Christopher Conlon - Savaging the Dark

They crash into the house, all giggles and fun, as I’m pushing Connor into his coat. I introduce him to Bill, show Bill the good work he did out back. I pay the boy and lead him to the front door. “Bye, Connor!” I say loudly. “Thanks! Have a nice snow day!”

He stumbles down the walkway. He says nothing, looking back at me for a moment and then toward the street. He walks away very quickly, almost running.

After Gracie calms down she grows sleepy and I lay her down in her room. Then I go to Bill, and with no preamble at all kiss him deeply, press against him, pull him toward the bedroom.

Things are different between Connor and me after that. I can see it in his eyes. He’ll stare at me for a long time in class and then suddenly look down, blushing. He still comes for movies at lunchtime but says little, rarely makes eye contact. When he does speak I can feel the effort he’s making to sound as if everything is normal.

Of course everything is normal, I tell myself over and over. We’ve done nothing that couldn’t be easily explained. Even the touching, the quick kiss—Ms. Straw felt sorry for her young student, that’s all. She was being supportive, caring. After all, he doesn’t have a mother. Yes, it’s possible that for just a moment she got a little too friendly with the boy, in a way that wasn’t wise, a way he might, in his innocence, misinterpret. A gentle reprimand might be called for: Ms. Straw, we know how much you care about your students, and you’re a wonderful teacher. But in the future be just a little more careful about the signals you may be inadvertently sending. Young boys are very impressionable.

Connor lingers in my classroom now, more so than before. He seems reluctant to leave it at the end of lunch and at the end of the day. I can feel his eyes on me even when I’m not looking at him, even when I have Lauren Holloway or Richard Broad or Kylie McCloud with me at my desk, carefully going over their homework with them or trying to draw them out on how they’re doing, how they’re feeling. Ms. Straw the great teacher has reappeared, organized, professional, compassionate, caring, one of the stars of the staff of the Cutts School, liked and admired by students, teachers, administration, parents.

One day when Connor comes into the room and takes off his sweater I see that he has a big bruise on his left bicep, an ugly purple splotch. “Hey,” I say casually, as the other students shuffle loudly in, “what happened to you?”

“This?” He looks at it as if he’s never noticed it before. “Nothin’. Walked into a door.”

This is the second time something like this has happened, with the same excuse. And the second time I don’t believe him.

After class, as I’m putting the cassette of Saboteur into the machine, I say: “Hey, Connor?”

“Yeah?” He’s drawing something on a piece of paper at his desk, doesn’t glance up.

I sit next to him. “Hey,” I say gently. “Can you look at me?”

He does.

“Is everything okay at home, Connor?”

“Sure it is,” he says, scowling, returning to his sketching.

“Sure?”

He doesn’t say anything, just moves the pencil on the paper. Circles, spiraling this way and that. We sit there for a moment.

“Can I come over again?” he asks finally, staring at the circles.

“Over?”

“To your house?”

I smile. “It hasn’t snowed, Connor.”

“I know. I can do other work. I’m pretty strong.” He looks up again and, smiling, flexing his little bicep for me. “See?”

“I’m sure you are,” I say. I look at him, at his crystalline green eyes, his pixie nose, the nasty bruise on his arm. “But…” Yet I can think of nothing to come after this word. I’m suddenly speechless. I look at him, aware of my breathing. Again the dominoes fall in my mind.

“We have a half-day on Friday,” I say.

“Yeah.”

“Maybe you could come then.”

“Yeah, that’d be good.” He smiles. “You’ll pay me, right?”

I laugh. “Of course I’ll pay you. I wouldn’t ask you to work for free.”

What I don’t tell him is that Bill will be gone then, at a convention in Philadelphia, an overnight. And that while Gracie has an abbreviated schedule too as long as I call ahead I can have them hold onto her through the mid-afternoon.

“I’ll have some projects for you to work on,” I say casually. “And maybe when you’re done we’ll watch a movie. Sound good?”

“Sure!” His face is open, bright. I want to hug him then, this pretty boy with the bruised arm, tell him things will be all right. But of course I don’t. I smile, get up and go to the VCR, turn on the movie.

The next two days I alternate between euphoria and low-grade panic. I cannot get Connor out of my mind no matter what I try. He’s taken up residence and pushed virtually everything else out. I make my way through my classes well enough—I’m professional enough for that—but mentally I’m in another place. Gracie gets only a highly distracted mother, Bill a distant wife. I wonder if he’ll start to think I’m crazy. Maybe I am, I think. But that doesn’t stop the excitement, the beating heart, followed by the awful dread, the feeling of doom heading straight at me as unstoppably as a freight train. Yet I can’t get off the tracks. Every time I try to move I only seem to get locked more tightly onto them.

I kiss Bill goodbye that morning, wish him a happy convention, see him off with his briefcase and overnight bag. I hustle Gracie into the car, drive her to pre-school, remind the teacher that I won’t be back for her until three today. She assures me this is fine and that the after-school kids will have plenty of fun. “Yes, good,” I say, or think that I say, jumping into the car again, driving too fast to Cutts, teaching my classes in a rushed and breathless way. Connor says nothing in class, seemingly just waiting, like the other kids, for the bell to ring and the half-day to begin. It does. He lingers after the others.

“See you at one, Connor,” I smile. It’s the time we’ve arranged.

He grins brightly. “Okay. ’Bye!”

The day has turned gray, cold, wet. Rain is slamming down by the time I get to my car, toss in my things, pull out of the parking lot and try to control myself, try to keep from pressing the gas pedal to the floor to get home. Or to get away, far away, any place except where I’m going. But my hands steer the wheel competently through the rain and soon enough I’m in the driveway, I’m home, I’m changing into a bright yellow blouse and short white skirt, I’m fixing my hair. My hands are covered in cold sweat. At any moment I expect to see Bill pull into the driveway, shaking his head in the self-effacing way he’s developed over the years, since he grew staid and conventional, saying as I open the door: You know what? I just realized I got the date wrong. The convention isn’t until next week! In a way I hope he does. I hope his familiar car pulls up behind mine in the driveway and I open the door and he comes in and we have coffee and he suggests we pick up Gracie and go for a drive or for lunch somewhere or dinner.

But he doesn’t. Instead Connor comes walking along the street. He has no umbrella, no hat, just his big coat. He looks up through the heavy rain, double-checking that he’s got the right house, and moves up the walkway. I force myself to wait until he rings the bell—not once, but twice. Then I walk to the hall and open the door.

“Connor! My gosh, you’re soaked!”

“Yeah.” He smiles, rain dripping from his nose. “Kinda wet.”

“Why didn’t you bring an umbrella?”

He laughs. “I don’t have one!”

“Well, come in, come in,” I say, clearing the way for him. “Take off your shoes, okay?” He does, leaves them near the door. “And give me your coat.” He does. “Connor, this thing is soaked all the way through! You should have called. I could have picked you up or we just could have postponed or something.”