He drove off before I reached the front door.
I watched his car disappear down the driveway. I’ve always felt like an only child, I thought. This just confirmed it. I wanted to be glad. I wanted to be defiant and hateful and not care, but the tears still came into my eyes. Why were Carson and I so different from each other? Was it just because I was born so much later? It was truly as though we had two different sets of parents. Why was he the lucky one? Why was he born first, born when they wanted a child more, when they had more time to give and to love?
It’s so easy for Carson to look down at me from his mountaintop. He had been brought through all the valleys and over all the difficult terrain comfortably, with loving care, and gently placed in a seat of substantial success. I was still struggling to get a foothold, to hold on to anything that gave me even the semblance of meaning and self-worth. Was it really all my fault?
I went inside and up to my room. The experience of being arrested and held without the prospect of hope had been far more exhausting mentally and emotionally than I had imagined it would be this time. The moment I lay down, I was asleep. Hours later, I felt the bed shake and opened my eyes. Daddy was standing there staring down at me.
“Did you enjoy your second night in jail, Teal?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I turned away and stared out the window at the gray sky.
“Okay,” he said, “this is how it will be until further notice. I’ve hired a driver who will take you to school in the morning and bring you home at the end of the day. He will take you nowhere else, so do not ask him to do so. You will come home, do your homework, have your dinner, and go directly to your room. You will speak to no one outside of this house, accept no invitations, even to go shopping, which to you means stealing anyway. You will be permitted to go with your mother to shop for the things you will need for Carson’s wedding. Other than that, you will spend your weekends confined to this house and these grounds. You will invite no one here and accept no invitations.”
“I would have been better off in jail,” I moaned.
“Maybe I should have let you be tried and convicted and go to jail, Teal. Perhaps that would have been the only way you would know for sure that you would not be better off there. However, there are other people to consider here, other people who would be hurt more than you, in fact, and you can be thankful for that. Otherwise, believe me, I would not have hesitated to leave you there. Nothing else I’ve done or tried to do has had any success with you.
“Let me assure you,” he continued, “that if you get into any more trouble at school, if your grades take a dive, this confinement will continue. Your therapist calls this tough love. As hard as it is for you to believe, it is tougher on your mother and me than it is on you. I try not to worry about her and about you at work, but it’s not easy to do.”
“Maybe I’ll die and you’ll be happy,” I said.
“Self-pity won’t work with me, Teal. Don’t waste your time on tears and threats and moans. You’ll behave yourself. One way or another, I’ll make that happen.”
He started for the door and then paused and turned back to me.
“The only thing going for you is the fact that you committed this disgusting deed before you were repairing yourself at school. I’m hoping that you did turn a corner and you will do a lot of soul-searching and continue on that track. If you do, we’ll ease up on the restrictions. How you live and how you enjoy your life from this moment on is therefore solely up to you.”
“It’s always been up to me,” I muttered under my breath. If he heard me, he didn’t care to react. He stared a few moments more and then left, closing the door behind him.
To me it sounded like the door of the police cell, clanking and rattling.
When Mother came home, she looked at me as if I was someone suffering from a terminal illness. Her face was full of pity, her eyes gray with sorrow.
“Teal,” she said, pronouncing my name like she would if she were standing over my grave, “Teal. I feel so sorry for you, so helpless. Forget about your father, your brother, and me for a moment. When you do bad things to people, do you ever think about the pain you cause them? Can you imagine how poor Mr. Mazel must have been suffering when he discovered his loss? His is a small, family-owned store. Do you ever think of such things?”
I didn’t answer, but I knew the short answer was no. Whatever I did, I did on the spur of the moment. Consequences for myself and for the people involved never played on my thinking or my actions. I was truly like some hysterical person, flailing about, casting myself every which way, looking for some relief from my own unhappiness. The therapists at least got me to see and believe this.
But I didn’t even know how to begin to explain that to my mother, so I continued to avoid her eyes. She sighed as deeply as ever and then added, “I guess I have to turn you over completely to your father, Teal. I can’t interfere anymore. I can’t plead for you anymore. I’ve failed you,” she said, and then I looked up at her.
Oh, Mother, I thought, you don’t know the half of it. You have no idea how long you have been failing me: all my life. Maybe she saw that in my eyes, for she turned briskly and walked away, returning to her favorite topics, Carson’s wedding and other social events.
Daddy wasn’t kidding about the driver. Apparently, he hired a former gangster hit man, I thought, because the man, a stout, dark-haired man with beady eyes and a neck that looked like it belonged on a young bull, gazed at me with a no-nonsense expression that shouted, “Don’t give me any grief.” He didn’t introduce himself or even say good morning. He just grunted at me and started the car. Daddy had at least told me his name was Tomkins, but I didn’t know if that was his first or last name.
At the end of the day he was there standing by the car, looking like a secret service agent. I saw the curiosity on the faces of the other students. To be sure, there were some others who had cars and drivers taking them back and forth to the private school, but most, like me, had been forced to ride the bus.
As I approached the car that first day, Tomkins looked at his watch.
“You’re ten minutes late,” he chided.
“One of my teachers kept me to explain something. Sometimes, I have to stay after an hour or so for remedial work,” I told him.
“This is the time I know to pick you up,” he said firmly, tapping his watch. He looked like he could lunge at me and tear off my head. “If there are any changes to be made, it has to come from your father. Otherwise, I’m instructed to go in there and get you. One way or another, I will do that,” he added, leaving little to my imagination. He opened the rear door and growled, “Get in.”
I didn’t know who I was more angry with at the moment: myself for getting into this situation, Del for backing away from our dream plan, or my father, who was like a prison warden. The ride home was dreary— no music, no conversation. When we arrived, Tomkins remained for a while to be sure I went into the house. I expected he would be out there, parked on the street, waiting to see if I would break my father’s rule and try to leave the grounds.
I got my second shock after I changed my clothes and went downstairs to call Del at the pizza parlor to see how things were going for him. The phone on the kitchen wall was gone, and the phone in the sitting room was gone. Daddy’s office-den door was locked. There wasn’t a phone for me to use downstairs. I spun around in the hallway as if I had just gotten off a merry-go-round. I am truly in prison, I thought. It’s even worse. It’s solitary confinement.
Angry and even in something of a panic, I hurried down the corridor to the stairway and ran up. There were two phones in my parents’ bedroom, but to my disappointment, I found that door locked as well. I rattled it angrily.
“You can’t do this to me!” I screamed.
One of the maids downstairs called back to see if there was something wrong. I didn’t answer her. I went into my bedroom and slammed the door. Daddy’s strategy was to put the phones back when he returned at the
end of the day. Mother was strictly forbidden to permit me to use their phones. I felt like I was being choked.
I will run away, I thought. I will.
The next day, I managed to talk Lisa Hardwick into letting me use her cell phone during lunch. Del had just arrived at work in the pizza parlor. I hurriedly told him all that had happened to me so that he wouldn’t think I was avoiding him or had decided not to see or speak with him ever again.
“I had a feeling something like that might happen, Teal. You went too far when you took that bracelet, and it was stupid to give it to someone like Shirley.”
“I know. I was just trying to impress you,” I confessed.
That softened him.
“Yeah, well, just be yourself, Teal, the way you are with my little brother and sister. That’s enough to impress me.”
“I’m glad, Del. I miss them. I miss you. How are things?”
“My mother is still holding on to her job and doing well. I’m holding my breath, of course, but it looks good.”
“I’m happy for you, Del.”
“Don’t do anything to get yourself in any more trouble,” he said. “Maybe your father will ease up.”
“I doubt it, Del, and I hate my driver. He’s like a prison guard! You still want to see me, don’t you?”
“Sure,” he said.
I wanted to say so much more, but Lisa was standing over me, eager to get back her phone.
“I’ll call you again. I’ll figure something out.”
“Whatever,” he said. “Be careful,” he added, and told me he had to get back to work.
I closed the phone and handed it to Lisa.
“Thanks,” I said. “Could I use it again tomorrow?”
“It’s expensive,” she replied, grimacing through her braces.
“I’ll give you ten dollars for five minutes, okay?”
She shrugged.
“Maybe,” she said, enjoying her power over me and my desperation. “I’ll see.”
How I hated these snob birds and wished I could somehow pull out their feathers and keep them from flitting about, so contemptuous of everyone below them.
My day will come, I told myself. It will come.
9
Ten Thousand Dollars
I managed to steal twenty dollars from Mommy’s purse that night. The next day at lunch, Lisa lorded it over me, practically making me beg her for her phone in front of the other girls. I swallowed my pride and did so. Finally, just before the bell was going to ring and make it impossible for me to use the phone, she relented and I gave her the ten dollars.
“Frozen custard for us after school today,” she announced, waving my ten dollars like a flag, “on Teal Sommers.”
The girls laughed.
I turned and called Del, but was disappointed to learn he wasn’t at work.
“He’s coming in at four today,” the other counterman said, and hung up.
“That was an easy ten dollars,” Ainsley Winslow cried when Lisa took the phone back. The girls laughed again, all smiling gleefully.
I hurried away, never feeling more helpless. I won’t let this go on, I vowed. I won’t.
With my driver herding me into the car and watching my every move, and with the house locked up like a penal institution, I boiled over with frustration. I couldn’t call Del and I couldn’t leave school and go to see him. After I was brought home at the end of the school day, I thought about breaking the lock on Daddy’s den-office door so I could get to his telephone and actually went down to the kitchen and got a butter knife out of the silverware drawer. What more could Daddy do to me anyway? I decided.
Just as I was at the door, however, I heard the front door open and Daddy and Carson speaking as they entered. Why were they here this early? Was Daddy coming to check on me?
Panicking, I retreated to the powder room across the way. I heard them laughing, and then I peeked out and saw Daddy unlock his door.
“What a pain in the rear this is,” he told Carson, “locking and unlocking my own office in my house, but for a while, I have to be sure she doesn’t disobey me. And there’s no doubt in my mind that she would if she could.”
“I know, Dad. I’m sorry,” Carson said as if he bore some responsibility for my behavior.
They entered his office, leaving the door open. Maybe they would forget and leave it that way, I hoped, and waited, watching them and listening.
“It was easy for Broderick to pay us the retainer in cash,” Daddy told Carson. “We’re saving him a ton of money and he knows it.”
I saw Daddy put a stack of bills on the desk, open his top desk drawer, take out a key, and then go to his wall safe and take out a metal cash box. Neatly, he put the money into the box.
“Ten thousand tax-free dollars!” Daddy declared. Carson laughed. “I hope you’re learning how to handle some of these clients of mine,” Daddy continued. “Someday, you’ll be in charge of the company, son.”
“You’re not retiring for a long, long time, Dad,” Carson told him, and Daddy smiled at him with such love and pride, I felt my heart ache. Paranoia or no paranoia, I thought, I never felt him look at me like that.
Daddy put the cash box back into his wall safe and put the key to the safe in his top drawer. Then they sat and began to talk about another project.
Boring, I thought, and slipped out and up the stairs. I’d wait to see if Daddy would leave and forget to lock the door. Hours later, Carson left, but Daddy didn’t. I heard him come up and go to his bedroom. When I went down to check the office, the door was locked again. Disappointed, but too frightened to attempt anything with the butter knife now, I retreated to my bedroom.
Later, dinner was conducted in the usual fashion it was conducted these days: a cross-examination of my activities, my school work, and my behavior. Mother sat looking as if she was the one being questioned and prodded. She kept her eyes down, held her breath, and nibbled on her food like a squirrel.
“Remember,” Daddy ended as he did every night since I had been arrested for the bracelet theft, “I hear that you so much as look at one of your teachers crosseyed, and I’ll tighten the walls around you even more,”
What else could you do, lock me in a closet? I wanted to fire back at him, but I didn’t say a word.
Instead, I waited like some predator for an opportunity, which came when he went upstairs to change into more relaxing clothes. This time he had left the office door unlocked. I snuck away from Mommy, who was on the phone, and I slipped into the office, but I didn’t call Del. I was too terrified Daddy might come down and find me in his office. Instead, I went to his window and undid the lock so it could be opened from the outside. Then I retreated to my room for the night, working on my homework, more to occupy myself and pass away the time than any interest I had in the material.
Close to eleven, Daddy came up to bed. I heard him go to his bedroom. Mommy was already there, after having given herself a foot treatment. I heard their muffled voices behind the closed door and as quietly as I could, tiptoed down the stairs and out the French doors in the sitting room.
It was a cool, overcast night, with just the ground lighting and some illumination from the house helping me to find my way around to Daddy’s office. I worried that he had found the window unlocked and had locked it, but when I went to it and tried, it opened and I was able to climb into the room. I dared not put on the lights. Carefully, I picked up the phone and punched out the number of the pizza parlor. If Del had come in at four in the afternoon today, he would still be there to close up, I thought. It rang and rang until finally someone picked up and I asked for Del.
“Who?”
I was afraid to raise my voice too loudly, but I took a chance.
“Del Grant,” I said.
“Del Grant?” I heard a voice I didn’t recognize ask.
“Yes.”
What other Del would be there? I wanted to snap at him.
“He couldn’t come in today. He had problems,” the man
said.
“What kind of problems?”
“Family problems.”
“What do you mean? Anything happen to his little brother or sister?”
“What do I look like, the Albany newspaper?” he griped, and hung up.
Couldn’t come in? Family problems? What could have happened? How was I supposed to go back up to my room and sleep? The very thought of having to beg lisa for use of her phone again tomorrow sickened me. I’ve had enough of this, I thought. I don’t care what happens to me now.
I went back into the house and found the SUV keys where they always were. Daddy didn’t hide them. He couldn’t even imagine my taking that car again, I thought. He was so confident I was too afraid. Well, I was, but this was more important to me. I wasn’t going to let my fear stop me.
Our house was so big and my parents’ bedroom was at the far end in the rear, so there was little chance of their hearing the SUV being started. Nevertheless, I drove out very slowly and kept the headlights off until I was out of our driveway and had turned onto the road. Then I gunned the engine and drove as quickly as I could to Del’s house.
All the lights were out when I arrived. It was late now, close to midnight, so I shouldn’t have been surprised, but after hearing what the man at the pizza parlor had said, darkness frightened me. I wasn’t sure what I should do. What if it wasn’t as serious a situation as the man had made it sound? Wouldn’t I cause more trouble by appearing at Del’s front door now? His mother might become very angry, and I might be responsible for bringing unpleasantness just when things were going well for Del and his little brother and sister.
I sat there, trying to decide, and finally concluded that since I had come this far and taken this great a chance, I had to do something. I couldn’t just drive off and forget about it. As quietly as I could, I got out and approached the front door. Hopefully, Del will wake first and come to the door, I thought, and tapped lightly. No lights went on, and I didn’t hear any sounds from within. I knocked harder and waited. Still, no light went on and no one came.