“Like the sound you heard just before the balcony collapsed. There’s reason to believe that the balcony had begun a slow collapse before the day of the show. Did Mr. Zarbor ever mention the condition of the balcony before that day?”
Hadn’t he asked that question a minute ago?
“No.” A hammer was pounding the nail home, high at the back of his skull.
At that moment, his father intervened.
“I think my son’s in pain,” he said. “Enough.”
The detective stepped back toward the doorway and the commissioner came to John Paul’s bedside. “Try to get some rest,” he said, kindly, gently.
“But think about those questions,” Detective Cutter called over his shoulder as he left the room. His voice was not kind or gentle.
The next morning, a small man, so short he was barely visible over the wagon he pushed, paused at the doorway and asked John Paul if he wanted to buy any candy or gum, magazines or newspapers.
“If you’ve got no money pay me later,” he called cheerfully.
“Can I buy a newspaper?” John Paul asked, immediately regretting it. He did not really want to read more newspaper stories about the Globe. “My father left money in the drawer.” Nodding toward the bureau next to the bed.
“My name’s Mac,” the man said. “I’m three feet nine and used to be in the circus. What a juggler! I used to perform at the Globe. Before your time. How old do you think I am?”
All of this while he brought over the newspaper, took the money from the drawer, deposited change in the drawer and handed the newspaper to John Paul.
“I don’t know,” John Paul said, glad for his company, for someone in his room who was not a doctor or nurse or investigator.
“Fifty-one. Everybody says I don’t look a day over thirty.” Shaking his head: “Too bad about Mr. Zarbor. He was a nice man. Had a soft spot for jugglers …”
Too bad? Was a nice man? Danger in those words.
John Paul snatched the newspaper from Mac’s hands, moaned as he saw the headline:
THEATER OWNER COMMITS SUICIDE;
DESPONDENT OVER PENDING CHARGES
That night, he prayed for the soul of Mr. Zarbor and for all the children who died in the theater. He said a rosary, counting off the prayers on his fingers. Then another rosary and another, hundreds of Notre Pères and Ave Marias—he always said his prayers in French—until he slipped, finally, into sleep. Sleep which had somehow become a sweet and cherished friend.
Three days later, he was discharged from the hospital. His mother and father came to take him home. They fussed over him. His mother helped him dress, although he felt capable of dressing himself. She knelt to lace his shoes, which embarrassed him. His father kept touching him—his shoulder, his hair—as if to verify John Paul’s existence.
Finally, Ellie, the white-haired nurse, came with a wheelchair. “Hop in,” she said. “You’re getting a free ride.”
John Paul resisted. “I can walk,” he said. “I feel fine …”
“A rule of the hospital,” Ellie said, leading him to the wheelchair. “Everybody gets a ride to the front door.”
But as they began their journey down the corridor, they headed away from the bank of elevators leading to the first floor and the main entrance.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
He saw the uncertainty on his parents’ faces, saw Ellie’s grim determination. “We’re going down the service elevator. To the back of the hospital. It’ll be quicker this way.”
“Why quicker?” he asked, suddenly alert, realizing that his parents had been more than concerned this morning. They’d been worried, tense, touching him, dressing him to cover their nervousness.
Nobody spoke.
The elevator doors opened, and they entered. They descended in silence. John Paul didn’t ask any more questions. He didn’t want to know the answers. He thought he knew, however, why they were avoiding the front of the hospital. He remembered the woman who had yelled accusations at him a few nights ago. Maybe she was waiting for him in the front of the building, with others like herself who blamed him for what happened at the theater.
The doors opened smoothly, silently. John Paul saw a police officer standing at the rear exit of the hospital. He beckoned to them, an old cop with a ruddy complexion, a grandfatherly kind of man. “The taxi is waiting,” he said. “Hurry, before they find out what’s happening.”
John Paul was wheeled to the doorway. His father helped him up from the wheelchair, although he needed no help. Ellie kissed him briefly on the cheek. “God be with you,” she said. “Poor boy …”
Through the doors and across the sidewalk and into the opened door of the taxi, his mother and father hurrying him inside. The taxi smelled of cigarette smoke. The driver, hunched over the wheel, did not look at them. “Hold on,” he muttered as the taxi shot away with squealing tires, bursts of foul exhaust obliterating the smell of smoke.
As they turned the corner leading away from the hospital, John Paul looked out the rear window. A small crowd had gathered at the hospital’s front entrance, holding up signs and placards, like pickets at the scene of a strike. He could not read the crudely scrawled words from this distance. As he watched, the crowd began to scatter across the lawn, heading for the rear entrance which the taxi had left only moments before. They halted in their tracks, as if realizing they had been tricked. John Paul saw fists raised in anger, faces raw with rage.
“They think I’m guilty,” he said, knowing that the anger and rage were for him.
“You are not,” his mother said, pulling him to her.
But I must be, he thought miserably, as the taxi roared through the streets toward home.
In the next few days, John Paul wondered whether he had come home too soon. He was not sure. He had been eager to leave the hospital, to have his bandages removed, to get away from the deadly routine of blood tests, blood pressure readings and a thermometer stuck under his tongue three or four times a day. The food always looked delicious on the plate but was tasteless in his mouth. The open door to his room had made him nervous, especially after that woman had invaded it, yelling accusations at him.
But, once at home, he was restless, roaming the rooms like an alien in a place that had always been safe. Not that he had ever felt danger anywhere, either at home or on the streets or at Wickburg Regional. A different kind of safety was now involved. He groped for the word, searching through his English and French vocabulary, and found it at last—“security,” although he pronounced it aloud the French way: “sécurité.” With the proper accents in place in his mind.
But no sécurité now. Even with his father sleeping away the morning—he still worked nights at the restaurant—and his mother busy with housework, he did not feel at ease. His headaches had stopped, his cuts and bruises healed. But he wondered whether something had happened to his mind that could not be cured. Something more than his mind, however. Something else entirely. Which he did not want to think about.
He told his mother: “I am going for a walk.”
She put down the big spoon with which she was stirring something in a pan on the stove. “Should you do that?”
“I will be going to school next week. Why not a walk this week? You told me I am pale. Maybe fresh air will help.” He did not use contractions with his mother.
She nodded, eyes sad. Since the tragedy, she wore sadness like a coat she could not take off.
The coldness of November greeted him as he stepped out of the house, and he raised the collar of his jacket. The sky, dark and low, pressed down upon him. Tree branches, stark and leafless, were like spiderwebs climbing against the grayness of the sky. Chilled and depressed, watching pieces of debris kicked across the sidewalk by a brisk wind, he almost went back into the house.
He headed for the Wickburg Memorial Library. Did not know he had left the house for this purpose until this moment, yet had known all along that he had to go, had to find out what had happened o
utside the hospital while he was a patient there.
Luckily, he did not have to spend time learning how to use the microfilm equipment. A cheerful librarian told him that the most recent newspapers had not yet been filmed, and she brought him all the newspapers for the past two weeks, placing them on a table in the reading room. She did not question why he was not in school.
An hour later, he stumbled out of the library. The headlines and stories raced through his mind as he made his way on wobbly legs up Main Street. He paused at a mailbox, leaning against it, his breath coming rapidly, dangerously, as if he had been running at a furious pace.
Lifting his face to the wind, he was grateful for having been in the hospital immediately after the tragedy, for having been spared the agony of those terrible days of rage and pain. Black headlines and story after story told of children trapped, children hurt, children dead. Pictures had been supplied by grieving families: first communions, school photos, family gatherings. Eager faces, shining eyes. A boy on Santa’s lap. A girl blowing out candles on a birthday cake. And there were pictures of funerals, too, of crowds outside churches, faces twisted with grief, eyes drowning with tears.
Then a shocking picture of himself, surrounded by happy children, all beaming at the camera, taken, apparently, in the lobby of the theater. He did not remember posing for the picture. He read the sentence under the photo: “Usher John Paul Colbert shown with children shortly before tragedy struck at the Globe Theater. Colbert has been cleared of responsibility for the collapse of the balcony.”
As he made his way home, that was his one shred of comfort. Cleared of responsibility.
But a very small and slender shred.
All those children had died.
And he had been a part of it.
A letter awaited him at home. His mother looked at him expectantly as she handed it over: he had never received a letter before. On his birthday, his mother and father always sent him a card in the mail, timing it to arrive on the correct date. But this was a letter, a long white envelope, delicate handwriting spelling out his name and address.
He weighed it in the palm of his hand, reluctant to open it.
He couldn’t imagine who could be writing to him.
He looked for the return address—none.
As he tore the envelope open carefully at one end, his father emerged from the bedroom, yawning, running his hand through sleep-rumpled hair.
“A letter for John Paul,” his mother announced to him, apprehension in her voice.
His parents watched as he withdrew a sheet of paper from the envelope. More delicate handwriting, and a faint whiff of perfume. A bouquet of blue flowers decorated the top right corner of the letter. An address in Wickburg took up the other corner.
Tilting the letter to the light from the window, he read the following:
Dear John Paul,
You may not remember me. My name is Nina Citrone. I was one of the high-school kids Mr. Zarbor hired to help out the day of the magic show.
I am writing to tell you how sorry I am about what happened. I know that you must be feeling unhappy. I read about your injuries and hope that you are feeling better. Thank God I escaped without getting hurt.
You were very kind to me the day of the show. I was nervous and you went out of your way to make me feel at ease.
I hope you are recovering on schedule and will be back in school soon.
Wasn’t that a terrible day? I still have nightmares. I see the crashing of the balcony just before I wake up. I pray for the souls of those poor children every night when I say my prayers.
Thank you again for being so nice to me.
Sincerely, Nina Citrone
He handed the letter to his mother and went to the window and looked out at the street. He did not want to look at his mother because he would have to confess that he could not recall being kind to Nina Citrone. He himself had been nervous that day, had tried to be helpful to everyone, answering questions, giving directions, trying to appear calm in all the turmoil. He had been attracted to the blond girl, not the nervous one who could not stand still, always moving her hands, shuffling her feet.
“A nice letter, that,” his father said, looking over his wife’s shoulder. “We are proud of you, John Paul …”
“You must answer her,” his mother said. “Demain.”
Then, catching herself: “Tomorrow.”
Maybe the letter was an omen of good things coming at last, he thought that night as he prepared for bed.
Let me count the good things for a change, he thought, kneeling to say his prayers. I have not had a headache for three days. I will be going back to school on Monday. My name has been cleared, even though there were no big headlines announcing it. And a girl has written me a letter.
He had never had a girlfriend, had never gone on a date. Had worshipped girls from a distance but never approached them.
He said his prayers, the old prayers in French, praying, like Nina Citrone, for the children, and adding the soul of Mr. Zarbor. Slipping between the sheet and the blanket, he wondered about Nina Citrone’s nightmares. She saw the crashing of the balcony. His nightmares were different. Vague: the children screaming, someone yelling “fire,” a shadow chasing him. But the nightmare was not the worst part. The worst part came before he fell asleep or when he woke up in the middle of the night, when he heard again the noises in the balcony, what he had thought were rats scurrying through the rubbish and the junk. Maybe, if he had overcome his fear of rats and had gone up to the balcony, he might have found the weakness that caused it to collapse. He turned from the thought but, in the darkness of the room, the sound came back to him, that strange pulling-away sound.
He placed his hands over his ears to shut it out. Impossible, of course, because the sound was inside his mind, and along with it was the knowledge that maybe he was guilty after all, that his refusal to investigate the balcony had led to the deaths of the children. Nightmares ended when you woke up. Guilt never ended, worst in the dark of night but with you all the time, day or night.
Alone in the house the next morning, he answered Nina Citrone’s letter. Poised with pen in hand and his mothers best stationery on the table, he did not know what to write. Actually, he knew why he was writing—to thank her for her letter—but how should he say it? Annoyed with himself, he wrote:
Dear Nina,
He did not really know her. Maybe he should call her Miss Citrone. He checked her letter. She had addressed him as John Paul.
Thank you very much for your letter.
That was safe. And proper.
It was kind of you to write.
He frowned, bothered by something. “Kind” seemed too stiff a word. He pondered this a moment, crossed out “kind” and replaced it with “nice,” then crossed out “nice” and resiored “kind.” He would have to copy the letter over. He sighed, troubled. Then found a solution:
It was nice and kind of you to write to me.
It was also good of you to pray for the souls of the children. I pray for them, too.
So far, so good. Next:
I am glad you were not hurt and escaped from the theater. I am sorry for your nightmares. I have them, too.
Maybe he should not have mentioned nightmares. But he wanted to show her she was not alone in this. He would not mention his guilt, however. He had not mentioned his guilt to anyone.
My injuries are all healed now. I will be returning to school in five days, next Monday.
He paused and put down the pen, unsure about what he would write next. Knew what he wanted to write but did not wish to appear too … he groped for the word and found it: “forward.” Then wrote the sentence anyway:
I hope we see each other at school.
He studied the sentence for a while, then let it stand. It wasn’t too forward. It was a polite sentence.
Thank you again for your letter.
This sounded too formal, but he could not think of a better ending. He looked at her letter, t
o see what word she had used above her name. “Sincerely.”
He then read her entire letter again, oddly moved, finding it difficult to swallow. He had received no get-well cards at the hospital from any of his classmates and understood why. He had only been a student at Wickburg Regional for a few weeks, and did not make friends easily. He was only a name to them. But Nina Citrone had recognized him as a person, had seen kindness in him that he had not known existed.
He ended the letter with:
Very sincerely,
John Paul Colbert
To the Editor:
The city of Wickburg should be ashamed of itself for not pursuing further the investigation of the disaster at the Globe Theater on October 31. The probe seemed to die along with the death of the theater owner. But there was another person involved in this needless tragedy, the only person other than the theater owner who was in the theater in the months prior to the collapse of the balcony.
That person is the young usher. Quotes from initial stories showed that he was familiar with the balcony. He often went there to store material. He also was in the balcony minutes before the tragedy to check out “a sound.” He lit the match that started the fire that might have initiated the plunging of the balcony on the innocent children below. “We have no evidence that the fire was connected with the balcony’s collapse,” the public safety commissioner reported. What does that mean? Exactly what it says. There is no evidence. This is obvious, because whatever evidence existed has been consumed in the flames and wreckage. If there is no evidence that the boy caused the collapse, there is also no evidence that he did not cause it or did not know about the condition of the balcony. “Case closed,” the commissioner said after the death of Mr. Zarbor. This case will never be closed until justice is served.
D. C.
Wickburg
The newspaper trembled in his hands. He was alone in the house. He had heard the thump of the paper against the back door, thrown by the kid who delivered it every day. He brought it into the house, averting his eyes from the front page and the headlines, then told himself that he could not go through life avoiding newspapers. Glancing tentatively at the front page, he was relieved to find no story about the Globe. Same with page 2. He skipped to the sports page but was not interested in the Celtics or the Bruins. He and his father liked baseball, often watched the Red Sox games on television together. He flipped to the comics. Ran his eyes over the strips without enthusiasm.