John Saul - Midnight Voices

Alicia shook her head. “Dr. Humphries is coming — that’s who I thought you were. Maybe another day?”

“Of course,” Irene assured her. “Give Rebecca my love, and tell her I might just bake up something special for her tomorrow.” Returning to the elevator, she pressed the button for the lobby. As the elevator rattled toward the ground floor through the shaft created by the staircase that wound all the way to the top of the eight-story building, Irene balefully eyed the panel of buttons that had several years ago displaced Willie from his job operating the elevator. Since her neighbors had voted to make the elevator self-service, she’d never quite felt safe. In the pre-button days, she’d always known that if anything went wrong, Willie would take care of it. But what would she do now? Call down to Rodney, who would come up the stairs, chat with her, but have no idea what to do? Well, perhaps it wouldn’t happen.

More likely, she decided darkly, it would. Then, as the elevator rattled safely to a stop and released her from its cage, she put the thought out of her mind. “You’re taking me for a walk,” she announced to Anthony Fleming, who was looking at her with a bemused expression that told her he probably wouldn’t argue with her. “It’s a beautiful day, and it would be a shame to waste it.”

“And suppose I had other plans?” Fleming asked, putting on a severe expression that Irene saw through in an instant.

“Then you would cancel them,” she announced. “How much older than you do you think I am?”

Fleming shrugged noncommittally. “A few years.”

“A few decades, you mean,” Irene shot back tartly. “At least that’s how I feel today. And since that’s how I feel, I’m going to demand the privilege of age, and let you take me for a stroll through the park. We shall observe nature in its full bloom, and the vigor of youth. Perhaps it will make me feel better.”

Anthony Fleming shrugged helplessly at Rodney, who was grinning from his kiosk, and held the front door open for Irene. “Where are we going? Or are we just wandering?”

“Children,” Irene said, turning south. “Whenever I start feeling this old, I always like to watch children.”

“Maybe you should have had some of your own,” Fleming observed.

“Wanting to watch children is one thing. Wanting to have them is entirely another.” She sighed heavily. “And if my child got sick, I don’t know how I’d handle it.”

“You’d handle it like everyone else does,” Anthony assured her. “You’d get through it.”

“But it must be so hard.”

There was a long silence, but then Anthony Fleming nodded in assent. “It is,” he agreed. “It’s very hard indeed.”

Caroline and Laurie were still a couple of hundred yards from the playground when a voice called out from behind them. “Laurie? Laurie! Wait up!”

Turning, Caroline saw Amber Blaisdell hurrying toward them. A blonde girl whose even-featured face was framed in the same pageboy haircut her mother wore, Amber was clad in Bermuda shorts and a white blouse with a sweater tied over her shoulders — exactly the same preppy uniform that half the girls at Laurie’s former school habitually wore when they weren’t wearing the school uniform itself.

“Hey, Amber,” Laurie said as the other girl caught up with them.

“A bunch of us are going to the Russian Tea Room for lunch! Want to go?”

Caroline saw a flash of anticipation cross Laurie’s face, but it faded almost as quickly as it came. “I–I don’t think so,” she said. “I think I’m gonna hang with my mom.”

“Oh, come on!” Amber urged. “It’ll be fun.” Her voice took on a slight edge. “Since you changed schools, we hardly ever see you anymore.”

A look of uncertainty passed over Laurie’s features. “It’s not that.”

“What is it?” Amber pressed. “You never want to do anything anymore.” She glanced at the small group of girls who were watching the interaction between herself and Laurie. “Some of the kids are starting to talk.”

Laurie’s eyes flicked toward the group of her former classmates. “Talk about what?”

Amber hesitated, as if not sure she should repeat what her friends were saying, but then decided to face it head on. “It just seems like you don’t want to be our friend anymore, that’s all.”

“I want to be,” Laurie began. “I just—”

But before she could finish, someone called out to Amber. “Are you coming? We’re going to be late.”

Amber looked at Laurie one last time. “Come on,” she urged. “Come with us.”

But still Laurie shook her head, and a second later Amber had disappeared into the gaggle of her friends. Caroline was almost certain she saw Laurie’s chin tremble slightly as she watched the girls who had been her best friends only a few short months ago now go off without her, and she slipped a comforting arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “I’m sorry,” she said as they set off once more toward the baseball diamond, where Ryan had already plunged into the milling group of boys who were just starting to choose up sides for their softball game. “Maybe we can find a way for you to go back to the Academy next year.”

“No,” Laurie replied a little too quickly, with a note in her voice that warned Caroline not to push it. But a moment later as they found an empty bench close enough to the baseball diamond to offer a good view but far enough away not to embarrass Ryan, she suddenly spoke again. “It’s just — I don’t know — even if we could afford for us to go back to the Academy, I couldn’t do the things we used to do.”

Caroline looked squarely at her daughter, and, in contrast to Ryan a few minutes earlier, Laurie seemed suddenly to have matured beyond her years. “You really don’t mind not going to the Academy?”

Laurie shrugged. “I don’t know. I liked it okay when I was there. But it cost a lot, and since Dad…” Her voice trailed off, but she didn’t need to finish the thought. Private school was the first thing that had gone after Brad had died, and it had been one of the hardest things for Caroline to accept. Indeed, right up until the spring semester fees were due, she’d kept struggling to find the money to keep Laurie and Ryan in the school that she and Brad had worked so hard first to get them in to, then to pay for. But they’d both agreed it was worth it, since at the Elliott Academy they were not only getting a good education, but were safe as well.

But the money simply hadn’t been there, and both she and the kids had had to face it. But now, after the interchange she’d just witnessed between Laurie and Amber Blaisdell, and the longing she’d seen in Laurie’s eyes as she watched her old friends go off without her, she wondered just how much the change in schools might really be damaging her children. Certainly the academic standards at the Elliott Academy were higher than in the public school, and it seemed like every week she read more and more reports of beatings and thievery and drug dealings by kids in public schools who were only a year or two older than Laurie.

Should she have tried harder to find the money to pay their tuition at the Academy? But even as the question formed in her mind, she knew the answer: If there wasn’t enough money to pay the rent, there sure wasn’t enough to cover the costs of private school.

I can’t do it, she thought. I just can’t cope with it all! But even as the words formed in her mind, she heard Brad’s voice whispering inside her head. “You can do it. You’ll find a way. You have to.”

“And I will,” she said, not realizing she’d spoken out loud until her daughter looked at her curiously.

“You’ll what?” Laurie asked.