pad thick with many sheets of paper, and he parts them eagerly to expose a fresh, white page. With his left hand, he now takes up the instrument he favors for the extrusion of black ink, an ordinary felt-tip pen endowed with a remarkably hard nib.

He touches the nib to the paper, a field of limitless possibility—and then the boy begins, the pen skittering from here to there in quick, electric motions as the segments of a deep design accumulate swiftly on the page. In seconds, sometimes minutes, the parts coalesce, the picture comes clear.

What is it?

It could be anything—for he is a small boy and thus a colossus in what he imagines. Perhaps he draws his mother—or the sister he does not have. He could draw Heaven if he wanted—or the worst monsters loosed from Hell. He is bound by nothing as his senses trail helplessly after the nib traveling its indelible course across a universe of paper. He is, after all, a child—and life has still to instruct him that a Pilot Razor Point pen is no more than a mere mechanical contrivance, and that a 9 X 12 All-Purpose Jumbo pad is just so many sheets of paper—things finite, things perishable, products manufactured to be sold for profit and not for the purpose of performing magic.

There! He is finished now. You would think it took no time at all. Yet centuries, whole epochs, a history beyond fathoming guided the hand that wrought the awesome inkings which yield the picture on this page.

What is it?

It could be anything—for he is no more than a boy and therefore stupendous in what he imagines. In this, be warned, the child is like a god, and the pen his terrible scepter—while the 9 x 12 pad before him is nothing less than the whole wide impending world.

CHAPTER ONE

A week after Hal Cooper was promoted to chief of publicity at Manhattan Records, his wife Peggy—a trim, brown-haired woman—was named head window-dresser at Bloomingdale's. Neither of them would have been Central Casting's idea of the roles they'd been assigned. Hal was a big, easy-going man, a fellow with more freckles than you'd try to count, whereas Peggy—Pegs to her dad back in Pensacola and Pegs to Hal—had the sort of crisp good-looks that made you think suburban matron and Junior League, a far cry from the sleek, hardbitten style common to women who worked in fashion.

Despite the hectic pace of their jobs, the Coopers were a relaxed, carefree couple, quick to smile over small pleasures, eager to pitch in and lend a hand, willing and friendly even when the pressure was on. Their boy Sam—a happy, spirited child of six—was a perfect facsimile of his parents, featuring Hal's freckles and Peggy's clean features, exuding the warm and cheerful manner that made people so fond of his mother and father.

The Coopers were special. But it wasn't the kind of specialness that aroused envy. On the contrary, it was because the Coopers appeared to be such an ordinary couple, so clean-cut and wholesome, that you kept your eye on them and watched their progress in the world. It made you feel good when things went well for Hal and Peggy. It made you feel that, in this one case at least, the time-honored virtues paid off.

It was the same with Sam.

For example, his nursery school teacher—the one he'd had last year—was always sending home little flattering notes, a few hastily written sentences whose breathless praise of Sam delighted Hal and Peggy, but whose content it was their habit to take in modest stride. It seemed that Miss Goldenson never tired of composing these little notes. Indeed, weeks after the term was over, still another one came, this time by mail.

"It has been such a joy to work with Sam! His is such a sweet disposition! How special he is, this kind, light-hearted boy of yours. And so talented at drawing pictures! Whatever you do, at all costs you must encourage his interest in art! Have a happy, healthy summer! Yours sincerely, Cecile Goldenson."

***

Of course, the Coopers were thrilled to have these endorsements of their son. As effusive as they were, in truth they were probably not far from the mark. Sam was an extraordinarily good boy. But why not? His was a happy, loving home. Yet proud as they were, Hal and Peggy were sensible people, and they did their best to keep their pride over Sam in check. After all, to get too showy about it wasn't the way the Coopers did things. It wasn't healthy to get all puffed up. The gods might get jealous, and then what?

As for Sam's being so crazy about drawing, well, Hal and Peggy weren't sure how much talent the boy really had. But they were glad he liked to do something creative. It was good for Sam to have an emotional outlet, a means of expressing his deepest feelings and secrets. Still, pleased as the Coopers were that their son loved to draw so much of the time, they cultivated no fanciful illusions about the boy's passion for paper and pen. After all, how many times had Peggy picked up a book on early childhood development and read there that lots of kids showed startlingly precocious achievement of some kind, only to have the impulse wear off when school and homework began to hit hard?

Wasn't Sam slated to start first grade in the fall? Chances were he'd forget all about drawing once school got really serious.

***

When the set of promotions had come through, the Coopers were both delighted and surprised. Hal wired his folks back in Grand Island, Nebraska, and Peggy called her dad, a retired airline pilot and widower who passed his days tinkering with humorously pointless inventions.

"Pop?" Peggy cried when her father picked up the phone in Pensacola. She was grinning impishly at Hal, who stood next to her ready to talk too, listening and beaming.

"It's Pegs, Pop. Guess what!"

She told him the good news and put on Hal and then called Sam to say good-night.

Later on that night, Hal and Peggy made love a little longer and more ferociously than usual. Even so, afterwards, as spent as they were, neither of them could drift off to sleep. They lay huddled together, dreamily musing on all their good fortune. Near dawn, when the grey light began snaking itself around the edges of the drawn window shade, Peggy wondered aloud if with their new salaries they might start looking for a better place to live, a larger apartment in a safer neighborhood. Hal stroked her hair and agreed that it was certainly in the cards, that it was high time Sam had a real room, something big enough to handle a double-decker so that, now that he was getting old enough, he could sometimes have a friend stay overnight.

***

It was no use trying to sleep after that—they were much too excited with the idea of what the new money really meant—a decent apartment at last.

Peggy got up and went to the kitchen to make coffee and start breakfast. Hal rolled over and watched her go, appreciating with a connoisseur's detachment the strong, straight back and the voluptuous cadence of her high hips.

He reached to the floor and pulled his briefcase up onto the bed. He figured he'd use the extra hour to polish some releases he was working on. But it wasn't easy concentrating. He thought about Peggy naked and walking, and then he thought about going to get her and carrying her back to bed. Or maybe he should wake Sam and tell him to get set for a brand new home, a place with lots of space and on a street that wasn't so damned noisy at night.

The more Hal Cooper thought about moving, the more he understood it was the perfect time. Sam would be starting school in earnest, so why not one of the better ones? As high as tuitions were these days, they could still probably afford that, too, right along with the new apartment. This was something else he'd have to talk to Peggy about—the right set-up for Sam, a first-rate private school.

The hell with the releases!

He got up and brushed his teeth and fingered cold water back through his curly, straw-colored hair. On his way to the kitchen he stopped and stood in the doorway of his son's room, his eyes measuring off the floor space almost gleefully, as if now, for the first time, its poverty couldn't threaten him or make him feel ashamed.

Damn it, the boy had no room to play! Anybody could see that. Of course they had to move. Why hadn't they thought of it the instant they'd heard about their promotions? God, it felt good to finally have some money.

As usual, the light summer blanket and the top sheet lay twisted on Sam's floor. His small, tanned body, sprawling in acrobatic slumber, was somehow draped more off than on the bed. Hal looked, and realized it was miraculous how a child could actually sleep in a position like that and what a lousy shame the miracle was ever outgrown. Then he tiptoed into his son's tiny room. For a time Hal Cooper stood listening to his son's sweet breathing, and then he leaned down and pressed his lips to the boy's long, silky hair.

***

The kitchen was ridiculously small—even by New York standards. But Peggy Cooper didn't seem to mind. She was more inclined to say what an advantage it was to have a layout that was so terrifically compact. After all, didn't it cut down on the steps you had to take to get a meal on the table and cleaned up again? Secretly, though, Peggy would have loved something spacious, a grand sort of country-style kitchen. What she wanted most was a kitchen with a window in it. Yet it wasn't in Peggy's nature to feel sorry for herself.

She was standing at the sink when Hal came from Sam's room, with her soft belly pushed up against the small patch of Formica counter and her short, shiny hair looking as if it had just been freshly arranged. There was a mixing bowl on the counter before her, and in her hand she still held the dripping shell of the egg she had cracked into the bowl minutes ago.

"Pancakes? Waffles? A little souffle?" Hal teased.

Peggy Cooper didn't answer at first, which wasn't like her at all. It was then that Hal saw that his wife seemed riveted by something that lay on the counter next to the bowl of unstirred batter.

He leaned his tall body against the doorjamb and smiled in a rascally sort of way.

"Mrs. Cooper? Hello, hello. It's Mr. Cooper over here. At least it was when I brushed my teeth."

Still Peggy did not answer. Her face was turned in profile, and it looked to him as if she gazed upon something that had struck her dumb.

"Honey? Pegs? You okay, baby?"

What the hell was she looking at?

"Hey, honey," Hal said again, more insistently, as he pushed away from the doorjamb and took the two short steps needed to put him next to her. He stood behind her so that he could peer over her shoulder.

Then he saw what she was looking at.

It was a drawing, one of Sam's, black ink on a white sheet from Sam's big Jumbo pad.

What Hal Cooper saw was a huge truck standing at the curb, four husky men frowning as they struggled with their burdens. They were loading the truck with furniture.

"Hey, that's great," Hal said, not understanding yet. But then he saw what Peggy saw—the big bentwood rocking-chair that stood in their bedroom and that Hal's dad had given them when they'd first set up housekeeping. It was an extraordinary rendering—the men, the van, the furniture. But it was the bentwood rocker, so perfect in every detail, that clinched it.

These were their own things, and a moving van had come to take them away.

CHAPTER TWO

Miss Goldenson was summering in Vermont, but Peggy decided the call would be worth it. After all, the woman was so terribly fond of Sam. Besides, she was a professional in these matters, and could be counted on to give reliable advice.

"Mrs. Cooper, I'd be more than happy to talk to you about schools for Sam, but I thought you'd decided to send him to the public school in your neighborhood."

Peggy hesitated. It seemed gauche to just blurt out that the reason she'd kept aloof from the insane Manhattan private school scramble that sometimes began when the city's young citizens were no older than three years of age had always had to do with money—and that now that she and Hal were making it she passionately wanted the "right" school for her child, and would do anything she could to get it.

She equivocated. "Well, Miss Goldenson," she began, clearing her throat, "my husband and I have given the whole matter a great deal of thought, and we've decided that Sam's education really has to be a top priority for us. I'm afraid no public school in the city would fill the bill, and as long as we've decided to go private, we may as well aim for the best."

"I couldn't agree with you more," the teacher replied, sounding as if she meant it. "Sam is a very special boy—genuinely gifted and talented—and I think a good prep school is exactly where he'll get the challenges and the stimulation he needs.

"But of course you realize," she continued, "that you'll have to apply him to several schools this September for a place the following year. It's harder to get into these private schools than it is to get in to college."

Of course Peggy knew all about that. Those of her friends who'd applied to private schools had carried on like crazy women all winter—waiting for the acceptances or rejections on which they seemed to feel their children's entire future hinged.

Which was why the conversation she'd had with someone in the admissions office at St. Martin's—one of the city's most exclusive schools—earlier in the day had seemed both so miraculous and so odd to her.

"Well," she said to Miss Goldenson in a voice both puzzled and elated, as the static crackled along the wire between Manhattan and Vermont, "I was fully prepared to go that route—send him to first grade in a public school while I waited for news about second grade. But I called St. Martin's this morning, and they said very definitely they wanted to interview him for this fall—even though he hasn't been tested or anything."

"But that's not possible," the astonished woman exclaimed. My God, it would be like getting into Harvard without taking the SAT's! "Are you sure, Mrs. Cooper?"

"Oh yes. Believe me, I'm just as amazed as you are. All the other schools I called told me the situation was hopeless for this coming year—they wouldn't even accept an application. And here we are with an interview at St. Martin's in a few days. St. Martin's! The best prep school in the city!" Despite herself, Peggy could not keep the note of jubilant yearning from her voice.

Long after they'd hung up, Miss Goldenson sat mulling over this conversation in the airless heat of the Vermont afternoon. What Peggy Cooper had told her was on the face of things absolutely incredible. Not that she would necessarily have chosen St. Martin's for Sam Cooper—it seemed a rather overly structured and stuffy place for such a creative little boy. But still, it was first-rate—there were parents all over the city who would have killed to get their kids in. Chiding herself for being so cynical, she couldn't help but wonder: Who had gotten to whom to arrange this unprecedented interview? Somebody'd been bought, she'd no doubt, but for the life of her, she couldn't think who.

***

For all her confidence in Sam, Peggy was nervous as hell about the upcoming interview. How do you interview a boy who's not even seven years old? Did they ask tough questions? Did they try to find out if you were the right sort of people or something? Did they have some tricky way of pinning you down, discovering that your parents went to state colleges and that your grandparents buttered the whole roll before taking the first bite?

Peggy checked with the older hands at Bloomingdale's—with some of the buyers whose business it was to stay up to date with the Manhattan social world. Had they heard of St. Martin's? Was it really all that grand? They all gave her the same report—a glowing one, a statement that was all the more convincing for the expressions that came over their faces.

St. Martin's was the best—bar none.

"Tres, tres," Helen Daniels said, and Helen Daniels was in a position to know.

"Well, Sam Cooper's tres, tres too," Peggy joked in reply, laughing a little to try to cover her anxiety.

***

Meanwhile, she used her apartment hunting as a diversion. It took her three days to find the perfect thing. It was also grotesquely expensive, with a monthly maintenance that was terrifying to behold. But yes, yes, yes—it was ideal, and one way or the other, they'd find a way to swing it.

The following Saturday they set aside their usual errands—groceries, laundry, all the frantic odds and ends a New York working couple saves up through the week—and instead, with Sam's hair carefully combed and his new Nikes on, Hal and Peggy took the Lexington Avenue subway from Thirty-third Street up to Ninety-sixth, then walked one block south. At the corner of Ninety-fifth and Lex, Peggy let go of Sam's hand and pointed, as if calling attention to a falling star.

"See?"

"That's it?" Hal said. "You're kidding."

What he saw was an elegant pre-war building midway up the block, the kind of understated, old-money housing favored by the young Wall Street crowd. Even the dark green canopy out front seemed to express a certain lofty bearing born of years of comfort, self-assurance and restraint.

"We can afford that?"

In answer, Peggy turned and whirled in the middle of the sidewalk, her white cotton skirt billowing out to show her bare, slim legs.

"For Christ's sake, Pegs, cut it out!" Hal called, embarrassed by this uncharacteristically flamboyant display.

He grabbed up Sam's hand and caught Peggy by the elbow, and together the three of them strode stiffly up the sidewalk. When they came to the canopy, they turned in under the shade and announced themselves to the doormen.

"The Coopers, you say?"

"That's right," Hal answered, startled by the force of the challenge. "We were told the agent from Douglas Elliman left the key for us. With the elevator man, I mean. For 8C?"

"We have three elevator men on duty," the older of the two doormen said. "If you will wait here while I look into it."

"Jesus," Hal muttered as the older man walked off and the other doorman moved out to the curb as if eager to ignore them.

Peggy grinned. "Will you just relax."

***

They hadn't been invited to sit down while they waited, but Sam ran to one of the wainscot chairs that stood to either side of the large mantelpiece that dominated the lobby. He got up onto the chair, took out his pen, and opened his drawing pad to a fresh page. Peggy caught his eye, and then she held a finger to her pursed lips as if to warn him to keep quiet and behave. But that was silly, cautioning Sam. Sam always behaved.

She was glad she'd thought to bring along his drawing things to keep him busy. On the other hand, she was sorry that she hadn't thought to dress him better. What on earth had possessed her to overlook such a thing? Jeans and a T-shirt just weren't appropriate. Still, he did look cute. Sitting there in that aristocratic chair, Sam seemed to fit right in.

It was Hal she was worried about. He kept pacing in a little circle, trying to glimpse things out of the corner of his eye—the furnishings that adorned the stately lobby, the ornate mirrors and sconces, the black and white marble tiles that spread over the floor in a checkerboard pattern, the deep shine that had been buffed into them.

Hal felt like an interloper, a trespasser, a fake. He wanted to weep—to weep because he'd never had this order and security as a child, to weep because no matter how much money he ever made this was not the sort of comfort he could ever just take for granted. When he looked at Peggy and saw her face lifted to the pewter chandelier that hung from the domed ceiling, he knew somehow that her emotional investment in this building, in St. Martin's, in the whole Manhattan scene was not as fraught with psychic pain and danger as his was. She was like a kid in a candy store—he felt infinitely more vulnerable than that.

He turned to regard his son. Sam seemed right at home, his blue-jeaned legs dangling over the edge of the ancient chair, the boy's shimmering hair falling straight to his wide brown eyes as he bent intently over his drawing pad. But maybe the chair was a reproduction. Hell, this was ridiculous, letting himself feel so goddamned intimidated by a couple of snooty doormen and a lobby that was probably not so hot once you got down and took a really good look at it.

Jesus, he'd better get a hold of himself. It was wonderful, being here, knowing this was all possible. How changed their lives suddenly were! It was as if everything that had gone before this very moment had been a movie in black and white. But now life blazed across a giant screen in a stupendous rage of color.

***

They talked about it all that night, debating everything from all sides, weighing the thing as methodically as their excitement would let them—how much the owner wanted, how much they could afford to offer, how big a mortgage they'd have to carry, what the whole nut would come to if you figured it by the month. But finally it was all too much for them. Dizzy with questions, crazy with expectation, they fell into each other's arms and made love with a new kind of fury, a fever that pounded in them with racking, joyous violence.

Sunday, while Peggy got breakfast together and Sam sat with his drawing pad on the floor of the kitchen, Hal telephoned the agent at home and stated the Coopers' terms.

"I doubt that'll cover it," the agent said.

"Yeah, well, that's our offer," Hal said, convinced now that they'd blown it, that the whole deal was off. And what happened if the offer was turned down and meanwhile St. Martin's took Sam? Or worse, if things worked out the other way around? He was panicked for the moment as he waited for the agent to say something. Maybe they were trying to do this thing backwards. Maybe they should hold off on the apartment until they heard from the school. But the agent was clearing his throat.

"I trust you and Mrs. Cooper understand that, even should your offer be accepted, everything is contingent upon the approval of the Co-op board."

"Of course," Hal said testily. Did this guy think he was an idiot? But the delicate balance of his good humor had been upset. He plunged into a nervous depression, convinced that no co-op board in the world could sit in judgement of him and fail to find him wanting.

***

All through the breakfast he kept obsessing about the board, and nothing Peggy said could pacify him.

For the rest of the day they could talk about nothing else—so many things to get done, so many possibilities for it all to go haywire—their offer rejected, the bank refusing to make the loan, the co-op board arriving at the opinion that the Coopers weren't good enough to live within a mile of East Ninety-fifth Street, let alone in a building with a deep green canopy. Worst of all, what if the admissions officer at St. Martin's signed her name to a letter telling them, ever so politely, to take their kid and get lost? It could happen. Everything could happen. It could all come clattering down.

***

But it didn't. In the coming weeks it was like the double promotions all over again. Everything went their way in a steady, seamless sweep of imponderable good luck. First word that, yes, the owner was willing to accept their offer. Then Citibank granted their loan application. The next night the Coopers got a babysitter and took a taxi uptown to meet with the board, and everything was just fine—not the least bit dicey. The "board" turned out to be a group of ordinary affluent New Yorkers, and not once did any one of them ask a question that either Hal or Peggy might conceivably regard as awkward. Nor were there any side-wise looks that were likely to make Hal feel as if working as a publicist was the most contemptible profession on earth.

Two days later they received a letter by messenger. The board would be happy to have the Coopers. Only hours later they received a call from the admissions officer at St. Martins, a Mrs. Wendell-Briggs, the imposing woman who'd sat silently by while a first-grade teacher had tested Sam, the same woman who'd every so often turned her patrician face to Hal and smiled comfortingly, as if she quite understood and sympathized with the particular agonies of his ordeal.

"We're in!" Peggy sang out when she was certain the telephone receiver was safely back in place. "Hey, everybody!" she shouted from the kitchen, "Sam Cooper is a St. Martin's boy!"

Hal came from the bedroom to collect Sam and hoist him onto his shoulders for a ride into the kitchen, and there the three of them danced around in the cramped space grinning like loons with no room to fly.

"What a guy!" Hal proclaimed as he jogged up and down with his son on his shoulders.

"Hurray for Sam!" Peggy chorused in reply—suddenly remembering the bottle of champagne she'd stuck in the fridge weeks ago, hoping for just this occasion.

She produced the bottle. Hal put Sam down. He got out a towel and popped the cork while Peggy got glasses—three of them, the ones they saved for guests.

"Champagne for the old scout here?" Hal said, frowning comically.

Peggy smiled gloriously. "A little won't hurt."

"To Sam, the St. Martin's man!" Hal toasted.

"To you, son," Peggy said as the three of them lifted their fragile glasses.

***

They went to bed early that night, exhausted from the shower of good news, but not too tired to make love. And for a moment Peggy even thought about leaving her diaphragm in the night table. After all, why not two little Coopers, another child as blessed and beautiful as Sam? But then she decided against it. It made more sense to wait until things settled back into place again and they had proved their ability to keep up with all these new expenses they were taking on.

Near dawn, feeling absolutely reborn, Peggy's eyes came open as if fingers had pushed back the lids—but within instants she staggered from the bed, overcome with a thunderous headache and a curious feeling of dread. She went to the bathroom, splashed water on her face and took two Tylenol. It was when she sat down to urinate that she saw they must have gone to bed with the light still on in the hall. She wiped herself got up to investigate, automatically reaching to flush the toilet but then thinking, no, better not to chance rousing Hal.

She padded into the hall.

But it wasn't the light in the hall that was shining. It was in Sam's room; the light was coming from in there.

Noiselessly she pushed open the partially closed door.

She saw her son sitting under the architect's lamp that was fastened to the corner of his worktable. He was in his undershorts, and his golden head was bowed over his Jumbo pad, where the Pilot Razor Point pen that he favored was dancing in small, deft motions over the page.

"Can't you sleep, honey?" Peggy softly called from the doorway.

The boy shook his golden head. "Too hot."

"But you switched off your fan, sweetie."

"Too noisy," Sam said, not turning to look at his mother until Peggy had moved into the room to brush his hair away and touched the back of her hand to his forehead.

"You feel sick, baby? Too much excitement? I never should have let you have that champagne."

"I'm fine, Mom, honest. I just wanted to draw, is all."

"Let's see," Peggy said, leaning down to examine what he was working on. Her vision was still gauzy from sleep and she had to blink her eyes to focus them. "I'll get you some ice water in a minute," she said tonelessly as she lifted the pad from the worktable to get a closer look.

She saw a classroom, three rows of boys seen from the rear as they sat at their old-fashioned desks. Facing them, looking out at the children and at Peggy, too, there stood a woman of striking height, her eyes circled with heavy-rimmed glasses. There was no expression on the woman's face. In fact, the most noticeable thing about her was the colorless look with which she regarded the children who sat before her—that and the sharply upturned nose that flared pig-like from under the ponderous spectacles.

"You've drawn her with a chignon," Peggy said, holding the pad under the light. "A chignon with a pencil sticking through it. Do you know what a chignon is?"

Sam shook his head and took back the pad.

"It's when a lady does her hair like that—pulled back in a bun."

"Oh, sure," Sam said. "Thanks, Mom."

"No trouble at all," Peggy said, smiling. "Whenever you want the scoop on coiffures, you just check with your old mom, okay?"

But Sam was too busy with his picture again to answer.

Peggy stood over him, uncertain about what to say next.

"I see you've got school on your mind. You're not worried or anything, are you baby? Sam honey? Everything's okay, isn't it?"

The boy looked up from his pad, his face softened to unspeakable loveliness now that his head had moved out of the harsh, direct light. Peggy could see that his freckles were almost invisible now, as if they magically vanished in the nighttime hours.

"I'm fine, Mom. Everything's fine."

His words were reassuring, but she felt a vague chill rush through her even so. She hugged her arms to her chest, and then, not smiling now, she knelt to hold her son to her breast.

He squirmed slightly in her arms, and Peggy realized with a catch in her throat how quickly he was growing up. Giving him a last squeeze, she got to her feet to get him the water she'd promised. It was when Peggy was in the kitchen yanking the ice tray free from the freezer compartment that she remembered what Miss Goldenson looked like.

Wasn't she a distinctly short woman? And her nose, it was nothing you'd ever notice. At least it was nothing like that.

Back in Sam's room, Peggy took up the pad again while Sam gulped his water. She studied the woman's face, searching for a trace of something human, some warmth. But it was incredibly void of feeling, and for some crazy reason that's what made you want to turn away as if you'd been stared down. But now that Peggy looked again, she saw something else—at the end of a row one of the boys in the picture lay crumpled over his desk. That hadn't been there when she'd first looked—or had it?

"You add this, sweetie?" Peggy asked, pointing to the slumped-over boy.

"Don't you like it, Mom?" he put down his glass and took a look.

Peggy tilted the pad for Sam to see what she was pointing at. "What's wrong with him?" she said, trying to keep her voice cheerful.

"Gosh, I don't know," came her son's sleepy answer and the yawn that gathered Peggy's attention into a different direction. She kissed him and turned off the light—and then she put him back to bed.

CHAPTER THREE

There was so much to do! First and foremost was actually taking possession of the apartment, with all the stomach-churning anxiety this particular financial transaction inevitably engenders in even the calmest of souls. With as good grace as possible, Hal and Peggy endured the whole agonizing business—the clearing of the title, the closing, the half-dozen certified checks that had to be in their hands when they sat down with the seller and the realtor and the bank loan officer and the building manager and the lawyers that represented everyone there.

Once the apartment was actually theirs, Peggy would have been more than happy to spend the afternoon drinking champagne in some wonderful, high-toned East Side haunt, but Hal began to obsess almost immediately about interior decoration, furnishings, remodeling—he was especially adamant about redoing the kitchen. They would have to spend the rest of the day looking at fabrics and furnishings—there was no time to waste.

With unusual intensity he described how he fantasized the finished kitchen: it would be agleam with built-in bright white appliances, maybe handmade Mexican tiles for the floor, patterned French tiles for the counters, good solid brass hinges for the wood cabinets, once they'd had the cruddy paint torched off and the surfaces relacquered in high-gloss white. And the window—the kitchen window Peggy herself had always said she wanted so badly—well, it would be shuttered in quartered oak. When she protested that he was talking about a fortune's worth of renovation, he brushed her objections roughly aside. He'd find the money—take out some sort of home improvement loan, get another line of credit somewhere. She wasn't to worry about that; he'd take care of it.

And as for furniture, someone in his office had an "in" with one of the best interior decorating firms in the city. To Peggy's astonishment, Hal informed her that he'd already made arrangements for one of their staff to look over the apartment, order drapes and carpeting, and at least enough furniture to make the place habitable by the time they were ready to move in. That's what he and Peggy would be seeing to this afternoon.

***

Against her better judgment, Peggy forced herself to keep her almost panic-stricken reservations about this economic profligacy to herself. Certainly Hal must know what he was doing. Maybe they'd given him the promise of a big bonus at work, and he was just saving the news for her as a delicious surprise. Or maybe his company gave out low-interest loans. Whatever, there was an adamant and eager quality to Hal's planning that she simply didn't have the nerve to challenge.

Wherever the money was going to come from, it was a mountain of work to get done. But, on the lucky side, St. Martin's didn't start until very late in September. If they hurried, if they really knocked themselves out, maybe they could do it all and still have time for a little holiday before Sam had to be back for school.

It was arranging the actual moving that almost broke their backs. How to do it? It was going to be hell packing up their four crammed rooms. It was a rental, only a block from University Medical Center, so noisy at night from the ambulances screaming to the emergency entrance that it was months after they'd moved in before either of them could sleep a straight eight hours. And it was worse for Sam. But small as the apartment was, it was jammed solid. Hal looked it over and said it was incredible what a little family could collect in such a short period of time, all the clever ways you could find for storing things you then forgot you had, and then they took a deep breath and started pulling it down from the tops of closets and out from under beds and tables draped to cover what was underneath. It was like opening a floodgate.

So Hal hired a moving company and told the estimator to figure in the added costs of handling the packing and unpacking, too. It was shameless, this abandon, spending left-and-right as if they were rich people, when in truth they were already stretched to the limit of their resources. Sure, raises had come along with their promotions, big raises, but how far could the money go with bigger taxes, too? Still, there were certain things that just had to be done—and, besides, it was mad to think they could pull up in front of their new building, roll up their sleeves, and start unloading a Ryder truck. Peggy was so relieved to turn over the hideous donkey work of packing to someone else that she barely bothered to protest this latest stunning extravagance.

So the men from Beverly came and the men from Beverly left—and though it was painless enough, it cost a mint and left Hal and Peggy feeling slightly decadent. But there was something else that left them feeling odd. One of the men, the one who introduced himself as the driver, looked strangely familiar. The more Hal and Peggy caught sight of the man as he shambled in and out of their rooms, the more they were convinced they'd seen him before—but not for the life of them could they remember where or when.

"That guy," Hal said as they watched the van lumber away from the curb, "don't we know him from someplace?"

"Beats me," Peggy said.

But, like Hal, she had the same nagging, uneasy impression that she'd seen that face before.

***

The thing to do was to cut corners on their vacation. On this, Peggy absolutely put her foot down. Instead of the Vineyard or the Cape or some lake up in Maine, she convinced him to fly to Florida and stay with her dad. Sam hadn't seen Val in almost three years—so it made perfect sense to make the trip and meanwhile to save on a hotel and having to eat out.

Hal booked economy seats on Eastern. All the way out to LaGuardia they kept congratulating themselves on a job well done, so much accomplished so fast—new apartment, new kitchen, new jobs, new school—all ready and waiting for them when the week in Florida was up.

"All right," Hal said, holding up his hand like a traffic cop, "I'm making an announcement and I want this family's strict attention." He grinned to show he was playing, really, but Peggy and Sam snapped straight up in their seats like soldiers awaiting orders. "I'm serious now," Hal insisted, a little too loudly.

"We are listening, oh captain," Peggy crooned, and then, whispering, added, "and so is the driver."

"Yeah, well," Hal said, lowering his hand sheepishly, "it's this. The way I see it, our lives have been too hectic for a little too long to be healthy. So I say that for the next seven days I want everyone to cool out. Do you read me?"

"Read you loud and clear," Peggy said, barking her answer in military fashion while Sam, clowning, caved over in his seat, as if going limp was what his father wanted.

"Don't do that!" Peggy cried, abruptly snatching at his shirt and almost tearing it. She didn't know why, but it had alarmed her, the way he'd suddenly fallen over like that. And although she did her best to compose herself, for the rest of the ride she was silent while Sam and Hal chattered away. She was suddenly filled with a feeling of dread, and no matter how she told herself to snap out of it, she could not. It wasn't at all like her to be moody and jumpy. Her nature was exactly the opposite of that. It must be all the excitement, she decided. Yes, that was it—her nerves were frazzled from all the energy she'd been putting out since the promotions had come through and their lives had gone rushing in so many new directions.

She sat back in her seat, gently smiling just like her old self again. A week in Pensacola was what she needed, seven low-key days, a good solid rest.

But even as Peggy scolded herself and tried to turn her mood around, the weight of something shadowy pressed ominously against her heart.

***

While Hal and the driver struggled to get the luggage out, Peggy took Sam's hand and together they ran to check in at the ticket counter.

"Hulluva family," the driver muttered as Hal fished in his pockets for the fare. "You're a lucky guy. Me, I wish I had a tenth as good."

Hal nodded absently, but when he looked up to pay the man, he was stunned by the ruined, mournful eyes, one of them sliding slightly off-track as the cabbie returned Hal's glance.

Once the plane was airborne, Hal loosened his seatbelt and leaned over to kiss Peggy and Sam, who was already busily at work on his Jumbo pad and just as industriously working on the wad of grape-flavored Bubblicious Peggy had treated him to on takeoff.

"How you doing, old scout?"

"Loose as a goose," said Sam.

Hal ruffled his son's hair and then touched Peggy's knee with his fingertips.

"Don't wake me when the lunch wagon comes, hear?"

She patted his hand and smiled. He loved to see Peggy smile. It etched little tucks into her cheeks, trim brackets that set off the liquid contours of her lips. He smiled back, and then he fitted the stereo headphones to his ears. He switched channels until he found one that was playing a tape of old standards. Pushing back his seat as far as it would go, he yawned extravagantly, and presently fell into a deep, untroubled sleep.

Peggy would have liked to doze off, too. But that would be unfair to Sam. Besides, she'd have to see to his lunch and to the bathroom when he needed to go. Actually, she wasn't sure if she could sleep on a plane if she tried. Funny, how airplanes put her a little on edge. After all, her dad was a pilot. Hadn't she been around aircraft for as long as she could remember? But maybe that was the reason. Maybe it was like the old thing about the shoemaker's sons never having shoes. No, that wasn't the right saying. Well, it was something like that—the preacher's child, the doctor's child, something about things being upside down.

Her jaw fell open in a yawn. She couldn't help herself. She wished they'd hurry with the food. How could she have forgotten to bring a book? She thought about checking the magazines in back, but all the good ones were bound to be gone by now. Besides, she'd have to climb over Hal to get into the aisle, and she didn't want to risk waking him yet. Time enough when Sam couldn't hold it anymore.

She turned to look out the window and fixed her eyes on the horizon. But that only made her groggier.

"Hungry, baby?"

Sam didn't look up from his pad. He shook his head and showed his gum as if to say that was all anyone could reasonably want in his mouth.

She pulled down the tray in front of his seat.

"Here, rest your pad on this. It'll be easier."

"Thanks, Mom. That's great."

"Want to play a game? I'll play you Geography if you like."

"Later, Mom, okay? After I finish this."

She leaned over a little to see what he was working on. The head-on portrait of a man from the belt up filled the sheet of drawing paper, a leathery man that Peggy instantly recognized as her father.

"That's Granddad," she said, thrilled. "Why, Sam, honey, that's amazing, the likeness. And you haven't seen Val in years."

"You like it?"

"It's wonderful, baby. But why did you stick that patch over his eye? You think Granddad's a pirate?"

"I don't know," Sam said as he drew a pair of pilot's wings across the shirt pocket. "He flies airplanes, doesn't he?"

"Not for a long time, sweetie—he's retired now."

"Retired?"

She was about to explain the meaning of the word when the feeling that she was going to sneeze sent her hand reflexively reaching for her purse. But it wasn't next to her in her seat. She felt behind her. It wasn't there either—nor could she see it by her feet on the floor. She looked at her lap as if it were possible to miss its presence there, some trick the eye had played.

"My God!" she cried, tugging at her lip. "I don't believe it!"

She felt Sam pulling at her arm, and when she looked, she saw his alarm as he swept the hair from his eyes.

"It's all right, baby," she said, cupping his cheek. "It's just that I think I lost my purse. Oh lord, your daddy's going to have a fit."

She undid her seatbelt and pushed gently at Hal's arm. "Hal, honey, get up, dear," she pleaded. "Honey, I can't find my handbag."

***

One of the stewardesses helped them look through the plane. But it was no use. Peggy kept having to say that she hadn't been anywhere except her seat, and the stewardess kept saying it wouldn't hurt to look around, just to make sure. Peggy didn't know which was worse—feeling so foolish or being so exasperated with everyone who kept giving her advice she didn't need.

All right, it wasn't such a terrible disaster, really. Hal had their traveling money—so, at worst, it just meant losing a few dollars and the hassle of having to get her credit cards replaced. And, oh yes, her driver's license, not that she needed it all that much.

"Either you left it at the airport or in the cab," Hal said. "Unless you walked out of the apartment without it."

"No," Peggy said. "I distinctly remember. I had it with me—because I remember getting my sunglasses out just before we got in the cab."

"So, okay. When we touch down, we'll have Eastern check LaGuardia and I'll call the Hack Bureau. That's the best we can do—and if it's no soap, then we'll just have to start phoning the credit card companies and report the loss." He smiled and put his hand to her shoulder. "Details, honey, mere details. Just relax."

For the rest of the trip, she tried to make a list of everything she had in her bag. Credit cards—that was the tough part. Did she have a Saks card? How about Altman's?

Peggy was still running through all the New York department stores she sometimes shopped at when the plane started its descent for Pensacola.

***

But they didn't have to call anybody. An Eastern agent was at the gate when they trooped off the airplane into the terminal. He spotted the Coopers instants before Peggy's father did—and in the confusion and excitement and relief, it took minutes before Peggy noticed something that made her legs go weak. First the Eastern agent told them not to worry, that the cab driver in New York had turned in her pocketbook to the Eastern desk at LaGuardia and it would be there waiting for her, safe and sound, on their return trip. Peggy could have kissed the man, she felt such a wave of relief. But then she saw her father, taller than the Eastern agent by a full head and standing just behind the smaller man as if waiting his turn in line.

Val Potter had his arms out, and he was grinning from ear to ear. Sam recognized him immediately. The boy hurled himself against his grandfather's legs and flung his arms around his waist.

"Val!" Hal stepped around the Eastern agent and clasped his father-in-law's hand.

But Peggy stayed where she was. She had all she could do just to keep her knees from buckling and giving way.

Her father, who had the vision of a professional pilot, was wearing a baseball cap and, beneath the bill, a black patch covered one eye.

CHAPTER FOUR

How good it was to see him, Peggy thought as she settled into the sane routine of her father's retirement. His wholesome normalcy was like a tonic after the frenetic pace of New York.

Val was thrilled to see them, and delighted by the chance to show off his latest whiz-bangs. One was a goofy contraption that puffed steam and flashed whirling lights and deposited five pennies into a slot over a spout that then dispensed a glass of cherry Kool-aid.

Sam couldn't get enough of it. He kept asking to go back out to the garage and try it again. But, over dinner that first night, Peggy scolded her dad for using up Florida's energy resources for no good reason but silliness.

Val Potter was delighted. "What do you mean, no good reason? You call a five-cent glass of Kool-aid no good reason?"

This reminded Sam, and he asked to be excused.

"Can I, Granddad? Can I go back out to the garage?"

Peggy scowled. "But, Sam, you haven't finished your milk, and you'll miss dessert."

"There's watermelon," Val Potter said, fixing his grandson with one smiling eye.

"I'll just be a second," Sam promised.

"More likely one hundred and thirty-two seconds," Val Potter said, "which is how long she takes to run a cycle." He laughed uproariously. " No good reason."

Peggy calculated whether she could ask what she wanted in that much time, and concluded she could. She wanted Sam out of the room when she raised the subject—and she was too tense about it to wait until the boy went to bed.

"All right," she said. "But when you come back, milk first. No watermelon until you finish every last drop."

They watched Sam skip through the kitchen to the garage door, his hand out to make contact with almost everything he passed.

"And don't put your sticky hands all over Granddad's nice, clean walls!" Peggy called after him, and then, turning to her father and pointing to her own eye, she lowered her voice.

"What happened, Pop?"

"Aw, hell, I didn't want to worry you two," Val Potter said.

"All right, but what happened?"

"Metal shaving. Should have had my goggles on. Didn't."

"You were horsing around in your workshop?" Hal said.

Val Potter nodded, then went back to eating. "It's nothing. Forget it."

"But how serious is it?" Hal persisted. "I mean, will you always wear that patch?"

"My dogfighting days are over," Val Potter laughed, pushing his plate away from him and smiling like a boy caught at something infamously off-bounds.

Peggy got up and put her arms around her father's neck. He hugged her and tried to get her to sit down again. "It's no big deal, kitten," he said gruffly. "Let's just skip the melodrama and get that watermelon on the table."

"In a minute," Peggy said, standing over her father and looking down at him with deep concern in her eyes. "Just tell me how long ago it happened."

"Why, just the other day. I figured there was no sense calling you about it, since you'd be here so soon anyway. Besides, it isn't important enough to deserve a long distance phone call."

It was a warm night and the house was hot anyway from the dinner cooking. But Peggy's thoughts fixated on Sam's notebook, and she was chilled to the marrow.

Val Potter stood staring at his daughter, totally nonplussed by the stricken look that had washed across her face. "I told you, Pegs, there's nothing to worry about."

***

It wasn't conclusive. But it was enough to start her thinking. Sam couldn't have known about the eye. Yet it could have been a wild coincidence, a boy on his way to visit his grandfather and he happens to have pirates on his mind.

Then she thought about the drawing of the moving van waiting at the curb to cart their belongings away. Was that a coincidence too? Yet what else could explain it? Nothing, she told herself sternly. Absolutely nothing. It wasn't like her to be this high-strung, and the sooner she got back to normal, the better.

But that night, when the house was quiet and she and Hal sat watching the late movie on TV, Peggy still hadn't been able to shake off her mood of unease. She wondered if she should say something, at least hint that she was worried. Perhaps Hal would think of some explanation that could put her fears to rest. Hal was clever that way. Maybe he'd unravel the whole thing in two seconds flat. But something told her that Hal would be just as mystified as she was. And then what? Everything would be worse—because that would get him to worrying too.

She decided she had to protect Hal from that. It would be rotten to burden him with something else when he had so much on his plate already—the mortgage, the monthly maintenance, the greater responsibilities and pressures that came along with his new job. It was a high stress affair, working in the music business, especially if you were connected to the public relations end of it. That really put Hal on the spot—if he lost his job now, they'd really be screwed. So she decided not to say anything, although she hated having secrets from Hal. In fact, wasn't this the first one?

The movie was awful—Aldo Ray in The Naked and the Dead. Besides, Peggy had seen it a thousand times, and she didn't like war movies to begin with, even if a shot was never fired.

She was sleepy, and what she really wanted was to go to bed. But she was afraid that as soon as her head hit the pillow, a vision of little boys sitting in precise rows would unfurl behind her eyelids. Like the boys in the picture, she too would face the pig-nosed woman who stood with her back to the blackboard as she coolly regarded the pupil who had collapsed across his desk.

She was being silly, wasn't she? Perhaps all Sam meant to suggest was that the boy was napping when he should have been paying attention to his lessons.

She felt Hal's hand moving up under her breast and then his other hand high on the inside of her leg. He was still for a moment, and then he stirred again. She had on one of her dad's old Navy robes, and Hal was parting it now and undoing the belt.

"Not here," Peggy whispered, kissing her husband's ear.

"Come on, then," he whispered back. He got to his feet and stood over her and started lifting her from the couch.

But Peggy resisted. "Don't you want to see the rest of this?"

Hal's voice was hoarse with desire when he answered. "I know what I want to see the rest of, and they're not showing it on TV."

She knew it was no time to try to talk. But she wanted to turn him off. There was too much to think about, and she was afraid to make love and then fall asleep and dream. Besides, there was a hard carnal edge to Hal's lovemaking lately that she just didn't find all that much of a turn-on. So, instead of letting him lift her, she pushed at his chest. "You could always go to that X-rated motel out by the airport. Didn't you notice it on the way in? Closed-circuit movies in every room?"

Even in the weak light, she could see the angry look that came over his face. It wasn't like Peggy to put him off. It wasn't like her to do it, let alone want to.

"I must be selling the wrong line of goods," he said, backing away slightly and standing back up to his full height.

"I'm sorry," Peggy said. "It's just—I don't know. Losing my bag and everything. I can't seem to settle down."

"That's okay, Pegs," he said, trying to mean it. He bent down, kissed her a quick peck on the forehead, and went off to the guest room, like Sam, making contact with the wall as he worked his way along the hall past the room where Val and Sam were sharing the bed.

***

Things were strained between Peggy and Hal the rest of the week. But the time went quickly. Val and Sam went fishing together almost every day. Peggy and Hal hung around the house. They sunbathed, took long naps, now and then talking together in a new and guarded way. Mainly they went over their new budget and mapped out the belt-tightening that would have to set in as soon as they got back to New York. Hal worked on a batch of releases. Peggy did sketches of some ideas she had for the store's late-autumn windows. And in no time at all, they were on their way home, having made Val promise he'd visit them in their new place come Christmas and that he'd also remember his safety goggles whenever he was inspired to fool around in the garage.

Peggy kept an eye on Sam's drawing now. At Val's he'd been too caught up with fishing to bother with his pad. But as soon as they were strapped into their seats, he got out his pad and went happily to work. Without letting on that she was doing it, Peggy made sure she got a look at everything he did. Halfway into the flight, she saw one that unnerved her completely. It showed one of the bridges that spans the East River between Queens and Manhattan—a reasonable rendering of the very bridge they would pass over on their way back into the city. In the first frame of the drawing, a large chunky car was crashing through the guard rail, heading for the river below. In the next frame, the car had hit the water, and a crowd had gathered near the broken railing to stare in horror at the vanishing car and its driver.

"Oh, Sam," Peggy almost cried. "Why on earth would you want to draw something so terrible?"

She hated herself for saying that—she would have her self freaked-out in no time at all if she didn't snap out of this thing about Sam's drawings—attaching such morbid and outlandish significance to it. But when she saw what he'd sketched in response to her outcry, she couldn't help but feel an inordinate sense of relief. In a third frame, Sam had shown the driver of the car being pulled to safety by what looked like a police rescue team in a motorboat. And when Sam turned to a fresh page and started to form the outline of an airplane, she reached out instinctively to put her hand in the middle of the sheet of paper to interrupt the motion of Sam's pen.

"Honey? Could I have a piece of paper to make some notes?"

She didn't give him a chance to offer another. Instead, she tore off the page he'd started to work on—and then, to distract him from going back to the same subject, she said it was time to visit the bathroom.

"Poke your daddy and tell him we have to get out."

Hal Cooper came awake angrily. "I don't like it," he growled as Peggy and Sam were making their way past him into the aisle.

"What, darling?"

"The way people are always making cracks about your dad and me having names that rhyme."

Peggy sent Sam on a few steps ahead and then turned back and touched her husband's arm, leaning down so that the other passengers would not hear. "Please, sweetie," she said, "please don't be angry with me. Everything will be back to normal before you know it." She hoped he would understand what she meant by normal, but the look Hal shot her before Peggy turned away to catch up with Sam was clear evidence that he hadn't.

She followed Sam down the aisle toward the back of the plane, aware that this was the first time in her married life when she and Hal weren't getting through to one another. Yet wasn't it her own fault? She was distracted. She was worried about Sam, about his drawing things as if his pad and pen could see around corners. But why didn't she share her concern with Hal? Was it just because she didn't want to burden him? Was she afraid he'd shrug it off and tell her she was crazy? Or was it something else that kept her silent?

Peggy went to claim her purse at the Eastern office while Hal and Sam waited at the carousel for their luggage to come around. Sam loved to help. He loved to be the first to spot a piece of their luggage as it bumped along the conveyor belt. In the taxi back to the city, Peggy went through her purse. It was all there, not a button missing. She breathed a sigh of relief and handed Hal the slip of paper on which she'd jotted down the name and address of the driver.

"I'll call him first thing in the morning," Hal said. "Let him know we're mailing him something. Twenty-five dollars okay?"

"No," Peggy said, "I'll do it. I was just wondering if you recognized the name now that you see it. I mean from that nameplate thing. You know, up there," and she pointed to the front seat to show what she was talking about.

But she could see that Hal didn't seem to understand. Or didn't want to.

"You know. Oh, forget it," she said, and took back the slip of paper.

He made an exasperated sound and turned to look out the window. "All I know is the guy had sad eyes and one of them strayed like. You know, it didn't track. And he said something about what a great family I had."

Peggy detected a faint note of irony in Hal's voice, and she was angry about it for Sam's sake. She couldn't understand Hal's unwillingness to patch things up. Maybe the strain of the new apartment, and all the debts that came with it, were beginning to tell on him. Why was he being so obstinate—and sarcastic?

She tried to make her voice soothing, and she hoped he would turn around and see that she was smiling. "I'll call and let him know something's on the way. After all, it's my job to thank the man."

"Sure," Hal said, and refused to turn around.

"I miss Val already," Sam said out of the blue.

Normally, she or Hal would have said something about that—something to brighten Sam up, or at least remind him to say "Granddad." But neither of them spoke the rest of the way into the city. Even when they pulled up in front of their new building and the crustier of the two doormen came trotting out to fling open the door and stand respectfully to one side, even then Peggy and Hal kept to their grim silence. It was Sam that greeted the doorman and stood around chattering about his week in Florida while the second doorman came out to take charge of the luggage. As for Peggy and Hal, they went sullenly into the lobby, walking the distance to the elevator in as frosty a silence as they'd ever experienced together. But as they stood at the elevator doors waiting for the luggage to be wheeled in, they could hear Sam struggling to describe the thing that huffed and puffed and gave you a glass of Kool-aid.

It made them smile—and then they laughed. By the time Sam appeared, his hand resting proprietarily on the stack of luggage piled up on the dolly the younger doorman was pushing, Hal and Peggy were hugging as well as laughing.

Thank God, Peggy thought with wild relief, everything's back to normal.

***

It was wonderful being home. And it felt like home, even though they'd slept in the new place only three nights before they'd left for Florida. Now that it was finished, Peggy had to admit that she adored her new kitchen. She stood in the doorway admiring the gleaming surfaces, everything so white and spanking clean, the brass hinges winking back at her in the late-afternoon sunlight that poured through the shuttered window over the sink.

"Come see," she called to Hal as he dragged the luggage into the foyer.

He came to stand beside her. "Nice," he said, and hugged her waist.

They stood for a time gazing at the one room that most powerfully suggested the change that had come into their lives. It was in the air between them, a good feeling, a feeling of enormous pride. They both felt it, didn't they? Peggy could tell it made things better. She leaned against him.

"You get Sam bathed and into his pyjamas while I whip us up a nice, light supper.''

But Hal said no, tomorrow was a big day—back to their jobs and first day of school. "And anyway," he said, "we're still officially on vacation."

So they went to a coffee shop a few blocks away, and got home in time to watch Sixty Minutes and get the unpacking started before Sam had to go to bed. Peggy laid out his new clothes, the outfit that conformed to St. Martin's dress code—school blazer, tie, proper leather shoes—the works.

"Why can't I wear my Nikes?" Sam said. He sat cross-legged on the bed, his old stuffed fox nestled in his lap. Hal sat at the foot of the bed, ready to bestow his kiss goodnight, while Peggy bent down to pick lint off the blazer and arrange it again on the top of Sam's toy box.

"Because those are the rules, mister. So don't waste your energy fighting it. Any more questions?"

The boy stared at the ceiling as if he was hardening himself to endure unspeakable tortures, but when Peggy came to kiss him and arrange the covers over his chest, Sam threw his arms around his mother's neck and hugged her with all his might.

"Thanks, Mom."

"Thanks for what?"

"For the new house and the new school and the new clothes and all that. And for getting to see Granddad, too. I had a great time. Tell Dad thanks, too."

"Tell him yourself."

"Thanks, Dad," Sam called out as Hal stood in the doorway waiting to snap off the light.

"That's okay, Son. You get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow's going to be a big day. So sleep tight, okay?"

They left his room with their arms about each other's waist, and without a word they turned to their own bedroom.

"The hell with unpacking," Hal said.

Peggy answered by touching the back of her hair with her free hand and then pivoting invitingly—so that she faced him as she walked backward, her fingertips tucked meaningfully into his belt.

***

What awakened her? The room was absolutely stifling. Yet it had been downright cool when they'd gone to bed. She could feel pinpricks of sweat forming between her breasts, as if the hair on Hal's chest was drilling tiny wells into her flesh. She tried to ease herself out from under him, but his weight pressed upon her massively and his legs still lay between hers, so that he was like an anchor that moored her in place. She lay there for a long time, listening to his heavy breathing and to a ticking sound that seemed to be coming from behind her head.

Good God, she thought, they've got the heat turned on and the radiator valve in here must be wide open.

It was then that she started worrying about Sam's room. He must be burning up.

She had no choice. She shoved herself out from under Hal and rolled toward the edge of the bed. Then she got up on one elbow and listened to hear if she'd awakened him. What she heard was Hal's even, slumbrous breathing, almost a snore.

She got down on her hands and knees and crept across the carpet until she felt the radiator sizzling in front of her face. She turned the valve all the way off, then got to her feet to check Sam's room. But the air in there was just right. She stood in the middle of the room. In the moonlight that came through the Levelor blinds she could see where she'd laid his things out on top of the toy box at the foot of his bed. The new shoes glowed like incandescent mice.

***

She went to the kitchen and turned on the light. It occurred to her that this lovely room was even more beautiful at night, its smooth white surfaces so creamy that they seemed to give off a kind of electric hum, as if a miniature dynamo purred from behind each sleek panel and tile.

She saw her purse sitting on the marble baker's table, the clasp open, the slip of white paper peeking over the top.

She looked at the digital clock embedded among the battery of dials that operated the built-in wall oven, and was amazed to see that it was only minutes after nine o'clock. She smiled with pleasure, remembering now the small cry that had escaped from her throat when Hal's climax triggered her own and for long instants their bodies had pulsed in perfect unison, the pressure of their embrace gradually subsiding into bottomless sleep.

Yes, everything was back to normal. It was even better than normal—because the great contentment of their lives had survived the transition to this new and much more comfortable home. They would be even happier here, lead even fuller lives. It was wonderful, how good things could be. Peggy felt herself unimaginably blessed. She murmured a small prayer of thanks, for herself and for those she loved, as she took up her purse and moved across the cool, irregular surface of the Mexican tiles.

She'd had a wall phone installed, white to go with the dominant color in the room. She lifted the receiver. She felt grateful and generous. She was in a great hurry to share her good fortune. What had Hal said? A man with sad eyes who thought her family worth complimenting? What a good person this cab-driver must be. Imagine, in this day and age, in New York, going to all that trouble to return someone's property. Who knows, the poor man might have even gotten a ticket while he went inside to check with the airline. Certainly a little after nine on a Sunday night wasn't too late to call, to thank the man and let him know that at least one person appreciated an act of such old-fashioned decency.

Twenty-five? She'd send him fifty! It was worth it. He needed it more than they did. Just look at how comfortably they were living! Fifty—she'd make the check out for fifty, and she'd tell the man it was on the way.

She dialed information, gave the name, the address in Queens—and then she dialed the number.

The phone had rung so many times that Peggy was just about ready to give up, when a gruff and breathless voice on the other end answered, "Max Tauber speaking."

"Mr. Tauber," Peggy exclaimed, concerned that she'd awakened him, despite the early hour. "Mr. Tauber," she repeated, "I hope I'm not disturbing you. My name is Peggy Cooper. I'm the woman whose pocketbook you rescued from your cab a week or so ago. I'm calling to thank you, and to let you know I'd like to send you a reward for all the trouble you took."

The silence that greeted these remarks was so prolonged that Peggy began to wonder if she even had the right person at the other end of the line. But then the man cleared his throat and said.

"Oh shit, now I remember you! Yeah, you have that cute little blond-haired kid and the nice old man. I'm afraid I'm not really playing with a full deck these days—it took me a minute to place you. But I had a pretty spectacular car accident a while back, and it's kind of pushed everything else to the side."

"Accident?" Peggy said weakly. "When? What happened?"

He named a date, but Peggy hardly heard it as her heart had begun to knock against her ribs so violently she could feel it. An accident, and that very day Sam had . . . "What? What were you saying, Mr. Tauber? I'm sorry I couldn't hear you."

"... almost went to meet my Maker flying off the 59th Street Bridge on my way back to the city," he was saying. "I'm in a wheelchair—the doctor says it'll be at least six weeks before I can walk again. But hell—it's a complete miracle I'm even alive, so I'm not complaining!"

Peggy felt something go funny in her legs. The muscles up and down the backs of her thighs buzzed as if electrodes had been attached to the fibers and were firing off in some kind of infernal pattern.

"Forgive me," she breathed, "but are you saying your cab went off a bridge?"

"Damn right it did, lady. Some maniac driving about a hundred miles an hour—probably tear-assing out to Kennedy to get a plane—came at me in my lane. All I could do was try to avoid a head-on collision and swerve to the right. Well, I did, but the car skidded, and the next thing I knew I was bound for glory over the side. Only God's grace could have seen to it that there was a police patrol boat practically on top of me when I hit the water. I got out of the cab somehow, and they picked me up. Nobody can believe I survived. Kind of makes you think there might be a Santa Claus after all, you know what I mean?"

By now Peggy was so strangled with foreboding she could scarcely breath. God in heaven, what did all this mean? "Mr. Tauber," she finally managed to stammer, "I'm profoundly glad to hear that you're going to be all right. I'll send you the reward tomorrow. You take care now!" And without waiting for him to say another word, she sent the receiver clattering back down on the phone.

***

It wasn't until the oven clock read after midnight that Peggy was able to lift herself from the kitchen stool and wash out her coffee cup and ashtray. She went directly to Sam's room. She found the pad on his worktable. Even in the dark she could tell how he'd lined it up squarely in the middle, the edge of the fat Jumbo pad precisely parallel to the edge of the butcher-block top that Hal had fashioned into a table where Sam could do his hammering. But Sam never hammered on this surface. He used it instead to support his pad as he labored over his daily drawings under the good light from the architect's lamp Hal had later clamped to one corner.

Peggy put the pad under her arm and went to the third bedroom. It was here that Amanda or Abigail would sleep when the time came. In the meanwhile the room would serve as a kind of office. She pulled the cord to turn on the light in the closet, and then she felt around on a high shelf for the cigar box in which she stored some of the smaller tools she sometimes needed for the artwork she did at home.

She found the loup, the eyepiece she looked through to magnify the dots in a half-tone. With the loup in her fist and the Jumbo pad under her arm, she went back to the kitchen. She drew the stool up to the baker's table and sat down. She found the page she was looking for. Yes, there was a face there, where the driver sat behind the windshield. She picked up the loup and set it down over the windshield of the squared-off vehicle that was plummeting through space.

She had to move her head back and forth to bring the lens into focus.

Each time she bent her head to the loup, she begged God to make it change.

But it was always the same. One doughnut stared straight back at her. But the other had been shaped into an oval—to show that the eye had wandered to the side.

When she focused finally on the police launch in the final frame of the drawing, she broke down and wept in a terrible outpouring of both terror and relief.

CHAPTER FIVE

Whatever good Pensacola had done, it was all behind her now. Peggy woke dog-tired when the alarm clock went off. Muted as its signal was, to Peggy it was a snarl, some know-it-all reproaching her for staying up so late.

She pushed at Hal, and then she dragged herself to Sam's room, for the first time noticing it wasn't the old short trip.

"Rise and shine, St. Martin's boy!" she sang out, detesting the note of false—almost hysterical—good cheer in her voice.

She waggled his naked foot like a dust rag and raised both Levelors to let the light finish the job. Then she hurried to the kitchen, poured orange juice, and got the coffee on. When Hal came in, eyes half-closed, hand out in front of him like a blind man feeling his way, she held out a cup for him, took him by the shoulders, and turned him around.

"Make sure the scholar's up and getting dressed."

He answered with a snuffling sound and a little comical wave.

***

After breakfast, she recombed Sam's hair while he rolled his eyes in despair, groaning the word Mom at every third stroke as if it had an extra syllable. Then she double-knotted his shoelaces and ran to the front door to kiss Hal before he left for work. She almost fell and broke her neck on her way back to Sam's room having forgotten entirely that the hall, was still strewn with their luggage.

"Let's see," she said, determined to be calm and cheerful. What sort of mother pulled a nut job on her kid on his very first day of first grade? She stood him in front of the full-length mirror set into the panel of his closet door.

She stood behind him to admire her handiwork—the Indian Walk shoes, grey flannel trousers, navy blazer, white shirt and tie. Even his hair was in place, she noticed with happy surprise.

She saw Sam smiling at her in the mirror and she reached her arms down to his chest and pulled him back against her.

"You'll muss me."

"Will I indeed?" she said, and ran to her room to get ready too.

***

When she came back to collect Sam for the walk to school, he was seated at his worktable drawing.

"Time to go, Sweetie."

He capped his pen and closed the pad, and then he stuffed both items into the little L.L. Bean back pack Hal had sent away for.

"Uh-uh," Peggy said, coming into the room to lift the back pack off Sam's shoulders. "Those things stay here."

Sam widened his eyes in alarm.

"I mean it, honey," Peggy explained. "School's school. You can do your drawing at home."

"Miss Goldenson always let me."

"That was different. That was nursery school. This is St. Martin's."

"So what?" Sam argued.

"It's just different, is all," Peggy repeated.

She was stumped for a better answer. But what could she say to him that would sound reasonable? Already she could tell from looking at him that she was failing him in some serious way. She knew it was cruel to deny Sam his pad and pen, especially if it comforted him to have them on the very first day. But she had to be honest with herself: she was now on tenter-hooks about what he might draw when she wasn't around to keep an eye out. However ridiculously she might be carrying on, she couldn't help but suspect that there was some bizarre connection between Sam's drawings and the future. Something about them seemed to influence events.

The whole business baffled and unnerved her. How could you make sense out of something so impossible?

It was then that Peggy remembered the drawing of the classroom, the pig-faced woman, the little boy who lay collapsed across his desk. What was she to do? She looked at Sam, and she could see that he was trying to steel himself to deal with the inevitable. But she could also see the tears that were beginning to gather in his eyes.

"I'm being silly," Peggy said with a smile. "Of course you can take your drawing things, sweetie. For God's sake, I don't know what got into me. Does that make everything okay?"

Sam nodded helplessly. She could see he was so relieved that he couldn't speak. He held out his hand for the backpack, and when Peggy gave it to him, he clutched it to his chest as if it were a stuffed animal that had the power to comfort and protect.

"I'm really forgiven?" she asked.

Again he nodded, even now not yet fully recovered from his shock.

***

The school stood on Fifth Avenue between Ninety-third and Ninety-fourth Streets, an austere Georgian building whose balanced rows of windows overlooked the particularly lush section of Central Park. She saw the younger boys and their parents streaming through the eddying ranks of older boys and queuing up in front of the stairs. Tightening her grasp on Sam's hand, she took her place in line. Up in front, standing on the top step, she could see Mrs. Wendell-Briggs and a man who must have been the headmaster. She knew the name, of course—she'd seen it in the school catalogue—but she'd never met the man, and now that Peggy stood here waiting her turn, she was a little bit terrified.

She looked down at Sam and tried to smile reassuringly When she looked back up to catch a glimpse of a ruddy, grinning man whose close-cropped white hair was like a beacon shining forth from the dark interior of the doorway, she realized with a frisson of anxiety that she'd forgotten his name. Wonderful!

She squeezed Sam's hand to get his attention and then bent down so as not to be overheard.

"Honey, you know the headmaster's name, don't you?"

He looked at her in wide-eyed confusion. "Headmaster?"

"You know, honey, the principal. Didn't I tell you his name?"

The puzzlement faded from Sam's face. "Oh, yeah," he said, shifting his knapsack to his other shoulder. It's Doctor something."

"Doctor what?" But as soon as Peggy said it, she remembered. "Doctor Whalen," she said, pronouncing the name very softly. "But you understand he's not a regular doctor."

"Oh, sure," Sam said. "That's okay. I don't mind."

Finally it was their turn at the top of the stairs. Was she being paranoid, or had Wendell-Briggs whispered some quick comment about her and Sam to the headmaster? Jesus, I'm coming unglued, Peggy thought miserably. Why, Wendell-Briggs had practically told her Sam was a prodigy, had scarcely been able to say enough about how happy the school was to have him. Obviously Sam was welcome here; obviously he'd be up to snuff. Obviously Wendell-Briggs wasn't standing there making nasty remarks about him! Why on earth else would he have been accepted under such extraordinary circumstances, bypassing all the regular procedures.

"... a real pleasure to meet your son," Dr. Whalen was saying, hiding, she could have sworn, a look of cool appraisal underneath his impeccably cordial expression. What she could not have known—what would have dumbfounded her to learn—was that Whalen was at that very moment wondering with passionate curiosity who it was who'd made the anonymous five-hundred-thousand-dollar contribution to the school's development fund, expressing at the same time the mild hope that a Sam Cooper might be admitted to this fall's first grade class, however unorthodox such a move might be. Well, the tests they'd run on him showed he really was bright as hell—clearly St. Martin's material—and what were a few bent rules in the face of half-a-million dollars.

He and Wendell-Briggs finished exchanging the routine pleasantries with Cooper and his mother, who seemed to Whalen's practiced eye to be exhibiting more than the usual first-day-of-school maternal separation anxieties. Maybe she knew about the—ah, should he say, inducement—that had secured Sam's admission and was feeling a little embarrassed. Not that this was the first time such a thing had happened, God knew. It just didn't usually happen with such an unimportant family.

For her part, Peggy read not a bit of the thoughts that were running through the man's mind. She hadn't given much thought to the matter of Sam's getting into this place so effortlessly and at such a late date—she had a genius on her hands, it seemed, and she'd just have to get used to the fact that his path was bound to be radically different from that of ordinary kids.

Suddenly she felt him tugging at her skirt, and realized that it was time for him to enter the august portals of St. Martin's and begin his very first day of school. "Oh, Sam," she said, bending down to give him the briefest of hugs—no need to humiliate him in front of all his little macho schoolmates. "You have a wonderful day, you hear? I can't wait for a full report."

He disengaged himself as quickly as possible and turned to enter the school. In the dim recesses of the school's foyer she spotted a tall, imposing woman who seemed to be waiting for him—was it his teacher, perhaps?—but the light wasn't clear enough for Peggy to make out her features. Suddenly filled with feeling—her first and only child was taking one hell of a big step today—Peggy took a deep breath to steady herself, then marched resolutely down the street towards the subway.

***

By afternoon Peggy's characteristic ebullience had returned in full force. The jitters and dread that had dominated and all but spoiled the morning had lifted entirely. She reminded herself of their excellent luck, of all the wonderful things that had been happening to them, all the things she and Hal had to be thankful for. Peggy even forgot about the drawings and what they might portend.

She worked at her art board finishing up the sketches for the next round of windows, and then, since Bloomingdale's was paying for it, she grabbed a cab down to the East Village and from there to SoHo to see what trends were breaking ground. After checking out various hip places to see if the gays were styling anything new, she called her office to say that she was on her way to pick up Sam at school.

She was heading for the subway when she passed a tiny jewelry shop. The window was draped from top to bottom with tiers of wildly bizarre costume pieces. She stood and studied the display for a time, and then she went inside.

It was no more than a cubbyhole—and with Peggy inside, there was hardly room for the fat man, too. He sat on a stool in the middle of the floor and made no effort to move. He was glaring at Peggy, and she glared right back, taking in the shaved head, the iron choker with the black plastic swastika hanging from it, the buttonless vest that did nothing much toward covering the milky, shirtless chest, the black tights, the tiny silver earrings, both pinned through the same spongy earlobe.

"I like your stuff," Peggy said, motioning with her head toward the window.

The man said nothing. He plucked a cigarette from behind his ear, tapped it on the back of his hairless wrist, and made a sort of wet, kissing sound in the air.

"You design it yourself?"

The man did not answer until he had lighted the cigarette and taken a series of quick, small puffs, which he then expelled in a long needle of smoke. When he talked, it seemed to Peggy that the voice came from somewhere behind his head.

"Listen, dumpling, you here to shoot the shit or buy?"

Peggy was used to this sort of thing. She'd been getting hunches out of the artsy-craftsy districts of the city long enough not to be thrown by the fuck-you manners that went with the fuck-you styles of the S & M and punk-rock designers.

"I'm with a department store," she said matter-of-factly.

"Baby," the fat man said, "like we're all with a department store, you dig? I mean, it's the American thing, right?"

Peggy gave him the knowing smile he wanted, and then she pressed her point.

"Really," she said, "if you're the designer, I'm interested. I'm with Bloomingdale's."

The fat man's manner changed abruptly.

"You buy for Bloomie's? You do their glitter?"

"Their windows. But sometimes I suggest things I like. Are you the designer?"

The fat man's face flattened into a look of excruciating boredom.

"Some Spic kid does the junk."

"Could I have his telephone number?"

The fat man took another swift succession of shallow puffs, then blew out the same remarkable needle of smoke.

"Lady, I don't have the faggot's telephone number. Some kid; what difference does it make? He goes to Pratt, is all I know. Infante, Richie Infante or some shit like that. I just sell the crap."

He eyed her peevishly, as if she was the cause of all his troubles.

"Now if you're interested in some good stuff . . ."

She could see him waiting for her to bite.

"Jewelry?" Peggy said.

"Yeah, jewelry," the fat man said. "You think I'm dealing pills? Like, dig, I used to do the counter bit at a real swank outfit uptown, and, you know, I've still got some friends in the business. Strictly legit, you understand—but like I can arrange certain things. You interested?"

Peggy was about to say no, that she didn't wear much in the way of jewelry and that, moreover, she didn't make it a practice to buy stolen goods—but then she remembered something and decided it wouldn't hurt to ask.

"There is an item I might be interested in," she said. "What would a decent string of pearls run me, considering?"

"We're talking wholesale," the fat man said, and winked.

"Right," Peggy said. "Just a ballpark figure."

"Something good? Two grand. Cash."

She was astonished she'd let it go this far. She stood there looking at him, amazed she'd ever asked.

"I could have it for you in a week," the fat man said, sucking feverishly at his cigarette.

"Sorry," Peggy said. "That's way over my head."

"No trouble," the fat man said. "Believe me, darling, I get bitches like you in here all day long."

The fat man swiveled on the stool and flicked his cigarette butt into the empty paint bucket that stood against the wall.

***

Outside, Peggy checked the time. She had forty-five minutes to pick up Sam. She trotted the rest of the way to the subway entrance and paced nervously up and down the platform, all thoughts of her work completely dispelled. She was focused completely on Sam—her heart jumping with fierce anticipation at seeing him, at hearing his description of how it all went the first day.

It was crazy how it came to her at a time when other things should have been on her mind.

She had the idea the instant she saw Sam among the first group of boys to appear at the top of the stairs, his back pack slung rakishly across one shoulder. All right, the timing was wrong. But everything else about it was right.

Peggy stored it away in he mind for use later on, and as Sam came hopping down the stairs, she was there at the bottom of them, ready with outstretched arms to fold her son inside.

***

She waited until they were around the corner and out of earshot of the other mothers. It was all she could do to wait that long.

"How'd it go, sweetie?"

"Great!"

"No problems?"

"It was great, Mom. I really love that school."

"Terrific," Peggy said. "And what about your teacher? What's she like?"

"Miss Putnam?"

"Is that her name? I thought it was going to be a Mrs. something, the one that talked to you the day you went with Daddy. Mrs. Booth, wasn't that her name?"

Sam swung his back pack onto his other shoulder. "She's the teacher for the other section."

"I see," Peggy said. "So you have Putnam. That's nice. What's she like?"

"Nice," said Sam, skipping a little to keep pace.

"That's good," Peggy said. "But don't you want to describe her to me?"

"She's just this lady," Sam said. "You know. She's just nice."

"Well," Peggy said, "I mean is she tall or short or what? Draw me a word picture, okay?"

"I don't know," Sam said, knitting his brow for an instant and then shoving the whole question aside. "She's tall, I guess. I mean, I don't know, Mom. She's taller than you are."

"Taller than Daddy?"

"Golly, I don't know," Sam said. "It's hard to tell. Maybe."

"Isn't there something else about her that would help me see her? You know, does she wear glasses or anything? Isn't there something that stands out kind of?"

Sam shrugged, and Peggy could see it was useless.

"Maybe," he said. "I don't know. I don't remember. I'll take a better look tomorrow, okay?"

"Sure," Peggy said. "Tomorrow's plenty of time. It's just that Mommy wants to know all about everything, you know?"

She figured she'd pushed him enough. Maybe after supper she'd ask again. But wouldn't Sam recognize a face he'd drawn? And anyway, what was there to stop her from having a look herself? Tomorrow, when she walked Sam over, why not just pop in and introduce herself?

"So you like her," Peggy said. "Your new teacher."

"Oh, sure," Sam said. "She's really great."

***

Sam was polishing off a snack of milk and cookies and Peggy was sorting through the day's mail when the telephone rang. It was Hal. He was calling from his office to say he'd be home late, to go ahead with supper without him.

"But this is Sam's first day at school," Peggy said. "I want you to hear all about it."

"When I get home," Hal said. "That's time enough."

"But aren't you interested?"

"Of course," he said. "It's just I've got this hassle here right now. Kiss the old scout for me and tell him I'll be home as soon as I can."

"Please try to make it before bedtime," Peggy said.

"I will, I will," she heard him say, and then she heard him hang up.

***

She stayed angry with him all through supper. But then she reminded herself that it was Hal's first day, too, and she was ashamed of herself for pressuring him. Tons of work must have piled up while he was away. Yet it was the same for her, wasn't it? Didn't she have a new job, too? And hadn't things also backed up on her desk while they were in Pensacola? But she'd made time, hadn't she? Didn't Sam come first?

She cleared the table and left the dishes in the sink, and then she took Sam into their new living room and read to him, listening between sentences for Hal's key in the door.

She didn't hear it.

At last she gave up and marched Sam off to his room. It was while she was helping him into his pyjamas that she remembered.

"You get to do any drawing today?"

He shook his head. "We had assemblies and songs and things like that. Miss Putnam said to leave our things in our cubbies."

"I see," Peggy said, wondering how to begin. She looked at her watch. "You want to wait up a little longer for Daddy?"

"Is it okay?"

"Maybe another half-hour." She opened the backpack and took out his things. "And you could draw a little—since you didn't get a chance today."

She sat on the bed while he flipped through his pad for a fresh sheet.

"Tell you what," Peggy said when she saw the pen poised over the page. "Draw me. Draw Mommy."

"You bet," Sam said, and began.

When he was finished, he put down his pen and carried the pad over to the bed.

"Oh, honey, that's really wonderful," Peggy said, no longer able to stop herself. She had to know. "Except don't you think I'd look prettier with a necklace?"

"Necklace coming up," Sam said, and went to seat himself at his worktable again.

***

When the eleven o'clock news was over and he still wasn't home, she lifted the phone to try Hal's office. But what good would it do? The switchboard would be closed and she didn't know the new direct number.

Peggy lowered the receiver, kicked off her shoes, and went to sleep with her clothes on. It must have been after three that she was vaguely conscious of his presence in the room, his familiar rustlings in the dark. When she felt him busy at her body—his hands turning her, Hal's gentle labors working off her dress, then pantyhose, her bra—Peggy tried to make herself wake up. But a thousand ropes pulled her back down into sleep again, even as she felt her hips lifted and her panties slipping from her legs.

"Darling," she heard Hal say as if he whispered from a faraway room, but somehow it got mixed up with another faraway voice and the image of a fat man sitting on a stool.

***

When the alarm went off, Peggy got up without looking back at the bed. She closed the bathroom door before she turned on the light, then sat down on the toilet and let her head down into her hands. She was reaching her hand out to the faucet to run cold water on her wrists when she saw it. It was draped over the tap, twisted into three loops to keep it from sliding off into the sink.

She stood up and slipped it into her hand. The chain was slender and gold, and the cameo that was suspended from it a faint, luminous pink. She looked at it, then hung it from her neck and looked at herself reflected in the mirror, the cameo like a third pale nipple newly risen between her breasts.

She trembled with a feeling that was like a great crashing of noise which no one but she would ever hear. For a long time she stood staring at herself, until fear and excitement made her turn away, still so stunned that she never saw the word he'd scrawled in soap across the glass.

FORGIVE

***

Forgiveness was the last thing on Peggy's mind as she raced Sam through breakfast and got him dressed for school, doing everything as quietly as she could so as not to disturb Hal.

"We'll just let Daddy sleep and do the best we can," Peggy said when there was nothing left but the necktie. Hal had tied the damn thing yesterday. She knelt in front of him and chewed at the inside of her cheek. After five or six tries she got something that looked as if it might pass.

"Take a peek," she said, and turned him to the mirror. "You approve?"

He touched his fingers to the knot and loosened it a little from his neck.

"It's just like Daddy's," said Sam, appraising his mother's work.

"That's what I say," Peggy said, getting to her feet and taking the St. Martin's blazer from the closet. After inspecting it closely for lint, she helped him into his jacket. Then she took another look.

"Pretty spiffy, Professor Cooper."

Sam grinned, delighted in spite of himself. Peggy grinned back at him, for the first time reckoning with what was surely behind that lovely, freckled face. A force, something strange and unimaginable, a kind of power whose reach could possibly go anywhere, whose limits might not even exist. It made her afraid—and also wildly exhilarated. Her son, this child, her own flesh and blood: it was as if he were an instrument able to shape space and time itself.

It couldn't be true—but it was!

Peggy studied her son for a moment more, searching the large, round, coppery eyes, so seemingly innocent, so willing, so mild. Or course it was true. It had to be. But did he know? Was it possible to have a power like this and not even know it was in you?"

"Honey," she began, groping her way, her loving eyes fastened on his, "when you draw, do you feel something funny ever?"

He looked at her blankly.

"Huh?"

"You know, baby—I mean, the things you draw, how do they come to you and stuff like that? Is it always the same?"

She waited for him to say something. But she could see that the more she waited, the more she was making him uncomfortable. When at last he broke away from her gaze and started nervously yawning, Peggy laughed to cover the tension and handed over the backpack.

She watched him pack it with his drawing things, the Jumbo pad still opened to the page that showed a handsome, short-haired woman with an oval pendant suspended from a thin chain that encircled her graceful neck. The woman was smiling, and to make certain anyone could see it was Peggy, Sam had inked in three deft arcs to either side of the drawn-back lips.

CHAPTER SIX

Peggy felt like a schoolgirl herself—giddy and expectant—as she walked Sam to school that morning. And there was no doubt about it—it was the thing that rode ever so lightly and radiantly on her chest that made Peggy feel so utterly delirious and hopeful, as if each step brought her another small distance closer to some inexpressibly momentous event. She felt charmed—and dangerous—like a woman pregnant with a baby she knows is destined to rule the world.

She laughed at the thought, its terrible absurdity. And when Sam looked at her questioningly, Peggy made a kind of rueful face as if to suggest that she was sorry for having broken the sweet silence of the morning bathed in the cool vapors of cleansed autumn air.

The baby has been born, she said to herself, taking a tighter grip on Sam's small hand as together they turned the corner onto Fifth.

***

No one stood at the top of the stairs waiting to extend another official greeting this morning. Nor were there more than a few parents visible, and these ventured no farther than the bottom of the stairs, where they stood uncertainly for a moment as their sons briskly mounted the marble steps and passed swiftly into the building.

"You run ahead," Peggy said before they reached the first step.

She knew a kiss would embarrass him, so she touched Sam's shoulder and then sent him on his way. She knew that following him up the stairs would be just as tough on him—so she stayed where she was until he was well inside before climbing the steps and entering between the wide doors that were kept flung back for those boys still to come before the first bell.

Inside, straight-backed, solemn-faced boys of all sizes were scattering in every direction—some disappearing down hallways to either side of the large, domed room she stood in; some rising noiselessly along the winding staircases that rose to the left and right of the massive door lying directly opposite the entrance.

The door was marked OFFICE, the word formed into a length of brass that looked as if it had been forged by medieval artisans. Peggy moved across the floor and knocked. When there was no answer, she pushed the door open.

The room was empty. But within instants the door behind her opened and a plump woman with eyeglasses propped unsteadily on top of her Gibson Girl hairdo bustled inside and deposited a pile of manila folders on one of the two desks that faced each other in the center of the room.

"Excuse me," Peggy said. "My son's a new boy and I was hoping . . ."

"Name?" The plump woman said as she arranged the folders into stacks.

"Excuse me," Peggy said. "I'm sorry. Perhaps I shouldn't have—"

"Name?" the plump woman said, looking up from the folders and smiling.

"Mrs. Cooper, Mrs. Harold C. Cooper."

"Your son's name," the woman said, pushing at her hair and then reaching to the desk for a pencil.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Peggy said. "Sam. Samuel Cooper. He's in first grade."

"One P or One B?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Putnam or Booth?" the woman said, no longer smiling.

"Oh yes, of course," Peggy said. "Putnam. Miss Putnam. Actually, that's why I stopped in. You see, I was hoping that I might meet with Miss Putnam for a brief time since—"

"That won't be possible at the moment," the plump woman said, wheezing slightly as she stepped away from the desk and came closer. "But we quite understand your concern. Dr. Whalen, however, is very strict on this score. The school's policy is to schedule our parent-teacher conferences in November. By that time the classes have settled down. I'm sure you can appreciate our position."

The woman produced an index card from the pocket of her smock. For a crazy instant it seemed to Peggy as if the woman were about to write a ticket and cite her for some witless offense.

"Oh no," Peggy said, backing away a half-step, "I'm not asking for a conference or anything like that. I mean, I quite understand how busy the teachers are right now and all. It's just that I was hoping I might meet very briefly with Miss Putnam, seeing as how—"

The woman was smiling again, this time very broadly—and as she interrupted Peggy, she once more took a threatening step closer.

"I am so sorry," the woman said, advancing on Peggy, "but Dr. Whalen feels it's better all around if we hold these parent-teacher meetings at the appropriate time. Now if your son is having any sort of difficulty, I could set up an appointment for you to meet with our school psychologist."

"Oh my heavens, there's nothing wrong with 5am," Peggy blurted. What on earth was wrong with this officious, unhelpful bitch? Controlling herself, though—God forbid she should get the reputation of a troublemaker the very first week of school—she continued evenly, "No, there's absolutely no problem; Sam's first day seemed to go beautifully. It's just that, well, I'd just like to get a look at Miss Putnam, even if I can't have a full-fledged conference with her just yet."

The woman stared at her incredulously. "Get a look at her?"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Peggy said, her composure suddenly shattered completely. "I said that all wrong. First-year parent jitters, I suppose. It's just that the way Sam was describing Miss Putnam, she sounded so sort of familiar to me, I thought—I mean, for a minute there, I thought . . ."

She did not know how to finish this sentence. As she struggled blindly on for some miraculous phrase to offer her a way out, Peggy could hear herself tumbling into worsening incoherence. She was suffocating with confusion, and all she could see was the woman standing there with her plump hand holding open the door and those eyeglasses teetering atop her great nest of ebony hair.

"I'm really very sorry," Peggy stammered. "I should never have asked you to bend your rules for me." And then, not caring about appearances anymore, she beat a mortified retreat. The next thing she knew she was back on the sidewalk again, her heart a fist that hammered to break loose from her chest.

"Dammit, dammit, dammit," she kept muttering to herself as she fought her way up the street and then turned east for the subway downtown.

***

At her office, she sat behind her desk and then moved to her art board and then went back to her desk again, too exasperated with herself to work. As she sat raging at herself, her anger began to flare in a new direction. It was the school that was at fault. Who the hell did they think they were, not letting her see her own son's teacher! The very idea! It was preposterous, treating a parent that way. Still, it was St. Martin's Academy, and wasn't that sort of structure and discipline one of the things it was famous for? No, she decided, calming down somewhat, it was her own fault, after all. She was the one who'd messed things up, handled everything so goddamned clumsily. How preposterous really to just barge into the office like that and expect an instant appointment. She'd have to think of a better way—that was all there was to it.

Hal! She suddenly remembered that in her agitation she'd completely forgotten to call the apartment to wake him up. She snapped up the phone and dialed. She let it ring. He was a heavy sleeper, and sometimes it took a cannon to jolt him out of sleep. When there was no answer, she hung up, waited five minutes, then called back.

She could hear the receiver fall to the floor and Hal fumbling to snatch at it and juggle it to his ear.

"I'm up, I'm up," she heard him say.

"Prove it," Peggy said.

"I'm up, I swear," he said. "You at work?"

"I'm here, but I'm not getting much done. What time did you get in last night?"

"I don't know," he said. "Late."

She pulled a note pad into reach and began doodling on it, drawing cubes of all sizes whose corners interlocked.

"Where were you? Were you at the office?"

She heard him yawn as if he was taking the time to cook up a story.

"You were asleep when I got home," he said. "Otherwise, I would have explained."

"You might have called," Peggy said.

"Yeah," he said. "I should have, I know."

"Well?"

"Well what?"

She heard him yawn again.

"Where were you?"

"It sounds bad," he began, "but it's really not. The fact is, The Six came by while I was working there in the office and they just wouldn't let me alone, kept saying come—"

"Who's The Six?" Peggy interrupted.

"The Six? You're kidding."

She had no patience with this anymore.

"I'm not kidding, Harold," she snapped. "Who's The Six?"

She heard him make a sound as if to suggest her question was beyond belief.

"They're this group, honey—punk-rockers, our biggest item this season. You telling me you don't remember my talking about—?"

Again she interrupted him. She didn't want to hear his protestations anymore.

"The point is," she said, her voice hard now, "you were not in your office and you were not working. You were out with some idiot kids, and you did not call me to tell me or even think to talk to your own son, who, if I might remind you, had a very important day in his life yesterday. Now that's the point, isn't it, Harold?"

"But I was working," he insisted. "You think it's not work for me when I have to run around with these lunatics? Let me remind you of something, Peggy—let me just remind you that it happens to be my goddamn job to hang out with Manhattan's recording artists—"

"You could have called!"

"All right, all right!" He was shouting now. She couldn't remember when she'd heard him do that before. "I didn't call—and I'm goddamn sorry I didn't. But I gave you a goddamn necklace as a peace offering and I still haven't heard you say one fucking word of thanks!"

She didn't get a chance to answer. He slammed down the phone before she could say another word.

***

That night, at supper, they did not talk to each other. They talked to Sam. And when they ran out of things to say to him, silence closed over the table like a shroud. It was stifling, a thing that choked them where they sat until they rose from their chairs, gasping to breathe. But Sam stayed where he was, and when they turned back to see if he was coming, they saw his face clench and then collapse into tears.

"Sam! Baby!"

It was Peggy who reached him first. She lifted him from his chair and held him to her, smoothing his hair as his wild sobs exploded against her chest.

"Oh, honey," she crooned, eyeing Hal over Sam's head, "Mommy and Daddy are sorry, sweetheart. Please forgive us. It's just that we're not feeling so well. That's all, baby. Come on, old scout, stop this now and everything will be all right. Okay?"

But the boy only shook his head furiously and pulled all the harder to hold himself closer to Peggy's chest.

"Now look," she said, pressing her palm against the back of his head, "the truth is Mom and Dad had an argument. But it's all over now, okay?"

"No!" Sam wailed, and shook his head back and forth as if trying to make something fall out of his ears.

"Oh, you silly," Peggy soothed. "Hal, honey, tell him."

"Hey now, old man," Hal said, lifting Sam into his own arms, "don't make Mommy and Daddy feel bad. We're sorry, and it's all over now, so quit it, hear?"

"It's not!" Sam cried out. "You don't understand!"

"What don't we understand?"

"She's trying to tell me what to draw!"

"Who is trying to tell you what to draw?" Peggy said.

"My teacher!"

"Miss Putnam?"

"Her!" Sam screamed, nodding his head as if they still hadn't understood.

"Put him down, Hal. Put him down," Peggy said, "and we'll all sit down at the table and talk this thing out."

"No!" Sam shrieked. "I want to go to bed!"

"Put him down," Peggy said.

But he wouldn't do it. She looked at her husband as he held her son. For the first time in a long time she sought the depths in his eyes. Something new was there, something she had never seen before.

"Hal," Peggy said, her voice very quiet now. "Did you hear me? I said put him down."

But still he would not do it. Instead, he heaved Sam a little higher against his chest and carried the boy from the room, his lips to Sam's ear, whispering, saying things that Peggy could not hear.

She stood there watching them go, her legs paralyzed, her heart suddenly crazily convinced that some secret had passed between them—and that if she knew what it was, it would make her afraid.

***

She gave Sam some Benedryl to help him drift off to sleep. She puffed up his pillows, tidied the covers over his shoulders, then rubbed his back as he lay there restively tossing and gently, ever more gently, sobbing in the darkened room. At length she kissed him and went to get ready for bed, changing into her nightgown in the bathroom she shared with Hal instead of in the bedroom where he could see her undress.

It was when she went to brush her teeth that she finally noticed his soap-written message on the mirror of the medicine chest.

Forgive? Forgive what? What was it that he really wished her forgiveness for?

She wet a wad of toilet paper and washed the mirror clean. But when she dried it off with a towel, the word came back, hovering stubbornly beneath the surface of the glass like an eternal ghostly image. She tried it again, repeating the procedure, this time pressing harder with the wet toilet paper and the towel. The word was fainter now, but demonstrably there, a dogged reminder of what she now dreaded might be his secret and unforgivable guilt.

She switched off the night light on her side of the bed, slipped herself gingerly between the covers and turned onto her side so that her back was to him.

"How much did you pay for it?" she said.

She heard him breathe out with annoyance.

"For what?"

"For the necklace."

"Don't you like it? It looks nice on you."

"I asked you how much you paid for it."

"I'll answer you when you face me," he said.

"Forget it." Peggy said. She pushed her knees free of the covers and got to her feet.

***

She stood listening at Sam's doorway. When she was certain he was asleep, she stepped softly into the room and went to his worktable.

The Jumbo pad was where he always kept it.

She lay down on the couch in the third bedroom and stretched out, reaching behind her to turn on the floor lamp. It wasn't there. She looked through every page, but nowhere could she find the drawing of the woman whose blank face was disfigured by the nose of a pig.

She checked again, pressing each sheet between her fingers to make sure no two were stuck together.

It was gone, torn out—but by whom? Sam always kept his pads intact, storing them under his bed when one was finished and he was ready to start on a fresh one.

Once again she riffled through the pages. Maybe this was a new pad, a different one. But no, this was the same one. She saw the moving van, the portrait of Val, the taxi cab going over the bridge, the pendant that hung from the slim chain encircling her own neck.

***

She turned off the light and replaced the pad on Sam's worktable, then went back to bed. She lay listening in the darkness—his breathing, the blood pumping in her ears, a car that now and then moved more noisily than most as it made its way along Lexington or Park.

She was willing to understand that she did not like this quiet anymore. Eight floors above the street, in a neighborhood that was predominantly residential, behind the thicker walls that came with a pre-war building, it all made for a strangled silence louder than the sirens that had screamed all night back on Thirty-third.

What the hell was happening to them, anyway? With their fancy new jobs and their fancy new co-op, their son miraculously enrolled in a snooty little prep school—why was it that she'd never felt more unhappy in her entire married life? She felt so alienated from Hal it terrified her—if it weren't for Sam, she realized, she could walk away from her marriage without a backward glance. The awful truth of it was enough to make her sob.

When had everything started to fall apart? Had they just gone through too many changes too quickly? Was it the move? Was that the dreadful, terrible mistake that had signaled an end to all their domestic contentment? Or was it that goddamned school? It seemed to mean too much to Hal—during the times they'd discussed their "St. Martin's boy," she'd had to fight a feeling that Hal seemed to place a life-and-death importance on Sam's being there, as if all the insecurities and self-doubts he felt about his own background would rise up and annihilate him if Sam were for some reason deprived entree to the magic sphere St. Martin's represented to him. It was unhealthy, really, the passionate significance Hal attached to it.

When she stopped to think about it, Peggy had to admit to herself that there was something deeply unnerving about all the events of the past several months. How odd it was, really, that she and Hal should have both received such fantastic promotions, after so many years, within weeks of each other. And she knew there were people at the store who couldn't really believe the Coopers had been accepted into this building, a building whose board normally demanded that applicants be able to pay for the apartment in cash and still show assets in excess of the purchase price. The Coopers would have been lucky to make it into a low-rent building on the Upper West Side—that they'd gotten into this building was almost inexplicable.

And finally, there was the matter of St. Martin's. Peggy had absolutely no doubt that had Sam applied through normal channels, he'd have stood as good a chance as the next guy of getting in. He was terrifically bright and engaging, and even the toniest prep schools were not the exclusive province of the "upper crust" anymore. The public school system was so rotten that by now the middle class had invaded the private schools in droves.

But Peggy was too well versed in the admissions procedures—God knows she'd heard enough about it from her frantic friends last year—not to realize that there was something—well, something bizarre—in the way Sam had just waltzed in practically on the same day the term began. She knew people were talking about it, knew that a lot of people were trying to figure out whom the Coopers knew, whom they'd managed to pay off, to get Sam in. Well, the hell with all that. She had far worse things to worry about than a bunch of nasty gossip. What she had to do was something to regain the feeling that she was in control of her life and that she lived within a comforting and sustaining domestic circle.

Almost as if he'd read her mind, Hal said in a voice that was little more than a croak, "You want to talk?"

"All right," she said, and turned onto her back.

"I don't like what's happening to us," he said.

"Me neither," Peggy said. "It's not good for Sam."

"I know," he said. "Let's fix it," he said, and she could feel his hand jerk up from the mattress, the palm flattening gently on her belly.

She nearly jumped at his touch, almost perceptibly recoiling.

"You said you wanted to talk," she said.

"Yes," he whispered, his lips touching her ear now, his hand traveling to the hem of her nightgown, pausing there as if awaiting permission.

She lifted herself and snapped on her night light. She got out of bed and went to the rocker.

"Is that how you want to talk?" he said, hoisting himself up onto his elbows and regarding her in the dim light.

"This is fine," Peggy said. She raised her knees to her chest and locked her arms around her legs, a motion that started the rocker listing to and fro. "Let's begin with Sam," she said. "I think we should take him out of that school."

"No," he said, instantly hostile and defensive. "That's out of the question."

"But he's upset. Can't you see how much he dislikes it?"

"He'll get over it. Besides, they don't refund tuition. It's right in the contract we signed—no refunds, and no exceptions."

"You'd sacrifice your son for money?"

He sat up higher and snapped on his light.

"That's a pretty lowdown crack."

"I'm sorry, Hal," she said, not sounding as if she meant it at all, "but I don't think you really have any idea what kind of a repressive environment that kid's being subjected to. You've never even been inside St. Martin's. I think you're acting like an uptight, social-climbing arriviste, willing to tolerate any indignity just for the sake of some hollow status symbol. There are other private schools you know—schools that would be much more appropriate for a creative kid like Sam. At least let me apply him to a few for next year."

"Peggy, I forbid it." He was icy cold now, talking to her in a tone of voice she'd never heard from him in all their years together. "I think you're making a very hasty and ill-considered snap judgement. If you think Sam's not being treated properly, for God's sake set up a conference with his teacher, talk to the headmaster, try to work things out. Don't just go off half-cocked and yank him out before you've even given the place a chance. Miss Putnam told me—"

Suddenly he broke off, a look of panic washing over him. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, and began searching nervously for his cigarettes.

"Miss Putnam told you," Peggy repeated, her bewilderment swamping the rage that had begun to flood her only a few moments before. "When did you talk to Miss Putnam? When I tried to get in to see her I was treated to the bum's rush by a goddamned secretary!"

"Oh, well, I didn't see her, Pegs. I just chatted with her briefly on the phone. Just this morning. I felt bad about not being home for Sam's first day of school, and I thought I'd check in with his teacher to see how things were going. I didn't find her at all unapproachable," he concluded smugly, his earlier discomfiture all but vanished.

He was lying. She felt it with the force of a blow. But some sixth sense told her that now was not the time to call him on it. Let him think he was fooling her—when the right time came to get to the bottom of all this, she'd know it. The thought filled her with disgust but she was even beginning to wonder if Hal had somehow bribed Sam's way into St. Martin's—although God only knew where he could have gotten the money. But then where was the money for any of their new lifestyle coming from?

"You're tense, Pegs," he was saying. "You're making a mountain out of a molehill. I'm telling you, Sam's fine. He'll adjust. Just give it a little time." She heard him chuckle to himself as if privately amused. "I don't know what's gotten into you lately—but, lady, you've sure been acting strange."

She teetered herself forward and held herself there so that the chair stayed poised on the front of the rockers.

"Did you take a page out of the pad Sam's working on?"

"Did I what?"

"You heard me."

He sat up again. She could see him staring at her, his eyes briefly darting to the seat of the chair. She let go of her legs and canted them to the floor.

"Too bad," he said. "Best view I've had all day."

"I asked you if you took a drawing out of Sam's pad."

"Now why should I do that?" he said.

She got up from the chair and moved across the floor, placing herself squarely in his line of vision.

"What did you whisper to Sam when you carried him out of the dining room? I want you to tell me what you whispered to him."

She could see him studying her, and she saw his hand swing up to the night light and his fingers feeling for the little burled knob that switched it on and off.

"Jesus," he said. "You're nuts."

And then she heard the tiny click as he rotated the knob and the circuit shut off.

She kept hearing it over and over in the silence, that click. It was like the period at the end of a sentence. Or a small pistol's hammer abruptly thumbed back.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Biting winds drove a steady drizzle of bone-chilling rain against hapless pedestrians; traffic snarled for miles in every direction; and it would have been worth Peggy's life to catch a cab. Rush hour was at its height, and since the subway was right outside Bloomingdale's anyway, she decided to make her way downtown underground.

Her estrangement from Hal had intensified over the past several weeks, and the affable, affectionate and amusing man she'd known and loved for so long had all but disappeared. In his place was a driven and remote careerist who seemed to her to be totally at the mercy of the demands of his job, and utterly indifferent to all they had formerly shared together.

As the Lexington Avenue train lurched to a halt at Thirty-third Street and Peggy struggled her way out of the car against the damp and urgent crowd that jostled and crushed her, she thought bitterly of the recent quarrels she and Hal had been having over St. Martin's. For reasons she couldn't put into words, but which she felt with the certainty of her entire being, Peggy was convinced that she should get Sam out of there as soon as she could make some alternate arrangement. She couldn't really stick him in a public school at this point—aside from the fact that she herself didn't really want that for him, Hal's burgeoning snobbery simply precluded such a move. It was crazy, really, the intensity of his investment in that school—crazy and frightening, because it just didn't make any sense.

Almost in desperation, Peggy had agreed to have dinner tonight with Sarah Goldenson, Sam's old nursery school teacher. The woman had called her the other day—out of the blue, it had seemed to Peggy—to see how Sam was doing, and Peggy had decided right then and there to get together with her and pour out all of her misgivings and miseries about St. Martin's. Maybe the teacher who had been so good to Sam, and who so obviously adored him, could help her. For some reason, she was almost certain that Sarah Goldenson would not find her growing distaste for St. Martin's at all surprising or uncomprehensible.

Peggy spotted Sarah Goldenson as soon as she entered the restaurant. She'd already taken a table, and her face brightened with a welcoming and somehow comforting smile as Peggy approached her.

After they'd ordered drinks and dispensed with some routine and perfunctory chit-chat, Sarah Goldenson came abruptly to the point. She didn't mean to pry or cause offense, she assured Peggy, but Sam was such a special child, and she'd always been so fond of him, that she just felt she had to let Peggy know that however ridiculous it might seem, she'd been worried about Sam for months. She felt she had to share these feelings with Peggy.

Peggy's vodka and tonic had arrived by this time, and she'd already drained it and signaled the waiter to bring another round. And even though she'd quit smoking years ago, and hadn't even thought about it in as long as she could remember, she now felt a craving for a cigarette that almost left her breathless.

"... didn't get to meet her when she observed at the nursery school," Sarah Goldenson was saying, "but it seemed to me a Miss Putnam from St. Martin's exhibited a rather inexplicable—unsavory, if you will—interest in your Sam, especially since at that point he wasn't even an applicant."

"I'm afraid I'm not following you," Peggy said weakly, as she reached gratefully for her second drink and decided to force herself to nurse it.

"Well, as you probably know, it's common practice for these private schools to send someone around to various nursery schools to observe applicants in their nursery school environment. Since Town and Country sends so many kids on to private schools, we're subjected to a constant round of observers in the fall. Their comments and judgments become a part of each kid's application file. Anyway, one day last October when I was out sick with one thing or another, a Miss Putnam came to observe my class, which was perfectly normal, since a number of the boys had applied to St. Martin's. But about a week later, she called me on the phone and started asking a lot of questions about Sam, particularly about his drawing, which she must have seen him working on while she was there. I just assumed there must be some mistake—I told her Sam Cooper hadn't even applied to St. Martin's. She said she knew that—she'd just been so taken by his talent she wanted to know more about him. At the time I guess I didn't find that all that peculiar—he is strikingly gifted as an artist—but then, when I found out he'd been admitted to that school on such an irregular basis and I thought back on my conversation with Putnam, it seemed to take on a—oh, I don't know—almost sinister quality. And the more I've thought about it, the more concerned I've become. So here I am. If you think I'm out of line—even if you think I'm nuts—just say so, and we'll just go ahead with dinner as if this conversation never took place. But I have to tell you that I know in my gut I'm on to something!"

Peggy was now in the grip of an anxiety so powerful she felt that it must surely be emanating from her body like some visible substance. But surely neither she nor Sarah Goldenson should allow themselves to disintegrate into infantile irrationality over this whole business. When you thought about it, their fears and suspicions not just about St. Martin's but about Sam's "gift" itself—for Peggy knew without having to be told that Sarah Goldenson felt as she did that there was a literally uncanny power to Sam's drawing—seemed both ludicrous and deranged. But no. It simply was no use to try to pretend that this was "all in her head." But what to do? Somehow she had to get Sam out of Putnam's clutches—he'd never set foot in that school again. And as for Hal's complicity in all this—if complicity there was—she'd get to the bottom of that, too. Her son's survival was at stake. She was convinced of that now. Nothing and no one could prevent her from doing everything in her power to safeguard him.

***

The next morning she walked right in. With Sam's hand in hers, his grip tightening when they came into view of the school, Peggy strode up the marble steps, through the doors, and into the large, domed space that functioned as an anteroom. It was empty of anyone who looked official, but it was crowded with boys moving in all directions, some of the older ones pausing to gape as if her presence contaminated the air.

When she bent down to speak to him, she could see Sam's eyes darting frantically to the side, real fear grabbing at the flesh of his face so that his cheeks seemed to sag.

"Now look, honey," Peggy said softly, "there's absolutely nothing to this. I'll have a little chat with Miss Putnam, and everything will be hunky-dory, I promise. You just show me the way, okay?"

He pulled her along to a hallway that gave off to their left. The light was weak in here, but even so Peggy could see large, brooding portraits of somber, white-haired men peering down at them from heavy gilt frames. A curious odor, like that of wood smoke mixed with a sweetish fragrance—lavender, perhaps, or frankincense—hung thick in the corridor like some meaty, sluggish mist. Small boys passed silently by in both directions, their well-shod feet stepping reverently as they negotiated the gleaming parquet floor.

Sam came to a halt before a wide, paneled door. There was a white card fitted into a brass slot, the slot screwed into the door at a level where a small boy would have no trouble seeing it. Inked onto the card in flowery, embellished script there was the number One and the letter P.

Sam tugged at Peggy's hand as if to warn her, as if to say this was it.

She glanced at her watch. She had to hold her wrist closer to her face to read the time in the light that came foggily from overhead.

It was eight minutes to eight, exactly three minutes before the first bell.

Peggy knocked lightly, waited, and then she smiled confidently at Sam and pushed open the door.

***

Three rows of wide-eyed faces—their heads all turning on the stalks of their necks like standing birds shifting their attention in unison—gawked fiercely in Peggy's direction.

Gently she coaxed Sam forward, and then she took a step inside after him.

"Go to your seat," Peggy said, and again pushed at the door.

It swung all the way back on its well-oiled hinges, presenting a view of the head of the class—the portable blackboard, the massive oaken desk, the teacher as tall sitting as Peggy was standing, her blonde hair pulled back into a bun skewered by a sharpened pencil and her eyes rimmed by the perfectly round spectacles which rested ponderously on a nose that was a snout.

It was the same nose Sam had drawn, and it seemed to be sniffing the air for Peggy's scent.

"Why, you must be Mrs. Cooper!" the woman said evenly, as she pushed back her chair and stood up to her huge, raw-boned height. "How nice of you to visit us!"

The woman came forward and extended her hand. "I'm Miss Putnam. Class?" the woman said, slowly turning her face to the rows of staring boys. "This is Samuel's mother, Mrs. Cooper. Will you say good morning, please?"

It was like a choir of carefully rehearsed voices.

"Good morning, Mrs. Cooper!"

Peggy turned to face them, scanning the room for Sam's desk.

It was there, at the far end of the very last row. It was the same desk where the boy in the drawing . . .

She could not finish the thought.

"Thank you, class," Miss Putnam called out commandingly in reply. "Now you will please compose yourselves while Mrs. Cooper and I visit together before first bell."

When she turned to face Peggy again, Peggy saw the eyes—vapid, virtually colorless, like small balls of frosty ice.

"Shall we step outside?"

Peggy felt herself drowning in the woman's piercing gaze. The room seemed suddenly airless, a chamber that could not support life—as if everything, the elements themselves, had drowsily raced away from her and left her suspended in a dream that was now gliding irresistibly toward its bad part, hard surfaces melting into something soggy, vivid hues spilling into a gluey cataract of grey, deathly paste.

She was numb, and she thought she was going to faint. She said, "Of course," and when she spoke, the words were muffled and she heard them swiftly sucked away. She felt herself staggering slightly as she attempted to move her body in the right direction, nearly losing her footing entirely as she marched out the door in the wake of the tall, angular figure of the first-grade teacher.

***

"Now, then," Miss Putnam was saying, her voice pitched so low it was like a priest's intoning the sacrament, "was there something in particular you wished to see me about?"

Peggy looked up as if taken by surprise. She tried to meet the woman's eyes, not to flinch from their strangely fixed stare.

"I know I must be interfering," she began, striving to maintain some kind of control over herself and speak deliberately, precisely, decisively—but everything inside her seemed to wilt under the cold fire that came from those glaced eyes. "I mean, I know there's some kind of rule about parents bothering teachers near the beginning of school."

"Nonsense!" Miss Putnam exploded. "Perfect stuff-and-nonsense!" She smiled as if together they shared an amusing conspiracy. "My dear Mrs. Cooper," Miss Putnam said, lowering her face close to Peggy's, "if I may hazard to say it, I sometimes think the headmaster's rules are as stuffy and dated as he is. But let's let that be our little secret, shall we?"

Peggy tried to return the woman's smile, but her face was frozen stiff. She knew it was her turn to say something, and yet she wasn't quite sure what the words should be.

"Was it something regarding Samuel?" Miss Putnam was saying helpfully as Peggy was still trying to organize her thoughts. "He's such a charming young man, so well-conducted and eager. I daresay he's looking forward to a superbly constructive year."

Peggy swallowed and lurched ahead. "It's about his drawing, Miss Putnam, if you'll forgive me—because, you see, last night—well, last night he was very upset. What it was is that he somehow got the idea that here at St. Martin's he was going to be told what to draw."

"Told what to draw?" she repeated, as if Peggy were addressing her in some foreign language. "Really, Mrs. Cooper, what an extraordinarily curious complaint. I'm sure St. Martin's is as supportive of genuine creativity as any school in the city, but we do have a specific way of presenting all the disciplines—from art to arithmetic and everything in between."

"But Sam was so upset last night. I didn't get the impression he was rebelling against disciplined instruction. I got the impression he was being terrified by some form of coercion." Even as she said it, Peggy felt and heard the absurdity of her own words. Would she have backed Sam up if he'd wanted to use a comb instead of a bow during his Suzuki violin lessons?

But the old battle-axe seemed to be bending over backwards to make things easy for her. "Mrs. Cooper," she was saying earnestly, "believe me, it takes a lot of our finest pupils a bit of a while to adjust to the structure of St. Martin's. But in the end, most of them come around. Believe me, it's a very warm and supportive world here—but it's based on order. We do have very definite ideas about the way things should be done. The more students and their parents come to share our point-of-view, the better off everyone is all around."

Peggy struggled to say something, but she felt the words skidding back down her throat. Instead, she nodded and did her best to maintain some semblance of dignified composure.

Just then the school bell split the air. "I want to thank you for coming in," Miss Putnam said as she pushed open the door. "Please feel free to call on me at any time you have any questions or problems about Sam's situation here." Now that the harsh light flooding out from the classroom had thrown her face into sudden shadow, her eyes were hidden behind her glasses.

It was as if the woman had become invisible except for the huge silhouette her formidable body subtracted from the back-scattering light. But when Peggy's eyes adjusted, she saw it again, so shocking in its pig-like shape that it seemed like something added to the young woman's face, a false nose Miss Putnam wore as a harmless kind of joke.

"Yes, of course," Peggy managed to say before the glaring light disappeared behind the closed door and she stood all alone in the murky gloom of the corridor, the school bell still raging in her ears as if its terrible scream were a contagion the mind itself could catch.

***

She took the subway to Fifty-ninth Street—but as she stepped off the train, she understood that she was too distraught to work. She ducked into a phone booth on Lexington, called her assistant, and told him she was too sick to come in, realizing as she uttered the lie that it was now the truth. She dropped in another dime and telephoned Hal. When his secretary put him on, Peggy hurried through her speech as if reading from a script and then hung up before he could blurt out some excuse.

She said, "I'm coming right over and you've got to make time," hung up, jerked open the door, and started picking her way through the pedestrians that jammed the sidewalks in front of Bloomingdale's and Alexander's.

She headed south to Forty-seventh Street before turning west toward the Avenue of the Americas, scarcely noticing the deep layer of black overcast that was forcing the day from the skies. As she walked, her thoughts fluttered between spasms of rage and panic overlaid by a queer shrinking feeling, as if she herself were a child obliged to call out Good morning! in chorus and be subjected to the "discipline" of that unbelievably creepy woman.

Desperately, she sought to get a purchase on her emotions, to reduce fear and anger to something more manageable—appropriate concern, unspecific anxiety, a mother's normal range of unfocused worries. Vainly, she tried sifting through the little data she already had—but painstakingly as she proceeded, examining it item by item, in the end what she knew was like that screwy contraption her dad had contrived, all noise and flailing lights, a commotion whose chaos left you with nothing but a drink of sickeningly sweet, ruby-red water and the afterlight of a turbulent luminescence still shimmering in front of your eyes.

FORGIVE

There was no making any sense out of any of it. You either swallowed it or you didn't.

Forgive what? What had Hal done that called for forgiveness? Failing to come home before Sam went to bed? Or something unimaginably worse?

She heard the ugly distortion of city thunder now, and for an instant it diverted her attention. But as she cast her eyes down to the street again, it all came back to her, the inked facsimile of the first-grade teacher aloofly contemplating a roomful of boys, one of them—Sam!—lying dead.

***

Peggy hastened through the echoing lobby, nodding absently to the starter as she turned in at the bank of elevators that served Arista's floors. She got off at twenty-one, half-waved to the receptionist, and headed for the entryway that led to the Corporate Affairs section.

Hal's new office door was closed.

Peggy raised her fist to knock. But then she changed her mind.

He sat with his back turned, his feet propped up on the couch that stood behind his desk, the telephone receiver crooked between his shoulder and chin, one hand lifted to the top of his head, his fingertips combing back and forth through his curly, thatch-colored hair.

Instinct, suspicion, curiosity—Peggy couldn't say what made her do it. But she left the door ajar and stepped gingerly across the carpet, seating herself in the chair placed closest to his desk. She considered what she was doing, and it pierced her with shame. Yet she persuaded herself it really wasn't that she was trying to keep her presence unannounced—it was just that she was doing her best not to make any unnecessary noise. Wouldn't it be intrusive, an interference to his work if she called out, "Hal, I'm here"?

But she listened. She listened as if her ears were fingers that could reach out and snatch up his words. What she heard was his mild Midwestern voice murmuring clipped replies to whatever the other party was saying, and it maddened her not to hear that, too.

"Yes."

"Sure."

"You can count on it."

"I understand."

"Right."

"That's okay."

"Yes, it's for the best."

"She was?"

"Of course."

"I understand."

"I'm grateful—believe me, I am."

"Good-bye."

He replaced the receiver, sighed wearily, and then swiveled around in his chair, his face registering something more than surprise when he confronted Peggy sitting just feet away.

"You might have knocked."

"I'm your wife," she said. "Do you have something to hide?"

He brought his elbows forward onto the top of the desk and laced his fingers together.

"What has hide got to do with it? For Christ's sake, Pegs, it's a mere formality."

"Formalities between husbands and wives?"

Suddenly she had to urinate. It didn't seem possible to hold it. She crossed her legs and jammed the toe of her shoe under his desk. She squeezed her thighs together hard.

"All right." he said, dropping his hands from their pose. "A courtesy, then. For God's sake, let's not fight."

"Forget it," Peggy said.

She saw the rain hit, blow against his window. It splattered over the glass as if sprayed by a hose full-force. Like a cue to a child straining over the toilet, it made the pressure in her bladder worse.

"It doesn't matter," she said, trying to recapture her thoughts. "What matters is why I'm here, and it has nothing to do with what you choose to keep secret from me." As soon as she said it, she wondered if it was true. But then she shook off the thought like a dog breaking his muzzle free of cobwebs.

He smiled. He spread his hands as if to shrug.

"Pegs, honey—I honest to God don't know what's happening to you. All I know is something is."

She saw the smile as a smirk, the gesture as a lie.

"It's not me, Hal. It's you," she said.

She felt she was competing against the clock now, a runner pitted against the speed of his own heartbeat. The rain, Hal, the weight of the scalding fluid that thundered for release, everything stood like a colossal wall between her and the undoing of the drawing Sam had made of his Miss Putnam and the class.

"I want Sam out of that school. We have to withdraw him. We have to do it right away."

"Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, Pegs. Let's not start on that again." His face closed down, and he hunched himself forward, his manner serious, grave, his mien that of the person elected to be the grown-up in the room. "Let me lay this on you one more time. I want that school for my son. I want him in the world St. Martin's represents; I want him to have the kind of education it provides; I want him to go to the kind of college it prepares kids for; and most of all, I want you to get off my goddamned case about it. People all over this city would kill to get their kids into that place, and all you can do is piss and moan about it. Really, Peggy, I think you're coming a little unglued. There is absolutely no reason for any of this bullshit you're slinging at me!"

"There is!" She was screaming.

When she saw him jump out of his chair and come quickly around the desk, she couldn't help herself—she recoiled in fear. But then she saw he was only going to close the door.

He returned to his place behind the desk, shaking his head from side to side and puffing out his cheeks as if nothing else could possibly express the magnitude of his shock.

"You realize this is an office? You realize you're making a spectacle of yourself in my goddamn office?" he hissed, his voice barely rising above a whisper.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Really, Hal, I—"

"Maybe you should see someone. Maybe, what with the move and everything, we've both been under too great a strain."

"No," she said. She got to her feet. When she stood up, it was as if her swollen bladder had to be lifted after her, hauled up an impossible distance. "No," she said again, "you don't understand."

"Then make me understand," he said, looking up at her.

She studied his face, tried to read the truth in his eyes. Was he really pleading with her? Or was it all a monumental con?

"Where did you get that necklace?" she suddenly asked.

She saw him look back down at his desk as though the answer was somewhere among the chaos of papers that covered it.

"It's a long story," he said. "I'll tell you when you've calmed down."

She said nothing. She turned her face to the window, to the fury of the rain against the glass.

"I've got to go," she said.

"You'll get drenched. At least wait until it eases up."

"I can't," she said.

She was at the door when he stopped her, called her name. She turned to face him again. He looked so different to her now, so changed, not Hal at all anymore.

Without another word, she stepped out into the hall.

She hurried to the ladies room—and stayed there fifteen minutes, long enough for him to give up if he'd gone looking for her at the elevators. Maybe it was the crazy thoughts that rush through your head when pent-up urine finally rushes from your body—but as she yanked down her pantyhose and briefs and then let go, she had the queerest feeling that it was Miss Putnam he'd been talking to when she'd caught him murmuring into the telephone.

***

The streets were awash. The instant she stepped off the curb to search the uptown flow of traffic for a free cab, a delivery truck cut in close to her and splashed a wave of water over the front of her dress. She was soaked through—drenched, just as he'd said.

Peggy stood for a moment, limp with feelings of impotence and frustration, like a child in a world of grown-ups who all rode cozily in cabs. Then she gave up and set off to work her way home by subway, drying out by the time she'd made it to the Ninety-sixth Street stop, getting soaked again as she walked the block and a half to her building.

She pressed the button for the elevator, stepping away from the puddle that was forming at her feet and starting a new one just as big. When she got off on eight, she waited until the elevator door had shut behind her, and then she stripped out of her things, dropped her clothes on the vestibule floor, and fished her keys from the bottom of her handbag.

With one naked foot she held the door propped open while she reached back and bundled her wet things under her arm. She left her shoes in the foyer, carried everything else to the little laundry room off the kitchen, and then, shivering slightly, she retraced her steps, cursing Hal when she saw the empty suitcases still lying in the hallway that led to the back. He knew she wasn't strong enough to lift them onto the top shelf of the storage closet. He knew he had to do that for her!

FORGIVE

She used to think she could forgive him anything, forgive him for leaving a million suitcases lying on the floor. But maybe there were some things too terrible to forgive.

She hadn't yet reached the doorway to their bedroom when she heard it—and stopped dead in her tracks. At first she thought it must be the rain, a kind of trick the rain played against the fancy brickwork that bordered he windows. But then, a second later, she realized that neither water nor wind could make a sound like that, and that it was coming from inside the apartment itself.

She stood listening, trying to hear it over the pounding of her heart, the roaring sussuration of her breath.

It was rhythmic, a steady, muted swinging sound, as of something moving relentlessly back and forth in the bedroom. The rocker! It must be the bentwood rocker at the foot of the bed! Yes, that was it—there was someone in there in the rocking chair, someone rocking back and forth.

She crept closer, her toes inching along the bare floor, her naked body inclined as far forward as she dared. When she got as far as she needed to look and make sure, she stopped and held her breath.

She could just see it around the edge of the door frame now, the tip of one wooden arc rising and falling, the toe of a shoe dark against the light field of new beige carpet.

She started inching back, her breath stopped in her chest, her arms crossed instinctively over her breasts.

The telephone in the kitchen! Or no, just get out; don't risk it. The elevator. Ring for the elevator! But she was naked.

She wanted to turn and run, scream, do something fast. She kept moving backward, the tiniest, quietest steps . . .

The voice stopped her. It was a man shouting.

"Is someone there? Pegs, kitten, is that you?"

CHAPTER EIGHT

She sat huddled on the living room couch, clutching her robe around her while Val poured her a second bourbon and continued his explanation. She barely listened. She was glad he was here, but it didn't matter why. Still, he kept listing the reasons—how much he wanted to see their new place, how he'd been so uneasy about the way she and Hal had treated each other in Pensacola. Was something wrong in their marriage? Didn't they both understand what a treasure they had in Sam and how it'd be a damn shame if anything came along to bust things up?

He was worried. He wanted to do what he could. Would money help? Was that the trouble? Maybe they were overextended. He didn't have much, but whatever he had was theirs—and of course, he could always borrow more.

She did her best to reassure him, and she tried to change the subject.

"But how did you get in, Pops? You scared me half to death."

"The super."

"He just let you in? I mean, how could he be sure you were my father?"

"Do I look like a criminal? Besides, he put a good one to me."

Peggy looked up from her drink. "He what?"

"Man said, 'If you're Mrs. Cooper's father, then describe the machine you invented that your grandson's always talking about.' Looks like old Sam's pretty impressed with that contraption." He grinned, reached out his hand and lifted her chin. "Listen, kitten, I just want you to know there's nothing in my power I won't do if you need me."

She'd been holding it in. But the look on his face, the one eye masked by the oval of black, cracked what strength she had left. She let it out, crying as if she'd been practicing for this moment all her life. He petted her and tried to quiet her, but she threw herself back down on the couch and wept until the ache in her chest made her stop.

"How about another hooker of bourbon?"

She shook her head. She felt hollowed out, too weak to speak.

"You want to tell me what's eating you, Pegs?"

Again she shook her head.

"I'm an okay listener, kitten. I've seen some things in my time. I doubt there's anything you could tell me that I haven't seen or heard before."

"No," she said, sitting up, rubbing at her face with the heels of her hands. "You wouldn't understand."

"Try me," he said. "That's what I'm here for."

"I can't," she said as if she was strangling.

He nodded and touched the top of her head. "Okay if I hang around for a few days?"

She knew if she tried to speak just yet, she'd collapse into tears again. So she hugged him to give him his answer, and then she took his hand and showed him to the room she knew would never be redone as a nursery for a little Abigail or Amanda. Creating a new life wasn't anything Peggy was thinking about anymore.

What she was thinking about was how to save the life of the child she had.

***

It was still drizzling when they left the apartment and went together to get Sam. She wanted it to be a happy time for Val and a happy time for Sam, but every step closer to the school was like a fist closing tighter on her heart.

When they stood at the bottom of the stairs waiting for the doors to swing open and the boys to start coming out, Peggy studied the faces of the other mothers who stood around with little rain hats and slickers and umbrellas at the ready. She knew none of these people, and she had the feeling she never would. It wasn't like the way it had been when Sam was in nursery school, all the mothers reaching out to each other for friendship and support. These women were different. They seemed so closed in, so shut off from ordinary needs, from simple companionship. Wouldn't most of the ones waiting be first-grade mothers, too? Which ones had sons who also went each morning to face Miss Putnam, to sit in one of the desks Sam had drawn before he'd even seen what they looked like? Would any of them believe her story? Was it something only a mother could take seriously?

Peggy stepped away from her father, moved a bit closer to the woman standing nearest.

"Hi," she said, touching the woman's elbow lightly, "I wonder if I might introduce myself. I'm Peggy Cooper—and this is my dad just up from Florida."

"Potter," Val said, putting out his big, brown hand. "Val Potter. Pleased to meet you."

"Hello," the woman said vaguely. "Are you visiting New York?"

"That's what I'm doing," Val said, smiling broadly, still holding onto the woman's hand.

"That's nice," the woman said, drawing her hand away and facing Peggy again. "You have a boy in first grade, I believe?"

"Sam," Peggy said. "And yours?"

"Yes," the woman said, turning away slightly, as if to check the doors.

"Does he have Miss Putnam?" Peggy said.

"Yes, thank goodness," the woman said, not looking back at Peggy. "I understand she works absolute wonders, whipping the little savages into St. Martin's boys before they get off on the wrong foot."

"You mean she's a lot better than Mrs. Booth?" Peggy said.

The woman turned her face back to Peggy, and then briefly glanced at Val, as if swiftly measuring him in some way. She seemed about to say something, but then she turned away again just as the doors banged open and the first ranks of boys began their joyous descent down the stairs, hands out to test the density of the rain that still fell from an ugly sky.

***

When they got back home, Peggy made cocoa for Val and Sam, then put a plate of Lorna Doones on the breakfast table and sat and listened to their excited exchange. She was comforted for the moment by the craggy timber of her father's voice, by her son's musical chirps of enthusiasm. This surprise visit was going to be as much of a tonic for Sam as it was for her. The unnerved and intimidated little boy she'd taken to school in the morning had vanished under the benign influence of his grandfather's presence.

After a time Peggy got up and called the main number at Manhattan. When she got through to Hal's secretary, she asked for his new direct line and memorized it as the woman recited the numerals.

"You want me to repeat that, Mrs. Cooper?"

"No, that's fine," Peggy said. "Is he available?"

"He's on another call. Would you like to hold or shall I have him get back to you?"

"I'll wait," Peggy said.

She pulled a stool over to the baker's table and sat down, going over the sequence of seven digits until she was sure she had them right.

"You fellas need more cookies?" she called out to the breakfast room. But then Hal came on the line and she never heard their answer.

"I tried you at your office. They said you didn't come in. You feeling any better, Pegs?"

"Yes," she said—because she knew it didn't matter now what she said to him. "Look," she said, lowering her voice, "I'm calling because Pop's here."

"Val? Val's in New York?"

"He wants to stay a few days and I thought you should know."

There was a silence for a time, as if he was considering what this meant.

"Pegs," he finally said, "if you ask me, it's just what the doctor ordered. You talk to Val. You tell him what's got you all upset. He'll set you straight."

She said nothing. She let his statement hang in the air. She waited.

"Pegs?"

"I'm here," she said. "We can put Dad up in the third bedroom. I just thought you should know, is all."

"Well, I think that's great news. You tell him hi for me and say I'll be home in about an hour."

She nodded as if he could see her.

"Pegs? Cheer up, baby. Everything is going to be fine."

"Right," she said tonelessly. "I'll get Pop comfortable and then I'll start fixing dinner."

"No, no," she heard him say, his voice sounding genuinely excited, "you get everybody ready and we'll treat Val to a steak down at Luger's. How's that grab you?"

"That's fine," she said, and then she said good-bye.

***

All the way down to Brooklyn Val kept insisting it had to be his treat, but Hal wouldn't hear of it.

"I fly free. So I'm how many dollars ahead of the game? It some kind of federal offense if I spend a few bucks on my kids?"

"Save your money," Hal said. "The price of Kool-aid's going up."

"It is?" Sam said from his perch on his grandfather's lap.

The men laughed, but Peggy kept to her silence, her face averted to the window as the cab wove in and out of the heavy commuter traffic along FDR Drive.

At the restaurant Hal kept up a steady stream of endorsements about what a great feed Luger's was, the best porterhouse steaks in the country, not to mention the sliced tomatoes, the sliced onions, the incredible rye bread, the home fries, and the pecan pie that was sure as hell coming after they'd stuffed themselves with everything else.

Peggy nibbled at her steak and listened. She'd never heard Hal quite like this before, nervously jabbering about the food that was right in front of their faces when anybody could see that Sam was bored and Val would sooner hear about other things—their new jobs, the apartment, St. Martin's. When the subject finally changed to how Sam was getting along in his new school, Hal interrupted to say he had more good news.

"Sam boy, guess what! Tomorrow, after school, guess who's coming to your new house!"

The boy had a forkful of pie on the way to his mouth. When he looked up to see what his father was so excited about, the food dropped back down to his plate.

"Your teacher!" declared Hal, beaming with pleasure.

"Miss Putnam?" Sam said, swallowing as if the pie had made it all the way.

"How did that come about?" Peggy said through clenched teeth, something sharp and oppressive moving over the area near her heart.

"She called me herself to set it up," he answered glibly, "almost right after you left my office. It's standard procedure at St. Martin's. The teacher calls on all her students some time during the year. It's a nice tradition, I think. Just give her a cup of tea and some cucumber sandwiches, and that'll be the end of it."

"Why didn't you tell me when I called you at your office?" she almost hissed.

He looked at her as if her question was absurd.

"You've got all the time you need to get ready, Pegs," Hal said soothingly, looking to Val as if to signal his conviction that Peggy's behavior was getting more aberrant by the minute.

"The place needs cleaning. I've got to work tomorrow."

"No sweat," Val said. He reached his hand to Peggy's arm and winked at Hal. "You kids can count on me to tidy up. It may come as a big surprise to certain citizens," Val said, moving his hand from Peggy's arm to tweak Sam's nose, "but us old Navy fly-boys can do some pretty fair strafing with a dust rag and a broom."

"We've got a vacuum cleaner," Sam offered helpfully. "A Kirby—right, Mom?"

"What?" Peggy said, her mind spinning with possibilities, the splinter that had by now penetrated her heart shattering into a thousand bright shards of glass.

"A Kirby!" Val bellowed. "Did I ever tell you, boy, what your granddad once did with an old Kirby motor, some baling wire, a couple of GE dimmer switches, a rebuilt Mixmaster, half a dozen lug nuts, and a 1957 Admiral TV?"

Sam looked wide-eyed, waiting.

Hal started laughing, and Val joined him. Together, they spluttered and roared, laughing and laughing until the tears rolled down their cheeks. And at last Sam laughed too, loving the laughter and the joke and these wonderful men, even if he didn't really understand.

Peggy watched them over the lip of her coffee cup, and then she closed her eyes and drank.

CHAPTER NINE

She had the alarm triggered for an hour early. But she was up and into her clothes before it got anywhere near the time it was set for. She took a last look in the bathroom mirror, wet her eyes with more cold water, and crept out of the bedroom. As she eased the door shut behind her, the faint opalescence of the seven scrawled letters still lay smeared across her dazed vision.

FORGIVE

No, Peggy would not forgive. It had passed the point of forgiveness now. Whatever it was, it had to be worse than that, too awful for her even to guess at. She could only grope her way, reach out with her wildest surmise—and even so, what would she have? Nothing. Nothing solid; nothing but suspicions and the aimless insanity of never knowing which one led anywhere near the truth. She would forgive nothing. Instead, she would fight. Yet who precisely was the enemy? It could be even herself.

She tiptoed down the hall to Sam's room, went in, and closed the door. She knelt at the side of his bed, put her head down next to his, blew her breath against his face. Again. Once more.

This time his hand jerked up and flicked across his nose as if a freckle might be tickling him.

Again she pursed her lips and puffed enough to send a microscopic hurricane hurtling across the twin ravines of his delicate nostrils—then chanted in a whisper:

Little fly upon the wall,

ain't you got no clothes at all?

no little shimmy shirtie?

no little underskirtie?

***

His eyes flew open, then slammed closed, his mouth opening instead.

"Holy cow, Mom, I'm not exactly a baby anymore, you know?"

"You're my baby," Peggy said, planting a small kiss on her favorite cluster of freckles as she scrabbled her fingernails under his arms, quickly standing before he could get her back.

It always worked. As late as he'd gotten to bed after the long ride back from Brooklyn and the thousand good nights he'd had to issue to Val, and as early as she'd gotten him up, this morning was no exception. Sam delivered himself of a giant yawn and then tumbled from his bed ready to go. But she stopped him before he could launch himself into his usual morning routine.

"I want you to draw something—a treat for Granddad."

He looked at her, his face falling.

"I can't."

"Of course you can—there's plenty of time," Peggy said. "I got you up early just so you could."

"But I can't," he moaned, close to tears now.

She felt the splinter start to move.

"Why can't you, honey?" she said, bending to him, taking him into her arms.

"Because Miss Putnam told me I was going to find myself in a world of trouble if I didn't stop spending so much time on my drawing and work a lot harder on things like reading and arithmetic."

His face was such a mixture of puzzlement and anxiety that Peggy could have wept. She was also flooded with a rage so intense it momentarily blocked out all sight and sound. But then, with an enormous act of will, she brought herself under control. This helpless child was her son, and he needed her to be strong. Her own anger and fear were useless to him.

"Listen, honey," she said, struggling to sound normal. "I understand that there are a lot of rules and regulations at St. Martin's that you're going to have to follow. It's only right. But in your own home, and on your own time, you can follow our house rules—just the way you always have. Do you read me?"

"Loud and clear," he answered with a teary smile.

"Okay. So, first thing, when you get home, there's this picture I want you to draw. For your granddad. Okay?"

"Sure. But if Miss Putnam's going to be here, are you sure I won't get in trouble?"

"I'm absolutely positive. Besides, you can work in your bedroom. She doesn't even have to know anything about it."

All right," Sam said, laying one naked foot on top of the other and scratching with his toes. "Only what does Granddad want me to draw?"

Peggy thought for a minute. "How about I tell you on the way to school?"

***

While Sam was getting ready, she put his breakfast on the table and wrote out a note for Val, telling him to meet her for lunch at her office. She put the note on the baker's table, cleared away Sam's dishes, set out pancake batter and bacon and eggs, adjusted the burner under the coffee so that the flame barely showed, then labored over Sam's necktie with what time she had left.

"Don't forget," she reminded him when they were turning the corner onto Fifth, "as soon as you get home, you go right to your room and you draw what I told you. All clear?"

"Suppose she comes into my room and catches me?"

"Don't be silly. She won't do that," Peggy said, bending to kiss him and then remembering it wasn't what he wanted in front of the school.

He smiled, put his foot on the first step, and then turned to hug her before going slowly up the stairs.

Peggy stood watching until he'd disappeared inside. For a time she thought to run after him, not risk these few more hours. She could say he was sick, that he had to go to the dentist, anything. What was wrong with her, taking another chance like this? It was reckless to let him go back in there. But then she thought about her plan, and it comforted her. Surely he'd be all right until she picked him up again.

***

After a hurried lunch with Val, during which she'd made him promise he'd be at the apartment when she got back with Sam, Peggy returned to her office. Her mind elsewhere, she started working through the call-back messages that had piled up on her desk in her absence. Again and again she had to ask the person on the other end to repeat something, and even when they did, she didn't really hear. Around three o'clock her secretary appeared in the door, motioning with his hand to get her attention, mouthing the sentence, "Mr. Cooper's holding," when Peggy finally looked up.

She said, "Who?" before she could catch herself, then nodded, quickly finished the call she was on and pressed the blinking button.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Were you waiting long?"

"No problem," he said. "I called home. Val says you had a good lunch together."

"Umm," she said, already tuning him out. She turned over one of the telephone memos and started forming a circle of interlocking cubes, marking each one with an initial when she'd filled in the last line—first S, then H, then P.

"Yeah, well, I want you to get all dolled up tonight," Hal was saying. "Because there's this party thing for The Six, and I want you to be there."

"What's that?" she said. "I didn't get that. I'm sorry."

"Are you listening, Pegs? Because what I said was that there's a thing for The Six tonight and I have to be there. I thought you'd like to come, too."

"The Six?"

"This group. Don't you remember?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "Of course."

"Of course what? Will you remember to get fixed up? It's around eightish. At the Four Seasons."

"I can't," she said. "I can't get a sitter. You haven't given me enough notice. Besides, I've got Miss Putnam coming this afternoon. It's just too much, Hal. You go ahead."

She could hear him sigh with weariness. She started placing a C after each initial.

"You've got Val to babysit, remember?"

"Of course," Peggy said. "Pop will be with Sam. I forgot."

Again she heard his small rustle of irritation.

"Pegs, will you for Christ's sake get your act together?"

"Okay," she said. "If you want me to come with you, of course I will. Dad can look after Sam."

"Right," he said. "Fine. I'll work straight through and I'll meet you there. You remember the time?"

"Around eight?"

"Good," he said. "I'll see you then. And try to be up for it, okay?"

"I'll try," she said, but he had already hung up.

***

She stayed another hour, whittling away her call-backs and trying to arrange for the use of some military parachutes she hoped to work in as style in her next set of windows. Just after four she locked her office and picked up an apricot torte in the store's bake shop, dropping it off at the apartment before going to get Sam.

Val let her in, his shirt-sleeves rolled up and a bottle of Windex in his hand. She pecked him on the cheek, put the cake box in the kitchen, and dialed Town and Country, Sam's old nursery school. Thank God she had one ally, especially now that her instincts told her everything was coming to a head.

"Hi, Ruth," she said, when the school secretary had answered the phone. "This is Peggy Cooper. Is Sarah Goldenson still there?"

"Oh, Mrs. Cooper, haven't you heard?" Again, the needle in her heart, the accelerating dread spreading everywhere. "Heard what?" she breathed, not even trying to hide her alarm, not even capable of trying.

"Miss Goldenson was in an accident. Run over by a hit-and-run driver at Thirty-fourth and Park. It was raining like crazy the night it happened—the car must have skidded out of control. She died before they could even get an ambulance to take her to the hospital—at least that's what I heard. You know they'll never find out who's responsible. I'm telling you, people can get away with murder in this city."

Without a word, Peggy placed the receiver back on its hook. For what seemed an eternity, she gazed mindlessly out the kitchen window, watching a tanker moving along the East River. She saw it passing from one end to the other across the space that provided a clear view between two intervening buildings. It was like a cardboard boat moving across a canvas backdrop, as if technicians out of sight of the audience silently advanced it across a stage. But she knew it was no more than an illusion, that if you were down there, on the river, close up to that iron hull, you would hear a maddened propeller thrashing at the water and everything howling with power.

Peggy shuddered slightly, feeling more alone than she ever had in her life. But she had to be strong—strong for Sam.

CHAPTER TEN

First she settled Sam in his room. Then, after giving Val his instructions as to how to handle Sam's bath, how to make sure he finished his supper, where to find the telephone number for the Four Seasons, she raced to get dressed, redid her makeup and topped it all off with the new necklace.

In the kitchen she got down her finest serving plate and slid the torte from the box, centering it on the plate and wetting her finger to wipe away the small jellied trace that had smeared across the rim. She climbed the footstool again and took down two of her fanciest cups and saucers, then carried everything into the living room. She went back for the good linen napkins, dessert dishes, the best teaspoons, the creamer, the sugar bowl, serving knife, forks. Then she hurried back to the bedroom to check her face in the mirror.

FORGIVE

She ran water over a wad of toilet paper and scrubbed frantically at the letters, drying the glass off with more toilet paper. But still the word was there, stubbornly visible if you really looked. She tossed the toilet paper into the bowl, hiked up the skirt of her dress and sat down, pulling her under-things to her knees and straining to empty herself out. But nothing came. There was just the nagging sensation, an incessant tension in her groin.

On her way back to the kitchen she stopped in Sam's room and stood over him to see how far he'd gone.

The page was blank.

He looked up at her, his face stiff with anxiety.

"She here yet?"

"No," Peggy said. "Any minute."

"Where's Granddad?"

"He just went down for cigarettes. You having trouble?" Peggy said, tilting her head at the empty sheet of drawing paper.

"I don't know," Sam said. "Maybe I'm not in the mood or something."

She pulled his reading chair over and sat down next to him. "Honey," she said, "I really hate to do this, but you've got to. I mean, Granddad's counting on it, and I promised him."

"But why that?" Sam said, his eyes pleading. "Why can't I draw what I want?"

"Because," Peggy said, reaching her hands to his face and turning his head so that he looked at her. "Because Granddad's not allowed in your school and he wants to see what your class is like. You can understand that, can't you?"

"But I don't want to," Sam cried, pulling his face away from her grasp.

"Oh, honey," Peggy begged, "it's not so much to ask. Just draw what you did before—only this time don't have that boy fallen over like that."

He looked at her, his head rigid, the flesh drained of color.

"No!" he wailed.

"You've got to! I'm begging you to!"

She saw him look wildly around, his face contorted with something nameless, a kind of frenzy that made him strange.

"Sam, you must!" Peggy yelled, grabbing at his shoulders to make him pay attention. "I don't have time to argue with you. I'm begging you. Please, Sam, please!"

When he looked at her, she saw it all in his eyes, saw everything she had feared. And when he spoke, his voice was very quiet. He was like an old man speaking, an old man that was very afraid.

"She made me swear."

"Swear what?" Peggy nearly screamed, her fingers trembling as they held fast to his small shoulders.

"Never to draw her. She said I'd die if I ever did."

Her heart stopped; her breath slammed to a halt in her chest, and in her groin small, jagged things raged. She opened her mouth to speak, swallowing to catch her breath, gasping for the right words, any words.

It was then that she first heard the door buzzer ringing, and understood that she had been hearing it long before this.

"Stay here," she said. "I love you, baby. It's okay. Just stay here."

She hugged him tight and then went to the front door, her body held as if poised to catch the weight of something fanged.

***

They were both there—the blonde woman looming, her great bulk pressed up close to the doorway, Val slouching a few paces behind her, his eye slitted against the smoke that rose from his cigarette.

"This here's Miss Putnam, Pegs," Val called over the big woman's shoulder as if proudly declaring his discovery. "Says she's old Sammy's teacher and has come to pay a visit."

Peggy felt something wet and sandy grind across her heart. Her hands fluttered to her breast, her fingers catching on the pale cameo. "What do you want with us?" she said.

The woman smiled blandly.

"You haven't forgotten, have you? Or perhaps Mr. Cooper neglected to tell you I was coming."

The woman had her hand out, waiting. Peggy lowered her hand from her bosom and hesitantly reached it forward.

"How very nice to see you again, Mrs. Cooper," Miss Putnam said, swallowing the smaller hand in hers.

"I'm so sorry," Peggy stammered. "I don't know what's getting into me lately. Yes, of course Hal told me. I was expecting you. You really must forgive me. We're going out tonight, and I suppose I'm a little flustered."

The woman lifted her heavy-buckled briefcase in front of her and hugged it to her chest. Peggy stood staring at the big woman, the tautly combed-back yellow hair, the plain grey wool jumper, the dainty Peter Pan collar. It was the costume of a simple, earnest woman, someone studious and modest and cultivated. Was she really a person to frighten children? Or was it all just a lot of craziness, Sam fibbing for some reason and her own vivid imagination running riot?

But when had Sam ever lied?

She saw the nose, blunt and flaring, the pinkish nostrils that swept sharply back, the fleshy parts actually quivering when Miss Putnam pronounced certain vowels.

"I'd like you to meet my father, Mr. Potter," Peggy said, not moving from the doorway.

"Oh, but we've met, we've met!" Miss Putnam confirmed, her frosted eyes never once straying from Peggy's face. "I observed the resemblance instantly."

"People say that," Peggy said, blushing, trying to free her hand from the big woman's powerful grasp, pulling it away awkwardly.

Then she stood aside and motioned Miss Putnam in.

"You must have a great deal on your mind," she said as she swept into the apartment. "Sam tells me you've only recently moved in."

"A few weeks ago," Peggy said. "We haven't really got it all fixed up yet."

"Looks pretty damn fine to me," Val called out as he closed the door behind him.

Peggy could see him waiting for someone to pick up on his remark, to congratulate him on having such a go-getter for a daughter, perhaps for the schoolteacher to give him a grade. But when no one said anything, he hunched his shoulders and studied the floor at his feet.

"Guess you two ladies will excuse me while I go catch myself a little nap before supper."

"You go right ahead," Miss Putnam said, offering her hand. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Potter. Sam has already addressed the class on the subject of your inventions. I must say, he's a lucky boy to have such a creative person in the family. No doubt it's from you that much of his marvelous talent derives."

"Me?" Val spluttered as he pumped the woman's hand, a hand easily as large as his own. "Heck, I'm just an old flyboy fella—nothing about me the least smidgen artistic at all. No, ma'am, it's old Pegs here that's to blame for what Rembrandt there is in the boy."

"You sell yourself short," she said perfunctorily, clearly indifferent to the entire conversation.

"Well," Val said, but the sentence he was starting never went anywhere. He toed the floor and then looked meaningfully at Peggy. "I'll just go along now and leave you ladies be."

He shambled down the hall, Peggy listening for the track of his footsteps. Sam's room? Or was he really going to take a nap?

***

She turned to face the blonde woman, and again she felt the texture of something rough roll violently across her heart, as if the belly of a serpent strove for greater traction as it sought a new position in her chest.

"Shall we?" Miss Putnam inquired, tipping her high forehead in the direction of the living room, the tight bun at the back of her neck gleaming in the late-afternoon light.

"Oh yes, of course," Peggy said. "Just go right in."

She let the schoolteacher lead the way, falling in behind her with numb, child-like obedience, as if she now comprehended that escape was utterly hopeless, that there was nothing left but for her to submit to some dreaded but subtle punishment, justified, yet insufferable.

Was it because she knew about Sam? His secret, devastating power? Was that why she felt so guilty and—ashamed? Even when she sat down—choosing the least comfortable place—she felt as though she was surrendering herself for some agony that was truly deserved.

"Now then," Miss Putnam said, lowering her briefcase to her lap, "this is comfy." She uncrossed her ankles and leaned closer. "I am so glad to have this visit—since, even this early on in the year, Samuel has already distinguished himself as potentially one of my best boys ever."

"Tea, Miss Putnam?" Peggy asked, knowing that what had been said called for some response but already reading from her prepared script. She lifted a cup by the saucer and heard its telltale rattle.

"Do call me Victoria," the blonde woman said, nodding at the proffered tea cup, her nose perceptibly twitching. "No sugar, thank you. Just milk," she warned. "And you're Peggy, aren't you? Do you mind?"

"Oh no, of course," Peggy said. "We're very informal around here." They were, but Peggy's very manner around this woman seemed to belie it.

"Cake, Miss Putnam?" Peggy asked, wishing she had thought to say torte.

"No, thank you," the woman said, frowning as if a prize student had just failed to master a crucial lesson. "Victoria," she said, enunciating very carefully. "Do feel free, Peggy, and please, I insist you be at ease with me. I'm really deeply opposed to those crusty forms St. Martin's seems to stand for in the minds of so many of our new parents. Actually, we're really a terribly relaxed group—the school and what we like to think of as our extended family—the old boys, the parents, even . . ." She waved her fingertips to indicate the back of the apartment. "Even the grandparents."

Miss Putnam chuckled, and then tested her tea with thin, colorless lips, her nose seeming to lift itself cautiously over the rim of the cup.

Peggy raised her own cup to her lips. But without sipping, she returned it to her saucer, setting it down with an emphatic click.

"I am so concerned," she said, forcing herself to look directly into the woman's face, "and because you're so friendly and all, I think I can speak openly."

Miss Putnam's eyebrows shot up questioningly.

"You may, you may!" she said, and touched her fingertip to the bridge of her rounded spectacles as though to steady them before they fell from their perch.

"It's about the drawing again," Peggy said, feeling panic as she prepared the way for what was to come next. "I just don't know what to believe anymore—because he maintains so staunchly that you're telling him what he can and cannot draw—even on his own time. And Sam has never been a fanciful, much less a deceitful, child."

As she talked, Peggy watched the woman's face for signs, hints that would help her find her way. But there was nothing, just that incredibly impassive expression contradicted by the smile that never left those bloodless lips. It was like a snort almost, more a snort than a real smile.

"You see—Victoria—you see," Peggy began again, "Mr. Cooper and I, Hal and I, we've always done everything we could to give Sam all the freedom he wants. I mean, so far as drawing goes, of course. Since he was a little baby, that's how it's been, because he's been doing it for years and years, and it's hard for you to know this, but he's really very passionate about it. Oh, you know how a boy can be—and so to have someone come along, even someone who has his best interest at heart, and say to him that, well, there are certain ways he's supposed to do it and certain things he's not supposed to draw, well, it's incomprehensible and maybe even traumatic to him."

Miss Putnam was reaching her hand out to rest her fingertips on Peggy's knee.

"Has someone said that?"

"Well," Peggy said, and looked helplessly around the room. "He says you did. But of course he's just a little boy and you know how little boys—"

Miss Putnam patted Peggy's knee.

"Of course he's a little boy, my dear—and little boys, even the best little boys in the world, get some astonishingly curious notions. Believe me, Peggy, I'm the expert." Miss Putnam sat back in her chair and rolled her eyes at the ceiling, the fleshy crown of her nose puckering hideously.

"The very idea!" she snorted. "He claimed I restricted certain subjects? Oh Peggy, can you imagine? He's already the complete artist, already dreaming up his own fantastic versions of reality, interpreting the world through his own marvelously distorted perspective. Oh, he's an artist all right, the little devil!"

Peggy felt utterly at sea. Was it possible that this thoughtful, cultured young woman sitting before her and looking so sincerely concerned, so considerate, was really a monster? Wasn't she really just an ordinary teacher doing an ordinary job?

Peggy tried to remember what that other mother had said, something about how admired Miss Putnam was, how vastly she was to be preferred over Mrs. Booth, the other first-grade teacher. Perhaps Peggy had misjudged the woman terribly—just because . . . But, no, it wasn't her face only, or her being the teacher in that picture. Sam never lied. Then who had ripped that picture out of Sam's pad? Could Sam have done it himself?

Was it possible that everything, that all the horrible things that had been happening, would all disappear under careful examination? That everything was perfectly normal? That it just took someone clever to explain it?

Perhaps she was going crazy—just as Hal had suggested. How did you know if you were the crazy one? After all, if you were crazy, how could you tell?

When Peggy looked up from her lap, she saw Miss Putnam standing, her figure huge in the living room light, the briefcase rebuckled and again clutched to her chest.

"I'll just say hello to Sam, take a peek at his room, and then I'll run along," Miss Putnam announced. She looked down from her great height. "I've detained you long enough."

"Oh, of course," Peggy said, shrinking under the woman's scalding gaze. "It's this way. I know he'll be so pleased."

"Little boys," the big woman chuckled, as she started after Peggy into the foyer and followed her down the hall. "They're such little devils!"

CHAPTER ELEVEN

As Peggy's cab careened madly down Park Avenue, she told herself for the millionth time that she had to stop indulging herself in all this hysterical nonsense. God knew Miss Putnam was not a particularly appealing personality—hardly anyone's fantasy of the ideal first-grade teacher, but she was surely no supernatural monster either.

After all, Sam had been pampered and adored his whole life long, and it was likely that even the mildest taste of plain old-fashioned discipline would throw him for a loop at first. What evidence had she, really, that there was anything more to Putnam than met the eye?

As for the sorry state of her marriage, well, Hal was certainly under inordinate stress on the job, and she was hardly being the nurturing and supportive wife that might enable him to unwind and be his old self at home. How could she possibly have imagined that he could ever be involved in anything that could possibly be harmful to Sam?

She felt just sick about Sarah Goldenson, but there, too, wasn't their entire conversation the product of two high-strung females feeding each other's paranoid and infantile anxieties?

Really, she, Peggy Cooper, was on her way to having it all—making it big in the toughest city in the world. And how had she reacted to her good fortune? With an utter loss of nerve! They said you had to be strong to survive in New York—maybe the higher you soared, the truer that was. In any case, she was going to put all this bullshit behind her, and start to enjoy herself. If Sam didn't shape up in the next month or so, she'd find a counselor for him—no doubt the school psychologist at St. Martin's could suggest someone.

She looked out the window at the grand buildings along Park, comparing some of them unfavorably with her own. She tried to spot canopies and doormen as they flashed by. They weren't so much, were they? Yes, her life was pretty damned fine, and it was high time she started appreciating it a little more. And letting Hal know it, too. Wasn't he working himself to death to give her everything she'd ever wanted? Just think—St. Martin's, and the teacher there already complimenting her on what a fine boy Sam was. And they were nice people, too, and not really so snooty at all.

Just look at her—the lovely cameo lying on her breast as she was being whisked along Park Avenue from her elegant Upper East Side residence to a party of show-business celebrities at the fabulous Four Seasons. And she herself a successful professional at the most glamorous store in the world. Wasn't it just what lots of women all over the country dreamed of and yearned for?

And how thoughtful Miss Putnam had been—Victoria had been—doing her best to make Val feel comfortable and proud. And even when she'd gone back into Sam's room, how sweet and kind and warm the woman had been, talking to Sam like an old pal. Honestly, she could have smacked him for the way he'd treated her. Manners. She'd have to work more on his manners. Wasn't he a St. Martin's boy, potentially one of the best Miss Putnam had ever come across?

The briefcase—damn. Too bad she'd forgotten it. She could see it in her mind's eye, leaning against the foot of Sam's worktable, forgotten.

Well, she'd just cart it along in the morning when she dropped Sam off at school. She hoped it wouldn't be a hardship for Miss Putnam to do without it tonight.

Victoria? Hi, it's Peggy. I do hope you didn't miss your briefcase too much last night. I didn't even notice it until long after you were gone; otherwise, I would have run after you. But when I was kissing Sam good night, there it was, big as life . . . I suppose I should have telephoned, looked up your number and called, but Mr. Cooper—Hal—he was waiting for me at the Four Seasons—yes, she'd get that in, the Four Seasons—and I was already running late . . .

The taxi slammed to a halt. Peggy looked up from her reverie and saw a brightly uniformed doorman leaning down with his face in the window.

"That's five dollars and sixty cents, lady," the cabdriver called through the money slot.

"Five dollars?" Peggy cried.

"And sixty cents," the driver added, letting the slot flip back.

***

At the counter there sat a blonde woman who sipped ever so daintily from her cup. Every so often she nipped a delicate bite from the English muffin, over whose lightly toasted halves butter was spread under the thinnest layer of marmalade. At intervals her head swiveled on its axis to regard the progress of the clock.

The clock was situated high on the rearmost wall where hurried patrons might conveniently keep an anxious eye on the time, for this was a coffee shop catering mainly to businessmen obliged to breakfast on the run. But it wasn't breakfast time now. Although the clock on the wall read eight-twenty, it had been twelve hours since the countermen had served the men who routinely crowded these stools, Upper East Siders whose wives routinely kept to their beds until long after their husbands had left for work.

As for the woman, who was at this moment the coffee shop's sole customer, her motions betrayed no excess of haste. Still, she kept observing the steady advance of the clock, immediately thereafter referring to her watch.

At length, when both the clock and her watch read half past the hour, the woman picked up her check, deposited a coin on the counter, and slid off the stool with impeccable grace.

She was very, very tall, and her carriage exaggerated her great height—for she held herself in a manner that imitated a plank of wood.

At the cash register she presented the check and a single dollar bill, her large palm unfolding to receive the coins that would be returned as change.

She took the coins and dipped her head as if to acknowledge the correctitude of the exchange. This gesture caused the bun balled at the back of her neck to glitter in the fluorescent light and the sharpened Mongol 482 skewering this knob of hair to bob like a lever that operated her head.

At the door, first turning again to read the time from the clock, the woman lifted her wristwatch into view before stepping out into the chill, autumn night.

For a brief moment she stood on the corner under the coffee shop's sign—the name Ramble's drawn out in thick, white script—and then she traversed Ninety-sixth Street and continued leisurely onward until she had gone a whole block south, her stroll carrying her past the darkened storefronts of a florist, a candy-vendor, a dry-cleaning establishment, and finally another coffee shop. At the intersection of Madison Avenue and Ninety-fifth Street the woman altered her direction and turned left, her immense frame seeming to expand as she ambled along this block.

Though Park Avenue was empty of traffic, she waited for the light to change before continuing her relentless progress east, crossing cautiously even so, her head pivoting north and then south as if to spot the sudden outbreak of a rash of speeding automobiles.

Her pace neither accelerated nor faltered as she stepped up onto the opposite curb, but proceeded with the same measured nonchalance until she had covered the remaining distance to the canopy whose dark green canvas vaulted the sidewalk midway up the block.

It was here that the woman stopped.

Two men in the gently lit lobby stood watching as the woman raised her hand, and then the younger of the two scurried forward to undo the latch that secured the lock.

The woman stepped inside and smiled politely by way of bestowing a proper greeting, the skin of the striking nose that flared from her bespectacled face distinctly crinkling along the fleshy patch between the topmost point and tip.

"Good evening," the woman said, her speech promptly identifying her as a person of unquestionable breeding. "You will remember I called by earlier. Miss Putnam of St. Martin's. Young Cooper's first-grade teacher."

The doorman nodded respectfully at the conclusion of each of these statements, his brain already poised to carry out whatever commands might follow.

"I seem," the woman said, frowning ruefully and darting a fingertip to the spectacles that were thus in danger of falling off, "I seem," she began again, "to have left behind my briefcase."

The doorman pursed his lips in a show of perfect comprehension, whereupon the woman spoke again.

"I do trust it will present no great difficulty if—"

But it was not necessary for the woman to press on with the completion of this sentence, for the doorman, first bowing with appropriate deference, acted with all dispatch.

"This way," he said with his finest accent, and then led her, on hushed footsteps, to the elevator that served the east-wing apartments.

***

It was like a riot inside. It was as if somebody had given the alert that terrorist bombers cruised overhead. It was a madhouse in which the lunatics had overturned their keepers and now roamed free, each exhibiting the aberration peculiar to his case.

"Hal, I don't believe this!" Peggy shouted over the din when he'd spotted her and was forcing his way through the other arrivals still jammed solid at the door.

He caught her by the elbow and pulled her along toward the stairs.

"I've got to check my coat!" she shouted.

"You kidding?" he shouted back, still pulling at her elbow as he shouldered toward the stairs. "Not a chance!"

She pushed her body against him as he fought his way across the floor and up the flights of stairs. On the second floor the press was slightly thinner and the noise quieter, a manageable roar. She put her hands to his waist and kept herself close in to him while he twisted left and right, excusing himself and shoving forward until he had steered her to a small alcove just off the lounge.

He kissed her quickly and a little harshly, and when he stood back and looked at her, she could see that his face was flushed with a certain wildness and that his eyes kept cutting away from her, as if he were impatient to get back out into the insanity careening around the floor.

"I thought this was going to be a dinner of some kind!"

"It got out of hand!" he shouted back. "But there's food, all right!"

"What if Pop has to get hold of us? They'll never find us in this!"

"Nothing to worry about! Sam's fine! Your dad can handle anything that comes up!"

"But I can't!" Peggy shouted. "I don't think I can handle much more of this!"

He laughed, his eyes sliding away to the people that streamed past the alcove. Peggy turned and saw men and women that were sometimes neither one nor the other, people of indeterminate gender whose butchered hair looked dyed with eggcoloring, some of them so grey and frail and skinny they might be corpses except that they moved.

"Hal, honey, I hate this kind of thing! You stay, and I'll go home!"

"Relax!" he shouted. "We're leaving here pretty soon and going to Regine's! Just The Six and some execs and a few key hangers-on. This here is for the media and the freaks!"

He looked at his watch.

"Five more minutes at the most! We'll get a drink! Eat some hors d'oeuvres! Five lousy minutes, for crying out loud!"

CHAPTER TWELVE

The woman seated herself on the leather settee as the elevator lifted slowly toward the east-wing apartment on the eighth floor. It pleased the operator that the woman sat—because he remembered from this afternoon how overwhelming her height was at close quarters.

He faced forward as the floors glided by, thinking it was bad enough to have had one look at her, no reason to go out of your way to get a second. But she was quality, all right—you could see that. Class, definitely class. So what the hell was she doing with the new tenants in 8C? Nice enough folks, sure; but farmers. Not real city people, whatever kind of hotshot jobs they had. New money, and from the look of them, probably not much of it either.

When the doors wheezed open, the woman did not get to her feet at first. It was as if she had entirely forgotten the errand she'd come on.

"Ma'am?" the elevator operator said, not turning around.

"Oh, yes," the woman said, her nose puckering, as if now she had caught the scent of the vapors peculiar to this region.

She stood up—and when she did, the elevator operator leaned away from her, pressing himself tighter into the corner where his control panel was.

She stepped off the elevator, and the doors closed quickly behind her. She waited a moment, her head turning, and then she swiftly drew the pencil from her knob of gleaming hair. With the end that wore a little cap of rubber, she jabbed the ivory button situated under the nameplate that said H.C. Cooper—one sharp thrust, the length of yellow wood held exactly parallel to the floor. Next, she raised the pencil high over her shoulder, her eyes still fastened on the door, and then drove it as you would a spear back through the ball of hair, piercing the bun dead-center, like a poker spitting an overripe apple and striking it precisely through the core.

After a time she heard a small commotion behind the door. The door opened slightly and was instantly pushed closed; then she heard a child's voice, whispering.

"No, Granddad, you're supposed to look through the peephole first, to make sure it's not robbers or something."

She heard a man's voice, also hushed, an older man, a notably hill-country sound—West Virginia, perhaps Kentucky. No, West Virginia, surely.

"Hell, son, I did, and it ain't nobody but your teacher."

The woman smiled. The door opened wide.

***

A row of limousines stood waiting at the curb on Fifty-second Street, the drivers lounging against the first vehicle in line. To Peggy, they looked like a rescue team sent out to race her away from Hell. She held on to Hal's arm as if without his support she might stagger and fall and be left behind. But he pulled himself free of her to speak to one of the drivers, who listened studiously, then touched the bill of his cap, and spoke to the other men.

As the drivers went to their stations—some getting in behind the wheel, other flinging open doors to receive passengers—Hal turned to the knot of people that had begun collecting on the sidewalk, shouting and gesturing as he assigned them to their cars. When the sidewalk had cleared and some of the vehicles were already pulling away, he came to Peggy, put his hand on her back, and moved her toward the curb.

"They'll never miss us," he said, his voice strangely husky.

"What?" she said, not sure she'd heard him right.

She saw him look at her as if she was unimaginably stupid.

"You get in this one," he said, shifting his grip to her arm and urging her toward one of the two limos still standing at the curb.

"Aren't we riding together?"

"Pegs," he said, and his face showed his anger, "will you quit asking me these dumb questions?"

"But I don't understand," she said. "Aren't we all going to Regine's? I'm starved. And I've had enough of all this anyway." She fingered the cameo on her chest.

"They're going to Regine's. Everybody in these two cars is going to Plato's Retreat. Now, will you come on, Pegs?"

Again he coaxed her toward the opened door.

"Where?"

"Will you get in, for God's sake? I'll explain later."

She was winding the gold chain around her finger, tightening the slack around her neck.

"Hal," she said, turning away from the opened door so that the people waiting wouldn't hear. "Honey, you can't send your bosses off like that and then disappear."

He yanked her by the arm and stuck his face up close to hers.

"Will you just shut up?" he said, his eyes so narrowed the freckles at their corners seemed to turn black. "It's where The Six want to go, and I don't have to give one good goddamn fuck what my bosses think. Now get the hell in, Pegs—I'm asking you to get the hell in."

"No," she said. "Give me enough money for a cab and I'll go home."

"Like hell you will!"

He took her violently and half-lifted her from her feet. The green-haired man sitting nearest the door, an emaciated man no bigger than a boy, screeched as if he'd touched a millipede, and then, giggling hysterically, he shoved over to make room as Hal pushed her down onto the seat and slammed the door closed.

She heard him rap his knuckles on the roof and then call through the window to the driver.

"You know where to go!"

***

"Mr. Potter!" the woman exclaimed when the man with the patch over his eye stood facing her across the threshold. "How good to see you again! And Sam, still up at this hour? Good evening to you, young man. Is your mother home?"

"She's out," the boy said, craning back his head to see up to the ball of hair at the nape of her neck.

The woman flattened her fingers against her lips in a gesture of disappointment and dismay.

"And your father, is he out, too?"

The boy stepped back as if he'd seen what he wanted and lowered his eyes to look at the woman's hands.

"The kids have taken off for some kind of party," the man said. "Be home real late, I understand."

"Oh, yes," the woman said. "Of course. I remember. Peggy did say she was planning an evening out. Well, no matter, no matter—I've only come to retrieve my briefcase."

The woman stepped across the threshold and put her hand on the back of the door as if to help the man get it closed.

"I believe," she said as she turned around, "that I must have left it in your room, Samuel. Will you be a good boy and show me the way?"

"That's right," the boy said as he set out down the hallway with the woman just behind him, her shadow so wide in the light from the foyer that her shoulders seemed to brush the walls. "Mom found it, but you'd already gone. She said we'd bring it over in the morning."

The man shouted down the hallway after them. "If you need me, I'll be in the kitchen cleaning up! And hey, Sammy boy, you best scoot now! I promised your ma I'd have you in the sack no later than nine o'clock!"

"I'm walking as fast as I can!" the boy yelled back as he preceded the woman into his room.

"Ah, there it is!" the woman cried, swooping down and gathering the dark satchel to her chest all in one startling, powerful motion. She stood gazing at the boy, her lips smiling, her nose testing the texture of the air.

"We would've brought it," the boy said, because he felt some pressure to keep talking and he didn't know what else to say.

"Yes, of course," the woman confirmed, peering down at him from her great height. "I know I can always count on you and your mother to do what's required."

"Sure," the boy said uncertainly, not flinching from the force of her terrible eyes.

"Well then," the woman said, tightening her grasp on the briefcase, "I shall be off. Time you were snug in your bed." But she made no motion toward the door.

"It's okay," the boy said. He hiked up the trousers of his pyjamas. "Me and Val were playing Go Fish. I mean, me and Granddad," the boy said, his eyes still locked within the violence of the woman's paralyzing stare.

"Granddad and I," the woman corrected, nodding her head pleasantly.

There was a long silence while their eyes fought out some unseen struggle across the churning space between them.

"Well then," the woman said again, her smile never more glorious.

She started for the door—but then she turned abruptly as if recollecting some item of good manners that had been carelessly overlooked.

"Your mother's art closet—show it to me, please."

"Why?" the boy said, his tone making no secret of the challenge he intended.

The woman's eyes seemed to color with a molten yellow light, their frosted surfaces liquefying under fever of some sudden animal heat.

"Because I want you to draw me a picture," the woman said, her voice so mild and gentle she might have been bidding the boy good night.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The limo cut across midtown and then headed uptown along the Avenue of the Americas toward Central Park West with Peggy sitting next to the window and the skinny, green-haired boy jammed up so close to her that she could feel his hipbone stabbing into her buttock. As the car angled through Columbus Circle, the boy fell against her, tittered, and then flipped open the heart-shaped locket that hung from the platinum chain around his neck.

"A little lift, love?" he said, displaying the contents of the locket, a white powder flecked with tiny, clear crystals.

"No, thank you," Peggy said.

"No charge," the boy said, tittering again, almost tipping the contents of the locket as he conveyed it closer to her nose.

"I don't do it," Peggy said, turning her face away. "Thanks."

"Don't you, now?" the boy giggled. "You with one of the Manhattan Records blokes?"

"Cooper," Peggy said. "I'm Harold Cooper's wife."

"Ah, now," the boy said, his tone turning grave, "H.C.'s missus, are you?" He hunched forward and looked back up at her. "Already sporting the odd trinket, I see."

"What?" Peggy said.

"That bauble there," the boy said, flicking the cameo with a dirty fingernail. "It was me that give it to the lad."

"This?" Peggy said, feeling for the cameo.

"Cut into me kip about ten yards, it did," the boy said, giggling again.

"A thousand dollars?" Peggy said.

"Would you like to see the blood?" the boy said.

Peggy turned in her seat to get a better look at him.

"Why in the world would you give my husband such an expensive gift?"

"Him?" the boy looked astonished. "H.C.? You think I'm some bloody fool? That one there's going to be the bleeding toff, he is. H.C.? You want to stay on the good side of that one, you bloody do."

"Hal? What makes you think Hal Cooper's going to head Manhattan?"

Again the boy's voice turned grave. "Manhattan?" he said. And then he giggled hysterically. "The bloody lad's got it wired, missus—your bloke's got it wired the whole bleeding trip!"

"How?" Peggy said. "How has Hal got things wired?"

The boy slapped his thigh with furious force, giggling as if he'd just performed the world's funniest stunt.

"How? How the bleeding hell should I know how! Perhaps the fellow signed a bit of a pact with the Devil!"

At this the boy fell into a fit of laughter, slapping his own thigh and then Peggy's, then with both hands beating a light rhythm on the seat between his knees.

"I'm the drummer, you know," he announced, his voice very solemn again.

Peggy opened her purse and checked her wallet—three subway tokens and eighty-six cents in change.

"Look," she said to the boy, "do you think you could give me about five dollars? My husband'll give it back to you when we get where we're going."

The boy kept whipping at the seat in a fast, syncopated rhythm.

"Not a filthy sou on me," he smiled. "It's all plastic, you know. H.C. keeping you down, is he, love?"

"Please," Peggy begged. "Don't you have anything at all?"

"You can have this," the boy said, interrupting his dramming to pull his watch from his wrist and drop it into her lap. "He'll fetch a sight more than she will," the boy said, using his dirty fingernail to tap the cameo again.

She faced forward while the boy went back to his thumping. The limo turned left at Seventy-third Street and slowed to a standstill behind a thicket of cars jammed farther up the block. The boy went on beating at the seat, muttering to himself, apparently oblivious to everything save the subject that concerned him now.

"My arse, The Six! Call it Instant This when I get bleeding Jakey out of me bloody face. Instant This, by Gulliver! There's a proper name. Or S-I-C-K-S, by Gulliver! Bloody bleeding right! None of this bleeding S-I-X fishcakes, not on your bloody life! Get into more ska, we will—the whole bleeding power-pop trip. Like the bleeding Specials and the Cars, by Gulliver. 'Naked man, naked woman, where did you get that nice suntan?' Bloody right! Instant bloody This!"

The boy left off his drumming and touched Peggy's arm.

"You know me sax man, Jakey Ross?"

"I'm sorry," Peggy said.

The car started to roll again. She put the wrist-watch on the seat beside her, and with her shoulder and hand she banged at the door. It was heavy, but she had it open before the limousine had fully accelerated again.

She hit the street hard, and in the fall she lost her shoe. But she didn't turn around for it. Instead, she ran back toward Central Park West, and at the corner, to make speed, she kicked off the other shoe.

***

"You will do as I ask you," the woman said.

"No," the boy said.

"You will do it," the woman said, the color in her eyes deepening to a lurid orange.

"No!" the boy said, backing up, his eyes not wavering from her riveting stare.

"I gave you a chance to be good, young man. But now I shall have to punish you for your defiance," the woman said, and started toward him.

"Val!" he screamed. "Granddad! Granddad!"

When the man with the patch over his eye came shuffling along the hallway, he had a dish towel flung over his shoulder and a sponge in his hand. He saw the woman lurch out of the boy's room.

"Something wrong?" the man said, looking at the woman and then back to the closed door.

"It would appear," the woman began, a smile unfurling across her face, "that our Sam is having himself a bit of a tantrum."

"Sammy?" the man said. "You don't say. Don't believe I've ever seen the boy act up before. What set him off, do you think?"

The woman said nothing. She stood gazing at the man, smiling bloodlessly, her nose lifting as she turned to look back at the locked door.

"Sammy boy?" the man said.

He shifted the sponge to his other hand and tried the doorknob.

"You open up now, lad," the man ordered. "Come on, boy. You got your teacher out here and I don't think she's going to like it if you make her mad."

No sound came from the room.

Again the man tried the door.

"You hear me, Sam boy?"

"You see?" the woman sniffed, her nose thrusting at the air.

The man rattled at the doorknob.

"Now that ain't like you, son," he called through the door. "Sammy? You listening to me? You're okay, aren't you, son?"

But there was no reply, just the deep silence that poured through the hall.

"Ah well," the woman said. "It's all right," She laughed a small laugh. "As the prophet says, boys will be boys. Do you suppose you could persuade him to open up? All I want is my briefcase."

"Val! Don't listen to her, Val. Make her get out of here!"

It was the boy's voice, a terrified, pitiable wail.

"You see?" the woman said again. "Virtually hysterical. It seems our young gentleman is greatly overtired. It happens, you know—ask any teacher. Fatigue can turn the poor things into absolute demons. If you'll forgive me for saying so, the child shouldn't be kept up so late."

"We were only playing Go—"

But the boy was screaming again.

"Granddad! Please!"

The man turned back to the locked door, twisting the knob back and forth.

"Sam boy," he shouted, "you're testing my nerves now, son!" Again he worked at the doorknob, twisting it with real force. "Now I'm telling you for the last time, Sammy, quit it and take this damn lock off this door!"

"West Virginia!" the woman sang out merrily, smiling pleasantly when the man turned suddenly to face her. "I thought so," she said. "I should say Webster or Randolph County."

"How's that?" the man said, letting go of the doorknob.

"Where you were born and reared, Mr. Potter—in West Virginia. Which was it? In Randolph or Webster County?"

"Webster," the man said, amazed. "Place called Boggs."

"Yes, of course," the woman said, grinning triumphantly, moving almost imperceptibly closer to him.

"Val!" the boy screamed—a single, deafening shriek.

"Now hold on," the man said, moving with lazy speed to jiggle the doorknob again. What in God's name ailed the boy, anyway? But his hand never made it, and he never spoke again.

She already had the pencil out and the point driven through his windpipe before she extracted the yellow shaft and inserted it once again, this time puncturing the carotid artery on the right side of the dead man's neck.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

She ran for Seventy-second Street and made it to the uptown subway entrance just as the sky shattered and the rain came again, a gusting torrent pelting at her back as she took the steps two at a time in stockinged feet. Breaking her pattern near the bottom to skip a step strewn with glass, Peggy plunged for the turnstile, slammed a token into the slot, and pushed through onto the deserted platform, her feet already aching from running on concrete.

She kept within sight of the token booth, leaning out over the tracks and peering into the downtown direction to see if a train might be coming. Almost immediately an express screamed by from the wrong direction, and then a downtown local. When the local pulled out, she looked across the tracks to watch the passengers as they made their way toward the exit, some with umbrellas, others with newspapers held over their heads.

It was then that she saw what might have been an old woman or an old man lying curled on a bench across the way, a shopping bag, its sides bulging, propped against the armrest like a pillow.

Again she leaned over the tracks to look down the tunnel for an uptown train—and when she saw nothing, she turned back to the tile wall and tiptoed along, studying the posters. At length she faced around just in time to see three teen-agers in hooded sweatshirts under khaki raincoats vault the turnstile on the downtown side. She could hear the man in the token booth shouting after them and the boys' vicious laughter as they ran up the platform. When they saw her, they came back down the platform and called across to her.

As if it was what she had meant to do anyway, Peggy faced around again and moved up close to the wall, her eyes on a poster but not really seeing it.

"Hey, white mama!" she heard from behind her, "motherfucker don't give you no shoes?"

She edged slowly toward the uptown token booth, her face turned to the wall as if she were deeply absorbed in reading the posters, her heart listening for the approach of an uptown train.

"Cat here got a juicy black dick for you, honky bitch! Come on, mama, time you has some real pipe laid in you! Hey, white mama, you catching up on you reading, bitch?"

She heard the roar of an uptown train, but when she faced around, she saw it was an express. It passed through the station like a thundering curtain drawn aside to reveal the three teen-agers busy at the body that lay on the bench.

"Let that person alone!" Peggy shouted.

One of the boys turned around.

"Shut you face, whitey!"

She saw the other two boys roll the body onto the platform. When it hit, it was the sound of meat falling against concrete.

She ran to the turnstile, shouting for the attendant in the token booth.

"Over there!" Peggy screamed, pointing.

But the man kept his face turned away. From where she stood, it looked as if he was reading something.

"There's someone in trouble over there!" Peggy shouted. "Call the police!"

The man in the booth turned around and stared at her.

"Do you hear me?" Peggy shouted. "Over there!"

She pointed. And when she faced around to look herself, she saw two of them pulling off the clothes, and the boy who had called to her was holding a cigarette lighter close to the hair, its tall spout of butane flame shooting up as the lighter moved like a wand.

"Do something!" Peggy shouted at the man in the token booth. She was about to shout again when she heard a train coming in behind her.

She turned. It was an uptown. A local.

Sam, she thought.

When the doors opened, she got on.

***

She looked up, her eyes livid in the strong light of the hallway. Behind his locked door, Sam was now as silent as Val. Her nose sniffed at the air, and beneath her thin upper lip slight protuberances seemed to appear, as if small tusks were budding from her gums. At Sam's locked door, she lifted her hand to knock gently.

"Samuel?" the woman said. "Dear fellow, this is really quite absurd. Now open up."

It was silent, save for the breathing she could hear on the other side of the door.

"We're all alone now, Sam, and there's no need for us to play little games any longer. I know all about your power—just as you know all about mine. Your father's on my side, you know. He wants you to do as I say. Believe me, he's been rewarded handsomely for the help he's given me. Now you don't want to go and spoil everything by refusing to cooperate, do you? Come on, Sam, let me come in and have you draw a picture for me. Just to prove we're friends."

First she put her ear against the wood paneling, and then the woman reached her hand to the knob, her eyes so crimson it looked as if they bled, while from under her upper lip two worn, brown growths appeared.

***

Rain blasted into her face as she came out from underground at Ninety-sixth. Across the way she could hear the wind thrashing at the trees that bordered the west side of the Park.

She fled under the plastic shelter for the cross-town bus, but the wind drove the rain in after her, drenching her through her coat.

She looked west and tried to study the traffic for the high, wide headlights that would signal the approach of a bus, and then she stepped out onto Ninety-sixth with her arm held above her head, waving it back and forth.

Cars passed her, their spray wetting her through to the skin. Two free cabs went right by her, and then a third cab with its "call" sign lit.

It was when she turned around to step back onto the curb that she saw the pay phone on the corner. No booth, but it wasn't protection from the rain that Peggy wanted.

She opened her purse and dug her fingers in for her wallet, praying. She was in luck.

She dropped the nickels in and dialed the number.

She counted the rings. When she reached twenty, she heard the operator come on and announce the obvious.

"I'm sorry, that number's not answering."

"Operator, operator," Peggy cried. "Please don't hang up. That's my own number. My name is Mrs. Cooper and that's my own telephone and I know there's someone there, operator. Please keep ringing it. My father and my son are there and they must be asleep. Will you please let it ring, operator? Please?"

This time she counted the rings to thirty, and then she gave up.

She looked west. Nothing.

She ran out into the intersection, the rain slapping her in the face as she waved her arms overhead—but the cars simply swerved around her, and the best she did was slow down a driver who yelled for her to get out of the street before she got herself killed.

She stepped back onto the curb, checked west again. But there were no headlights at all now, just the shining asphalt and the silvery rain that blew across it in sinewy pulsations, like sheets of radiant pebbles skidding over ebony glass.

She turned to look back at Central Park, her attention fixed on the road that cut across it at Ninety-sixth. If she ran, how long would it take? Ten minutes, fifteen?

The number made her think of a telephone ringing and no one answering. How many times had it rung?

Enough. Enough to make even someone like Val—a heavy sleeper—wake up.

***

She let go of the doorknob, and when she did, the faceted glass spun back with a small, ratchety noise.

"I can hear you, young man," the woman called, her lips up close to the wood. "Can you hear me?"

There was nothing, just the boy's muffled weeping.

"Very well, then," the woman murmured into the wood.

She turned away from the door and went back down the hallway, kicking at the empty suitcases that still lay along the floor. In the kitchen she pulled open the drawers until she found the right one: pads and thumbtacks, rubber bands and balls of string, food coupons piled along one side. She reached her hand in and felt beneath them. First she touched the hammer, then the thing she wanted.

She lifted the screwdriver from the drawer and held it to the light to see if it was an acceptable size. Then, after a moment's pause, she selected a meat cleaver from a wooden rack on the counter. He would draw what she told him to draw—or she'd see to it that he didn't draw at all. Cutting off the hands would be simple enough—once she'd gotten him unconscious.

She got down on her knees in front of the boy's door and aimed the screwdriver into the oval of greenish brass. It took no more than seconds to pinion the screws by their slots and twist them free of the wood. When the key plate fell away from the door, she caught it in her hand and lowered it quietly to the floor. She raised the screwdriver to the hole that was exposed and pushed it through, penetrating just far enough to feel the lever pressing against the vertical plane of the steel.

She held the screwdriver level and touched her cheek to the door, snout swollen, the curve of one small tusk steadying the tool's handle as it turned.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

She picked the side that faced against the traffic. But there were no cars when she started out along the narrow walkway, and none came until she'd made it to the first tunnel, their tires throwing the pooled rain against her like sudden curses, as if her presence was an insult, a loathsome trespass in the night.

She ran when she could, her feet slipping and tearing on the cobblestones, and when she could bear it no more, she slowed to a ragged trot, hurling herself against the wall whenever headlights blazed up in front of her, the vehicles then slashing past her, the only lone person in a city of safe millions.

It was madness, but as she stumbled along she counted the jagged complaints of a telephone ringing. How many? Thirty, forty, fifty? Peggy counted because it was a comfort, because it made a noise in her head loud enough to drown out everything else. Again and again she turned to see if the echoing noises behind her were footsteps. But when she strained to look back up the tunnel, all she saw was her own bloated fear sneering back at her and the stone walls running black with seepage.

***

"Sam!" she called sternly, and then, in one fluid movement, like a length of silk swiftly splitting along the fibers, the woman pushed the door wide and presented the cleaver.

The room was empty. Both windows were closed.

But then she saw where one of the Levelor blinds was raised halfway up and the window latch lay meaningfully open.

She advanced across the floor and put her fingertips to the sill, trailing them back and forth through the sooty droplets of rainwater.

She shoved against the frame. When it lifted, wind blew against the soft grey wool of her jumper, and the Peter Pan collar fluttered wildly and then stood up against her hairy, matted throat.

She looked down and then up before she squeezed herself out onto the grating. When she stood—her great height erected against the lights of the city—it was like a four-footed creature trained to stand aloft, the fire escape the carnival grid on which the beast had learned to balance himself.

***

When she saw the lighted windows of the buildings along Fifth, she quickened her pace until she was running again, running past the gaping doormen watching from their lobbies as she raced against the rain that fell crashing to the street between the apartment houses on East Ninety-sixth. At Madison she turned right and cut across partway down the block, two busses nearly colliding when the first one had to swing wide to miss her. She tumbled headlong as she rounded the comer onto Ninety-fifth, her knees ripping open where they scraped along the cement. She clambered to her feet and was running again before she realized she'd dropped her purse. She kept going, counting the whines of a telephone that never stopped. But at Park Avenue she turned around and, gasping, quickly walked off her course back along the windswept block, her eyes searching the blowing shadows for her handbag, for the pair of housekeys she'd need to get inside.

***

She started up the iron steps, sometimes calling for him, sometimes humming to herself, the Mongol 482 back in place now so that both hands might be free to make the slippery ascent. At each landing, she stopped and tried the window, fitting the bulb of her knobby shoulder in against the frame and heaving. When the window would not give, she pressed her snout to the wet glass, her bristled nostrils quivering as they sought to catch the scent.

She went all the way to the top and, still calling him, climbed off onto the roof.

It was here that she smelled him, and readied the meat cleaver.

***

She sprinted the rest of the way, almost falling again just as she staggered in under the canopy. She banged at the door and waved her hands. The doormen turned and looked in her direction. But neither of them moved from his place on the wainscot chairs that stood to either side of the mantelpiece.

"Help me!" she screamed.

Through the glass she could hear one of them shout for her to get away before he called the police.

"Please!" she screamed. "It's Mrs. Cooper!" But neither of them seemed to hear.

She had her hand in her purse and her head down as she scooped blindly for her keys when she felt the door push against her.

She stepped back and looked up.

"Thank God," she sobbed before she saw who it was.

He had his arms reaching for her and he was stepping out under the canopy to enclose her inside.

"Pegs baby," he said, and when she moved to fight her way past him, he punched her in the face.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

She circled the roof, making her way stealthily, skirting the places where the rain had collected in small black lakes, her lips parting to show her furry tusks as she paused to call out after him.

"Sam, you have only to do as I say, and I won't harm you."

Again she circled the roof, crouching to sniff beneath the racks of pipe, behind ventilators, around skylights, her snout thrusting in front of her like a foot testing a hot bath.

She stood erect again and backed toward the guard rail, her sow's face slowly lifting to regard the heights that lay above.

She saw the penthouse—and then, higher still, perched atop the tower of wet scaffolding that held it like a massive throne, the gigantic, shingled cylinder of the building's reserve water tank.

She saw the water tank, its gross immensity blotting out a sector of the sky, and then she saw the steel ladder leading straight up its side.

***

She heard his voice first, and she listened for a time before she opened her eyes.

"Just a family squabble," he was saying. "Honestly, you must forgive us. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Honey, wake up and tell them. Hey, Pegs baby, cut it out now, okay? All right, I lost my temper, and I'm honestly and truly sorry. I just popped off, okay? But just look at her—you guys can see for yourselves. She jumped out of the cab and started running around like a crazy woman, and then she ran away. I mean, I had to quiet her down. You can see that, can't you, fellas? It was for her own good. Hey, Pegs, honey. Tell them, baby. Tell them it's really all right."

When she looked, she saw him bending over her, and beyond him, the faces of the doormen looking back down into her own.

"It's not all right," she said. "Let me alone."

"Here," the older doorman said, and shouldering Hal aside, he helped her scramble to her feet and put her purse under her arm.

"Easy now," he said when she pushed herself away from him and made for the elevator. "You're bleeding, Mrs. Cooper."

"I'm all right," she answered. "Just keep him away from me."

"As you say, missus," the younger doorman said, turning to Hal to block his effort to cut her off, ordering him to shut up when Hal shouted after her.

"Pegs!" he shouted. "I tell you it's all right. Just stay out of it! She's not going to hurt anybody, I swear! You interfere and it'll blow the whole deal!"

She pressed the button and saw the light go off behind the B and then come on behind the L. The doors parted, and the operator stood staring.

"Jesus, ma'am," he breathed.

"I'm fine," Peggy said. "Just hurry."

***

She went hand over hand, her impossible face wincing in the flooding lash of the wind, the cleaver slipped through the belt of her jumper.

She hummed as she climbed into the roaring sea of the night, her throat grunting beneath the sinuous melody of the ancient music that drained from her pallid lips.

The boy listened. He listened from where he hung against the ladder inside the tank, his torn feet clinging to the last strip of metal, his fingers locked over the bar that lifted off the hatch.

Beneath him the water spread wide and black. He watched it as she climbed. He saw its surface ripple, registering each pounding step of the beast's steady, patient ascent.

***

She screamed when she found the man, and the elevator operator came running back. When he made it to the entrance to the hallway, he saw the scattered suitcases and the woman bent over the man. He followed her into the room. But by then she was out the window.

He leaned into the rain. He warned her to come back. He might even have reached for her, tried to grab her legs. But he was afraid.

***

"Sam!" the woman shrieked, and then another woman called his name, the second voice closer and much gentler than the first.

He heard the woman screaming, a voice so far away, and then, right after it, the nearer voice, a dreamy female purring that crooned his special name.

"Old scout, are you in there, dear? Mama's here at last."

He felt like swooning, or maybe just going to sleep.

"Sammy, darling. Mama's here. Up above your head."

He felt the bar in his hands moving.

"Up here, my precious. Can you turn your head and look?"

He thought he'd fall if he tried. But wouldn't she dive in after him and save him if he did?

He threw back his head and looked. He saw the smoking fingernails, the steaming female snout.

"Baby,'' the first voice whispered from a dream so far away. "Draw a circle. And her. Draw her falling off.''

He looked back at the clangorous liquid that shivered beneath his feet. He thought, I will die if I dare to draw her. But a child could let go. He could slip endlessly into the water because the water was only a dream, ceaseless, forever and forever, until you decided the sleep was over.

"Baby," the first voice whispered. "Draw her falling off."

With one hand, he let go of the bar, and felt along the waistband. His special pen. It was there, right where he'd stuck it, held fast by the stretched elastic.

He raised it to his lips. He used his teeth to pry the cap off. He lifted one foot to the next rung up, and lowered the nib to the thin white cotton.

He could smell it as he worked—like corn burning, only with sugar in it, something that smelled both ways at once.

He felt the hatch pulling away from his fingers, and when he looked again to see, he saw the black crescent of the plunging sky, and in it, grunting longingly, he saw the nightmare that was real—Miss Putnam's spectacles ringing the belching eyeballs, and below them the muzzle of a maddened swine, its blistered tongue slavering a veil of wormy saliva onto the lacy scallops of a Peter Pan collar.

He worked by feel, drawing against the easel of his leg, his execution never swifter, his skill never more artful.

In this Sam Cooper was an ordinary child, doing what God had given him to do. First he completed the little circle, and as the bar was swept from his hand, he finished the rest of the figure, arms flung eternally to the heavens, feet inked one infinite inch into the fathomless eclipse of space, the body forever flying from the faraway arc of the world.

EPILOGUE

It is a place called Boggs, and it is here that the boy goes to school now—second grade, Mrs. Alma Tweety's class. They say she's the meanest woman in the state, the old-timers who had her long ago. Well, the truth is, she is very, very strict. All you have to do is sass her or do anything the least bit out of line, and there's Mrs. Tweety hollering, "Go straight to the principal's office! This minute!''

But the kids all secretly love her, even though they like to make fun of her name. It's a mystery why, year after year, they're all so fond of Mrs. Tweety, despite what the old-timers say. On the other hand, sometimes children see things grownups never imagine; the same child who sees so much is no better than blind by the time he's grown to a man.

At any rate, the boy is just nuts about old Mrs. Tweety, just the way the rest of the kids are. She lets him draw whenever he wants to, so long as it doesn't get in the way of his work.

And as for the boy, he never misses his chance. He takes his special pen and his All-Purpose Jumbo pad, his left hand nimbly delivering to the paper the vision that's come into his head. But somehow he can never quite catch it, not all of it, at least. A line, a curve, a little squiggle—there's never any telling. It's just that some crucial part of the thing simply isn't there.

It makes the boy a tiny bit sad, this absence that's there on the page. Deep down, he knows it's something big. Deep down, he knows that it's everything, the difference between what's true and what's real.

But everyone flatters him anyhow. They all tell him how good he is, no more than a second-grader, and look—he can draw what he sees in the world!

Yet the boy knows better. He knows that he has lost something very special. And sometimes, when he's all by himself, he knows a truth even crazier than that. He knows the thing he lost was lost the instant he tried to know what it was.

The boy likes to think about it sometimes, times when he and his mother are just sitting around being quiet, her knitting or sewing or doing something sort of very gentle like that.

He watches her from where he sits on the floor, his eyes swimming in her light brown hair, and he thinks how it's really a backward miracle how a thing vanishes the second it appears. Oh, not real things—like people and dogs and stuff. And not even fuzzy things—like wanting and hurting and love. But another kind of thing, a thing deeper and truer than anything else.

It's just that there's no word that says exactly what it is. But that doesn't mean it's not there. Or, anyhow, that it really once was.