The Southampton School Board superintendent, Stuart Gordonson, arrived a bit late to the McDolen Christmas party; as soon as Donald introduced him to Kate and mentioned her new degree, the man pulled her aside and promised her a job if and when she might ever want one.
“We would be thrilled to have a McDolen on our team,” Mr. Gordonson had grinned beneath his well-trimmed mustache. “What a feather in our cap, eh?” Kate thanked him and said she’d let him know.
When everyone had at last left, somewhere around two-thirty in the morning, and Kate and Donald were stacking punch cups on the kitchen counter for the maid to take care of when she arrived in a few hours, Kate mentioned the job offer to Donald. He’d smiled his vague smile and said, “I only introduced you as a courtesy, don’t be silly. Stuart would have chastised me if I hadn’t. But you aren’t seriously considering teaching, are you? There are plenty of other people in this county for that.”
He’d stepped up to Kate to put his arms around her, but she’d moved back. “What do you mean?”
Donald chuckled, shook his handsome and prematurely graying head, and said, “Honey, I’m glad you finished your degree. I know you’ve worked hard. But you weren’t seriously considering going into education, were you? I mean…honey, Donnie needs you at home. I need you at home. Please don’t make me say things that will sound like an old fashioned chauvinist, but there really is no need for you to teach.”
So it would look bad to you, would it? she thought. Your wife getting minimum pay as a first year teacher, lugging books to and fro, calling parents to set up conferences, wiping other people’s kids snotty noses. Much too comfy with the regular Joes, Donald?
“Well,” Kate said. “I wouldn’t think there would be an opening, anyway. It’s the middle of the year.”
Donald had kissed her forehead. “True, true.” He smiled. “And wasn’t tonight just grand? I’m so glad to be home. It will be good for all of us, settled once and for all.”
Christmas Day galloped in, and with it a spattering of snow, a emerald ring for Kate, and a rifle for Donnie with a big red bow and a promise from Donald that they would go turkey hunting on New Year’s Eve. Donnie, still small for a seventh-grader but solid in shoulder and arm, had gawked at the weapon. Donald had patted his son on the shoulder and said all McDolen boys hunted turkey and game on their land.
Donnie was thrilled. So was Kate. Up until now, Donald had had little time for Donnie. Now, at last, they could try to recapture the father-son bond.
But the connection was a sharp and double-edged one, when all was said and done. Donald, comfortable now in his element, his territory, had done “what my father did for me.” He let Donnie get by with things Kate would never have allowed on her own. He introduced Donnie to cigars, a “McDolen tradition, Kate, only the best blends, of course.” Then, of course, the McDolen’s favorite beers and wines over dinner and after dinner. Donnie, once more like Kate in his cautious, shy demeanor, began to embrace his McDolen heritage with gusto. Donald’s attention with Donnie was hit and miss, with his work and his own stable of local buddies, but Donnie discovered quickly that the McDolen name had incredible pull in Southampton. He discovered that when he decided something was in style, the other middle school boys followed suit. They could smell the money on him like dogs to a ham bone, and Donnie loved it.
The rifle that first Christmas had been the beginning of the changes in Kate’s son, the beginning of his loss to her. Kate hadn’t known on that first Christmas morning as she’d stood outside the sun room door wiping the cold, wet snow out of her face and laughing as Donnie and Donald had test-fired it against the trunks of the barren trees of the apple orchard, that Donnie wouldn’t be living at home much longer. That her shy child would find power and clout as intoxicating as his father’s fine wines.
She remembered the cold of the snow. The wet pattering on her cheeks and neck. Donald’s shouts, “Yes, that’s right, just a bit higher! Pull!” The crack of the discharge. The splintered apple bark.
She remembered.
There was a loud slam. Kate started. Her head whipped toward the bathroom door and she saw a shadow pass over the surface of the dresser. The girl was back.
Freezing water was pouring from the shower spigot and down Kate’s naked body.
The girl had returned.
Oh, bring her on, Kate thought, her breath picking up again and her arms tightening. She found herself smiling. Let’s have it out.
40
The girl was back. Mistie flinched when the door slammed. She stared as the girl came in, strode between the bed and the T.V. up to the door and back again, then tried to pull the mirror off the wall with a loud grunt. It didn’t come, so the girl pulled a drawer out of the dresser and cracked the glass with it. The splinters of glass in the frame looked like the shiny star in Princess Silverlace’s crown. The girl paced again, her arms crossed and her eyes straight ahead. She looked like somebody had put her in a car and rolled it into a lake. She was messed up.
As she passed the television the fifth time, she drove her fist into the power button. The T.V. winked off. Mistie drew herself up, and scooched up to the head of the bed.
The girl paced some more. Her eyes were ugly. They looked like pit bull eyes. There was a high school boy who lived at the trailer park who had a pit bull with eyes like that. The dog didn’t seem to have any sense except for biting and chopping at everything that went near it on its chain. It seemed more like a machine than a dog.
Then the girl went into the bathroom and the water was turned off.
41
The teacher hadn’t gone anywhere, big surprise. She was standing in the bathtub, shivering like a wet dog, one foot on top of the other, lips tinged blue, hands above her head and secured with the towel strip. The rod had bent, but was in place. A little bar of paper-wrapped soap had been knocked into the tub and was at the drain hole, gummy and torn. The room wasn’t steamy; the water had gone cold, probably a long time ago. Puddles of water stood on the tile floor.
But there was one disturbing difference. The teacher’s head wasn’t down. Her gaze was steady and cold as the water, locked on Tony.
Tony turned off the spigot, swiped the knife from her ankle and lifted it to the teacher’s throat. Her body stung and throbbed, and she was going to share all the joy she had to share. “Miss me? Oh, I bet you did. I’m sure you wish you could have gone with me on my little adventure.”
“Truth or dare,” said the teacher.
“What?” Tony was incredulous. “What did you say?”
The teacher smiled.
Tony pressed the tip of the blade into the teacher’s abdomen, and pushed until the felt the skin give with a silent little pop. The teacher’s smile tightened into a grimace, but she didn’t repeat what she said.
“Oh, tough now?” Tony scoffed. “Enjoy your bath?”
The teacher, eyes locked on Tony’s, nodded slowly. “You bet.”
“Yeah? Well you would enjoy what just happened to me. You smelly cunt, I bet you’d get all wet over what I just went through.”
The teacher’s eyed winced, but then narrowed and held. She said nothing.
Tony put the knife on the back of the toilet, kicked off her boots, then peeled off her jeans. The motions nearly made her sick, the sound of the denim sliding over skin. She clenched her teeth and remembered the laughter and the slobbering and the jabbing. She wanted to have them now in this bathroom with their pants down, she wanted to rip their members apart, just like they had ripped her insides. Tony threw her jeans and panties, crusted and hard with the boys’ cum, into the corner behind the toilet. She stood in just her sweatshirt. “I want you and Baby Doll to see something,” she said. “Kid! Get in here!”