Part 5 (1/2)
”All right,” Kyra said with a sigh. ”But please, be careful. Make sure everything in the apartment is put back just like it was. Don't start taking risks just to test Dad and see if you get caught.”
”Would I do that?”
”Yes, you might. What I'm telling you is Don't. No matter what you say, if Sarah gets caught, she's not going to take it alone. She'll make the most of a bad thing by dragging me down with her.”
She ended the call and went into the living room, where her mother was seated in her father's recliner. The winegla.s.s in her hand was filled to the brim, although Kyra recalled it as having been almost empty at the end of dinner. Obviously it had been refilled from the decanter on the coffee table.
”Was that your father?” Sheila Thompson asked immediately.
”No,” Kyra told her. ”It was Eric. He just wanted to chat.” She paused and then, pained by the disappointment on her mother's face, offered her a consolation gift. ”Guess what happened today to Rosemary Zoltanne? She dumped red-hot tomato sauce all over herself.”
”Can't that woman cook?” Sheila responded contemptuously.
”Obviously not if she can't hang on to a cook pot.”
”Was she injured badly?”
”It was bad enough so that Dad had to take her to Urgent Care.”
”I know I should say *Poor thing!' or something of that sort,” Sheila said. ”It's the Christian thing to be sorry when people get hurt, and you know how important it is to me to live by Christian values. But I'm only human. It's impossible to feel sorry for a woman who takes advantage of an argument between husband and wife to deliberately break up a happy family.”
”I know,” Kyra said. She sat down on the arm of the recliner and slipped her arm around her mother's shoulders. ”Hang in there, Mom, we're not beaten yet. Dad will come back. He always has before.”
”But this time it's different,” her mother said. ”This time there's that woman!”
”She won't last,” Kyra said rea.s.suringly. ”This is his home, and we're his family. He's not going to leave us.”
”What does he see in her? Is she pretty?”
”Not as pretty as you are.”
”Does she have a career?”
”She did, but she doesn't now. n.o.body here will hire a woman like that.”
”Your father wants a homemaker. That's terribly important to him; he wants to find everything perfect when he comes home from work. He didn't object to my working part-time at the church, but when I told him I wanted to apply for that job as a legal secretary in Bridleville-”
”Rosemary is a lousy homemaker,” Kyra said quickly in an effort to quell the recitation before the tears came. ”She serves weird food-like artichokes.”
”Do you think your father still loves me?” her mother asked in a little-girl voice filled with pleading.
”Of course,” Kyra said with certainty. ”If Rosemary Zoltanne hadn't jumped into the picture, he'd be here right now. This isn't going to last, Mom, I promise.”
”You're such a comfort,” her mother said, reaching up to cover Kyra's hand with her own. She paused and then asked, ”How did Eric learn about the tomato sauce? He doesn't go over there, does he? He hasn't made a friend of that girl?”
”Of course not,” Kyra said. ”I guess he just heard it somewhere.”
In bed that night, too stressed out to sleep, Sarah opened the library book Charlie had given her. If she hadn't known otherwise, she would have thought she was reading fiction: In Salem Village, Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1692, nine-year-old Betty Parris, the daughter of the town minister, and her eleven-year-old cousin, Abigail, would sit in the kitchen of the Parris rectory and listen to t.i.tuba, a slave from the Spanish West Indies, tell stories about magic. Although t.i.tuba had converted to Christianity, she still had charms for everything. She even taught the children how to see their future husbands by breaking an egg into a gla.s.s of water and finding pictures in the swirls.
Fun was a scarce commodity in this tiny Puritan community, where lives were devoted to work and religious observance. Dancing and games were forbidden, toys were regarded as time-wasters, and little girls weren't even permitted to have dolls.
When word began to circulate about the entertainment taking place in the kitchen at the rectory, Betty and Abigail were joined by a group of older girls. The leader of this group was a twelve-year-old girl named Ann Putnam.
In Salem Village, anything involving magic was considered evil, and the older girls began to worry that they would be found out. Since Betty was the youngest and inclined to be a chatterbox, they threatened her with terrible punishment if she told what they were doing. Betty, who was an impressionable child, became too nervous to eat and started having nightmares and screaming in her sleep. Her father grew concerned and took her to a doctor, who, finding nothing physically wrong with her, determined that her problems must be caused by witchcraft.
When the older girls heard this, they became more frightened than ever that Betty would talk and that they would be blamed for her condition. Then Ann Putnam got the idea that if she claimed to be bewitched also, she might be able to escape punishment. Timing her performance to take place in the minister's presence, she screamed and hurled herself to the floor as if struck down by evil forces. The other girls caught on and entered into the drama, shouting that they saw hideous figures and were being pinched by invisible hands.
What a horrid bunch of children, Sarah thought, laying the book aside. I can't believe anyone could take all their crazy talk seriously.
But no matter how silly the story was, she was grateful to have something to think about other than the terrible scene that had occurred in her own kitchen.
CHAPTER.
SEVEN.
ERIC INSERTED THE KEY into the lock of the ground-floor apartment, opened the door, and groped around in the darkness in search of a switch. After a moment he found it, and the interior of the room was flooded with overhead light. He set down his backpack and Sarah's CD player and went around quickly pulling down window shades.
”We don't want the neighbors reporting that they saw lights,” he said.
”So this is his apartment.” Sarah placed the paperweight on an end table and glanced about her with reluctant curiosity. The living room was exactly as she would have pictured it. As colorless and unimaginative as Ted Thompson himself, it was carpeted in beige and furnished with the routine sofa, armchairs, coffee table, and end tables, and a set of empty bookshelves.
”It looks like the places he's rented before,” Eric commented. ”Typical no-frills digs for a guy paying child support. Is he chipping in on your mom's rent, or is she carrying it herself?”
”I think they're splitting it,” Sarah said. ”But my mother's share comes out of her savings, since she hasn't found a job yet. What do you mean, it's like the other places he's rented? Have he and Kyra's mother been separated before?”
”A couple of times,” Eric said. ”It's sort of like a power play. She doesn't stand up to him often, but if she does, he puts her in her place by packing up and walking out. Then he gets his own place for a while until he starts missing the comforts of home and decides to give her another chance. They make up, and everything's rosy until it happens again.”
”So you think he'll go back to her?” Sarah asked hopefully.
”Maybe not this time, because he has your mother.” Eric was clearly bored by the subject. ”So, on with the show! Let's figure out the best place for you to set up shop.”
Together they toured the apartment, which didn't take long, as it consisted only of the living room, kitchenette, and two small bedrooms, one of which contained nothing but a bureau, the two single beds having been transferred to Sarah's bedroom at the house on Windsor Street.
”Terrific!” Eric said. ”We can use this one as the seance room. If there were beds, it would ruin the effect.”
”We're not having a seance,” Sarah protested. ”That's what they call it when mediums call up spirits of the dead. All I'm going to pretend to do is tell fortunes.”
” *The Crystal Room,' then,” Eric said lightly. ”I like that, don't you? That sounds like a room in the White House. Why don't you go get changed, and I'll set things up.”
He made a quick trip back to the living room to retrieve the portable CD player and the backpack, out of which he extracted a K Mart sack, which he handed to Sarah. When she opened it, she was startled to find not the Gypsy costume she expected but a witch costume, with a black cape and peaked black hat.
”What's this?” she exclaimed. ”I thought I was going to wear the same outfit I wore at the carnival!”
”I couldn't get it back from the Drama Club prop room without explaining why I wanted it,” Eric said. ”What I ended up doing was. .h.i.tting the discount counter at K Mart, but most of the Halloween costumes were already sold.”
”I don't like it,” Sarah objected. ”The other costume was funky and fun, but this one's creepy.”